brutal hand, and his cry of 'Qu-u-u-u-aaa!' (Bosjesman for
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something desperately insulting I have no doubt) - conscious of an
affectionate yearning towards that noble savage, or is it
idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest, abominate, and abjure him? I
have no reserve on this subject, and will frankly state that,
setting aside that stage of the entertainment when he counterfeited
the death of some creature he had shot, by laying his head on his
hand and shaking his left leg - at which time I think it would have
been justifiable homicide to slay him - I have never seen that
group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, but
I have sincerely desired that something might happen to the
charcoal smouldering therein, which would cause the immediate
suffocation of the whole of the noble strangers.
There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs exhibiting at the St.
George's Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, London. These noble savages
are represented in a most agreeable manner; they are seen in an
elegant theatre, fitted with appropriate scenery of great beauty,
and they are described in a very sensible and unpretending lecture,
delivered with a modesty which is quite a pattern to all similar
exponents. Though extremely ugly, they are much better shaped than
such of their predecessors as I have referred to; and they are
rather picturesque to the eye, though far from odoriferous to the
nose. What a visitor left to his own interpretings and imaginings
might suppose these noblemen to be about, when they give vent to
that pantomimic expression which is quite settled to be the natural
gift of the noble savage, I cannot possibly conceive; for it is so
much too luminous for my personal civilisation that it conveys no
idea to my mind beyond a general stamping, ramping, and raving,
remarkable (as everything in savage life is) for its dire
uniformity. But let us - with the interpreter's assistance, of
which I for one stand so much in need - see what the noble savage
does in Zulu Kaffirland.
The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he submits
his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and whose whole
life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but who, after killing
incessantly, is in his turn killed by his relations and friends,
the moment a grey hair appears on his head. All the noble savage's
wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything
else) are wars of extermination - which is the best thing I know of
him, and the most comfortable to my mind when I look at him. He
has no moral feelings of any kind, sort, or description; and his
'mission' may be summed up as simply diabolical.
The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifies his life are, of
course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a wife he appears before
the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his father-inlaw,
attended by a party of male friends of a very strong flavour,
who screech and whistle and stamp an offer of so many cows for the
young lady's hand. The chosen father-in-law - also supported by a
high-flavoured party of male friends - screeches, whistles, and
yells (being seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that there never
was such a daughter in the market as his daughter, and that he must
have six more cows. The son-in-law and his select circle of
backers screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that they will
give three more cows. The father-in-law (an old deluder, overpaid
at the beginning) accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. The
whole party, the young lady included, then falling into epileptic
convulsions, and screeching, whistling, stamping, and yelling
together - and nobody taking any notice of the young lady (whose
charms are not to be thought of without a shudder) - the noble
savage is considered married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps
at him by way of congratulation.
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When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and mentions
he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage,
called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately sent for to
Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male
inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned
doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and administers a
dance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which
remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls:- 'I am the
original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow yow yow! No
connexion with any other establishment. Till till till! All other
Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo Boroo! but I perceive
here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh Hoosh Hoosh! in whose
blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will
wash these bear's claws of mine. O yow yow yow!' All this time
the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for
some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any
small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a
spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is
instantly killed. In the absence of such an individual, the usual
practice is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in
company. But the nookering is invariably followed on the spot by
the butchering.
Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so strongly
interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by rum and
smallpox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike this,
though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious details.
The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian corn, and
the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief has sometimes
the condescension to come forth, and lighten the labour by looking
at it. On these occasions, he seats himself in his own savage
chair, and is attended by his shield-bearer: who holds over his
head a shield of cowhide - in shape like an immense mussel shell -
fearfully and wonderfully, after the manner of a theatrical
supernumerary. But lest the great man should forget his greatness
in the contemplation of the humble works of agriculture, there
suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for the purpose, called a
Praiser. This literary gentleman wears a leopard's head over his
own, and a dress of tigers' tails; he has the appearance of having
come express on his hind legs from the Zoological Gardens; and he
incontinently strikes up the chief's praises, plunging and tearing
all the while. There is a frantic wickedness in this brute's
manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out, 'O what a delightful
chief he is! O what a delicious quantity of blood he sheds! O how
majestically he laps it up! O how charmingly cruel he is! O how
he tears the flesh of his enemies and crunches the bones! O how
like the tiger and the leopard and the wolf and the bear he is! O,
row row row row, how fond I am of him!' which might tempt the
Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the Swartz-Kop
location and exterminate the whole kraal.
When war is afoot among the noble savages - which is always - the
chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion of his
brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be
exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an
Umsebeuza, or war song, - which is exactly like all the other
songs, - the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends,
arranged in single file. No particular order is observed during
the delivery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself
excited by the subject, instead of crying 'Hear, hear!' as is the
custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or
crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or
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breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the
body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus
excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the
orator, that illustrious person is rather in the position of an
orator in an Irish House of Commons. But, several of these scenes
of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an Irish
election, and I think would be extremely well received and
understood at Cork.
