Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  The subtle essences comprising these qualities met and mingled — result, a fungus growth, Job Walton. The same sort of thing occurs a thousand times a day in the case of toadstools.

  I am really friendly with only one of the smaller lizards here — and he is a large one; the big monitor at the corner. But I have never been able to learn from him, even in his most confidential moments, how many feet of tongue he really has. It is a round, whip-lash sort of tongue, like the ant-eater’s, and I have a private superstition in both cases that there actually is no other end to that tongue.

  The monitor is fond of rats, but the rats are not at all partial to his society. Lesueur’s Water lizard is a curious specimen. He has not been here long, but has already assumed, on his own nomination, a position of great responsibility and importance. He is Inspector of Visitors. He won’t have questionable characters in the reptile-house.

  When not actively inspecting, he is watching for his victims. He observes a visitor approaching. He is on guard at once, by the front glass of the case. His aspect is official and stern, his manner abrupt and peremptory; he is not a lizard to be trifled with. “Paid your shilling?” he demands, as plainly as a silent lizard may. “Got your railway ticket? Show it.”

  Any respectable visitor with the fear of the law before his eyes will comply at once. “Where do you live? Produce your last water-rate receipt.” He looks you up and down suspiciously. “Been vaccinated lately? Date? All right. Pass along.” And he swings abruptly round to watch for somebody else.

  The Australian Bearded Lizard (most quaint lizards are Australian) is supposed to derive his colloquial name — the Jew Lizard — from his beard. But he has an Israelitish acquisitiveness of his own, too.

  He goes about his shop — everything he does makes it seem a shop — and brings his paw down on one pebble and one twig after another with an unmistakable air of assertive proprietorship.

  “Mine,” he intimates, “mine, every one of them: and you keep your hands off them, unless you’re ready to do business.” He would pronounce it “pishnesh” if mere gesture-talk admitted of it. A little irritation goes a long way with the Jew lizard. His beard stands out tremendously, he swells to a rib-threatening degree, and stands at bay with open mouth, ready to smite the Philistines hip and thigh and spoil the Egyptians of their finger-tips — let them but come near enough. But he is a very respectable lizard, not so lazy as most, and pleasant to the touch.

  He is not so lazy, for instance, as the chameleon. The chameleon is the slowest creature alive. If there were a race between a chameleon and a pump, it would be safest to back the pump.

  An active little Gallot’s lizard was placed here lately, with a pair of chameleons, but the contrast was so disgraceful to the chameleons that he was removed, and made to chum with a Gecko, a few cases off. He absorbed all the rations, too, which was an addition of injury to insult, although chameleons can always put off dinner for a month or two without inconvenience.

  A chameleon is a sort of twin. Like other things, he has two halves; but these halves are only acquainted with one another — not really intimate.

  His left-hand side is often asleep while the right is as wide awake as a chameleon’s side can he. His eyes, also, are quite independent of one another, and roll in opposite directions as often as not, so that he would he inconvenient as a Speaker. Everybody would catch his eye at once and there would be quarrels — possibly even fights — a thing impossible in the House of Commons as it is. A chameleon never walks, he proceeds in this way.

  After a long and careful deliberation, extending over half an hour or so, he proceeds to lift one foot. You may not be able to see it moving, but it is moving all the same, like the hand of a watch. Take a look round the Gardens and come back, when, if you have not been too hurried in your inspection, you may see the lifted foot in mid-air, and the chameleon probably asleep. He usually takes a nap after any unusual exertion. In an hour or two he will wake up, and proceed to plant that foot, with proper deliberation, before him. Then there will be another nap and a good think, after which the tail will begin to unwind from the branch it clings to. This process, persistently persevered in for many days, will carry the intrepid gymnast quite a number of inches.

  But a journey of this sort is an enterprise rarely ventured on. Chameleons prefer the less exciting sport of sitting face to face and daring each other to mortal combat, secure in the assurance that neither will think of moving toward the other.

  They have been known to Fight. A chameleon fight is an amusement whereunto neither the Peace Society nor the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals need have any objection. No evangelistic clergyman need incur scandal by being present, an interested spectator, at a chameleon fight. The savage combatants never attempt to bite. They gaze gravely and seriously at the surroundings, and at proper pre-arranged intervals solemnly dab their tails together — not hard, nor with any particular feeling beyond a desire to conduct the rite with proper formality and decorum. It is the most harmless and dignified scuffle in the animal creation.

  ZIG-ZAG SIMIAN

  WHENCE has arisen the notion that monkeys are happy creatures? Probably from the inadequate fact that they pull one another’s tails and run away. But a being may be mischievous without being happy. Many mischievous boys are never happy possibly because the laws of Nature won’t permit of half the mischief they are anxious to accomplish. Still, the monkey, at any rate in a state of freedom, is looked upon as a typically happy creature. “And watch the gay monkey on high,” says Bret Harte; and Mr. Kipling addresses the monkey as “a gleesome, fleasome thou,” which latter looks like an attempt to make an admissible adjective pass in an unwarranted brother.

