VEGETARIANISM IN THE DRAWING-ROOM
THE Company that assembled to listen to the Prophet of the Moon, on the
next occasion of his delivering any formal address, was much more select
than the comparatively mixed and middle-class society of the Simple
Souls. Miss Browning and her sister, Mrs. Mackintosh, were indeed
present; for Lord Ivywood had practically engaged them both as private
secretaries, and kept them pretty busy, too. There was also Mr. Leveson,
because Lord Ivywood believed in his organizing power; and also Mr.
Hibbs, because Mr. Leveson believed in his political judgment, whenever
he could discover what it was. Mr. Leveson had straight, dark hair, and
looked nervous. Mr. Hibbs had straight, fair hair, and also looked
nervous. But the rest of the company were more of Ivywood’s own world,
or the world of high finance with which it mixes both here and on the
continent. Lord Ivywood welcomed, with something approaching to warmth,
a distinguished foreign diplomatist, who was, indeed, none other than
that silent German representative who had sat beside him in that last
conference on the Island of the Olives. Dr. Gluck was no longer in his
quiet, black suit, but wore an ornate, diplomatic uniform with a sword
and Prussian, Austrian or Turkish Orders; for he was going on from
Ivywood to a function at Court. But his curl of red lips, his screw of
black mustache, and his unanswering almond eyes had no more changed than
the face of a wax figure in a barber’s shop window.
The Prophet had also effected an improvement in his dress. When he had
orated on the sands his costume, except for the fez, was the shabby but
respectable costume of any rather unsuccessful English clerk. But now
that he had come among aristocrats who petted their souls as they did
their senses, there must be no such incongruity. He must be a proper,
fresh-picked oriental tulip or lotus. So—he wore long, flowing robes of
white, relieved here and there by flame-coloured threads of tracery, and
round his head was a turban of a kind of pale golden green. He had to
look as if he had come flying across Europe on the magic carpet, or
fallen a moment before from his paradise in the moon.
The ladies of Lord Ivywood’s world were much as we have already found
them. Lady Enid Wimpole still overwhelmed her earnest and timid face
with a tremendous costume, that was more like a procession than a dress.
It looked rather like the funeral procession of Aubrey Beardsley. Lady
Joan Brett still looked like a very beautiful Spaniard with no illusions
left about her castle in Spain. The large and resolute lady who had
refused to ask any questions at Misysra’s earlier lecture, and who was
known as Lady Crump, the distinguished Feminist, still had the air of
being so full and bursting with questions fatal to Man as to have passed
the speaking and reached the speechless stage of hostility. Throughout
the proceedings she contributed nothing but bursting silence and a
malevolent eye. And old Lady Ivywood, under the oldest and finest lace
and the oldest and finest manners, had a look like death on her, which
can often be seen in the parents of pure intellectuals. She had that
face of a lost mother that is more pathetic than the face of a lost
child.
“And what are you going to delight us with today?” Lady Enid was asking
of the Prophet.
“My lecture,” answered Misysra, gravely, “is on the Pig.”
It was part of a simplicity really respectable in him that he never saw
any incongruity in the arbitrary and isolated texts or symbols out of
which he spun his thousand insane theories. Lady Enid endured the impact
of this singular subject for debate without losing that expression of
wistful sweetness which she wore on principle when talking to such
people.
“The Pig, he is a large subject,” continued the Prophet, making curves
in the air, as if embracing some particularly prize specimen. “He
includes many subjects. It is to me very strange that the Christians
should so laugh and be surprised because we hold ourselves to be defiled
by pork; we and also another of the Peoples of the Book. But, surely,
you Christians yourselves consider the pig as a manner of pollution;
since it is your most usual expression of your despising, of your very
great dislike. You say ‘swine,’ my dear lady; you do not say animals far
more unpopular, such as the alligator.”
“I see,” said the lady, “how wonderful!”
“If you are annoyed,” went on the encouraged and excited gentleman, “if
you are annoyed with anyone, with a—what you say?—a lady’s maid, you do
not say to her ‘Horse.’ You do not say to her ‘Camel.’”
“Ah, no,” said Lady Enid, earnestly.
“‘Pig of a lady’s maid,’ you say in your colloquial English,” continued
the Prophet, triumphantly. “And yet this great and awful Pig, this
monster whose very name, when whispered, you think will wither all your
enemies, you allow, my dear lady, to approach yet closer to you. You
incorporate this great Pig in the substance of your own person.”
