by C. S. Lewis
II The Documents
In approaching the work my first business was necessarily to draw up an exhaustive list of all surviving documents and to estimate their comparative value. I had believed that memory alone was sufficient to furnish me with the list: but the discovery of four fragmentary histories of Animalland, where I had remembered only two, soon warned me of my mistake. Having thus been forced to abandon memory as an absolute test, I was reduced to search – a method which has the disadvantage of leaving us always uncertain whether some document has not been overlooked. At the same time, I am of opinion that no Text of first rate importance was ever forgotten. Fragments and short monographs, individual drawings and sketch maps, may still wait to be discovered and to enlighten us on matters of detail. A Supplement to the Encyclopedia may thus, at any time, become necessary: but the main outlines of the Boxonian world (with one great exception) are fixed beyond dispute.
The following list of Texts will also serve as a key to the references in the Encyclopedia. I have prefixed to each Text the initial letters by which it is referred to, and the reader should make himself familiar with these before he proceeds. (The arabic numerals, which follow the initial letters in references, indicate the page of the Text in question: the Roman numerals, where necessary, indicate the volume. Thus ‘LB II 13’ means ‘Life of Big. Volume II. page 13’. References to chapters, or (in plays) to Acts and Scenes, are not made use of in the Encyclopedia.)
LIST OF TEXTS
1. KR = The King’s Ring. Found in a small account book with stiff black covers. Almost certainly the oldest text which we have, it deals, in a crude, archaic fashion, with the theft of the crown jewels of Animalland by James Hit, in the reign of Benjamin I.
2. TS = Tom Saga. I have given this name, for purposes of reference, to an un-named narrative dealing with the exploits of the heroes Bob, Tom and Dorimie, against the Cats. It is very archaic in style and must have been written not long after KR. It is sewn up inside the cover of a yellow limp-backed account book together with the next Text: the cover bearing the joint title ‘Tales of Mouseland’.
3. GG = The Glorious Goal. An unfinished narrative dealing with the adventures of the Jaspers and of Benjamin I in Tararo. It shows a great advance in style and structural power and gives valuable confirmation to the more strictly historical Texts.
4. OH = Old History. (So called for purposes of reference; the MS. bears the title History of Mouseland from Sto’ A to Bub I, i.e. from Stone-age to Bublish I.) Found in a small account book with limp black covers. An unfinished history of Mouseland. It does not descend lower than the Indian Settlement, contradicts all known history, and is nearly worthless. In style it is as archaic as TS, and may be earlier than GG.
5. LH = The Lost History. (So called because it was unexpectedly discovered in the attic in 1927. In the MS, the title is History of Mouseland.) Found in an exercise book with limp yellow covers. It comes down to the reign of an apocryphal Bublish II, and is generally inconsistent with the better histories, though recording some valuable facts. In style and spelling it suggests a date slightly earlier than GG.
6. MH = Middle History. (So called for purposes of reference. The MS. bears the ambitious title History of Animalland from 1327 to 1906.) Found in a quarto exercise book with limp yellow covers very much defaced by scribbling. Alone among our texts it is written in pencil. It gives a clear and credible account of Animallandic History from the landing of the Indians to the latter half of the reign of Benjamin I. It disagrees with OH and LH, but is in entire agreement with NH, which sometimes reproduces it word for word.
7. NH = New History. (In the MS, History of Animalland.) Found in an exercise book, very small quarto, with limp terra cotta covers. In range, style, and credibility, it is easily the best of the Histories, and brings us down as far as the Lantern Act. The writer apparently has KR, TS, GG, and MH before him and has some idea of the historical handling of sources. In his treatment of the Feline War (NH 16–18) he regards himself as giving a historical account of the same events which TS treats in the epic and fabulous manner.
8. CHM = The Chess Monograph. (Un-named in the MS.) A short narrative of four pages, found in the same book with OH, and describing the risorgimento of the Chess under Flaxman, and the foundation of the first Chessaries. It is in almost complete agreement with the account of the same events given in NH 23 et seq,17 and appears to be a little earlier.
