The Casual Ward: Academic and Other Oddments

“Well,” said Pluto, “we’ll see what can be done, on that assumption. It does rather limit possibilities, though, doesn’t it? You see I have to confess that, considering it’s the nineteenth century, we are a little behind the times – no great variety in the matter of punishments.”

“Why don’t you bring them up to date?” asked the visitor.

“Practically,” he replied, “it’s a question of expense. With funds, I could do much more. Roasting over a slow fire, for instance, is good: they have that in another place: but just think of the coal bill! Then viva-voceing and vivisecting without anæsthetics are of course admirable; but the cost of expert labour involved would be ruinous. Result is, that nearly all my penalties are self-acting and consequently simple in design; and, on the whole, except in the case of blasés people who come here with a too varied experience, they answer tolerably well.”

“All right,” said the Tutor, “suggest an occupation.”

“Let me see,” said the Ruler of the Shades, and he pondered a few moments. “How would it be, now, if you were to take a turn with our friend Sisyphus? He rolls a big stone up a hill, and just as he thinks it’s going to get to the top, down it comes again – most disappointing. Quite inexpensive, and very healthy, I should say, and really, as an object-lesson in the force of gravity, not uninstructive.”

“Won’t do at all,” replied the Tutor. “In the Vacations I was always walking up hills and having to come down before I got to the top. Then in the Term I used to teach Logic to passmen; and really, if you think – ”

“Yes, yes,” Pluto agreed; “the occupations would be practically identical. Of course, that won’t suit you. Well, then, there’s Ixion, who goes round on a wheel.”

“I’m a bicyclist myself,” objected the Tutor.

“Are you? Pity, too, because Ixion says his wheel’s old-fashioned; he wants a new one with pneumatic tyres warranted puncturable, which shows that he is really entering into the spirit of the thing. You might have had his old one for a song, I’m sure. However, what do you say to calling on those Danaid girls, and getting them to teach you their little industry? There, again, you have simplicity itself. Take a can with a hole in the bottom, go on pouring water into it – ”

“I thought I told you,” murmured the deceased, wearily, “that I have followed the profession of teaching.”

“Very true; I had forgotten. Don’t know what we can do to suit you, really! Perhaps you’d like to imitate Theseus —sedet aeternumque sedebit, as Virgil said. Astonishing how Virgil picked these details up! There’s old Theseus, sitting like a hen. They say he’s as tired of sitting as if he were a rowing-man.”

“As an ex-member of the Board of the Faculty of Arts – ” began the Tutor.

“Ah, dear me!” replied Pluto. “Then that won’t do either? Those Boards must be excellent from my point of view. I have often wished I had one or two down here. But I’m really afraid we’re getting to the end of the list. And, you know, if we can’t provide you with anything, back you’ll have to go. I won’t keep you, eating your head off. But, talk of eating! shall I put you up beside Prometheus, and ask his eagle to do a little overtime work by taking a turn at your liver? I am afraid we could hardly stand you a private eagle all to yourself. It is said to be quite painful; I really don’t think you can have gone through that, with all your experience.”

“Oh yes I have,” returned the Tutor; “a long course of Hall dinners has familiarized me with every possibility in the way of liver trouble. The eagle business would be the merest crambe repetita.”

“Bless the man!” cried Pluto, justly provoked. “Very well; then you can’t stay here, that’s all. I’ve given you all the alternatives Hades has at its disposal, and you tell us you have been through them all in your University! All I can say is, you had better go back to it, and stay there.”

“The Bursar,” said the Tutor, “will not be best pleased to see me again. He thinks he has got my Fellowship, and is going to use it for the benefit of the College farms. I can tell you he won’t like it one bit when I reappear at the College Meeting.”

“The Bursar and I shall have plenty of time for an explanation – later,” said Pluto.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF MR. BULL 2

I have been a good deal distressed lately by the reverses of my friend John Bull, who is one of the leading tradesmen in this town. Everybody knows his establishment. It does a very large business indeed: you can get practically everything there – coals, Lee-Metford rifles, chocolate, biscuits, steam-engines, Australian mutton, home and colonial produce of every kind, in short. My old friend is tremendously proud of his shop, which, as he says, he has made what it is by strict honesty (and really for an enterprising tradesman he is fairly honest) and attention to business principles. He has put a deal of capital into it, and spares no expense in advertising; in fact, he keeps a regular department for poetry, which is written on the premises and circulated among customers and others, and explains in the most beautiful language that the house in Britannia Road is the place to go to for everything. John, who prides himself on his literary taste, considers this to be the finest poetry ever written; and Mrs. Bull reads it out to him in the evening before he has his regular snooze after supper.