Lady Enid Wimpole was looking a little dazed at last, at this
description of her habits, and Joan gave Lord Ivywood a hint that the
lecturer had better be transferred to his legitimate sphere of
lecturing. Ivywood led the way into a larger room that was full of
ranked chairs, with a sort of lectern at the other end, and flanked on
all four sides with tables laden with all kinds of refreshments. It was
typical of the strange, half-fictitious enthusiasm and curiosity of that
world, that one long table was set out entirely with vegetarian foods,
especially of an eastern sort (like a table spread in the desert for a
rather fastidious Indian hermit); but that tables covered with game
patties, lobster and champagne were equally provided, and very much more
frequented. Even Mr. Hibbs, who would honestly have thought entering a
publichouse more disgraceful than entering a brothel, could not connect
any conception of disgrace with Lord Ivywood’s champagne.
For the purpose of the lecture was not wholly devoted to the great and
awful Pig, and the purpose of the meeting even less. Lord Ivywood, the
white furnace of whose mind was always full of new fancies hardening
into ambitions, wanted to have a debate on the diet of East and West,
and felt that Misysra might very appropriately open with an account of
the Moslem veto on pork or other coarse forms of flesh food. He reserved
it to himself to speak second.
The Prophet began, indeed, with some of his dizziest flights. He
informed the Company that they, the English, had always gone in hidden
terror and loathing of the Pig, as a sacred symbol of evil. He proved it
by the common English custom of drawing a pig with one’s eyes shut. Lady
Joan smiled, and yet she asked herself (in a doubt that had been
darkening round her about many modern things lately) whether it was
really much more fanciful than many things the scientists told her: as,
the traces of Marriage by Capture which they found in that ornamental
and even frivolous being, the Best Man.
He said that the dawn of greater enlightenment is shown in the use of
the word “gammon,” which still expresses disgust at “the porcine image,”
but no longer fear of it, but rather a rational disdain and disbelief.
“Rowley,” said the Prophet, solemnly, and then after a long pause,
“Powley, _Gammon_ and Spinach.”
Lady Joan smiled again, but again asked herself if it was much more
farfetched than a history book she had read, which proved the
unpopularity of Catholicism in Tudor times from the word “hocus pocus.”
He got into a most amazing labyrinth of philology between the red
primeval sins of the first pages of Genesis and the Common English word
“ham.” But, again, Joan wondered whether it was much wilder than the
other things she had heard said about Primitive Man by people who had
never seen him.
He suggested that the Irish were set to keep pigs because they were a
low and defiled caste, and the serfs of the pig-scorning Saxon; and Joan
thought it was about as sensible as what the dear old Archdeacon had
said about Ireland years ago; which had caused an Irishman of her
acquaintance to play “the Shan Van Voght” and then smash the piano.
Joan Brett had been thoughtful for the last few days. It was partly due
to the scene in the turret, where she had struck a sensitive and
artistic side of Phillip Ivywood she had never seen before, and partly
to disturbing news of her mother’s health, which, though not menacing,
made her feel hypothetically how isolated she was in the world. On all
previous occasions she had merely enjoyed the mad lecturer now at the
reading-desk. Today she felt a strange desire to analyse him, and
imagine how a man could be so connected and so convinced and yet so
wildly wide of the mark. As she listened carefully, looking at the hands
in her lap, she began to think she understood.
The lecturer did really try to prove that the “porcine image” had never
been used in English history or literature, except in contempt. And the
lecturer really did know a very great deal about English history and
literature: much more than she did; much more than the aristocrats round
her did. But she noted that in every case what he knew was a fragmentary
fact. In every case what he did not know was the truth behind the fact.
What he did not know was the atmosphere. What he did not know was the
tradition. She found herself ticking off the cases like counts in an
indictment.
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that
Richard III was called a “boar” by an eighteenth century poet and a
“hog” by a fifteenth century poet. What he did not know was the habit of
sport and of heraldry. He did not know (what Joan knew instantly, though
she had never thought of it before in her life) that beasts courageous
and hard to kill are noble beasts, by the law of chivalry. Therefore,
the boar was a noble beast, and a common crest for great captains.
Misysra tried to show that Richard had only been called a pig after he
was cold pork at Bosworth.
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that
there never was such a person as Lord Bacon. The phrase is a
falsification of what should be Lord Verulam or Lord St. Albans. What he
did not know was exactly what Joan did know (though it had never crossed
her mind till that moment) that when all is said and done, a title is a
sort of joke, while a surname is a serious thing. Bacon was a gentleman,
and his name was Bacon; whatever titles he took. But Misysra seriously
tried to prove that “Bacon” was a term of abuse applied to him during
his unpopularity or after his fall.
Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that
the poet Shelley had a friend called Hogg, who treated him on one
occasion with grave treachery. He instantly tried to prove that the man
was only called “Hogg” because he had treated Shelley with grave
treachery. And he actually adduced the fact that another poet,
practically contemporary, was called “Hogg” as completing the connection
with Shelley. What he did not know was just what Joan had always known
without knowing it: the kind of people concerned, the traditions of
aristocrats like the Shelleys or of Borderers like the Ettrick Shepherd.
