CHAPTER XVIIIMEDDLA
IT was not far in the afternoon when my companion, taking a look ahead, gave a long, low whistle and laughed. He had recognised some feature of the land we were now approaching. “You will have some fun here,” he said. “We shall have to bridge our way over the lunatic asylum of the archipelago. It is a series of islets on which we have classified and quarantined our cranks for many ages. Anyone ridden by a fixed idea or habit is shipped off to those of his own kin. So we keep our communities clear of quixotism and crazy eccentricity. You will see each for yourself, for we cannot get to Figlefia unless by passing over every one of these islets in order to provision our canoe for each voyage across the passages between them. We call the group Loonarie; but each has its own special and grandiloquent name to distinguish it, for they have a supreme contempt for one another.”
We paddled and drifted with considerable rapidity, and the features of an island grew more and more distinct; for the current which bore us evidently ran close inshore. The beach swarmed with people as we approached; their fantastic dresses made a brilliant but grotesque scene; everyone seemed to have tried to produce as loud and individual an effect as possible by the colour and shape of his garments and the slovenly way in which he had pitchforked them on. It was not the colours of the rainbow, but a complete diapason of discordant colours. As we got nearer they seemed to have chosen garments by lottery. Their lean, lank forms showed like May-poles in the loose finery; and their sharp faces and small red heads almost disappeared in the enormous beribboned turbans they wore. They all looked preternaturally solemn and wise. There was much buttonholing amongst them, and most confidential communications were evidently passing from lip to ear.
I feared some sinister purpose with regard to ourselves. But Sneekape laughed when I mentioned the idea. “They only wish to convert you to their way of thinking, and each is getting ready for the assault. One soul gained to their side, they say, is one soul saved. Propaganda is their passion.”
We beached our canoe amid much dignified fussing that really delayed us instead of helping us. I thought the efforts they made to do us a service would have landed us all in the surf—a matter of little consequence to us in our rags, but somewhat serious to them and their ill-harmonised finery. We were like to be torn into fragments by the candidates for our friendship when we had got our feet on the sand. They were all eager to clothe us. Sneekape rescued me from a dozen who clutched at my rags; and we followed the most dignified personage in the crowd and got re-clothed. I had imagined that it was in pure charity they had been eager to substitute something better for our rags. But it turned out that we had to pay most handsomely for our new and gorgeous garments, and that they were the uniform of a party. The benevolence lay in taking the custom to a shop owned by one of the party, and perhaps in saving our souls by giving us the badge of that party.
The majestic ribbon-pole who had captured us entered into conversation with me in Aleofanian. He had seen me in Aleofane when he was there on a mission to the heathen; and he had yearned to save my soul from the baneful influence of men who had not the true faith—faith in altruism. He asked me if I knew that I had landed in one of the noblest countries in the universe, Meddla, the Isle of Philanthropy. Here was the true centre of the universal fire of love. Here lived those who yearned to save the souls of their neighbours, who cared not what became of themselves, if only other men were saved. Had I thought over the momentous question of the true harmony of colours? Of course a man of experience such as I was had thought it out and decided that green and blue were the divine mixture, were indicative of the noblest qualities that God had conferred on human character. I looked down and saw that my new garments were a motley of green and blue; and of course I knew that black and yellow were the colours of the principle of evil. Ah, if only men knew how much the difference meant to their souls and to the destiny of the world, they would not trifle with the question! It was the deadliest poison, the rankest sin to wear black and yellow. All moral evils went with this mixture. And if I knew how serious a thing life was, I would join them in their crusade against this diabolism in colour, would put forth every effort to suppress it and prevent the world being lost.
I would have burst into a roar of laughter, but that I caught a warning glance in Sneekape’s eye. I kept serious and he helped to rescue me from the enthusiast and devotee of green and blue, by whispering something in his ear that spread a radiant smile over the meagre face.
He had not left us many minutes, when I was pounced upon by another May-pole, who thrust his little head into my face and addressing me in Aleofanian wished to know what I thought of Meddla. Was it not the greatest community on the globe? Had it not reached the acme of civilisation? Did not its fundamental principle of anxiety for the souls of others make it the centre of the universe?
I told him that I was afraid that I had not had time or opportunity for forming a judgment. I had just landed and had never seen the island before. He must excuse me if I did not answer his questions.
But I had spoken with Wispra, one of their leaders; what did I think of him? What were his faults? The speaker had the deepest love for his fellow-men as all Meddlarians must have, but he must exercise that love in sweeping all faults and vices out of their civilisation. Foreigners were the most apt critics; they could see flaws, which home eyes passed over from long custom.
Well, if he would insist, I thought that Wispra was a little dogmatic. At the word, the little head shook with excitement and wagged with stifled wisdom. Was that his fault? Of course it was. And it was the fault of all Meddlarian human nature. Oh, he was delighted to have found it out! And he would cure it straightway. The legislature was just sitting. He would call a meeting and get a resolution passed in favour of the complete abolition of dogmatism. He would send large posters and tracts all over the island urging immediate action. His agents and supporters would get up public meetings in every village and settlement; and mile-long petitions would soon roll in to the assembly, asking it to suppress this vice. A law would be passed, I should see, within a week prohibiting the use of dogmatism in conversation, or in any form of speech under the most rigorous penalties. He would be the saviour of his country.
