Part 11 (2/2)
”Certainly not, Mrs. Belper. The Dutch belong to a different branch of the great Teutonic stock, or, if ident.i.ty had ever existed, the two races have long been differentiated. I think, Mrs. Belper, that the most eminent physicians have recognised the beneficial effects of a gentle laxative during the treacherous (though delightful) season of spring?”
”Law bless you, Sir, you're right, as you always are, or why, Doctor? As my pore mother used to say when she made up the mixture: 'Scour 'em out is the right way about!' And laugh she would as she pounded the stuff up till I really thought she would 'a busted, and shaking like the best blancmanges all the while.”
”Mrs. Belper, you have removed a weight from my mind. You think, then, that I shall be freed from all unfair compet.i.tion while I pay my addresses to my young friend, Miss Floyer?”
”As free you will be, Doctor Chesson, Sir, as the little birds in the air; for not one of them young fellers will stand on his feet for days, and groans and 'owls will be the best word that mortal man will speak, and bless you they will with their dying breath. So, Sir, you'll 'ave the sweet young lady, bless her dear 'art, all to yourself, and if it's twins, don't blame me!”
”Mrs. Belper, your construction, if I may say so, is somewhat proleptic in its character. Still, I am sure that your meaning is good. Ha! I hear the bell for afternoon school.”
The Doctor's voice happened to be shrill and piercing, with something of the tone of the tooth-comb and tissue-paper; while the fat cook spoke in a suety, husky contralto. Ambrose reproduced these peculiarities with the gift of the born mimic, adding appropriate antic and gesture to grace the show, and Nelly's appreciation of its humours was intense.
Day by day new incidents and scenes were added. The Head, in the pursuit of his guilty pa.s.sion, hid in the coal-cellar of the ”Bell,” and, rustling sounds being heard, evaded detection for a while by imitating the barks of a terrier in chase of a rat. Nelly liked to hear the ”Wuff!
wuff! wuff!” which was introduced at this point. She liked also the final catastrophe, when the odd man of the ”Bell” burst into the bar and said: ”Dang my eyes, if it ain't the Doctor! I seed his cap and gown as he run round and round the coals on all fours, a-growling 'orrible.” To which the landlady rejoined: ”Don't tell your silly lies here! How _could_ he growl, him being a clergyman?” And all the loafers joined in the chorus: ”That's right, Tom; why _do_ you talk such silly lies as that--him being a clergyman?”
They laughed so loud and so merrily over their morning tea and these lunacies that the landlady doubted gravely as to their marriage lines.
She cared nothing; they had paid what she asked, money down in advance, and, as she said: ”Young gentlemen _will_ have their fun with the young ladies--so what's the good of talking?”
Breakfast came at length. They gave the landlady a warning bell some half-hour in advance, so the odd food was, at all events, not cold.
Afterwards Nelly sallied off on her shopping expeditions, which, as might have been expected, she enjoyed hugely, and Ambrose stayed alone, with his pen and ink and a fat notebook which had captured his eye in a stationer's window.
Under these odd circ.u.mstances, then, he laid the foundations of his rare and precious _Defence of Taverns_, which is now termed by those fortunate enough to possess copies as a unique and golden treatise.
Though he added a good deal in later years and remodelled and rearranged freely, there is a certain charm of vigour and freshness about the first sketch which is quite delightful in its way. Take, for example, the description of the whole world overwhelmed with sobriety: a deadly absence of inebriation annulling and destroying all the works and thoughts of men, the country itself at point to perish of the want of good liquor and good drinkers. He shows how there is grave cause to dread that, by reason of this sad neglect of the Dionysiac Mysteries, humanity is fast falling backward from the great heights to which it had ascended, and is in imminent danger of returning to the dumb and blind and helpless condition of the brutes.
”How else,” he says, ”can one account for the stricken state in which all the animal world grows and is eternally impotent? To them, strange, vast and enormous powers and faculties have been given. Consider, for example, the curious equipments of two odd extremes in this sphere--the ant and the elephant. The ant, if one may say so, is very near to us. We have our great centres of industry, our Black Country and our slaves who, if not born black, become black in our service. And the ants, too, have their black, enslaved races who do their dirty work for them, and are, perhaps, congratulated on their privileges as sharing in the blessings of civilisation--though this may be a refinement. The ant slaves, I believe, will rally eagerly to the defence of the nest and the eggs, and they say that the labouring cla.s.ses are Liberal to the core.
Nay; we grow mushrooms by art, and so they. In some lands, I think, they make enormous nests which are the nuisance and terror of the country. We have Manchester and Lupton and Leeds, and many such places--one would think them altogether civilised.
”The elephant, again, has many gifts which we lack. Note the curious instinct (or intuition, rather) of danger. The elephant knows, for example, when a bridge is unsafe, and refuses to pa.s.s, where a man would go on to destruction. One might examine in the same way all the creatures, and find in them singular capacities.
”Yet--they have no art. They see--but they see not. They hear--and they hear not. The odour in their nostrils has no sweetness at all. They have made no report of all the wonders that they knew. Their houses are, sometimes, as ingenious as a Chemical Works, but never is there any beauty for beauty's sake.
”It is clear that their state is thus desolate, because of the heavy pall of sobriety that hangs over them all; and it scarcely seems to have occurred to our 'Temperance' advocates that when they urge on us the example and abstinence of the beasts they have advanced the deadliest of all arguments against their nostrum. The Laughing Jacka.s.s is a teetotaller, doubtless, but no sane man should desire to be a Laughing Jacka.s.s.
”But the history of the men who have attained, who have done the glorious things of the earth and have become for ever exalted is the history of the men who have quested the Cup. Dionysius, said the Greeks, _civilised_ the world; and the Bacchic Mystery was, naturally, the heart and core of Greek civilisation.
”Note the similitudes of Vine and Vineyard in Old Testament.
”Note the Quest of the San Graal.
”Note Rabelais and _La Dive Bouteille_.
”Place yourself in imagination in a Gothic Cathedral of the thirteenth century and a.s.sist at High Ma.s.s. Then go to the nearest Little Bethel, and look, and listen. Consider the difference in the two buildings, in those who wors.h.i.+p in one and listen and criticise in the other. You have the difference between the Inebriated and the Sober, displayed in their works. As Little Bethel is to Tintern, so is Sobriety to Inebriation.
”Modern civilisation has advanced in many ways? Yes. Bethel has a stucco front. This material was quite unknown to the builders of Tintern Abbey.
Advanced? What is advancement? Freedom from excesses, from extravagances, from wild enthusiasms? Small Protestant tradesmen are free from all these things, certainly. But is the joy of Adulteration to be the last goal, the final Initiation of the Race of Men? _Caelumque tueri_--to sand the sugar?
”The Flagons of the Song of Songs did not contain ginger-beer.
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