Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 372
SWIFT. But she is not silent. Again and again, when I have asked her, she has fully assented to the opinions I hold. They are accepted and recognised as hers. In this matter you are not only disregarding my own opinions. You are also riding rough-shod over my wife’s opinions.
JOHNSON. Sir, your wife has no opinions. She has as good a head as yours; and there is not and never has been a single opinion in it. Men like you and me, who have to do with books and pamphlets, fall into a fashion of imagining opinion to be the pre-occupation of all mankind. But, if I may suggest so strange a course to a republican, go among the common people; talk to the men, and especially the women, who do the real work of the world. Talk to the girl who serves in your kitchen. Ask the old woman who sells apples at the corner of the street. You will be surprised to find how large a proportion of your fellowcreatures live and die and do good work without being troubled even with good opinions; the more reason, Sir, that they should have good customs and a sound religion. Your wife would do better than we in managing a shop or a farm. I am far from sure she would not do better in ruling a ship or a Highland clan. But I am a man of some reading and experience in controversy; and you really must not ask me to give a brass button for her opinions. They never were anything but your opinions; and that alone, under your favour, does not suffice to recommend them to me.
SWIFT. What am I to do, when you tell me this on your own authority, and my own wife tells me the exact opposite?
JOHNSON. Why, Sir, you are to use your own common sense. Was she wearing a red cap like a cockatoo when you first met her in the New England village? Did she utter a eulogium on Jack Wilkes when she gave us tea in the Hebrides? Did she ever invent one single sophistry on her own account? It is you and your precious opinions that have boxed the compass from Puritanism to profligacy; is it not rather strange that her free and independent opinions always changed at the same time as yours?
SWIFT. By your account, I have wasted my life upon a sophistry.
JOHNSON. My young friend, you have not had much of your life to waste. There are many things that may happen yet, and I hope more rationally. [After a pause.] Poor Bozzy asked me just now what I should do if I were left alone with a baby. I should not shine on the occasion.
SWIFT. I know what you mean.
JOHNSON [lowering his voice]. She would not regard a baby as an opinion. She does not regard you as an opinion. She is of a sort that always has been and always will be the nucleus and norm of humanity; and it understands its duties before it has defined them.
SWIFT. Mr. Wilkes said there must be a revolution in the family as well as in the state.
JOHNSON. The family is a reality; and realities last longer than revolutions. I will put the reality as rudely as you will. When you are left alone to play with your own baby, you will not desire, any more than any other man, that people should laugh and look to see if it has a squint.
SWIFT. Good God!
JOHNSON. Nay, I know it is not so; I know your platonic philosophies and philanderings. I know your wife cares nothing for Wilkes, and I doubt if you care much for that French bluestocking who flatters you. The more fools you, to sell your honour without even getting the price of pleasure that the devil would give you.
SWIFT. YOU say that the French lady flatters me, and perhaps she does. But she paid me a compliment to-day which I value. She said I accepted the truth when I saw it, from whom ever it came, and however it went against me. I am going to prove that I deserved it. [After a pause.] I know now that all my work here has been wasted; or rather that I have done no work, but only dissipated my days with fine company and fine words. I am useless, or I have been used by those who care nothing for me. What am I to do now?
JOHNSON [taking a paper from his pocket]. Do? Go back to America. Fight on the wrong side if you must; but fight. You would make a good soldier; you have certainly made a very bad spy. This is a safe conduct from the King, which I got from one of the King’s friends at Westminster; it will see you out of the country. Take your wife with you and go; but go quickly, for there are many to make trouble about a royal favour. I need not ask whose fault it is if the royal power is not very secure.
SWIFT [takes the paper doubtfully]. You are very generous, and I wish now that I could do it. But I am attached formally to the French Embassy.
JOHNSON. The French Embassy is going too. France has taken up the cause of the colonies and declared war on England.
SWIFT [starting forward and speaking with all his old impetuosity]. Declared war! Great God! Then the Revolution is saved! The Revolution will triumph after all; and we shall live to see all tyranny go down to hell. War! What does it matter about me or about any man? What does it matter whether I have helped or hindered? The Republic is born.
JOHNSON [smiling]. Nay, Sir, you shall not draw me into an argument.
SWIFT. I see now that a man never knows he is right till he knows he is wrong. As clearly as I see my own labour in ruins, I see the future full of republics and free parliaments, and the peoples of the earth driving forward to democracy. Yes, I know now that the world will break its ancient chains; I know it firmly and finally as I know I am a fool. And I know that future ages will be asking how such a man as Samuel Johnson came to support such a man as George the Third; and how he came to discredit such a man as George Washington.
JOHNSON. Why, Sir, I certainly will not argue with you if you have become a prophet.
