As an instance of the dangers, for the Clergy themselves, introduced by this new movement, let me mention the fact that, according to my experience, Clergymen of this school are specially apt to retail comic anecdotes, in which the most sacred names and wordssometimes actual texts from the Bibleare used as themes for jesting. Many such things are repeated as having been originally said by children, whose utter ignorance of evil must no doubt acquit them, in the sight of God, of all blame; but it must be otherwise for those who consciously use such innocent utterances as material for their unholy mirth.
Let me add, however, most earnestly, that I fully believe that this profanity is, in many cases, ^conscious : the ' environment' (as I have tried to explain at p. 123) makes all the difference between man and man ; and I rejoice to think that many of these profane storieswhich I find so painful to listen to, and should feel it a sin to repeatgive to their ears no pain, and to their consciences no shock ; and that they can utter, not less sincerely than myself, the two prayers, " Hallowed be Thy Name," and " from hardness of heart, and contempt of Thy Word and Commandment, Good Lord, deliver us!" To which I would desire to add, for their sake and for my own, Keble's beautiful petition, help us, this and every day, To live more nearly as we pray I" It is, in fact, for its consequences—for the grave dangers, both to speaker and to hearer, which it involves—rather than for what it is in itself that I mourn over this clerical habit of profanity in social talk. To the believing hearer it brings the danger of loss of reverence for holy things, by the mere act of listening to, and enjoying, such jests ; and also the temptation to retail them for the amusement of others. To the unbelieving hearer it brings a welcome confirmation of his theory that religion is a fable, in the spectacle of its accredited champions thus betraying their trust. And to the speaker himself it must surely bring the danger of loss of faith. For surely such jests, if uttered with no consciousness of harm, must necessarily be also uttered with no consciousness, at the moment, of the reality of God, as a living being, who hears all we say. And he, who allows himself the habit of thus uttering holy words, with no thought of their meaning, is but too likely to find that, for him, God has become a myth, and heaven a poetic fancy—that, for him, the light of life is gone, and that he is at heart an atheist, lost in " a darkness that may be felt?
There is, I fear, at the present time, an increasing tendency to irreverent treatment of the name of God and of subjects connected with religion. Some of our theatres are helping this downward movement by the gross caricatures of clergymen which they put upon the stage: some of our clergy are themselves helping it, by showing that they can lay aside the spirit of reverence, along with their surplices, and can treat as jests, when outside their churches, names and things to which they pay an almost superstitious veneration when inside: the u Salvation Army" has, I fear, with the best intentions, done much to help it, by the coarse familiarity with which they treat holy things : and surely every one, who desires to live in the spirit of the prayer " Hallowed be thy Name" ought to do what he can, however little that may be, to check it. So I have gladly taken this unique opportunity, however unfit the topic may seem for the Preface to a book of this kind, to express some thoughts which have weighed on my mind for a long time. I did not expect, when I wrote the Preface to Vol. I, that it would be read to any appreciable extent : but I rejoice to believe, from evidence that has reached me, that it has been read by many, and to hope that this Preface will also be so : and I think- that, among them, some will be found ready to sympathise with the views I have put forwards, and ready to help, with their prayers and their example, the revival, in Society, of the waning spirit of reverence.
Christmas, 1893.
CHAPTER ONE
BRUNO’S LESSONS
DURING the next month or two my solitary town-life seemed, by contrast, unusually dull and tedious. I missed the pleasant friends I had left behind at Elveston—the genial interchange of thought—the sympathy which gave to one’s ideas a new and vivid reality: but, perhaps more than all, I missed the companionship of the two Fairies—or Dream-Children, for I had not yet solved the problem as to who or what they were—whose sweet playfulness had shed a magic radiance over my life.
In office-hours—which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee-mill or a mangle—time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one’s own dreary musings, one strove—all in vain—to people the vacant air with the dear faces of absent friends, that the real bitterness of solitude made itself felt.
One evening, feeling my life a little more wearisome than usual, I strolled down to my Club, not so much with the hope of meeting any friend there, for London was now ‘out of town’, as with the feeling that here, at least, I should hear ‘sweet words of human speech’, and come into contact with human thought.
However, almost the first face I saw there was that of a friend. Eric Lindon was lounging, with rather a ‘bored’ expression of face, over a newspaper; and we fell into conversation with a mutual satisfaction which neither of us tried to conceal.
After a while I ventured to introduce what was just then the main subject of my thoughts. ‘And so the Doctor’ (a name we had adopted by a tacit agreement, as a convenient compromise between the formality of ‘Doctor Forester’ and the intimacy—to which Eric Lindon hardly seemed entitled—of ‘Arthur’) ‘has gone abroad by this time, I suppose? Can you give me his present address?’
‘He is still at Elveston—I believe,’ was the reply. ‘But I have not been there since I last met you.’
I did not know which part of this intelligence to wonder at most. ‘And might I ask—if it isn’t taking too much of a liberty—when your wedding-bells are to—or perhaps they have rung, already?’
