Myles Away From Dublin

by Flann O'Brien

  Some cynics of recent date suggest that the Irish team is not very anxious to play, that their forward branch of the game has been very bad because they have been under the disability of having small packs. I disagree with that and believe that the boys in the green jerseys are all right provided that they have not also green faces.

  And the fact is that the postponement of the Wales-Ireland encounter was due, not to small packs, but to small pocks. The usual spelling is ‘smallpox’, but a pock everywhere on the face is just as genuine as a puck in Croke Park.

  I am an authority on smallpox and would fain recount my recent experiences. The phrase ‘would fain may seem archaic, but so am I.

  March Wedding

  A distant cousin insisted that I attend her wedding in Swansea on the 2nd of this month. (That means a present, I muttered to myself morosely.) In Dublin, I casually mentioned to a medical friend, though no client of his, that I would have to go.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how would you like a temperature of 104, a racing pulse, vomiting and pains all over the back and legs for a start? Then a rash that develops into a mass of pustules? Then a swelling of the head that makes your face unrecognisable and threatens death from asphyxia by blocking the air passages? And even with recovery, the certainty of being disfigured for life?’

  I said I wouldn’t fancy this regimen.

  ‘Then you’re a lunatic to go across without being vaccinated. Slip down to the hospital tomorrow about 11 and I’ll do the little job. If I’m tied up I’ll get another man to do the needful.’

  ‘Do the needle, you mean?’

  Unthinkingly, I did this. Within a week I was very ill, and in bed. In hospital.

  Some Ugly Facts

  Smallpox is a very painful, dangerous and largely unexplained disease, caused by a filter-passing virus, and is highly infectious. There is no settled treatment or cure for it. Emphasis of medical endeavour has been on prevention, and the very word vaccination (from L. vacca, a cow) was first invented in connection with the fight to control smallpox.

  Following a theory of therapy now very widely distributed in use, one Dr Edward Jenner in 1798 published a paper which said, in effect, that the best way of making a man immune to smallpox was to give him smallpox.

  The idea is that if he is given a minor dose of the disease, he is almost certain not to get the massive, disastrous dose. It seems to work pretty well in practice, but there are not a few quaint individuals to whom vaccination proves not only dangerous but occasionally fatal. I think I am one.

  There is a disorder called vaccinia, which is really smallpox of the cow, sometimes misleadingly called cowpox. Jenner found that if a cow was infected by smallpox, the end-product of the passage of the virus through the cow’s body would still be a smallpox virus but one of much diminished power and malignancy.

  This, if injected in a solution of glycerine into the human arm, would cause a mild attack with the familiar pocks in a small area at the point of injection but would lack the power of causing a generalised eruption.

  In 1889 a Royal Commission on vaccination was set up and in its final report of 1896, it gave approval with some reservations to the principle of vaccination against smallpox. In Britain as well as in many other countries, legislation was passed making vaccination compulsory. This led to political and social upheavals, and the inevitable appearance of ‘conscientious objectors’ led to some relaxation of compulsion. Responsible people have alleged and established many cases of eczema and impetigo following vaccination, and hundreds of cases of the far worse horror known as post-vaccinal encephalitis.

  True, the difference in reaction of adults to vaccination is truly enormous, but it is indisputable that almost anything is better than a dose of real smallpox.

  Therefore, good reader, if the next time you look over a hedge and see a cow, raise your hat.

  A dreadful day

  It seems, looking back, that my contributions to this newspaper have consisted mostly of my accounts of illnesses, bad luck, money owed and not paid, and every other kind of misfortune. If it’s the truth, why should I be shy of telling it. The recital alone gives some relief, and might also be a sort of a warning to other people who have it in for me.

  I feel the latest piece of victimisation takes some beating. For once, I will be brief about it, if only the torture was very lengthy.

  One morning I got a telephone call from a television company in London. I do not disclose which company. Would I be good enough to sit for a television interview? The date suggested was a Saturday and the man speaking said that absolute quiet was essential, the place he wanted to do it in (a pub) would have to be closed.

  I said certainly, though I made no comment about the pub. I knew that Irish pubs everywhere ‘make’ the week on Friday and Saturday, when the wage-earner drinks the wages. I did, however, as a sort of a joke ask certain proprietors if they would be good enough to close on this Saturday for a few hours, and that the television firm would pay handsome compensation. The result was the nearest thing I have seen to heart failure.

  They Arrive

  Yes, two bright boys came to my own house at 10.30 a.m., accompanied by three locals, very likely borrowed from Telefis. These were a camera man, a man to look after terrifying and roasting arc-lamps, and a third to attend to sound recording. All were polite enough in a bleak way, refused my hospitable offer of a drink, and went to work immediately.

  I was put sitting on an upright, dining-room type of chair and No. 2 of the visitors sat near me but apparently not in the picture. The Sahara lights went on and my interlocutor (the general subject was books) began to ask me the most stupid questions imaginable.

