Chapter 21
and the word "Jingo" took its place in the language as the recognized symbol of a warlike policy. At Easter 1878 it was announced that the Government were bringing black troops from India to Malta, to aid our English forces in whatever enterprises lay before them. The refrain of the music-hall was instantly adapted with great effect, even the grave _Spectator_ giving currency to the parody--
"We don't want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do, We won't go to the front ourselves, but we'll send the mild Hindoo."
Two years passed. Lord Beaconsfield was deposed. The tide of popular feeling turned in favour of Liberalism, and "Jingo" became a term of reproach. Mr. Tennyson, as he then was, endeavoured to revive the patriotic spirit of his countrymen by publishing _Hands all Round_--a poem which had the supreme honour of being quoted in the House of Commons by Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Forthwith an irreverent parodist--some say Mr. Andrew Lang--appeared with the following counterblast:--
DRINKS ALL ROUND.
(Being an attempt to arrange Mr. Tennyson's noble words for truly patriotic, Protectionist, and Anti-aboriginal circles.)
"A health to Jingo first, and then A health to shell, a health to shot! The man who hates not other men I deem no perfect patriot." To all who hold all England mad We drink; to all who'd tax her food! We pledge the man who hates the Rad, We drink to Bartle Frere and Froude!
Drinks all round! Here's to Jingo, king and crowned! To the great cause of Jingo drink, my boys, And the great name of Jingo, round and round.
To all the companies that long To rob, as folk robbed years ago; To all that wield the double thong, From Queensland round to Borneo! To all that, under Indian skies, Call Aryan man a "blasted nigger;" To all rapacious enterprise; To rigour everywhere, and vigour!
Drinks all round! Here's to Jingo, king and crowned! To the great name of Jingo drink, my boys, And every filibuster, round and round!
To all our Statesmen, while they see An outlet new for British trade, Where British fabrics still may be With British size all overweighed; Wherever gin and guns are sold We've scooped the artless nigger in; Where men give ivory and gold, We give them measles, tracts, and gin.
Drinks all round! Here's to Jingo, king and crowned! To the great name of Jingo drink, my boys. And to Adulteration round and round.
The Jingo fever having abated, another malady appeared in the body politic. Trouble broke out in Ireland, and in January 1881 Parliament was summoned to pass Mr. Forster's Coercion Act. My diary for that date supplies me with the following excellent imitation of a veteran Poet of Freedom rushing with ardent sympathy into the Irish struggle.
A L'IRLANDE.
PAR VICTOR HUGO.
O Irlande, grand pays du shillelagh et du bog, Où les patriots vont toujours ce qu'on appelle le whole hog. Aujourd'hui je prends la plume, moi qui suis vieux, Pour dire au grand patriot Parnell, "How d'ye do?" Erin, aux armes! le whisky vous donne la force De se battre l'un pour l'autre comme les fameux Frères Corses. Votre Land League et vos Home Rulers sont des libérateurs. Payez la valuation de Griffith et n'ayez pas peur.
De la tenure la fixité c'est l'astre de vos rêves, Que Rory des Collines vit et que les landgrabbers crèvent Moi, je suis vieux, mais dans l'ombre je vois clair, Bientôt serez-vous maîtres de vos bonnes pommes de terre. C'est le brave Biggar, le T.P. O'Connor et les autres Qui sont vos sauveurs, comme Gambetta était le nôtre; Suivez-les, et la victoire sera toujours à vous, Si à Milbank ce cher Forster ne vous envoie pas. Hooroo!
By the time that these lines were written the late Mr. J.K. Stephen--affectionately known by his friends as "Jem Stephen"--was beginning to be recognized as an extraordinarily good writer of humorous verse. His performances in this line were not collected till ten years later (_Lapsus Calami_, 1891), and his brilliant career was cut short, by the results of an accident, in 1892. I reproduce the following sonnet, not only because I think it an excellent criticism aptly expressed, but because I desire to pay my tribute of admiration to one of whom all men spoke golden words:--
"Two voices are there: one is of the deep-- It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep; And one is of an old, half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That glass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep; And, Wordsworth, both are thine."
