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Letters From Troy |
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Title: Letters From Troy Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch [More Titles by Quiller-Couch] ADDRESSED TO RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABBYSSINIA.
We were at first a good deal annoyed on finding that the Act allowed Troy but eleven Parish Councillors. We have never had less than sixty-five on our Regatta Committee, and we had believed Local Self-Government to be at least as important as a Regatta. We argued this out at some length last night, and the Chairman--Lawyer Thoms-- admitted that we had reason on our side. But his instructions were definite, and he could not (as he vivaciously put it) fly in the face of the Queen and two Houses of Parliament. We saw that his regret was sincere, and so contented ourselves with handing in seventy-two nomination papers for the eleven places, just to mark our sense of the iniquity of the thing. In another matter we worked round the intention of the Act more successfully. We have never been able to understand why the Liberal party in the House of Commons should object to Local Self-Government taking place in public-houses. The objection implies a distrust of the people. And it so happens that down here we always take a glass of grog before inaugurating an era; we should as soon think of praetermitting this as of launching a ship without cracking a bottle on her stem. So we asked the Chairman, and finding there was no law to prevent us, we ordered in half a dozen trays from the "King of Prussia," across the way. The Vicar, who is a particular man about his food and drink, pulled out a pocket Vesuvius and a bottle of methylated spirit, and boiled his kettle in the ante-room. Well, there we were sitting in the Town Hall, as merry as grigs, each man with his pipe and glass, and ready for any amount of Self-Government. And the Chairman stood up and briefly explained the business of the meeting. He said the Parish Councils Act was the logical result of Magna Charta, and would have the effect of making us all citizens of our own parish; and that as the expense of this would come upon the rates, we should endeavour to use our hardly won enfranchisement with moderation. "We had met to choose eleven good men and true to administer the parish business for the coming year, or to nominate as many good men and true as we pleased. If more than eleven were nominated"--this was foolishness, for he could see there was hardly a man in the room that hadn't a nomination paper in his hand--"he would ask for a show of hands, and any candidate defeated upon this might demand a poll. He hoped we would vote in no spirit of sectarian or partisan bitterness, but as impartial citizens jealous only for the common weal; at the same time he was not in favour of letting down the Squire, Sir Felix Felix-Williams, too easily." So we handed up our nomination papers, and while the Chairman and overseers were checking them off by the register, Old Pilot James got upon his legs. He said that as long as he could remember--man and boy--he had always practised carols in that very Town Hall upon the first Tuesday in December. The Vicar--as soon as he had done boiling the kettle in the next room--would come in and confirm his words. The practices were held on the first Tuesday in December, and on each successive Tuesday until St. Thomas's Day, when they had one extra. If St. Thomas's Day fell on a Tuesday, then the extra practice would be on Wednesday. He had received no notice of the change. Thomas Rabling rose and explained that at a meeting held last Saturday, the singers had agreed to postpone the first practice in view of Local Self-Government. Mr. James had been present and had not objected. George William Oke--a blockmaker, who had never sung a carol or attended a practice in his life--stood up and said, rather unnecessarily, that this was the first _he'd_ heard of it. Old Pilot James, answering Mr. Rabling, admitted that he might have been present at the meeting on Saturday. But he was deaf, as everybody knew--and Mr. Rabling no less than the rest--and hadn't heard a word of what was said. If he had, he should have objected. But, deaf or not deaf, he still took a delight in singing; and, if only as a matter of principle, he was going to sing, "_God rest you merry, gentlemen_," then and there. He was an old man, and they might turn him out if they liked; but he warned them it would be brutal, and might lead to a summons. Well, the Chairman was making a long business of the nomination papers: so just to pass the time we let the old man sing. It seemed churlish, too, not to join in the chorus; and by and by the whole meeting was singing with a will. We sang "_Tidings of Comfort and Joy_," and "_I saw Three Ships_," and the _Cherry-tree Carol_, and "_Dives and Lazarus_." We had come to that verse where Dives is carried