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CHAPTER IX: AS TO COOKERY AND SCULPTURE
Robert Burns and Homer were seated at a small table in the dining-room of the house-boat, discussing everything in general and the shade of a very excellent luncheon in particular.
“We are in great luck to-day,” said Burns, as he cut a ruddy duck in twain. “This bird is done just right.”
“I agree with you,” returned Homer, drawing his chair a trifle closer to the table. “Compared to the one we had here last Thursday, this is a feast for the gods. I wonder who it was that cooked this fowl originally?”
“I give it up; but I suspect it was done by some man who knew his business,” said Burns, with a smack of his lips. “It’s a pity, I think, my dear Homer, that there is no means by which a cook may become immortal. Cooking is as much of an art as is the writing of poetry, and just as there are immortal poets so there should be immortal cooks. See what an advantage the poet has—he writes something, it goes out and reaches the inmost soul of the man who reads it, and it is signed. His work is known because he puts his name to it; but this poor devil of a cook—where is he? He has done his work as well as the poet ever did his, it has reached the inmost soul of the mortal who originally ate it, but he cannot get the glory of it because he cannot put his name to it. If the cook could sign his work it would be different.”
“You have hit upon a great truth,” said Homer, nodding, as he sometimes was wont to do. “And yet I fear that, ingenious as we are, we cannot devise a plan to remedy the matter. I do not know about you, but I should myself much object if my birds and my flapjacks, and other things, digestible and otherwise, that I eat here were served with the cook’s name written upon them. An omelette is sometimes a picture—”
“I’ve seen omelettes that looked like one of Turner’s sunsets,” acquiesced Burns.
“Precisely; and when Turner puts down in one corner of his canvas, ‘Turner, fecit,’ you do not object, but if the cook did that with the omelette you wouldn’t like it.”
“No,” said Burns; “but he might fasten a tag to it, with his name written upon that.”
“That is so,” said Homer; “but the result in the end would be the same. The tags would get lost, or perhaps a careless waiter, dropping a tray full of dainties, would get the tags of a good and bad cook mixed in trying to restore the contents of the tray to their previous condition. The tag system would fail.”
“There is but one other way that I can think of,” said Burns, “and that would do no good now unless we can convey our ideas into the other world; that is, for a great poet to lend his genius to the great cook, and make the latter’s name immortal by putting it into a poem. Say, for instance, that you had eaten a fine bit of terrapin, done to the most exquisite point—you could have asked the cook’s name, and written an apostrophe to her. Something like this, for instance:
Oh, Dinah Rudd! oh, Dinah Rudd!
Thou art a cook of bluest blood!
Nowhere within
This world of sin
Have I e’er tasted better terrapin.
Do you see?”
“I do; but even then, my dear fellow, the cook would fall short of true fame. Her excellence would be a mere matter of hearsay evidence,” said Homer.
“Not if you went on to describe, in a keenly analytical manner, the virtues of that particular bit of terrapin,” said Burns. “Draw so vivid a picture of the dish that the reader himself would taste that terrapin even as you tasted it.”
“You have hit it!” cried Homer, enthusiastically. “It is a grand plan; but how to introduce it—that is the question.”
“We can haunt some modern poet, and give him the idea in that way,” suggested Burns. “He will see the novelty of it, and will possibly disseminate the idea as we wish it to be disseminated.”
“Done!” said Homer. “I’ll begin right away. I feel like haunting to-night. I’m getting to be a pretty old ghost, but I’ll never lose my love of haunting.”
At this point, as Homer spoke, a fine-looking spirit entered the room, and took a seat at the head of the long table at which the regular club dinner was nightly served.
“Why, bless me!” said Homer, his face lighting up with pleasure. “Why, Phidias, is that you?”
“I think so,” said the new-comer, wearily; “at any rate, it’s all that’s left of me.”
“Come over here and lunch with us,” said Homer. “You know Burns, don’t you?”
“Haven’t the pleasure,” said Phidias.
The poet and the sculptor were introduced, after which Phidias seated himself at Homer’s side.
“Are you any relation to Burns the poet?” the former asked, addressing the Scotchman.
“I am Burns the poet,” replied the other.
“You don’t look much like your statues,” said Phidias, scanning his face critically.
“No, thank the Fates!” said Burns, warmly. “If I did, I’d commit suicide.”
