On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (4 page)

I took up the letter, I say, and carefully examined the outside. It
was written in the hand of an educated man. It was almost illegible,
and had all the appearance of what an honest citizen of some culture
might write to one hurriedly about some personal matter. I noticed
that it had come from the eastern central district, but when you
consider what an enormous number of people live there during the
day, that did not prejudice me against it.

Now, when I opened this letter, I found it written a little more
carefully, but still, written, not printed, or typewritten, or
manifolded, or lithographed, or anything else of that kind. It was
written.

The art of writing … but Patience! Patience!…

It was written. It was very cordial, and it appealed directly, only
the style was otiose, but in matters of the first importance style
is a hindrance.

_Telephone No. 666.

The Mercury,

15th Nishan 5567.

Dear Sir,—Many people wonder, especially in your profession,_
[what is It?]
why a certain Taedium Vitae seizes them towards
five o'clock in the afternoon. The stress and hurry of modern life
have forced so many of Us to draw upon Our nervous energy that We
imagine that
[Look at that 'that'! The whole Elizabethan
tradition chucked away!] _We are exceeding our powers, and when
this depression comes over Us, we think it necessary to take a rest,
and Let up from working. This is an erroneous supposition. What it
means is that Our body has received insufficient nutriment during
the last twenty-four hours, and that Nature is craving for more
sustenance.

We shall be very happy to offer you, through the medium of this
paper, a special offer of our Essence of The Ox. This offer will
only remain open until Derby Day, during which period a box of our
Essence of The Ox will be sent to you Free, if you will enclose the
following form, and send it to Us in the stamped envelope, which
accompanies this letter.

Very faithfully yours,_

It seemed to me a most extraordinary thing. I had never written for
Ullmo and his
Mercury
, and I could do them no good in the world,
either here or in Johannesburg. I was never likely to write for
him at all. He is not very pleasant; He is by no means rich; He is
ill-informed. He has no character at all, apart from rather unsuccessful
money-grubbing, and from a habit of defending with some virulence,
but with no capacity, his fellow money-grubbers throughout the
world. However, I thought no more about it, and went on reading
about "Vivisection."

Two days later I got a letter upon thick paper, so grained as to
imitate oak, and having at the top a coat-of-arms of the most
complicated kind. This coat-of-arms had a little lamb on it,
suspended by a girdle, as though it were being slung on board ship;
there were also three little sheaves of wheat, a sword, three
panthers, some gules, and a mullet. Above it was a helmet, and there
were two supporters: one was a man with a club, and the other was
another man without a club, both naked. Underneath was the motto,
"Tout à Toi." This second letter was very short.

Dear Sir,—Can you tell me why you have not answered Our letter
re the Essence of the Ox? Derby Day is approaching, and the
remaining time is very short. We made the offer specially to you,
and we had at least expected the courtesy of an acknowledgment. You
will understand that the business of a great newspaper leaves but
little time for private charity, but we are willing to let the offer
remain open for three days longer, after which date—

How easy it would be to criticise this English! To continue:

—after which date the price will inevitably be raised to One
Shilling.—We remain, etc.

I had this letter framed with the other, and I waited to see what
would happen, keeping back from the bank for fear of frightening the
fish, and hardly breathing.

What happened was, after four or five days, a very sad letter which
said that Ullmo expected better things from me, but that He knew
what the stress of modern life was, and how often correspondence
fell into arrears. He sent me a smaller specimen box of the Essence
of The Ox. I have it still.

And there it is. There is no moral; there is no conclusion or
application. The world is not quite infinite—but it is
astonishingly full. All sorts of things happen in it. There are all
sorts of different men and different ways of action, and different
goals to which life may be directed. Why, in a little wood near
home, not a hundred yards long, there will soon burst, in the spring
(I wish I were there!), hundreds of thousands of leaves, and no one
leaf exactly like another. At least, so the parish priest used to
say, and though I have never had the leisure to put the thing to the
proof, I am willing to believe that he was right, for he spoke with
authority.

