Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 305
The same public will have that day looked at the world moving picture, and in the evening will all read the novel, the same novel, and all fall asleep at the same point in it.
Meantime human life, its cares gone, its digestion rotating as smoothly as a sleeping gyroscope, lapsed in ease and with preventive medicine at its elbow, will grow longer and longer. From the fifty years it has now reached in its recent sudden advance it will move to seventy, to eighty, to ninety, and still onward. Little old clean-shaven men will sit down to bridge for the fifty-thousandth time, with partners they knew a hundred years ago.
The lengthened and assured span of life will bring with it a new dreariness. There will be no death, except by an accident — odd, exceptional, awful, a thing to be shuddered at — or by the extreme weariness of old age, a slow and imperceptible sleep, the parting from a world already long forgotten and unregretted. Human life will have been lengthened, but not the soul and the freshness of it that belongs only to life’s morning. After that, life will stretch in front of each, in a long vista, visible to an infinite distance of dreariness, like a trail across a desert.
Thus will the human race sink, generation after generation, into a slow stagnation that will lead it unconsciously to oblivion. The restless survival instinct, that fought its wars, and chafed at its poverty, and cared for its young and its own, this will fade out, and with it the power to live.
Then in some far future there will come the great mortality — not a pestilence, not a plague — just a great mortality — and the human race, like lone islanders upon a rock, will perish to the last man.
FINIS
Afternoons in Utopia
CONTENTS
Part I. Utopia Old and New
Chapter I. Dear Old Utopia
Chapter II. Ten Seconds for Refreshments
Chapter III. The Real Utopia
Part II. Grandfather Goes to War
Chapter I. War Stuff
Chapter II. He Goes in A.D. 1810
Chapter III. He Goes in 1950
Chapter IV. With the League of Nations, A.D. 2000 Or So
Chapter V. War in Utopia, Later Still
Chapter VI. War Extracts from the Press of A.D. 2050
Part III. The Doctor and the Contraption
Chapter I. Medicine As It Was
Chapter II. Medicine Year, 1932
Chapter III. The Walrus and the Carpenter
Part IV. Rah! Rah! College or Tom Buncom at Shucksford
Chapter I. Introduction — Anno Domini 1880
Chapter II. A First Day at College
Chapter III. The Rah Rah Life
Chapter IV. Danger Ahead
Chapter V. Sunk and Saved!
Chapter VI. College in Utopia
Chapter VII. The Dissolution of Shucksford College A.D. 2000
Part V. The Band of Brothers
Chapter I. Reflections on the Fall of Capitalism
Chapter II. Our Courts of Justice
Chapter III. Our System in Operation
Chapter IV. Lights and Shadows
Chapter V. Revolution
Part VI. A Fragment from Utopia
Chapter I. The Fifty-fifty Sexes
Part I. Utopia Old and New
Chapter I. Dear Old Utopia
SUPPOSE THAT THERE were written down the chronicle of one day’s doings of any ordinary family of today, how strange it would appear — could they have foreseen and read it — to the people of three or four hundred years ago! Not their day to us, but ours to them; not one of their days as seen by us in retrospect, but one of our days as seen by them, if it were possible, in prospect. The little acts and incidents and surroundings which we take for granted as part of our daily life, how marvellous, how inexplicable to them!
Their day to us would not seem strange or mysterious, but only limited, cramped and objectionable. People in dirty houses with garbage floating down the street outside; people without motor-cars and newspapers and telephones; ignorant people in an ignorant world, full of silly beliefs and superstitions, and cruel in their silliness; people to whom moving pictures would have been the work of the devil, Charlie Chaplin a ghost, and an aeroplane an angel — the lives of such people would have no charm or wonder for us. Even the vast mystery of the unknown and unlimited world in which they lived is spoiled by their stupid certainty about the little stars set up in the sky to light them.
But our day to them, could they but see it! For them we live in a world of humming wires and rushing winds, of ghosts walking in white light on paper walls, the voices of the spirits calling from the unknown at our command. Magic wands control the forces of the earth and air in a new world in which they would find everything changed, nothing left that was — nothing but man himself.
Nothing but man. Yet man himself goes next. The biggest change of all is yet to come — as will amply appear in the pages of this book.
Now ever since people learned to write and set down their imaginings in books, many wise and interesting writers have given to the people of their day pictures of what they thought the world was going to be like later on. Plato began it. The fathers of the Church, the monks and the Arabs went on with it. In Henry the Eighth’s time Sir Thomas More before (not after) he was beheaded wrote his Utopia. After him came Bacon and Milton and Bunyan, and Lord Lytton and Mr. Bellamy, and others writing still.