“Why don’t you sue the sculptors for libel?” asked Phidias.
“You speak with a great deal of feeling, Phidias,” said Homer, gravely. “Have they done anything to hurt you?”
“They have,” said Phidias. “I have just returned from a tour of the world. I have seen the things they call sculpture in these degenerate days, and I must confess—who shouldn’t, perhaps—that I could have done better work with a baseball-bat for a chisel and putty for the raw material.”
“I think I could do good work with a baseball-bat too,” said Burns; “but as for the raw material, give me the heads of the men who have sculped me to work on. I’d leave them so that they’d look like some of your Parthenon frieze figures with the noses gone.”
“You are a vindictive creature,” said Homer. “These men you criticise, and whose heads you wish to sculp with a baseball-bat, have done more for you than you ever did for them. Every statue of you these men have made is a standing advertisement of your books, and it hasn’t cost you a penny. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that if it were not for those statues countless people would go to their graves supposing that the great Scottish Burns were little rivulets, and not a poet. What difference does it make to you if they haven’t made an Adonis of you? You never set them an example by making one of yourself. If there’s deception anywhere, it isn’t you that is deceived; it is the mortals. And who cares about them or their opinions?”
“I never thought of it in that way,” said Burns. “I hate caricatures—that is, caricatures of myself. I enjoy caricatures of other people, but—”
“You have a great deal of the mortal left in you, considering that you pose as an immortal,” said Homer, interrupting the speaker.
“Well, so have I,” said Phidias, resolved to stand by Burns in the argument, “and I’m sorry for the man who hasn’t. I was a mortal once, and I’m glad of it. I had a good time, and I don’t care who knows it. When I look about me and see Jupiter, the arch-snob of creation, and Mars, a little tin warrior who couldn’t have fought a soldier like Napoleon, with all his alleged divinity, I thank the Fates that they enabled me to achieve immortality through mortal effort. Hang hereditary greatness, I say. These men were born immortals. You and I worked for it and got it. We know what it cost. It was ours because we earned it, and not because we were born to it. Eh, Burns?”
The Scotchman nodded assent, and the Greek sculptor went on.
“I am not vindictive myself, Homer,” he said. “Nobody has hurt me, and, on the whole, I don’t think sculpture is in such a bad way, after all. There’s a shoemaker I wot of in the mortal realms who can turn the prettiest last you ever saw; and I encountered a carver in a London eating-house last month who turned out a slice of beef that was cut as artistically as I could have done it myself. What I object to chiefly is the tendency of the times. This is an electrical age, and men in my old profession aren’t content to turn out one chef-d’oeuvre in a lifetime. They take orders by the gross. I waited upon inspiration. To-day the sculptor waits upon custom, and an artist will make a bust of anybody in any material desired as long as he is sure of getting his pay afterwards. I saw a life-size statue of the inventor of a new kind of lard the other day, and what do you suppose the material was? Gold? Not by a great deal. Ivory? Marble, even? Not a bit of it. He was done in lard, sir. I have seen a woman’s head done in butter, too, and it makes me distinctly weary to think that my art should be brought so low.”
“You did your best work in Greece,” chuckled Homer.
“A bad joke, my dear Homer,” retorted Phidias. “I thought sculpture was getting down to a pretty low ebb when I had to fashion friezes out of marble; but marble is more precious than rubies alongside of butter and lard.”
“Each has its uses,” said Homer. “I’d rather have butter on my bread than marble, but I must confess that for sculpture it is very poor stuff, as you say.”
“It is indeed,” said Phidias. “For practice it’s all right to use butter, but for exhibition purposes—bah!”
Here Phidias, to show his contempt for butter as raw material in sculpture, seized a wooden toothpick, and with it modelled a beautiful head of Minerva out of the pat that stood upon the small plate at his side, and before Burns could interfere had spread the chaste figure as thinly as he could upon a piece of bread, which he tossed to the shade of a hungry dog that stood yelping on the river-bank.
“Heavens!” cried Burns. “Imperious Cæsar dead and turned to bricks is as nothing to a Minerva carved by Phidias used to stay the hunger of a ravening cur.”
“Well, it’s the way I feel,” said Phidias, savagely.