9. MCH = The Murry Chronicle. One number only of this paper has been discovered. It consists of an uncovered sheet of notepaper and contains an account of the origin and outbreak of the Pongeein War in the reigns of Hawki IV and Benjamin VI. It seems to have been written later than NH and CHM.
10. MET = The Murry Evening Telegraph. Eleven numbers of this paper have been found. Numbers 1 to 6 are sewn together in a cover decorated with paintings. The remaining numbers are loose. It gives an account of daily events in the reigns of Benjamin VI and Hawki IV at a period shortly after the Pongeein War, and is a mine of valuable information. It is certainly later than MCH.18
11. B = Boxen. Found in two exercise books with limp terra cotta covers. This narrative, in the form of a novel, deals primarily with the history of Orring’s League in the early years of Hawki V and Benjamin VII, and the political rise of Polonius Green. It is much later than MET.
12. LD = The Locked Door Found in a Malvern exercise book with half-limp black covers. This text is also in the form of a novel, and deals with the Tracity War. The writer has B before him and has connected the events he describes with those described in B.
13. SS = The Sailors. Found in two exercise books with limp blue covers. A novel, dealing almost exclusively with the life of naval officers on T.M.S. Greyhound, and therefore of less value than B and LD for the study of Boxonian life and institutions in general. Many characters, however, are common to it and them, and all three texts tend to confirm one another.
14. LB = Life of Big. Found in three small notebooks (Malvern) with limp black covers. The author, starting at 1856, brings his narrative down to 1913. For much of his matter he is our only authority, but elsewhere confirms NH, MCH, B, LD and SS.
15. THK = Than Kyu. Found in the same book with LD. This short narrative relates an otherwise unknown episode of Big’s early life.
16. LSM = Littera Scripta Manet. Found in an exercise book with limp yellow covers. This text gives in dramatic form an account of the reconciliation between James Bar and Big, and is in agreement with the story of the same event given in LB III 21 et seq.
17. UP = Unfinished Play. Found in an exercise book with limp yellow covers, which has since been utilised as the 2nd volume of Leeborough Studies. It deals with an attempt of Big’s to induce Quicksteppe to marry. Only one act has been completed. The episode is nowhere else recorded: but the general framework and the characters are in agreement with LB, LD, B etc.
18. LS = Leeborough Studies. A series of drawings of all periods collected in two exercise books with limp yellow covers. The Boxonological section often represents episodes recorded in the Texts and provides portraits of many important characters. (References indicate the number of the Plate by a Roman numeral.)
III The Boxonian Apocrypha
Under this heading I have grouped together a number of texts which refer to the Boxonian world but which cannot, for various reasons, be regarded as giving trustworthy evidence about it. It should be remembered, however, that all these texts may occasionally supply written evidence for events well attested by tradition, or rendered extremely probable by the better texts. Where they are our only authorities, their statements, if intrinsically probable, may be accepted, though with caution. The Apocrypha includes the following texts; –
1 THE SQUIRREL FRAGMENT (SQF). An unfinished narrative dealing with the adventures of a free company under the leadership of the squirrel Strawbane, against the Cats. Its style suggests a date rather later than GG, and it is found in a quarto exercise book
[A page of the Encyclopedia w
as torn out here. There is enough of it left to show that it contained writing on both sides. Besides losing a list of the Boxonian Aprocrypha, we no longer have what were the dates of ‘Period I’ of section III – Chronology. The Encyclopedia continues as follows:]
PERIOD II or GREAT HIATUS: Early Boxen down to 1856.
(No sources.)
PERIOD III: 1856–1913.
(Sources: – MCH, MET, B, LD, SS, LB, THK, LSM, UP.)
PERIOD I. – NH abstains from all attempt at chronology. The remaining histories, from the chronological point of view, fall into two families; –
(a) OH and LH which assign the Indian settlement and the unification of Calico to the early thirteenth century.
(b) MH which gives 1327 for the accession of Hacom and unification of Calico, and 1340 for the death of Benjamin I.
