PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
ANOTHER PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
PART I.
BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
BOOK THE SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BOOK THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
PART II.
BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
BOOK THE SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
BOOK THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
BOOK THE FOURTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
BOOK THE FIFTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
BOOK THE SIXTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
BOOK THE SEVENTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
BOOK THE EIGHTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
BOOK THE NINTH.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
URSUS.I.Ursus
and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their
dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf:
probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found
Ursus fit for
himself, he had found
Homo fit for the
beast. Man and wolf turned their partnership to account at fairs, at
village fêtes, at the corners of streets where passers-by throng,
and out of the need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to
idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and
courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing
to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all
the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which
collects so many folks on the road of royal processions.Ursus
and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High
Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from
country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town.
One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small
van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and
guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many
ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his
neck and pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had
thus grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in
the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads
intersect, at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in
market-places, in public walks, on the borders of parks, before the
entrances of churches. When the cart drew up on a fair green, when
the gossips ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round
the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his
mouth, politely made a collection among the audience. They gained
their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf
had been trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to
divers wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all
things, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would say to
him.Never
did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At least, to bite was
the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope, and to italicize his
misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. To live, also; for the
stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope,
whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a
doctor. To be a doctor is little: Ursus was a ventriloquist. You
heard him speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited, so as
to deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices
so exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All
alone he simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right
to the title of Engastrimythos, which he took. He reproduced all
sorts of cries of birds, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark,
otherwise called the gray cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers
like himself: so that at times when the fancy struck him, he made you
aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men,
or of a meadow loud with the voices of beasts—at one time stormy as
a multitude, at another fresh and serene as the dawn. Such gifts,
although rare, exist. In the last century a man called Touzel, who
imitated the mingled utterances of men and animals, and who
counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person of
Buffon—to serve as a menagerie.Ursus
was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the singular
expositions which we term fables. He had the appearance of believing
in them, and this impudence was a part of his humour. He read
people's hands, opened books at random and drew conclusions, told
fortunes, taught that it is perilous to meet a black mare, still more
perilous, as you start for a journey, to hear yourself accosted by
one who knows not whither you are going; and he called himself a
dealer in superstitions. He used to say: "There is one
difference between me and the Archbishop of Canterbury: I avow what I
am." Hence it was that the archbishop, justly indignant, had him
one day before him; but Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting
a sermon he had composed upon Christmas Day, which the delighted
archbishop learnt by heart, and delivered from the pulpit as his own.
In consideration thereof the archbishop pardoned Ursus.As
a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other. He made use of
aromatics; he was versed in simples; he made the most of the immense
power which lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the hazel,
the catkin, the white alder, the white bryony, the mealy-tree, the
traveller's joy, the buckthorn. He treated phthisis with the sundew;
at opportune moments he would use the leaves of the spurge, which
plucked at the bottom are a purgative and plucked at the top, an
emetic. He cured sore throat by means of the vegetable excrescence
called Jew's ear. He knew the rush which cures the ox and the mint
which cures the horse. He was well acquainted with the beauties and
virtues of the herb mandragora, which, as every one knows, is of both
sexes. He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool,
of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a
retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. It
was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam;
they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set
him free on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was
probably not true; we have all to submit to some such legend about
us.The
fact is, Ursus was a bit of a savant, a man of taste, and an old
Latin poet. He was learned in two forms; he Hippocratized and he
Pindarized. He could have vied in bombast with Rapin and Vida. He
could have composed Jesuit tragedies in a style not less triumphant
than that of Father Bouhours. It followed from his familiarity with
the venerable rhythms and metres of the ancients, that he had
peculiar figures of speech, and a whole family of classical
metaphors. He would say of a mother followed by her two daughters,
There is a dactyl;
of a father preceded by his two sons,
There is an anapæst;
and of a little child walking between its grandmother and
grandfather, There
is an amphimacer.
So much knowledge could only end in starvation. The school of Salerno
says, "Eat little and often." Ursus ate little and seldom,
thus obeying one half the precept and disobeying the other; but this
was the fault of the public, who did not always flock to him, and who
did not often buy.Ursus
was wont to say: "The expectoration of a sentence is a relief.
The wolf is comforted by its howl, the sheep by its wool, the forest
by its finch, woman by her love, and the philosopher by his
epiphonema." Ursus at a pinch composed comedies, which, in
recital, he all but acted; this helped to sell the drugs. Among other
works, he had composed an heroic pastoral in honour of Sir Hugh
Middleton, who in 1608 brought a river to London. The river was lying
peacefully in Hertfordshire, twenty miles from London: the knight
came and took possession of it. He brought a brigade of six hundred
men, armed with shovels and pickaxes; set to breaking up the ground,
scooping it out in one place, raising it in another—now thirty feet
high, now twenty feet deep; made wooden aqueducts high in air; and at
different points constructed eight hundred bridges of stone, bricks,
and timber. One fine morning the river entered London, which was
short of water. Ursus transformed all these vulgar details into a
fine Eclogue between the Thames and the New River, in which the
