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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In Arthur Morrison's charmingly whimsical collection, "Zig-Zags at the Zoo," readers are transported into the enchanting and often humorous world of a lively urban zoo. Through a series of interconnected vignettes, Morrison deftly crafts a narrative style that incorporates rich, vivid descriptions and playful dialogues, drawing upon the essence of both children's literature and observational humor. Set against the backdrop of a Victorian-era zoo, the book captures the glee and wonder of childhood exploration while subtly commenting on the complexities of human-animal interactions and societal norms of the time. Arthur Morrison, an established author of late 19th and early 20th-century literature, is known for his focus on urban life and the human condition. His experiences growing up in London, coupled with his keen observational skills, likely inspired the delightful anecdotes found in this work. Morrison's affinity for realism shines through, allowing readers to glimpse the intricacies of life during a period marked by rapid social changes, emphasizing a blend of innocence and complexity in the stories he shares. "Zig-Zags at the Zoo" is not only an engaging read for children but also a delightful journey for adults seeking a nostalgic reflection on the joys of exploration and the innocence of youth. Morrison's unique narrative style and the poignant themes presented will resonate with readers of all ages, making this collection a timeless addition to the literary landscape. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Zig-Zags at the Zoo
Table of Contents
Introduction
A curious eye wanders the enclosures and pathways, turning a city’s menagerie into a mirror for human habits, follies, and fascinations.
Zig-Zags at the Zoo by Arthur Morrison presents a sequence of observational sketches that blend humor, reflection, and keen description within the setting of a public zoological garden. Best known for fiction rooted in London life, Morrison here adopts a lighter, essayistic mode, guiding readers through scenes of animals and onlookers alike. Emerging from the vibrant period of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century popular literature, the book aligns with a culture of urban leisure and public spectacle. Its genre is part humorous essay, part vignette—an amble through cages and crowds that favors wit, immediacy, and attentive detail.
The premise is elegantly simple: the narrator meanders through the zoo, pausing wherever curiosity strikes, and offers brisk, characterful reflections. Each stop becomes an occasion for noticing gestures, rhythms, and the subtle theater of observation. The reading experience is light but textured—urbane, playful, and alert to nuance. Rather than constructing a grand narrative, the book assembles moments, letting variety and contrast do the storytelling. Readers can expect nimble shifts of focus, quick turns of perspective, and a conversational intimacy that feels like strolling alongside a perceptive companion, looking, joking, thinking, and moving on before the scene grows too settled.
Beneath its amiable surface, the book probes how people look at animals and what that looking reveals. It examines the boundaries between curiosity and projection, science and spectacle, empathy and amusement. The zoo becomes a stage where the human need to categorize meets the irreducible otherness of living creatures. Morrison’s tone balances affectionate satire with genuine attentiveness: he notices both the animals’ presence and the audience’s habits, suggesting how public spaces organize behavior. In this way, the collection becomes a meditation on urban modernity—on order and display, on control and contingency, and on how everyday leisure shapes our sense of nature.
For contemporary readers, its relevance lies in the questions it raises rather than any prescriptive answers. Zoos today are debated as sites of conservation, education, and entertainment; Morrison’s scenes illuminate the enduring tangle of motives behind visiting such places. The book invites a reconsideration of spectatorship: what do we seek when we look at animals, and what do we miss when we rush to assign them human traits? It also offers a snapshot of historical attitudes without demanding that we share them, encouraging a thoughtful, critical appreciation of past sensibilities alongside the pleasure of an agile, observant voice.
Stylistically, the writing is crisp, quick on its feet, and fond of sidelong glances—the prose equivalent of a zig-zagging walk. Morrison favors precise images and light irony, shifting pace to match the scene: unhurried when contemplating, brisk when the crowd jostles or the animals stir. The structure encourages browsing; one can dip in and out, gathering impressions that accumulate into a portrait of a living institution. This poise between immediacy and design makes the sketches feel both spontaneous and artfully composed, giving the collection a durable charm that rests on cadence, timing, and a finely tuned awareness of surfaces and subtexts.
Zig-Zags at the Zoo will appeal to readers who enjoy literary nonfiction, urban observation, and the interplay of wit with ethical curiosity. It offers a companionable guide through a familiar yet strange terrain, attentive to spectacle without being consumed by it. Those interested in Arthur Morrison’s range will find a revealing counterpoint to his grittier fiction, while newcomers can simply relish an engaging voice in motion. Read it as a promenade of intellect and amusement: a series of bright, humane encounters that challenge how we look, remind us why we look, and leave space for the living world to look quietly back.
Synopsis (Selection)
Zig-Zags at the Zoo, first published as a sequence of illustrated sketches, presents Arthur Morrison’s light, episodic tour of a metropolitan zoological garden. Guided by a flâneur-like narrator and enlivened by J. A. Shepherd’s drawings, the pieces wander from enclosure to enclosure, preferring curiosity and impulse over systematic order. The book mixes plain observation with fanciful conjecture, inviting readers to notice small habits, posted placards, and the moods of crowds as much as the animals themselves. Without arguing a thesis, it proposes a playful way of looking: a series of digressions that together amount to a portrait of public leisure and captive nature.
