Crotchet Castle
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Thomas Love Peacock >> Crotchet Castle
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REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very likely, sir; but the Athenian virgins did
no such thing, and they grew up into wives who stayed at home--
stayed at home, sir; and looked after their husbands' dinner--his
dinner, sir, you will please to observe.
MR. CROTCHET. And what was the consequence of that, sir? that they
were such very insipid persons that the husband would not go home
to eat his dinner, but preferred the company of some Aspasia, or
Lais.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Two very different persons, sir, give me leave
to remark.
MR. CROTCHET. Very likely, sir; but both too good to be married in
Athens.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, Lais was a Corinthian.
MR. CROTCHET. Od's vengeance, sir, some Aspasia and any other
Athenian name of the same sort of person you like -
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. I do not like the sort of person at all: the
sort of person I like, as I have already implied, is a modest
woman, who stays at home and looks after her husband's dinner.
MR. CROTCHET. Well, sir, that was not the taste of the Athenians.
They preferred the society of women who would not have made any
scruple about sitting as models to Praxiteles; as you know, sir,
very modest women in Italy did to Canova; one of whom, an Italian
countess, being asked by an English lady, "how she could bear it?"
answered, "Very well; there was a good fire in the room."
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, the English lady should have asked how the
Italian lady's husband could bear it. The phials of my wrath would
overflow if poor dear Mrs. Folliott -: sir, in return for your
story, I will tell you a story of my ancestor, Gilbert Folliott.
The devil haunted him, as he did Saint Francis, in the likeness of
a beautiful damsel; but all he could get from the exemplary Gilbert
was an admonition to wear a stomacher and longer petticoats.
MR. CROTCHET. Sir, your story makes for my side of the question.
It proves that the devil, in the likeness of a fair damsel, with
short petticoats and no stomacher, was almost too much for Gilbert
Folliott. The force of the spell was in the drapery.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Bless my soul, sir!
MR. CROTCHET. Give me leave, sir. Diderot -
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Who was he, sir?
MR. CROTCHET. Who was he, sir? the sublime philosopher, the father
of the Encyclopaedia, of all the encyclopaedias that have ever been
printed.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Bless me, sir, a terrible progeny: they belong
to the tribe of Incubi.
MR. CROTCHET. The great philosopher, Diderot -
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, Diderot is not a man after my heart. Keep
to the Greeks, if you please; albeit this Sleeping Venus is not an
antique.
MR. CROTCHET. Well, sir, the Greeks: why do we call the Elgin
marbles inestimable? Simply because they are true to nature. And
why are they so superior in that point to all modern works, with
all our greater knowledge of anatomy? Why, sir, but because the
Greeks, having no cant, had better opportunities of studying
models?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Sir, I deny our greater knowledge of anatomy.
But I shall take the liberty to employ, on this occasion, the
argumentum ad hominem. Would you have allowed Miss Crotchet to sit
for a model to Canova?
MR. CROTCHET. Yes, sir.
"God bless my soul, sir!" exclaimed the Reverend Doctor Folliott,
throwing himself back into a chair, and flinging up his heels, with
the premeditated design of giving emphasis to his exclamation; but
by miscalculating his impetus, he overbalanced his chair, and laid
himself on the carpet in a right angle, of which his back was the
base.
CHAPTER VIII: SCIENCE AND CHARITY
Chi sta nel mondo un par d'ore contento,
Ne gli vien tolta, ovver contaminata,
Quella sua pace in veruno momento,
Puo dir che Giove drittamente il guata.
FORTEGUERRI.
The Reverend Doctor Folliott took his departure about ten o'clock,
to walk home to his vicarage. There was no moon, but the night was
bright and clear, and afforded him as much light as he needed. He
paused a moment by the Roman camp to listen to the nightingale;
repeated to himself a passage of Sophocles; proceeded through the
park gate, and entered the narrow lane that led to the village. He
walked on in a very pleasant mood of the state called reverie; in
which fish and wine, Greek and political economy, the Sleeping
Venus he had left behind, and poor dear Mrs. Folliott, to whose
fond arms he was returning, passed, as in a camera obscura, over
the tablets of his imagination. Presently the image of Mr.