former invited the latter to come to him, and offered her his bed,
saying, "I am too old to please women, but I am rich enough to
pay them"—an ingenious and gallant conceit to indicate how Sir
Hugh Middleton had completed the work at his own expense.Ursus
was great in soliloquy. Of a disposition at once unsociable and
talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to converse with some
one, he got out of the difficulty by talking to himself. Any one who
has lived a solitary life knows how deeply seated monologue is in
one's nature. Speech imprisoned frets to find a vent. To harangue
space is an outlet. To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to
have a dialogue with the divinity which is within. It was, as is well
known, a custom of Socrates; he declaimed to himself. Luther did the
same. Ursus took after those great men. He had the hermaphrodite
faculty of being his own audience. He questioned himself, answered
himself, praised himself, blamed himself. You heard him in the street
soliloquizing in his van. The passers-by, who have their own way of
appreciating clever people, used to say: He is an idiot. As we have
just observed, he abused himself at times; but there were times also
when he rendered himself justice. One day, in one of these
allocutions addressed to himself, he was heard to cry out, "I
have studied vegetation in all its mysteries—in the stalk, in the
bud, in the sepal, in the stamen, in the carpel, in the ovule, in the
spore, in the theca, and in the apothecium. I have thoroughly sifted
chromatics, osmosy, and chymosy—that is to say, the formation of
colours, of smell, and of taste." There was something fatuous,
doubtless, in this certificate which Ursus gave to Ursus; but let
those who have not thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy, and chymosy
cast the first stone at him.Fortunately
Ursus had never gone into the Low Countries; there they would
certainly have weighed him, to ascertain whether he was of the normal
weight, above or below which a man is a sorcerer. In Holland this
weight was sagely fixed by law. Nothing was simpler or more
ingenious. It was a clear test. They put you in a scale, and the
evidence was conclusive if you broke the equilibrium. Too heavy, you
were hanged; too light, you were burned. To this day the scales in
which sorcerers were weighed may be seen at Oudewater, but they are
now used for weighing cheeses; how religion has degenerated! Ursus
would certainly have had a crow to pluck with those scales. In his
travels he kept away from Holland, and he did well. Indeed, we
believe that he used never to leave the United Kingdom.However
this may have been, he was very poor and morose, and having made the
acquaintance of Homo in a wood, a taste for a wandering life had come
over him. He had taken the wolf into partnership, and with him had
gone forth on the highways, living in the open air the great life of
chance. He had a great deal of industry and of reserve, and great
skill in everything connected with healing operations, restoring the
sick to health, and in working wonders peculiar to himself. He was
considered a clever mountebank and a good doctor. As may be imagined,
he passed for a wizard as well—not much indeed; only a little, for
it was unwholesome in those days to be considered a friend of the
devil. To tell the truth, Ursus, by his passion for pharmacy and his
love of plants, laid himself open to suspicion, seeing that he often
went to gather herbs in rough thickets where grew Lucifer's salads,
and where, as has been proved by the Counsellor De l'Ancre, there is
a risk of meeting in the evening mist a man who comes out of the
earth, "blind of the right eye, barefooted, without a cloak, and
a sword by his side." But for the matter of that, Ursus,
although eccentric in manner and disposition, was too good a fellow
to invoke or disperse hail, to make faces appear, to kill a man with
the torment of excessive dancing, to suggest dreams fair or foul and
full of terror, and to cause the birth of cocks with four wings. He
had no such mischievous tricks. He was incapable of certain
abominations, such as, for instance, speaking German, Hebrew, or
Greek, without having learned them, which is a sign of unpardonable
wickedness, or of a natural infirmity proceeding from a morbid
humour. If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew it. He would
never have allowed himself to speak Syriac, which he did not know.
Besides, it is asserted that Syriac is the language spoken in the
midnight meetings at which uncanny people worship the devil. In
medicine he justly preferred Galen to Cardan; Cardan, although a
learned man, being but an earthworm to Galen.To
sum up, Ursus was not one of those persons who live in fear of the
police. His van was long enough and wide enough to allow of his lying
down in it on a box containing his not very sumptuous apparel. He
owned a lantern, several wigs, and some utensils suspended from
nails, among which were musical instruments. He possessed, besides, a
bearskin with which he covered himself on his days of grand
performance. He called this putting on full dress. He used to say, "I
have two skins; this is the real one," pointing to the bearskin.The
little house on wheels belonged to himself and to the wolf. Besides
his house, his retort, and his wolf, he had a flute and a violoncello
on which he played prettily. He concocted his own elixirs. His wits
yielded him enough to sup on sometimes. In the top of his van was a
hole, through which passed the pipe of a cast-iron stove; so close to
his box as to scorch the wood of it. The stove had two compartments;
in one of them Ursus cooked his chemicals, and in the other his
potatoes. At night the wolf slept under the van, amicably secured by
a chain. Homo's hair was black, that of Ursus, gray; Ursus was fifty,
unless, indeed, he was sixty. He accepted his destiny, to such an
extent that, as we have just seen, he ate potatoes, the trash on
which at that time they fed pigs and convicts. He ate them indignant,
but resigned. He was not tall—he was long. He was bent and
melancholy. The bowed frame of an old man is the settlement in the
architecture of life. Nature had formed him for sadness. He found it
difficult to smile, and he had never been able to weep, so that he
was deprived of the consolation of tears as well as of the palliative
of joy. An old man is a thinking ruin; and such a ruin was Ursus. He
had the loquacity of a charlatan, the leanness of a prophet, the
irascibility of a charged mine: such was Ursus. In his youth he had
been a philosopher in the house of a lord.This
was 180 years ago, when men were more like wolves than they are now.Not
so very much though.II.Homo
was no ordinary wolf. From his appetite for medlars and potatoes he
might have been taken for a prairie wolf; from his dark hide, for a
lycaon; and from his howl prolonged into a bark, for a dog of Chili.
But no one has as yet observed the eyeball of a dog of Chili
sufficiently to enable us to determine whether he be not a fox, and
Homo was a real wolf. He was five feet long, which is a fine length
for a wolf, even in Lithuania; he was very strong; he looked at you
askance, which was not his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he
occasionally licked Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short bristles on
his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome leanness of a forest
life. Before he knew Ursus and had a carriage to draw, he thought
nothing of doing his fifty miles a night. Ursus meeting him in a
thicket near a stream of running water, had conceived a high opinion
of him from seeing the skill and sagacity with which he fished out
crayfish, and welcomed him as an honest and genuine Koupara wolf of
the kind called crab-eater.As
a beast of burden, Ursus preferred Homo to a donkey. He would have
felt repugnance to having his hut drawn by an ass; he thought too
highly of the ass for that. Moreover he had observed that the ass, a
four-legged thinker little understood by men, has a habit of cocking
his ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is
a third person between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a
restraint. As a friend, Ursus preferred Homo to a dog, considering
that the love of a wolf is more rare.Hence
it was that Homo sufficed for Ursus. Homo was for Ursus more than a
companion, he was an analogue. Ursus used to pat the wolf's empty
ribs, saying: "I have found the second volume of myself!"
