Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  There is no other house in these Gardens where the unobtrusive visitor is so made to feel his utter smallness and insignificance — and that by mere brazen clamour — as in this. The elephants look large — they are large — but the elephants behave with gentlemanly quietness and self-respect. The parrots rise up and curse you (and everything else) with sudden and painful unanimity. You are appalled, dwarfed, made insignificant and ashamed by the overpowering vastness of — the mere row.

  The fact is that each single individual of this crowd of parrots, cockatoos, macaws, and parrakeets holds his own importance above every other created thing as a prime article of belief, and is naturally and most virtuously indignant when he finds that you don’t go directly to him and load him with presents. Therefore, he blares and screams at you, till the air swims in your ears and eyes and the outer world is but a chaos of great beaks, angry combs, and streaks of red, green, and white. If you venture so far as to make an invidious selection, and tender a peace-offering to a particular bird, you draw down upon your devoted head the double rage and united jealousy of all the other parrots, cockatoos, parrakeets, and macaws, each convinced that you couldn’t possibly have seen him or you would never have slighted so superlative a creature; and again the air and the colours swim to your senses.

  The whole sensation is not unlike that produced by a long inspection of immense thundering and shrieking engineering works. You feel bewildered and you feel small: and everything about you is metallic and mechanical. Every movement of a parrot, if you will but notice it, is suggestive of metal joints and mechanical action; and the voice — but there is no metal metallic enough to emit such a voice as that at its worst.

  There is a married couple here — Triton cockatoos — near the keeper’s room.

  They nag and quarrel and snarl at one another, and all on strictly mechanical principles. Their only gibe is an inarticulate snarl delivered when repartee seems unlikely.

  Thus, Mr. C. observing Mrs. C. apparently asleep will snarl ferociously, and compose himself to rest. In a little while Mrs. C. will rouse herself, and perceiving the placid quiescence of Mr. C., will snarl at him and go to sleep again; all this with a mechanic jerk of the head and neck suggestive of Punch or an automaton. After a while, perhaps, the inclination for a snarl will take both at once, and, finding themselves face to face, with nothing original to say, they will subside and sulk for the rest of the day, each trying hard to think of some particularly unkind remark to hurl at the other.

  Cocky, the big Triton, has been moved here from the insect-house, and shows signs of forgetting his English. That is what will occur in a congregation of this sort.

  The marvel is that many of the birds will still talk at all. An old, rose-crested cockatoo will dance gracefully, with his head on one side (and his eye on the reward), at the offer of a nut. He is called Cocky, in common with all of his kind, just as the parrot is always Polly; but I prefer to call him Richardson, because his is, practically speaking, the only show in the fair.

  There is a slender-billed cockatoo, who offers me a warlike challenge to “come on” whenever I approach him, and a few more who have a word or two, but Richardson is the only bird capable of a decent show. He will stand at his cage wires and bawl out “What ho! what ho! what ho!” in a way that confirms his classification as a showman and gives a hint of aspirations to tragedy. Richardson is the least mechanical of the birds here, and is a most respectable and old-fashioned veteran, who would look quite in character taking snuff, arid whose polite accomplishments have not been ruined by his residence among unmannered crowds of other birds.

  But, mannered or not, here is nothing but a crowd of screaming, unfeeling, snapping painted machines. I have never seen a plucked parrot, but I know without seeing, that you have only to pluck one to lay bare nuts and bolts cams, hinges, springs, cranks, and metallic joints. See a cockatoo spread and shut his crest; clearly it is just the motion that could be actuated by a string on the wooden harlequin principle; probably, as there is no string, there is a long spiral spring under the feathers of the head (just lying along where some people part their hair) set going by a catch on the principle of the air-gun trigger.

  As to the gorgeous mechanisms on perches that hang in a line down the main aisle, every joint, sound, and motion spells “clockwork” aloud. Such of these as speak have one word, which is “Hullo!”

  This, in varying degrees of urgency and gruffness, will greet you as you pass along the line — if you show any indication of nuts; otherwise you are insignificant, and unworthy of notice.