An introductory stroll through the gates sets the method and mood. The narrator declares no intention to catalog species in scientific order, preferring instead to follow shifting interest, sudden noises, and the eddies of visitors. Notices, guidebooks, and keepers’ remarks appear as props that steer the route and supply facts, but the emphasis is on what catches the eye. The result is a pattern of short approaches and quick departures: a pause at a rail, a turn to another path, a return when something stirs. The zig-zag becomes both path and principle, shaping how scenes are chosen and remembered.
The primate houses provide early examples of this mixed attention and fancy. Monkeys and apes are shown in constant motion, testing wires, trading glances with spectators, and sampling whatever enrichment the hour allows. The text notes differences of temperament among species, then imagines their motives and private jokes without insisting on them. Keepers’ routine cautions—about fingers and feed—frame the interactions. The sketch favors small incidents: a scramble over a perch, a sudden scold, a lull of grooming that draws a silence from the crowd. In this setting, the resemblance between animal curiosity and human watching is left to suggest itself.
From chatter and bustle, the route turns toward the big cats, where control and ceremony are emphasized. Lions, tigers, and leopards are presented with an eye for taut pacing, stillness before a spring, and the ritual moment of feeding. The narrator points out safety barriers, feeding tools, and the calm of experienced attendants, tempering the natural theatrics of teeth and roar. Exaggerated tales from visitors circulate at the railings, and the sketches record them without confirmation, as part of the day’s atmosphere. The effect is to frame power as spectacle, observed through glass and iron, measured by distance and routine.
Elephants and other large herbivores shift the tone again, away from menace toward bulk, memory, and seemingly deliberate courtesy. The tour lingers on trunks and tusks, the steady rhythm of chewing, and the particular expectations that accrue around these animals—buns proffered, bows imagined, tricks recalled. Rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and giraffes are considered in turn, each treated as a presence defined by shape and pace as much as by any anecdote. The narrator notes how crowds behave differently here, spreading out to accommodate size, then clustering for a gesture or a splash. Humor remains, but it is slower, built from mass and method.
The aviaries and reptile rooms offer contrasts of color and patience. Birds appear in swift flashes—a parrot’s phrase, an ostrich’s abrupt stride, finches sketching lines through wire. The text records labeled facts about range and diet, then allows brief flights of whimsy before moving on. Reptiles are observed as lessons in stillness: snakes coiled into geometry, crocodilians assembled like sculpture, and turtles offering minute alterations that draw disproportionate attention. Here the zig-zag slows, with the narrator accepting that some spectacles require waiting. The sketches balance mock-scientific asides with candid admissions of boredom that give way to sudden interest.
Less heralded residents occupy the next stages of the wander: bears with practical talents, hyenas circling with a grin that is explained and demystified, and smaller mammals engaged in tidy, industrious routines. The writing lingers on overlooked habitats and labels whose names alone seem stories. Occasionally a misread sign or a swapped cage number generates a brief comic misunderstanding that is promptly corrected and folded into the flow. The emphasis remains on variety—of demeanor, of scent, of enclosure—and the way chance determines what is seen. A turn of weather or the arrival of a school group subtly rearranges the program.
Interludes with keepers and attendants illuminate the infrastructure that makes display possible. Feeding schedules, veterinary interventions, cleaning routines, and methods for moving animals over short distances are sketched with economy and respect. The narrator reports these matters as practicalities, not secrets, letting procedures explain why certain animals appear at particular hours or behave in recognizable ways. Occasional reminiscences—what a tiger once did, how an elephant learned a signal—supply context without claiming drama. These backstage glimpses align with the book’s governing idea: a public entertainment composed of many small, coordinated acts, supported by craft and habit as much as by wonder.
Late-day scenes conclude the excursion, with light changing and crowds thinning, and the book draws its elements together. Without extracting lessons, it suggests a purpose: to show how a meandering attention can assemble a composite picture of a place built for looking. The tone remains cheerful and uninsistent, compressing fact and fancy into brief, repeatable encounters that readers might recognize from their own visits. Animals retain their distance; humans keep their rails. The final impression is of urban recreation that is at once instructional and improvised, a portfolio of moments rather than a map, gathered by the simple act of zig-zagging.
Historical Context
Arthur Morrison’s Zig-Zags at the Zoo is rooted in late-Victorian London, with scenes anchored in the Zoological Society of London’s gardens at Regent’s Park. First appearing as illustrated pieces in the Strand Magazine in 1894–1895, the work reflects the routines, sights, and crowds of the London Zoo at the fin de siècle. Morrison, already known for his urban realism, here turns a sociological eye—tempered by humor—toward a quintessential metropolitan institution. The setting is not merely a menagerie but a regulated public space shaped by imperial supply chains, scientific display, and mass leisure. J. A. Shepherd’s drawings situate the reader among keepers, signage, and holiday throngs in North London.
The institution that frames the book’s world was itself a historical creation. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was founded in 1826 under the leadership of Sir Stamford Raffles, receiving a Royal Charter in 1827. Its Regent’s Park gardens opened in 1828 to fellows and, from 1847, to the general public for a fee. Landmark facilities shaped Victorian visiting: the Round House for carnivores (1830s), the Giraffe House (1837), the Reptile House (1849), and the Fish House—the world’s first public aquarium—opened in 1853. Under secretary Philip Lutley Sclater (1860–1902), acquisitions and classification flourished. Morrison’s sketches presuppose these curated spaces and the flow of species displayed there.