Again he said, "When I am dead, any one wishing to know me need
only study Homo. I shall leave a true copy behind me."The
English law, not very lenient to beasts of the forest, might have
picked a quarrel with the wolf, and have put him to trouble for his
assurance in going freely about the towns: but Homo took advantage of
the immunity granted by a statute of Edward IV. to servants: "Every
servant in attendance on his master is free to come and go."
Besides, a certain relaxation of the law had resulted with regard to
wolves, in consequence of its being the fashion of the ladies of the
Court, under the later Stuarts, to have, instead of dogs, little
wolves, called adives, about the size of cats, which were brought
from Asia at great cost.Ursus
had communicated to Homo a portion of his talents: such as to stand
upright, to restrain his rage into sulkiness, to growl instead of
howling, etc.; and on his part, the wolf had taught the man what
he knew—to do
without a roof, without bread and fire, to prefer hunger in the woods
to slavery in a palace.The
van, hut, and vehicle in one, which traversed so many different
roads, without, however, leaving Great Britain, had four wheels, with
shafts for the wolf and a splinter-bar for the man. The splinter-bar
came into use when the roads were bad. The van was strong, although
it was built of light boards like a dove-cot. In front there was a
glass door with a little balcony used for orations, which had
something of the character of the platform tempered by an air of the
pulpit. At the back there was a door with a practicable panel. By
lowering the three steps which turned on a hinge below the door,
access was gained to the hut, which at night was securely fastened
with bolt and lock. Rain and snow had fallen plentifully on it; it
had been painted, but of what colour it was difficult to say, change
of season being to vans what changes of reign are to courtiers. In
front, outside, was a board, a kind of frontispiece, on which the
following inscription might once have been deciphered; it was in
black letters on a white ground, but by degrees the characters had
become confused and blurred:—"By
friction gold loses every year a fourteen hundredth part of its bulk.
This is what is called the Wear. Hence it follows that on fourteen
hundred millions of gold in circulation throughout the world, one
million is lost annually. This million dissolves into dust, flies
away, floats about, is reduced to atoms, charges, drugs, weighs down
consciences, amalgamates with the souls of the rich whom it renders
proud, and with those of the poor whom it renders brutish."The
inscription, rubbed and blotted by the rain and by the kindness of
nature, was fortunately illegible, for it is possible that its
philosophy concerning the inhalation of gold, at the same time both
enigmatical and lucid, might not have been to the taste of the
sheriffs, the provost-marshals, and other big-wigs of the law.
English legislation did not trifle in those days. It did not take
much to make a man a felon. The magistrates were ferocious by
tradition, and cruelty was a matter of routine. The judges of assize
increased and multiplied. Jeffreys had become a breed.III.In
the interior of the van there were two other inscriptions. Above the
box, on a whitewashed plank, a hand had written in ink as follows:—"THE
ONLY THINGS NECESSARY TO KNOW."The
Baron, peer of England, wears a cap with six pearls. The coronet
begins with the rank of Viscount. The Viscount wears a coronet of
which the pearls are without number. The Earl a coronet with the
pearls upon points, mingled with strawberry leaves placed low
between. The Marquis, one with pearls and leaves on the same level.
The Duke, one with strawberry leaves alone—no pearls. The Royal
Duke, a circlet of crosses and fleurs de lys. The Prince of Wales,
crown like that of the King, but unclosed."The
Duke is a most high and most puissant prince, the Marquis and Earl
most noble and puissant lord, the Viscount noble and puissant lord,
the Baron a trusty lord. The Duke is his Grace; the other Peers their
Lordships. Most
honourable is
higher than right
honourable."Lords
who are peers are lords in their own right. Lords who are not peers
are lords by courtesy:—there are no real lords, excepting such as
are peers."The
House of Lords is a chamber and a court,
Concilium et Curia,
legislature and court of justice. The Commons, who are the people,
when ordered to the bar of the Lords, humbly present themselves
bareheaded before the peers, who remain covered. The Commons send up
their bills by forty members, who present the bill with three low
bows. The Lords send their bills to the Commons by a mere clerk. In
case of disagreement, the two Houses confer in the Painted Chamber,
the Peers seated and covered, the Commons standing and bareheaded."Peers
go to parliament in their coaches in file; the Commons do not. Some
peers go to Westminster in open four-wheeled chariots. The use of
these and of coaches emblazoned with coats of arms and coronets is
allowed only to peers, and forms a portion of their dignity."Barons
have the same rank as bishops. To be a baron peer of England, it is
necessary to be in possession of a tenure from the king
per Baroniam integram,
by full barony. The full barony consists of thirteen knights' fees
and one third part, each knight's fee being of the value of £20
sterling, which makes in all 400 marks. The head of a barony (Caput
baroniæ) is a
castle disposed by inheritance, as England herself, that is to say,
descending to daughters if there be no sons, and in that case going
to the eldest daughter,
cæteris filiabus aliundè satisfactis.[1]"Barons
have the degree of lord: in Saxon,
laford; dominus in
high Latin; Lordus
in low Latin. The eldest and younger sons of viscounts and barons are
the first esquires in the kingdom. The eldest sons of peers take
precedence of knights of the garter. The younger sons do not. The
eldest son of a viscount comes after all barons, and precedes all
baronets. Every daughter of a peer is a
Lady. Other English
girls are plain
Mistress."All
judges rank below peers. The serjeant wears a lambskin tippet; the
judge one of patchwork,
de minuto vario,
made up of a variety of little white furs, always excepting ermine.
