[4] Very much so indeed, my good friend; and yet, the plague of it is, one never can get people to do anything that is wise or generous, unless they go and make monks of themselves. I believe this St. George’s land of mine will really be the first place where it has been attempted to get married people to live in any charitable and human way, and graft apples where they may eat them, without getting driven out of their Paradise. [↑]
[5] There, again! why, in the name of all that’s natural, can’t decent men and women use their tongues, on occasion, for what God made them for,—talking in a civil way; but must either go and make dumb beasts of themselves, or else (far worse) let out their tongues for hire, and live by vomiting novels and reviews! [↑]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXXIX.
On a foggy forenoon, two or three days ago, I wanted to make my way quickly from Hengler’s Circus to Drury Lane Theatre, without losing time which might be philosophically employed; and therefore afoot, for in a cab I never can think of anything but how the driver is to get past whatever is in front of him.
On foot, then, I proceeded, and accordingly by a somewhat complex diagonal line, to be struck, as the stars might guide me, between Regent Circus and Covent Garden. I have never been able, by the way, to make any coachman understand that such diagonals were not always profitable. Coachmen, as far as I know them, always possess just enough geometry to feel that the hypothenuse is shorter than the two sides, but I never yet could get one to see that an hypothenuse constructed of cross streets in the manner of the line A C, had no advantage, in the matter of distance to be traversed, over the simple thoroughfares A B, B C, while it involved [[52]]the loss of the momentum of the carriage, and a fresh start for the cattle, at seventeen corners instead of one, not to mention the probability of a block at half a dozen of them, none the less frequent since underground railways, and more difficult to get out of, in consequence of the increasing discourtesy and diminishing patience of all human creatures.
Now here is just one of the pieces of practical geometry and dynamics which a modern schoolmaster, exercising his pupils on the positions of letters in the word Chillianwallah, would wholly despise. Whereas, in St. George’s schools, it shall be very early learned, on a square and diagonal of actual road, with actual loaded wheelbarrow—first one-wheeled, and pushed; and secondly, two-wheeled, and pulled. And similarly, every bit of science the children learn shall be directly applied by them, and the use of it felt, which involves the truth of it being known in the best possible way, and without any debating thereof. And what they cannot apply they shall not be troubled to know. I am not the least desirous that they should know so much even of the sun as that it stands still, (if it does). They may remain, for anything I care, under the most simple conviction that it gets up every morning and goes to bed every night; but they shall assuredly possess the applicable science of the hour it gets up at, and goes to bed at, on any day of the year, because they will have [[53]]to regulate their own gettings up and goings to bed upon those solar proceedings.
Well, to return to Regent Street. Being afoot, I took the complex diagonal, because by wise regulation of one’s time and angle of crossing, one may indeed move on foot in an economically drawn line, provided one does not miss its main direction. As it chanced, I took my line correctly enough; but found so much to look at and think of on the way, that I gained no material advantage. First, I could not help stopping to consider the metaphysical reasons of the extreme gravity and self-abstraction of Archer Street. Then I was delayed a while in Prince’s Street, Soho, wondering what Prince it had belonged to. Then I got through Gerrard Street into Little Newport Street; and came there to a dead pause, to think why, in these days of division of mechanical labour, there should be so little space for classification of commodities, as to require oranges, celery, butchers’ meat, cheap hosiery, soap, and salt fish, to be all sold in the same alley.
Some clue to the business was afforded me by the sign of the ‘Hotel de l’Union des Peuples’ at the corner, “bouillon et bœuf à emporter;” but I could not make out why, in spite of the union of people, the provision merchant at the opposite corner had given up business, and left his house with all its upper windows broken, and its door nailed up. Finally, I was stopped at the corner of Cranbourne Street by a sign over a large shop advising me to buy some “screwed boots and shoes.” I am too shy [[54]]to go in and ask, on such occasions, what screwed boots are, or at least too shy to come out again without buying any, if the people tell me politely, and yet I couldn’t get the question what such things may be out of my head, and nearly got run over in consequence, before attaining the Arcadian shelter of Covent Garden. I was but just in time to get my tickets for Jack in the Box, on the day I wanted, and put them carefully in the envelope with those I had been just securing at Hengler’s for my fifth visit to Cinderella. For indeed, during the last three weeks, the greater part of my available leisure has been spent between Cinderella and Jack in the Box; with this curious result upon my mind, that the intermediate scenes of Archer Street and Prince’s Street, Soho, have become to me merely as one part of the drama, or pantomime, which I happen to have seen last; or, so far as the difference in the appearance of men and things may compel me to admit some kind of specific distinction, I begin to ask myself, Which is the reality, and which the pantomime? Nay, it appears to me not of much moment which we choose to call Reality. Both are equally real; and the only question is whether the cheerful state of things which the spectators, especially the youngest and wisest, entirely applaud and approve at Hengler’s and Drury Lane, must necessarily be interrupted always by the woful interlude of the outside world.