SWIFT. I am a prophet. You are a wiser man than I; but you are a sage and not a prophet. Prophets and poets shall know what I know; many of them men as weak and unwise as I; but they shall know. They shall sing of the Republic before it is born, and see it when it is invisible. For all the simple know in their hearts that men should be free and equal; and all the doubts of all the sages will go down before that simplicity. And men looking back, up the long perspective of our age, shall see even you as a sublime ruin or a solitary obstacle. They shall see you like some great statue, for nothing can depress you from greatness; a figure mighty and monumental; but dark, dark against the dawn.
JOHNSON. Sir, I have told you that I will not argue. I told you that I counted private affairs greater than public; I came but to end a private difference; and I thank Heaven it is ended. For the rest, it is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile, and it may be that the future of mankind is all your own. Only I will say this. Suppose that you have deposed your tyrants and created your republics, suppose that a hundred years from now the earth is full of your free parliaments and free citizens. You have often reminded me that Kings are only men. Suppose you have discovered by that time that citizens are only men. Suppose that those wielding power should still be bad men. Suppose your parliaments are as unpopular as monarchies. Suppose your politicians are more hated than Kings. Suppose there returns to you war, the ancient enemy of mankind laying the world waste and leaving riddles to be read by a decimated race of demagogues and hucksters. If in that far-off day you are thus disappointed and embittered, I ask of you one thing. Do not in that day turn upon the people and curse them, because in your own whims and fancies you have chosen to ask of them more than men can give. Do not be like poor Gulliver, your great namesake, Jonathan Swift, who saw so clearly where the world was going, and turned on men and called them Yahoos. When your parliaments grow more corrupt and your wars more cruel, do not dream that you can breed a Houyhnhnm like a race-horse, or summon monsters from the moon, or cry out in your madness for something beyond the stature of man. Do you in that day of disillusion still have the strength to say: these are no Yahoos; these are men; these are fallen men; these are they for whom their Omnipotent Creator did not disdain to die.
[The clock strikes one. JOHNSON points with his finger to the door; and SWIFT after a moment’s hesitation goes out. JOHNSON sits down at one of the tables and leans his head on his hand. Enter CAPTAIN
DRAPER, LIEUTENANT CROCKFORD and two Grenadiers.
DRAPER. Dr. Johnson! I should never have dreamed of finding you here. We have come to arrest the Swifts; they are spies of the rebels.
JOHNSON. YOU will not find them. They have gone home.
[While he is speaking CROCKFORD has gone into the inner room and returned with a bewildered expression.
DRAPER. Home? You mean home to their lodgings?
JOHNSON. They have gone home to their own country, under a safe conduct from His Majesty.
DRAPER, [after a silence]. Do you give me your word that they have a safe conduct?
JOHNSON. I give you my word.
DRAPER. It is due to you to say that you are the only man whose word I would take for it. Crockford, we are too late.
CROCKFORD. Yes, I shall tell my men to turn in.
[They go out. JOHNSON leans forward with his elbows on the table, covers his face with his hands and remains as if he were praying. BOSWELL enters almost on tiptoe and quietly takes a seat on an adjoining bench.
BOSWELL [in a low voice]. I fear this has been a terrible hour for you, Dr. Johnson.
JOHNSON [looking up and speaking in a strong voice]. It has been the happiest hour in my life, which has known not a few terrible ones.
BOSWELL. Why, Sir, that is even more interesting. I have never attempted to disguise from your penetration that I have occasionally taken notes of our conversations, and may perhaps make some attempt to benefit the world by them. And the happiest hour of Dr. Johnson’s fife — that is an incident for which they will certainly look with interest in my book.
JOHNSON. This incident will not be found in your book.
Curtain.
THE TURKEY AND THE TURK
CAST
Father Christmas
The Doctor
The Princess of the Mountains
The Turkish Knight
St. George
The Turkey and the Turk
Father Christmas
Here am I, Father Christmas; well you know it,
Though critics say it fades, my Christmas Tree,
Yet was it Dickens who became my poet
And who the Dickens may the critics be?
St. George
I am St. George, whose cross in scutcheon scored,
Red as the Rose of England on me glows,
The Dragon who would pluck it, found this sword [draws sword]
Which is the thorn upon the English Rose.
Doctor
I am the Doctor from Berlin. I kill
Germs and diseases upon handsome terms
There are so many ways of being ill —
Some trust the Germans. Some prefer the Germs.
The Turkish Knight
I am the Turkish Knight: to sink and rise
In every Mummer’s Play has been my work.
I am that Wrath that falls but never flies,
A Turkish Knight — but a most knightly Turk.