The book mirrors Britain’s imperial collecting networks that populated the Zoo. The Suez Canal’s opening in 1869 shortened routes from India and East Africa, facilitating live-animal transport to London. Celebrity creatures exemplified this traffic: Obaysch, a hippopotamus captured on the White Nile, arrived in 1850 and drew unprecedented crowds; Jumbo, an African elephant resident from 1865, became a national favorite until his controversial sale to P. T. Barnum in 1882. ZSL officials and agents, under figures like P. L. Sclater, coordinated imports, exchanges, and scientific description. Morrison’s playful catalog of beasts relies on, and wryly comments upon, this imperial pipeline that turned distant fauna into urban spectacle.
Mass leisure and urban mobility formed the audience and tone that Zig-Zags addresses. The Bank Holidays Act of 1871 created predictable days of rest for clerks and artisans, and metropolitan rail and omnibus networks—especially the Metropolitan Railway through Baker Street (from 1863)—made Regent’s Park accessible. By the 1890s the Zoo drew hundreds of thousands annually, with cheap-admission days encouraging family visits. The Strand Magazine, launched by George Newnes in 1891, achieved circulations exceeding 300,000, popularizing illustrated reportage. Morrison’s pieces, appearing there with J. A. Shepherd’s images, translate the crowded promenades, keeper patter, and showfeedings into a form of armchair tourism that depended on these leisure and print revolutions.
Victorian animal-welfare campaigns shaped public discourse around menageries. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) formed in 1824; the Cruelty to Animals Act (1835) tightened regulation of baiting and mistreatment; and antivivisection activism coalesced in the 1870s, notably with the National Anti-Vivisection Society (1875). The Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act (1900) capped decades of agitation toward humane standards in exhibition. Media furor over Jumbo’s 1882 sale dramatized affection for individual animals and anxieties about their treatment. Morrison’s tone, often anthropomorphic yet skeptical of gawking crowds, registers these currents by gently critiquing human behavior toward confined creatures and hinting at the ethics of display.
Scientific culture provided another framework. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and the advocacy of Thomas H. Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace made evolutionary thinking a public conversation. ZSL served as a node for professional zoology while also staging popular science; naturalist Philip Henry Gosse’s establishment of the first public aquarium at the Zoo in 1853 exemplified this synthesis. P. L. Sclater’s 1858 proposal of six zoogeographic regions guided classification and display. Morrison’s observational humor assumes readers’ familiarity with species traits, feeding habits, and geographic origins, turning the Zoo into a living encyclopedia and gently parodying the era’s confidence in classification and instructive entertainment.
Late-Victorian urban governance shaped the Zoo as a regulated civic arena. The Metropolitan Police (established 1829) and park by-laws under the Office of Works managed crowd flow, closing hours, and safety protocols; after the creation of the London County Council in 1889, municipal concerns over congestion, sanitation, and public order intensified. Holiday surges required ticketing arrangements, queue discipline, and keeper authority at feeding times, while signage codified expectations for visitors. Morrison repeatedly notices the choreography of attendants and spectators, reflecting a city preoccupied with regulating pleasures and hazards alike. The Zoo’s orderly promenades and rules—no feeding, no tapping on glass—become part of the book’s social observation.
As social critique, the book exposes tensions in a culture that converted global nature into metropolitan entertainment. Through comic scenes and pointed asides, it spotlights class mixing on cheap days, the disciplining gaze of keepers and signage, and the paradox of scientific elevation amid confinement. The anthropomorphic voice often turns back upon the crowd, suggesting vanity, imperial entitlement, and shallow curiosity. By staging animals as both subjects and mirrors, Morrison queries the ethics of possession and spectacle in the 1890s city. The work thus registers concerns about humane treatment, commodified leisure, and the performative confidence of late-Victorian science and order.
Zig-Zags at the Zoo
I. — ZIG-ZAG PRELUSORY
First published in The Strand Magazine, July 1892
"ZIG-ZAGS AT THE ZOO" is a title which must not be misunderstood. The Zigzag—though possibly suggestive of a beast with stripes—is not a newly-captured wild animal lately added to the great London collection; it is merely the ordinary commonplace, charming, and delightful Zig-zag of everyday existence. For variety is the spice of life[1q], and every man taking ease and joy of his life shall go through it in zig-zags. The direct road is the path of the toiler. Observe a man at a picture exhibition—a man who begins at number one on the catalogue and goes right through with solemn persistence until he arrives at the longest number at the last page, and the uttermost corner of the last gallery. That man is either "doing the show" for a newspaper, or prefers to make the pictures an affliction unto himself. A picture show, like everything else, should be taken on the zig-zag. The man who plans and cogitates the nearest way between two streets—that man is too busy poor fellow, to know the sweets of the zig-zag. To go upon the zig-zag is to see more, and with greater entertainment. Who sees more stars, more lamp-posts, front-doors, and keyholes than other men—yea, even unto tenfold? He who goes home on the zig-zag.
The zig-zag is the token, the mystic sign, of contentful ease and good fellowship the world over; the very word is passed to us, like a loving-cup, by the French, who have taken it in all good amity from the Germans, as Littré himself testifieth, and what greater sign of universal brotherhood shall you want than that? The zig-zag, too, is necessary; for the soberest citizen may not walk home through many streets in a straight line, lest he break his nose. "Zig-zag: something with short sharp turns," says the respectable Webster. Let us, therefore, take here a sharp turn, lest we run our noses against the wall of brown speculation.