Ermine is reserved for peers and the king."A
lord never takes an oath, either to the crown or the law. His word
suffices; he says, Upon my honour."By
a law of Edward the Sixth, peers have the privilege of committing
manslaughter. A peer who kills a man without premeditation is not
prosecuted."The
persons of peers are inviolable."A
peer cannot be held in durance, save in the Tower of London."A
writ of supplicavit cannot be granted against a peer."A
peer sent for by the king has the right to kill one or two deer in
the royal park."A
peer holds in his castle a baron's court of justice."It
is unworthy of a peer to walk the street in a cloak, followed by two
footmen. He should only show himself attended by a great train of
gentlemen of his household."A
peer can be amerced only by his peers, and never to any greater
amount than five pounds, excepting in the case of a duke, who can be
amerced ten."A
peer may retain six aliens born, any other Englishman but four."A
peer can have wine custom-free; an earl eight tuns."A
peer is alone exempt from presenting himself before the sheriff of
the circuit."A
peer cannot be assessed towards the militia."When
it pleases a peer he raises a regiment and gives it to the king; thus
have done their graces the Dukes of Athol, Hamilton, and
Northumberland."A
peer can hold only of a peer."In
a civil cause he can demand the adjournment of the case, if there be
not at least one knight on the jury."A
peer nominates his own chaplains. A baron appoints three chaplains; a
viscount four; an earl and a marquis five; a duke six."A
peer cannot be put to the rack, even for high treason. A peer cannot
be branded on the hand. A peer is a clerk, though he knows not how to
read. In law he knows."A
duke has a right to a canopy, or cloth of state, in all places where
the king is not present; a viscount may have one in his house; a
baron has a cover of assay, which may be held under his cup while he
drinks. A baroness has the right to have her train borne by a man in
the presence of a viscountess."Eighty-six
tables, with five hundred dishes, are served every day in the royal
palace at each meal."If
a plebeian strike a lord, his hand is cut off."A
lord is very nearly a king."The
king is very nearly a god."The
earth is a lordship."The
English address God as my lord!"Opposite
this writing was written a second one, in the same fashion, which ran
thus:—"SATISFACTION
WHICH MUST SUFFICE THOSE WHO HAVE NOTHING."Henry
Auverquerque, Earl of Grantham, who sits in the House of Lords
between the Earl of Jersey and the Earl of Greenwich, has a hundred
thousand a year. To his lordship belongs the palace of Grantham
Terrace, built all of marble and famous for what is called the
labyrinth of passages—a curiosity which contains the scarlet
corridor in marble of Sarancolin, the brown corridor in lumachel of
Astracan, the white corridor in marble of Lani, the black corridor in
marble of Alabanda, the gray corridor in marble of Staremma, the
yellow corridor in marble of Hesse, the green corridor in marble of
the Tyrol, the red corridor, half cherry-spotted marble of Bohemia,
half lumachel of Cordova, the blue corridor in turquin of Genoa, the
violet in granite of Catalonia, the mourning-hued corridor veined
black and white in slate of Murviedro, the pink corridor in cipolin
of the Alps, the pearl corridor in lumachel of Nonetta, and the
corridor of all colours, called the courtiers' corridor, in motley."Richard
Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, owns Lowther in Westmorland, which has a
magnificent approach, and a flight of entrance steps which seem to
invite the ingress of kings."Richard,
Earl of Scarborough, Viscount and Baron Lumley of Lumley Castle,
Viscount Lumley of Waterford in Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant and
Vice-Admiral of the county of Northumberland and of Durham, both city
and county, owns the double castleward of old and new Sandbeck, where
you admire a superb railing, in the form of a semicircle, surrounding
the basin of a matchless fountain. He has, besides, his castle of
Lumley."Robert
Darcy, Earl of Holderness, has his domain of Holderness, with
baronial towers, and large gardens laid out in French fashion, where
he drives in his coach-and-six, preceded by two outriders, as becomes
a peer of England."Charles
Beauclerc, Duke of St. Albans, Earl of Burford, Baron Hedington,
Grand Falconer of England, has an abode at Windsor, regal even by the
side of the king's."Charles
Bodville Robartes, Baron Robartes of Truro, Viscount Bodmin and Earl
of Radnor, owns Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, which is as three palaces
in one, having three façades, one bowed and two triangular. The
approach is by an avenue of trees four deep."The
most noble and most puissant Lord Philip, Baron Herbert of Cardiff,
Earl of Montgomery and of Pembroke, Ross of Kendall, Parr, Fitzhugh,
Marmion, St. Quentin, and Herbert of Shurland, Warden of the
Stannaries in the counties of Cornwall and Devon, hereditary visitor
of Jesus College, possesses the wonderful gardens at Wilton, where
there are two sheaf-like fountains, finer than those of his most
Christian Majesty King Louis XIV. at Versailles."Charles
Somerset, Duke of Somerset, owns Somerset House on the Thames, which
is equal to the Villa Pamphili at Rome. On the chimney-piece are seen
two porcelain vases of the dynasty of the Yuens, which are worth half
a million in French money."In
Yorkshire, Arthur, Lord Ingram, Viscount Irwin, has Temple Newsain,
which is entered under a triumphal arch and which has large wide
roofs resembling Moorish terraces."Robert,
Lord Ferrers of Chartly, Bourchier, and Lonvaine, has Staunton Harold
in Leicestershire, of which the park is geometrically planned in the
shape of a temple with a façade, and in front of the piece of water
is the great church with the square belfry, which belongs to his
lordship."In
the county of Northampton, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland,
member of his Majesty's Privy Council, possesses Althorp, at the
entrance of which is a railing with four columns surmounted by groups
in marble."Laurence
Hyde, Earl of Rochester, has, in Surrey, New Park, rendered
magnificent by its sculptured pinnacles, its circular lawn belted by
trees, and its woodland, at the extremity of which is a little
mountain, artistically rounded, and surmounted by a large oak, which
can be seen from afar."Philip
Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, possesses Bretby Hall in Derbyshire,
with a splendid clock tower, falconries, warrens, and very fine
sheets of water, long, square, and oval, one of which is shaped like
a mirror, and has two jets, which throw the water to a great height."Charles
Cornwallis, Baron Cornwallis of Eye, owns Broome Hall, a palace of
the fourteenth century."The
most noble Algernon Capel, Viscount Maiden, Earl of Essex, has
Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, a seat which has the shape of a capital
H, and which rejoices sportsmen with its abundance of game."Charles,
Lord Ossulston, owns Darnley in Middlesex, approached by Italian
gardens."James
Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, has, seven leagues from London, Hatfield
House, with its four lordly pavilions, its belfry in the centre, and
its grand courtyard of black and white slabs, like that of St.
