That Very Mab

CHAPTER VIII. – THE BEAUTIFUL

'How exceedingly successful,' observed Queen Mab one day, 'the Permanent Scarecrows have been!'

'The Permanent Scarecrows?' said the Owl.

The winged and gifted pair had been on another visit to London, and Mab had found rows on rows of stucco houses, where she had left green fields, running brooks, and hedges white with may, on the northern side of the Strand.

'Yes 'said Mab 'you hardly ever see a crow now, where, in my time, the farmers were so much plagued by the furtive bird. But, as the crows have been thoroughly frightened off, and as there are now no crops to protect, I do think they might remove the permanent scarecrows.'

'Your Majesty's meaning,' said the Owl, 'is beginning to dawn on me. True, in your time there were no statues in London, and the mistake into which you have fallen is natural. You went away before the great development of British Art, and British Sculpture, and British worship of Beauty. The monuments you notice are expressive of our love of loveliness, our devotion to all that is fair. These objects of which you complain are not meant to alarm predatory fowls (though well calculated for that purpose) but to commemorate heroes, often themselves more or less predatory.'

'Do you mean to tell me?' asked Mab, 'that that big burly scarecrow, about to mend a gigantic quill with a blunt sword, was a hero?'

'He was indeed,' said the Owl, 'though I admit that you would never have guessed it from his effigy.'

'And that other scarecrow, all claws and beak, who blocks up the narrow street where the Dragon worshippers throng? Was he a hero?'

'He is believed by some to be the Dragon himself,' said the Owl; 'but no one knows for certain, not even the sculptor.'

'And the Barber's Block with the stuffed dog, looking into the Park?'

'He was a poet,' said the Owl, 'and expressed so much contempt for men that they retorted by that ridiculous caricature. Would you believe it, English sculptors actually quarrelled among themselves as to who made that singular and, for its original purpose, most successful scarecrow!'

'I don't wonder,' remarked the Queen, 'that birds of taste are rare in the Metropolis, and that, on the Embankment especially, a rook would be regarded as a kind of prodigy. Nowhere has the manufacture of permanent scarecrows been conducted with more ingenious success. But tell me, my accomplished fowl, have Britons any other arts? Long ago the men used to paint themselves blue, but, as far as I have remarked, the women are now alone in staining their cheeks with a curious purplish dye and their locks with ginger colour.'

'Among the Arts,' said the Owl, 'the modern English chiefly excel in painting. To-morrow, by the way, the shrine of Loveliness begins to open its gates. The successful worshippers, are admitted to varnish their offerings to Beauty, while the unsuccessful are sent away in disgrace, with their sacrifices. Suppose we go and examine this curious scene.'

'In Polynesia,' replied Mab, 'no well-meant offering is rejected by the gods.'

'The Polynesian gods,' answered the Owl, 'are too indiscriminate.'

On the next morning any one whose eyes were purged with euphrasy and rue might have observed an owl and a fairy queen fluttering in the smoky air above Burlington House. Here a mixed multitude of men and women, young and old, were thronging about the gates, some laughing, some lamenting. A few entered with proud and happy steps, bearing quantities of varnish to the goddess; others sneaked away with pictures under their arms, or hastily concealed the gifts rejected at the shrine of Beauty in the hospitable shelter of four-wheeled cabs.

'Let us enter,' said the Owl, 'and behold how wisely the Forty Priests of Beauty (or the Forty Thieves, as their enemies call them) and the Thirty Acolytes have arranged the gifts of the faithful.

Lightly the unseen pair fluttered past the servants of Beauty, nobly attired in gold and scarlet. They found themselves in a series of stately halls, so covered with pictures in all the hues of the aniline rainbow, that Queen Mab winked, and suffered from an immortal headache.

'How curious it is,' said Queen Mab, 'that of all the many thousand offerings only a very few, namely, those hung at a certain height from the floor, are really visible to any one who is neither a fairy nor a bird.'

'The pieces which you observe,' remarked the Owl, 'are almost in every case the work of the Forty Priests of Beauty, of the Thirty Acolytes, and of their cousins, their sisters, and their aunts. Those other attempts, almost invisible, as you say, to anyone but a bird or a fairy, have been produced by other worshippers not yet admitted to the Holy Band.'

'Then,' asked the Queen, 'are the Forty Priests by far the most expert in devising objects truly beautiful, and really worthy of the Goddess of Beauty?'

'On that subject,' said the Owl, 'your Majesty will be able to form an opinion after you have examined the sacrifices at the shrine.'

