X. OF THE SOCIAL ELEPHANT.
Upon my word, the crowd is very dense just here! I find it more than difficult to elbow a passage through. And I know how dangerous it is to jostle literary men, even by accident—they are so touchy, that no matter how politely you apologise for the inadvertency, they never excuse it. And there is a little obstruction yonder in the person of the tame Elephant, who is a sort of grotesque pet of ours; he moves slowly on account of his bulk, and he has a big palanquin on his back in which sits the Fairy who manages him. It's quite a charming spectacle—especially the Fairy part of it—and although there is such a crush in this particular corner, it is pleasant to see how good-natured some of the people are, and how kindly they allow the Elephant to get along in spite of increasing scarcity of room, and how they all make light of his awkward size because he is such a nice, mild, innocent, sagacious creature.
What am I talking about?—who am I talking about? Nothing!—nobody! I am only making an allegory. It is not called "The Sunlight Lay Across my Bed," but "The Elephant Walked Across my Path." So he did on one occasion. I wasn't a bit inconvenienced by his proceedings; he thought I was, but I wasn't.
When they are at home the Elephant and the Fairy live together. The Elephant has a Trunk (or Intellectual Faculty) of the utmost delicacy and sensitiveness at the tip, and with this exquisitely formed member he is fond of picking up Pins. The Fairy watches him with a touch of melancholy interest in her lovely eyes; pins are certainly useful, and he does pick them up "beautifully." No one can be more bewitching than the Fairy; no one can be blander or more aware of his own value than the Elephant. Conscious of weight and ponderous movement, he nevertheless manages to preserve a suggestion of something indefinable that is "utter." He is not without malice—note the slyness of his eye when he is at his graceful trick of Pin-lifting. He will, it is true, wave his trunk to and fro with a majestic gentleness that seems harmless, but a closer inspection of him will arouse in the timorous observer a vague sense of danger. The chances are ten to one that he will accept the sugared biscuit (or compliment) offered to him by the unsuspecting beholder, and then that he will incontinently seize the unsuspecting one suddenly round the body and dash him to bits on the flat ground of some hard journalistic matter suitable for smashing a man. But he never forgets himself so far as to trumpet forth this secret capability of his; the only warning the visitor ever receives as to his possible malicious intent is the solemn twinkle of his sly green eye. Beware that eye! it means mischief.
As for the Fairy, it is not too much to say that she is one of the prettiest things alive. She does not seem to stand at all in awe of her Elephant lord. She has her own little webs to weave—silvery webs of gossamer-discussion on politics, in which, bless her heart for a charming little Radical, she works neither good nor harm. Her eyes would burn a hole through many a stern old Tory's waistcoat and make him dizzily doubtful as to what party he really belonged to for the moment. She has the prettiest hair, all loosely curling about her face, and she has a very low voice, so modulated as to seem to some folks affected in its intonation. But it isn't affected; it is a natural music, and only repulsive old spinsters with cracked vocal cords presume to cast aspersions on its dulcet sweetness. She dresses "æsthetically"—in all sorts of strange tints, and rich stuffs, made in a fashion which the masculine mind must describe as "gathered-up-anyhow"—with large and wondrous sleeves and queer mediæval adornments—it pleases her whim so to do, and it also pleases the Elephant, who is apt to get excited on the subject of Colour. We all know what a red rag is to a bull—so we should not be surprised to find an Elephant who is calmed by some colours and enraged by others. Colour, in fact, is the only rule of life accepted by the Elephant—better to have no morality, according to him, than no sense of Colour. And so the Fairy robes herself in curious and cunningly-devised hues to soothe the Elephant's nerves (Elephants have thick hides but excessively fragile nerves, as every naturalist will tell you); and pranks herself out like a flower of grace set in a queen's garden. She does not talk much, this quaint Fairy, but she looks whole histories. Her gaze is softly wistful, and often abstracted; at certain moments her spirit seems to have gone out of her on invisible wings, miles away from the Elephant and literary Castle, and it is in such moments that she looks her very prettiest. To me she is infinitely more interesting than the Elephant himself, but as it is the Elephant whom everybody goes to see, I must try to do him justice—if I can!
