Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  The colour stayed long enough, as a rule, to admit of sale at a decent price, but was liable to fade after.

  As I think I have said, the toad is distinguished by a placid calm denied to the frog; therefore it is singular that the ordinary toad’s Latin name should be Bufo vulgaris — a name suggestive of nothing so much as a low — disgracefully low — comedian. Bufo vulgaris should be the name of a very inferior, rowdy clown. The frog is a much nearer approximation to this character than the toad. The frog comes headlong with a bound, a bunch of legs and arms, with his “Here we are again! Fine day to-morrow, wasn’t it?” and goes off with another bound, before the toad, who is gravely analyzing the metaphysical aspect of nothing in particular, can open his eyes to look up.

  The toad has one comic act, however, of infinitely greater humour than the bouncing buffooneries of the frog. When the toad casts his skin he quietly rolls it up over his back and head, just as a man skins off a close-fitting jersey. Once having drawn it well over his nose, however, he immediately proceeds to cram it down his throat with both hands, and so it finally disappears. Now, this is a performance of genuine and grotesque humour, which it is worth keeping a toad to see.

  ZIG-ZAG DASYPIDIAN

  THE DASYPIDAE are not such fearful wild-fowl as their name may seem to indicate; for the name Dasypus is nothing but the scientific naturalist’s innocent little Greek way of saying “hairy-foot.” The Sloth, the Scaly Manis, the Armadillo, the Platypus, the Aard-Vark, the Anteater, and one or two more comprise the family, presenting the appearance of a job-lot of odds and ends at the tail of an auctioneer’s catalogue. Not only is the family of a job-lot nature, but each individual seems a sort of haphazard assemblage of odd parts made up together to save wasting the pieces; for some have tremendous tails, and some have almost none; some have armour and some have hair; one has an odd beak, apparently discarded by a duck as awkwardly shaped; some have two toes only on a foot, some three, some four, and some five — just as luck might have it in the scramble, so to speak; they only agree in being all very hard up for teeth.

  The sloth is an admirable creature in many respects. Chiefly, he has a glorious gift of inaction — a thing too little esteemed and insufficiently cultivated in these times. If it is sweet to do nothing, as we have it on the unimpeachable authority of a proverb, therefore it must be actually noble to do nothing on scientific principles, as does the sloth.

  The objectionably moral and energetic class of philosopher is always ready to enlist the ant, the bee, and similarly absurdly busy creatures as practical sermons on his side; and that the indolent Philosopher has never retaliated with the sloth is due merely to the fact that he is indolent, practically as well as theoretically. Yet the sloth has well-esteemed relations. Consider other proverbs. “Sloth,” says one, “is the mother of necessity.” Then another. “Necessity,” says this second, “is the mother of invention.” Whence it plainly follows that sloth is invention’s grandmother — although nobody would think it to look at the sloth here, in house number forty-seven.

  Now there are persons who attempt to deprive the sloth of the credit due to his laziness by explaining that his limbs are not adapted for use on the ground. This is a fact, although it is mean to use it to discredit so fine a reputation. The sloth is indeed a deal more active when he is hanging upside down by his toes — but then that is all a part of his system, since it is plain that his greatest state of activity is merely one of suspended animation. It is only when he is in a state of suspense that the sloth is really happy, and this is only one aspect of the topsy-turviness of his entire nature. Hanging horizontally, head and tail downward, is his normal position in society, and this is apt to lead to a belief among the unthinking that he must have lived long in Australia and there become thoroughly used to holding on to the world in his usual attitude; but his actual home is Central and South America — not altogether “down under,” but merely on the slope.

  The sloth in this place is, in the eyes of most visitors, a mere mop in a heap of straw. Let but the keeper stir him up and he reveals himself gradually, the picture of a ragged, rascally mendicant — a dirty ruffian whose vocation can be nothing more laborious than extorting coppers on pretence of sweeping a crossing. A little more stirring, and he will reach for his perch and invert himself, to think things over. To him the floor is inconvenient, for it is his ceiling; anybody’s ceiling is inconvenient to crawl about on.