Germain. This palace, which has a frontage 272 feet in length, was
built in the reign of James I. by the Lord High Treasurer of England,
the great-grandfather of the present earl. To be seen there is the
bed of one of the Countesses of Salisbury: it is of inestimable value
and made entirely of Brazilian wood, which is a panacea against the
bites of serpents, and which is called
milhombres—that
is to say, a thousand men. On this bed is inscribed,
Honi soit qui mal y pense."Edward
Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, is owner of Warwick Castle, where
whole oaks are burnt in the fireplaces."In
the parish of Sevenoaks, Charles Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, Baron
Cranfield, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, is owner of Knowle, which is
as large as a town and is composed of three palaces standing parallel
one behind the other, like ranks of infantry. There are six covered
flights of steps on the principal frontage, and a gate under a keep
with four towers."Thomas
Thynne, Baron Thynne of Warminster, and Viscount Weymouth, possesses
Longleat, in which there are as many chimneys, cupolas, pinnacles,
pepper-boxes pavilions, and turrets as at Chambord, in France, which
belongs to the king."Henry
Howard, Earl of Suffolk, owns, twelve leagues from London, the palace
of Audley End in Essex, which in grandeur and dignity scarcely yields
the palm to the Escorial of the King of Spain."In
Bedfordshire, Wrest House and Park, which is a whole district,
enclosed by ditches, walls, woodlands, rivers, and hills, belongs to
Henry, Marquis of Kent."Hampton
Court, in Herefordshire, with its strong embattled keep, and its
gardens bounded by a piece of water which divides them from the
forest, belongs to Thomas, Lord Coningsby."Grimsthorp,
in Lincolnshire, with its long façade intersected by turrets in
pale, its park, its fish-ponds, its pheasantries, its sheepfolds, its
lawns, its grounds planted with rows of trees, its groves, its walks,
its shrubberies, its flower-beds and borders, formed in square and
lozenge-shape, and resembling great carpets; its racecourses, and the
majestic sweep for carriages to turn in at the entrance of the
house—belongs to Robert, Earl Lindsey, hereditary lord of the
forest of Waltham."Up
Park, in Sussex, a square house, with two symmetrical belfried
pavilions on each side of the great courtyard, belongs to the Right
Honourable Forde, Baron Grey of Werke, Viscount Glendale and Earl of
Tankerville."Newnham
Paddox, in Warwickshire, which has two quadrangular fish-ponds and a
gabled archway with a large window of four panes, belongs to the Earl
of Denbigh, who is also Count von Rheinfelden, in Germany."Wytham
Abbey, in Berkshire, with its French garden in which there are four
curiously trimmed arbours, and its great embattled towers, supported
by two bastions, belongs to Montague, Earl of Abingdon, who also owns
Rycote, of which he is Baron, and the principal door of which bears
the device Virtus
ariete fortior."William
Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling-places, of which
Chatsworth (two storied, and of the finest order of Grecian
architecture) is one."The
Viscount of Kinalmeaky, who is Earl of Cork, in Ireland, is owner of
Burlington House, Piccadilly, with its extensive gardens, reaching to
the fields outside London; he is also owner of Chiswick, where there
are nine magnificent lodges; he also owns Londesborough, which is a
new house by the side of an old palace."The
Duke of Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two Gothic buildings,
and a Florentine one; he has also Badminton, in Gloucestershire, a
residence from which a number of avenues branch out like rays from a
star. The most noble and puissant Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is
also Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Viscount
Grosmont, and Baron Herbert of Chepstow, Ragland, and Gower, Baron
Beaufort of Caldecott Castle, and Baron de Bottetourt."John
Holies, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsover, with
its majestic square keeps; his also is Haughton, in Nottinghamshire,
where a round pyramid, made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in
the centre of a basin of water."William,
Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead
Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the
finest water-jet in England; and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead
Marshall, on the façade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in
the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at the
point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest."Linnæus,
Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of
Corleone in Sicily, derives his title from the castle of Clancharlie,
built in 912 by Edward the Elder, as a defence against the Danes.
Besides Hunkerville House, in London, which is a palace, he has
Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards,
one at Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of
Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith, Hell-Kerters
(where there is a miraculous well), Phillinmore, with its turf bogs,
Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac, Vinecaunton, on the
Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen boroughs and villages with
reeves, and the whole of Penneth chase, all of which bring his
lordship £40,000 a year."The
172 peers enjoying their dignities under James II. possess among them
altogether a revenue of £1,272,000 sterling a year, which is the
eleventh part of the revenue of England."In
the margin, opposite the last name (that of Linnæus, Lord
Clancharlie), there was a note in the handwriting of Ursus:
Rebel; in exile; houses, lands, and chattels sequestrated. It is
well.IV.Ursus
admired Homo. One admires one's like. It is a law. To be always
raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition of
Ursus. He was the malcontent of creation. By nature he was a man ever
in opposition. He took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to
no one and to nothing. The bee did not atone, by its honey-making,
for its sting; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow
fever and black vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus criticized
Providence a good deal. "Evidently," he would say, "the
devil works by a spring, and the wrong that God does is having let go
the trigger." He approved of none but princes, and he had his
own peculiar way of expressing his approbation. One day, when James
II. made a gift to the Virgin in a Catholic chapel in Ireland of a
massive gold lamp, Ursus, passing that way with Homo, who was more
indifferent to such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd,
and exclaimed, "It is certain that the blessed Virgin wants a
lamp much more than these barefooted children there require shoes."Such
proofs of his loyalty, and such evidences of his respect for
established powers, probably contributed in no small degree to make
the magistrates tolerate his vagabond life and his low alliance with
a wolf. Sometimes of an evening, through the weakness of friendship,
he allowed Homo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the
caravan. The wolf was incapable of an abuse of confidence, and
behaved in society, that is to say among men, with the discretion of
a poodle. All the same, if bad-tempered officials had to be dealt
with, difficulties might have arisen; so Ursus kept the honest wolf
chained up as much as possible.From
a political point of view, his writing about gold, not very
intelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable, was but a
smear, and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James
II., and under the "respectable" reign of William and Mary,
his caravan might have been seen peacefully going its rounds of the
little English country towns. He travelled freely from one end of
Great Britain to the other, selling his philtres and phials, and
sustaining, with the assistance of his wolf, his quack mummeries; and