I hope that there are few among my readers who have not in their time known and loved the dear old ditty which tells us how
"There was a youth, and a well-beloved youth, And he was a squire's son, And he loved the Bailiff's daughter dear Who dwelt at Islington."
Well, to all who have followed that touching story of love and grief I commend the following version of it. French, after all, is the true language of sentiment:--
"Il y avait un garçon, Fort amiable et fort bon, Qui était le fils du Lord Mayor; Et il aimait la fille D'un sergent de ville Qui demeurait à Leycesster Sqvare.
"Mais elle était un peu prude, Et n'avait pas l'habitude De coqueter, comme les autres demoiselles; Jusqu'à ce que le Lord Mayor (Homme brutal, comme tous les pères) L'éloigna de sa tourterelle.
"Après quelques ans d'absence, Au rencontre elle s'élance; Elle se fait une toilette de très bon goût-- Des pantoufles sur les pieds, Des lunettes sur le nez, Et un collier sur le cou--c'était tout.
"Mais bientôt elle s'assit Dans la rue Piccadilli, Car il faisait extrêmement chaud; Et là elle vit s'avancer L'unique objet de ses pensées, Sur le plus magnifique de chevaux!
"Je suis pauvre et sans ressource! Prête, prête-moi ta bourse, Ou ta montre, pour me montrer confiance.' 'Jeune femme, je ne vous connais, Ainsi il faut me donner Une adresse et quelques références'
"'Mon adresse--c'est Leycesster Sqvare, Et pour référence j'espère Que la statue de Shakespeare vous suffira,' 'Ah! connais-tu ma mie, La fille du sergent?' 'Si; Mais elle est morte comme un rat!'
"'Si défunte est ma belle, Prenez, s'il vous plaît, ma selle, Et ma bride, et mon cheval incomparable; Car il ne faut rien dire, Mais vite, vite m'ensevelir Dans un désert sec et désagréable.'
"'Ah! mon brave, arrête-toi. Je suis ton unique choix; La fille du sergent sans peur! Pour mon trousseau, c'est modeste, Vous le voyez! Pour le reste, Je t'épouse dans une demi-heure!'
"Mais le jeune homme épouvanté Sur son cheval vite remontait, La liberté lui était trop chère! Et la pauvre fille dégoûtée N'avait qu'à reprendre sa route, et Son adresse est encore Leycesster Sqvare."
The chiefs of the Permanent Civil Service are not usually, as Swift said, "blasted with poetic fire," but this delightful ditty is from the pen of Mr. Henry Graham, the Clerk of the Parliaments.
Of the metrical parodists of the present hour two are extremely good. Mr. Owen Seaman is, beyond and before all his rivals, "up to date," and pokes his lyrical fun at such songsters as Mr. Alfred Austin, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and Mr. Richard Le Gallienne. But "Q." is content to try his hand on poets of more ancient standing; and he is not only of the school but of the lineage of "C.S.C." I have said before that I forbear, as a rule, to quote from books as easily accessible as _Green Bays;_ but is there a branch of the famous "Omar Khayyám Club" in Manchester? If there be, to it I offer this delicious morsel, only apologizing to the uninitiated reader for the pregnant allusiveness, which none but a sworn Khayyámite can perfectly apprehend:--
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept, And wailed the Nightingale with "Jug, jug, jug!" Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept.
Enter with me where yonder door hangs out Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, Where death, Aladdin, waits as Chuckeroût.
Methought, last night, that one in suit of woe Stood by the Tavern-door and whispered, "Lo! The Pledge departed, what avails the Cup? Then take the Pledge and let the Wine-cup go."
But I: "For every thirsty soul that drains This Anodyne of Thought its rim contains-- Freewill the _can_, Necessity the _must;_ Pour off the _must_, and see, the _can_ remains.