Eavesdrop, with a printed sketch of the Reverend Doctor F.,
presented itself before him, and he began mechanically to flourish
his bamboo. The movement was prompted by his good genius, for the
uplifted bamboo received the blow of a ponderous cudgel, which was
intended for his head. The reverend gentleman recoiled two or
three paces, and saw before him a couple of ruffians, who were
preparing to renew the attack, but whom, with two swings of his
bamboo, he laid with cracked sconces on the earth, where he
proceeded to deal with them like corn beneath the flail of the
thresher. One of them drew a pistol, which went off in the very
act of being struck aside by the bamboo, and lodged a bullet in the
brain of the other. There was then only one enemy, who vainly
struggled to rise, every effort being attended with a new and more
signal prostration. The fellow roared for mercy. "Mercy, rascal!"
cried the divine; "what mercy were you going to show me, villain?
What! I warrant me, you thought it would be an easy matter, and no
sin, to rob and murder a parson on his way home from dinner. You
said to yourself, doubtless, "We'll waylay the fat parson (you
irreverent knave), as he waddles home (you disparaging ruffian),
half-seas-over, (you calumnious vagabond)." And with every
dyslogistic term, which he supposed had been applied to himself, he
inflicted a new bruise on his rolling and roaring antagonist. "Ah,
rogue!" he proceeded, "you can roar now, marauder; you were silent
enough when you devoted my brains to dispersion under your cudgel.
But seeing that I cannot bind you, and that I intend you not to
escape, and that it would be dangerous to let you rise, I will
disable you in all your members. I will contund you as Thestylis
did strong smelling herbs, in the quality whereof you do most
gravely partake, as my nose beareth testimony, ill weed that you
are. I will beat you to a jelly, and I will then roll you into the
ditch, to lie till the constable comes for you, thief."
"Hold! hold! reverend sir," exclaimed the penitent culprit, "I am
disabled already in every finger, and in every joint. I will roll
myself into the ditch, reverend sir."
"Stir not, rascal," returned the divine, "stir not so much as the
quietest leaf above you, or my bamboo rebounds on your body, like
hail in a thunder-storm. Confess, speedily, villain; are you a
simple thief, or would you have manufactured me into a subject for
the benefit of science? Ay, miscreant caitiff, you would have made
me a subject for science, would you? You are a school-master
abroad, are you? You are marching with a detachment of the march
of mind, are you? You are a member of the Steam Intellect Society,
are you? You swear by the learned friend, do you?"
"Oh, no! reverend sir," answered the criminal, "I am innocent of
all these offences, whatever they are, reverend sir. The only
friend I had in the world is lying dead beside me, reverend sir."
The reverend gentleman paused a moment, and leaned on his bamboo.
The culprit, bruised as he was, sprang on his legs, and went off in
double quick time. The Doctor gave him chase, and had nearly
brought him within arm's length, when the fellow turned at right
angles, and sprang clean over a deep dry ditch. The divine,
following with equal ardour, and less dexterity, went down over
head and ears into a thicket of nettles. Emerging with much
discomposure, he proceeded to the village, and roused the
constable; but the constable found, on reaching the scene of
action, that the dead man was gone, as well as his living
accomplice.
"Oh, the monster!" exclaimed the Reverend Doctor Folliott, "he has
made a subject for science of the only friend he had in the world."
"Ay, my dear," he resumed, the next morning at breakfast, "if my
old reading, and my early gymnastics (for, as the great Hermann
says, before I was demulced by the Muses, I was ferocis ingenii
puer, et ad arma quam ad literas paratior), had not imbued me
indelibly with some of the holy rage of Frere Jean des Entommeures,
I should be, at this moment, lying on the table of some flinty-
hearted anatomist, who would have sliced and disjointed me as
unscrupulously as I do these remnants of the capon and chine,
wherewith you consoled yourself yesterday for my absence at dinner.
Phew! I have a noble thirst upon me, which I will quench with
floods of tea."
The reverend gentleman was interrupted by a messenger, who informed
him that the Charity Commissioners requested his presence at the
inn, where they were holding a sitting.
"The Charity Commissioners!" exclaimed the reverend gentleman, "who
on earth are they?"
The messenger could not inform him, and the reverend gentleman took
his hat and stick, and proceeded to the inn.
On entering the best parlour, he saw three well-dressed and bulky
gentlemen sitting at a table, and a fourth officiating as clerk,
with an open book before him, and a pen in his hand. The church-
wardens, who had been also summoned, were already in attendance.
The chief commissioner politely requested the Reverend Doctor
Folliott to be seated, and after the usual meteorological
preliminaries had been settled by a resolution, nem. con., that it
was a fine day but very hot, the chief commissioner stated, that in
virtue of the commission of Parliament, which they had the honour
to hold, they were now to inquire into the state of the public
charities of this village.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. The state of the public charities, sir, is
exceedingly simple. There are none. The charities here are all
private, and so private, that I for one know nothing of them.
