presented by the Poets’ Birth (Prevention) Bill. The object, as his
colleagues knew, was to secure that in future poets should be made (if
possible by publicity) and not born. Everybody agreed that democracy
should have self-made poets, that the pretensions of birth must cease.
At the same time it could not be denied that poets insisted on being
born. It would be within his colleagues’ recollection that a number of
poets had been made in the recent list of honours. They were, he was
happy to say, perfect in every respect except that they did not write
poetry. For his part he preferred that kind of poet, but it could not
be denied that the opponents of the measure were making great play with
this. He asked for the views of his colleagues.
“The Minister of Higher Education asked what poetry was?
“The Minister of Commerce entirely agreed.
“The Master of the Weasels thought that there was much in what had been
said.
“The Senior Almoner had had a letter from a very respectable
washerwoman in his constituency. She complained that there was a poet
who wore soft collars. He did not wish to press the point, but popular
feeling could not be neglected.
“The Keeper of the Conscience took the view that the time was ripe for
action. Several members of the Council concurred.
“The Prime Minister, summing up, said that he was glad to find his
colleagues unanimous in supporting the course he had proposed. The
division was likely to be a close one. He especially appealed to Lord
Albatross.”
At this point the angel took possession of the Clerk’s mind, and
with a queer click the faces of the men round the table were rolled
up like green railway carriage blinds, and their minds became
visible, working rather like electric light studs being pressed
off and on. The Clerk continued to write the minutes: “Not that
Lord Albatross cared, but his stud would fidget his neck, and he
couldn’t be expected to listen to the Prime Minister’s neat periods
with a rasping stud. The other eighteen fellers probably had got
their studs right. Anyhow, judgin’ by their serious looks, they had
better things than studs to think about. Queer thing how complete
they all looked--if you know what I mean. Couldn’t imagine them
ever having not worn morning coats or neat grey tweeds and a sort
of sewn-up-and-sent-home-hoping-it’s-to-your-complete-satisfaction
look. Except ‘Conky,’ the Lord High Wig. ‘Conky’ was dressed up like
himself--a sort of suit consistin’ of a heavy jowled face, glass eyes,
looming stomach and the rest. Joke if they found him and ‘Conky’ out
and gave them the push for having sneaked into the room during a
Council.” Albatross suppressed a chuckle.
The P.M. looked at him coldly. “Damn the fellow with his aristocratic
sharpness. There he sat looking like a stuck pig, and all the time he
had followed every word and seen through the whole caboodle. That’s
the worst of mixing classes. They’ve got their own cold, fishy way
of nosing through the water, and snap--they’re on the fly, when you
thought them fast asleep. They’d never understand each other--never.
Here was he not caring a row of beans (or has-beens, he added,
viciously looking round) as to what the result of the division would
be. What he wanted was friendship. He wanted them all to see that
he wasn’t just the best thing in talking machines that had been
invented. Groping to them he was--to their hearts. Well, why not? They
had hearts, hadn’t they? And just when he was stretching out a hand
to gather in the strings this cold fellow fetches out his knife of
laughter. Not human, that’s what was wrong. Born like a little Eastern
idol. He should have stuck to his own lot. There was Crayfish, the
Senior Almoner. He sympathised. He stood shoulder to shoulder. Damn!
getting the rhetoric into his thoughts! Still Crayfish would pull it
through, if only to irritate Albatross and Lord Conkers. If he didn’t,
well he’d get back to humans at last. He had a right, hadn’t he, to be
a man.
“The Minister of Commerce was drawing one O after another on his pad.
Who did the perfect circle? Forget my own name next. Just ask old
Crayfish--only chap in the room who’s ever read anything except _The
Morning News_--begging Albatross’ pardon--and _The Blue ’Un_. Silly to
have got cluttered up with this gang, and yet what a wonder the P.M.
was. Never felt a thing in his life. Could make a bed--mattress and
all--out of two adjectives and a noun. Yes, and the right adjectives
too--right in a popular sense that is. But as a literary proposition, O
Lord! How odd, though, to live by words that weren’t words so much as
gestures and nothing behind them. Like Hume--association of well, not
ideas, but penny plain dressed up as tuppeny coloured. Like a series
of ballads hawked by a man in the street hung all round him and no man
in the middle. Funny how not being a man he gets real men like old
Crayfish for instance. That’s the one--no rhetoric for him. Look at his
tense simple eyes. He thinks only of what’s best and loyalty, and if
sincerity can get the damned thing through he’ll do it. Now I wonder if
he does know who did the perfect circle?...”
