Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
Upon which Toad-in-the-hole, that cursed interrupter, broke out
a-singing--"Et interrogatum est a Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille exercitus?
Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."
"No, no, Toad--you are wrong for once: that army _was_ found, and was all
cut to pieces in the desert. Heavens, gentlemen, what a sublime picture!
The Roman legions--the wilderness--Jerusalem in the distance--an army of
murderers in the foreground!"
Mr. R., a member, now gave the next toast--"To the further improvement of
Tooling, and thanks to the Committee for their services."
Mr. L., on behalf of the committee who had reported on that subject,
returned thanks. He made an interesting extract from the report, by which
it appeared how very much stress had been laid formerly on the mode of
tooling, by the fathers, both Greek and Latin. In confirmation of this
pleasing fact, he made a very striking statement in reference to the
earliest work of antediluvian art. Father Mersenne, that learned Roman
Catholic, in page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one[1] of his
operose Commentary on Genesis, mentions, on the authority of several
rabbis, that the quarrel of Cain with Abel was about a young woman; that,
by various accounts, Cain had tooled with his teeth, [Abelem fuisse
_morsibus_ dilaceratum a Cain;] by many others, with the jaw-bone of an
ass; which is the tooling adopted by most painters. But it is pleasing to
the mind of sensibility to know that, as science expanded, sounder views
were adopted. One author contends for a pitchfork, St. Chrysostom for a
sword, Irenaeus for a scythe, and Prudentius for a hedging-bill. This last
writer delivers his opinion thus:--
"Frater, probatae sanctitatis aemulus,
Germana curvo colla frangit sarculo:"
_i.e_. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his
brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully
submitted by your committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for
it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance
which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as
Chrysostom and Irenaeus."
[Footnote 1: "Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one"--_literally_,
good reader, and no joke at all.]
"Dang Irenaeus!" said Toad-in-the-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the
next toast:--"Our Irish friends; and a speedy revolution in their mode of
tooling, as well as everything else connected with the art!"
"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take
up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good, this
is charming, this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a
little farther, before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the
Irish manufacture. Instantly we loath it; we call to the waiter; we say,
Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely
offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a
murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel
himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered, he finds it to be
Cape; or when, taking up what he takes to be a mushroom, it turns out
what children call a toad-stool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in
principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or
Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we
must import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole sat
down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!"
sufficiently showed that he spoke the general feeling.
The next toast was--"The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"
This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the
question, made a very curious communication to the company:--"Gentlemen,
we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own times: and in fact no
Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing _de rebus
deperditis_. Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the
art _was_ known to the ancients, although like the art of painting upon
glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for
want of encouragement. In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made
by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism: it is a
perfect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at
this moment, but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find
it in his notes on Vopiscus: 'Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well
he might call it "elegans!") ubi medicus et pollinctor de compacto sic
egerunt, ut medicus aegros omnes curae suae commissos occideret:' this was
the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor, for
himself and his assigns, doth undertake and contract duly and truly to
murder all the patients committed to his charge: but why? There lies the
beauty of the case--'Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.'
The _pollinctor_, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to
dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The original ground of the
transaction appears to have been sentimental: 'He was my friend,' says the
murderous doctor; 'he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But
the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these
tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is
essential that a 'consideration' should be given. Now what _was_ the
consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he
will be well paid for his services; but, meantime, the generous, the
noble-minded doctor gets nothing. What _was_ the little consideration
again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall
hear: 'Et ut pollinctor vicissim [Greek: telamonas] quos furabatur de
pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorurn
quos curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of
reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was
also a surgeon: he could not murder _all_ his patients: some of the
surgical patients must be retained intact; _re infecta_. For these he
wanted linen bandages. But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which
account they bathed so often. Meantime, there _was_ linen to be had in
Rome; but it was monstrously dear; and the [Greek: telamones] or linen
swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses,
would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to
furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be
it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with
one half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties
murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his
invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker;) the
undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly
recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a
perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely, and on the gallows, it
is to be hoped, they were not divided.
"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly, when I think of those two friends
drawing and redrawing on each other: 'Pollinctor in account with Doctor,
debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which
damaged.' Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have
been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody
heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably settled in Ireland,
considerably to the west, and does a little business now and then; but, as
he observes with a sigh, only as a retailer--nothing like the fine thriving
wholesale concern so carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. 'You see what comes
of neglecting business,'--is the chief moral, the [Greek: epimutheon],
as AEsop would say, which he draws from his past experience."
At length came the toast of the day--_Thugdom in all its branches_.