The lecturer concluded with a passage of inpenetrable darkness about
pig-iron and pigs of lead, which Joan did not even venture to
understand. She could only say that if it did not mean that some day our
diet might become so refined that we ate lead and iron, she could form
no fancy of what it did mean.
“Can Phillip Ivywood believe this kind of thing?” she asked herself; and
even as she did so, Phillip Ivywood rose.
He had, as Pitt and Gladstone had, an impromptu classicism of diction,
his words wheeling and deploying into their proper places like a
well-disciplined army in its swiftest advance. And it was not long
before Joan perceived that the last phase of the picture, obscure and
monstrous as it seemed, gave Ivywood exactly the opening he wanted.
Indeed, she felt, no doubt, that he had arranged for it beforehand.
“It is within my memory,” said Lord Ivywood, “though it need in no case
have encumbered yours, that when it was my duty to precede the admired
lecturer whom I now feel it a privilege even to follow, I submitted a
suggestion which, however simple, would appear to many paradoxical. I
affirmed or implied the view that the religion of Mahomet was, in a
peculiar sense, a religion of progress. This is so contrary, not only to
historical convention but to common platitude, that I shall find no
ground either of surprise or censure if it takes a perceptible time
before it sinks into the mind of the English public. But I think, ladies
and gentlemen, that this period is notably abbreviated by the remarkable
exposition which we have heard today. For this question of the attitude
of Islam toward food affords as excellent an example of its special mode
of progressive purification as the more popular example of its attitude
toward drink. For it illustrates that principle which I have ventured to
call the principle of the Crescent: the principle of perpetual growth
toward an implied and infinite perfection.
“The great religion of Islam does not of itself forbid the eating of
flesh foods. But, in accordance with that principle of growth which is
its life, it has pointed the way to a perfection not yet perhaps fully
attainable by our nature; it has taken a plain and strong example of the
dangers of meat-eating; and hung up the repellent carcass as a warning
and a sign. In the gradual emergence of mankind from a gross and
sanguinary mode of sustenance, the Semite has led the way. He has laid,
as it were, a symbolic embargo upon the beast typical, the beast of
beasts. With the instinct of the true mystic, he selected for exemption
from such cannibal feasts the creature which appeals to both sides of
the higher vegetarian ethic. The pig is at once the creature whose
helplessness most moves our pity and whose ugliness most repels our
taste.
“It would be foolish to affirm that no difficulty arises out of the
different stages of moral evolution in which the different races find
themselves. Thus it is constantly said, and such things are not said
without some excuse in document or incident, that followers of the
Prophet have specialised in the arts of war and have come into a
contact, not invariably friendly, with those Hindoos of India who have
specialised in the arts of Peace. In the same way the Hindoos, it must
be confessed, have been almost as much in advance of Islam in the
question of meat as Islam is in advance of Christianity in the matter of
drink. It must be remembered again and again, ladies and gentlemen, that
every allegation we have of any difference between Hindoo and Moslem
comes through a Christian channel, and is therefore tainted evidence.
But in this matter, even, can we not see the perils of disregarding such
plain danger signals as the veto on pork? Did not an Empire nearly slip
out of our hands because our hands were greased with cow-fat? And did
not the well of Cawnpore brim with blood instead of water because we
would not listen to the instinct of the Oriental about the shedding of
sacred blood?
“But if it be proposed, with whatever graduation, to approach that
repudiation of flesh food which Buddhism mainly and Islam partly
recommends, it will always be asked by those who hate the very vision of
Progress—‘Where do you draw the line? May I eat oysters? May I eat eggs?
May I drink milk?’ You may. You may eat or drink anything essential to
your stage of evolution, so long as you are evolving toward a clearer
and cleaner ideal of bodily life. If,” he said gravely, “I may employ a
phrase of flippancy, I would say that you may eat six dozen oysters
today, but I should strongly advise five dozen oysters tomorrow. For how
else has all progress in public or private manners been achieved? Would
not the primitive cannibals be surprised at the strange distinction we
draw between men and beasts? All historians pay high honour to the
Huguenots, and the great Huguenot Prince, Henri Quatre. None need deny
that his aspiration that every Frenchman should have a chicken in his
pot was, for his period, a high aspiration. It is no disrespect to him
that we, mounting to higher levels, and looking down longer
perspectives, consider the chicken. And this august march of discovery
passes figures higher than that of Henry of Navarre. I shall always give
a high place, as Islam has always given a high place, to that figure,
mythical or no, which we find presiding over the foundations of
Christianity. I cannot doubt that the fable, incredible and revolting
otherwise, which records the rush of swine into the sea, was an allegory
of his early realisation that a spirit, evil indeed, does reside in all
animals in so far as they tempt us to devour them. I cannot doubt that
the Prodigal leaving his sins among the swine is another illustration of
the great thesis of the Prophet of the Moon. But here, also, progress
and relativity are relentless in their advance; and not a few of us may
have risen today to the point of regretting that the joyful sounds
around the return of the Prodigal should be marred by the moaning of a
calf.