off to sit on the serpent's knee, when the Chairman rose and said that only five of the nomination papers were spoilt, and he declared sixty-seven ladies and gentlemen to be duly nominated. We all pricked up our ears at the word "ladies." However, there turned out to be one lady only; and when the Chairman read out her name, her husband--a naval pensioner, William Carclew--stood up and explained that he had only meant it for a joke upon the old woman, just to give her a start, and he hoped it would go no farther. This seemed fair and natural enough; but the Chairman said if Mrs. Carclew wished to withdraw her name she had better do so at once by word of mouth. So Carclew had to run home and fetch her. While he was gone we finished "_Dives and Lazarus_." In five minutes' time back came Carclew, followed by Mrs. Carclew, who announced--in a rich brogue--that since her man had conspired to put this fool's trick upon her, why now she would stand, begob! "Arrah now, people, people, and a gay man he'll look houlding the babby, while I'm afther superinthendin' the Parush!" So the Chairman declared her duly nominated. It will surprise me if she does not head the poll on the 17th. The Chairman now invited us to interrogate the candidates, if we wished. By this time we were getting pretty well into the way of Self-Government, and all enjoying it amazingly. Of course our lady candidate, Mrs. Carclew, had the first few questions; but these were mostly jocular and domestic, and I am bound to say the lady gave as good as was brought. The only sensible question came from Old Pilot James, who asked if she believed in the ballot. For his part he had never given a vote for anybody since Forster brought in the ballot in 'seventy-one. He favoured peace and quiet; and he liked to walk up to the hustings and give his vote, and hear 'em say, "Well done!" or "You '--' old scoundrel!" as the case might be. He didn't mind being called "a '--' old scoundrel," provided it was said to him by a gentleman who weighed his words. Since Forster brought in the ballot he had always gone to the poll regular. He always took his paper and wrote opposite the names: "_Shan't say a word. Got my living to get. Yours obediently, Matthias James_"--and would advise everybody else to do the same. After him, Renatus Hansombody, carpenter, rose at the back of the hall and announced that he had a question to put to the Doctor. The Doctor, by the way, is one of the most popular of the candidates. "I should like," said Mr. Hansombody, "to ask the Doctor if he will kindly explain to the company Clauses 5, 6, and 13 of the new Act?" The Chairman protested that this would occupy more time than the meeting had to spare. "In that case," said Mr. Hansombody, "I will confine myself to a test question. The Act provides that the Chairman of a Parish Meeting is to be elected by the Meeting. Now suppose the votes for two gentlemen are equal. In such a case what would the Doctor advise? For until you have a Chairman elected, there is no Chairman to give a casting vote." The Doctor thought that, since we had long ago elected a Chairman by acclamation, the question was superfluous. "And you call him a straightforward man!" Mr. Hansombody exclaimed, turning round on the Meeting. "What I say is, are we to have pusillanimity in our first Parish Council? What I say is, that a gentleman who gives a working man such an answer to such a question--" At this point the door opened and a shrill voice asked, "Is Hansombody here?" "I am here," said Hansombody, "to expose impostors!" "Because if so, he must please come home at once. Mrs. Hansombody's cryin'-out!" "I always said," remarked Old Pilot James, "that this cussed Act would scare half the women in the Parish before their time." "Beggin' your pard'n, Doctor," began his denouncer lamely. "Not at all, not at all," said the Doctor. "We must keep these matters altogether outside the sphere of party politics." (_Loud cheering_.) "Then I'll have to ask you to step along with me." The two political opponents picked up their hats, and left the room together. The Chairman rose as the door closed behind them. "I think," he said, "this should be a lesson to us to accept the Act in the spirit in which it was given. If nobody else wishes to ask a question, I will now take a show of hands: but I warn you all it'll be a dreary business." At this, the first hint of tedium, the company rose, drained their glasses, and made for the door, leaving the sixty-six remaining candidates to vote for themselves.
I doubted, but did not contradict him. "There's one thing," he added; "Ironmonger Loveday has laid in a whole stock of sixpenny fire-balloons for to-night: and there isn't a breath of wind. His boy's very clever with the scissors and paste: and he've a-stuck a tissue-paper text on each--'Success to the Charter of our Liberties,' and 'Rule Britannia' and 'God Speed the Plough'; and nothing more than the sixpence charged."