In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the utmost
possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some
civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of
the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilised man
can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of
ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon
have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at once
on our own separate accounts: making society hideous. It is my
opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble savage, we
could not get rid of it too soon. But the fact is clearly
otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry question, substituting coin for
cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left. The
endurance of despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage
always. The improving world has quite got the better of that too.
In like manner, Paris is a civilised city, and the Theatre Francais
a highly civilised theatre; and we shall never hear, and never have
heard in these later days (of course) of the Praiser THERE. No,
no, civilised poets have better work to do. As to Nookering
Umtargarties, there are no pretended Umtargarties in Europe, and no
European powers to Nooker them; that would be mere spydom,
subordination, small malice, superstition, and false pretence. And
as to private Umtargarties, are we not in the year eighteen hundred
and fifty-three, with spirits rapping at our doors?
To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have anything
to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues
are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense.
We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable
object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC
NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher
power than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the world will
be all the better when his place knows him no more.
A FLIGHT
WHEN Don Diego de - I forget his name - the inventor of the last
new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more
for gentlemen - when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax
and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen's
dominions, and shall have opened a commodious Warehouse in an airy
situation; and when all persons of any gentility will keep at least
a pair of wings, and be seen skimming about in every direction; I
shall take a flight to Paris (as I soar round the world) in a cheap
and independent manner. At present, my reliance is on the South-
Eastern Railway Company, in whose Express Train here I sit, at
eight of the clock on a very hot morning, under the very hot roof
of the Terminus at London Bridge, in danger of being 'forced' like
a cucumber or a melon, or a pine-apple. And talking of pineapples,
I suppose there never were so many pine-apples in a Train
as there appear to be in this Train.
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Whew! The hot-house air is faint with pine-apples. Every French
citizen or citizeness is carrying pine-apples home. The compact
little Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French actress, to
whom I yielded up my heart under the auspices of that brave child,
'MEAT-CHELL,' at the St. James's Theatre the night before last) has
a pine-apple in her lap. Compact Enchantress's friend, confidante,
mother, mystery, Heaven knows what, has two pine-apples in her lap,
and a bundle of them under the seat. Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in
Algerine wrapper, with peaked hood behind, who might be Abd-el-
Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems to be dressed entirely in
dirt and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered basket. Tall,
grave, melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and hair
close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and compressive
waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his
feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as
to his linen: dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed - got up, one
thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into
a highly genteel Parisian - has the green end of a pine-apple
sticking out of his neat valise.
Whew! If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing-frame, I
wonder what would become of me - whether I should be forced into a
giant, or should sprout or blow into some other phenomenon!
Compact Enchantress is not ruffled by the heat - she is always
composed, always compact. O look at her little ribbons, frills,
and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at her hair, at her
bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her! How is it
accomplished? What does she do to be so neat? How is it that
every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot choose but be a
part of her? And even Mystery, look at HER! A model. Mystery is
not young, not pretty, though still of an average candle-light
passability; but she does such miracles in her own behalf, that,
one of these days, when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old
woman in her bed, distantly like her. She was an actress once, I
shouldn't wonder, and had a Mystery attendant on herself. Perhaps,
Compact Enchantress will live to be a Mystery, and to wait with a
shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite to Mademoiselle in
railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently, as Mystery
does now. That's hard to believe!
Two Englis
hmen, and now our carriage is full. First Englishman, in
the monied interest - flushed, highly respectable - Stock Exchange,
perhaps - City, certainly. Faculties of second Englishman entirely
absorbed in hurry. Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of
window concerning his luggage, deaf. Suffocates himself under
pillows of great-coats, for no reason, and in a demented manner.
Will receive no assurance from any porter whatsoever. Is stout and
hot, and wipes his head, and makes himself hotter by breathing so
hard. Is totally incredulous respecting assurance of Collected
Guard, that 'there's no hurry.' No hurry! And a flight to Paris
in eleven hours!
It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry.
Until Don Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with the
South-Eastern Company. I can fly with the South-Eastern, more
lazily, at all events, than in the upper air. I have but to sit
here thinking as idly as I please, and be whisked away. I am not
accountable to anybody for the idleness of my thoughts in such an
idle summer flight; my flight is provided for by the South-Eastern
and is no business of mine.
The bell! With all my heart. It does not require me to do so much
as even to flap my wings. Something snorts for me, something
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shrieks for me, something proclaims to everything else that it had
better keep out of my way, - and away I go.
Ah! The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though it
does blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of
this vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are - no, I mean there
we were, for it has darted far into the rear - in Bermondsey where
the tanners live. Flash! The distant shipping in the Thames is
gone. Whirr! The little streets of new brick and red tile, with
here and there a flagstaff growing like a tall weed out of the
scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open sewer and ditch for
the promotion of the public health, have been fired off in a
volley. Whizz! Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds.
Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There we were at Croydon.
Bur-r-r-r! The tunnel.
I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I begin to
feel as if I were going at an Express pace the other way. I am