Everything was going on swimmingly until this unfortunate Hooligan trouble began. I must explain to you that Mr. Bull owns a great deal more property than the actual premises where he transacts business. Somehow or other, in course of time he has become the proprietor of bits and scraps all over the town and suburbs – tenements, waste lands, eligible building sites, warehouses, and what not – the whole making up what, if it was put together, would be a very considerable estate. How it all came into John Bull’s hands nobody knows properly; indeed, I don’t think he does himself. Some of it was bought, and bought pretty dear too. Some of it was left to him. A good deal of it he – one doesn’t like using the word, but still – well, in fact, took; but, mind you, he always took everything for its good, and for the ultimate benefit of society, not for any selfish reasons; so that to call Mr. Bull a pirate, as Dubois does who keeps the toy-shop over the way, is manifestly absurd. Anyhow, it is a very fine property, and would be bigger still if Jonathan C., a cousin of the family, hadn’t taken off a good slice which used to belong to John.

As I was saying, this property is a very large straggling affair, most of it a long way off from the shop. Its owner finds it very hard to look after every part; all the more so, because this town has no regular police, and is therefore continually troubled by gangs of roughs, who go about breaking windows and even heads, and doing damage generally. They are always giving a great deal of trouble to the Bull people; and what makes it worse is that very often they are actually tenants on the property, who ought to know better. One of these Hooligan crowds lately made a dead set against poor John; it was all the harder because to my personal knowledge he had shown himself most kind and forgiving to various members of this particular gang; and once before, when they came and broke his windows, he refused to prosecute, and simply gave them five shillings to drink Mrs. Bull’s health and not do it again. That is the kind of man he is, sometimes. In spite of this indulgent and charitable treatment, they came the other day and made a raid into an outlying corner of his property and did all sorts of damage; and not content with this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull’s adjacent tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a disgrace to civilization. And when Mr. Bull’s watchman (I told you there is no regular police force, and everybody has to look after himself), when Thomas Atkins, I say, came with orders to turn them out, they told him to go – I hardly like to say where – and absolutely refused to stir; quite the contrary; they hid themselves behind rubbish-heaps and hoardings and such like, and threw things at Thomas; and when he tried to catch them, they ran away and hid behind more hoardings, so that when you thought they were in one place they were always somewhere else, and the poor watchman got so knocked about with stones and brickbats that the next morning, when he came round to the shop to report progress, he had a black eye, and a cut head, and a torn coat, and a nasty bruise on one of his legs. Mrs. Bull had to patch up his coat and give him some arnica and vaseline.

Poor Mr. Atkins! He is a most respectable man, and an excellent watchman, as was his father before him. It is a tradition of the Atkins family that they are as brave as lions, and do not know what fear is; but unfortunately they are not always very clever, and Thomas is a little slow at learning, and does not pick up new tricks readily. His father had a tremendous hammer-and-tongs battle with the Dubois’ watchman once, right in the middle of the public street – thirty-six rounds or so they had of it – and licked him, as John Bull says, in true British style; and that is always Thomas’s way, and the only thing that he understands properly; none of your underhand dodges like hiding behind places and throwing brickbats when one isn’t looking. So that the Hooligan ways of fighting were quite too much for him at first. And although Mr. Bull spent a lot of money in buying him a new watchman’s rattle and a very expensive second-hand truncheon, nearly as good as the best kind, still it was all no good, and Thomas couldn’t turn the invaders out.