Many good friends have I in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London. These good friends devote their entire lives to the furtherance of a popular taste for zoology, and are, or should be at once elected, most distinguished active members of the society. To pay certain gold guineas a year is a good thing; but what human member of the society would live amiably behind bars for the cause, to be stared at and made the subject of personal impudences? Now, all these fine fellows have their individual characters, their little personal habits and crotchets, just as have those distinguished zoologists who walk upright and wear tail-coats.
For instance, you may have come upon a row of three lions, or monkeys, or seals, as the case may be, and to you, a casual visitor, they shall be but three very similar seals or monkeys or lions. So also in the official guide-book, for a guide-book which is sober and official can say no other. But scrape close acquaintance with those creatures and talk to their keepers, and you shall find them Bill, Polly, and Sam: Bill, perhaps, being an easy-going lion (or seal or monkey), with a weakness for a lump of sugar, and a disregard of the state of his coat; Polly a coquette, with a vast pride in her tail; and Sam a touchy old fellow who objects to all but one particular keeper; and each with a history. Among these distinguished personages shall we zig-zag, and improve acquaintance. Meantime, let us sit upon this seat on the terrace with a good view of the gardens before us, while the big good-humoured Jung Perchad stalks along below with a howdahful of children and an eye to the casual bun; and let us meditate.
I like to conduct my brown studies in an atmosphere of mingled evolution and metempsychosis. It is a pity that the theory of our evolution from the primordial protoplasm in an inclusive line through every living species should now be considered old-fashioned. I like to imagine that among my remote ancestors every living thing is represented—it gives them a family interest. And if, further, I can persuade myself that I have been everything, at one time or another, from a bluebottle to a giraffe—why, then I can brown-study forever. The imaginative mind can compass all things. Well may I remember the comfort of a mouth six feet by measurement along the lips, in a crocodile. You take in your enemy in one large generous smile, and he is seen no more. And a tail for others—the cow, the dog, the horse, the lion, the tiger—is a convenience, both as a fly-whisk and as a help to working up a tantrum. In evolution from a bluebottle to a giraffe one learns the value of these things.
As a bluebottle, I think I should have enjoyed life—as a young one certainly; an elderly bluebottle gets bloated, slow, and gouty, losing his sense of humour. He grows infirm of purpose, too, and forgets to return to the same spot on a bald head after the eighteenth time of chasing off—the eighteenth time being really just when the fun begins. Sometimes he passes over a red nose altogether, probably from a fear of aggravating the gout in his feet. I am a little more doubtful about the giraffe. I should certainly have had a better opportunity of holding my head high in the world than I ever have now; and the giraffe has the advantage of the bluebottle in the matter of gouty feet. But what a neck for mumps!
I think I must have been a raven or a jackdaw at some time—reasoning by induction—and I must have had a rare good time. The great object of a raven's life is the collection of valuables, wherein he resembles a large half of the human race. He steals rings, silver thimbles, and money, hoarding them in a safe and quiet place. Now, there is nothing so impartial as good Dame Nature. For everything she gives its compensation; every poison has its antidote, every excess its counteracting scarcity; nothing dies. Everything is a cause, and the effects of all causes work on for eternity. So that I conclude that my life as a raven must have been peculiarly successful from a business point of view, and that for that flood of good fortune I am now suffering the ebb. Obviously I must have been bursting with this world's wealth in some life or another, else why things as they so painfully are? Or perhaps—stunning thought!—I am saving up all this penury against a flood of millions to come. But, come when it will, it shall never overwhelm me, for I shall take a holiday in a Scotch hotel. I quite believe I skipped the crocodiles; at any rate, I find little hereditary affinity between us. When a crocodile objects to its surroundings, it refuses its food; as a boy at school, I objected very much to my surroundings, but without any effect of that sort.
My late friend—God rest him!—Mr. Jamrach, used to have rare tussles with his crocodiles. They were valuable as property, and when, out of spite, they took to attempting suicide by starvation, he had them tied up firmly and fed forcibly with a long pole à la ramrod. I never remember being so obstinate about my dinner as that; and if I had, from what I recollect of him, I don't believe my worthy preceptor would have done as Mr. Jamrach did. I never heard of his using any stick in that way. Beyond all this too, it should be observed that the crocodile has three distinct lids to each eye, whereby he is equipped for the performance of six separate and entirely distinct winks of the single variety, and an incalculable number of the more complicated sort by combination. Now the wink is the infallible sign of a frivolous and larky nature, and in disclaiming all relationship with the crocodile I need say no more than this.
I often wonder what all these animals think of the band which plays here in the summer. The coming of the warm season is a time of joy, at any rate to the more tropical varieties, and it seems a pity to make it sad with a band. Perhaps it is done on the great principle of universal compensation already spoken of. Not that the band isn't a good one, you should understand, but a band of any sort before dinner is an infliction. Music is rather a nuisance to a hungry man, and its proper occasion arrives after a good dinner. Lions and tigers have ten times the capacity for hunger granted to man, and should be considered accordingly. Herein do I speak with feeling; for on several days of the week a German band plays near the corner of my street in the hungriest hour of the twenty-four, and on all the other afternoons the young lady next door, who is learning to sing (and taking a very long time over it) practises her scales.
I should like to have met that German band when I was—say a tiger, and very hungry. But the young lady who will never learn to sing is infinitely worse, and deserves no consideration at all. I should like an opportunity of attacking her as a mouse.