  One fine blue and yellow machine will not say “Hullo” without receiving a nut in advance; probably being constructed on the familiar automatic principle. But it is all an expressionless outcome of clockwork. We seldom see among the lists of “patents sealed” and “provisional protections” granted, any reference to an invention for improvements in the mechanism of parrot and cockatoos.

  It is a remarkable thing that so obvious a field for invention and improvement should have been so much neglected. Plainly, an easy and obvious improvement would be the provision of a simple shut-off valve, by which the suffering proprietor could stop the parrot’s steam whistle when desired.

  The desirability of some such improvement need not be enlarged upon, and, once the appliance were in the market, every parrot-owner would hasten to have it fitted to his machine.

  Another contrivance, having the same object, would consist of a self-acting escape valve, by which the familiar scream of the mechanism would be diverted, and escape noiselessly through a small grating at the back of the neck after a certain degree of pressure had been attained. Moreover, what more easy than to have the outer side of the jaw-hinge fitted with a convenient butterfly-nut, by tightening which, after the periodical stoking with maize and so forth, the engine would be prevented from nipping carelessly-offered fingers?

  As it is at present, the jaw-hinge is a mere ordinary pair of sharp pincers barbarically ornamented with feathers and colours. Improvements suggest themselves at every point. Many of these otherwise amusing instruments cause trouble by occasionally breaking out into startling and exceedingly forcible language. It would seem that a pressure valve might be profitably employed in this case also, by means of which, as soon as the expressions reached to the degree of “blow it,” or “shut up,” the power would be immediately diverted, and either allowed to escape harmlessly through a small chimney at the top of the head, or else conducted by a power-transmitting mechanism to an adjacent musical-box, which would play “Pop Goes the Weasel,” or something else of a similarly moral tendency.

  The whole subject is full of profitable suggestions, which are offered, free of any expense beyond a small royalty to myself, to the notice of persons of mechanical genius.

  ZIG-ZAG SAURIAN

  PEOPLE, as a rule, are not fond of lizards, and the larger the lizards the less people like them; until the crocodile and the alligator, largest of all, are received with positive antipathy, and rarely treated as pets. People make many excuses for such an attitude toward lizards; calling them ugly, crawly, slimy, scaly, and so forth.

  I have an hypothesis that envy is a large element in this human antipathy. For after all, if we will but confess it, the alligator’s is rather an enviable lot. To lie all day in a bed of warm, soft mud — really, it is a pleasant thing. To be able, without inconvenience, to postpone dinner for a fortnight — that is attractively economical. To enjoy the advantages of six eyelids and the resulting capability in winks — there is something even in this.

  But chiefly, envy for the crocodile has got into the grain of humanity by heredity from those ancients who believed everything that Plutarch told them in his book, De Iside et Osiride. The crocodile, he informs us therein, can render itself invisible at will, everything else being perfectly visible to it the while. This is a noble privilege, and worthy of the most respectful envy. Jack the Giant Killer performed the trick by means of a cloak; but Plutarch’s crocodile do
es it “merely by the power of the heye,” as the street-corner mesmerist has it — does it “like winking,” in fact. The mechanism is very simple, and quite easy to understand. It consists only of a membrane to draw over the eye; and as the eye it is drawn over is the crocodile’s, it is obvious that he becomes invisible at once. His ability to see others is provided for by the ingenious expedient of having the membrane transparent — and there you are. What could be simpler? Anybody who can run to a transparent membrane fitting for his eyes may dodge his creditors at will, thanks to the tip of the benevolent and ingenious Plutarch.

  In the reptile-house at these Gardens, the largest saurian bears the apt name of Little-’un. He is a youthful alligator, although, being rather more than 10ft. 6in. long, he has quite grown out of short frocks. Nothing infantile remains about his appearance, and he has in full development that curious cravat of fleshy folds and creases noticeable in no animals but alligators and ‘bus-drivers, and among the latter species only in the stout and red-faced variety.