Ah, my dear Prince, if you could only tell me what he exclaimed, you would restore a whole parish to its natural slumbers. For indeed he is playing the deuce with our nights, here in Troy, that guileless Tyrolean. How trivial are the immediate causes of great events! On New Year's Day our excellent Vicar, having bought himself a Whitaker's Almanack for 1895, presented his last year's copy to the Working Men's Reading Room. In itself you would have thought this action of the Vicar's signified no more than a generous desire to keep his parishioners abreast of the times. In effect it inaugurated the Great Temperance Movement in Troy--a social revolution of which we are only now, after four long weeks, beginning to see the end. You must not, of course, suppose that we had never heard of temperance before. No, Prince, we do not live so far from Abyssinia as all _that_. In a general way we understood it to be a good thing, and upon that ground (optimists that we are) believed its ultimate success to be but a question of time. But I think I may say we never regarded it as a pressing question--such as the reform of the House of Lords, for instance. The general impression (I call it no more) was that we should all be temperate sooner or later; possibly as the next step after espousing our Deceased Wife's Sister. Well, our Vicar laid his copy of the 1894 almanack on the reading-room table at 11.30 a.m., or thereabouts, looked over the local papers for a few minutes, and left the building at ten minutes to noon. I get this information from Matthias James, our respected pilot, who happened to be in the room, reading the _Shipping Gazette_. It is confirmed by Mr. Hansombody and four or five other members. At noon precisely, Mr. Rabling (our gasman and an earnest Methodist) came in. His eye, as it wandered round in search of an unoccupied newspaper, was arrested by the scarlet and green binding of Whitaker. He picked the book up, opened it casually, and read:
Mr. Rabling left the room and walked straight up to the Vicarage, and the Vicar assured him that the Customs Returns were almost as accurate as if they had been prepared under a Conservative Government. You must excuse these details, Prince. They are really essential to the story. At 12.55 Mr. Rabling (after a hasty dinner) handed across the counter of the post-office a telegram addressed to his religious superintendent at Plymouth. The message ran:
"Am sending missionary next train." Thus our Temperance movement began. The missionary arrived before set of sun, borrowed a chair from Mr. Rabling, carried it down to the town quay and mounted it. A number of children at once gathered round, in the belief that the stranger intended a tumbling performance. The missionary eyed them and began, "Ah, if I can once get hold of you tender little ones--" an infelicitous opening, which scattered them yelling, convinced that the Bogey-man had come for them at last. Upon this he changed his tone and called "O Gomorrah!" aloud several times in a rich baritone voice, which fetched quite a little crowd of elders around him from the reading-room, the fish-market, the "King of Prussia" Inn, and other purlieus of the quay. Then the missionary gave us a most eloquent and inspiriting address, in the course of which he mentioned that if all the beer annually consumed in England were placed in bottles, and the bottles piled on one another, it would reach within five hundred miles of the moon. He asked us if this were not an intolerable state of things and a disgrace to our boasted civilisation? Of course, there could be no two questions about it. We are not unreasonable, down in Troy. We only want a truth to be brought home to us. The missionary said that if only a man would deny himself his morning glass, in eight months he could buy himself a harmonium, besides being better in mind and body. And he wound up by inviting us to attend a meeting in the Town Hall that evening. Well, at the evening performance he made us all feel so uncomfortable that, as soon as it was over, we held an informal gathering in the bar of the "King of Prussia," and decided that temperance must be given a fair trial. The missionary had laid particular stress on the necessity of taking the rising generation and taking them early. So we decided to try it first upon the children, and see how it worked. The missionary was delighted with our zeal. (Our zeal has often surprised and delighted strangers.) And he helped with a will. Early next morning he organised what he called a "Little Drops of Water League," and a juvenile branch of the Independent Order of Good Templars, entitled the "Deeds not Words Lodge of Tiny Knights of Abstinence." Each of these had its insignia. He sent us down the patterns as soon as he returned to Plymouth, and within a week the drapers' shops were full of little scarves and ribbons--white and gold for the girls, pink and silver for the boys. By this time there wasn't a child under fourteen but had taken the pledge; and as for narrow blue ribbon, it could not be supplied fast enough. I heard talk, too, of a juvenile fife-and-drum band; and the mothers had already begun stitching banners for the processions. I tell you it was pleasant, over a pipe and glass, to watch all these preparations, and think how much better the world would be when the rising generation came to take our places. But, of course, no popular movement ever