  When one knows that the sloth never drinks, one is prepared to believe that he persistently refuses to stand; but then nobody can stand anything, even drinks, on a ceiling.

  If by any chance he finds himself on the ceiling (which, as I have said, is his word for floor), he can only hook his claws wherever he sees a hole, and drag himself. He is the poorest of all the Dasypidae in the matter of tail, and was also unfortunate in the allotment of toes, only wearing two on each fore-foot. Which disposes of the sloth.

  Of the Dasypidae there are only, beside the sloth, various armadillos and an ant-eater in this place. The armadillo is a placid creature, with none of the warlike disposition that its armour might lead some to expect. Mild and placable, as well as rather bashful, it has somewhat the character of a beplated and armed theatrical super, who play the flute and teaches in a Sunday-school when off duty. It is susceptible to cold, too, and regardless of any heroism of appearance in face of a chill in the air. Withal the armadillo is indifferent alike to flattery and abuse: you can no more hurt his feelings than his back.

  There are several sorts of armadillo here, but all are equally indifferent to criticism. Nothing is more impervious to criticism (or anything else, if you come to that) than an armadillo. He should have been born a minor poet. An oyster appears to care very little for what is said of him, but a good deal of his indifference is assumed; you often catch him opening his shell to listen. The armadillo won’t open his shell for anything — figuratively as well as literally speaking.

  If a raging mad jaguar prances up to an armadillo, the armadillo curls up quietly with an expression that says: “Really, you excite yourself overmuch; I suppose you want to gnaw me. If you expect to eat me, after your length of experience, you must be — well, rather a fool, if I may say so. I shall go to sleep,” which he does, while the jaguar ruins his teeth.

  Naturalists have marvelled at the fact that native Paraguayans find whether an armadillo is at home by poking a stick into his burrow, when (if he is) out comes a swarm of mosquitoes. “What,” they ask, wonderingly, “can mosquitoes want with an armadillo, when other things not quite so hopeless are near at hand for biting?” But it is probably a mosquito championship meeting.

  The sloth, sluggard as he is, has not gone to the ant, but to the ant-eater; that is to ay, his cage is not far from Sukey’s here. Sukey is not a wise person. Nobody anxious to be an orator with so little talent for it can be wise. When first you enter the room you observe that Sukey is anxious to address a large meeting.

  She has a ledge before her, on which she rests her fore-knuckles in a manner so extremely suggestive of a lecture that you instinctively look for the customary carafe and glass, and feel perplexed at their absence. Regardless of this disadvantage, Sukey will turn this way and that, and thump alternately with one fist and the other, and even, in the excitement of her eloquence, bounce bodily upon the ledge before her, as one has heard of a gymnastic American divine doing in his pulpit.

  This will the voiceless Sukey do till public indifference disgusts her, and she flops heavily back on her knuckles into hinder retirement. But no failure can stifle her ambition, whether it be actually for oratorical distinction, as appearances indicate, or only for such cockroaches as you may choose to offer her, as the keeper believes.

  Sukey is not an impressive person — her features are against it. She is not equal to assuming a presence. With all her wealth of nose, she can’t turn it up at anybody. Her sneer is a wretched failure. Any attempt at an imposing attitude is worse; a large nose of a sort is often a noble featur
e of itself; but a nose like this!...Sukey’s extravagance in nose is paid for by a scarcity of mouth. Her small mouth may be a loveliness in itself, but it will never allow Sukey a sneer or a smile — let alone a laugh; it condemns her to perpetual prunes and prism, so that Sukey may neither impress you by a haughty presence, nor sneer at you, nor laugh at you; one thing only remains — and it is a low expedient — she can put out her tongue at you — by the yard.

  I have often speculated as to how much of this tongue Sukey really has stowed away inside her, and what would happen if she let it all out at once. It would probably get entangled with everything and with itself, like a ball of string cast loose, and Mansbridge (who is Sukey’s keeper) would spend an afternoon unfastening all the knots.