"Then, pot or glass, why label it '_With care?'_ Or why your Sheepskin with my Gourd compare? Lo! here the Bar and I the only Judge:-- O Dog that bit me, I exact an hair!"
No versifier of the present day lends himself so readily to parody as Mr. Kipling. His "Story of Ung" is an excellent satire on certain methods of contemporary literature:--
"Once on a glittering icefield, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. Fashioned the form of a tribesman; gaily he whistled and sung, Working the snow with his fingers, '_Read ye the story of Ung!_'
* * * * *
And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft, Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed: 'If they could see as thou seest they would do as thou hast done, And each man would make him a picture, and--what would become of my son?'"
So far Mr. Kipling. A parodist writing in _Truth_ applies the same "criticism of life" to commercial production:--
THE STORY OF BUNG.
Once, ere the glittering icefields paid us a tribute of gold, Bung, the son of a brewer, heir to a fortune untold-- Vast was his knowledge of brewing--gaily began his career. Whispered the voice of ambition, "Perhaps they will make thee a peer."
People who sampled his liquor wunk an incredulous wink, Smelt it, then drank it, and grunted, "Verily _this_ is a drink!" Even the Clubman admitted, wetting the tip of his tongue, "Lo! it is excellent beer! Glory and honour to Bung!"
Straightway the doubters assembled, a prying, unsatisfied horde: "It is _said_ the materials used are approved by the Revenue Board; It is claimed that no adjuncts are used, the advertisements say it is pure; True, the beer is good--and it may be--but can the consumer be sure?"
Wroth was that brewer of liquor, knowing the doubters were right, User of chemical adjuncts, and methods that bear not the light; Little he recked of disclosures, much of the profits he cleared, So in the ear of his father whispered the thing that he feared.
And the father of Bung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft, "If they cast suspicion upon thee, it is nought but a random shaft; If others could know what thou knowest, they would do what thou hast done, And men would drink of their brewing, and--what would become of my son?
"So long as thy beer is best, so long shall thy brewing win The praise no money can buy, and the money that praise brings in. And if the majority's pleased, the majority does not mind The _how_, and the _what_, and the _whence_. Rejoice that the public is blind."
And Bung took his father's counsel, and fell to his brewing of beer, And he gave the Government cheques, and the Government made him a peer, And the doubters ceased from their doubting, loudly his praises they sung, Cursing their previous blindness. _Heed ye the story of Bung!_
But no effort of intentional parody can, I think, surpass this serious adaptation of the "March of the Men of Harlech" to the ecclesiastical crisis of 1898-9:--
A PROTESTANT BATTLE-SONG;
OR,
PASTORAL ADDRESS TO CHRISTIAN BRETHREN.
Sons of Freedom, rouse the Nation! Or Britain's glorious Reformation Soon will reach dire consummation! God defend the right! Shall false traitor-bishops lead us, Chained to Rome, and madly speed us, From the Word of God which freed us, Unto Papal night? False example setting, Treachery begetting, Temple, Halifax, Maclagan, Now with Rome coquetting. Mighty House of Convocation Thou art not the British Nation! Every warrior to your station; Freedom calls for fight!
Cuba, Spain, and Madagascar, Where the Jesuits are master, Shout our shame in their disaster,-- What shall Britain say? Rome, thy smile is cold as Zero. Drop the mask, thou crafty Nero! Britons! rouse ye! Play the Hero! Right shall win the day! False example setting, Treachery begetting, Temple, Halifax, Maclagan, Now with Rome coquetting. Trust in God! His truth protecting, Prayer and duty ne'er neglecting, Fearless, victory expecting, Prepare you for the fray!
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Born 1851; ordained 1874; died 1877.
XXIX.
VERBAL INFELICITIES.
