The Narrative of John Smith, Page 3

  If a bibliophile House of Commons were to pass a ‘Bill for the better preservation of books’ we should have paragraphs of this sort under the headings of ‘Police Intelligence’ in the newspapers of the year 2000: ‘Marylebone Police Court.27 Brutal outrage upon an Elzevir Virgil. James Brown, a savage-looking elderly man, was charged with a cowardly attack upon a copy of Virgil’s poems issued by the Elzevir press. Police Constable Jones deposed that on Tuesday evening about seven o’clock some of the neighbours complained to him of the prisoner’s conduct. He saw him sitting at an open window with the book in front of him which he was dog-earing, thumb-marking and otherwise ill using. Prisoner expressed the greatest surprise upon being arrested. John Robinson, librarian of the casualty section of the British Museum, deposed to the book, having been brought in in a condition which could only have arisen from extreme violence. It was dog-eared in thirty-one places, page forty-six was suffering from a clean cut four inches long, and the whole volume was a mass of pencil – and finger – marks. Prisoner, on being asked for his defence, remarked that the book was his own and that he might do what he liked with it. Magistrate: “Nothing of the kind, sir! Your wife and children are your own but the law does not allow you to ill treat them! I shall decree a judicial separation between the Virgil and yourself, and condemn you to a week’s hard labour.” Prisoner was removed, protesting. The book is doing well and will soon be able to quit the museum.’

  What a wonderful, wonderful thing it is, though use has dulled our admiration of it! Here are all these dead men lurking inside my oaken case, ready to come out and talk to me whenever I may desire it. Do I wish philosophy? Here are Aristotle, Plato, Bacon, Kant and Descartes, all ready to confide to one their very inmost thoughts upon a subject which they have made their own. Am I dreamy and poetical? Out come Heine and Shelley and Goethe and Keats with all their wealth of harmony and imagination. Or am I in need of amusement on the long winter evenings? You have but to light your reading lamp and beckon to any one of the world’s great storytellers, and the dead man will come forth and prattle to you by the hour. That reading-lamp is the real Aladdin’s wonder for summoning the genii with. Indeed, the dead are such good company that one is apt to think too little of the living.

  [surviving portion of a passage cut out of the manuscript] crystals and hideous accompaniments, are infinitely softer and more pleasant to the eye. I can understand a lunatic asylum managed on home rule principles preferring the gas-flare, but how the general public has come to adopt it passes my understanding.28

  I can imagine that when an Antipodean or African scientist about the year of grace 7000 begins to make excavations and researches among the mounds which mark the former situation of London, nothing which he unearths will puzzle him more than the gas-pipes. By that time all memory of the vile compound will have left this planet – its place having been taken by the successor to the successor to the electric light. Drainpipes and water pipes will be within the savant’s range of comprehension, but in Heaven’s name what are these miles and miles of corroded narrow-gauged tubing!29 This is something like the report which will appear in the New Guinea Quarterly Review of the learned disquisition by the Doctor Dryasdust of the period.