The Princess of the Mountains
I am the Princess come from mountains shady
That are the world’s last wall against the Turk.
I had to come; or there would be no lady
In this remarkable dramatic work.
[Enter Father Christmas with Christmas Pudding, Turkey, Flagons, etc.]
Father Christmas
I will not drink; let the great flagon here
Till the great toasts are drunk, stand where it is.
But Christmas pudding comes but once a year
But many times a day. And none amiss [cuts off a piece]
The Christmas Pudding, round as the round sky,
Speckled with better things than stars.
Doctor [rushes in and arrests his hands]
Forgive my haste. But men who eat that pudding die.
Father Christmas
And men who do not eat it do not live. [eats]
Doctor
Our last proofs show, for perils that appal,
A Christmas pudding is a cannon ball.
But you grow old —
Father Christmas
And you grow always new
And every year you take a different view.
My every Christmas brings, with change and chills,
New doctors’ doctrines with new doctors’ bills.
Next year this pudding where I plant my knife
Will be the only food sustaining life.
The proverb holds; who shall decide or choose
When doctors disagree — with their own views?
Your drugs turn poisons and your poisons food.
And still this round and solid fact holds good —
While with themselves the doctors disagree
No Christmas pudding disagrees with me.
Doctor
Progress is change; so is the whole world’s youth
Afoot betimes to catch the newest truth,
While you in night-long wassail waste your breath
The early bird catches the worm of death,
Conquers the grave; and doth the secret know
Of life immortal.
Father Christmas
For a month or so.
That, too, will change. Soon you will tell us all
That early rising is a daily fall,
That fever waits in fiery morning skies,
And Bed is the most bracing exercise.
You’ll find for sluggards some more pleasing term
And cry “The Early Bird catches the Germ”.
[Enter the Princess of the Mountians.]
Princess
Save me and harbour me, all Christian folk,
For I am fleeing from the heathen might.
My mountain city is a trail of smoke,
My track is trampled by the Turkish Knight,
Already where I sink they shake the ground,
The flying towers, the horsemen of Mahound.
Doctor
Mahound. More properly Muhammad. Quaint!
The wars of creeds — or demons — smoke and smother.
Each of the demons calls himself a saint —
Until two men can tolerate each other.
Princess
So were we taught by many Turkish kings
To tolerate intolerable things.
Father Christmas
I have a creed. Its name is charity
And at my table all men may agree.
Princess
Folk of the West, bethink you, far from strife,
Through what more weary ages than you think,
Our broken swords covered your carving knife
And with our blood you bought the wine you drink,
That you might ply your kindlier Christmas work
And kill the Turkey while we killed the Turk.
Father Christmas
I see one from the mounts ride amain
Who rather comes to slay than to be slain.
[Enter Turkish Knight.]
Turkish Knight
I am the master of the sons of battle,
The cohorts of the Crescent of the night,
I for whom queens are slaves and slaves are cattle,
I claim this queen and slave out of my right.
I have burned her town and slain her sire in strife,
Is there a better way to earn a wife?
Princess
A wife! This Turkish dog, like sheep in pen,
May herd a hundred wives — or bondwomen.
Doctor
Consider, Set above the smoke of passion
Where high philosophy and reason reign.
I can give counsel in a cooler fashion
Who am the friend of peace, the foe of pain.
Consider — should this gentleman insist —
He might be worse than a polygamist.
Princess
What could be worse, and what unworthier?
Doctor
He might, like Bluebeard, be a widower.
The habit which enjoys a hundred wives
Suggests at least, that every wife — survives.
Princess
Such are not things that such as I survive,
Nor shall such bridal see us both alive,
Nor I consent —
Turkish Knight
Nor did I ask consent.
I did not ask your banner to be rent;
Your sire to fall, your battle-line to break,
I do not ask for anything I take.
Doctor
She will find comfort in Philosophy.
Father Christmas
You were right, Doctor; I am old. Woe’s me,
My knife is a clown’s sword for cutting grease. [flings down his carving knife]
Doctor [looking piously upward]
Peace! Is not this the certain road to Peace?
[Enter St. George]
St. George
Stop! For the doors are shut upon your treason,
I, George of Merry England, bar the way.
Not all so easily, not for a season,
You brave the anger of the saints at bay.
Red shall your cohorts be, your Crescent faint,
The hour you find — what will provoke a Saint.
Doctor
Who is this mad Crusader?
Father Christmas [lifting his flagon]
He is come!
Let burst the trumpets, dance upon the drum!
Shout till you deafen the dead! I drain the flagon.
England in arms! St. George that beat the Dragon!
Doctor
You dream, old dotard, and your drunken tales
Are fumes of Yuletide vintages and ales.
The wine is in your head. Water and wine.
