Part 3
Of course, I couldn’t have Peter in the room catching scarlatina and spreading infection, but Daisy was never tired of hearing about him. We country people don’t keep our animals in the Zoo and visit them once a year. They are part of our life, and we talk about them accordingly. Dobbin, now—but I suppose I mustn’t? Well, well, to return to Peter. Sometimes he would stand on a bench under the window and put his paws on the sill, eagerly looking in with his bright black eyes, his ears pricked, his ecstatic tail hopefully suggesting a walk. And then bones. He loves bones, nice old gamey ones, disinterred with excitement and later buried again with earnest care. The ambition of his heart is to gnaw them inside. He prances in proudly, tail up, head up, bone on one side, and then at the reprimand, the transparent bubble of his innocence pricked, he turns round (laughing, doubtless, at his discomfiture), and makes for his mat—when he doesn’t defy you from under the table. And to see him tugging at an apron-string, legs set, eyes bulging!
“What else does he do?” enquires Daisy solemnly. I can’t think of anything else, and I say lamely:
“Well, once he barked at a beetle.”
Obiit
Peter is dead.
Daisy is inconsolable. He was such an engaging little fellow.
He was the only dog that Marjorie ever allowed inside.
He is buried under the apple tree where he used to forage so busily for bones.
The Drought
Last birthday Hob got a rather special penknife. This disposed him to be generous with his third and oldest.
“If I give you this,” he meditated to little Allen from next door, “I suppose you will cut yourself with it?”
“I wouldn’t,” protested Allen. Hob gave it to him. Last week when Daisy and I were going to the library Allen came prancing up to us.
“I’ve got a cut finger,” he exclaimed, triumphantly. Then, suddenly remembering, “But I didn’t do it with Hob’s knife.” He danced backward on his toes so as to face us as we walked on.
“I’ve been to town,” offered Daisy.
“See the aererplane? See the Cave? See Father Christmas?” he demanded.
“Yes,” bragged Daisy.
“I ain’t,” said Allen, wistfully.
And the harvest is so scanty that Father Christmas will have to be very frugal if he is to come at all to the homes of some working men. Petunia looks very sad, bare and brown and dusty. The sparrows hop about with parched open beaks, waiting their turn when the tap drips, and on Sundays the dejected draught horses stand about in the trampled dust while the hot wind soughs through the stunted shrubs, and the sun blazes on bare paddocks, and shimmers on the iron roofs. In winter it is different. The light shines clearly on gay green crops and whitens the curving blades, and the horses mosey companionably along the roadsides, nibbling the grass, twitching humorous nostrils, gambolling clumsily and shaking their bell-bottomed pasterns, screaming with laughter when sportively bitten by a friend. Oh, man and beast love Petunia in winter! But droughts really ought not to be allowed. It is moving to think of ill-fed cattle and disheartened workers.
“Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go,”
writes Browning. In the good seasons I find this advice inspiring. When the rebuff begins it seems less so. And when one thinks of the returned soldiers who are only getting three bushels to the acre (not even enough for seed!) one remembers with tears that it is easier to die for a country than to live for it. “Beginning again” after the years at the war takes resolution and courage, the willingness to take risks, and the patience not to take them hastily, that are as true tests of manhood as any they had abroad.
The Works of Simple Simon, LL.D., D.Litt., Ph.D., M.B., B.S.
An Emendation
Amid the welter of possible misprints in such writers as Shakespeare, Shelley, and Coleridge, one obvious correction would appear to have been overlooked.
“Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to look at the Queen. Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under her chair.”
So runs one of the earliest-known (to me) and best-loved poems.
But is it credible that the romantic young cat who trimmed his fur and hoisted his tail and fared forth to catch a glimpse of Majesty would create a vulgar scene in that adored presence? Is it credible that, returning, he should boast of his boorishness, like a gutter-snipe making a _pied de nez_? Nor can I think that what he saw at Court turned our gallant to a cynic, coarsely sniggering out his disillusion. No, I prefer to believe that a pedantic regard for mechanical accuracy of metre has caused the printer to err. For “frightened” I believe we should read “caught.”