he passed with ease through the meshes of the nets which the police
at that period had spread all over England in order to sift wandering
gangs, and especially to stop the progress of the Comprachicos.This
was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus lived with Ursus,
a tête-à-tête,
into which the wolf gently thrust his nose. If Ursus could have had
his way, he would have been a Caribbee; that being impossible, he
preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modified savage,
accepted by civilization. He who wanders most is most alone; hence
his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long suffocated him
with the sense of being tamed. He passed his life in passing on his
way. The sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets,
thorns, and holes in the rock. His home was the forest. He did not
feel himself much out of his element in the murmur of crowded
streets, which is like enough to the bluster of trees. The crowd to
some extent satisfies our taste for the desert. What he disliked in
his van was its having a door and windows, and thus resembling a
house. He would have realized his ideal, had he been able to put a
cave on four wheels and travel in a den.He
did not smile, as we have already said, but he used to laugh;
sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh. There is consent in a
smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.His
great business was to hate the human race. He was implacable in that
hate. Having made it clear that human life is a dreadful thing;
having observed the superposition of evils, kings on the people, war
on kings, the plague on war, famine on the plague, folly on
everything; having proved a certain measure of chastisement in the
mere fact of existence; having recognized that, death is a
deliverance—when they brought him a sick man he cured him; he had
cordials and beverages to prolong the lives of the old. He put lame
cripples on their legs again, and hurled this sarcasm at them,
"There, you are on your paws once more; may you walk long in
this valley of tears!" When he saw a poor man dying of hunger,
he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling out, "Live
on, you wretch! eat! last a long time! It is not I who would shorten
your penal servitude." After which, he would rub his hands and
say, "I do men all the harm I can."Through
the little window at the back, passers-by could read on the ceiling
of the van these words, written within, but visible from without,
inscribed with charcoal, in big letters,—URSUS,
PHILOSOPHER.
ANOTHER PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
THE
COMPRACHICOS.
I.
Who
now knows the word Comprachicos, and who knows its meaning?
The
Comprachicos, or Comprapequeños, were a hideous and nondescript
association of wanderers, famous in the 17th century, forgotten in
the 18th, unheard of in the 19th. The Comprachicos are like the
"succession powder," an ancient social characteristic
detail. They are part of old human ugliness. To the great eye of
history, which sees everything collectively, the Comprachicos belong
to the colossal fact of slavery. Joseph sold by his brethren is a
chapter in their story. The Comprachicos have left their traces in
the penal laws of Spain and England. You find here and there in the
dark confusion of English laws the impress of this horrible truth,
like the foot-print of a savage in a forest.
Comprachicos,
the same as Comprapequeños, is a compound Spanish word signifying
Child-buyers.
The
Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and sold them. They did
not steal them. The kidnapping of children is another branch of
industry. And what did they make of these children?
Monsters.
Why
monsters?
To
laugh at.
The
populace must needs laugh, and kings too. The mountebank is wanted in
the streets, the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the
other a Fool.
The
efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of the
attention of the philosopher.
What
are we sketching in these few preliminary pages? A chapter in the
most terrible of books; a book which might be entitled—The
farming of the unhappy by the happy.
II.
A
child destined to be a plaything for men—such a thing has existed;
such a thing exists even now. In simple and savage times such a thing
constituted an especial trade. The 17th century, called the great
century, was of those times. It was a century very Byzantine in tone.
It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity—a curious
variety of civilization. A tiger with a simper. Madame de Sevigné
minces on the subject of the fagot and the wheel. That century traded
a good deal in children. Flattering historians have concealed the
sore, but have divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.
In
order that a human toy should succeed, he must be taken early. The
dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play with childhood. But a
well-formed child is not very amusing; a hunchback is better fun.
Hence
grew an art. There were trainers who took a man and made him an
abortion; they took a face and made a muzzle; they stunted growth;
they kneaded the features. The artificial production of teratological
cases had its rules. It was quite a science—what one can imagine as
the antithesis of orthopedy. Where God had put a look, their art put
a squint; where God had made harmony, they made discord; where God
had made the perfect picture, they re-established the sketch; and, in
the eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch which was perfect. They
debased animals as well; they invented piebald horses. Turenne rode a
piebald horse. In our own days do they not dye dogs blue and green?
Nature is our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to God's
work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for
worse. The Court buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man
to the monkey. It was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in
retrogression. At the same time they tried to make a man of the
monkey. Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Southampton,
had a marmoset for a page. Frances Sutton, Baroness Dudley, eighth
peeress in the bench of barons, had tea served by a baboon clad in
cold brocade, which her ladyship called My Black. Catherine Sedley,
Countess of Dorchester, used to go and take her seat in Parliament in
a coach with armorial bearings, behind which stood, their muzzles
stuck up in the air, three Cape monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of
Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal Pole witnessed, had her stockings
put on by an orang-outang. These monkeys raised in the scale were a
counterpoise to men brutalized and bestialized. This promiscuousness
of man and beast, desired by the great, was especially prominent in
the case of the dwarf and the dog. The dwarf never quitted the dog,
which was always bigger than himself. The dog was the pair of the
dwarf; it was as if they were coupled with a collar. This
juxtaposition is authenticated by a mass of domestic records—notably
by the portrait of Jeffrey Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta of France,
daughter of Henri IV., and wife of Charles I.
To
degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of his state was
completed by disfigurement. Certain vivisectors of that period
succeeded marvellously well in effacing from the human face the
divine effigy. Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen Street College,
and judicial visitor of the chemists' shops of London, wrote a book
in Latin on this pseudo-surgery, the processes of which he describes.
If we are to believe Justus of Carrickfergus, the inventor of this
branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore—an Irish word
signifying Great River.
The
dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose effigy—or
ghost—springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidelberg, was a
remarkable specimen of this science, very varied in its applications.