  ‘You shave every morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What part of your face do you choose for starting shaving?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  When the whole shot was over, No. 1 said:

  ‘That was very … very … very good, but you raised your voice slightly when you began talking about knitting. Shall we try it again?’

  And so we did, and so we did. There was no lunch because the Mammie, if I may so call her, assumed that this 10-minute orgy would last an hour or so at most. There was the added crux of making lunch for seven persons in all. I don’t think we have that many chairs.

  One Break

  There were a few minor breaks between ‘takes’, and one major one. Glancing through a window, No. 1 said ‘That’s a nice little garden you have’, went out and lay down on the grass.

  ‘Get up, you fool,’ I roared, ‘that grass is wet. I don’t want pneumonia on my hands as well as this television job.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, rising, ‘let’s try it again.’

  The major break came about half an hour afterwards. The camera man had to motor into Dublin to get more film.

  This outfit arrived, as I’ve said, at 10.30 a.m., and that’s early enough for the start of any ordeal. They left at 7.30 p.m.

  If any reader would like to know what this means in personal terms, let him sit on an upright chair between those hours, with no food beyond a cup of coffee, and nothing else of any kind except non-stop annoyance.

  The item has not yet appeared on the TV screens, but I can certify that the recording was HELL. With knobs on.

  Bad language

  The title of this week’s discourse need not alarm anybody, for the language throughout will be seemly. But bad language as a subject of discussion is worth while. While our dander is well down and we are at peace with the world, let us debate this question of abuse.

  Every week this newspaper (like all others) has a small report about some decent, simple farmer. He has been hauled before the court for using vile and abusive language, and sometimes this is linked with the assertion that at the same time he was drunk and disorderly. Usually he is fined ten bob. And what about it? It could happen to a bishop.

  Language (of any kind) is a fairly recent invention. I mean, it didn’t start until about 100,
000 years ago, roughly. Before that, communication – and here I include beasts as well as men – was by gesture. A hungry creature pointed to the mouth to indicate hunger.

  Elephants did just the same as homo sapiens, except that they used the trunk instead of a finger. Hunger is one thing that precludes ambiguity. If you are hungry, you know you are suffering from hunger, irrespective of whether you are a mouse or an ostrich.

  Having established the antiquity of language, the next question is – how old is bad language?

  A Sorry Puzzle

  It is not an easy question. The oldest documents accessible to the western world, those of Homer and Vergil, do not contain any bad language. The Book of Ardagh, edited by Dr John O’Donovan and placed as to age about AD 900, contains no obscenities or crude talk. In fact, it is mostly a biblical transcript, with wonderful and elaborate lettering. When then did man first begin to soil his mouth?

  Certain pre-Christian Latinists, not the ones we were beaten up about at school, did not hesitate to be a bit dirty. Ovid was one of the bad boys and occasionally the elegant Horace could go a bit too near the edge.

  Long their predecessor, Sophocles wrote a questionable play dealing with incest. A certain Dr Bowdler had to expurgate the works of Shakespeare and incidentally gave a new word to the English language. All those people seem remote, long-dead, old-fashioned.

  How do we manage today, 1962, for bad language and immoral literary behaviour? I think we can boast that we are doing as well as our ancestors, but it is also true that the general public attitude for such wares has seriously declined. A dirty book is no longer an easy way of making quick money.

  I haven’t tried myself, but some friends of mine who know nothing about any other sort of book say that publishers have become stupid and just refuse to publish ‘modern novels’. I usually offer them a cigarette and change the subject.

  Our Own Man

  About 40 years ago a Dublin man astonished the world (and also made it very angry) by publishing a book named Ulysses. His inner attitude was that there was no such thing as bad language; there was only language. It is not so much that this book was censored; my own copy bears this entry in its printing history:

  ‘Third printing – January 1923. 500 numbered copies of which 499 seized by Customs Authorities, Folkestone.’

  This statistic has always fascinated me. What happened to the 500th copy? Who has it?

  It is true that Ulysses contains those four-letter words but it is indeed far from being a bad book. The author was human enough to produce patches of poor and arid writing, and one large gallop of it shows that he was capable of giving himself airs by reproducing (as he thought) the styles of many writers who went before him. For all that, I believe Ulysses is a great book.

  Its many distinctions have been imitated often enough to prove that.

  Maybe that’s enough to say for one week. The book is not banned in Ireland but is very hard to get. Joyce is dead and the sort of people who originally felt outraged now think the book is tame stuff. May both RIP!

  Does tax hurt?

  Once a year we, like our fellow-serfs on the sister-isle, are presented with a thing called the Budget. It pretends to be an annual review of the national housekeeping, looking at the economic facts of the year gone by and purporting to peer cunningly into the year that is to come. After a smug sermon lasting about an hour scolding us for our profligate and reckless habits, the elderly uncle (otherwise the Minister for Finance, whoever he may be) announces the new taxes. And that’s that.