Evidence exists in favour of the B-chronology. We know that the defeat of the Cats occurred in the reign of King Mouse the Good who succeeded Benjamin I (NH 15–17). We also know that King Mouse was ‘old’ and ‘worn out with anxiety’ when he died ‘soon after’ the conclusion of the Feline War (ibid., 18). We may therefore assume that he had a long reign. If we accept 1340 for the death of Benjamin I, and forty years for the reign of King Mouse, we shall have 1380 for King Mouse’s death and 1375–79 for the defeat of the Cats. So much for the B-chronology.
If we now turn to LB II 13 we shall find it stated that the defeat of the Cats took place ‘over five hundred years before’ the Emancipation Bill of 1897; which would bring it, say, to 1390. Thus LB and the B-chronology agree within fifteen years in their date for the Feline War, which implies a similar agreement as to the dates of Benjamin I and Mouse the Good, while the A-chronology would disagree with both by a century. When we add to this the general inferiority of OH and LH, in which the A-chronology is given, we need have no hesitation in accepting the B-chronology.
As MH does not come lower than Benjamin I, and NH gives no dates, we have no chronology offered for the later history of Pre-Boxonian Animalland. It is not impossible, however, to arrive at an approximate date for the Union. We know from LB I 10 that Danphabel School was founded by Bublish II ‘three hundred years’ before Big entered it in 1870: i.e. in 1590. We also know (ibid.) that Little-Master White was educated at Danphabel: and, that the same White (NH 32) was Little-Master under Bublish II at the time of the Union. He therefore had time to grow up and climb to the Little-Magisterial chair in the lifetime of the King who founded the school at which he was educated. We are, further, entitled to assume, on the analogy of terrestrial history, that the school-going age was younger in the Sixteenth, than in the Twentieth, century. If White has been one of the first pupils to enter Danphabel when it was founded in 1570, and if he had then been 6 years of age, he would not have been thirty till 1593: and as it is very unlikely that he would have become Little-Master at an earlier age, we may therefore be sure that the Union took place either in 1593 or later. Again, Bublish II, who was not born in the purple and had to fight for the crown, cannot have been in a position to found Danphabel before his twenty-fifth year. Assuming that he was twenty-five at the time of the foundation (i.e. in 1570), 1630 – when he would have been eighty-five – is the latest year which we can, with any probability, assume for his death: and as he certainly survived the Union by a year or so (NH 33) its date cannot be later than 1628. I therefore conclude that the Union took place sometime between 1593 and 1628: 1610 may be regarded as a convenient date which cannot be seriously wrong.
Before leaving the 1st Period, a word should be said of the Pre-Historic period; by which I mean to include such events as the texts occasionally allude to, which come before the beginning of connected narrative in the Histories. The earliest historical fact of which the texts hold any record is the existence of a Piscian empire, ruled by one Pau-Amma, and described by Big (LD 21) as flourishing in a high state of civilisation two centuries before the Pongeein invasion of Animalland. NH, which alone of the histories knows anything of the Pongeein period, gives no dates: but we can work back from the B-chronology of MH. Hacom’s Porcine expedition took place in 1329 (MH 2), shortly after his third annual council (NH 3) and therefore in the fourth year of his reign. This fixes Hacom’s accession at 1325. The earliest Indian settlements took place about a century earlier (NH 2), and are described as being ‘the first notable event’ after the Pongeein evacuation: which suggests the first years of the thirteenth century for the fall of the Pongeein empire in Animalland. NH 1 and LD 21 both make it clear that the Pongeeins not only conquered the country but held it for some time as part of their empire. As we have no means of determining the duration of this Pongeein period, and know only that the Piscian empire flourished two centuries before its commencement, we cannot provide a terminus post quem for Pau Amma. What we are able to conclude is that he cannot have lived later than the middle of the eleventh century.
PERIOD II. – Since the Great Hiatus begins immediately after the troubles arising in connection with the Lantern Act (NH 33), that is, in the early years of the seventeenth century, and ends with the beginning of LB in 1856, we can now determine its extent as roughly two hundred and fifty years. In the absence of any connected account of this period we are reduced to collecting scattered references to isolated events from the texts of the IIId Period and from the apocryphal MCC. These, with their dates, will be given in the Chronological Table below.