took root in our town without a "tea-drink" or some such public function. And you may judge of our delight when, on applying to the Vicar, we heard that he had been talking to the Squire, Sir Felix Felix-Williams, and Sir Felix would gladly preside. Sir Felix suggested the following programme--(1) A Public Lecture in the Town Hall, with a Magic Lantern to exhibit the results of excessive drinking. The missionary would lecture, and Sir Felix would take the chair. (2) The lecture over, the children were to form outside in procession and march up behind the Town Band to Sir Felix's great covered tennis-court, where tea would be spread. I have mentioned the Magic Lantern and the Town Band, and must say a word here on each. When the late Government set aside a sum of money for Technical Instruction throughout the country, Sir Felix, who, as our chief landlord, may be supposed to know best what we need, decided that we needed to learn drawing. His idea was, by means of a magic lantern, to throw the model upon a screen for the class to copy; and in the heat of his enthusiasm he purchased two magic lanterns at 25 pounds apiece before consulting the drawing-master, who pointed out that a drawing-lesson, to be thorough, must be conducted in a certain amount of light, whereas a magic lantern is only effective in a dark room. So Sir Felix was left with two very handsome lanterns on his hands, and burned for an opportunity of turning them to account. Hence his alacrity in suggesting a lecture. As for the Town Band, it was started last autumn with a view to rendering our little town more attractive than ever to summer visitors. The bandsmen have practised sedulously through the winter, and are making great strides; but--if fault must be found--I am sorry that our bandmaster, Mr. Patrick Sullivan (an Irishman), left the purchase and selection of the music to his brother, who lives in London and plays the piccolo at one of the music-halls. The result-- but you shall hear. Punctually at 3.30 p.m. last Wednesday, Sir Felix drove down to the Town Hall in his brougham. The body of the Hall was already packed, and the missionary busy on the platform with his lanterns and white sheet. Mr. Rabling and an assistant stood ready to close the shutters and turn up the gas at the proper moment. The band waited outside; and as Sir Felix alighted, mounted the steps and entered the hall, bowing to right and left with the air of a real patriarch, the musicians crashed out the tune of--
"The beauty of temperance," said Sir Felix, "was once brought home to me very forcibly in rather peculiar circumstances. Many years ago I was travelling afoot in the Tyrol, and chancing to pass by a shepherd's cottage, turned aside to inquire my way. The good people of the house, with native hospitality, pressed me to tarry an hour and partake of their mid-day meal. I acceded. The fare, as you may suppose, was simple. There was no intoxicating liquor. But never shall I forget the gesture or the words of that simple shepherd as he placed a bowl of goat's milk before me on the board. His words--a short sentence only--left such an impression on my mind that to this day I never seat myself at table without repeating them to myself. Three times a day for over thirty years I have repeated those words and seen in imagination the magnificent gesture which accompanied them. The words of my simple shepherd were--" (Here Sir Felix reproduced the simple shepherd's magnificent gesture, and paused.) "And then," he pursued, "as he set the bowl of goat's milk on the board, that simple Tyrolean turned to me with a magnificent sweep of the hand"--gesture repeated--"and exclaimed--" Here followed a prolonged pause, and it slowly dawned upon the audience that by a pardonable trick of memory Sir Felix was for the moment unable to recall the words he had repeated thrice a day for the last thirty years. The situation was awkward. At the back of the platform Mr. Rabling rose to it. He had once a tenor voice of moderate calibre which he was used to exert publicly in the days of Penny Readings. And the word "Tyrolean" now suggested to him a national song which had long reposed in his musical cabinet at home. He leaned forward, screened his mouth with one hand and whispered-- "Sir Felix--" "Hey?" Sir Felix whipped round. "Did a' say" (with sudden and piercing jodel) "_Lul-ul-i-e-tee! Lul-ul-i-ee! Lul-ul_--" Sir Felix stamped his foot; and I think we all felt glad for Rabling at that moment that he held his cottage on a ninety-nine years' lease. But the lecture was spoilt before it began. The missionary piled his statistics to the moon, and turned down the gas, and showed us "The Child: What will he become?" But we took no interest in that question. The question for us was, What exactly did that simple Tyrolese shepherd say to Sir Felix? And that is just what we have been asking each other for a week past. Sir Felix recovered himself towards the close of the address, and at the close acknowledged our vote of thanks in a pleasant little speech--in which, however, his Tyrolean friend was not so much as alluded to. It was pretty, too, to see the Little Knights of Abstinence afterwards, with their sashes and banners, marching uphill after the band, like so many children of Hamelin after the Pied Piper. Only, my dear Prince, what tune do you think the band was playing? Why--
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