‘No,’ said Eric, in a steady voice, which betrayed scarcely a trace of emotion: ‘that engagement is at an end. I am still "Benedick the unmarried man".’
After this, the thick-coming fancies—all radiant with new possibilities of happiness for Arthur—were far too bewildering to admit of any further conversation, and I was only too glad to avail myself of the first decent excuse, that offered itself, for retiring into silence.
The next day I wrote to Arthur, with as much of a reprimand for his long silence as I could bring myself to put into words, begging him to tell me how the world went with him.
Needs must that three or four days—possibly more—should elapse before I could receive his reply; and never had I known days drag their slow length along with a more tedious indolence.
To while away the time, I strolled, one afternoon, into Kensington Gardens, and, wandering aimlessly along any path that presented itself, I soon became aware that I had somehow strayed into one that was wholly new to me. Still, my elfish experiences seemed to have so completely faded out of my life that nothing was further from my thoughts than the idea of again meeting my fairy-friends, when I chanced to notice a small creature moving among the grass that fringed the path, that did not seem to be an insect, or a frog, or any other living thing that I could think of. Cautiously kneeling down, and making an ex tempore cage of my two hands, I imprisoned the little wanderer, and felt a sudden thrill of surprise and delight on discovering that my prisoner was no other than Bruno himself!
Bruno took the matter very coolly, and, when I had replaced him on the ground, where he would be within easy conversational distance, he began talking, just as if it were only a few minutes since last we had met.
‘Doos oo know what the Rule is,’ he enquired, ‘when oo catches a Fairy, withouten its having tolded oo where it was?’
(Bruno’s notions of English Grammar had certainly not improved since our last meeting.)
‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know there was any Rule about it.’
‘I think oo’ve got a right to eat me,’ said the little fellow, looking up into my face with a winning smile. ‘But I’m not pruffickl
y sure. Oo’d better not do it wizout asking.’
It did indeed seem reasonable not to take so irrevocable a step as that, without due enquiry. ‘I’ll certainly ask about it, first,’ I said. ‘Besides, I don’t know yet whether you would be worth eating!’
‘I guess I’m deliciously good to eat,’ Bruno remarked in a satisfied tone, as if it were something to be rather proud of.
‘And what are you doing here, Bruno?’
‘That’s not my name!’ said my cunning little friend. ‘Don’t oo know my name’s "Oh Bruno!"? That’s what Sylvie always calls me, when I says mine lessons.’
‘Well then, what are you doing here, oh Bruno?’
‘Doing mine lessons, a-course!’ With that roguish twinkle in his eye, that always came when he knew he was talking nonsense.
‘Oh, that’s the way you do your lessons, is it? And do you remember them well?’
‘Always can ‘member mine lessons,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s Sylvie’s lessons that’s so dreffully hard to ‘member!’ He frowned, as if in agonies of thought, and tapped his forehead with his knuckles. ‘I ca’n’t think enough to understand them!’ he said despairingly.
‘It wants double thinking, I believe!’
‘But where’s Sylvie gone?’
‘That’s just what I want to know!’ said Bruno disconsolately. ‘What ever’s the good of setting me lessons, when she isn’t here to ‘splain the hard bits?’
‘I’ll find her for you!’ I volunteered; and, getting up, I wandered round the tree under whose shade I had been reclining, looking on all sides for Sylvie. In another minute I again noticed some strange thing moving among the grass, and, kneeling down, was immediately confronted with Sylvie’s innocent face, lighted up with a joyful surprise at seeing me, and was accosted, in the sweet voice I knew so well, with what seemed to be the end of a sentence whose beginning I had failed to catch.
‘—and I think he ought to have finished them by this time. So I’m going back to him. Will you come too? It’s only just round at the other side of this tree.’
It was but a few steps for me; but it was a great many for Sylvie; and I had to be very careful to walk slowly, in order not to leave the little creature so far behind as to lose sight of her.
To find Bruno’s lessons was easy enough: they appeared to be neatly written out on large smooth ivy-leaves, which were scattered in some confusion over a little patch of ground where the grass had been worn away; but the pale student, who ought by rights to have been bending over them, was nowhere to be seen: we looked in all directions, for some time in vain; but at last Sylvie’s sharp eyes detected him, swinging on a tendril of ivy, and Sylvie’s stern voice commanded his instant return to terra firma and to the business of Life.
‘Pleasure first and business afterwards’ seemed to be the motto of these tiny folk, so many hugs and kisses had to be interchanged before anything else could be done.
‘Now, Bruno,’ Sylvie said reproachfully, ‘didn’t I tell you you were to go on with your lessons, unless you heard to the contrary?’
‘But I did heard to the contrary!’ Bruno insisted, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
‘What did you hear, you wicked boy?’
‘It were a sort of noise in the air,’ said Bruno: ‘a sort of a scrambling noise. Didn’t oo hear it, Mister Sir?’
‘Well, anyhow, you needn’t go to sleep over them, you lazy-lazy!’ For Bruno had curled himself up, on the largest ‘lesson’, and was arranging another as a pillow.