To begin with, I know him very well, and he knows me. I have fed him many a time and oft with the sugared compliments he likes best—and what is really a matter worth noting he has allowed me to feed him. This is very good of him. He is not so amiable to everybody. Few indeed are permitted the high honour of holding out a dainty morsel of flattery to that delicately-sniffing trunk which "smells a rat" too swiftly to be easily cajoled. But it has pleased the Elephant to take food from my hand, though while he ate, I noticed he never stopped winking. So that I know perfectly well who it was that lifted me up a while ago in a journal that shall be nameless, and did his utmost to smash me utterly by the force with which he threw me down again. Elephants have "nasty humours" now and then—it is their nature. But for once this particular animal found his match. He didn't hurt me though he tried; I got up from under his very feet, and—offered him another Compliment. He took it—gracefully; swallowed it "beautifully"—and does not wink quite so much now. Still, his eye is always on me—and mine on him—and we begin to understand each other.
His prettiest trick, and the one for which he is chiefly admired, is, as I said before, the delicate way in which he picks up Pins. Pins that any less sensitive creature would think worthless, he instantly perceives, selects and classes as "distinctly precious." Minute points of discussion having to do with vague subjects which (unless we could live on an Island of Dreams like the Laureate's Lotus-eaters) no one has any time to waste in considering, he (the Elephant) turns over and over and disposes of in his own peculiar fashion. He has a low estimate of man's moral responsibilities, he thinks that if the "masses" could only be brought to appreciate Colour as keenly as he himself appreciates it, the world would be both happy and wise, and would have no further need of law. He considers Nature au naturel a mistake. Nature must be refined by Art. Ergo, a grand waterfall would not appeal to him, unless properly illumined by electricity, or otherwise got up for effect. He himself is got up for effect—if he were not, according to his own showing, he would be hideous. An Elephant of the jungle is unlovely, but an Elephant in civilian attire, decently housed, with a Fairy to look after him and preside over his meals, is a very different animal. Art has refined him. Nature has nothing more to do with him.
Sometimes the Elephant ruminates. Pins cease to interest him, and with coiled-up trunk (i.e., Intellectual Faculty), and heavy limbs at rest, he shuts his blinking emerald eyes to outer things, and thinks. Then, rising with a mighty roar of trumpeting that blares across the old world and the new, he tears up the ground beneath his feet, and throws a Production—i.e., a novel, or a play—in the face of his foes. And his foes momentarily shrink back from him, appalled at the noise he makes; but anon they rise up boldly in their puny strength to confront his ponderosity. Staves, darts, arrows and stones they get together in haste and trembling, and, shielding themselves behind different editor's desks, begin the wild affray. Lo, how the huge Trunk sways and the green eyes glare! Trample the Production to pieces, ye pigmy ruffians of reviewers, ye shall never crush what is "immortal!" Howl, ye spitfires of the Press, ye shall never make the Elephant's shadow diminish by one iota! For the fulminating truth of the elephantine Production, from a literary point of view, is this: That "as a work of art it is perfection, and perfection is what we artists aim at."
Thus the Elephant, with much pounding of feet, swinging of trunk, lashing of tail, and scattering of dust in the eyes of bewildered beholders. And truly he succeeds in attracting an infinite amount of attention, as why should he not? He is a lordly animal; large enough to be seen at a distance, and society pets him as it pets all creatures of whom it is vaguely afraid. Shy, retiring souls have no chance whatever of what is called "social success" nowadays. You must either be an Elephant or a Gnat; you must rend or sting before society will take any notice of you. And though critics curse the Elephant and wish he were well out of their way, Society fondles him; and as long as he is thus fondled, so long will he score certain victories in art and literature. It is impossible to "quash" him, he is too big. Every one is bound to look at him, and when he begins to move, albeit slowly, every one is equally bound to get out of the way.