Old Sir John Maundevile is a man one would like to have met. I would do a great deal—even unto paying at the gate—to inspect a zoological garden furnished with a good selection of Sir John's discoveries. I should like, for instance, to see his "wylde Gees, that han 2 Hedes." They are not found in many poultry-yards nowadays, and have become swans on inn signs. I should like, too, to see that "fulle felonous Best" with a black head and three long horns, "trenchant in front, scharpe as a Sword," with which he "sleethe the Olifaunt," Again, I think I should like to see those "Ipotaynes, that dwellen sometyme in the Watre and sometyme on the Lond; and thei ben half Man and half Hors," and compare them with the blithesome hippopotamus as we now see him in our own Zoo.
I should like to have the opinion of the man end on his equine hinder half, and to see how he walked; for, unlike the centaur, the "ipotayne" had only two legs. I should like to get a "cokadrille" as Maundevile's book pictures him, with long legs and ears like a donkey's, and show him to the sleepy alligators in the reptile house, by way of reconciling long-sundered relatives. But most I should like to get my mutton from a tree in the way Sir John did in a kingdom "that men clepen Caldilhe"—somewhere, it would seem, between India and China. On the tree, says our good friend, grows a fruit "as though it were Gourdes" and in each of these gourds grows a "lyttylle Lomb, withouten Wolle," which lamb, as well as the fruit, Sir John has eaten. "And that is a gret Marveylle," quoth Sir John; and so it is, when you come to think of it.
It is a pity that there was no wool on those "Lombs;" it would have given the narrative a certain artistic completeness, a rounding off. But, since there was no wool, it is fortunate that Sir John distinctly said so, otherwise people might have called him a liar.
Before the Zoological Society find specimens of these rarities, perhaps they may come upon another giraffe or two. Sir John Maundevile really plays light with the giraffe. He might have made something much more startling of it than "a Best pomelee or spotted; that is but a litylle more highe than is a Stede; but he hathe the Necke a 20 Cubytes long; and his Croup and his Tayl is as of an Hert; and he may loken over a gret highe Hous." Moreover, the illustrative woodcut in my copy actually under-represents the neck by full two-thirds; but that is for the very best of all reasons—there is no room on the block for any more. Perhaps it was because Sir John vouched for the giraffe that up to the present century most people in this country disbelieved in its existence.
But just consider how he might have put it, and with truth; and how that heavy-handed artist might have put it—without truth. An animal with a deer's head, a leopard's skin, a swan's neck; a tongue that was used as a man's hand to grasp things a foot from its nose. With eyes that saw in every direction without a turn of the head; with nostrils that closed or opened. Withal higher than three tall men, one above another, and capable of slaying a man with one kick of a hinder leg, yet so timid as to fly before a child or a little dog! One feels rather ashamed of Sir John, after all, for neglecting his opportunities. There is difficulty in the capture of a giraffe, and there is expense. These obstacles, however, and greater ones, have been overcome again and again in time past by the Zoological Society of London, and probably giraffes soon will be seen here again. They are becoming rare even in their own habitat, and an African hunt would be a long and trying one. However, a giraffe is still to be had, and the time is distant when we shall become dependent for the supply upon a forlornly possible giraffe shower. Fish, frogs, and insects in showers are not unknown, while cats and dogs are proverbial. Water-spouts cause these fish and frog showers; in a giraffe transaction it would be necessary to charter rather a strong waterspout, and to stay indoors awhile; all a serious possibility considered from a Maundevillian standpoint.
II. — ZIG-ZAG URSINE
First published in The Strand Magazine, August 1892
A BEAR is an adaptable creature, a philosopher every inch.[2q] He takes everything just as it comes—and doesn't readily part with it. He lives in all sorts of countries, in all manner of weather and climate, merely changing his coat a little to suit the prevailing weather. He will eat honey—when he can get it; when he can't he consoles himself with the reflection that it is bad for the teeth. He is largely a vegetarian, except when meat falls in his way, and although innocently fond of buns, will cheerfully put up with strawberries and cream if they stray in his direction. There is a proverb inculcating the principle of catching the bear before you sell his skin. This, from a business point of view, is obviously absurd. If you can find somebody idiot enough to buy the skin first, and pay cash, why, take it, and let him do the catching. It will save a deal of trouble, and you will probably have a chance of selling the same skin again after the other fellow's funeral.
The bear is indeed a very respectable beast, as beasts go. And he certainly is respected in some quarters. Both the North American Indians and the Lapps reverence him too much even to mention his name in conversation; with them he is "the old man in the fur cloak" or "the destroyer." Indeed, it seems reasonable to feel a certain respect for an animal which can knock the top of your head off with a blow of his paw; but both the Indians and the Lapps carry their respect a little too far. To kill a bear and them humbly apologise to the dead body, as they do, is adding insult to injury, especially if you dine off the injured party immediately afterward. Neither is it likely to propitiate Bruin if a dozen men, while prodding him vigorously with a dozen spears, express their regret for the damage they are doing, and hope that he'll pardon the liberty. All this they do in sober earnest, and even go so far as to proffer a polite request that he won't hurt them. If he ever accedes to this, it is probably because he is confused by the contemplation of such colossal "cheek."