It fashioned beings the law of whose existence was hideously simple:
it permitted them to suffer, and commanded them to amuse.
III.
The
manufacture of monsters was practised on a large scale, and comprised
various branches.
The
Sultan required them, so did the Pope; the one to guard his women,
the other to say his prayers. These were of a peculiar kind,
incapable of reproduction. Scarcely human beings, they were useful to
voluptuousness and to religion. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel
utilized the same species of monsters; fierce in the former case,
mild in the latter.
They
knew how to produce things in those days which are not produced now;
they had talents which we lack, and it is not without reason that
some good folk cry out that the decline has come. We no longer know
how to sculpture living human flesh; this is consequent on the loss
of the art of torture. Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but
are so no longer; the art has become so simplified that it will soon
disappear altogether. In cutting the limbs of living men, in opening
their bellies and in dragging out their entrails, phenomena were
grasped on the moment and discoveries made. We are obliged to
renounce these experiments now, and are thus deprived of the progress
which surgery made by aid of the executioner.
The
vivisection of former days was not limited to the manufacture of
phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace (a species
of augmentative of the courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes.
It abounded in varieties. One of its triumphs was the manufacture of
cocks for the king of England.
It
was the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to have a sort
of watchman, who crowed like a cock. This watcher, awake while all
others slept, ranged the palace, and raised from hour to hour the cry
of the farmyard, repeating it as often as was necessary, and thus
supplying a clock. This man, promoted to be cock, had in childhood
undergone the operation of the pharynx, which was part of the art
described by Dr. Conquest. Under Charles II. the salivation
inseparable to the operation having disgusted the Duchess of
Portsmouth, the appointment was indeed preserved, so that the
splendour of the crown should not be tarnished, but they got an
unmutilated man to represent the cock. A retired officer was
generally selected for this honourable employment. Under James II.
the functionary was named William Sampson, Cock, and received for his
crow £9, 2s. 6d. annually.
The
memoirs of Catherine II. inform us that at St. Petersburg, scarcely a
hundred years since, whenever the czar or czarina was displeased with
a Russian prince, he was forced to squat down in the great
antechamber of the palace, and to remain in that posture a certain
number of days, mewing like a cat, or clucking like a sitting hen,
and pecking his food from the floor.
These
fashions have passed away; but not so much, perhaps, as one might
imagine. Nowadays, courtiers slightly modify their intonation in
clucking to please their masters. More than one picks up from the
ground—we will not say from the mud—what he eats.
It
is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their contradictions
never perplex us. In approving always, one is sure to be always
right—which is pleasant. Louis XIV. would not have liked to see at
Versailles either an officer acting the cock, or a prince acting the
turkey. That which raised the royal and imperial dignity in England
and Russia would have seemed to Louis the Great incompatible with the
crown of St. Louis. We know what his displeasure was when Madame
Henriette forgot herself so far as to see a hen in a dream—which
was, indeed, a grave breach of good manners in a lady of the court.
When one is of the court, one should not dream of the courtyard.
Bossuet, it may be remembered, was nearly as scandalized as Louis
XIV.
IV.
The
commerce in children in the 17th century, as we have explained, was
connected with a trade. The Comprachicos engaged in the commerce, and
carried on the trade. They bought children, worked a little on the
raw material, and resold them afterwards.
The
venders were of all kinds: from the wretched father, getting rid of
his family, to the master, utilizing his stud of slaves. The sale of
men was a simple matter. In our own time we have had fighting to
maintain this right. Remember that it is less than a century ago
since the Elector of Hesse sold his subjects to the King of England,
who required men to be killed in America. Kings went to the Elector
of Hesse as we go to the butcher to buy meat. The Elector had food
for powder in stock, and hung up his subjects in his shop. Come buy;
it is for sale. In England, under Jeffreys, after the tragical
episode of Monmouth, there were many lords and gentlemen beheaded and
quartered. Those who were executed left wives and daughters, widows
and orphans, whom James II. gave to the queen, his wife. The queen
sold these ladies to William Penn. Very likely the king had so much
per cent. on the transaction. The extraordinary thing is, not that
James II. should have sold the women, but that William Penn should
have bought them. Penn's purchase is excused, or explained, by the
fact that having a desert to sow with men, he needed women as farming
implements.
Her
Gracious Majesty made a good business out of these ladies. The young
sold dear. We may imagine, with the uneasy feeling which a
complicated scandal arouses, that probably some old duchesses were
thrown in cheap.
The
Comprachicos were also called the Cheylas, a Hindu word, which
conveys the image of harrying a nest.
For
a long time the Comprachicos only partially concealed themselves.
There is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over
iniquitous trades, in which they thrive. In our own day we have seen
an association of the kind in Spain, under the direction of the
ruffian Ramon Selles, last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three
provinces under terror for thirty years—Valencia, Alicante, and
Murcia.
Under
the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means in bad odour at court.
On occasions they were used for reasons of state. For James II. they
were almost an
instrumentum regni.
It was a time when families, which were refractory or in the way,
were dismembered; when a descent was cut short; when heirs were
suddenly suppressed. At times one branch was defrauded to the profit
of another. The Comprachicos had a genius for disfiguration which
recommended them to state policy. To disfigure is better than to
kill. There was, indeed, the Iron Mask, but that was a mighty
measure. Europe could not be peopled with iron masks, while deformed
tumblers ran about the streets without creating any surprise.
Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh. You
are masked for ever by your own flesh—what can be more ingenious?
The Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees. They had
their secrets, as we have said; they had tricks which are now lost
arts. A sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands; it was
ridiculous and wonderful. They would touch up a little being with
such skill that its father could not have known it.
Et que méconnaîtrait l'oeil même de son père,
as Racine says in bad French. Sometimes they left the spine straight
and remade the face. They unmarked a child as one might unmark a
pocket-handkerchief. Products, destined for tumblers, had their
joints dislocated in a masterly manner—you would have said they had
been boned. Thus gymnasts were made.