The blinds clicked down again. The Master of the Weasels was standing
over the Clerk pouring some brandy down his throat. The Clerk blinked
his eyes and recovered suddenly. “I’m sorry, sir, I must have fainted.
I’m afraid that I’ve missed part of the discussion.” “It doesn’t
matter,” said the Prime Minister, looking at the notes, from which the
angelic interpolations had disappeared. “Nobody said a thing while you
were off.” “Oh,” said the Clerk happily, “then nothing happened. Will
you sign the minutes?”
XXIII
YOU CANNOT HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT
A certain business-man in Damascus, whose efficiency was only surpassed
by his personal ugliness, was informed that in a distant vilayet dwelt
a peasant of whom it was currently rumoured that he possessed a goose
that laid eggs of pure gold.
He accordingly chartered a caravan, and with much jingling of silver
bells set out across the desert to make a proposition to the peasant.
In his company was a young man who was reputed (though it had not been
finally brought home to him) to be a poet. Whether this were true or
no, it cannot be denied that he paid much heed to the ascensions of the
moon.
On the third day of the pilgrimage that pale planet was bewitching in
her pensive hair the reluctant black beauty of the desert. All was
still except when a grave camel kneeling shook a bell. But presently,
with the clear monotony of a bird, the young man’s voice was heard
singing:
“In this cold glory
of midnight, day
and her fever
have passed away.
“Here in the quiet,
here in the cool,
even pain, even sorrow
are beautiful.
“And the voice of the poet
lifts and lingers
at one in the dark
with the older singers.”
“As I feared,” said the merchant, raising his head from his silken
and tasselled pillow, “the fellow is a poet. I must cope with this.”
Thereupon he lifted the flap of his embroidered tent, and in a sleeping
suit, of which the radiant texture did not conceal the irregular
contours of his frame, with one arm behind his back, strode across the
sand to where, in a patch of shadow, the poet was crooning.
“Young man,” said the merchant, breaking somewhat harshly on the
singer’s reverie, “was that your own poem?”
“It was, merchant,” replied the poet, “but now, since you have heard
it, it is yours also.”
“Tell me,” said the merchant craftily, “how much would you be paid for
such a poem in Damascus?”
“If I were lucky,” said the poet, “I might earn a kiss, or if unlucky a
dinah.”
“A dinah,” said the merchant. “By the beard of the Prophet, no bad
pay for a mouthful of sweet words. And is it difficult to acquire the
trick?”
“All that is needed,” answered the poet, “is a rose behind the ear and
the moon behind the heart.”
“In Damascus,” cried the merchant, “I have a hanging garden stained
with roses, and at night the moon rises in the garden. My ears are
longer than yours, and my heart, if one may judge by a comparison of
our persons, is incomparably larger. I will accordingly give up the
quest of the goose, and will return to Damascus and in my rose garden
lay my own golden eggs. But in the meantime,” he added reflectively,
stabbing the poet to the heart with the pearl-handled scimitar which he
had hitherto concealed, “I may as well dispose of a dangerous rival.”
“O fool,” whispered the dying poet, “it was only the goose who thought
the eggs gold, because of the golden goslings hidden in their cool blue
shell, as the peasant discovered when he killed her.”
“Why did she think so?” said the merchant, daintily wiping the curved
blade.
“Because she was a poet,” whispered the dying man. “And why did she
tell the peasant?” asked the merchant, preparing to return to his
interrupted rest. “Because,” said the poet, turning over on his side
with a little sigh, “because she was a goose.”
XXIV
IN VINO VERITAS
“The next story,” said the author, “will be an example of grim realism.
It will have no characters and no incidents and no meaning. It will
continue for some three or four hundred pages, and will begin in the
middle and not end at all. There will also be a tendency for verbs
and punctuation to disappear simultaneously, and a slightly stagnant
atmosphere of muddled gloom will reproduce the sensation of a London
fog.”
“I did not know,” said the publisher, “that you had read Tchekov. For
my part I have not, and let me add I do not intend that my public
should.”
