The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 49

"Oh yes, but I don't greatly like poetry myself."

"Why don't you like poetry?"

"You see, poetry resembles metaphysics, one does not mind one's own, but one does not like any one else's."

"Oh! And what you call metaphysic?"

This was too much. It was like the lady who attributed the decline of the Italian opera to the fact that singers would no longer "podge"

their voices.

"And what, pray, is 'podging'?" enquired my informant of the lady.

"Why, don't you understand what 'podging' is? Well, I don't know that I can exactly tell you, but I am sure Edith and Blanche podge beautifully."

However, I said that metaphysics were la filosofia and this quieted him. He left poetry and turned to prose.

"Then you shall like much the works of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving?"

I was grieved to say that I did not; but I dislike Was.h.i.+ngton Irving so cordially that I determined to chance another "No."

"Then you shall like better Fenimore Cooper?"

I was becoming reckless. I could not go on saying "No" after "No,"

and yet to ask me to be ever so little enthusiastic about Fenimore Cooper was laying a burden upon me heavier than I could bear, so I said I did not like him.

"Oh, I see," said the boy; "then it is Uncle Tom's Cabin that you shall like?"

Here I gave in. More "Noes" I could not say, so, thinking I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a mutton chop, I said that I thought Uncle Tom's Cabin one of the most wonderful and beautiful books that ever were written.

Having got at a writer whom I admired, he was satisfied, but not for long.

"And you think very much of the theories of Darwin in England, do you not?"

I groaned inwardly and said we did.

"And what are the theories of Darwin?"

Imagine what followed!

After which:

"Why do you not like poetry?--You shall have a very good university in London?" and so on.

Sunday Morning at Soglio

The quarantine men sat on the wall, dangling their legs over the parapet and singing the same old tune over and over again and the same old words over and over again. "Fu tradito, fu tradito da una donna." To them it was a holiday.

Two gnomes came along and looked at me. I asked the first how old it was; it said fourteen. They both looked about eight. I said that the flies and the fowls ought to be put into quarantine, and the gnomes grinned and showed their teeth till the corners of their mouths met at the backs of their heads.

The skeleton of a bird was nailed up against a barn, and I said to a man: "Aquila?"

He replied: "Aquila," and I pa.s.sed on.

The village boys came round me and sighed while they watched me sketching. And the women came and exclaimed: "Oh! che testa, che testa!"

And the bells in the windows of the campanile began, and I turned and looked up at their beautiful lolling and watched their fitful tumble- aboutiness. They swung open-mouthed like elephants with uplifted trunks, and I wished I could have fed them with buns. They were not like English bells, and yet they rang more all 'Inglese than bells mostly do in Italy--they had got it, but they had not got it right.

There used to be two crows, and when one disappeared the other came to the house where it had not been for a month. While I was sketching it played with a woman who was weeding; it got on her back and tried to bite her hat; then it got down and pecked at the nails in her boots and tried to steal them. It let her catch it, and then made a little fuss, but it did not fly away when she let it go, it continued playing with her. Then it came to exploit me but would not come close up. Signor Scartazzini says it will play with all the women of the place but not with men or boys, except with him.

Then there came a monk and pa.s.sed by me, and I knew I had seen him before but could not think where till, of a sudden, it flashed across me that he was Valoroso XXIV, King of Paphlagonia, no doubt expiating his offences.

And I watched the ants that were busy near my feet, and listened to them as they talked about me and discussed whether man has instinct.

"What is he doing here?" they said; "he wasn't here yesterday.

Certainly they have no instinct. They may have a low kind of reason, but nothing approaching to instinct. Some of the London houses show signs of instinct--Gower Street, for example, does really seem to suggest instinct; but it is all delusive. It is curious that these cities of theirs should always exist in places where there are no ants. They certainly anthropomorphise too freely. Or is it perhaps that we formicomorphise more than we should?"

And Silvio came by on his way to church. It was he who taught all the boys in Soglio to make a noise. Before he came up there was no sound to be heard in the streets, except the fountains and the bells.

I asked him whether the curate was good to him.

"Si," he replied, "e abbastanza buono."

I should think Auld Robin Gray was "abbastanza buono" to Mrs. Gray.

One of the little girls told me that Silvio had so many centesimi and she had none. I said at once:

"You don't want any centesimi."

As soon as these words fell from my lips, I knew I must be getting old.

And presently the Devil came up to me. He was a nice, clean old man, but he dropped his h's, and that was where he spoiled himself--or perhaps it was just this that threw me off my guard, for I had always heard that the Prince of Darkness was a perfect gentleman. He whispered to me that in the winter the monks of St. Bernard sometimes say matins overnight.

The blue of the mountains looks bluer through the chestnuts than through the pines. The river is snowy against the "Verdi prati e selve amene." The great fat tobacco plant agrees with itself if not with us; I never saw any plant look in better health. The briar knows perfectly well what it wants to do and that it does not want to be disturbed; it knows, in fact, all that it cares to know. The question is how and why it got to care to know just these things and no others. Two cheeky goats came tumbling down upon me and demanded salt, and the man came from the saw-mill and, with his great brown hands, scooped the mud from the dams of the rills that watered his meadow, for the hour had come when it was his turn to use the stream.

There were cow-bells, mountain elder-berries and lots of flowers in the gra.s.s. There was the glacier, the roar of the river and a plaintive little chapel on a green knoll under the great cliff of ice which cut the sky. There was a fat, crumby woman making hay. She said:

"Buon giorno."

And the "i o r" of the "giorno" came out like oil and honey. I saw she wanted a gossip. She and her husband tuned their scythes in two- part, note-against-note counterpoint; but I could hear that it was she who was the canto fermo and he who was the counterpoint. I peered down over the edge of the steep slippery slope which all had to be mown from top to bottom; if hay grew on the dome of St. Paul's these dreadful traders would gather it in, and presently the autumn crocuses would begin to push up their delicate, naked snouts through the closely shaven surface. I expressed my wonder.

"Siamo esatti," said the fat, crumby woman.

For what little things will not people risk their lives? So Smith and I crossed the Rangitata. So Esau sold his birthright.

It was noon, and I was so sheer above the floor of the valley and the sun was so sheer above me that the chestnuts in the meadow of Bondo squatted upon their own shadows and the gardens were as though the valley had been paved with bricks of various colours. The old gra.s.s- grown road ran below, nearer the river, where many a good man had gone up and down on his journey to that larger road where the reader and the writer shall alike join him.