There was once a time, however (when the Elephant was younger), in which it seemed doubtful whether he would remain an Elephant. A strange spell was upon him, a wizard-glow of the light that blinds reviewers—Genius. He stood on the confines of a sort of magic territory, wagging his delicate Trunk wistfully, and taking inquiring sniffs at the world. He was then like one of those deeply interesting animals we read about in the dear old fairy-books; he was waiting for the proper person to come and cut off his head, or throw water over him, or something, and say—"Quit thy present form and take that of a ——" What? Well, let us say "Poet," for example. Yes, that would have probably been the correct formula—"Quit thy present form and take that of a Poet." And then, hey presto! he would have skipped out of his hide, all dressed in dazzling blue and silver, a very Prince of wit and wisdom. But the magician who could or might have worked this change in him didn't turn up at the right moment, and so no one would believe he was anything but an Elephant at last. And when he found that this was people's fixed opinion, and that nobody could be persuaded to think otherwise, he showed a few very ugly humours. He broke into the newspaper shops and went rampaging round among the pens and the ink-pots. He knocked down a few unwary authors whom he imagined stood in his way, and when they were down, he stamped upon them. This was not nice of him. But he ought to have known, if he had been as wise as elephants are supposed to be, that authors, unless they are very frail indeed, take a deal of killing before being killed. And he might have foreseen the possibility of those trampled people getting up and revenging themselves whenever they had the chance. His "perfect" work was the very thing they had waited for ever so long. And they did not spare the Elephant. Not they! They remembered the weight of his feet on themselves, and not being able to tread on him because he was so large and heavy and obstinate, they stuck things into him instead. The "barbëd arrow," you know, that kind of disagreeable small weapon that goes in deep and rankles. A whole shower of such irritating little darts went into the Elephant—just in the delicate fleshy places between the folds of his hide—and it was an amazing sight to see how badly he took them. Never was such a roaring and trumpeting heard before! In the unreasoning heat of rage he quite forgot how matters really stood, and that he was only getting the quid pro quo he actually deserved. He never gave a thought to the authors he had mangled and left for dead, and who had not been allowed to make any outcry on the subject of their wounds. He had no recollection of that Scriptural anecdote which tells how the "dry bones" came together "bone by bone," and became a "great standing army." His "dry bones" were the poor poets and novelists he had stamped upon; indeed, not only had he stamped upon them, but he had even filled his trunk with muddy water, and squirted it over their seemingly lifeless remains. But the "great army" was there, and not past fighting, and it marched straight at and around the Elephant. On one occasion it encamped a force against him in the St. James's Gazette, and alas, for the good Elephant's vanity, he imagined he had foes there simply because he holds Radical views. Ye gods! Who that is commonly sane, cares whether an elephant be Radical, Whig, or Tory? Politics are the very last subject in the world I should consult an Elephant about. The mere idea of such a thing is enough to make a certain St. James's Gazette reviewer I wot of, split his sides with laughter in the evil secrecy of his literary den.
As I hinted before, the Elephant while on the rampage in the newspaper-shops once chanced on my humble self, sitting back in an unobtrusive corner. One would have thought that to a lordly animal of such a size, I might have seemed too microscopic to be noticed, but not a bit of it. He "went" for me, with a good deal of unnecessary vigour—a total waste of power on his part, I considered; however, that was his look-out, not mine. He didn't know who I was then, and he doesn't quite know now, though I believe if I threw off my domino and showed him my features he would take to his old tricks again in a minute. But I don't want to irritate him, because he is really a good creature; I would much rather pet him than goad him. He can be cruel, but he can also be kind, and it is in the latter mood that everybody likes him and wants to give him sugar-candy. Moreover, as Elephant he is the living Emblem of Wisdom—a sacred being; and, if one is of an Eastern turn of mind, worthy of worship—and I never heard of any one yet who would venture to cast a doubt on his sagacity. He is wonderfully knowing; his opinion on some things is always worth having, and when he picks up Pins his movements are graceful and always worth watching. Moreover, one never gets tired of looking at the lovely Fairy who guards and guides him. We could not spare either of the twain from our midst—they form a picture "full of Colour." When we view that picture the "moral sense" of Colour enters into us—we feel twice born and twice alive. See how graceful is the cortége! how quaint and pretty and Oriental! Through the eye-holes of my domino I gaze admiringly upon the group—it makes a bright reflection on the "tablets of my memory." Move on, gentle Elephant! Move on! As slowly as you like, and at your own pleasure. Only don't try to "smash" me any more—it's useless. I am formed of that hard "virile" composition of literary ware "guaranteed unsmashable"—I am neither glass nor porcelain. Have another biscuit? Another bon-bon of sugared praise? Well, then, you are a poet in disguise—a genius, wrapped up and sealed down under a hopeless weight of circumstances. I know your buried qualities well, and had some brave person cut off your head—i.e. your Self-Esteem (as I previously suggested)—years ago, we might have had a Prince, nay, even a King, among us. Yet on the whole I think you are happy in your condition. The dolce far niente suits you very well, and the bovine repose of an almost Buddhistic meditation entirely agrees with your constitution, while as long as life lasts you may be sure you shall never lack Pins. Pass, good Elephant! I salute you profoundly, and with a still more profound reverence I kiss the hands of the Fairy!
XI.
THE STORY OF A SOUTH AFRICAN DREAM.