Crotchet Castle
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Thomas Love Peacock >> Crotchet Castle
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MR. MAC QUEDY. Eh, sir, it is the simplest way to begin at the
beginning. "In the infancy of society, when government was
invented to save a percentage; say two and a half per cent.--"
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I will not say any such thing.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, say any percentage you please.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I will not say any percentage at all.
MR. MAC QUEDY. "On the principle of the division of labour--"
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Government was invented to spend a percentage.
MR. MAC QUEDY. To save a percentage.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No, sir, to spend a percentage; and a good deal
more than two and a half percent. Two hundred and fifty per cent.:
that is intelligible.
MR. MAC QUEDY.--"In the infancy of society--"
MR. TOOGOOD.--Never mind the infancy of society. The question is
of society in its maturity. Here is what it should be. (Producing
a paper.) I have laid it down in a diagram.
MR. SKIONAR. Before we proceed to the question of government, we
must nicely discriminate the boundaries of sense, understanding,
and reason. Sense is a receptivity -
MR. CROTCHET, JUN. We are proceeding too fast. Money being all
that is wanted to regenerate society, I will put into the hands of
this company a large sum for the purpose. Now let us see how to
dispose of it.
MR. MAC QUEDY. We will begin by taking a committee-room in London,
where we will dine together once a week, to deliberate.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. If the money is to go in deliberative dinners,
you may set me down for a committee man and honorary caterer.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Next, you must all learn political economy, which I
will teach you, very compendiously, in lectures over the bottle.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I hate lectures over the bottle. But pray,
sir, what is political economy?
MR. MAC QUEDY. Political economy is to the state what domestic
economy is to the family.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No such thing, sir. In the family there is a
paterfamilias, who regulates the distribution, and takes care that
there shall be no such thing in the household as one dying of
hunger, while another dies of surfeit. In the state it is all
hunger at one end, and all surfeit at the other. Matchless claret,
Mr. Crotchet.
MR. CROTCHET. Vintage of fifteen, Doctor.
MR. MAC QUEDY. The family consumes, and so does the state.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Consumes, air! Yes: but the mode, the
proportions: there is the essential difference between the state
and the family. Sir, I hate false analogies.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, the analogy is not essential.
Distribution will come under its proper head.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Come where it will, the distribution of the
state is in no respect analogous to the distribution of the family.
The paterfamilias, sir: the paterfamilias.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, let that pass. The family consumes, and
in order to consume, it must have supply.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, sir, Adam and Eve knew that, when they
delved and span.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Very true, sir (reproducing his scroll). "In the
infancy of society--"
MR. TOOGOOD. The reverend gentleman has hit the nail on the head.
It is the distribution that must be looked to; it is the
paterfamilias that is wanting in the State. Now here I have
provided him. (Reproducing his diagram.)
MR. TRILLO. Apply the money, sir, to building and endowing an
opera house, where the ancient altar of Bacchus may flourish, and
justice may be done to sublime compositions. (Producing a part of
a manuscript opera.)
MR. SKIONAR. No, sir, build sacella for transcendental oracles to
teach the world how to see through a glass darkly. (Producing a
scroll.)
MR. TRILLO. See through an opera-glass brightly.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. See through a wine-glass full of claret; then
you see both darkly and brightly. But, gentlemen, if you are all
in the humour for reading papers, I will read you the first half of
my next Sunday's sermon. (Producing a paper.)
OMNES. No sermon! No sermon!
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Then I move that our respective papers be
committed to our respective pockets.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Political economy is divided into two great
branches, production and consumption.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Yes, sir; there are two great classes of men:
those who produce much and consume little; and those who consume
much and produce nothing. The fruges consumere nati have the best
of it. Eh, Captain! You remember the characteristics of a great
man according to Aristophanes: [Greek text]. Ha! ha! ha! Well,
Captain, even in these tight-laced days, the obscurity of a learned
language allows a little pleasantry.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Very true, sir; the pleasantry and the
obscurity go together; they are all one, as it were--to me at any
rate (aside).
MR. MAC QUEDY. Now, sir -
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Pray, sir, let your science alone, or you will
put me under the painful necessity of demolishing it bit by bit, as
I have done your exordium. I will undertake it any morning; but it
is too hard exercise after dinner.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Well, sir, in the meantime I hold my science
established.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. And I hold it demolished.
