A Boswell of Baghdad; With Diversions

by E. V. Lucas

"When the negroes of Africa have been brought to the same state of civilization as the white man, they will make statues and set them up in public; and as we who are white make black statues, they who are black will of course make white statues.

"Can anybody say what sin Dr. Jenner committed for which he does perpetual penance, not in white, but in black, his face black and his hands too, seated in the most public part of London, fixed to his chair, with no hope of rising from it?

"This seated figure might be anybody. I see nothing by which I recognize Dr. Jenner; to say nothing of a cow, there is not even a calf by his side, with the benevolent physician's hand on the animal.

"I cannot approve of a seated black statue in the open air—a black man sitting, and no more.

"I sincerely pity our seated gentlemen in London, poor Cartwright, who looks like an old cobbler on his stool, and Fox, worse treated still, blanket-dressed, fat and black. No wonder some shortsighted man from the new Confederate States once took Fox for a negro woman, the emblem of British philanthropy and a memorial of the abolition of the slave trade.

"The only beasts on which we can now place our heroes are horses. I may be wrong in my opinion, but I see no beauty in a horse standing still and a man's legs dangling down from the beast's back; nor do I think that the matter is mended by the horse and rider being of colossal size, though they ought to be larger than life. Perhaps we shall not have any more of these statues; but is it impossible to remove those that we have?

"As we are a fighting people, we have been great makers of statues of fighting men. We put them even in churches. This reminds that when the time shall come for finishing and adorning the inside of St. Paul's, there will be an enormous quantity of old stone to dispose of, which is now in the shape of generals, captains, admirals, lions and other animals.

"It is singular, or it is not singular, I can't say which, that we who box, wrestle, run and in many ways work our bodies, more than any other nation, have not employed our sculptors to immortalize our athletic heroes. Some of them would make good subjects for the artist. He might strip the boxer or runner naked, if he liked, and exhibit his art in the representation of strength and beauty of form. I have some misgivings about the faces of boxers, which are not remarkable for beauty, but the artist may improve them a little without destroying the likeness; and besides, in a naked figure we look less at the face than at the body and limbs. The champion of England would certainly have had a statue by Lysippus or some artist as good, if he had been lucky enough to live in ancient times.... We shall, of course, want a place to put these statues in, for we may be sure they will not get into the churches, which are only made for statues of fighting men who have killed somebody or ordered somebody to kill somebody.

"I could go on much longer, but I don't choose. I write to amuse myself, and also to instruct, and when I am tired, I stop. I see no reason why I should exhaust the subject. I should only be giving my ideas to people who have none, who make a reputation out of other folks' brains, who pounce on anything that they find ready to their hand, and flood us with books made only to sell."

It is already, I imagine, abundantly clear that Long would not have much liked many things that we do to-day. Writing of "Place and Power," he says: "At that very distant time when all members of Parliament shall be Andrew Marvells and will live on two hundred a year, poor men may do our business for us; but for the present I prefer men who are rich enough to live without the profits of place. I wish somebody would move for a return of all the visible and invisible means of support which every member of the Commons has. I want to know how much every man in the House receives of public money, whether he is soldier, sailor, place-holder, sinecurist, or anything else; and also how much he has by the year of his own." Elsewhere he says: "There is no occasion to print any more sermons.... I have always wondered why so much is written on the doctrines and principles of Christianity and on good living, when we have it done long ago in a few books which we all refer to as our authority." And this is good: "I wish Euclid could have secured a perpetual copyright. It might have helped the finances of the Greeks."