PERIOD III. – For the greater part of this period we have simply to copy down the dates given in LB. After the accession of Benjamin VII and Hawki V in 1908, our chronological problem is the comparatively simple one of fitting into the framework of LB the events recorded in B, LD, SS, THK, LSM and UP.
On the following page I have attempted a chronological table. The dates are largely based on LB.
IV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
PERIOD I
XIth Century Piscian empire of Pau-Amma.
1200 Decline of Pongeein Empire. Pongeein evacuation of Animalland.
Indian settlements in Mouseland.
Alliance of Indian settlers with the Cosois.
1325 Hacom crowned King of all Calico.
Foundation of the Damerfesk.
1329 Hacom’s Porcine war; and death.
1330 Accession of Bublish I.
1331 Assassination of Bublish I. Accession of Benjamin.
Discovery of Tararo.
A ‘Hawkie’ reigning in India.
Union of Southern Animalland with Calico.
Reform of the Damerfesk.
1340 Death of Benjamin I. Accession of King Mouse.
1375 Suppression of Feline resolt. Feline disabilities imposed.
1380 Death of King Mouse. Formation of Commonwealth.
Democratic rising and dictatorship of Balkyns.
Rise of Perrenism.
Death of Balkyns. Commonwealth continued, but power reverts to the middle classes. Leppi I becomes ‘governer’.
Rise of the Chessaries.
Persecution of Perrenism.
Death of Leppi I. Accession of Leppi II.
Foundation of the Clique. Abolition of Slavery in Animalland.
Monarchist rising in the South of Animalland. Death of Leppi II.
Restoration of monarchy by the Damerfesk.
1560–70 (?) Accession of Bublish II.
Foundation of office of Little-Master.
1610 Union of Animalland with India.
Attempted abolition of Slavery in India.
The Lantern Act.
PERIOD II
circ. 1790 Floruit the Sly Italian in Animalland.
1800 Floruit Hawk Wages in India.
1801 Abolition of Slavery in India.
1848 Lord Robert Big’s Domestic Servants Act.
1854 The elder Chutney born.
PERIOD III
1856 Lord John Big born.
1870 He enters Danphabel.
1874 Leaves Danphabel.
1876 Enters Great Eglington.
1879 Is
called to the bar. (Visits Than Kyu?)
1881 Becomes Cornet of Dragoons.
1883 Death of Lord Robert Big.
1884 Shops Hours Act. Murry riots.
1885 Train outrage in Pongee.
1886 (Jan.) War with Pongee declared.
(March) Pongeein expedition sails.
Siege of Fortressa.
1888 Relief of Fortressa. March on Omaar-Raam.
1890 Lord John Big’s dash to the coast.
1892 He becomes member of Damerfesk.
1893 Peace with Pongee.
1895 Marquis of Calcutta’s budget. The affair of Bumper
1897 Grimalkan’s bill for Feline Emancipation.
1898 Debate in the Damerfesk on Feline Emancipation.
1898–1901 Lord Big’s retirement to the Tracities.
1902 The Princes enter the Royal Chessary.
1903 Threat of war with Prussia.
1904 Big and the Princes in Turkey. Defeat of War party.
1905 Exclusion Bill.
1906 The Princes leave the Royal Chessary.
1908 Death of Hawki IV & Benjamin VI; accession of Hawki V & Benjamin VII.
1909 Coronation of Hawki V & Benjamin VII.
Orring’s League. P. Green’s new Clique Bill.
War with the Tracity Islands.
V Geography
While a simple criticism suffices to clear up the chronology of the Boxonian world, the same cannot be said for its geography. As regards the configuration of the principle land masses all the extant maps show a remarkable uniformity, but as regards the scale it is quite impossible to reconcile any of the maps with the distances implied in the texts where journies are described. Over the orientation insoluable problems arise, the climates and products of many countries being apparently incompatible with the latitudes to which all maps assign them. How far this puzzle could be solved by assuming for the axis of the Boxonian globe an angle different from the terrestrial, is a question which the present writer feels himself incompetent to discuss. He is therefore reluctantly compelled to leave the whole geographical problem to some future Boxonologist.