MR. CROTCHET, JUN. Pray, gentlemen, pocket your manuscripts, fill
your glasses, and consider what we shall do with our money.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Build lecture-rooms, and schools for all.
MR. TRILLO. Revive the Athenian theatre; regenerate the lyrical
drama.
MR. TOOGOOD. Build a grand co-operative parallelogram, with a
steam-engine in the middle for a maid of all work.
MR. FIREDAMP. Drain the country, and get rid of malaria, by
abolishing duck-ponds.
DR. MORBIFIC. Found a philanthropic college of anticontagionists,
where all the members shall be inoculated with the virus of all
known diseases. Try the experiment on a grand scale.
MR. CHAINMAIL. Build a great dining-hall; endow it with beef and
ale, and hang the hall round with arms to defend the provisions.
MR. HENBANE. Found a toxicological institution for trying all
poisons and antidotes. I myself have killed a frog twelve times,
and brought him to life eleven; but the twelfth time he died. I
have a phial of the drug, which killed him, in my pocket, and shall
not rest till I have discovered its antidote.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I move that the last speaker be dispossessed of
his phial, and that it be forthwith thrown into the Thames.
MR. HENBANE. How, sir? my invaluable, and, in the present state of
human knowledge, infallible poison?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Let the frogs have all the advantage of it.
MR. CROTCHET. Consider, Doctor, the fish might participate. Think
of the salmon.
REV DR. FOLLIOTT. Then let the owner's right-hand neighbour
swallow it.
MR. EAVESDROP. Me, sir! What have I done, sir, that I am to be
poisoned, sir?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, you have published a character of your
facetious friend, the Reverend Doctor F., wherein you have sketched
off me; me, sir, even to my nose and wig. What business have the
public with my nose and wig?
MR. EAVESDROP. Sir, it is all good-humoured; all in bonhomie: all
friendly and complimentary.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, the bottle, la Dive Bouteille, is a
recondite oracle, which makes an Eleusinian temple of the circle in
which it moves. He who reveals its mysteries must die. Therefore,
let the dose be administered. Fiat experimentum in anima vili.
MR. EAVESDROP. Sir, you are very facetious at my expense.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, you have been very unfacetious, very
inficete at mine. You have dished me up, like a savoury omelette,
to gratify the appetite of the reading rabble for gossip. The next
time, sir, I will respond with the argumentum baculinum. Print
that, sir: put it on record as a promise of the Reverend Doctor
F., which shall be most faithfully kept, with an exemplary bamboo.
MR. EAVESDROP. Your cloth protects you, sir.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. My bamboo shall protect me, sir.
MR. CROTCHET. Doctor, Doctor, you are growing too polemical.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, my blood boils. What business have the
public with my nose and wig?
MR. CROTCHET. Doctor! Doctor!
MR. CROTCHET, JUN. Pray, gentlemen, return to the point. How
shall we employ our fund?
MR. PHILPOT. Surely in no way so beneficially as in exploring
rivers. Send a fleet of steamboats down the Niger, and another up
the Nile. So shall you civilise Africa, and establish stocking
factories in Abyssinia and Bambo.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. With all submission, breeches and petticoats
must precede stockings. Send out a crew of tailors. Try if the
King of Bambo will invest in inexpressibles.
MR. CROTCHET, JUN. Gentlemen, it is not for partial, but for
general benefit, that this fund is proposed: a grand and
universally applicable scheme for the amelioration of the condition
of man.
SEVERAL VOICES. That is my scheme. I have not heard a scheme but
my own that has a grain of common sense.
MR. TRILLO. Gentlemen, you inspire me. Your last exclamation runs
itself into a chorus, and sets itself to music. Allow me to lead,
and to hope for your voices in harmony.
After careful meditation,
And profound deliberation,
On the various pretty projects which have just been shown,
Not a scheme in agitation,
For the world's amelioration,
Has a grain of common sense in it, except my own.
SEVERAL VOICES. We are not disposed to join in any such chorus.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Well, of all these schemes, I am for Mr.
Trillo's. Regenerate the Athenian theatre. My classical friend
here, the Captain, will vote with, me.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. I, sir? oh! of course, sir.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Surely, Captain, I rely on you to uphold political
economy.