  One has to see Sukey many times before the lineal possibilities of her tongue begin to dawn on one. See her once or twice only, and she may only exhibit a mere foot or so of it — possibly only eight or ten inches. Another time she will let out a foot or eighteen inches more, and you are rather surprised; still your belief is unshaken that there is another end to that tongue somewhere. But when, some time later, she casually releases another yard or two, beyond the few feet wherewith you are familiar, with an aspect of keeping miles more in reserve, you abandon the doctrine of the finiteness of things earthly as mere scientific superstition.

  Plainly, I don’t believe there is any other end to Sukey’s tongue. It has the redeeming feature, however, of possessing one end, which anybody may see; and as there is an end to Sukey’s tongue we won’t be too hard on her, remembering that there have been Sukeys — well, differently provided for.

  Sukey’s tongue is a sticky thing, and she waves it about with a view of eating any unfortunate insect that may adhere to it, on the catch-’em-alive-oh principle. Her chiefest tit-bit is a cockroach, and, as you will perceive from her manner as you make her acquaintance, it is a firm article of Sukey’s belief that visitors carry these interesting insects about with them, in large quantities.

  When one remembers how comparatively unfashionable this practice is, one can understand that Sukey largely lives the life of a disappointed creature. By way of a great feast, she will sometimes be given a mouse; and she fishes perseveringly through such odd cracks and holes as she may find, in hopes of providing such a feast for herself. I respectfully suggest baiting the end of her tongue with a piece of cheese. As it is, I fear her catch of mice is scarcely sufficient to warrant the importation of the ant-eater as a substitute for the harmless necessary (but usually more harmful than necessary) Tom-cat of the garden-wall.

  The ant-eater is not a prepossessing being, Anybody who had never before seen or heard of him would readily believe him to be an inhabitant of the moon. He looks the sort of animal one would invent in a nightmare; his comparatively sober colours and his bushy tail save him from being an absolute unearthly horror. Conceive, if you can, a pink ant-eater with blue spots and a forked tail!

  Neither is the ant-eater very wise; nothing with so much tongue is very wise; and the ant-eater uses up so much of its head-stuff on its nose that nothing is left for the brain. The ant-eater never cuts his wisdom teeth, because he never has any teeth at all. Really the ant-eater scarcely seems a respectable character, considered altogether. An animal with more than a foot of slender nose, expressly used for poking into other people’s concerns (the ants’), an immeasurable tongue, no use for a tooth-brush, and an irregular longing for cockroaches for lunch — well, is such an animal quite respectable? Would you, for instance, tolerate him in your club?

  The only fairly respectable member of the Dasypidae is the armadillo — unless you count the sloth’s scientific indolence a claim to respectability; I rather think it is. But none of the Dasypidae are clever — not one. They are all in the lowest form of the mammalian school, and whenever one is not at the bottom of the form it is because another already occupies the place. You will commonly find them placed last of the mammalia in the first book of natural history you look at.

  ZIG-ZAG SCANSORIAL

  NOW, a “scansorial zigzag” may be interpreted to mean a graded path up a cliff — does mean it, in fact, if you like to use the phrase in that sense. I don’t. Scansores are climbing birds — toucans, parrots, parrakeets, cockatoos, macaws, lories, and woodpeckers. In the house numbered 54 and 55 on the plan of the Gardens (having two numbers for no particular reason except that one would be quite enough), all these birds are represented except the woodpecker. The wood-pecker is also excluded from this zigzag for similar reasons, which I can’t remember at this moment. One may be the fact of the woodpecker tapping, whereas all taps is vanities.