“I do not even know,” replied the author, “what Tchekov is, though by
the sound it might be a Slavonic parlour game. But if, as always, you
are going to thwart me just when I am about to strike a modern note, I
will tell you quite simply and (I hope) beautifully an old-fashioned
Christmas story. About the year 1840,” said the author, “in the City
of London, and to be particular in the immediate neighbourhood of a
cosy, rosy, prosy old coaching inn in the Borough, lived, or rather
existed (for he was a wicked old screw was Jonathan), a merchant in the
tea trade (at least he let it be understood that it was the tea trade,
but the gossips, who stood about at the street corners with very blue
noses waiting for the muffin-boy, had their suspicions that----)”
“I do not,” interjected the publisher, “wish to be unduly curious. But
may I ask whether there are any other sentences in this story?”
“Of course,” retorted the author, with justifiable heat, “but if I am
to tell this story at all perhaps you will permit me to tell it in an
old-fashioned way. Let me tell you that in 1840 people had time to
finish sentences like that, yes and to understand them. A man who could
stand the factory system of the time could stand anything.
“Well,” continued the author, “there existed in that neighbourhood
Jonathan Gogglesnape, and as is general with persons who had
acquired names of that sort, he was the hardest, grindingest miser
that you would find in a smart day’s walk, east, west, south or
north of the pump on the left hand corner of the square of St.
Runnymede-in-the-East. Jonathan was at all times of the year a cold,
pinched figure of a man in a tight, rusty surtout, and not an inch
of linen showing either at the mean, scraggy throat or the large red
wrists, but at five o’clock on Christmas Eve he was a circumstance,
like the whistling wind, to make comfortable folks draw closer to the
fire and to thank their Maker and the Spirit of Christmas that they
were not as other men.
“A sharp fall of snow, as yet untrodden into filth and mud, had
smoothed out the vices of the pavement and given that touch of happy
contrast between the radiant revellers within and the homeless
wanderers without so typical of Christmas feeling.”
“I do not think that I can stand much more of this,” said the publisher
faintly.
“In that case,” said the author, “I shall, without delay, recite a
poem which I have called ‘In vino veritas.’”
IN VINO VERITAS.
“Singing ’e was. I tell yer, singing
as sweet as kiss me ’and--
a drunken sort o’chune, but swinging
the feet like if yer understand.
“I stood and watched ’is dancin’ shadder,
Lord wot a dancer! ’eel an’ toe.
‘Oo’s for the ladder--Jacob’s ladder--
one good ’eave and up yer go!’
“Drunk as God ’e was--the liquor,
like a flare of naphthaline,
burning as it run, but quicker--
brightest thing I ever seen!
“’Appy? well I arsk yer! Drinking,
laughing, singing, dance ’e went,
Tell yer straight I kep’ on thinking--
’appy! that’s wot ’appy meant.
“‘I’ve a ladder--Jacob’s ladder--
one good ’eave and up yer go.
Men are mad, but God is madder--’
Meaning? ‘Ow am I ter know?’
“Laughing, singing, dancing, mumming--
looking soft and sly behind ’im,
‘Are yer coming? Aren’t yer coming?’
Damn ’is eyes--I’m off to find ’im.”
“There is a good deal,” remarked the publisher, “to be said for
Prohibition.”
XXV
TANTAE RELIGIO
And another thing. In the gardens of Haroun-al-Raschid, just past the
corner where one pale rose watches her tranquil shadow in the ice-blue
water of a marbled pond, grew a black tree that could not wait for the
Arabian spring. But on the contrary, instead of leaves she threw over
her graceful shoulders a cloak sprigged with red blossom. And that in a
single night.
“Oh miracle,” said the first gardener next morning when he observed
this bright irregularity, “red snow has fallen in the night.” “Oh
marvel,” said the second, “a swarm of red butterflies.” “Oh wonder,”
cried the third, “a little lanthorn in each lighted twig.” “You must be
blind,” said the first; “or a numbskull,” said the second; “or mad,”
cried the third. And thereupon, as was only to be expected, the three
fell to fighting furiously one with another.
“What are those men doing?” whispered the terrified blossoms to the
mother tree; “we are afraid.”
“Hush! blossoms,” murmured the tree, “they think that we are a divine
manifestation.”
“What is that?” asked the blossoms.
“The appearance of the God they worship upon earth,” replied the tree.
“And how do you know,” cried the blossoms, “that they think so?”
“Because,” said the tree as the last gardener fell heavily to the
ground, “they are killing one another.”
XXVI
ON ENTERTAINING ANGELS UNAWARES
The pale-faced man with the slightly Jewish cast of countenance was
observed for the first time on the night of the 27th June passing
through the churchyard by the Vicar, who, taking him, not unnaturally,
for a loafer, ordered him out pretty sharply. He obeyed with remarkable
meekness and disappeared rapidly in the direction of the house of Mrs.