‘I wasn’t asleep!’ said Bruno, in a deeply-injured tone. ‘When I shuts mine eyes, it’s to show that I’m awake!’
‘Well, how much have you learned, then?’
‘I’ve learned a little tiny bit,’ said Bruno, modestly, being evidently afraid of overstating his achievement. ‘Ca’n’t learn no more!’
‘Oh Bruno! You know you can, if you like.’
‘Course I can, if I like,’ the pale student replied; ‘but I ca’n’t if I don’t like!’
Sylvie had a way—which I could not too highly admire—of evading Bruno’s logical perplexities by suddenly striking into a new line of thought; and this masterly stratagem she now adopted.
‘Well, I must say one thing—’
‘Did oo know, Mister Sir,’ Bruno thoughtfully remarked, ‘that Sylvie ca’n’t count? Whenever she says "I must say one thing", I know quite well she’ll say two things! And she always doos.’
‘Two heads are better than one, Bruno,’ I said, but with no very distinct idea as to what I meant by it.
‘I shouldn’t mind having two heads,’ Bruno said softly to himself: ‘one head to eat mine dinner, and one head to argue wiz Sylvie—doos oo think oo’d look prettier if oo’d got two heads, Mister Sir?’
The case did not, I assured him, admit of a doubt.
‘The reason why Sylvie’s so cross—’ Bruno went on very seriously, almost sadly.
Sylvie’s eyes grew large and round with surprise at this new line of enquiry—her rosy face being perfectly radiant with good humour. But she said nothing.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to tell me after the lessons are over?’ I suggested.
‘Very well,’ Bruno said with a resigned air: ‘only she wo’n’t be cross then.’
‘There’s only three lessons to do,’ said Sylvie. ‘Spelling, and Geography, and Singing.’
‘Not Arithmetic?’ I said.
‘No, he hasn’t a head for Arithmetic—’
‘Course I haven’t!’ said Bruno. ‘Mine head’s for hair. I haven’t got a lot of heads!’
‘—and he ca’n’t learn his Multiplication-table—’
‘I like History ever so much better,’ Bruno remarked. ‘Oo has to repeat that Muddlecome table—’
‘Well, and you have to repeat—’
‘No, oo hasn’t!’ Bruno interrupted. ‘History repeats itself. The Professor said so!’
Sylvie was arranging some letters on a board—E—V—I—L. ‘Now, Bruno,’ she said, ‘what does that spell?’
Bruno looked at it, in solemn silence, for a minute. ‘I know what it doesn’t spell!’ he said at last.
‘That’s no good,’ said Sylvie. ‘What does it spell?’
Bruno took another look at the mysterious letters. ‘Why, it’s "LIVE", backwards!’ he exclaimed. (I thought it was, indeed.)
‘How did you manage to see that?’ said Sylvie.
‘I just twiddled my eyes,’ said Bruno, ‘and then I saw it directly. Now may I sing the King-fisher Song?’
‘Geography next,’ said Sylvie. ‘Don’t you know the Rules?’
‘I think there oughtn’t to be such a lot of Rules, Sylvie! I thinks—’
‘Yes, there ought to be such a lot of Rules, you wicked, wicked boy! And how dare you think at all about it? And shut up that mouth directly!’
So, as ‘that mouth’ didn’t seem inclined to shut up of itself, Sylvie shut it for him—with both hands—and sealed it with a kiss, just as you would fasten up a letter.
‘Now that Bruno is fastened up from talking,’ she went on, turning to me, ‘I’ll show you the Map he does his lessons on.’
And there it was, a large Map of the World, spread out on the ground. It was so large that Bruno had to crawl about on it, to point out the places named in the ‘King-fisher Lesson’.
‘When a King-fisher sees a Lady-bird flying away, he says "Ceylon, if you Candia!" And when he catches it, he says "Come to Media! And if you’re Hungary or thirsty, I’ll give you some Nubia!" When he takes it in his claws, he says "Europe!" When he puts it into his beak, he says "India!" When he’s swallowed it, he says "Eton!" That’s all.’
‘That’s quite perfect,’ said Sylvie. ‘Now, you may sing the King-fisher Song.’
‘Will oo sing the chorus?’ Bruno said to me.
I was just beginning to say ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the words’, when Sylvie silently turned the map over, and I found the words were all written on the back. In one re
spect it was a very peculiar song: the chorus to each verse came in the middle, instead of at the end of it. However, the tune was so easy that I soon picked it up, and managed the chorus as well, perhaps, as it is possible for one person to manage such a thing. It was in vain that I signed to Sylvie to help me: she only smiled sweetly and shook her head.
‘King Fisher courted Lady Bird—
Sing Beans, sing Bones, sing Butterflies!
"Find me my match," he said, "With such a noble head—
With such a beard, as white as curd—
With such expressive eyes!"
‘"Yet pins have heads," said Lady Bird—
Sing Prunes, sing Prawns, sing Primrose-Hill!
"And, where you stick them in,They stay, and thus a pin Is very much to be preferredTo one that’s never still!"
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 44