“For the rest, he who asks us whither we go knows not the meaning of
Progress. If we come at last to live on light, as men said of the
chameleon, if some cosmic magic closed to us now, as radium was but
recently closed, allows us to transmute the very metals into flesh
without breaking into the bloody house of life, we shall know these
things when we have achieved them. It is enough for us now if we have
reached a spiritual station, in which at least the living head we lop
has not eyes to reproach us; and the herbs we gather cannot cry against
our cruelty like the mandrake.”
Lord Ivywood resumed his seat, his colourless lips still moving. By some
previous arrangement, probably, Mr. Leveson rose to move a motion about
Vegetarianism. Mr. Leveson was of opinion that the Jewish and Moslem
veto on pork had been the origin of Vegetarianism. He thought it was a
great step, and showed how progressive the creed could be. He thought
the persecution of the Hindoos by Moslems had probably been much
exaggerated; he thought our experience in the Indian Mutiny showed we
considered the feeling of Easterners too little in such matters. He
thought Vegetarianism in some ways an advance on orthodox Christianity.
He thought we must be ready for yet further advances; and he sat down.
And as he had said precisely, clause by clause, everything that Lord
Ivywood had said, it is needless to say that that nobleman afterward
congratulated him on the boldness and originality of his brilliant
speech.
At a similar sort of preconcerted signal, Hibbs However rose rather
vaguely to his feet to second the motion. He rather prided himself on
being a man of few words, in the vocal sense; he was no orator, as
Brutus was. It was only with pen in hand, in an office lined with works
of reference, that he could feel that sense of confused responsibility
that was the one pleasure of his life. But on this occasion he was
brighter than usual; partly because he liked being in a lord’s house;
partly because he had never tasted champagne before, and he felt as if
it agreed with him; partly because he saw in the subject of Progress an
infinite opportunity of splitting hairs.
“Whatever,” said Hibbs, with a solemn cough, “whatever we may think of
the old belief that Moslems have differed from Buddhism in a regrettable
way, there can be no doubt the responsibility lay with the Christian
Churches. Had the Free Churches put their foot down and met Messrs.
Opalstein’s demand, we should have heard nothing of these old
differences between one belief and another.” As it was, it reminded him
of Napoleon. He gave his own opinion for what it was worth, but he was
not afraid to say at any cost, even there and in that company, that this
business of Asiatic vegetation had occupied less of the time of the
Wesleyan Conference than it should have done. He would be the last to
say, of course, that anyone was in any sense to blame. They all knew Dr.
Coon’s qualifications. They all knew as well as he did, that a more
strenuous social worker than Charles Chadder had never rallied the
forces of progress. But that which was not really an indiscretion might
be represented as an indiscretion, and perhaps we had had enough of that
just lately. It was all very well to talk about Coffe but it should be
remembered, with no disrespect to those in Canada to whom we owe so
much, that all that happened before 1891. No one had less desire to
offend our Ritualistic friends than he did, but he had no hesitation in
saying that the question was a question that could be asked, and though
no doubt, from one point of view the goat’s—
Lady Joan moved sharply in her chair, as if gripped by sudden pain. And,
indeed, she had suddenly felt the chronic and recurrent pain of her
life. She was brave about bodily pain, as are most women, even luxurious
women: but the torment that from time to time returned and tore her was
one to which many philosophical names have been given, but no name so
philosophical as Boredom.
She felt she could not stand a minute more of Mr. Hibbs. She felt she
would die if she heard about the goats—from one or any point of view.
She slipped from her chair and somehow slid round the corner, in
pretence of seeking one of the tables of refreshment in the new wing.
She was soon among the new oriental apartments, now almost completed;
but she took no refreshments, though attenuated tables could still be
found here and there. She threw herself on an ottoman and stared toward
the empty and elfin turret chamber, in which Ivywood had made her
understand that he, also, could thirst for beauty and desire to be at
peace. He certainly had a poetry of his own, after all; a poetry that
never touched earth; the poetry of Shelley rather than Shakespeare. His
phrase about the fairy turret was true: it did look like the end of the
world. It did seem to teach her that there is always some serene limit
at last.
She started and half rose on her elbow with a small laugh. A dog of
ludicrous but familiar appearance came shuffling toward her and she
lifted herself in the act of lifting him. She also lifted her head, and
saw something that seemed to her, in a sense more Christian and
catastrophic, very like the end of the world.
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