All this is galling enough, though otherwise intended, but contumely reaches its climax when dinner comes on. It would be annoying enough to the shade of the departed gentleman in fur to hear that he made a capital joint, or the reverse; still, it is what might be expected. But this sort of thing they studiously refrain from saying. They talk with enthusiasm of the poor bear's high moral qualities—often inventing them for the occasion, it is to be feared—and, presumably talking at his ghost, tell each other that it was most considerate and indulgent of him to let them kill him so easily. Now this is worse than laying on insult with a trowel; it is piling it on with a shovel, and rubbing it in with a brick.
Contact with man ruins the respectability of the bear. He gets dissipated and raffish, and appears in the dock at police-courts. He associates with low companions—unclean-looking foreigners—who bang him sorely about the ribs with sticks to make him dance. They keep him badly, and he grows bony and mangy. He retaliates upon them by getting loose, frightening people, and breaking things. Then, when he is brought before a magistrate, they have to pay his fine. Sometimes they get into prison over him. The end is always the same—a bear who begins by associating with these people always turns up at the police-court before long, and once there, he comes again and again—just in the manner of the old offenders at Marlborough-street. Even in the innocent old times, when Bidpai wrote (or plagiarised) his fables, association with man made a fool of a bear. Witness the fable of the gardener's bear, who, zealous about a fly on his master's face, brought a paw upon it with all his force, and knocked off an indispensable piece of the worthy gardener's head.
There is nothing whatever recorded against that gardener's character; he probably lived a most exemplary life, and won prizes at all the prehistoric horticultural shows in India—although it might not be strictly correct for a American to say there were no flies on him. But his society made a great ass of that bear.
There was once a belief that bears licked their cubs into shape. If there be anything in this, all the bears in my acquaintance came of very negligent mothers—or, perhaps, of mothers who tried the other sort of licking. They have strength, sagacity, stupidity, gloom, cheerfulness, teeth, hair, claws, position, magnitude, and big feet; but nothing at all like shape. This is why they are able to indulge in such a rich variety of attitudes of rest. With so convenient a want of shape, a bear may be put upon the ground as you please, and so he will lie, without rolling. A bear rests or sleeps just as he falls, as you shall see on any warm day here at the Zoo. Usually, however, he makes an attempt to spread his feet against something. What this is it doesn't matter, so long as he nay reach it with the flat of his foot; he is never perfectly safe, he feels, unless there is a firm foundation for that very large area of sole; considerations of natural gravity he doesn't stop to think about. He has a deal of confidence in the supporting capability of those feet; and, if the table of square measure means anything, he is actively justified So he lies on his back, and plants his feet against the side of his den; or on his side, and plants them against the bars. If there be two, they plant their feet against each other, and, in the sweet communion of sole, fall asleep; if there be only one, he curls up, and opposes his palms to his soles, and falls asleep so. Bango, the hairy-eared bear in the end cage, does this.
A man who once said it was his sole attitude was driven to seek refuge from an infuriated populace in the seal pond. Notwithstanding this, and all that has been said about brute instinct in animals, nobody can gaze at, for instance, Michael, the big brown bear, without seeing at once that his sole is quite big enough for his body, big as that is.
While the family motto of Samson, the big Polar bear, is understood to be, "O my prophetic sole, mine ankle!" This, however, is another story, and relates to Samson's slight lameness in a hind foot. Samson is a fine fellow in the matter of size. The only short thing about him is his tail, unless you count his temper. And there really is some excuse for the short temper. The climate would be a sufficient excuse in itself. It might, perhaps, be reasonable to say that the English climate is sufficient excuse for anybody's shortness of temper, but on the Polar bear it has the effect of that of India on an Englishman.
Both Samson and Mrs. Samson—her name is Lil—manage fairly well in the winter, although they would be the more comfortable for an iceberg or two. But in the summer they keep as much as possible to the coolness of their cave, and look dolefully out at the visitors with just the expression of a fat Cockney when he says, "Ain't it 'orrid 'ot?" Still, Samson has had twenty-one of these summers now, and is bigger and stronger than ever, so that it is plain that his health does not suffer. Lil is only a little bigger than was Samson when he first arrived, and is playful—Samson isn't.
Twenty-one years is a good length of healthy captivity for a bear, but Bango, the hairy-eared bear, has been here since 1867—established a quarter of a century, as the shopkeepers say. Bango lives with a single eye to his own comfort and nourishment, being blind in the other. Still, he can see a bun with his one eye just as quickly as any other bear can with two. Bango has a delusion—he is firmly convinced that by the regulations he is entitled to nine or ten meals a day, in addition to promiscuous snacks. By way of agitating for his rights, he makes a dinner gong of the partition between his cage and the next, punching it vigorously and uproariously for five minutes together whenever it strikes him that a meal is due.
A sad, bad character in bears lives a few doors further down. It is Billy, the sloth-bear. He is the most disreputable, careless, lazy, and unkempt bear on the premises. Perhaps his parents neglected him. Certainly if one bear can have less shape than another, which has none, Billy has. He is more than shapeless; he approaches the nebulous. A sort of vast, indefinite, black mop, with certain very long and ill-kept claws observable in odd places, and now and again a dissolute, confused muzzle, in which a double allowance of lip and a half-allowance of lip mingle indistinguishable.
Billy is usually asleep. He is as fond of eating as any other bear, but fonder still of sleeping. Give him a biscuit while he is lying down, and he will come for it with an indignant expression of muzzle, implying that you are rather a nuisance than otherwise.