“I _caught_ a little mouse under her chair.”
The astonishing thing is that no previous editor seems to have thought of this. Of course, there will be some dissenters.
“What!” will exclaim the upholder of things as they are, instead of as they might so much better be, “Would you have us sentimentalize the cat, and by pathetic fallacy pretend that the young prig thought to ‘serve his Queen’?”
“Not at all,” I reply. I will tell you my idea. Having stepped softly and daintily into the presence and slipped behind the tapestry and out again near the throne, he gazed adoringly at the lovely Queen, at her soft hair under the crown, at her rosy fingers, her silk-clad knee, the graceful brocaded train with which his pussy-humour longed to play. And then his eyes, big and black with the unaccustomed splendour, suddenly espied the natural, homely mouse licking his whiskers impudently in the fancied security of the royal throne. Pussycat was shocked and interested (like a little boy with a dog in church), and he watched and watched till he was all pussy, till the Court faded and Pussycat’s strategic eye made him pounce before he thought.
And when the Ladies-in-Waiting fainted because they dared not scream, and the Gentlemen-in-Waiting dashed forward because they thought Pussycat might scrunch the mouse under the royal chair, Pussycat laid back his ears and darted his eyes defensively, and with a laughing growl laid it at the Queen’s own feet.
And so when, safe back at home over a saucer of milk, Pussycat told a reproachful little boy where he had been, and the little boy screamed with delight,
“Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?”
Pussycat, hugging himself for his naughty boldness, and smiling to think how the Queen had smiled, and vastly enjoying the sensation he was making, burst out with his answer (and that is the meaning of the irregular metre, the long pause and stress):
“I _caught_ a little mouse under her chair!”
A Protest
I have long regretted the publicity accorded to the pieman incident—solely on the pieman’s account.
“Simple Simon met a pieman, Going to the fair.”
Our family has always been noted for its straightforward simplicity. I was hungry, I was curious in pie-lore, and I made the request which I conceive any youth, bred to gracious treatment, would have made.
“Said Simple Simon to the pieman, Let me taste your ware.”
So might the Prince of Wales himself have spoken. O, sordid, oh mercenary pieman! Where was thy pride of bakery, where thy manners? Thou did’st neither feed the hungry nor wait with honest pride a meed of praise. Thine not the artist soul, thine not the joy of giving; thine, alas! but lust of pelf. What does the paltry fellow reply?
“Said the pieman to Simple Simon, Show me first your penny.”
With sorrow and scorn I gave answer candidly:
“Said Simple Simon to the pieman, For sure I haven’t any.”
My simple dignity speaks for itself. A more sophisticated youth would have demanded the production of the hawker’s licence.
A “Lancet” Article
A subject on which I have several times reflected is tuberculosis, and I believe that I can cure it. An account of my method and of how I hit upon it will doubtless gratify my readers.
I have always held that Nature’s avenue of healing is the lips. In my youth I studied physics, and passed the Senior—or was it the Junior? Anyway, the idea came to me of disintegrating the molecules of which the bacillus or germ is composed. To be precise, I meant to grab the nitrogen out of them. Unfortunately, I recollected that there is nitrogen in the tissues as well, and I did not feel certain that I could disintegrate one without the other.
My present device is strictly scientific. Beginning with the principle that cure is to be through the lips, and that the goal is to be the elimination of the bacilli, I asked myself how they could be extracted. Not with forceps, that was clear. Then, in the course of my extensive reading I was much struck in “The English at the North Pole,” with the adhesion of nails, knives, and other steel and iron ware to the magnetic pole. “What,” thought I to myself, “if I were to magnetize the bacilli?” Of course, the tubercle bacilli contain no iron, but iron can be taken through the lips, and some of it would roost on the germs in passing. I followed this procedure, and then, having opened the patient’s mouth to its fullest extent, dangled a magnet down the throat. On withdrawing the instrument it was found that 149,563,769 tubercles, or more than can dance on the point of a needle, adhered to it. No other treatment is necessary, though the operation needs to be performed daily (at a fee of £10 10s. per time) for twelve months. The operator should wear a mask, and should boil his face and hands thoroughly after each operation.