“I think you are a trifle foolish to be so eternally vexed about it,” said Homer, soothingly. “Of course you feel badly, but, after all, what’s the use? You must know that the mortals would pay more for one of your statues than they would for a specimen of any modern sculptor’s art; yes, even if yours were modelled in wine-jelly and the other fellow’s in pure gold. So why repine?”
“You’d feel the same way if poets did a similarly vulgar thing,” retorted Phidias; “you know you would. If you should hear of a poet to-day writing a poem on a thin layer of lard or butter, you would yourself be the first to call a halt.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Homer, quietly; “in fact, I wish the poets would do that. We’d have fewer bad poems to read; and that’s the way you should look at it. I venture to say that if this modern plan of making busts and friezes in butter had been adopted at an earlier period, the public places in our great cities and our national Walhallas would seem less like repositories of comic art, since the first critical rays of a warm sun would have reduced the carven atrocities therein to a spot on the pavement. The butter school of sculpture has its advantages, my boy, and you should be crowning the inventor of the system with laurel, and not heaping coals of fire upon his brow.”
“That,” said Burns, “is, after all, the solid truth, Phidias. Take the brass caricatures of me, for instance. Where would they be now if they had been cast in lard instead of in bronze?”
Phidias was silent a moment.
“Well,” he said, finally, as the value of the plan dawned upon his mind, “from that point of view I don’t know but what you are right, after all; and, to show that I have spoken in no vindictive spirit, let me propose a toast. Here’s to the Butter Sculptors. May their butter never give out.”
The toast was drained to the dregs, and Phidias went home feeling a little better.
CHAPTER X: STORY-TELLERS’ NIGHT
It was Story-tellers’ Night at the house-boat, and the best talkers of Hades were impressed into the service. Doctor Johnson was made chairman of the evening.
“Put him in the chair,” said Raleigh. “That’s the only way to keep him from telling a story himself. If he starts in on a tale he’ll make it a serial sure as fate, but if you make him the medium through which other story-tellers are introduced to the club he’ll be finely epigrammatic. He can be very short and sharp when he’s talking about somebody else. Personality is his forte.”
“Great scheme,” said Diogenes, who was chairman of the entertainment committee. “The nights over here are long, but if Johnson started on a story they’d have to reach twice around eternity and halfway back to give him time to finish all he had to say.”
“He’s not very witty, in my judgment,” said Carlyle, who since his arrival in the other world has manifested some jealousy of Solomon and Doctor Johnson.
“That’s true enough,” said Raleigh; “but he’s strong, and he’s bound to say something that will put the audience in sympathy with the man that he introduces, and that’s half the success of a Story-tellers’ Night. I’ve told stories myself. If your audience doesn’t sympathize with you you’d be better off at home putting the baby to bed.”
And so it happened. Doctor Johnson was made chairman, and the evening came. The Doctor was in great form. A list of the story-tellers had been sent him in advance, and he was prepared. The audience was about as select a one as can be found in Hades. The doors were thrown open to the friends of the members, and the smoke-furnace had been filled with a very superior quality of Arcadian mixture which Scott had brought back from a haunting-trip to the home of “The Little Minister,” at Thrums.
“Friends and fellow-spooks,” the Doctor began, when all were seated on the visionary camp-stools—which, by the way, are far superior to those in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation—“I do not know why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is the province of the presiding officer on occasions of this sort to say pleasant things, which he does not necessarily endorse, about the sundry persons who are to do the story-telling. Now, I suppose you all know me pretty well by this time. If there is anybody who doesn’t, I’ll be glad to have him presented after the formal work of the evening is over, and if I don’t like him I’ll tell him so. You know that if I can be counted upon for any one thing it is candor, and if I hurt the feelings of any of these individuals whom I introduce to-night, I want them distinctly to understand that it is not because I love them less, but that I love truth more. With this—ah—blanket apology, as it were, to cover all possible emergencies that may arise during the evening, I will begin. The first speaker on the programme, I regret to observe, is my friend Goldsmith. Affairs of this kind ought to begin with a snap, and while Oliver is a most excellent writer, as a speaker he is a pebbleless Demosthenes. If I had had the arrangement of the programme I should have had Goldsmith tell his story while the rest of us were down-stairs at supper. However, we must abide by our programme, which is unconscionably long, for otherwise we will never get through it. Those of you who agree with me as to the pleasure of listening to my friend Goldsmith will do well to join me in the grill-room while he is speaking, where, I understand, there is a very fine line of punches ready to be served. Modest Noll, will you kindly inflict yourself upon the gathering, and send me word when you get through, if you ever do, so that I may return and present number two to the assembly, whoever or whatever he may be?”