Away bustled the lank agitator, oscillating his wise head in excitement; he must set the crusade afoot that very minute. Before I left the island I found him and his disciples persecuting the dissentients from his views and calling them by the most opprobrious epithets; they would have no conditioning of their dogmas, and no questioning of their assertions; they would listen to no argument, but howled down in their meetings everyone who dared to advise caution and consideration before venturing on a crusade against so widespread and delightful a method of speech. Such mild protest was taken up and used as a missile for wounding the protester and his sympathisers. It showed, the speakers from the platform said, how necessary the reform was when a man would have the hardihood to stand up in a respectable audience and declare in the same breath that the habit was universal and yet that it should be approached with caution. Before the week was out, I had to leave; but I saw that the agitation was working its way through the island and splitting up parties into new and surprising sections; households were rent asunder, old friendships broken, old loyalties dissolved; I began to regret that I had ever uttered the word to my buttonholer. And so did Sneekape; for he knew that they would send out missionaries to the adjacent islands to disturb and harass the souls of their inhabitants in order to achieve their salvation.
Some of the greatest popular movements of their past had had, I ascertained, marvellous results. One of them had been for the spread of the custom of wiping the nose with a handkerchief; a section of the community had been satisfied for centuries with their sleeve or their fingers. After two or three ages of wild political agitation, a law was passed making it penal to accomplish the act without an officially marked piece of cloth; and there was a large charity organisation which spent all its days and nights in making and distributing amongst the poor patent attachments that would keep the government handkerchiefs hung close to the nose; and it had a paid staff of teachers and preachers who went around educating the people how to save their souls by wiping their noses in the proper way.
Another great reform that had come about after long searchings of the national spirit and untold sufferings on the part of its advocates and martyrs was the abolition of the practice of thrusting the hands in the pockets. The reformers saw that this introduced indolence and its attendant maladies and vices, and this imperilled the salvation of thousands of innocent victims to the habit, who began it in childhood when they did not know what to do with their hands, or in cold seasons, when they needed warmth; the practice was most insidious; it had generally mastered a man before he knew that he had begun it; and no preaching, no demonstration of its awful consequences could break him of it. After heroic efforts, a law was passed prohibiting the habit under the severest penalties. Yet it was by no means eradicated; men preferred being imprisoned to giving it up. So there was a great society, chiefly of women, who busied themselves in watching offences against the laws and prosecuting the offenders. But they were too philanthropic to confine themselves to such negative proceedings; they distributed gloves gratis in winter and the members went about with needle and thread sewing up the openings of trousers pockets. They were the busiest of all the citizens yet; for gloves had a trick of getting lost and sewing a trick of coming undone; and the kind-hearted women found themselves worn to shadows in their unselfish endeavours to make the law a reality.
Another law had been passed after great commotion to compel the people to wear table napkins when feeding; slovenliness and uncleanliness were two of the most soul-destroying vices; and, if the meals were taken in order and without soil, all other virtues would follow. Another huge organisation busied itself in distributing tracts on the nobleness of the practice that the law commanded and in supplying napkins to those who could not afford them; recently they had, on the suggestion of one whom they revered as a genius, combined their two functions and printed their tracts on the napkins they gave gratis. The members all felt that the eyes of mankind were upon them, as they went round the various villages seeing that their napkins were tied on properly.
They had a multitude of prohibitory laws for the cure of every habit that anyone had considered evil or worked up a movement for the suppression of. One forbade the raising of the little finger in drinking, another the wearing of hats so large as to occupy too much space in the streets, another the use of expletives, another the mutilation of a guttural sound that was apt to pass into a palatal, another the habit of boys standing on their heads in public places, another the use of worms in fishing, another the following of any business on certain hours of certain days.
The statute-book was an enormous one, and was filled with such laws as these. A considerable number clashed with others, and yet there were societies founded to see the carrying out of each of the conflicting statutes, and their agents and supporters often came into fierce collision, reaping on each side a full harvest of bloody noses and cracked crowns. But this only made the devotees more devoted. Most of the prohibitions ended in rooting the habit more deeply, by sending it underground. One instance was the law for the suppression of winking except on the approach of sleep; prosecutions always failed because the culprit generally contrived to fall asleep on the way to court or prison and so destroyed the case against him. I never saw so much winking in any community of the same size; I thought at first that they were all in the incipient stage of eye disease or of paralysis; but an arrest by an agent of the anti-winking society cleared up the mystery for me.
Of course I soon saw that the greater matters of the law had to be neglected in order to join in these quixotic crusades. The population had fallen into drunkenness, lying, thieving, slandering, fornication, and even murder. Every man and woman had some one or more of these vices; and all were accomplished hypocrites, I discovered before I left. Yet they all spent as much time as they could save from business or amusement in the pursuit of the salvation of their neighbours. Every citizen of either sex was a member and spy of one or more of these philanthropic societies, and was ever joining in some movement for getting the legislature to make the prohibition more rigorous and detailed; and none of them but thought that the gaze of creation was upon them as they followed their crusade. They were the true saviours of the world; they had the salt of love and altruism that would never lose its savour; they had reached the secret of true happiness. In spite of their philanthropy, they were eaten up with envy, jealousy, malice, and all the minor evil feelings that sting men and make men sting each other.
I was quite prepared to believe Sneekape when he said that the archipelago translated the name of the island differently from the inhabitants; it was the Isle of Busybodies. The gradual discovery of the true nature of the people made me glad to escape. We went off without notice one midnight in our canoe, which we had well provisioned some days before.