At the end of this time the patient will be in a very different condition from what he was before.
I tried this treatment on T.B. He was 96 years old, with a previous history of fractured skull and varicose veins. The epidermis of his nose was found to be a good deal reddened. I administered three ounces of iron, and applied the magnet. The operation was entirely successful. There is no prognosis, because the patient choked. Through what? _Through the flocking of the germs to the magnet._ This proves that the dose of iron was too strong. Care must be taken to prevent the magnetization of too many bacilli at the same operation.
I confidently look forward to receiving large sums for this treatment, especially if well-advertised in gullible quarters.
An Application of Psychology to Medicine
The insistent demands of Psychology (too long regarded with jealousy) to be called in to the aid of Medicine have at length been recognized. _In corpore sano_ is an easy matter compared with _mens sana_. The medical man soon learns to prescribe his nostrums, and to draw up a diet which shall suit the palate of his patient; the very skilled can even hit upon the exact vintage which shall be most acceptable. The mentality is also diagnosed with as much insight as can be expected; but now the treatment is less easy to decide. The book-list proves harder than the wine-list, for here the doctor is on less familiar ground. It is at this point that the psychologist’s work is of value. Disciples of Æsculapius will be glad to receive the following typical book-list communicated to us by a rising young physician of South Australia (a remote province of our Empire in the outlying parts of the Southern Hemisphere) who has used it with success.
First week of treatment.—Letting the mind down gently. Works by Ethel Dell, Gertrude Page.
Second week.—Mind to be lulled. “Just David,” “Pollyanna.” (In very obstinate cases, _e.g._, returned soldiers, “Jessica’s First Prayer” and “Eric, or Little by Little” may be added.)
Third week.—Stage of acute self-pity, to be discharged by weeping over woes of others. The “Elsie” books, “The Wide, Wide, World.” Confessions (anybody’s).
Fourth week.—Patient needs rousing. This is a very critical period, and the psychosis of the individual must be carefully studied. No general prescription can be given, but the following suggestions are made: For elderly Methodist spinster, Victoria Cross novel (preferably that alleged to have set a bookstall alight); jaded divorcé (or divorcée), “Golden Heart Novelettes”; case of delirium tremens, _Patriot_, or other temperance organ. President of the Liberal Union: “_Direct Action_,” “Sabotage.” (If these fail, get him to make up his income-tax return.) Member of the I.W.W.: Probate lists; failing these, the speeches of Irvine and Hughes will be found efficacious. Doctor (difficult case, especially at night): works of Mrs. Baker-Eddy, or the present article.
Fifth week.—Patient annoyed to hear he is looking better. Mild case: Emerson’s Essays (one to be taken after each meal). Obstinate case: Degree 1, the Bible; degree 2 (probably a lodge patient), advise to make peace with God, and send for a clergyman.
Sixth week.—Patient returns to his wallowing: Hegel or Bertrand Russell; Thompson or Lodge, and “Science from an Easy Chair”; “Structure and Growth” or “Psychology for Little Tots”; Wells or Charles Garvice; _London Punch_ or _The Pink ’Un_; “Horner’s Penny Stories” and the _Sunday Circle_; all according to taste.
Our National Bulletin
At Fremantle the observant academic on his travels to the Antipodes notes the rush of his Australian fellow-passengers for a large, bright pink compendium. “Ah!” he thinks to himself, “that national paper of theirs!” and at the first opportunity he purchases a copy in order to study the manners and customs of the inhabitants.