  Not many people give the matter much cold, objective thought. They accept taxation and State interference with their private lives as inevitable, like death. If on the day following the day of the Budget, you ask some reasonable man what he thought of it, the response you will get is almost certain to be a sullen grunt. As a subject of conversation, the Budget is as sterile, perfunctory as the weather. All the talk in the world won’t prevent the descent of a heavy shower of rain.

  It is commonly and silently accepted that the main function of a government is to tax the citizens and make them as poor and insignificant as possible. To complain amounts almost to treason but most of the victims do not do this, because they realise it is a fearful waste of time. The only people who talk of taxation (and they do so with glee) are those who think they are not taxed at all. Such people do not realise that there is practically nobody in any modern community who is not taxed.

  Not His Business

  Let us take the case of Mr Plain Man. He has a good job, is married and has four kids. His salary is not enormous but it is comfortable, and with all his allowances he pays next to nothing in income tax. He hasn’t a car, of course, and doesn’t go in for any nonsense of that kind. A drink? He’s no TT but once a week for a few pints is enough for any man. He is sensible, shrewd, level-headed. On Budget day the Minister announces an extra duty of 3d a gallon on petrol. The PM (– stands for Plain Man, not Prime Minister) gives three cheers.

  ‘Good enough for them,’ he sniggers. ‘Flashing along the roads like streaks of lightning, killing people and with a lady in the front seat who is almost certainly somebody else’s wife. And plenty of drink on board, of course. Makes you sick.’

  A Narrow View

  A little reflection would show that this is a narrow view. A rise in the cost of petrol means a rise in the cost of distribution of everything, including essential food. It means that the cost of all goods must go up. The cost of feeding the people in the County Home goes up, and up go the rates. The Ministers, here and in Britain, pretended to make a distinction as between essential and ‘luxury’ goods and services. Is a newspaper a luxury? If a man thinks he badly needs a haircut, is he therefore a vain and despicable little bantam? How luxurious is it to have a hot bath now and again?

  Finance Ministers all over the world believe that taking a drink or smoking a cigarette are habits which are very bad for us, and underline this decision by imposing massive taxes on those commodities. The truth is that if everybody concerned suddenly decided en masse to give up drinking and smoking for good, the financial foundations of the State would collapse, and new unprecedented taxes (e.g. on bread) would be necessary to enable the creaking government machine to shamble along. There is an excise tax on matches. That hits the smoker again, but what about the little wife who has to light the fire every morning?

  Across the Way

  Selwyn Lloyd in Britain was attacked and jeered at for putting a tax on kiddies’ lollipops. The British taxpayer can well be angry at this petty impost, as with an infinity of other marginal fiscal irritations. Why? Because every now and again he is called on to pay for Britain’s share in a world war when all standards of financial wisdom and equilibrium are swept completely aside, money is no object, buy X, Y and Z no matter what it costs, freedom itself is priceless, we also serve and et cetera.

  It could be argued, against this background of taxation, that world wars are intermittent intervals of sanity. In Britain, World War I is not yet paid for. Two or three generations yet unborn will have to spend their days paying for Word War II. How about World War III? By then, I hope to be a recluse in Rome. Anybody who wants to get in touch with me should ring me – I know it is an old joke – at Vat 69.

  Mowers to movies

  This week the reader must bear with me (after all, isn’t this a small bear garden we run here?) because two subjects I should like to mention have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

  First of all, I got a catalogue (unsolicited) from a Dublin firm of purveyors for the needs of gardeners and small-time cultivators. The prices in it astonished me. No, not for the usual reason that they were astronomically high but because they were so low. A nice situation in 1962.

  Take a lawn mower, for example. It is not a very complicated machine but it is an example of what we call precision engineering. The drum of cutting blades must have a delicately minute impact on the reactor blade against which they come. There are side effects, such a
s a shaft of seasoned oak, and a lubrication system which a decent half-wit could operate. What price for this small miracle? On average, a fiver!

  Owner-driven

  But there was more than that in this small, illustrated book. There were other mowers on offer, mechanically propelled and of unearthly appearance. The driver could ride on them, and there seems to be no reason why he should stay on lawns. There seemed to me to be no obvious reason why the owner-driver should not surge out from his modest abode of a Saturday and go to the races in the Curragh on this mower.

  Compared with a taxi, the cost of a mower would be negligible and I doubt if any Guard, or even a Taca, would have the nerve to stop a contraption that looks like a cross between a mobile thermological station and a concrete mixer. The cost would be well under £40.

  The Movies

  Completely different is a picture I saw. On my trips to Dublin I often find myself in an elderly but smallish cinema, of which there are many similar sorts in London. You are not confronted with an epic, or a reconstruction of the most spectacular parts of the Bible story by some Hollywood mogul. You get bits and pieces – travelogues, newsreels, sometimes ‘on the record’ spiffs by American politicians.

  You can leave when you like without feeling defrauded. There is no climax to wait for. You can rest, and even sleep. Yet, inevitably, in such tame situations, you come across positively startling material. In my case last week it was the record of a wrestling event. It was incredible, mercifully silent but with a cynical American commentator on the sound-track.