Ludlam's dog, says the proverb, was so lazy as to lay his head against the wall to bark. Billy must have been Ludlam's bear. Round at the other side, Joey, Fanny, and Dolly, the little Malayan bears, are certainly not lazy. Dolly will turn a somersault for you with his head (yes, I mean his) in the sawdust, bringing himself over by gripping the bars with his feet. Fanny will do the same thing high up against the bars, climbing a somersault, so to speak. Of course, there is no regular charge for this performance, but neither Fanny nor Dolly will feel disappointed if you contribute a biscuit to the prize fund. Fanny will find the biscuit with her paw, even if it be put out of sight on the ledge before the partition.
But Michael—big Michael, the great brown Russian bear, the largest bear in the place except Samson—doesn't need to trouble to hunt for biscuits. He just opens his mouth, and you throw your contribution in. Now, with most of the bears this is something of a feat of skill, since you may easily pitch a little wide, and fail to score a bull's-eye. But when Michael's mouth opens—let us call him the Grand Duke Michael, by the bye—when the Grand Duke's mouth opens you can't very easily miss it. Go and look at the Grand Duke's mouth and see.
One chiefly respects Kate, the Syrian bear, as a relative of those other Syrian bears that ate the forty-two rude boys who annoyed Elisha. I have sometimes wondered whether these bears, hearing mention of a bald head, had aroused in them any personal feeling in regard to bear's-grease. But, on consideration, I scarcely think this likely, because bear's-grease for the hair is always made from pig. The pretty young Himalayan here can dance if she will, having been taught by the bearward, Godfrey. But she will only dance when she feels "so disposed," and never if asked, which is ungrateful to Godfrey, who has taken pains with her education, and who managed bears long before her grandmother was born.
Menush and Nelly belong to a good family—the American blacks—but have been in trade, in the pit, until quite lately. Having acquired a considerable competence in buns, however, they have now retired into semi-privacy.
They grew so excessively fat, indeed, upon the public bounty, that it became a matter of great difficulty to induce either to climb the pole—and almost as difficult a thing for either do it. Now they live in ease—although, looking at them and remembering that they are sporting characters, one might suppose them to be thinking of taking a quiet public house for the rest of their days.
Punch and Judy have succeeded to the pit business. A few days after they first took possession, two other bears were turned in with them, nameless, but these obviously should be called Toby and the Policeman. When Punch and Judy, young bears and new to the place, first found themselves in the unaccustomed area, they looked about them till their eyes fell in succession upon the pole, the bath, and the floor—circular, and plainly meant as a ring. Here was a gymnasium, ready fitted; wherefore they promptly began a grand inaugural assault-at-arms, lasting most of the day.
There was no distinct separation of the events; plunging, boxing, climbing, and wrestling were mixed in one long show, frequently approaching in character the drama wherefrom Punch and Judy derive their names, with one variation. For Judy is rather larger and stronger than Punch, who accordingly became chief receiver, and this with the utmost good humour. The pair, in the wild delight of comparative freedom in novel surroundings, having executed a prelusive scramble and rampage and a mutual roll in the bath, stood up and sparred carefully for an opening. Judy soon began proceedings with both mawleys, Punch ducking very cleverly and putting in the right on the listening-machine. Not to be denied, Judy bored in, and using right and left scored a decided lead, when Punch, the trickier of the two, observing his partner's back now to be turned to the bath, ducked in, held and back-heeled, both falling a mighty plunge, Punch uppermost, thus finishing round one. Round two consisted chiefly in a persevering attempt by Punch to drag Judy out of the bath, in order to roll in it himself. Round three began by Judy suddenly rising from the water and driving Punch violently up against the pole, from which awkward position he dropped on to four feet and retreated with celerity, suddenly stopping and turning about to deliver a stinger between the eyes.
This round continued an unrecorded length of time, and consisted chiefly of wrestling, the bottom of the bath in the end being about the driest spot in the pit. Rounds four, five, and six consisted of judicious extracts from rounds one, two, and three, in new combinations, and with varying results, the combatants retiring, secundum artem, to their proper corners between each round. Bangs on the smeller, drives in the breadbasket and dexter optic, straight uns on the knowledge-box, rib-benders and ivory-rattlers were fully represented, and there were frequent visitations in the atmospheric department.
As the seventh round was about to begin, a visitor protruded a bun, impaled upon the stick for the purpose provided, near the pole a little way up. Business was immediately suspended, and Judy made for that bun. With some difficulty—Judy wasn't used to the pole, and it shook the more the higher she ascended—she acquired the little present half way up, and descended to where Punch waited to renew the display. But Judy was thoughtful, and indisposed for the noble art. She had found a new thing in life, something to live for and think about—buns. So she thought about them. The place where they were to be found, she reasoned—for she had never noticed the man at the opposite end of the long stick—was up that pole; the pole being probably a bun-tree. So that, whenever disposed for buns, it only needed to climb the pole and find some. Having arrived at this stage in the argument, it seemed to strike her that another bun was desirable, there and then. Wherefore she began another rather nervous climb, her eyes fixed steadily above to where the buns were expected to appear.
The expedition was a failure, and Judy pondered it, with the apparent decision that the buns must be a little higher up. So she started again, and found one! She has got over that little bun-tree superstition by this time, and can climb better. Also she and the others have already broken up entirely five of the sticks upon which buns arrive, thus from time to time cutting off the supply. And although Toby and the Policeman are very useful as seconds at the later boxing matches, very few buns get past Judy. Punch, the hen-pecked and wily, waits good-humouredly at the foot of the pole, and has been known to catch many a bun that Judy climbed for.