  Little-’un’s name was not given him by way of a joke, but because, nine years ago, he was only a foot long — which is little for an alligator. Little-’un has always been a good business alligator, however, and by strict industry and invincible perseverance in the pursuit of whatever might be eatable, has risen to an honoured and considerable eminence in the higher Zoo circles.

  To observe the open countenance of Little-’un bearing down on a piece of meat that ought property to belong to some other alligator, is to get a sight of a truly original edition of “Smiles’s Self Help.” Little-’un’s one moral principle is — the greatest good of the greatest alligator. His business maxim is — get something to eat; honestly, if there is no other way, but, anyhow, get it as large as possible, and as often as you can.

  He would, without the least bashfulness, proceed to eat his friends in the same tank if Tyrrell (the keeper, whom you know already) neglected the commissariat. Indeed, he once began on one fellow-lodger, with no other excuse than opportunity. Feeding was in progress, and, in the scramble and confusion, a smallish crocodile, lunging his nose in the direction of the desired morsel, without particularly noticing where that direction led, found himself up to the eyes in Little-’un’s dental establishment. Little-’un’s prudent habits rendered it unlikely that he would deliberately fling away anything that Providence had actually thrust into his mouth, even if it were his own grandfather; and only a vigorous application of Tyrrell’s pole saved the crocodile from making a meal in a sense he didn’t originally intend.

  Eighty-five degrees is the temperature prescribed for the water here, and every crocodile is a thermometer unto himself, soon showing signs, notwithstanding his thick hide, of any variation in the rate of his gentle stewing — Little-’un being as sensitive as any, in spite of his assiduous attention to business.

  With Tyrrell, by the way, Little-’un is comparatively affable, for an alligator. Tyrrell climbs calmly into the basin, among its inmates, to swill and mop it out at the weekly cleaning, herding crocodiles and alligators into a corner by the flourish of a mop, in a manner more than disrespectful — almost insulting. There is some mysterious influence about that mop. Why should alligators shut their heads and stand meekly aside at its potent waggle? I would never venture up the Nile without Tyrrell’s mop. With one wave of that mystic sceptre I would assume immediate sovereignty over all the crocodiles in Africa, and drive them into corners. There is no withstanding that mop. If it will intimidate crocodiles, plainly it would be successful with leopards, cobras, lions, and tigers. If I could borrow it I would even try it on the beadle at the Bank of England, and if I could wave him aside with it, I should know that thenceforth the world was at my feet; and I’m afraid Tyrrell wouldn’t get his mop back.

  But I was speaking of Little-’un: his affability; and of Tyrrell: his irreverent familiarity. When Tyrrell mops out the basin, he finds it convenient to leave somewhat under a foot of water in the bottom for cleaning purposes, and as this would be damp (as is water’s nature) to tread in, he calmly stands on Little-’un’s back and proceeds placidly with his mopping. To wave an alligator aside with a mop is an insult altogether, but to stand on his back for the sake of dry shoes is an outrage unutterable. Little-’un seems a very appropriate name as it stands, but if ever a time should arrive when it must he changed, I think, with every respect and honour to the departed statesman, I should suggest John Bright. “Mr. Speaker,” said an honourable member, who spoke before he thought, but whose name I have forgotten, “Mr. Speaker, the right honourable gentleman” (Mr. Bright) “accuses me of making allegations. Why, sir, the right honourable gentleman is the greatest alligator in this House!” Which is precisely what Little-’un is now.

  Round at the back, in his private domains, Tyrrell keeps a crocodile and alligator nursery. It is a metal box fixed against a wall and holding about a gallon. Here are all the infants, eight inches to a foot long, squirming, wriggling, and struggling, with a lively activity foreign to the nature of the full-grown alligator. Tyrrell will plunge his hand into the struggling mass and produce a handful for your inspection. They are charming little pets and as ready to bite as if they were twenty feet long. An alligator may be pardoned some impatience in growing; if he is to be ten feet and a half long at nine years of age, there is a deal of lee-way to make up. Most creatures would be discouraged at being born only to a measurement in inches, and refuse to grow at all.