  ‘At the third annual meeting of the New Guinea Archaeological Society a paper was read by Dr Dryasdust F.N.G.A.S. upon recent researches on the supposed site of London, together with some observations upon hollow cylinders in use among the Londoners. Several examples of these cylinders or tubings were on exhibition in the hall and were passed round for inspection among the audience. The learned lecturer prefaced his remarks by observing that on account of the enormous interval of time which separated them from the days when London was a flourishing city, it behooved them to weigh the evidence very carefully before coming to any definite conclusions as to the habits of the inhabitants. There appeared to be no doubt that the date of the Fall of London was somewhat later than that of the erection of the Egyptian pyramids. A large building had recently been unearthed near the dried-up bed of the River Thames, and there could be no question from existing records that this was the seat of the law-making council among the Ancient Britons, or Anglicans as they are sometimes termed. Near this was a square brick building called the Aquarium, and serving, as the name implies, as a place of seclusion for habitual drunkards.30 The lecturer proceeded to remark that there are strong reasons for believing that the city was at that time situated upon the seashore, since, as Professor Fungus has pointed out, one of the principal thoroughfares was known as the Strand. The bed of the Thames had been tunnelled under by a monarch named Brunel who is supposed by some historians to have succeeded Alfred the Great. The principal places of amusement were Kensington (from the German root “kennen – to know,” so called with reference to certain schools of fine art and cookery) – and Hyde Park, the name of which appeared to Dr Dryasdust to suggest the possibility of treasures being concealed in it. These open spaces must, however, have been far from safe, as the bones of tigers, lions, and other large Carnivora have been discovered in the adjoining Regent’s Park. The lecturer, having briefly referred to the mysterious structures known as “pillar-boxes”, which are scattered thickly over the city and which, he remarked, must be regarded either as religious in their origin, or else as marking the tombs of Anglican chiefs, passed on to the cylindrical piping. This had been described by Dr Fungus as having formed a complex and universal system of lightning conductors. He (the lecturer) could not assent to his theory. In a series of observations extending over several years he had discovered the important fact that these lines of tubing, if followed out, invariably led to large hollow metallic chambers which were connected with furnaces. No one who knew how addicted the Ancient Britons were to tobacco could doubt what this meant. Evidently, large quantities of this herb were burned in the central reservoir and the aromatic and narcotic vapour was carried through the tubes to the house of every citizen so that he might inhale it at will. Having illustrated his theory by a series of diagrams, the lecturer concluded by remarking that modern science had thrown such a light upon Old London that, from the moment of the citizen taking his tub or tab in the morning31 until after a draught of porter he painted himself blue before retiring to rest, every action of his life was known.’

  I daresay there is as much foundation for most of the above as for Piazzi Smyth’s Theory of the Great Pyramid,32 or our ideas of life among the Babylonians. It’s best not to be dogmatic on those matters. But I must really drop these [narrative cuts off]

  This room of mine which I have described with such prolixity is a second-floor front in a quiet London thoroughfare. The wave of fashion passed over this quarter a century or so ago and has left a deposit of eminent respectability behind it. You can see the long iron extinguishers upon the railings where the link-boys used to put out their torches, instead of banging them about on the pavement or stamping upon them as was the custom in less high-toned neighbourhoods. There are the high curb-stones too, so that Lady Teazle or Mrs Sneerwell could step out of coach or sedan chair without soiling their dainty satin shoes.33 Dear me, what a very unstable chemical compound man is, to be sure! Here are all the little stage accessories still standing while the players have all split up into hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and carbon, with traces of iron and silica and phosphorus and a few other ingredients. Look at this picture and on that! High-born bucks of the period, mincing ladies, swaggering bullies, scheming courtiers – see how they are planning and pushing and striving each to attain his own petty object! Now for a jump of seventy years – good heavens, what is this! Margarine and cholesterine, carbonates and sulphates, ptomaines and liquescence – yet that nauseous mass is human life reduced to its least common denominator.

  And yet I have a very high respect for the human body and I hold that it has been unduly snubbed and maligned by divines and theologians. ‘Our gross frames’ and ‘our miserable mortal clay’ are phrases which to my mind partake more of blasphemy than of piety. It is no
compliment to the Creator to depreciate His handiwork. Whatever theory or belief we may hold about the soul, there can be no question that the body is immortal. Matter may be transformed from one shape to another but it can never be destroyed. If a comet were to strike this dust-heap of ours and to knock it into a billion fragments which flew right and left into space, if its fiery breath were to lick up every living form as a moth is shrivelled up in a candle; still, at the end of a thousand million years, every tiniest particle of our bodies would still exist – in other forms and combinations it is true – but still the very identical molecules which we now bear about in our organisation. Not a nucleolus would be wanting. How far we may impress our own individuality upon the ultimate atoms of our composition is a question which will bear a very considerable amount of discussion.34 The facts of embryology may be taken to indicate that every tiny organic cell of which a man is composed contains in its microcosm a complete miniature of the individual of which it forms a part. The ovum itself from which we are all produced is less than one two-hundredth part of an inch in diameter and yet within those narrow limits lies potentiality not only for reproducing the features of two individuals, but even their smallest tricks of habit or thought.