Swiftly as Art Critics the winged spectators flew, invisible, round the galleries, and finally paused, breathless, on the gigantic group of St. George and the Dragon, then in the Sculpture Room.

'Well, what do you think?' asked the Owl.

'The Forty Priests,' replied Queen Mab, 'are, with few exceptions, men who seem to have been blinded, perhaps by the Beatific Vision of Beauty. If the Beatific Vision of Beauty has not blinded them, why are they and their friends so hopelessly absurd? Why do they have all the best of the shrine to themselves, while the young worshippers are consigned to holes and corners, or turned out altogether? Who makes the Forty the Forty? Does the goddess choose her own Ministers?'

'By no means,' said the Owl, 'they choose themselves. Who else, in the name of Beauty, would choose them? But you must not think that they are all blind or stupid; there are some very brilliant exceptions,' and he pointed triumphantly to the offerings of the High Priest and of five or six other members of the Fraternity.

'This is all very well, and I am delighted to see it,' said Queen Mab, 'but tell me how the choosing of the Forty and of the Acolytes is arranged. 'When one of the Forty dies,' replied the Owl, 'which happens only at very long intervals, for they belong to the race of Struldbrugs, several worshippers who have become bald, old, nearly sightless, with other worshippers' still young and strong, are paraded before the Thirty-nine. And they generally choose the old men, or, if not, the young men who come from a strange land in the North, where rain falls always when it is not snowing, and whither no native ever returns. If such a man lives in a fine house, and has a cunning cook, then (even though he can paint) he may be admitted among the Forty, or among the Thirty who attain not to the Forty. After that he can take his ease; however ugly his offerings to Beauty, they are presented to the public.'

'Well,' said Queen Mab, 'my curiosity is satisfied, and I no longer wonder at the permanent scarecrows. But one thing still puzzles me. What becomes of the offerings of the Forty after the temple closes?'

'They disappear by means of a very clever invention,' said the Owl. 'Long ago a famous priest, named Chantrey, perceived that the country would be overrun with the offerings to which you allude. He therefore bequeathed a sum of money, called the Chantrey bequest, to enable the Forty to purchase each other's pictures.'

'But what do they do with them after they have bought them?' persisted Mab, who had a very inquiring mind.

'Oh, goodness knows; don't ask me,' said the Owl crossly; 'nobody ever inquires after them again!'

CHAPTER IX. – IN WHICH THE NIHILIST, THE DEMOCRAT, AND THE PROFESSOR OFFER A SUGGESTION TO THE BISHOP

'Were it not better not to be!'

Tennyson: The Two Voices.

'Si tu veux', je te tuerais ici tout franc, en sorte que tu rien sentiras rien, et m'en croy, car j'en ay bien tué d'autres qui s'en sont bien trouvez'

Pantagruel, ii. xiv.

'Look there!' said the Owl one day. 'There is a bishop, one of the higher priests of St. George.'

He was a beautiful bishop, in his mitre, canonicals, and crozier, all complete – so the Owl said. It strikes one as a novelty for bishops to wear their rochettes and mitres when they go out walking in Richmond Park; but one is forced to believe the Owl, he has such a truthful way with him, like George Washington. By the way, what scope George Washington had for telling lies, if he had wished it, after that incident of the cherry-tree, which gave everyone such a high opinion of his veracity!

The Bishop advanced slowly into full view, and then drew up before a tree. He did not lean against the tree, for fear of spoiling his splendours, but he drew up before it, and began to ponder, with a mild, benevolent expression on his fine features. At the same time, two hundred yards away, Queen Mab caught sight of the Democrat, walking very fast, a little out of breath, and looking for the Bishop. He wanted to explain to him the principles of Church and State, and to talk things over in a friendly way. The Democrat had great faith in talking things over, spite of his failure to convince the Aristocrat; he never really doubted that if he only harangued against obstacles long enough they would ultimately disappear. The Bishop, for instance, would willingly rush into nonentity, if once he could be brought to look at his duty in that light, and the Democrat was eager to begin to put it before him in that light immediately. But while he was still looking earnestly for his expected proselyte, someone else advanced with a similar purpose – a tall, gentlemanly individual, with a pleasing exterior, spotless linen cuffs, and a black bag. The Owl uttered a cry of horror.

'Come away!' he exclaimed. 'It is a Nihilist, a dynamiter!'

But Queen Mab held her ground, or rather her branch. She was a courageous fairy, and though she turned a shade paler she spoke resolutely:

'No!' she said. 'I mean to stay and see what he does with it You may go.'

But the Owl was either too chivalrous to desert her, or he was paralysed with terror.