FIRST COMMISSIONER. We have been informed, sir, that there is an
annual rent charged on the land of Hautbois, for the endowment and
repair of an almshouse.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Hautbois! Hautbois!
FIRST COMMISSIONER. The manorial farm of Hautbois, now occupied by
Farmer Seedling, is charged with the endowment and maintenance of
an almshouse.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT (to the Churchwarden). How is this, Mr.
Bluenose?
FIRST CHURCHWARDEN. I really do not know, sir. What say you, Mr.
Appletwig?
MR. APPLETWIG (parish clerk and schoolmaster; an old man). I do
remember, gentlemen, to have been informed, that there did stand,
at the end of the village, a ruined cottage, which had once been an
almshouse, which was endowed and maintained, by an annual revenue
of a mark and a half, or one pound sterling, charged some centuries
ago on the farm of Hautbois; but the means, by the progress of
time, having become inadequate to the end, the almshouse tumbled to
pieces.
FIRST COMMISSIONER. But this is a right which cannot be abrogated
by desuetude, and the sum of one pound per annum is still
chargeable for charitable purposes on the manorial farm of
Hautbois.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very well, sir.
MR. APPLETWIG. But, sir, the one pound per annum is still received
by the parish, but was long ago, by an unanimous vote in open
vestry, given to the minister.
THE THREE COMMISSIONERS (una voce). The minister!
FIRST COMMISSIONER. This is an unjustifiable proceeding.
SECOND COMMISSIONER. A misappropriation of a public fund.
THIRD COMMISSIONER. A flagrant perversion of a charitable
donation.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. God bless my soul, gentlemen! I know nothing
of this matter. How is this, Mr. Bluenose? Do I receive this one
pound per annum?
FIRST CHURCHWARDEN. Really, sir, I know no more about it than you
do.
MR. APPLETWIG. You certainly receive it, sir. It was voted to one
of your predecessors. Farmer Seedling lumps it in with his tithes.
FIRST COMMISSIONER. Lumps it in, sir! Lump in a charitable
donation!
SECOND AND THIRD COMMISSIONER. Oh-oh-oh-h-h!
FIRST COMMISSIONER. Reverend sir, and gentlemen, officers of this
parish, we are under the necessity of admonishing you that this is
a most improper proceeding: and you are hereby duly admonished
accordingly. Make a record, Mr. Milky.
MR. MILKY (writing). The clergyman and church-wardens of the
village of Hm-ra-m-m- gravely admonished. Hm-m-m-m.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Is that all, gentlemen?
THE COMMISSIONERS. That is all, sir; and we wish you a good
morning.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. A very good morning to you, gentlemen.
"What in the name of all that is wonderful, Mr. Bluenose," said the
Reverend Doctor Folliott, as he walked out of the inn, "what in the
name of all that is wonderful, can those fellows mean? They have
come here in a chaise and four, to make a fuss about a pound per
annum, which, after all, they leave as it was: I wonder who pays
them for their trouble, and how much."
MR. APPLETWIG. The public pay for it, sir. It is a job of the
learned friend whom you admire so much. It makes away with public
money in salaries, and private money in lawsuits, and does no
particle of good to any living soul.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Ay, ay, Mr. Appletwig; that is just the sort of
public service to be looked for from the learned friend. Oh, the
learned friend! the learned friend! He is the evil genius of
everything that falls in his way.
The Reverend Doctor walked off to Crotchet Castle, to narrate his
misadventures, and exhale his budget of grievances on Mr. Mac
Quedy, whom he considered a ringleader of the march of mind.
CHAPTER IX: THE VOYAGE
[Greek text]
Mounting the bark, they cleft the watery ways.--Homer.
Four beautiful cabined pinnaces, one for the ladies, one for the
gentlemen, one for kitchen and servants, one for a dining-room and
band of music, weighed anchor, on a fine July morning, from below
Crotchet Castle, and were towed merrily, by strong trotting horses,
against the stream of the Thames. They passed from the district of
chalk, successively into the districts of clay, of sand-rock, of
oolite, and so forth. Sometimes they dined in their floating
dining-room, sometimes in tents, which they pitched on the dry,
smooth-shaven green of a newly-mown meadow: sometimes they left
their vessels to see sights in the vicinity; sometimes they passed
a day or two in a comfortable inn.