  There is reason to believe that every microscopic cell, billions of which go to make up a human unit, has the latent power within it of developing under certain conditions an entire individual. Have you ever heard of dermoid cysts? They are among the most mysterious of pathological conditions. A man perceives a lump to be forming on his eyebrow, or his shoulder, or any other part of his person. It increases rapidly until it attains alarming proportions. He hurries to a surgeon who, under the impression that the swelling is an abscess, opens it and finds – teeth, hair, bones, perhaps even some attempt at the formation of an arm or a leg. These cases are by no means uncommon in the annals of surgery. Apparently nothing but the defective blood supply of the part has prevented the formation of a perfect human being. What are we to understand by that? So startling a phenomenon must have some deep meaning. I imagine that the true explanation is that every cell in our organisations has a power latent in it by which it may reproduce the whole individual, and that occasionally under some special circumstances – some obscure local nervous or vascular excitement – one of these microscopic units of structure actually does make a clumsy attempt in that direction.

  But, dear me, what very deep waters we have got ourselves into! All this comes from my endeavouring to show that it was within the bounds of possibility that the ultimate atoms of our composition – which are to all appearance immortal – may bear to the end of time some impress of our individuality. John’s dust may always retain something of John about it and be eternally distinguishable from that of Tom. The moral of which is that since our bodily constituents will have work of one sort or another to do for countless ages it is our duty to cultivate them and keep them in the highest state of efficiency. Train lads’ minds by all means, but don’t neglect their bodies. I hate the bulbous-headed bicep-less youth who knows everything and does nothing. He is not the highest expression of modern civilisation any more than an encyclopaedia is the crowning glory of literature.35 Give me a lad who has good warm blood in his veins, who can do the mile in 5.30 or throw a cricket ball a hundred yards, and I’ll forgive some little ignorance as to Greek roots or the formation of the second aorist in irregular verbs. His bright eye and brown cheek bespeak a power of acting which will probably be of more value to the community at large than his white-faced companion’s power of accumulating knowledge. It is only when you have the two powers largely developed in the same individual that you get a very superior type of man – a Newton, a Stanley or a Lesseps.

  Thought when reduced to practice is the mainspring of the world, but I fancy we are inclined to attach too much importance to it in the abstract. The fifty moral philosophers who have come to fifty different conclusions about the nature of the will may have all been very estimable gentlemen, but they have not advanced the weal of the human race in any appreciable degree, and that, after all, is the touchstone on which the value of a man’s life’s labour should be tested. Take the case of a navvy who has had a hand in the digging of the Suez Canal. That man has undoubtedly contributed during his lifetime to the carrying out of a project which has benefited the world, and we are all therefore so much the better for his existence. But how about Kant of Königsberg? If he and his theories had never been heard of, what would we be the worse? I fancy the navvy has rather the best of the comparison.

  Mrs Rundle my landlady has just been up to enquire about my foot. She is a buxom, timorous woman with her heart full of kindness and her head of devices for making both ends meet. I need hardly remark that she is a widow. During a long and varied experience of lodgings I had become so accustomed to having widows as landladies that the two ideas were synonymous in my mind.36 On a recent occasion, however, shortly after entering into new apartments, I perceived a little cross-eyed red-bearded man crawling about the staircase whom I promptly arrested as a suspicious character. To my astonishment he claimed to be the landlady’s husband, and his assertion was borne out by the matron herself and by the servant girl, so it seems there is no rule without an exception.

  Mrs Rundle has seen better times but is now in reduced circumstances. Lodging-house keepers are like the price of land, forever reduced and never to rise. Her husband used to be ‘in the City,’ which is an elastic term meaning anything from a commissionaire to a bank-director. She has three children, poor soul, and a hard fight to bring them up to her own satisfaction. At nine-thirty sharp I see them trotting off to school with a perfect polish upon their chubby faces from vigorous washing, and at four or thereabouts they return in such a mess that they leave a dinginess in the very air as they pass through it. If the learning they acquire is in any proportion to the dirt they must be three little Solomons.