CAPTAIN FITZCHROME. Me, sir! oh, to be sure, sir.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Pray, sir, will political economy uphold the
Athenian theatre?
MR. MAC QUEDY. Surely not. It would be a very unproductive
investment.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Then the Captain votes against you. What, sir,
did not the Athenians, the wisest of nations, appropriate to their
theatre their most sacred and intangible fund? Did not they give
to melopoeia, choregraphy, and the sundry forms of didascalics, the
precedence of all other matters, civil and military? Was it not
their law, that even the proposal to divert this fund to any other
purpose should be punished with death? But, sir, I further propose
that the Athenian theatre being resuscitated, the admission shall
be free to all who can expound the Greek choruses, constructively,
mythologically, and metrically, and to none others. So shall all
the world learn Greek: Greek, the Alpha and Omega of all
knowledge. At him who sits not in the theatre shall be pointed the
finger of scorn: he shall be called in the highway of the city, "a
fellow without Greek."
MR. TRILLO. But the ladies, sir, the ladies.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Every man may take in a lady: and she who can
construe and metricise a chorus, shall, if she so please, pass in
by herself.
MR. TRILLO. But, sir, you will shut me out of my own theatre. Let
there at least be a double passport, Greek and Italian.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. No, sir; I am inexorable. No Greek, no
theatre.
MR. TRILLO. Sir, I cannot consent to be shut out from my own
theatre.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. You see how it is, Squire Crotchet the younger;
you can scarcely find two to agree on a scheme, and no two of those
can agree on the details. Keep your money in your pocket. And so
ends the fund for regenerating the world.
MR. MAC QUEDY. Nay, by no means. We are all agreed on
deliberative dinners.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very true; we will dine and discuss. We will
sing with Robin Hood, "If I drink water while this doth last;" and
while it lasts we will have no adjournment, if not to the Athenian
theatre.
MR. TRILLO. Well, gentlemen, I hope this chorus at least will
please you:-
If I drink water while this doth last,
May I never again drink wine:
For how can a man, in his life of a span,
Do anything better than dine?
Well dine and drink, and say if we think
That anything better can be,
And when we have dined, wish all mankind
May dine as well as we.
And though a good wish will fill no dish
And brim no cup with sack,
Yet thoughts will spring as the glasses ring,
To illume our studious track.
On the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes
The light of the flask shall shine;
And we'll sit till day, but we'll find the way
To drench the world with wine.
The schemes for the world's regeneration evaporated in a tumult of
voices.
CHAPTER VII: THE SLEEPING VENUS
Quoth he: In all my life till now,
I ne'er saw so profane a show.--BUTLER.
The library of Crotchet Castle was a large and well-furnished
apartment, opening on one side into an ante-room, on the other into
a music-room. It had several tables stationed at convenient
distances; one consecrated to the novelties of literature, another
to the novelties of embellishment; others unoccupied, and at the
disposal of the company. The walls were covered with a copious
collection of ancient and modern books; the ancient having been
selected and arranged by the Reverend Doctor Folliott. In the
ante-room were card-tables; in the music-room were various
instruments, all popular operas, and all fashionable music. In
this suite of apartments, and not in the drawing-room, were the
evenings of Crotchet Castle usually passed.
The young ladies were in the music-room; Miss Crotchet at the
piano, Lady Clarinda at the harp, playing and occasionally singing,
at the suggestion of Mr. Trillo, portions of Matilde di Shabran.
Lord Bossnowl was turning over the leaves for Miss Crotchet; the
Captain was performing the same office for Lady Clarinda, but with
so much more attention to the lady than the book, that he often
made sad work with the harmony, by turnover two leaves together.
On these occasions Miss Crotchet paused, Lady Clarinda laughed, Mr.
Trillo scolded, Lord Bossnowl yawned, the Captain apologised, and
the performance proceeded.
In the library Mr. Mac Quedy was expounding political economy to
the Reverend Doctor Folliott, who was pro more demolishing its
doctrines seriatim.
Mr. Chainmail was in hot dispute with Mr. Skionar, touching the
physical and moral well-being of man. Mr. Skionar was enforcing
his friend Mr. Shantsee's views of moral discipline; maintaining
that the sole thing needful for man in this world was loyal and
pious education; the giving men good books to read, and enough of
the hornbook to read them; with a judicious interspersion of the
lessons of Old Restraint, which was his poetic name for the parish
stocks. Mr. Chainmail, on the other hand, stood up for the
exclusive necessity of beef and ale, lodging and raiment, wife and
children, courage to fight for them all, and armour wherewith to do
so.