With these words the Doctor retired, and poor Goldsmith, pale with fear, rose up to speak. It was evident that he was quite as doubtful of his ability as a talker as was Johnson.
“I’m not much of a talker, or, as some say, speaker,” he said. “Talking is not my forte, as Doctor Johnson has told you, and I am therefore not much at it. Speaking is not in my line. I cannot speak or talk, as it were, because I am not particularly ready at the making of a speech, due partly to the fact that I am not much of a talker anyhow, and seldom if ever speak. I will therefore not bore you by attempting to speak, since a speech by one who like myself is, as you are possibly aware, not a fluent nor indeed in any sense an eloquent speaker, is apt to be a bore to those who will be kind enough to listen to my remarks, but will read instead the first five chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield.”
“Who suggested any such night as this, anyhow?” growled Carlyle. “Five chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield for a starter! Lord save us, we’ll need a Vicar of Sleepfield if he’s allowed to do this!”
“I move we adjourn,” said Darwin.
“Can’t something be done to keep these younger members quiet?” asked Solomon, frowning upon Carlyle and Darwin.
“Yes,” said Douglas Jerrold. “Let Goldsmith go on. He’ll have them asleep in ten minutes.”
Meanwhile, Goldsmith was plodding earnestly through his stint, utterly and happily oblivious of the effect he was having upon his audience.
“This is awful,” whispered Wellington to Bonaparte.
“Worse than Waterloo,” replied the ex-Emperor, with a grin; “but we can stop it in a minute. Artemas Ward told me once how a camp-meeting he attended in the West broke up to go outside and see a dog-fight. Can’t you and I pretend to quarrel? A personal assault by you on me will wake these people up and discombobulate Goldsmith. Say the word—only don’t hit too hard.”
“I’m with you,” said Wellington. Whereupon, with a great show of heat, he roared out, “You? Never! I’m more afraid of a boy with a bean-snapper that I ever was of you!” and followed up his remark by pulling Bonaparte’s camp-chair from under him, and letting the conqueror of Austerlitz fall to the floor with a thud which I have since heard described as dull and sickening.
The effect was instantaneous. Compared to a personal encounter between the two great figures of Waterloo, a reading from his own works by Goldsmith seemed lacking in the elements essential to the holding of an audience. Consequently, attention was centred in the belligerent warriors, and, by some odd mistake, when a peace-loving member of the assemblage, realizing the indecorousness of the incident, cried out, “Put him out! put him out!” the attendants rushed in, and, taking poor Goldsmith by his collar, hustled him out through the door, across the deck, and tossed him ashore without reference to the gang-plank. This accomplished, a personal explanation of their course was made by the quarrelling generals, and, peace having been restored, a committee was sent in search of Goldsmith with suitable apologies. The good and kindly soul returned, but having lost his book in the mêlée, much to his own gratification, as well as to that of the audience, he was permitted to rest in quiet the balance of the evening.
“Is he through?” said Johnson, poking his head in at the door when order was restored.
“Yes, sir,” said Boswell; “that is to say, he has retired permanently from the field. He didn’t finish, though.”
“Fellow-spooks,” began Johnson once more, “now that you have been delighted with the honeyed eloquence of the last speaker, it is my privilege to present to you that eminent fabulist Baron Munchausen, the greatest unrealist of all time, who will give you an exhibition of his paradoxical power of lying while standing.”
The applause which greeted the Baron was deafening. He was, beyond all doubt, one of the most popular members of the club.
“Speaking of whales,” said he, leaning gracefully against the table.
“Nobody has mentioned ’em,” said Johnson.
“True,” retorted the Baron; “but you always suggest them by your apparently unquenchable thirst for spouting—speaking of whales, my friend Jonah, as well as the rest of you, may be interested to know that I once had an experience similar to his own, and, strange to say, with the identical whale.”
Jonah arose from his seat in the back of the room. “I do not wish to be unpleasant,” he said, with a strong effort to be calm, “but I wish to ask if Judge Blackstone is in the room.”
“I am,” said the Judge, rising. “What can I do for you?”