I appeal loudly to the Muse of History (whose name I forget and you
never knew) to help me in the description of this house, for—

The Muse of Tragedy would overstrain herself on it;

The Muse of Comedy would be impertinent upon it;

The Muse of Music never heard of it;

The Muse of Fine Arts disapproved of it;

The Muse of Public Instruction … (Tut, tut! There I was nearly
making a tenth Muse! I was thinking of the French Ministry.)

The Muse of Epic Poetry did not understand it;

The Muse of Lyric Poetry still less so;

The Muse of Astronomy is thinking of other things;

The Muse Polyhymnia (or Polymnia, who, according to Smith's
Dictionary of Antiquities
, is commonly represented in a
pensive attitude) has no attribute and does no work.

And as for little Terpsichore whose feet are like the small waves in
summer time, she would laugh in a peal if I asked her to write,
think of, describe, or dance in this house (and that makes eleven
Muses. No matter; better more than less).

Yet it was a house worthy of description and careful inventory, and
for that reason I have appealed to the Muse of History whose
business it is to set down everything in order as it happens,
judging between good and evil, selecting facts, condensing
narratives, admitting picturesque touches, and showing her further
knowledge by the allusive method or use of the dependent clause.
Well then, inspired, I will tell you exactly how that house was
disposed. First, there ran up the middle of it a staircase which,
had Horace seen it (and heaven knows he was the kind of man to live
in such a house), he would have called in his original and striking
way "Res Angusta Domi," for it was a narrow thing. Narrow do I call
it? Yes—and yet not so narrow. It was narrow enough to avoid all
appearance of comfort or majesty, yet not so narrow as to be quaint
or snug. It was so designed that two people could walk exactly
abreast, for it was necessary that upon great occasions the ladies
should be taken down from the drawing-room by the gentlemen to the
dining-room, yet it would have been a sin and a shame to make it
wider than that, and the house was not built in the days of
crinolines. Upon these occasions it was customary for the couples to
go down in order and in stately fashion, and the hostess went last;
but do not imagine that there was any order of precedence. Oh, no!
Far from it, they went as they were directed.

This staircase filled up a kind of Chimney or Funnel, or rather
Parallelepiped, in the house: half-way between each floor was a
landing where it turned right round on itself, and on each floor a
larger landing flanked by two doors on either side, which made four
altogether. This staircase was covered with Brussels carpet (and let
me tell you in passing that no better covering for stairs was ever
yet invented; it wears well and can be turned, and when the uppers
are worn you can move the whole thing down one file and put the steps
where the uppers were. None of your cocoanut stuff or gimcracks for
the honest house: when there is money you should have Brussels, when
you have none linoleum—but I digress). The stair-rods were of brass
and beautifully polished, the banisters of iron painted to look like
mahogany; and this staircase, which I may take to be the emblem of a
good life lived for duty, went up one pair, and two pair, and three
pair—all in the same way, and did not stop till it got to the top.
But just as a good life has beneath it a human basis so this (heaven
forgive me!) somewhat commonplace staircase changed its character
when it passed the hall door, and as it ran down to the basement had
no landing, ornament, carpet or other paraphernalia, but a sound
flight of stone steps with a cold rim of unpainted metal for the hand.

The hall that led to these steps was oblong and little furnished.
There was a hat-rack, a fireplace (in which a fire was not lit) and
two pictures; one a photograph of the poor men to whom the owner
paid weekly wages at his Works, all set out in a phalanx, or rather
fan, with the Owner of the House (and them) in the middle, the other
a steel engraving entitled "The Monarch of the Forest," from a
painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. It represented a stag and was very
ugly.