All this time you must not suppose that Mr. Bull’s neighbours had nothing to say about the matter. On the contrary, they were very much interested and, I am sorry to say, pleased. Dubois the Frenchman, and Müller, the man who keeps the World’s Cheap Emporium, and Alexis Ivanovitch, the big cornfactor in the next street who is always maltreating his workmen, were never tired of saying nasty things about Mr. Bull and crowing over the mishaps of Mr. Atkins. Everybody knows what a terrible quarrel there was some years ago between Müller and Dubois, and how Müller went into the toyshop and thrashed the Frenchman then and there, so that poor Dubois had to go to bed for a week, and for a long time afterwards used to go about vowing vengeance. But this didn’t in the least prevent the two from fraternizing on the common ground of enmity to John Bull. They would meet – by accident, of course – just under his windows, and then Müller would say, very loud, to Dubois, “Is it not ridiculous, my friend, that this once apparently so mighty Herr Bull and his watchman should again by the Hooliganish crowd have been defeated?” Or perhaps, “This is what comes of your big businesses and your straggling premises with no one to protect them. How much better to have a small compact business (though it’s not so small either, mind you) like my Emporium, by a large number of properly trained watchmen defended!” And Dubois would say, – so that it annoyed the Bull household very much indeed, – “Behold the fruits of being a pirate and a robber. Conspuez M. Atkins! Justice for ever! À bas les Juifs!” (he always says that now when he is angry – goodness only knows why). Indeed Dubois got so excited that he actually thought of breaking John’s windows, though on reflection he decided that he wouldn’t do it just yet. And John was very cross with Atkins and the shopboy, and even with Mrs. Bull and his son J. Wellington Bull, and caused it to be generally known that he would knock Dubois’s head off for sixpence if he got the chance. Then Paddy Gilhooly, who is a tenant of the Bulls’, in Hibernia Road – and a shocking bad tenant, too, who never pays any rent when he can help it, and keeps his premises in a disgraceful condition, with a lot of pigs and poultry running about in the front parlour – this Paddy must needs put his finger in the pie and turn against his own landlord, so that whenever Mr. Atkins came along Hibernia Road Paddy would put his head out of window and shout, “Hooligans for iver! More power to th’ inimy! Crunchy aboo!” and other similar observations, of which no one took the least notice, because it was the way with the Gilhooly family. Still, it was very ungrateful of Paddy, after all John’s kindness to him; besides being painful to Mr. Atkins, who is a near cousin of the Gilhoolys and would not wish to be disgraced by the conduct of his relations. I don’t know why it is, but somehow or other Mr. Bull has not the gift of making himself generally popular. Time after time he has lent Paddy money; and as for Müller and Dubois, if they want good advice on the proper conduct of their business, they know where to come for it: but they don’t seem to appreciate the privilege. In short, if it wasn’t for that little bankrupt wine merchant Themistocles Papageorgios, whom John saved some time ago from the consequences of litigation with a Turkish firm, I doubt if my poor friend has one sincere wellwisher among all the townsmen.

However, I am glad to say that most of them have begun to change their tune lately, thanks to Mr. Bull’s luck being on the mend. Thomas Atkins did not make a very good start, certainly; but as time went on he learnt a number of new tricks, and the violent exercise which he had to take put him into excellent training. Moreover, some cousins of the Bulls showed a very proper family spirit, and sent the eldest son, Larry, to help Mr. Atkins. So, what with Thomas being, so to speak, a new man, and Larry being very strong and active, and the shopboy coming out to lend a hand when required, the three between them began to turn the tables. They caught two or three of the marauders at last, and had them locked up; and I sincerely hope and trust that they will do the same with all the rest very soon. This seems to have produced a great change in the sentiments of Mr. Bull’s fellow-citizens. Müller is not nearly so contemptuous as he used to be about Atkins; and Dubois, I suppose, has remembered that he is going to have a big summer sale this year, and that it would be very embarrassing, under the circumstances, to be embroiled with an influential person like this brave M. Bull, as he calls him now. Only Ivanovitch is still very sulky and goes on using violent expressions. I am afraid there will be trouble yet between my poor friend and the cornfactor – though goodness knows the town ought to be big enough to hold both of them. But the fact is they have both got mortgages on a china shop in the suburbs which is in a bad way financially, and it makes them as jealous of each other as possible.

Evidently this Hooligan affair is not going to last for ever; and, on the whole, if things don’t get worse, Bull may congratulate himself on having done pretty well so far. But it has hit him rather hard. What with buying things for Mr. Atkins and paying him for working overtime, and having had to put up new fire-proof shutters, and sending out the shopboy away from his duties to help Atkins and Larry, he has lost a deal of money, one way and another; and besides, as he is very much afraid of this kind of thing happening again, it looks as if the whole business of the shop were going to be put on a different footing. For here is J. Wellington Bull, who was to have helped behind the counter, going out now to do watchman’s duty with the others; and as likely as not the old man himself will have to take to patrolling his property instead of looking after his customers; so that, in all probability, there will be no one but Mrs. B. to see after the shop. And, as John said to me the other day, these are no times for leaving a business to be managed by old women.

He says he has seen enough of that kind of thing.

