The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 42

"Gaetano, my grandmother is ill and cannot get her firewood; come with me to the bosco this evening and help me to bring her a load or two, will you?"

And he said he would go.

So when the sun was well down and the cool night air was sauntering under the chestnuts, the pair sat together cheek to cheek and with their arms round each other's waists.

"O Gaetano," she exclaimed, "I do love you so very dearly. When you look at me your eyes are like--they are like the eyes"--here she faltered a little--"the eyes of a cow."

Thenceforward he cared not . . .

And so on.

A Divorce Novelette

The hero and heroine are engaged against their wishes. They like one another very well but each is in love with some one else; nevertheless, under an uncle's will, they forfeit large property unless they marry one another, so they get married, making no secret to one another that they dislike it very much.

On the evening of their wedding day they broach the subject that has long been nearest to their hearts--the possibility of being divorced.

They discuss it tearfully, but the obstacles seem insuperable.

Nevertheless they agree that faint heart never yet got rid of fair lady, "None but the brave," exclaims the husband, "deserve to lose the fair," and they plight their most solemn vows that they will henceforth live but for the object of getting divorced from one another.

But the course of true divorce never did run smooth, and the plot turns upon the difficulties that meet them and how they try to overcome them. At one time they seem almost certain of success, but the cup is dashed from their lips and is farther off than ever.

At last an opportunity occurs in an unlooked-for manner. They are divorced and live happily apart ever afterwards.

The Moral Painter--A Tale of Double Personality

Once upon a time there was a painter who divided his life into two halves; in the one half he painted pot-boilers for the market, setting every consideration aside except that of doing for his master, the public, something for which he could get paid the money on which he lived. He was great at floods and never looked at nature except in order to see what would make most show with least expense.

On the whole he found nothing so cheap to make and easy to sell as veiled heads.

The other half of his time he studied and painted with the sincerity of Giovanni Bellini, Rembrandt, Holbein or De Hooghe. He was then his own master and thought only of doing his work as well as he could, regardless of whether it would bring him anything but debt and abuse or not. He gave his best without receiving so much as thanks.

He avoided the temptation of telling either half about the other.

Two Writers

One left little or nothing about himself and the world complained that it was puzzled. Another, mindful of this, left copious details about himself, whereon the world said that it was even more puzzled about him than about the man who had left nothing, till presently it found out that it was also bored, and troubled itself no more about either.

The Archbishop of Heligoland

The Archbishop of Heligoland believes his faith, and it makes him so unhappy that he finds it impossible to advise any one to accept it.

He summons the Devil, makes a compact with him and is relieved by being made to see that there was nothing in it--whereon he is very good and happy and leads a most beneficent life, but is haunted by the thought that on his death the Devil will claim his bond. This terror grows greater and greater, and he determines to see the Devil again.

The upshot of it all is that the Devil turns out to have been Christ who has a dual life and appears sometimes as Christ and sometimes as the Devil. {235}

XVI--WRITTEN SKETCHES

Literary Sketch-Books

The true writer will stop everywhere and anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will stop everywhere and anywhere to sketch.

I do not see why an author should not have a sale of literary sketches, each one short, slight and capable of being framed and glazed in small compa.s.s. They would make excellent library decorations and ought to fetch as much as an artist's sketches. They might be cut up in suitable lots, if the fas.h.i.+on were once set, and many a man might be making provision for his family at odd times with his notes as an artist does with his sketches.

London

If I were asked what part of London I was most identified with after Clifford's Inn itself, I should say Fetter Lane--every part of it.

Just by the Record Office is one of the places where I am especially p.r.o.ne to get ideas; so also is the other end, about the butcher's shop near Holborn. The reason in both cases is the same, namely, that I have about had time to settle down to reflection after leaving, on the one hand, my rooms in Clifford's Inn and, on the other, Jones's rooms in Barnard's Inn where I usually spend the evening. The subject which has occupied my mind during the day being approached anew after an interval and a shake, some fresh idea in connection with it often strikes me. But long before I knew Jones, Fetter Lane was always a street which I was more in than perhaps any other in London. Leather Lane, the road through Lincoln's Inn Fields to the Museum, the Embankment, Fleet Street, the Strand and Charing Cross come next.

A Clifford's Inn Euphemism

People when they want to get rid of their cats, and do not like killing them, bring them to the garden of Clifford's Inn, drop them there and go away. In spite of all that is said about cats being able to find their way so wonderfully, they seldom do find it, and once in Clifford's Inn the cat generally remains there. The technical word among the laundresses in the inn for this is, "losing"

a cat:

"Poor thing, poor thing," said one old woman to me a few days ago, "it's got no fur on its head at all, and no doubt that's why the people she lived with lost her."

London Trees

They are making a great outcry about the ventilators on the Thames Embankment, just as they made a great outcry about the Griffin in Fleet Street. [See Alps and Sanctuaries. Introduction.] They say the ventilators have spoiled the Thames Embankment. They do not spoil it half so much as the statues do--indeed, I do not see that they spoil it at all. The trees that are planted everywhere are, or will be, a more serious nuisance. Trees are all very well where there is plenty of room, otherwise they are a mistake; they keep in the moisture, exclude light and air, and their roots disturb foundations; most of our London Squares would look much better if the trees were thinned. I should like to cut down all the plane trees in the garden of Clifford's Inn and leave only the others.

What I Said to the Milkman

One afternoon I heard a knock at the door and found it was the milkman. Mrs. Doncaster [his laundress] was not there, so I took in the milk myself. The milkman is a very nice man, and, by way of making himself pleasant, said, rather complainingly, that the weather kept very dry.

I looked at him significantly and said: "Ah, yes, of course for your business you must find it very inconvenient," and laughed.

He saw he had been caught and laughed too. It was a very old joke, but he had not expected it at that particular moment, and on the top of such an innocent remark.

The Return of the Jews to Palestine