  I have seen monkeys fleasome, treesome, freesome, keysome (opposite adjectives these, you will perceive on reflection), and disagreesome, but cannot call to mind one that looked in the least gleesome. Everything that runs up a fence or swings on a rope is not necessarily jolly, much as the action would appear to justify the belief. Many a human creature has stormed a fence with a lively desire to attain the dogless side, but no noticeable amount of jollity; and a man escaping from fire by, a rope wastes no time in unseasonable hilarity, dangle he never so quaintly. Look at their faces; look also at the monkey’s face. If a monkey grin, it is with rage; his more ordinary expression of countenance is one of melancholy reflection — of sad anxiety. His most waggish tricks are performed with an air of hopeless dejection. Now, this may be due to any one of three causes, or even to a mixture of them. It may be that, like the boy, he dolorously reflects that, after all, mischief has its limits; that you cannot, so to speak, snatch the wig of the man in the moon, upset the Milky Way, or pull the tail of the Great Bear. Or it may be that a constant life of practical jokes, and of watchfulness to avert them, is a wearying and a saddening thing after all. Or it may be that every ape, meditating on his latest iniquity, tries for ever to look as though it were the other monkey.

  With many people, to speak of the Zoo monkeys is to speak of Sally. Poor Sally! Who would not weep for Sally? For Sally is dead and hath not left her peer. A perversion of Milton is excusable in the circumstances. Why is there no memorial of Sally? “Is the spot marked with no colossal bust?” as they say on invitations to bachelor small-hour revels. There should, at least, be a memorial inscription to Sally.

  Sally, when first she came here in 1883, was a modest and, indeed, rather a shy chimpanzee. A few years of elementary education, however, quite changed Sally’s character, for she learnt to count up to five, and to be rather impudent. Wonderfully uniform are the results of elementary education. The chimpanzees, orang-outangs, and such near relatives of humanity are kept, when they are alive to keep, in the sloths’ house. Such as are there chiefly occupy their time in dying. It seems to be the only really serious pursuit they ever take to. Sudden death is so popular among them, that it is quite impossible to know how many are there at any particular time without having them all under the eye at the momen
t. A favourite “sell” among them is for a chimpanzee or orang to become a little educated and interesting, then wait till some regular visitor invites all his friends to inspect the phenomenon, and die just before they arrive at the door. This appears to be considered a most amusing practical joke by the dead monkey, and is much persevered in.

  Sally was a black-faced chimpanzee. The white-faced kind is more common, and in the days of its extreme youth much more like a stage Irishman, except that his black hair gives him the appearance of wearing dress trousers very much frayed at the ankles.

  The orang-outang is less intellectual as a rule than the chimpanzee; but he has a deceptive appearance of brain-pan — an illusory height of forehead — that earns undeserved respect.

  Many a man has conducted a successful business with credit on the strength of a reputation as easily earned. With the orang as with the chimpanzee, it is in infancy that he presents the most decently human appearance. But even then he is a low, blackguard sort of baby — worse than the precocious baby of the Bab Ballad could possibly have been. He should have a pipe for a feeding-bottle and a betting-book to learn his letters from. These anthropoid apes come with such suddenness and die with such uncertainty that I cannot say whether there are any in the Zoo now or not — I haven’t been there since yesterday.

  But wanderoos there are, I feel safe in saying, and Gibbons. The wanderoo is a pretty monkey, and usually gentle. He has a grave, learned, and reverend aspect as viewed from the front, and this is doubtless why, in India, his is supposed to be a higher caste, respected and feared by other monkeys. That same wig, however, that looks so venerable in the forefront view, is but a slatternly tangle in profile, like unto the chevelure of a dowdy kitchenmaid. But a wanderoo, well taught, and of good-temper, is as clean and quaint a pet as you may desire, and as delicate as the poet’s gazelle, with its incurable habit of dying. The same may be said of the Gibbon. In this climate he Declines and Falls on the smallest excuse, although, perhaps, not quite so readily as the chimpanzee, who may almost be said to Decline and Fall professionally, like Mr. Wegg.

  The Diana monkey, too, makes a pleasant pet, and is not so confirmed a dier as some. The Diana monkey here is over in the large monkey-house, in the middle of the Gardens. Her name is Jessie, and her beard is most venerable and patriarchal.

  But just outside the eastern door of the big house, John, the Tcheli monkey, occupies his separate mansion. John is a noticeable and choleric character. He dislikes being made the object of vulgar curiosity, and is apt to repel an inspection of his premises with a handful of sawdust. Any unflattering remark on his personal appearance will provoke a wild dance about his cage and a threatening spar through the wires. But once threaten him with a policeman — do as much as mention the word, in fact — and John becomes a furious Bedlamite, with the activity of a cracker and the intentions of dynamite. Against floor, walls, ceiling, and wires he bounces incontinent, flinging sawdust and language that Professor Garner would probably translate with hyphens and asterisks.

  John is the most easily provoked monkey I know, and the quaintest in his rage. He is also the hardiest monkey in the world, being capable o enjoying a temperature of ten degrees below zero; but there is a suitable penalty provided in the by-laws for any person so lost to decency as to suggest that this Tcheli monkey is a very Tcheli monkey indeed. For John’s benefit I would suggest an extra heap of sawdust on Bank Holidays. On an occasion of that sort it is little less than cruelty to keep him short of ammunition.