  There would appear to be a sort of general reluctance to make a domestic pet of the crocodile; it is not fashionable now, and nobody seems anxious to set the mode. To encourage anybody who is disposed to distinguish himself, I may observe that a crocodile is cheapest when young. This is doubly fortunate, because for a less sum you have a longer run for your money — the last expression not being intended in any uncomfortable sense. I believe the usual price of young crocodiles and alligators, up to a certain size, is a guinea a linear foot; at any rate, I know you could buy them at that rate of my old friend Mr. Jamrach, and I have no doubt that the Zoological Society may be able, from time to time, to spare a foot or two of alligator at the price. If you buy a foot — or a yard, as the case may be (the case, of course, will be a little longer, but that is unworthy trifling) — you must be careful to keep it in a warm place, in water at the right temperature, at night as well as day. Then when it grows to the size of Little-’un, it will make an imposing embellishment for your entrance-hall, and useful to receive subscription-collectors. And to take them inside.

  It is a bad thing to generalize in a world containing China. China upsets everything. If you venture to put a date to the invention of gunpowder, somebody is sure to remind you to except China; the same with printing and everything else. There is nothing China hasn’t got or hasn’t had. So that naturally, after America has many years flaunted and gloried in the exclusive possession of the broad-nosed alligator as distinguished from the sharp-snouted crocodile, China, in the old familiar aggravating way, bobs up serenely with her alligators — perfectly authentic and genuine, and here some of them are, in the small basin. There’s no getting ahead of China.

  But Temminck’s Snapper is the wonder and gaping-stock of this house. Bring the most impassive country cousin, let him sneer at the snakes, lounge past the lizards, turn up his nose at the tigers, elevate it more at the elephants, ridicule the rhinoceros, and disparage the donkeys. Let him do all this, and then confront him with the Snapper. He will be beaten. “Well, of all the—” He will probably refuse to believe the thing alive, and it certainly looks more like a fine old Paleozoic Fossil than anything else imaginable. This is due to the operation of Misdirected Patience — a virtue so noticeable as to demand capital letters. For the Snapper has been in this not very large tank for ten years, and has not yet become convinced that there are no fish in it. Wherefore he laboriously and patiently fishes without a moment’s cessation. Fishing, with him, means waiting immovably with open mouth for a fish to come and be gobbled. He has waited te
n years for a bite, but that is nothing unusual, as you may try for yourself, if you buy a rod and line. It is calculated, I believe, that a hundred years more in his present attitude will be sufficient to fossilize him, when, no doubt, he will be passed on to the Geological Society.

  He has never yet found the need for an individual name; but I am thinking of suggesting a suitable combination — I think it should be Job Walton.

  Job is not an emotional person. He never exhibits enthusiasm, even for fishing. I shouldn’t myself, after ten years’ waiting for a bite. There he floats, with all the mental activity of an ordinary brick, while visitors come and go, nations are convulsed, elections, boat-races are decided, and green weed grows all over his back, but he doesn’t care. “A rolling stone gathers no moss” is a capital proverb for the guidance of people who care for moss as a personal adornment. Job avoids all rolling, in common with other forms of movement, and is lavishly rewarded with moss of the greenest, on back, legs, toes, and tail.

  Beyond his patience (a negative sort of virtue, after all), Job Walton has no particular personal characteristic that I can discover, except extreme niggardliness plain and patent in his face. He has nothing in the world to be niggardly with, except his moss, but if he had, he would make a very unindulgent uncle. I have a theory that Job is not an animal at all, but a fossilized concretion of the twin virtues (or what you like to call them), patience and stinginess; a sort of petrified fungus, produced by the chemical action consequent on the mingling of the two qualities. Probably some very shocking old miser (perhaps it was Scrooge himself) lost all his stinginess at once, just at the identical moment when some long-suffering person lost his patience (this was, probably, an angler).