Bolpus. He was next seen on the following evening--a cold, clear night
of moon--by the village ninny, or so it was supposed. For he came back
shouting some nonsense about a lighted man, and laughed happily and
quietly all night.
It was, however, her ladyship who met him in broad daylight two days
later, and engaged him in conversation. For she had heard of his
appearance and feared that he might be a new scandal. She had intended
to begin by speaking to him roundly, but something soft and flickering
in his eyes stopped her. Instead of reproving him, therefore, she
said, speaking almost as to an equal:
“We are thinking of forming a branch of the Society of Poor Lost Things
in the village, and we wondered whether you would care to join?”
“Strange,” he replied in a low but beautifully clear voice, “I was
also thinking of forming a society. But perhaps our objects are the
same! What is yours?” “Oh,” said the lady, “we aim at sweetening bitter
lives.”
“In that case,” said the stranger earnestly, “I would like to give all
I have. It is, I fear,” he added with a smile, “only a guinea.”
“You are joking, I see,” murmured the lady, signing a receipt with a
gold pencil. “And now, sir, will you forgive me if I make a personal
observation?”
“But of course,” he replied.
“You are lodging with Mrs. Bolpus. As a stranger you cannot know her
reputation. If I might without impertinence suggest it, perhaps it
would be wise to find a less questionable landlady.”
“And yet,” mused the stranger, “she seemed poor and unhappy.”
“And so she should,” cut in the lady.
“Indeed I should have described her as a Poor Lost Thing.”
“I can see,” said the benefactress icily, taking the guinea out of
her purse, “that you have misunderstood the objects of the Society.
We assist only the deserving.” “In my Society,” said the man, sadly
pocketing his coins, “we assist first the undeserving.”
“So I should imagine,” sneered her ladyship, “and what do you call it?”
“Oh,” said the stranger gently, turning away, “we call it the Society
of the Rich Lost Things, for whom the way to the kingdom of heaven is
through the eye of a needle.”
* * * * *
“I hope,” said her ladyship to the Earl, her husband, at dinner, “that
you will arrange for Mrs. Bolpus to be evicted at once.”
“Evicted!” said the Earl; “but haven’t you heard the news? She died
this morning.”
“Died!” gasped the lady; “then what was the Jew with the beard doing in
her house?”
“The Jew with the beard?” asked her husband. “I was there to-day and
didn’t hear of anyone.”
“Are you sure?” cried the Countess.
“Quite!” said the Earl, “but wait! Is it perhaps the tramp that the
Vicar saw in the churchyard and poor Geordie Brown’s ‘lighted man’? I
think myself that in both cases it was just imagination.”
“Perhaps,” replied the lady after a long pause, “but all the same I
shall resign my chairmanship of the branch of the Poor Lost Things.”
“Now what in the name of God----,” began the Earl.
“Hush,” almost screamed his wife.
XXVII
TEMPUS FUGIT
“No,” said the old grandfather clock to the green parrot, “I will not
tell you another story. I have told so many that I am quite hoarse.” “I
cannot think what you mean,” replied the parrot. “You have said nothing
but tick-tock like a hen, and then you cluck loudly as though you had
laid an egg, though you have in fact only mislaid an hour. That is not
my idea of a story.”
“When you are my age,” said the clock, “you will realise that there is
no other story.”
XXVIII
YOU CAN TAKE A HORSE TO THE WATER
Once upon a time (and you will see later that it was fortunately not
twice upon this time) in the garden of the Château of Nyon, in the
sweet heart of a lime tree and very near to the little padded box where
they keep the silkworms, there lived a chrysalis, whose ancestors had
come over with John Knox, but who nevertheless agreed with Hume.
“The Almighty,” he said, speaking with what he conceived to be a
Scottish accent, “is merely a prrojection of the chrysalis mind--a
varra puir exemple of the association of incomparable ideas. Now Kant,
as every Scotsman knows, dragged in the soul--a silly bit fluttering
thing with white wings--the great gowk. Mon, it’s a peety....”
“Qu’est que tu me chantes là,” exclaimed an elderly silk-worm, who was
busily occupied in his exquisite occupation. “Execrable worm, thinkest
thou that because thou art no better than a dried twig that all suffer
from such misfortune? It is indeed certain that upon such as thee the
good God has not wasted a soul, but as to me I know that the delicate
machine which can spin so marvellous a net was not meant to fade into
dust. But what can one expect of one whose forefathers were generated
in a fog, lived in an east wind, and died without ever having seen the
sun?” and with this the silk-worm resumed his tapestry.