At Oxford, they walked about to see the curiosities of
architecture, painted windows, and undisturbed libraries. The
Reverend Doctor Folliott laid a wager with Mr. Crotchet "that in
all their perlustrations they would not find a man reading," and
won it. "Ay," said the reverend gentleman, "this is still a seat
of learning, on the principle of--once a captain, always a captain.
We may well ask, in these great reservoirs of books whereof no man
ever draws a sluice, Quorsum pertinuit stipere Platona Menandro?
What is done here for the classics? Reprinting German editions on
better paper. A great boast, verily! What for mathematics? What
for metaphysics? What for history? What for anything worth
knowing? This was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon.
But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him
is left but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had
tumbled to pieces, crying "Time's Past," was the only palpable
fragment among its minutely pulverised atoms, and which is still
resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. That nose,
sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my hat, in all
this Babylon of buried literature.
MR. CROTCHET. But, doctor, it is something to have a great
reservoir of learning, at which some may draw if they please.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. But, here, good care is taken that nobody shall
please. If even a small drop from the sacred fountain, [Greek
text], as Callimachus has it, were carried off by any one, it would
be evidence of something to hope for. But the system of dissuasion
from all good learning is brought here to a pitch of perfection
that baffles the keenest aspirant. I run over to myself the names
of the scholars of Germany, a glorious catalogue: but ask for
those of Oxford,--Where are they? The echoes of their courts, as
vacant as their heads, will answer, Where are they? The tree shall
be known by its fruit: and seeing that this great tree, with all
its specious seeming, brings forth no fruit, I do denounce it as a
barren fig.
MR. MAC QUEDY. I shall set you right on this point. We do nothing
without motives. If learning get nothing but honour, and very
little of that; and if the good things of this world, which ought
to be the rewards of learning, become the mere gifts of self-
interested patronage; you must not wonder if, in the finishing of
education, the science which takes precedence of all others, should
be the science of currying favour.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very true, sir. Education is well finished,
for all worldly purposes, when the head is brought into the state
whereinto I am accustomed to bring a marrow-bone, when it has been
set before me on a toast, with a white napkin wrapped round it.
Nothing trundles along the high road of preferment so trimly as a
well-biassed sconce, picked clean within and polished without;
totus teres atque rotundus. The perfection of the finishing lies
in the bias, which keeps it trundling in the given direction.
There is good and sufficient reason for the fig being barren, but
it is not therefore the less a barren fig.
At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond; and,
proceeding on their voyage, fell into a discussion on legendary
histories.
LADY CLARINDA. History is but a tiresome thing in itself: it
becomes more agreeable the more romance is mixed up with it. The
great enchanter has made me learn many things which I should never
have dreamed of studying, if they had not come to me in the form of
amusement.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. What enchanter is that? There are two
enchanters: he of the north, and he of the south.
MR. TRILLO. Rossini!
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Ay, there is another enchanter. But I mean the
great enchanter of Covent Garden: he who, for more than a quarter
of a century, has produced two pantomimes a year, to the delight of
children of all ages; including myself at all ages. That is the
enchanter for me. I am for the pantomimes. All the northern
enchanter's romances put together would not furnish materials for
half the Southern enchanter's pantomimes.
LADY CLARINDA. Surely you do not class literature with pantomime?
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. In these cases, I do. They are both one, with
a slight difference. The one is the literature of pantomime, the
other is the pantomime of literature. There is the same variety of
character, the same diversity of story, the same copiousness of
incident, the same research into costume, the same display of
heraldry, falconry, minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery,
devilry, robbery, poachery, piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology,
demonology, architecture, fortification, castrametation,
navigation; the same running base of love and battle. The main
difference is, that the one set of amusing fictions is told in
music and action; the other in all the worst dialects of the
English language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral
or political truth, anything having a tendency, however remote, to
make men wiser or better, to make them think, to make them ever
think of thinking; they are both precisely alike nuspiam,
nequaquam, nullibi, nullimodis.
LADY CLARINDA. Very amusing, however.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Very amusing, very amusing.
MR. CHAINMAIL. My quarrel with the northern enchanter is, that he
has grossly misrepresented the twelfth century.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. He has misrepresented everything, or he would
not have been very amusing. Sober truth is but dull matter to the
reading rabble. The angler, who puts not on his hook the bait that
best pleases the fish, may sit all day on the bank without catching
a gudgeon.
MR. MAC QUEDY. But how do you mean that he has misrepresented the
twelfth century? By exhibiting some of its knights and ladies in
the colours of refinement and virtue, seeing that they were all no
better than ruffians, and something else that shall be nameless?