"_Se non è vero_," said a very great Lord Mayor, "_è ben traviata_." His lordship's linguistic slip served him right. Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in _The Mill on the Floss_, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready." But to quote from any other language is to commit an outrage on your guests. The late Sir Robert Fowler was, I believe, the only Lord Mayor who ever ventured to quote Greek, but I have heard him do it, and have seen the turtle-fed company smile with alien lips in the painful attempt to look as if they understood it, and in abject terror lest their neighbour should ask them to translate. Mr. James Payn used to tell a pleasing tale of a learned clergyman who quoted Greek at dinner. The lady who was sitting by Mr. Payn inquired in a whisper what one of these quotations meant. He gave her to understand, with a well-assumed blush, that it was scarcely fit for a lady's ear. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed; "you don't mean to say----" "Please don't ask any more," said Payn pleadingly; "I really could not tell you." Which was true to the ear, if not to the sense.
Municipal eloquence has been time out of mind a storehouse of delight. It was, according to tradition, a provincial mayor who, blessed with a numerous progeny, publicly expressed the pious hope that his sons might grow up to be better citizens than their father, and his daughters more virtuous women than their mother. There was a worthy alderman at Oxford in my time who was entertained at a public dinner on his retirement from civic office. In replying to the toast of his health, he said it had always been his anxious endeavour to administer justice without swerving to "partiality on the one hand or impartiality on the other." Surely he must have been near akin to the moralist who always tried to tread "the narrow path which lay between right and wrong;" or, perchance, to the newly-elected mayor who, in returning thanks for his elevation, said that during his year of office he should lay aside all his political prepossessions and be, "like Caesar's wife, all things to all men." A well-known dignitary, rebuking his housemaid for using his bath during his absence from the Deanery, said, "I am grieved to think that you should do behind my back what you wouldn't do before my face;" and it was related of my old friend Dean Burgon that once, in a sermon on the transcendent merits of the Anglican school of theology, he exclaimed, with a fervour which was all his own, "May I live the life of a Taylor, and die the death of a Bull!" The late Lord Coleridge, eulogizing Oxford, said in his most dulcet tone, "I speak not of this college or of that, but of the University as a whole; and, gentlemen, what a _whole_ Oxford is!"
The admirable Mr. Brooke, when he purposed to contest the Borough of Middlemarch, found Will Ladislaw extremely useful, because he "remembered what the right quotations are--_Omne tulit punctum_, and that sort of thing." And certainly an apt quotation is one of the most effective decorations of a public speech; but the dangers of inappositeness are correspondingly formidable. I have always heard that the most infelicitous quotation on record was made by the fourth Lord Fitzwilliam at a county meeting held at York to raise a fund for the repair of the Minster after the fire which so nearly destroyed it in 1829. Previous speakers had, naturally, appealed to the pious munificence of Churchmen. Lord Fitzwilliam, as the leading Whig of the county, thought that it would be an excellent move to enlist the sympathies of the rich Nonconformists, and that he was the man to do it. So he perorated somewhat after the following fashion:--"And, if the liberality of Yorkshire Churchmen proves insufficient to restore the chief glory of our native county, then, with all confidence, I turn to our excellent Dissenting brethren, and I exclaim, with the Latin poet,
'Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo.'"
Mr. Anstey Guthrie has some pleasant instances of texts misapplied. He was staying once in a Scotch country-house where, over his bed, hung an illuminated scroll with the inscription, "Occupy till I come," which, as Mr. Guthrie justly observes, is an unusually extended invitation, even for Scottish notions of hospitality. According to the same authority, the leading citizen of a seaside town erected some iron benches on the sea front, and, with the view of at once commemorating his own munificence and giving a profitable turn to the thoughts of the sitters, inscribed on the backs--
THESE SEATS WERE PRESENTED TO THIS TOWN OF SHINGLETON BY JOSEPH BUGGINS, ESQ., J.P. FOR THE BOROUGH. "THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT."