“What,” exclaimed the chrysalis, “is it Scotland you’re naming in the
same breath wi’ your God-forgotten, pope-ridden, frog-warren? A’m
black ashamed, ah am, and metaphysic or no a’ll no ha it said that any
trapesing piece of a Frenchy had a soul and me from the Clachans of
the Tolbooth no. But mind,” he added as he burst, and from his husk
daintily, like a lace handkerchief out of lavender, rose the butterfly,
“my opeenions remain unchanged.”
“I also,” said the silk-worm, “who have all the years had faith, will
take wings.” And he breathed very hard and deep, but the only result
was that he spoiled his skein.
XXIX
HALF A LOAF IS BETTER THAN NO BREAD
Once upon a time there lived in a cathedral city, almost in the shadow
of the minster, a middle-aged freethinker, who was exceedingly angry
with God for not existing. Nor was he conciliated by those who pointed
out (reasonably enough) that it was not His fault. This, in the view of
the freethinker, merely increased the offence. “He should have thought
of all that before,” he would say grimly.
In the same town, but actually in the minster itself, yes and in a
hole in the pulpit, lived a mouse, who, for her part, did not agree
with the freethinker. She was, I fear, not as independent a mind as
she should have been, and permitted herself to be influenced by the
singularly sweet voice of the principal officiating priest. Him she
(foolishly) identified with the creator of the ample mansion of her
choice, and indeed let it be understood among her acquaintance that she
was peculiarly acceptable in his sight. “For,” she said, “every day he
comes dressed all in white when the sun strikes through the windows,
throwing a coloured shadow on his robe, and scatters precious bread
for me on a stainless cloth. And in further proof,” she would say to
scoffers, “there is a second and lesser angel, who salutes him, calling
him by his name of ‘Our Father in Heaven.’” Several mice who doubted
her story came at her invitation to scoff and remained to eat the
sacred crumbs.
Now it was exactly this matter of the bread which above all other
Christian uses most inflamed the freethinker. When he was not railing
at the superstition of those who believed that a celestial body could
be concealed in milled and baked ears of corn, he was complaining
against the waste of good bread. He would calculate a statistic of the
annual diversion of bread to this purpose. “Think of the poor!” he
would snort, but it is not certain that he thought of them himself.
The freethinker’s habit in the spring months of the year was to take an
early turn along the quiet and flowery streets. The clean and morning
beauty was for him an anodyne, and when he was certain of escaping
observation he would on occasion slip through a small postern gate
in the cathedral and brood happily upon the base uses to which a
structure so noble had been addressed. During one of these intrusions
he observed that the cloth was laid on the high altar and that the
priest was preparing the communion service. As no worshippers appeared,
the freethinker drew near to the altar in order to satisfy himself by
personal witness of the futility of the celebration.
The priest did not observe (or did not appear to observe) his visitor,
but completed the ritual as though in the company of a great host.
“Buffoonery!” muttered the freethinker, struggling angrily against the
radiant charm of the sun falling through old glass. “Bad enough,” he
continued in an audible whisper, “to serve bread to those who do not
need it, but to serve it to nobody at all----!!”
“Are you sure,” said the priest, who had finished the service, “that it
is for nobody?” and he pointed smiling to the tiny grey communicants
nibbling the crumbs. “Do I understand,” inquired the freethinker
icily, “that you perform this service for the sake of the mice?” “Why
not,” said the priest; “as you do to the least of these----” “This,”
said the freethinker, quite properly indignant, “is what I should
call blasphemy.” “And of that,” said the priest, turning to go to the
vestry, “you should be no mean judge.”
* * * * *
“Sir,” said the verger to the priest later in the day, “them mice have
been about again. I see two of them at the sacred bread. I wish you
would let me set traps.” “Why,” said the priest, “I have already set
one.” “And did you catch anything?” asked the verger. “I think so,”
said the priest.
XXX
IN FOR A PENNY IN FOR A POUND
There was once a beautiful line of poetry who had by an unfortunate
accident lodged herself in the brain of an extremely inferior poet. To
her great discomfort the line found herself driven to associate with a
disorderly mob of worn-out and shabby phrases. Nor was this all. While
her companions were for ever being taken out and aired, and on occasion
finding their way into the public prints, she remained neglected and
disused.