THE NATION IN ARMS

This is the tale that is told of an almost universally respected Minister,Who, being fully aware of the views of Continental Potentates, and their plans ambitious and sinister,For the better defence of his native land, and to free her from continual warlike alarms,Determined that he would popularize the conception (and a very good one too) of a Nation in Arms!Now this is the way he proceeded to fan the flame of patriot ardour —(This metre looks at first as easy to write as blank verse, or Walt Whitman, but is in reality considerably harder), —He assured his crowded audience that, while everyone must deprecate a horrid, militant, Jingoist attitude,Not to serve one’s country – at least on Saturday afternoons – was the very blackest ingratitude:Death on the battlefield, – or at least the expense of buying a uniform, – was the patriots’ chiefest glory;Dulce et decorum est (said the statesman, amid thunderous cheers) pro patria mori!Everyone should be ready to defend his hearth and home, be it humble cot or family mansion,Provided always that he discouraged a tendency to Militarism and Imperial Expansion:That was the habit of mind which a Briton’s primary duty to stifle was,Seeing that the country’s salvation lay rather with the intelligent, spontaneous, disinterested volunteer who didn’t care how obsolete the pattern of his rifle was:Too much skill in shooting or drill was a perilous thing, and he did not mean to acquire it,For fear of alarming peace-loving Emperors and such-like by display of a combative spirit;Regular armies tended to that: and in view of the state of international conditions heMeant to cut down our own to the minimum consistent with Guaranteed Efficiency, —Being convinced as he was that an army recruited and trained on a properly peaceful principleWould be wholly (and here comes a rhyme that won’t please the mere purist, but I’m sorry to say it’s the only available one) wholly, I say, and completely invincible!This being so, he did not propose to devise any scheme or with cut-and-dried details to fetter aPatriot Public which quite understood of itself that England Expects – et cetera.After this oratorical burst, as the country next day was informed by about two hundred reporters,The Right Honourable Gentleman resumed his seat amid loud and continuous applause, having spoken for two hours and three quarters.The Public at once declared with unanimity so remarkable that nothing would well surpass itThat patriotic self-sacrifice was a Priceless National Asset:No rational person, they said, could fail to be deeply impressed by the charmsOf that truly august conception, a Nation in Arms:To become expert in the use of strictly defensive weapons, spear or sword, Lee-Metford, torpedo, or sabre,Was a duty – if not for oneself, yet incumbent without any shadow of doubt on one’s neighbour;Still there were some who might possibly urge that the world was at peace, and the time was not ripe yet for it, —Besides the undoubted fact that a patriot who was asked to sacrifice his Saturday half-holiday might legitimately inquire what he was likely to get for it;So on the whole while they recognized quite (what a metre this is, to be sure!) that the Minister’s scheme was replete with attraction,They decided to wait for a while (what with the danger of encouraging a spirit of Militarism and a number of other excellent reasons) before putting his plan into action.Then the Continental Potentates – and if I venture at all to allude to them, it isOnly to show how all this Nation-in-Arms business may lead to the most regrettable extremities:This part of my poem in short most painful and sad to a lover of peace is,And in fact I believe I can deal with it best by a delicate use of the figure Aposiopesis —However – the net result was that a time arrived when Consols went down to nothing at all, caddies in thousands were thrown out of work and professional footballers docked of their salary,And several League matches had to be played at a lamentable financial loss in the absence of the usual gallery!Then, some time after that (it’s really impossible to say what happened in between) when business at last had resumed its usual working,And the nation in general was no longer engaged in painfully realistic manœuvres, on the Downs, between Guildford and Dorking, —Then the public met and resolved like the person whose case is recorded in fableThat now that the steed had been stolen (or at least suffered from exposure to the air) it was high time to close the door of the stable;And that never again no more should their cricket-fields, football grounds, croquet lawns, bunkers,Be profaned by the feet of Cossacks, Chasseurs, Bashi-Bazouks, or Junkers;And I don’t think they talked very big about Nations in Arms, or inscribed on their banners any particularly inspiring motto,But they learnt to shoot and to drill, not more or less but quite well – in spite of the dangers of Militarism – for the plain and simple reason that they’d got to!