“Bai Jove!” he gasps weakly, as he opens on a huge and brutal Norman Lindsay cartoon, a quite unnecessarily unpleasant sketch by Mack or Souter, or (as _The Bulletin_ itself might say) at the allegedly humorous caricatures of “Poverty Point,” or “Sundry Shows.” On the Red Page he is upset to find Looney’s Shakespeare theory taken seriously, the sacred laws of punctuation explicitly and at length, but without explanation, denied, and (in “A Satchel of Books”) a snub administered to E. V. Lucas, while space is devoted to analysis and appreciation of some unheard-of Australian writer. He considers the tone of the Society gossip columns “most regrettable” (“vulgar” is his word if no Australian is in earshot), and when he turns to Aboriginalities for local colour, his refined literary palate is outraged at the—the travesty on the English language which he finds. There is perhaps the story of an egg-stealing crow, “whose black nibs” carries away “bunches” of “this fruit.” And the whole paper is like that! Even “Plain English!” From the number of abuses attacked, in provocative captions like “Australia for the Asiatics,” “Murder at £4 11s. 3d. a Time,” it appears that nothing, except perhaps an occasional piece of work by a _Bulletin_ young man, goes right in Australia. Unless our academic is a brave man, with sound missionary instincts, he writes at once to resign his appointment. He really must refuse to herd with these callow vulgarians.
Is _The Bulletin_ really characteristic of Australia? In the long run, and with modifications, yes. It is the one paper which every good Australian, at home or abroad, reads, and reads with gusto. It contains argument, comment, or anecdote about nearly every subject on which the Australian is interested. Its opinion may be wrong and its manner blatant, but there is never any doubt that it has an opinion, and it is never dull for a single sentence. But it is surely the _reductio ad absurdum_ of some, as well as the highest power of other, of our characteristics. Like the comic writers of the eighteenth century, it holds the mirror up to nature—Australian nature—and its mirror is always unsentimental and sometimes distorting.
Young nations are self-confident—and so is _The Bulletin_; self-confident and bumptious and cock-sure. The Cheerful Cherub must certainly have had this paper in mind when he wrote:
I always envy editors With minds both deep and bright; They always feel so positive That what they think is right.
Whatever the subject, when the hail of argument ceases, the pulverized reader wonders why he had not agreed to this before; or, if he still has a doubt or objection, he keeps it to himself, because obviously it is all his foolishness. Indeed that is _The Bulletin_ attitude in every subject and in every paragraph. “It am It, and the other fellow is a fool, most probably a damned fool.” _The Bulletin_ really has convictions, too; its violence isn’t entirely explained, as the psycho-analysts explain swearing, as an attempt to make up for the defects of genius by the violence of style. No, _The Bulletin_ knows its happy-go-to-football-match average Australian; it is perfectly aware that to make him listen to reason you must (and this is the reason both for our yellow press and our stump oratory) hold him by the scruff of the neck while you shout your lesson in his ear. And so _The Bulletin_ hits you in the eye with its red cover, and, having caught your attention, rapidly emits a brisk succession of crisp ideas, conveyed in a style of studied unexpectedness. It is terse and trenchant and clear, though no one could call it nervous or sympathetic or scholarly or refined. Those responsible have had extraordinary success in achieving uniformity of manner through all their many regular and paragraph writers. The essentials are something to say (captious for preference), and trenchancy in saying it. Probably in no other paper of its size are there fewer tiresome circumlocutions. Even Death is briskly handled. “Died last week ...” begins the paragraph. _De mortuis_, too, not _nil nisi bonum_, but whatever you like. _The Bulletin_ doesn’t think much of classical learning, and perhaps it has thrown a courteous precept or two overboard at the same time.
But the paper has a code of its own, an air of sea-green incorruptibility and impartiality, and a fearlessness in defying the conventional, which, even if it is sometimes only the aggressiveness of crudity, makes its value more than that of a _succès de scandale_. Politically it stands for two or three principles, which are rooted (and which it assisted to root) in Australian conviction, and for two or three others which will probably become so. It stands for a White Australia and Protection and Self-Defence; it is anti-Imperial and anti-Party and anti-Hughes, but no one can doubt that it is always and wholly pro-Australian. It is the critic of all parties, with an opinion as far removed from stick-in-the-mud Liberalism as it is from the Party that Declines to Work. Its treatment of Royalty is probably characteristic of the bulk of Australians. It wishes us to understand that it holds no brief for Royalty, but that it likes and respects “the Princelet” for himself, and wishes it could rescue him from the pitiful efforts at entertainment of the vulgar Sassiety and official classes. “Refer to us for information on Teddy’s tastes. Young Windsor and we are pals,” it rather patronizingly suggests. Imagine H.R.H. having a _Bulletin_ and Bohemian good time with Harrison O. and Henry Horsecollar and Pat O’Maori and the rest! (Though occasionally one wonders whether they live in so hectic a Bohemia as they would have us believe.) For the pompous and the stupid they have no pity; to Gaud Mayors and Gaud Mayoresses and Gent Helps they mete out treatment savage or contemptuous, according to the degree of offence. Pitiless publicity and offensive epithet are _The Bulletin’s_ ungenerous treatment of inexperience and human weakness alike with incompetence and considered roguery and political opposition.