'Dynamite strikes downwards,' the fairy heard him murmur with chattering beak, and that was all he could say. Meanwhile the Nihilist went up to the Bishop.

'Excuse me!' he murmured politely, and knelt down. The Bishop stretched out his hands absently, in an attitude of blessing; but the Nihilist did not look up. He took an American cloth parcel from the black bag and laid it at the Bishop's feet. Then, gradually withdrawing, he began to lay the train.

'He is going to blow him up!' whispered Mab, shuddering. But the Bishop, absorbed in rapt contemplation, heard and saw nothing, till the Democrat, breaking rudely through some bushes and into his reverie, roused him effectually. The Democrat was not a person of whose neighbourhood one could remain unconscious.

'Ah!' he exclaimed, while the Bishop looked upon him with an air of mild disapprobation. 'I have found you at last! I was anxious to discuss with you – but what is this?'

For the more observant Democrat had caught sight of the cloth parcel.

'What is this?' he repeated suspiciously.

'I really don't know,' said the Bishop mildly, putting on his spectacles and gazing down. 'I am a little shortsighted, you know. It is the size of the quarto edition of – '

'There!' interrupted the Democrat, who had caught a glimpse of the Nihilist's shadowy figure. He darted after it, while the Bishop, a little perturbed, moved slowly in the same direction.

'Don't move,' said the Nihilist, raising an abstracted face. 'I will only be a moment. Just step back there, will you?' and he pointed towards the parcel with one hand, while the other still scattered the train.

'What are you doing?' cried the Democrat, shaking him.

'Stop that!' said the Nihilist 'You had better not lay hands on me, or you mayn't like it. It is really inconsiderate,' he continued, appealing to the Bishop in an injured voice. 'I am only going to blow you up, and you won't be quiet half a minute together. How can I blow you up properly, if you will keep walking about?'

'You are going to blow me up!' said the Bishop, awaking to the situation, and becoming as indignant as his gentle nature would allow him to be. 'Miserable man! What will you want to blow up next? I utterly discountenance it. Take your dynamite to the haunts of iniquity and atheism, if you will. Rather blow up Renan, and Dissenters, and the Rev. Mr. Cattell; but as for me, this is really carrying it too far!'

'Waal,' said the Nihilist, rising with a surprised stare, and in the astonishment of the moment betraying his nationality, 'I guess things air come to a pretty pass when a Bishop of the Church of England refooses to be blown up in the interests of hoomanity!'

He took up the American cloth parcel as he spoke and walked despondently away, musing over the lack of public spirit displayed by established orders in general and prelates in particular.

'I would cheerfully consent to be blown up any day,' he murmured pensively, 'in the interests of hoomanity; but it is not for the interests of hoomanity – '

'Why did you not arrest him?' said the Bishop reproachfully, when he was out of sight.

'He is the natural product of the present depraved state of Society and of the Legislature,' replied the Democrat, shaking his head, 'and therefore to be pitied rather than condemned. He should be accepted as a warning, a merciful token sent to all thrones, principalities and powers, reminding them of the error of their ways and of their latter end. And besides,' he continued unwillingly, 'he has a whole magazine of explosives on his person. If I had not been carried away by my indignation just now I should never have taken him by the collar. I did remonstrate with him once, on the strength of his political bias. I said, "Look at us, why can't you profit by our example? We don't wish to blow up, but gently to 'disintegrate. We are mild, but firm. We never express a wish for revolution, but for reform. We are as active as anyone in bringing about the Millennium, but we don't desire to be shot into it head foremost, like a projectile from one of your infernal machines. Dynamite, that last infirmity of noble minds, should only be resorted to when all other modes of conciliation have failed." And what do you think he replied? He smiled affably and offered me a box. "Thank you!" he said, "Take a torpedo?"'

'Dear me!' said the Bishop; 'he is really a terrible character. I have here some of his advertisements, sent to me the other day. Actually sent by post, to me, a Prelate of the Church of England. I saved them, intending to deliver a discourse upon the subject.'

He took a handful of papers from his pocket-book, and the Democrat perused them, while Queen Mab, invisible, looked over his shoulder.

'Home Comfort! Hints to Architects and Builders.

'In the construction of tenements, it is absolutely necessary, for the safety and convenience of the inmates, to place in the recess at the back of each fireplace a couple of Donovan's Patent Dynamite Fire Bricks, warranted. The advantages of this novel and most ingenious contrivance will be fully appreciated when, for the first time, the family circle gathers round the cheerful blaze.'