On the ground floor of the House (which is a libel, for it was some
feet above the ground, and was led up to by several steps, as the
porch could show) there were four rooms—the Dining-room, the
Smoking-room, the Downstairs-room and the Back-room. The Dining-room
was so called because all meals were held in it; the Smoking-room
because it was customary to smoke all over the house (except the
Drawing-room); the Back-room because it was at the back, and the
Downstairs-room because it was downstairs. Upon my soul, I would
give you a better reason if I had one, but I have none. Only I may
say that the Smoking-room was remarkable for two stuffed birds, the
Downstairs-room from the fact that the Owner lived in it and felt at
ease there, the Back-room from the fact that no one ever went into
it (and quite right too), while the Dining-room—but the Dining-room
stands separate.

The Dining-room was well carpeted; it had in its midst a large
mahogany table so made that it could get still larger by the
addition of leaves inside; there were even flaps as well. It had
eleven chairs, and these in off-times stood ranged round the wall
thinking of nothing, but at meal times were (according to the number
wanted) put round the table. It is a theory among those who believe
that a spirit nourishes all things from within, that there was some
competition amongst these chairs as to which should be used at
table, so dull, forlorn and purposeless was their life against the
wall. Seven pictures hung on that wall; not because it was a mystic
number, but because it filled up all the required space; two on each
side of the looking-glass and three large ones on the opposite wall.
They were all of them engravings, and one of them at least was that
of a prominent statesman (Lord Beaconsfield), while the rest had to
do with historical subjects, such as the visit of Prince Albert to
the Exhibition of 1851, and I really forget what else. There was a
Chiffonier at the end of the room in which the wines and spirits
were kept, and which also had a looking-glass above it; also a white
cloth on the top for no reason on earth. An arm-chair (in which the
Owner sat) commonly stood at the head of the table; this remained
there even between meals, and was a symbol that he was master of the
house. Four meals were held here. Breakfast at eight, dinner at one,
tea at six, and a kind of supper (when the children had gone to bed)
at nine or so. But what am I saying—
quo Musa Historiae
tendis?
—dear! dear! I thought I was back again in the old
times! a thousand pardons. At the time my story opens—and closes
also for that matter (for I deal of the Owner and the House
in
articulo mortis
so to speak; on the very edge of death)—it was
far otherwise. Breakfast was when you like (for him, however, always
at the same old hour, and there he would sit alone, his wife dead,
his son asleep—trying to read his newspaper, but staring out from
time to time through the window and feeling very companion-less).
Dinner was no longer dinner; there was "luncheon" to which nobody
came except on Saturdays. Then there was another thing (called by
the old name of dinner) at half-past seven, and what had happened to
supper no one ever made out. Some people said it had gone to
Prince's, but certainly the Owner never followed it there.

On the next floor was the Drawing-room, noted for its cabinet of
curiosities, its small aquarium, its large sofa, its piano and its
inlaid table. The back of the drawing-room was another room beyond
folding doors. This would have been convenient if a dance had ever
been given in the house. On the other side were the best bedroom and
a dressing-room. Each in its way what might be expected, save that at
the head of the best bed were two little pockets as in the time of our
grandfathers; also there was a Chevalier looking-glass and on the
dressing-table a pin-cushion with pins arranged in a pattern. The
fire-place and the mantelpiece were of white marble and had on them
two white vases picked out in bright green, a clock with a bronze
upon it representing a waiter dressed up partly in fifteenth-century
plate and partly in twelfth-century mail, and on the wall were two
Jewish texts, each translated into Jacobean English and illuminated
with a Victorian illumination. One said: "He hath prevented all my
ways." The other said: "Wisdom is better than Rubies." But the gothic
"u" was ill made and it looked like "Rabies." There was also in the
room a good wardrobe of a kind now difficult to get, made out of cedar
and very reasonable in arrangement. There was, moreover (now it occurs
to me), a little table for writing on; there was writing paper with
"Wood Thorpe" on it, but there were no stamps, and the ink was dry in
the bottles (for there were two bottles).