  Of the big monkey-house, who remembers more than a nightmare of tails, paws, and chatterings? Here are monkeys with beards, monkeys with none, big monkeys, little monkeys, monkeys with blue faces, monkeys who would appear to have escaped into the grounds at some time and to have sat on freshly painted seats; all thieving from visitors and each other, pulling tails, swinging, turning somersaults, with faces expressive of unutterable dolor and weariness of the world. The wizen, careworn face of the average monkey appeals to me as does that of the elderly and rheumatic circus-clown, when his paint has washed off.

  The monkey, I am convinced, is as sick of his regulation jokes as is the clown of his. But he has a comic reputation to keep up, and he does it, though every mechanical joke is a weariness and a sorrow to the flesh. “There is somebody’s tail hanging from a perch,” reflects the monkey, looking lugubriously across the cage. “I am a joker, and several human creatures are looking at me, and preparing to laugh; consequently, I must pull that tail, though I would prefer to stay where I am, especially as it belongs to a big monkey, who will do something unpleasant if he catches me.” And with an inward groan he executes the time-honoured joke and bolts for his life.

  It is a sad affliction to be born a wag by virtue of species. There is one monkey here who for some weeks displayed a most astonishing reluctance to snatch things through the wires, and a total disinclination to assist or share in the thefts of his friends by “passing on” or dividing. For some time I supposed him to be a moral monkey strayed from a Sunday-school book, and afflicted with an uncomfortable virtue. But afterwards I found that his conscientiousness was wholly due to his having recently grabbed a cigar by the hot end, and imbibed thereby a suspicion of the temperature of everything.

  Beware especially, in this house, of the paws of Marie, the Barbary ape. She has a long reach, and quickness enough to catch a bullet shot Poole-fashion — softly. Only Jungbluth, her keeper, can venture on familiarities, and him she takes by the eyebrows, gently stroking and smoothing them. Behind the large room Jungbluth keeps sick monkeys, delicate monkeys, tiny monkeys, and curious monkeys, who have no room outside.

  Here is a beautiful moustache monkey, segregated because of a slight cold, and at liberty to train his moustache without interference, if only it would grow sufficiently long. Watch the light fur under the chin of a moustache monkey; it is tinted with a delicate cobalt blue, a colour that would seem impossib except in feathers.

  But the little marmosets and the Pinche monkey, all in a cage together, are chiefly interesting here. The Pinche monkey is badly afflicted with nerves, and, as he is undisputed chief of the community, the marmosets have to be careful how they sneeze, or cough, or blink, or his indignation may be aroused. So that the whole performance in this cage is a sort of eccentric knockabout act, by the celebrated Marmosetti Eccentric Quartette.

  Marmoset No. 1 ventures on a gentle twitter, and the rest join in the song. Promptly the irritated Pinch bounds from his inmost lair, and the songsters are scattered. Everybody doesn’t know, by-the-bye, that the marmoset is consumed with an eternal ambition to be a singing bird, and practises his notes with hopeless perseverance. Another thing that many seem to be ignorant of, even some who keep marmosets as pets, is that a marmoset’s chief food should consist of insects. In a state of freedom he also eats small birds; but for a pet, cockroaches and bluebottles will probably be found, as a dietary, preferable in some respects to humming-birds and canaries.

  Among the sick in this place is a spider monkey. Mind, I say he is there. To-morrow, or in five minutes, he will probably be somewhere else, for that is the nature of a monkey. Sickening, recovering, dying, snatching, jumping, tail-pulling, bonnet-despoiling, everything a monkey does is done in a hurry.

  This particular spider monkey has two or three names, as Jerry, Tops and Billy, whereunto he answers indifferently; but I prefer to call him Coincidence, because of his long arms, and he answers as well to that name as to another. He came in here because of a severe attack of horizontal bar in the stomach. I have never seen a monkey fall, and, for that reason, wish I had seen the attack, as a curiosity. For, by some accident, unparalleled in monkey history, Coincidence managed to miss his hold, and fell on his digestive department across a perch. He is a long, thread-papery sort of monkey, and it too a little time to convince him that he wasn’t broken in half. When at last he understood that there was still only one of him, he set himself to such a doleful groaning and rubbing and turning up of the eyes,
that Jungbluth put him on the sick list at once. But it took a very few hours to make him forget his troubles; and, indeed, I have some suspicion that the whole thing was a dodge to secure a comfortable holiday in hospital.

  That certainly is the opinion of Coincidence’s friend, the Negro monkey, as his face will tell you, if you but ask him the question. It may interest those who already know that Coincidence has a long arm, to know also that he has but four fingers to each hand and no thumb; it is a part of his system. His tail is another part of his system, and you mustn’t touch it.

  There is no more affable and friendly monkey alive than Coincidence, although he is a little timid; but once touch his tail (it is long, like everything else belonging to Coincidence), and you lose his friendship for ever. He instantly complains to Jungbluth, and points you out unmistakably for expulsion. It is this house that witnesses most excitement on Bank Holidays.