MR. CHAINMAIL. By no means. By depicting them as much worse than
they were, not, as you suppose, much better. No one would infer
from his pictures that theirs was a much better state of society
than this which we live in.
MR. MAC QUEDY. No, nor was it. It was a period of brutality,
ignorance, fanaticism, and tyranny; when the land was covered with
castles, and every castle contained a gang of banditti, headed by a
titled robber, who levied contributions with fire and sword;
plundering, torturing, ravishing, burying his captives in loathsome
dungeons, and broiling them on gridirons, to force from them the
surrender of every particle of treasure which he suspected them of
possessing; and fighting every now and then with the neighbouring
lords, his conterminal bandits, for the right of marauding on the
boundaries. This was the twelfth century, as depicted by all
contemporary historians and poets.
MR. CHAINMAIL. No, sir. Weigh the evidence of specific facts; you
will find more good than evil. Who was England's greatest hero--
the mirror of chivalry, the pattern of honour, the fountain of
generosity, the model to all succeeding ages of military glory?
Richard the First. There is a king of the twelfth century. What
was the first step of liberty? Magna Charta. That was the best
thing ever done by lords. There are lords of the twelfth century.
You must remember, too, that these lords were petty princes, and
made war on each other as legitimately as the heads of larger
communities did or do. For their system of revenue, it was, to be
sure, more rough and summary than that which has succeeded it, but
it was certainly less searching and less productive. And as to the
people, I content myself with these great points: that every man
was armed, every man was a good archer, every man could and would
fight effectively, with sword or pike, or even with oaken cudgel;
no man would live quietly without beef and ale if he had them not;
he fought till he either got them, or was put out of condition to
want them. They were not, and could not be, subjected to that
powerful pressure of all the other classes of society, combined by
gunpowder, steam, and fiscality, which has brought them to that
dismal degradation in which we see them now. And there are the
people of the twelfth century.
MR. MAC QUEDY. As to your king, the enchanter has done him ample
justice, even in your own view. As to your lords and their ladies,
he has drawn them too favourably, given them too many of the false
colours of chivalry, thrown too attractive a light on their
abominable doings. As to the people, he keeps them so much in the
background, that he can hardly be said to have represented them at
all, much less misrepresented them, which indeed he could scarcely
do, seeing that, by your own showing, they were all thieves, ready
to knock down any man for what they could not come by honestly.
MR. CHAINMAIL. No, sir. They could come honestly by beef and ale,
while they were left to their simple industry. When oppression
interfered with them in that, then they stood on the defensive, and
fought for what they were not permitted to come by quietly.
MR. MAC QUEDY. If A., being aggrieved by B., knocks down C., do
you call that standing on the defensive?
MR. CHAINMAIL. That depends on who or what C. is.
REV. DR. FOLLIOTT. Gentlemen, you will never settle this
controversy till you have first settled what is good for man in
this world; the great question, de finibus, which has puzzled all
philosophers. If the enchanter has represented the twelfth century
too brightly for one, and too darkly for the other of you, I should
say, as an impartial man, he has represented it fairly. My quarrel
with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a
book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book--it is a
plaything. There is no question about the amusement,--amusement of
multitudes; but if he who amuses us most is to be our enchanter
[Greek text], then my enchanter is the enchanter of Covent Garden.
CHAPTER X: THE VOYAGE, CONTINUED
Continuant nostre routte, navigasmes par trois jours sans rien
descouvrir.--RABELAIS.
"There is a beautiful structure," said Mr. Chainmail, as they
glided by Lechlade church; "a subject for the pencil, Captain. It
is a question worth asking, Mr. Mac Quedy, whether the religious
spirit which reared these edifices, and connected with them
everywhere an asylum for misfortune, and a provision for poverty,
was not better than the commercial spirit, which has turned all the
business of modern life into schemes of profit and processes of
fraud and extortion. I do not see, in all your boasted
improvements, any compensation for the religious charity of the
twelfth century. I do not see any compensation for that kindly
feeling which, within their own little communities, bound the
several classes of society together, while full scope was left for
the development of natural character, wherein individuals differed
as conspicuously as in costume. Now, we all wear one conventional
dress, one conventional face; we have no bond of union but
pecuniary interest; we talk anything that comes uppermost for
talking's sake, and without expecting to be believed; we have no
nature, no simplicity, no picturesqueness: everything about us is
as artificial and as complicated as our steam-machinery: our
poetry is a kaleidoscope of false imagery, expressing no real
feeling, portraying no real existence. I do not see any
compensation for the poetry of the twelfth century."
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