Mr. Henbane had got his face scratched, and his finger bitten, by
the cat, in trying to catch her for a second experiment in killing
and bringing to life; and Doctor Morbific was comforting him with a
disquisition to prove that there were only four animals having the
power to communicate hydrophobia, of which the cat was one; and
that it was not necessary that the animal should be in a rabid
state, the nature of the wound being everything, and the idea of
contagion a delusion. Mr. Henbane was listening very lugubriously
to this dissertation.
Mr. Philpot had seized on Mr. Firedamp, and pinned him down to a
map of Africa, on which he was tracing imaginary courses of mighty
inland rivers, terminating in lakes and marshes, where they were
finally evaporated by the heat of the sun; and Mr. Firedamp's hair
was standing on end at the bare imagination of the mass of malaria
that must be engendered by the operation. Mr. Toogood had begun
explaining his diagrams to Sir Simon Steeltrap; but Sir Simon grew
testy, and told Mr. Toogood that the promulgators of such doctrines
ought to be consigned to the treadmill. The philanthropist walked
off from the country gentleman, and proceeded to hold forth to
young Crotchet, who stood silent, as one who listens, but in
reality without hearing a syllable. Mr. Crotchet, senior, as the
master of the house, was left to entertain himself with his own
meditations, till the Reverend Doctor Folliott tore himself from
Mr. Mac Quedy, and proceeded to expostulate with Mr. Crotchet on a
delicate topic.
There was an Italian painter, who obtained the name of Il
Bragatore, by the superinduction of inexpressibles on the naked
Apollos and Bacchuses of his betters. The fame of this worthy
remained one and indivisible, till a set of heads, which had been,
by a too common mistake of Nature's journeymen, stuck upon
magisterial shoulders, as the Corinthian capitals of "fair round
bellies with fat capon lined," but which Nature herself had
intended for the noddles of porcelain mandarins, promulgated
simultaneously from the east and the west of London, an order that
no plaster-of-Paris Venus should appear in the streets without
petticoats. Mr. Crotchet, on reading this order in the evening
paper, which, by the postman's early arrival, was always laid on
his breakfast-table, determined to fill his house with Venuses of
all sizes and kinds. In pursuance of this resolution, came
packages by water-carriage, containing an infinite variety of
Venuses. There were the Medicean Venus, and the Bathing Venus; the
Uranian Venus, and the Pandemian Venus; the Crouching Venus, and
the Sleeping Venus; the Venus rising from the sea, the Venus with
the apple of Paris, and the Venus with the armour of Mars.
The Reverend Doctor Folliott had been very much astonished at this
unexpected display. Disposed, as he was, to hold, that whatever
had been in Greece, was right; he was more than doubtful of the
propriety of throwing open the classical adytum to the illiterate
profane. Whether, in his interior mind, he was at all influenced,
either by the consideration that it would be for the credit of his
cloth, with some of his vice-suppressing neighbours, to be able to
say that he had expostulated; or by curiosity, to try what sort of
defence his city-bred friend, who knew the classics only by
translations, and whose reason was always a little ahead of his
knowledge, would make for his somewhat ostentatious display of
liberality in matters of taste; is a question on which the learned
may differ: but, after having duly deliberated on two full-sized
casts of the Uranian and Pandemian Venus, in niches on each side of
the chimney, and on three alabaster figures, in glass cases, on the
mantelpiece, he proceeded, peirastically, to open his fire.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. These little alabaster figures on the
mantelpiece, Mr. Crotchet, and those large figures in the niches--
may I take the liberty to ask you what they are intended to
represent?
MR. CROTCHET. Venus, sir; nothing more, sir; just Venus.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. May I ask you, sir, why they are there?