The speeches _attempted_ at this crisis of the dinner were past all
counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the
crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again
to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal
to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-in-the-hole now became quite
ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant
for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived
that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or
that, being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in a general
massacre. This we could not think of allowing: it became indispensable,
therefore, to kick him out, which we did with universal consent, the whole
company lending their toes _uno pede_, as I may say, though pitying his
gray hairs and his angelic smile. During the operation the orchestra poured
in their old chorus. The universal company sang, and (what surprised us
most of all) Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing--
"Et interrogatum est ab omnibus--Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-hole
Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."
JOAN OF ARC[1]
IN REFERENCE TO M. MICHELET'S HISTORY OF FRANCE.
What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd
girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the Hebrew shepherd
boy from the hills and forests of Judaea--rose suddenly out of the quiet,
out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more
perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his
patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious _act_, such as no man could
deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read
by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no
pretender: but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all
who saw them _from a station of good will_, both were found true and loyal
to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the
difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose--to a splendor
and a noon-day prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the
records of his people, and became a byeword amongst his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor,
forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest
which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs
that rose in her native Domremy, as echoes to the departing steps of
invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which
celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then
silent: No! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl!
whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and
self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for _thy_ side,
that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the
vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! O no! Honors, if
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.[2] Daughter
of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be
sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not
hear thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor,
but she will be found _en contumace_. When the thunders of universal
France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor
shepherd girl that gave up all for her country--thy ear, young shepherd
girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was
thy portion in this life; to _do_--never for thyself, always for others;
to _suffer_--never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy
own--that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself.
Life, thou saidst, is short: and the sleep which is in the grave, is long!
Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams
destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature--pure
from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was
pure in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded
herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet
her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in
vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators
without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the
surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the
pitying eye that lurked but here and there until nature and imperishable
truth broke loose from artificial restraints; these might not be apparent
through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to
death, _that_ she heard for ever.
Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that
sate upon it: but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sate
upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for _them_; not
she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were
the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their
beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and
man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had
read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland
for _her_. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for _her_.
But stop. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna
precisely in this spring of 1847? Might it not have been left till the
spring of 1947? or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes, but it _is_ called
for; and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst the many original
thinkers, whom modern France has produced, one of the reputed leaders is M.
Michelet. All these writers are of a revolutionary cast; not in a political
sense merely, but in all senses; mad, oftentimes, as March hares; crazy
with the laughing-gas of recovered liberty; drunk with the wine-cup of
their mighty Revolution, snorting, whinnying, throwing up their heels, like
wild horses in the boundless pampas, and running races of defiance with
snipes, or with the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find
nothing else to challenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to
read, may introduce _you_, that have not, to two or three dozen of these
writers; of whom I can assure you beforehand that they are often profound,
and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our best
English blood, and sometimes (because it is not pleasant that people should
be too easy to understand) almost as obscure as if they had been suckled
by transcendental German nurses. But now, confining our attention to M.
Michelet--who is quite sufficient to lead a man into a gallop, requiring
two relays, at least, of fresh readers,--we in England--who know him best
by his worst book, the book against Priests, &c., which has been most
circulated--know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of
incoherence. M. Michelet was light-headed, I believe, when he wrote it:
and it is well that his keepers overtook him in time to intercept a second
part. But his _History of France_ is quite another thing. A man, in
whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he is
linked to the windings of the shore by towing ropes of history. Facts, and
the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from
the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore--in his _France_,--if
not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for
an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never
forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and
gazing upwards in anxiety for his return: return, therefore, he does. But
History, though clear of certain temptations in one direction, has separate
dangers of its own. It is impossible so to write a History of France, or
of England--works becoming every hour more indispensable to the
inevitably-political man of this day--without perilous openings for
assault. If I, for instance, on the part of England, should happen to turn
my labors into that channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to Chevy
Chase)--
----"A vow to God should make
My pleasure in the Michelet woods
Three summer days to take,"
--probably from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into _delirium
tremens_. Two strong angels stand by the side of History, whether French
History or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of Research on the
left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages
blotted with lies; the angel of Meditation on the right hand, that must
cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of
_asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life.
Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of
detail: with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impossible:
but such errors (though I have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service)
are not the game I chase: it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which
M. Michelet writes against England. Even _that_, after all, is but my
secondary object: the real one is Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans for
herself.
I am not going to write the History of _La Pucelle_: to do this, or even
circumstantially to report the history of her persecution and bitter death,
of her struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring judges, it would
be necessary to have before us _all_ the documents, and, therefore, the
collection only now forthcoming in Paris. But _my_ purpose is narrower.
There have been great thinkers, disdaining the careless judgments of
contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far
posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare.
There have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might,
with the same depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of
compatriot friends--too heartless for the sublime interest of their story,
and too impatient for the labor of sifting its perplexities--to the
magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Arc.
The Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not
to relent, after a generation or two, before the grandeur of Hannibal.
Mithridates--a more doubtful person--yet, merely for the magic perseverance
of his indomitable malice, won from the same Romans the only real honor
that ever he received on earth. And we English have ever shown the same
homage to stubborn enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of England;
to say through life, by word and by deed--_Delenda est Anglia Victrix_!
that one purpose of malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people
upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual annuity. Better than an
inheritance of service rendered to England herself, has sometimes proved
the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, even his far inferior son
Tippoo, and Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition amongst
ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic enmity. Not one of these men
was ever capable, in a solitary instance, of praising an enemy--[what
do you say to _that_, reader?] and yet in _their_ behalf, we consent to
forget, not their crimes only, but (which is worse) their hideous bigotry
and anti-magnanimous egotism; for nationality it was not. Suffrein, and
some half dozen of other French nautical heroes, because rightly they did
us all the mischief they could, [which was really great] are names justly
reverenced in England. On the same principle, La Pucelle d'Orleans, the
victorious enemy of England, has been destined to receive her deepest
commemoration from the magnanimous justice of Englishmen.
Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, according to her own
statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Michelet asserts, Jean[3]) d'Arc, was born at
Domremy, a village on the marshes of Lorraine and Champagne, and dependent
upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I have called her a Lorrainer, not simply
because the word is prettier, but because Champagne too odiously reminds
us English of what are for _us_ imaginary wines, which, undoubtedly, _La
Pucelle_ tasted as rarely as we English; we English, because the Champagne
of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; _La Pucelle_, because the
Champagne of Champagne never, by any chance, flowed into the fountain of
Domremy, from which only she drank. M. Michelet will have her to be a
_Champenoise_, and for no better reason than that she "took after her
father," who happened to be a _Champenoise_. I am sure she did _not_: for
her father was a filthy old fellow, whom I shall soon teach the judicious
reader to hate. But, (says M. Michelet, arguing the case physiologically)
"she had none of the Lorrainian asperity;" no, it seems she had only "the
gentleness of Champagne, its simplicity mingled with sense and acuteness,
as you find it in Joinville." All these things she had; and she was worth a
thousand Joinvilles, meaning either the prince so called, or the fine old
crusader. But still, though I love Joanna dearly, I cannot shut my eyes
entirely to the Lorraine element of "asperity" in her nature. No; really
now, she must have had a shade of _that_, though very slightly developed--a
mere soupcon, as French cooks express it in speaking of cayenne pepper,
when she caused so many of our English throats to be cut. But could she do
less? No; I always say so; but still you never saw a person kill even a
trout with a perfectly "Champagne" face of "gentleness and simplicity,"
though, often, no doubt, with considerable "acuteness." All your cooks and
butchers wear a _Lorraine_ cast of expression.
These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domremy stood
upon the frontiers; and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_ race
representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. A river (it is true) formed the
boundary line at this point--the river Meuse; and _that_, in old days,
might have divided the populations; but in these days it did not--there
were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank
to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers, that
were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of
which was the great high road between France and Germany, _decussated_ at
this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St.
Andrew's cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large
X, in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux for
these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education,
by showing him to a hair's breadth where it was that Domremy stood. These
roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty
realms,[4] and haunted for ever by wars or rumors of wars, decussated (for
anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bed-room window;
one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the
other unaccountably preferring (but there's no disputing about tastes) to
sweep round that odious man's odious pigstye to the left.
Things being situated as is here laid down, viz. in respect of the
decussation, and in respect of Joanna's bed-room; it follows that, if she
had dropped her glove by accident from her chamber window into the very
bull's eye of the target, in the centre of X, not one of several great
potentates could (though all animated by the sincerest desires for the
peace of Europe) have possibly come to any clear understanding on the
question of whom the glove was meant for. Whence the candid reader
perceives at once the necessity for at least four bloody wars. Falling
indeed a little farther, as, for instance, into the pigstye, the glove
could not have furnished to the most peppery prince any shadow of excuse
for arming: he would not have had a leg to stand upon in taking such a
perverse line of conduct. But, if it fell (as by the hypothesis it did)
into the one sole point of ground common to four kings, it is clear that,
instead of no leg to stand upon, eight separate legs would have had
no ground to stand upon unless by treading on each other's toes. The
philosopher, therefore, sees clearly the necessity of a war, and regrets
that sometimes nations do not wait for grounds of war so solid.
In the circumstances supposed, though the four kings might be unable to
see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon
Joanna's intention, she--poor thing!--never could mistake her intentions
for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove
she might drop into the _quadrivium_ must be wickedly missent by the
post-office, if it found its way to any king but the king of France.