  A toucan is a beak, fitted with an inadequate bird at the hinder end. It is over against the wall, opposite the front door of 54 and 55, that one recognises the fine Roman nose of the toucan. A green nose, a red nose, a yellow nose, a black nose, all these colours you may see, but all nobly Roman as to shape. The toucan will not talk in the manner of the parrot, but he (or she) is an admirable listener. I have told the green-billed toucan many stories of bird-scandal without interruption, and, on the whole, the conversation has been most improving. “Dear, dear!”— “Really, now”— “Who’d have thought it?”— “No — o — o — o! You don’t really say so? Well, you do surprise me!” These are the only contributions offered to the talk by the green-billed toucan, and even these are only in pantomime. An ideal listener, the toucan. I have a horrible temptation to say that toucan play at that game, and that if you are anxious not to be toucandid, you toucan say nothing, and the bird will listen just as respectfully; but a pious bringing-up enables me to cast the temptation from me — toucancel the inclination, in fact. Howbeit, the truth remains that the toucan will listen with perfect attention whether you proffer information aloud or get no further than inventing it.

  The toucan will chatter horribly in native freedom, but that is only when many hundreds of other toucans are present to keep it in countenance; for the toucan’s voice is not pretty, and he knows it. Still, when hundreds assemble, every one with a discordant voice, nothing is more natural than that they should all shout at once, and unite in the belief that the performance is admirable. If there were any ugly women (there are not, of course — it is a mere hypothesis), and they were all collected together to the number of many hundreds on a solitary island, the first thing they would do would be to hold a beauty show with a prize for everybody, and next they would fight over the distribution of those prizes. The toucans do something very much like this — minus the fighting, because the prize is mutual admiration. They chatter and scream in their hundreds — taking care to leave a sentinel on guard, because other animals won’t stand anything, even in South America — and at intervals they all join in a simultaneous yell of approbation, audible half a league off.

  The whole performance is a sad piece of humbug, which makes one marvel greatly that because of it the South American natives call the toucan the Preacher-bird. Here, with so many gorgeous parrots and macaws about, the toucan behaves with becoming modesty, but in the presence of any duller-clad bird than itself its arrogance is frightful. A great crowd of toucans will mob any such unfortunate creature with much chatter, till, surrounded by long and threatening bills, like a despairing debtor, he “hops the twig” — if he can.

  Perhaps the most dissipated-looking creature in the animal kingdom is a toucan during a bad moult. You long to give him a gallon of soda-water and a temperance tract. He sleeps much (a toucan always sleeps with his beak over his shoulder and covered by his wing — he doesn’t mean to have that nose stolen) — he sleeps as much as possible, and wakes as seedy as one can imagine.

  He can scarcely drag his beak off his back without banging it on his perch, and considers the question of breakfast with a shudder. With many blinks he strives desperately to pull himself together — to pull together a handful of loose quills and a beak.

  They give him grapes; it is a mockery. Who can eat grapes with such a head? He may struggle with a gra
pe perhaps for a few seconds, but breakfast beats him in the end, and he retires to a repentant corner. What a night it must have been.

  Out of his moult, however, and in good feather, the toucan is rather a fine bird, so long as you forget his nose. The Ariel toucan here — with the black beak — is a little horsey in aspect — a very little — but quite neat and gentlemanly. Not such a real old crusted Tory-club-window gentleman as the Triton cockatoo, but still a gentleman. As for the green-billed toucan, she can never be anything but a good-natured Jewess in her most gorgeous Shobbos clothes.

  The comparative quietness of the toucans in house number 54-55 is, probably, due to a worse thing — the noise of the parrots and cockatoos; the house can hold no more noise, and the toucans altogether despair of ever making themselves heard.

  Why the windows are so rarely broken I can scarcely understand, except on the hypothesis of a suspension of natural laws for the benefit of natural science and its institutions. The keeper says he doesn’t mind the noise — to such torture may human nature be accommodated by long habit. Saint Cecilia would have become accustomed to boiling if she had had forty years of it. The other saint (male, but I forget which) who was grilled could never have done without his hot gridiron if he had been able to keep on it for forty years, the time this keeper has been among these parrots. Personally, I should expect to become reconciled to boiling, grilling, or any other class of plain cookery, in about half the time that would elapse before a few hundred competitive parrot-yells began to feel soothing to the nerves.