Nothing is more deeply rooted in the mind of the average man than that certain well-known aphorisms of piety are to be found in the Bible--possibly in that lost book the Second Epistle to the Ephesians, which Dickens must have had in his mind when he wrote in _Dombey and Son_ of the First Epistle to that Church. "In the midst of life we are in death" is a favourite quotation from this imaginary Scripture. "His end was peace" holds its place on many a tomb in virtue of a similar belief. "He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" is, I believe, commonly attributed to Solomon; and a charming song which was popular in my youth declared that, though the loss of friends was sad, it would have been much sadder,
"Had we ne'er heard that Scripture word, 'Not lost, but gone before.'"
Mrs. Gamp, with some hazy recollections of the New Testament floating in her mind, invented the admirable aphorism that "Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye." And a lady of my acquaintance, soliloquizing on the afflictions of life and the serenity of her own temper, exclaimed, "How true it is what Solomon says, 'A contented spirit is like a perpetual dropping on a rainy day'!"
A Dissenting minister, winding up a week's mission, is reported to have said, "And if any spark of grace has been kindled by these exercises, oh, we pray Thee, water that spark." A watered spark is good, but what of a harnessed volcano? When that eminent Civil servant, Sir Hugh Owen, retired from the Local Government Board, a gentleman wrote to the _Daily Chronicle_ in favour of "harnessing this by no means extinct volcano to the great task" of codifying the Poor Law. An old peasant-woman in Buckinghamshire, extolling the merits of her favourite curate, said to the rector, "I do say that Mr. Woods is quite an angel in sheep's clothing;" and Dr. Liddon told me of a Presbyterian minister who was called on at short notice to officiate at the parish church of Crathie in the presence of the Queen, and, transported by this tremendous experience, burst forth in rhetorical supplication--"Grant that as she grows to be an old woman she may be made a new man; and that in all righteous causes she may go forth before her people like a he-goat on the mountains."
Undergraduates, whose wretched existence for a week before each examination is spent in the hasty acquisition of much ill-assorted and indigestible knowledge, are not seldom the victims of similar confusions. At Oxford--and, for all I know, at Cambridge too--a hideous custom prevails of placing before the examinee a list of isolated texts, and requiring him to supply the name of the speaker, the occasion, and the context.
_Question_.--"'My punishment is greater than I can bear.' Who said this? Under what circumstances?"
_Answer_.--"Agag, when he was hewn in pieces."
One wonders at what stage of the process he began to think it was going a little too far.
"What is faith?" inquired an examiner in "Pass-Divinity." "Faith is the faculty by which we are enabled to believe that which we know is not true," replied the undergraduate, who had learned his definition by heart, but imperfectly, from a popular cram-book. A superficial knowledge of literature may sometimes be a snare. "Can you give me any particulars of Oliver Cromwell's death?" asked an Examiner in History in 1874. "Oh yes, sir," eagerly replied the victim: "he exclaimed, 'Had I but served my God as I have served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.'"
"Things one would rather have expressed differently" are, I believe, a discovery of Mr. Punch's. Of course he did not create them. They must be as old as human nature itself. The history of their discovery is not unlike that of another epoch-making achievement of the same great genius, as set forth in the preface to the _Book of Snobs_. First, the world was made; then, as a matter of course, snobs; they existed for years and years, and were no more known than America. But presently--_ingens patebat tellus_--people became darkly aware that there was such a race. Then in time a name arose to designate that race. That name has spread over England like railroads. Snobs are known and recognised throughout an Empire on which the sun never sets. _Punch_ appeared at the ripe season to chronicle their history, and the individual came forth to write that history in _Punch_. We may apply this historical method to the origin and discovery of "Things one would rather have expressed differently." They must have existed as long as language; they must have flourished wherever men and women encountered one another in social intercourse. But the glory of having discovered them, recognized them, classified them, and established them among the permanent sources of human enjoyment belongs to Mr. Punch alone.
"He was the first that ever burst Into that silent sea."
Let us humbly follow in his wake.