  At present matters must, I should judge, be going well with the Rundle family. They themselves occupy the basement of the house, which is mysteriously divided into their apartments and those of two domestics. On the ground floor is a very eligible tenant, Herr Johann Lehmann, Professor of Music, who growls on his grand piano or screams on his violin from early in the morning till late at night. The Herr Professor is a permanent lodger and a good one – I daresay he represents three guineas a week, for I pay two upon the floor above. Then on the top floor of all there dwells an ancient half-pay officer37 who appears to be quiet and inoffensive in his ways, though I hear that he has been known once or twice about quarter-day to be a little merry and to sing old-fashioned songs in a high cracked voice at untimely hours. Putting the veteran’s contribution at a guinea we arrive at the respectable sum of six guineas a week as Mrs Rundle’s income. On the other hand, she contends that rent and taxes are enormous, servants’ wages ruinous, and meat at a shilling a pound – so perhaps there is no very great margin after all.

  A wandering life is apt to take the finer edge off a man’s soul. Contact with women and children develops the more amiable virtues. When a man has drifted about for thirty years over half the known world, and has never remained under one roof for six months at a time it rubs some of the varnish off him and tries his character as well as his constitution. Now I have been a rolling stone all my life and what is worse I am conscious that I have been a failure. As a boy at college, as a student at Edinburgh, as a literary man in London, as a soldier in America, as a traveller in many lands, as a diamond digger at the Cape, 38 I have always had the same sense of failure. ‘But look how successful you have been!’ cry my friends. It is true that I have amassed enough to satisfy my wants and to secure my old age, but is that success? Ah, if I had my time over again how very much better I could do it all!

  Literature is a very tempting oyster for a smart young man to open, but your knife is apt to break short off before you get into it.39 Oh you brilliant and coruscating ones, who sail through the firmament of letters with all the magazines fighting for the sparks which yo
u emit, how can you realise how dreary a profession it is to your less gifted brethren? If the secret history of literature could be written, the blighted hopes, the heart-sickening disappointments, the weary waiting, the wasted labour, it would be the saddest record ever penned. Have I not known the genius of the family, boy or girl, buckle to bravely produce a maiden romance, which should take the public by storm and relieve the weight of liabilities which were pressing the old folk down? Very slowly and very laboriously, with much knitting of brows and burning of oil, chapter is added to chapter. Soon the book takes substance and form. Extracts are read from it to the assembled family and are hailed with laughter and tears by every member, from the six-year-old to the doddering grandfather who claps his thin hands together with delight. Never was such a novel written – never! Who ever heard of so villainous a villain, or of so heroic a hero? Flushed and proud the coming author pushes on with redoubled vigour until some fine day he writes a great finis at the end of the third volume and springs from his seat in triumph, while his good mother conceals the pen in her private drawer of valuables, as being an article which will one day be regarded as a relic. Now who shall have the honour of publishing it? Oh, the best of course. Brown, Jones and Robinson are a high-toned firm. They are the very men to bring out such a work. Off it goes to London, duly packed, addressed, and registered, with every conceivable precaution against its miscarrying.40 A month passes pleasantly enough while the family discuss what is to be done with the proceeds of the book. There is Freddy’s education to be thought of,41 and the getting of the Genius himself into a profession unless he determines to confine himself to literature. It is all arranged and rearranged. The second month comes and there is a hurry down in the morning and a pricking of ears for the postman’s step – but still no letter from London. Another month passes. ‘Perhaps we had better write and enquire,’ the father suggests timidly. ‘No, no,’ says the Genius, ‘it always takes some time for them to arrange the getting out of a work of importance.’ Two more months pass and at last the letter is written. What is this great roll upon the breakfast table with the London postmark? ‘The book, father, the book!’ cry brothers and sisters. The Genius unties it with trembling fingers, tears the brown paper open and reveals his manuscript all tattered and torn. Here is a little pencil note. ‘B.J. and R. present their compliments to Mr – and regret that they have detained his M.S. so long. The delay arose from its having been mislaid. B.J. and R. regret to state that after careful perusal of the M.S. they are of opinion that it is entirely unfit for publication.’ ‘Never mind – we’ll get it in somewhere,’ cries the Genius in a crackling voice, feeling in a moment as if his heart had turned to a lump of lead. ‘Of course we will,’ says the father with a forced laugh. ‘Then I’m not to go to school,’ cries the little six-year-old. ‘It will make a hit yet,’ says the mother, gathering up the worthless roll of paper from the table. Ah, dear, it seems so strange and hard to them, and yet no post ever goes out of London which does not contain such another bundle and cause such another pang.