THE INCUBUS

Essence of boredom! stupefying Theme!   Whereon with eloquence less deep than full,Still maundering on in slow continuous stream,   All can expatiate, and all be dull:Bane of the mind and topic of debate   That drugs the reader to a restless doze,Thou that with soul-annihilating weight   Crushest the Bard, and hypnotisest thoseWho plod the placid path of plain pedestrian Prose:Lo! when each morn I carefully peruse   (Seeking some subject for my painful pen)The Times, the Standard, and the Daily News,   No other topic floats into my kenSave this alone: or Dr. Clifford slates   Dogmas in general: or the dreadful banOf furious Bishops excommunicates   Such simple creeds as Birrell, hopeful man!Thinks may perhaps appease th’ unwilling Anglican.Lo! at Society’s convivial board   (Whereat I do occasionally sit,In hope to bear within my memory stored   Some echo thence of someone else’s wit),Or e’er the soup hath yielded to the fish,   A heavy dulness doth the banquet freeze:Lucullus’ self would shun th’ untasted dish   When lovely woman whispers, “Tell me, please,What are Denominational Facilities?”From scenes like these my Muse would fain withdraw:   To Taff’s still Valley be my footsteps led,Where happy Unions ’neath the shield of Law   Heave bricks bisected at the Blackleg’s head:In those calm shades my desultory oat   Of Taxed Land Values shall contented trill,Of Man ennobled by a Single Vote, —   In short, I’ll sing of anything you will,Except of thee alone, O Education Bill!

THE WORKING MAN

(After seeing his Picture in the Press)Working Man! whose psychic beauty   (Unattainable by me)Still it is my pleasing duty   Painted by your friends to see, —You, whose virtues ne’er can bore us,   Daily through their list we scan,Let me swell th’ admiring chorus,   Let me hymn the Working Man!You whose Leaders, highly moral,   Always shocked by war’s alarms,Could not in their country’s quarrel   Contemplate the use of arms,Yet, should strikes provide occasion,   Then by higher promptings ledDo with more than moral suasion   Break the erring Blackleg’s head: —You, whose intellectual state is   Such that you are aiming atGetting all your culture gratis   (Not that you’re alone in that), —Always with the strict injunction   That whate’er be false or trueEvery teacher’s simple function   Is to teach what pleases you: —Not to gain by learned labour   Any sordid quid pro quo:Not to rise above your neighbour   (Comrades ne’er are treated so):Not to change your lowly station,   Not for rank and not for pelf,Academic education   Only, only for itself, —Yet in whose commercial dealings   Vainly we attempt to findThose disinterested feelings   Which adorn the Student’s mind, —Seeing that, O my high-souled brothers!   There your dream of happinessIs (like mine, and several others’)   Earning more for working less!’Tis not that I blame your getting   Anything you think you can:’Tisn’t that which I’m regretting,   Noble British Working Man!No – although the facts I mention   Sometimes wake a mild surprise —Still – the truth’s beyond contention —   You are good, and great, and wise:Swell my taxes: stint my fuel:   Last, to close the painful scene,Send me, rather just than cruel,   Send me to the guillotine:Ere the knife bisects my spinal   Cord, and ends my vital span,This shall be my utterance final,   Bless the British Working Man!

CONCERNING A MILLENNIUM

They tell me the Millennium’s come   (And I should be extremely gladCould I but feel assured, like some,   It had):They tell me of a bright To Be   When, freed from chains that tyrants forgeBy the Right Honourable D.   Lloyd George,We shall by penalties persuade   The idle unrepentant GreatTo serve (inadequately paid)   The State, —All working for the general good,   While painful guillotines confrontThe individual who could   And won’t:But horny-handed sons of toil,   Who now purvey our meats and drinks,Our gardens devastate, and spoil   Our sinks,Shall seldom condescend to take   That inconsiderable sumFor which they daily butch, and bake,   And plumb;Such humble votaries of trade   No more shall follow arts like these;Since most of them will then be made   M.P.s!* * * * *And can I then (with some surprise   You ask) possess my tranquil soul,And view with calm indifferent eyes   The Poll,While partisans, in raucous tones,   With doleful wail or joyful shoutProclaim that Brown is in, or Jones   Is out?I can: I do: the reason’s plain:   That blissful day which prophets paintPerhaps may come: perhaps again   It mayn’t:And ere these ages blest begin   (For Rome, I’ve heard historians say,Was only partly finished in   A day)In men of sentiments sublime   ’Tis possible we yet may traceThe influence of mellowing Time   And PLACE: —O who can tell?  Ere Labour rouse   Its ever-multiplying hordesTo mend or end th’ obstructive House   Of Lords,And bid aristocrats begone,   And their hereditary pelfBestow with generous hand upon   Itself —Why, Mr. George, – his threats forgot   Which Earls and Viscounts cowering hear, —Himself may be, as like as not,   A Peer!