“I desire to apply for an injunction restraining the Baron from using my whale in his story. That whale, your honor, is copyrighted,” said Jonah. “If I had any other claim to the affection of mankind than the one which is based on my experience with that leviathan, I would willingly permit the Baron to introduce him into his story; but that whale, your honor, is my stock in trade—he is my all.”
“I think Jonah’s point is well taken,” said Blackstone, turning to the Baron. “It would be a distinct hardship, I think, if the plaintiff in this action were to be deprived of the exclusive use of his sole accessory. The injunction prayed for is therefore granted. The court would suggest, however, that the Baron continue with his story, using another whale for the purpose.”
“It is impossible,” said Munchausen, gloomily. “The whole point of the story depends upon its having been Jonah’s whale. Under the circumstances, the only thing I can do is to sit down. I regret the narrowness of mind exhibited by my friend Jonah, but I must respect the decision of the court.”
“I must take exception to the Baron’s allusion to my narrowness of mind,” said Jonah, with some show of heat. “I am simply defending my rights, and I intend to continue to do so if the whole world unites in considering my mind a mere slot scarcely wide enough for the insertion of a nickel. That whale was my discovery, and the personal discomfort I endured in perfecting my experience was such that I resolved to rest my reputation upon his broad proportions only—to sink or swim with him—and I cannot at this late day permit another to crowd me out of his exclusive use.”
Jonah sat down and fanned himself, and the Baron, with a look of disgust on his face, left the room.
“Up to his old tricks,” he growled as he went. “He queers everything he goes into. If I’d known he was a member of this club I’d never have joined.”
“We do not appear to be progressing very rapidly,” said Doctor Johnson, rising. “So far we have made two efforts to have stories told, and have met with disaster each time. I don’t know but what you are to be congratulated, however, on your escape. Very few of you, I observe, have as yet fallen asleep. The next number on the programme, I see, is Boswell, who was to have entertained you with a few reminiscences; I say was to have done so, because he is not to do so.”
“I’m ready,” said Boswell, rising.
“No doubt,” retorted Johnson, severely, “but I am not. You are a man with one subject—myself. I admit it’s a good subject, but you are not the man to treat of it—here. You may suffice for mortals, but here it is different. I can speak for myself. You can go out and sit on the banks of the Vitriol Reservoir and lecture to the imps if you want to, but when it comes to reminiscences of me I’m on deck myself, and I flatter myself I remember what I said and did more accurately than you do. Therefore, gentlemen, instead of listening to Boswell at this point, you will kindly excuse him and listen to me. Ahem! When I was a boy—”
“Excuse me,” said Solomon, rising; “about how long is this—ah—this entertaining discourse of yours to continue?”
“Until I get through,” returned Johnson, wrathfully.
“Are you aware, sir, that I am on the programme?” asked Solomon.
“I am,” said the Doctor. “With that in mind, for the sake of our fellow-spooks who are present, I am very much inclined to keep on forever. When I was a boy—”
Carlyle rose up at this point.
“I should like to ask,” he said, mildly, “if this is supposed to be an audience of children? I, for one, have no wish to listen to the juvenile stories of Doctor Johnson. Furthermore, I have come here particularly to-night to hear Boswell. I want to compare him with Froude. I therefore protest against—”
“There is a roof to this house-boat,” said Doctor Johnson. “If Mr. Carlyle will retire to the roof with Boswell I have no doubt he can be accommodated. As for Solomon’s interruption, I can afford to pass that over with the silent contempt it deserves, though I may add with propriety that I consider his most famous proverbs the most absurd bits of hack-work I ever encountered; and as for that story about dividing a baby between two mothers by splitting it in two, it was grossly inhuman unless the baby was twins. When I was a boy—”
As the Doctor proceeded, Carlyle and Solomon, accompanied by the now angry Boswell, left the room, and my account of the Story-tellers’ Night must perforce stop; because, though I have never heretofore confessed it, all my information concerning the house-boat on the Styx has been derived from the memoranda of Boswell. It may be interesting to the reader to learn, however, that, according to Boswell’s account, the Story-tellers’ Night was never finished; but whether this means that it broke up immediately afterwards in a riot, or that Doctor Johnson is still at work detailing his reminiscences, I am not aware, and I cannot at the moment of writing ascertain, for Boswell, when I have the pleasure of meeting him, invariably avoids the subject.