The aspiring Australian inevitably submits his literary productions to _The Bulletin_. Its frank and wholesome judgments are what he wants. Its reviews of literary works are in accordance with the best typically Australian opinion, though in its admiration for the vigorous and the original and the characteristic it fails to appreciate some of the fundamentally sound and admirable achievement which the conventional often represents. The sound discipline it imposes upon writers of verse is in striking contrast with this. In prose, too, of course, it insists on grammatical English, but scholarship, and much that scholarship implies, are alien to _The Bulletin_ (and to the young Australian?) temperament. It is so much easier and more flattering to ignorance to assume that mere common-sense can take precedence of intelligence which is instructed and disciplined. In noticing a work on sociology, ostentatiously to give its author—and one so well known—as “a” Professor J. J. Findlay, is a perverse and provincial parade of ignorance and detachment which discredit the writer. A reviewer should at least know the literature and personnel of his subject.
_The Bulletin_ is full of energy and character and youth. Like youth, in its horror of being Wowserish it assumes a bold bad air, but fundamentally it has the wholesomeness as well as the intolerance of youth. With the passage of years perhaps its intolerance and its slang will wear off together, for most of us do not want to see the rise of a mongrel Australian tongue akin to the worst kind of Americanese. It deals with everything from sport to business, from literature to politics, and all with an absence of qualm as to its ability that of itself inspires confidence. That it excludes certain types of writer is no reproach, for unity requires selection. Despite the following imaginary list, the present writer is graciously pleased to admit that he for one would not like to do without his weekly _Bulletin_.
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.
Elia: Using “Roast Pig”; returning “Dream Children” and “Poor Relations” for decent burial.... R.L.S.: Yarn has the right stuff in it. Keep on.... “Paradise Lost”: Send a couple of bullock drays for the M.S. What’s it all about, anyway?... Walt Whitman: You can’t get away with that verse, not in this paper.... A.A.M.: Joke feeble. You might try it on London _Punch_.... Alice Meynell: What do we care about your blooming kids?... Sage of Chelsea: Got a grouch about something, haven’t you? Work it off on the woodheap.... Walter Pater: Take it away.... Robert B.: Just misses being a shocking example.... Bagehot: Laodicean stuff not in our line. For Gawsake lose your temper sometimes.... Bernard Partridge: Drawing accurate, but not enough kick in the figures. So the holy lady with the wings is Peace, is she?... W.W.:
“A primrose by the river’s brim, A simple primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.”
Beats us what more it ought to have been—two primroses? Our Temperance Editor protests.
Nigger
I.
Master was away all the afternoon; it was very dull. He did not come back in the evening. Nigger was uneasy. Once during the night he slipped his chain and went in search.
“Perhaps he’ll be in when I get back,” he thought hopefully.
And later: “He’s sure to be here for breakfast.”
But he wasn’t.
Nigger searched every room and sniffed the furniture. No master. Nigger was lonely. He cuddled up on the forbidden cushions of the garden-seat with Simonette, waiting for master to come whizzing round the corner. He opened an eye at a noisy cycle, and cocked his ear for a motor. He trotted up the drive, he wheeled sharply round to the stables, he cut back, barking, to master’s room. No master.
After a little dejected self-examination Nigger paid a rapid visit to several rabbit-holes. Whatever the strain, duty must be done. He came back to be comforted.
“I know,” he yapped joyously, “he’s afraid to come home; he’s hiding behind a tree.”
But he wasn’t.
“Then I darn well hope,” snapped Nigger, “that they’ll shut him up for a day when he does turn up.” He sighed heavily.