Not
only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child, they
also took away his memory. At least they took away all they could of
it; the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had
been subjected. This frightful surgery left its traces on his
countenance, but not on his mind. The most he could recall was that
one day he had been seized by men, that next he had fallen asleep,
and then that he had been cured. Cured of what? He did not know. Of
burnings by sulphur and incisions by the iron he remembered nothing.
The Comprachicos deadened the little patient by means of a stupefying
powder which was thought to be magical, and suppressed all pain. This
powder has been known from time immemorial in China, and is still
employed there in the present day. The Chinese have been beforehand
with us in all our inventions—printing, artillery, aerostation,
chloroform. Only the discovery which in Europe at once takes life and
birth, and becomes a prodigy and a wonder, remains a chrysalis in
China, and is preserved in a deathlike state. China is a museum of
embryos.
Since
we are in China, let us remain there a moment to note a peculiarity.
In China, from time immemorial, they have possessed a certain
refinement of industry and art. It is the art of moulding a living
man. They take a child, two or three years old, put him in a
porcelain vase, more or less grotesque, which is made without top or
bottom, to allow egress for the head and feet. During the day the
vase is set upright, and at night is laid down to allow the child to
sleep. Thus the child thickens without growing taller, filling up
with his compressed flesh and distorted bones the reliefs in the
vase. This development in a bottle continues many years. After a
certain time it becomes irreparable. When they consider that this is
accomplished, and the monster made, they break the vase. The child
comes out—and, behold, there is a man in the shape of a mug!
This
is convenient: by ordering your dwarf betimes you are able to have it
of any shape you wish.
V.
James
II. tolerated the Comprachicos for the good reason that he made use
of them; at least it happened that he did so more than once. We do
not always disdain to use what we despise. This low trade, an
excellent expedient sometimes for the higher one which is called
state policy, was willingly left in a miserable state, but was not
persecuted. There was no surveillance, but a certain amount of
attention. Thus much might be useful—the law closed one eye, the
king opened the other.
Sometimes
the king went so far as to avow his complicity. These are audacities
of monarchical terrorism. The disfigured one was marked with the
fleur-de-lis; they took from him the mark of God; they put on him the
mark of the king. Jacob Astley, knight and baronet, lord of Melton
Constable, in the county of Norfolk, had in his family a child who
had been sold, and upon whose forehead the dealer had imprinted a
fleur-de-lis with a hot iron. In certain cases in which it was held
desirable to register for some reason the royal origin of the new
position made for the child, they used such means. England has always
done us the honour to utilize, for her personal service, the
fleur-de-lis.
The
Comprachicos, allowing for the shade which divides a trade from a
fanaticism, were analogous to the Stranglers of India. They lived
among themselves in gangs, and to facilitate their progress, affected
somewhat of the merry-andrew. They encamped here and there, but they
were grave and religious, bearing no affinity to other nomads, and
incapable of theft. The people for a long time wrongly confounded
them with the Moors of Spain and the Moors of China. The Moors of
Spain were coiners, the Moors of China were thieves. There was
nothing of the sort about the Comprachicos; they were honest folk.
Whatever you may think of them, they were sometimes sincerely
scrupulous. They pushed open a door, entered, bargained for a child,
paid, and departed. All was done with propriety.
They
were of all countries. Under the name of Comprachicos fraternized
English, French, Castilians, Germans, Italians. A unity of idea, a
unity of superstition, the pursuit of the same calling, make such
fusions. In this fraternity of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean
seaboard represented the East, those of the Atlantic seaboard the
West. Many Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque and the
Irishman understand each other—they speak the old Punic jargon; add
to this the intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic
Spain—relations such that they terminated by bringing to the
gallows in London one almost King of Ireland, the Celtic Lord de
Brany; from which resulted the conquest of the county of Leitrim.
The
Comprachicos were rather a fellowship than a tribe; rather a residuum
than a fellowship. It was all the riffraff of the universe, having
for their trade a crime. It was a sort of harlequin people, all
composed of rags. To recruit a man was to sew on a tatter.
To
wander was the Comprachicos' law of existence—to appear and
disappear. What is barely tolerated cannot take root. Even in the
kingdoms where their business supplied the courts, and, on occasions,
served as an auxiliary to the royal power, they were now and then
suddenly ill-treated. Kings made use of their art, and sent the
artists to the galleys. These inconsistencies belong to the ebb and
flow of royal caprice. "For such is our pleasure."
A
rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss. The Comprachicos
were poor. They might have said what the lean and ragged witch
observed, when she saw them setting fire to the stake, "Le jeu
n'en vaut pas la chandelle." It is possible, nay probable (their
chiefs remaining unknown), that the wholesale contractors in the
trade were rich. After the lapse of two centuries, it would be
difficult to throw any light on this point.
It
was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws, its oaths, its
formulæ—it had almost its cabala. Any one nowadays wishing to know
all about the Comprachicos need only go into Biscaya or Galicia;
there were many Basques among them, and it is in those mountains that
one hears their history. To this day the Comprachicos are spoken of
at Oyarzun, at Urbistondo, at Leso, at Astigarraga.
Aguardate niño, que voy a llamar al Comprachicos—Take
care, child, or I'll call the Comprachicos—is the cry with which
mothers frighten their children in that country.
The
Comprachicos, like the Zigeuner and the Gipsies, had appointed places
for periodical meetings. From time to time their leaders conferred
together. In the seventeenth century they had four principal points
of rendezvous: one in Spain—the pass of Pancorbo; one in
Germany—the glade called the Wicked Woman, near Diekirsch, where
there are two enigmatic bas-reliefs, representing a woman with a head
and a man without one; one in France—the hill where was the
colossal statue of Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood of Borvo
Tomona, near Bourbonne les Bains; one in England—behind the garden
wall of William Challoner, Squire of Gisborough in Cleveland,
Yorkshire, behind the square tower and the great wing which is
entered by an arched door.
VI.
The
laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in England.
England, in her Gothic legislation, seemed to be inspired with this
principle, Homo
errans fera errante pejor.
One of the special statutes classifies the man without a home as
"more dangerous than the asp, dragon, lynx, or basilisk"
(atrocior aspide,
dracone, lynce, et basilico