'To Clergymen.

'For a pure religious light, suitable to the Liturgy of the Church of England, try Donovan's Wax Tapers for Church Illumination. Two of these, placed in the sconces, will give more light than twenty ordinary candles, and will also impart vigour and fervency of tone to the whole of the proceedings. Donovan and Co. are so confident of the superiority of their manufactures that they are willing to refund costs, on receiving the written attestation of the Bishop of the diocese that the article has proved unsuitable. Try them; you can have no idea of the effects.' 'Directors of Railway Companies.

'Take care to have carriages illuminated with Donovan's Patent Safety Lamps. These exert a bracing and salutary influence, not only on the atmosphere and the spirits of the passengers, but on the tunnel walls themselves, which are invariably found, after the passage through them of a train lighted by Donovan's Patent Safety Lamps, completely prostrate with astonishment at the unparalleled effects of the same, to the immense convenience of traffic and judicious prevention of accidents.'

There were several more advertisements, similar in tone and of attractive appearance, which the Democrat perused with interest.

'What could possess the fellow to send all these to you?' he exclaimed when he had finished. 'I always said he pushed the thing to an extreme. He has got dynamite on the brain: he will go off himself some day if he doesn't take care, like a new infernal machine.'

'I wish he would!' said the Bishop hastily; and then correcting himself, 'I was about to say, "Whatever is, is best."'

'Oh, stow that!' exclaimed the Democrat. 'I mean,' he added apologetically, on observing the Bishop's startled glance, 'that, of course, that sounds very well, and it is a pretty thing to say, but everybody knows it isn't true. I will undertake to prove to you, if you will allow me' – here the Bishop's face gathered a shade of melancholy – 'that, in fact, there never was a more outrageous falsehood on the earth. As for the Nihilist, naturally we should be thankful to get rid of him, either by explosion or otherwise; but he is such a dangerous fellow to tackle. The fact is, one hardly dare shake hands with him, for fear of being blown into the middle of next week, and then one couldn't toil for the benefit of humanity.'

'Act, act in the living Present,' murmured the Bishop.

'Just so,' said his companion approvingly. 'And you can't act in the living Present when you are in the middle of next week.'

'And yet, you know,' said the Bishop, with a glimpse before him of some possible advantage in the argument, 'I have often fancied that you yourself – '

He paused judiciously.

'Oh no!' returned the Democrat promptly, 'we wouldn't do it on any account. I assure you that our motives are quite unimpeachable.'

'Oh!' said the Bishop. 'And about the House of Lords, for example? Being a Spiritual Peer oneself, you see, one naturally takes an interest – limited.'

'Well, as for that,' said the Democrat, 'it would really be such an excellent thing for you in all respects to be abolished, that you would never make any objection, would you now? We have your welfare so deeply at heart, and long study of your characteristics has convinced us that a course of judicious abolition would be your salvation, temporal, spiritual – and eternal.'

'I say!' exclaimed the Bishop, 'isn't that putting it rather strong? To a Bishop, you know.'

'Ah,' said his companion encouragingly, 'all that feeling will pass away. The full beauty of true Democracy is not, I admit, at first wholly apparent to the Conservative mind; but once afford the requisite culture, and it unfolds new attractions every day. Believe me, we are acting in this matter solely, or almost solely, with a view to your ultimate benefit. We are not acting for ourselves – ourselves is a secondary consideration. But your true fife, as Goethe so beautifully says, probably with an intentional reference to bishops and noble lords, must begin with renunciation of yourself. Till you have once been abolished you can never know how nice it is.

"The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower,"' he added, quoting the words of the hymn-book, with the firm impression that they were from some Secularist publication.

'And is it necessary?' said the Bishop somewhat helplessly.

'Absolutely necessary,' replied the Democrat.

'I don't know about that,' said a voice behind them, and Queen Mab started, seeing the Professor. 'But depend upon it, the fittest will survive. I think, myself, that it is quite time you were gone; but some types die out very slowly, especially the lower types; and you may be said, as regards freedom of intellect and the march of Science, to be a low type – in fact, a relic of barbarism. There can be no doubt that, in the economy of Nature, bishops are an unnecessary organ, merely transmitted by inheritance in the national organism, and that in the course of time they will become atrophied and degenerate out of existence. When that time comes you must be content to pass into oblivion. Study Palæontology.' Now he pronounced it Paleyon-tology, not having had a classical education. 'Think of the pterodactyles, who passed away before the end of the Mesozoic ages, and never have appeared again. What, in the eternal nature of things, are bishops more than pterodactyles?'