Through all the bear-dens you may see bears in attitudes sufficiently human to be quaint and grotesque. A squat like that of an Indian idol, an oddly human looking out of window, or a lounge at the bars, clumsily suggestive of a lounge at a bar in the Strand; and of all the attitudes those of the gentle little Malay are quaintest. A certain bandy human respectability hangs about these small fellows. Dolly, after turning his somersault, will sit and inspect his reward just as a child will examine an apple, judging where to make the first bite. Dolly's great luxury is a cocoanut. He will thrust holes through the eyes at the end with a claw, and drink the milk before proceeding to the kernel. If the eyes are too tough to be pierced, he will lose his temper, like a spoiled child, and smash the nut against the floor; after which he will rush about distracted making wild efforts to drink the milk. I think some sort of a moral lesson might be deduced from this. If so, the gentle reader is at liberty to deduce it, without extra charge.
III. — ZIG-ZAG CAMELINE
First published in The Strand Magazine, September 1892
THE CAMEL is very largely a fraud.[3q] That is to say, he contributes his half share to a very large fraud, and the goody-goody natural history books of childhood's days contribute the other half—perhaps rather more than half. First he is a fraud in the matter of docility—a vile fraud. We read of the kind, patient, intelligent camel, who voluntarily settles on his knees to receive his load, and afterwards carries it for any number of thousands of miles at twenty or thirty miles an hour with nothing to eat and we approve of the camel and his cheapness.
Then there is a proverb which aids the fraud—most proverbs, by-the-bye, aid a fraud of some sort—a proverb about the last straw breaking the camel's back. What a glamour of oppressed, uncomplaining patience that proverb sets about the camel! You imagine the picturesque but inconsiderate Bedouin, having piled his faithful camel with everything he possesses, looking about for something else to crown the structure. There are all his tents, blankets, trunks, bags, rugs, hatboxes, umbrellas, and walking-sticks, with some grocery for Mrs. B. and a wooden horse from the Bagdad Arcade for the little B's. It seems a pity, having a camel, not to load it up enough, so he looks for something else, but can see nothing. Suddenly it strikes him that he has just used a straw to drink a gin-sling, and without for an instant considering what may be the result, he pops it on the top of the rest of the baggage. The patient, loving creature has barely time to give its master one pathetically reproachful look when its back goes with a bang.
Now, this may be the way of the Bedouin, but it isn't the way of the camel. He doesn't wait for the last straw—he won't have the first if he can help it. There's no living thing in the universe that he wouldn't like to bite or kick; and when he isn't engaged in active warfare with creation in general, he is sulking and planning it.
He equally resents being loaded or fed, or banged with a pole. He wants the world for himself, and finding he can't get it, sulks savagely. He has to be shoved forcibly to his knees and tied down by the neck and fore-legs before he is loaded, and while the operation is in progress he grunts and growls like a whole menagerie, and reaches about—he can reach—to masticate people. When he is loaded he won't get up-but he will grunt and bite.
When at last he is persuaded to stand upon his legs he devotes himself to rushing about and scattering his load far and wide—and biting. The unhappy Bedouin's household furniture, hat-boxes, and wooden horse are scattered all over the Syrian Desert, and the unhappy Bedouin himself is worse off than at the beginning; and still the insatiate creature bites. The Bedouin swears—in his own way—hopes that jackals may sit upon the grave of the camel's grandfather, and so forth—and gathers his belongings together preparatory to beginning afresh.
And then, after all this—and supposing that all troubles are overcome and the journey ends without mishap—that delightful camel objects to the baggage being taken off, and growls and bites. It is not mere poetic imagery, it is a wicked joke to call the camel the ship of the desert. To call it even the Carter Paterson of the desert would be to cast reflections upon the business conscientiousness of a very respectable firm. One is disposed to be the harder on the camel because of the goody-book fraud, which is a double-barrelled fraud, telling wonderful stories of the camel's speed. As a matter of fact, the ordinary pack-camel, lightly loaded, is barely up to three miles an hour.
He is a provident beast in the matter of drink. He takes a very long drink when he can get it, and saves it, neatly stowed away, against the drought. As a camel gets older and more experienced, he lays by more and more water in this way arriving in the course of a long and thirsty life at five or six quarts. If he lived a little longer he would probably add whisky.
He is also provident in the matter of food. He feeds on his hump. I see an opportunity of dragging in a joke just here about a perpetually sulky man doing the same, but I refrain. I take the occasion to renounce and disclaim all intention of saying anything about the morose camel always having the hump, or of his contrary disposition giving him a greater hump the more he has to eat. It is vulgar as well as old. The only variation in the facial expression of the camel takes place when he eats. Ordinarily the camel wears an immutable, deceptive, stupid, good-natured grin. This is a wise provision of Nature, leading people to trust and approach him, and giving him opportunities to gnaw their faces off with suddenness and less difficulty; or guilelessly to manoeuvre the victim near a wall, against which he can rub him and smash him flat.
His feeding manners are vulgar, although superior to the tiger's. When he eats he uses his immense lips first as fingers to lift the desired dainty. Then he munches in a zig-zag, using alternately his right upper teeth on his left lower, and vice versa, and swinging his lips riotously. And he chucks up his nose, taking full advantage of his length of neck in swallowing.