MR. CROTCHET. To be looked at, sir; just to be looked at: the
reasons for most things in a gentleman's house being in it at all;
from the paper on the walls, and the drapery of the curtains, even
to the books in the library, of which the most essential part is
the appearance of the back.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very true, sir. As great philosophers hold
that the esse of things is percipi, so a gentleman's furniture
exists to be looked at. Nevertheless, sir, there are some things
more fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is
nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It
is, as I may say, from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed
pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that
you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you
please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon
you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your
bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a
delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in
which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be
otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle. Touching this
matter, there cannot, I think, be two opinions. But with respect
to your Venuses there can be, and indeed there are, two very
distinct opinions. Now, Sir, that little figure in the centre of
the mantelpiece--as a grave paterfamilias, Mr. Crotchet, with a
fair nubile daughter, whose eyes are like the fish-pools of
Heshbon--I would ask you if you hold that figure to be altogether
delicate?
MR. CROTCHET. The sleeping Venus, sir? Nothing can be more
delicate than the entire contour of the figure, the flow of the
hair on the shoulders and neck, the form of the feet and fingers.
It is altogether a most delicate morsel.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Why, in that sense, perhaps, it is as delicate
as whitebait in July. But the attitude, sir, the attitude.
MR. CROTCHET. Nothing can be more natural, sir.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. That is the very thing, sir. It is too
natural: too natural, sir: it lies for all the world like--I make
no doubt, the pious cheesemonger, who recently broke its plaster
facsimile over the head of the itinerant vendor, was struck by a
certain similitude to the position of his own sleeping beauty, and
felt his noble wrath thereby justly aroused.
MR. CROTCHET. Very likely, sir. In my opinion, the cheesemonger
was a fool, and the justice who sided with him was a greater.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Fool, sir, is a harsh term: call not thy
brother a fool.
MR. CROTCHET. Sir, neither the cheesemonger nor the justice is a
brother of mine.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, we are all brethren.
MR. CROTCHET. Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the thief; the squire
of the poacher; the judge of the libeller; the lawyer of his
client; the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of the
bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro; as these are brethren,
so am I and the worthies in question
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. To be sure, sir, in these instances, and in
many others, the term brother must be taken in its utmost latitude
of interpretation: we are all brothers, nevertheless. But to
return to the point. Now these two large figures, one with drapery
on the lower half of the body, and the other with no drapery at
all; upon my word, sir, it matters not what godfathers and
godmothers may have promised and vowed for the children of this
world, touching the devil and other things to be renounced, if such
figures as those are to be put before their eyes.
MR. CROTCHET. Sir, the naked figure is the Pandemian Venus, and
the half-draped figure is the Uranian Venus; and I say, sir, that
figure realises the finest imaginings of Plato, and is the
personification of the most refined and exalted feeling of which
the human mind is susceptible; the love of pure, ideal,
intellectual beauty.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I am aware, sir, that Plato, in his Symposium,
discourseth very eloquently touching the Uranian and Pandemian
Venus: but you must remember that, in our universities, Plato is
held to be little better than a misleader of youth; and they have
shown their contempt for him, not only by never reading him (a mode
of contempt in which they deal very largely), but even by never
printing a complete edition of him; although they have printed many
ancient books, which nobody suspects to have been ever read on the
spot, except by a person attached to the press, who is, therefore,
emphatically called "the reader."
MR. CROTCHET. Well, sir?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Why, sir, to "the reader" aforesaid (supposing
either of our universities to have printed an edition of Plato), or
to any one else who can be supposed to have read Plato, or, indeed,
to be ever likely to do so, I would very willingly show these
figures; because to such they would, I grant you, be the outward
and visible signs of poetical and philosophical ideas: but, to the
multitude, the gross, carnal multitude, they are but two beautiful
women, one half undressed, and the other quite so.
MR. CROTCHET. Then, sir, let the multitude look upon them and
learn modesty.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I must say that, if I wished my footman to
learn modesty, I should not dream of sending him to school to a
naked Venus.
MR. CROTCHET. Sir, ancient sculpture is the true school of
modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where
they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have
cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns
humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant. And, sir, to show
my contempt for cant in all its shapes, I have adorned my house
with the Greek Venus, in all her shapes, and am ready to fight her
battle against all the societies that ever were instituted for the
suppression of truth and beauty.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. My dear sir, I am afraid you are growing warm.
Pray be cool. Nothing contributes so much to good digestion as to
be perfectly cool after dinner.
MR. CROTCHET. Sir, the Lacedaemonian virgins wrestled naked with
young men; and they grew up, as the wise Lycurgus had foreseen,
into the most modest of women, and the most exemplary of wives and
mothers.
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