So many of these Utopias have been written that they have all run to a pattern that grows drowsy in its very sameness. In all of them the narrator falls asleep for two hundred years and awakes (which is a pity) to find himself in an altered world. He is confronted with a “venerable being” who is cut to a pattern in a “flowing robe,” with the further credential of a “majestic beard.” This being, then, who speaks beautiful but antiquated English —
But stop — let us reproduce the familiar scene of the long sleep and the arrival of the awakened sleeper in dear old Utopia. We will introduce, however, the slight, but novel, innovation of supposing that the narrator in this case arrives with — and not as usually depicted — without — his — brains.
My Voyage to Utopia
Having decided to make one of those voyages to Utopia which have been the source of great literary profit from the days of Sir Thomas More until now, I realized that I must find means to fall asleep for a hundred years.
I did so.
On awakening I found myself as it were awake, and looked about me in order to ascertain, if possible, where I was. I found myself reclining on a couch in what appeared to me to be a large Gothic chamber — I might almost call it a hall — I will call it a hall — of which the lofty ceiling extended into a half darkness while the hall itself was lighted by a soft and suffused light coming from I knew not where. But as I had not expected to know where the light came from, this did not in any way upset me.
I was well aware that in all Utopias the light is soft and suffused and comes from you don’t know where. As a matter of fact I had seen, even in the poor old vanished world from which I came, little tricks like this light stuff, or nearly as good.
I had therefore no means of telling whether it was day or night — another fact which gave me no concern, as I was indifferent as to whether it was day or night. I looked at my watch. It had stopped. I had an idea that it must have stopped because it had run down. This fact I presently verified by winding it up.
Rising to a half-recumbent posture — which is as far as I care to go in one rise — I looked about me. The chamber as I said was vast yet contained little furniture other than a few oaken tables and chairs of an exquisite workmanship and design which I never recalled to have seen before. This, however, was not surprising as I have never worked in a furniture store. A few rugs of elaborate craftsmanship lay on the floor; but whether of skins or of woven fabric I was unable to say. I always am.
Being well acquainted with Utopias I knew that I had only to wait patiently and they would start something. I was certain that they wouldn’t be long, nor indeed had I long to wait. A door at the side of the room opened and a “slippered attendant” appeared. I knew, of course, that the first thing to come would be a slippered attendant. If he hadn’t I’d have slippered him myself.
I saw at once that he was an attendant from the fact that he wore one of those “loose smocks” which by common consent are recognized as the costume of all attendants, two hundred years hence. It was a sort of two-piece pajama suit made of some plain woven material, but of what I could not say which.
The slippered attendant approached the couch where I was now only one-quarter recumbent and made a low obeisance.
“Come,” he said, “Oom will see you.” “All right,” I said and I readjusted my collar and necktie and followed him.
We crossed to the further end of the great hall and my attendant knocked at a small oaken door. To my surprise, the door opened of itself without the aid of human hands. Often though I have seen this — doors in restaurants and other places that open this way — I am always surprised at it. I don’t see how it is arranged unless there is some kind of catch or spring or trick about it. Anyway, it opened.
As yet, however, I could not see into the room beyond, which was half darkened.
The attendant bowed low in the doorway.
“One is without,” he said.
He didn’t say what I was without (perhaps, without a drink) but I guessed from my previous reading that he merely meant “outside.”
A deep resonant voice answered back, “Let the stranger enter.”
I found myself, on entering, in the presence of a venerable being whose flowing robe and majestic beard lent to him an air of dignity almost amounting to senility.
“Stranger,” he said. “Thou art awake, welcome.”
Just why he should adopt a form of speech lost for four centuries except in Yorkshire, I was at a loss to know. But I remembered that that is the way they always speak in the Utopia books.
“What wouldst?” continued Oom.
“First,” I said, “if you don’t mind I would like something to eat and drink.”
“Your pardon,” said Oom, “I had forgotten. With us it matters so little.”
He clapped his hands.
Two slippered attendants at once appeared as if by magic — in fact by magic.
“Bring viands and drink,” commanded Oom.
“Don’t you yourself eat, Dr. Oom?” I asked.
“I am indifferent to it,” replied the venerable man. “Our constitutions and the life we lead — so different from yours of the Earth-as-it-was — render food scarcely necessary. I break my fast in the morning with perhaps an egg, or bacon or eggs, or perhaps a beefsteak, or lamb kidneys and bacon with waffles — but it is a matter of indifference. At noon I take nothing, unless perhaps a cold meat pie or a lobster. Beyond this I eat nothing till at eventide and then possibly a hot goose or a boiled jack-rabbit with a veal cutlet — it is of no consequence. The abstemious life brings its own reward; the mind, O Stranger, becomes clearer, more liquid—”
“I know,” I said, “less full of mud. Indeed this abstemious life had got well started in what you call the Earth-as-it-was. I have often heard people speak as you do.”
“Here’s the food,” said Oom.
The attendants then set before us a tray of dainty and refreshing viands — including what appeared to be pâté de foie gras, only better, and canapé aux anchois, only not so smashed up.
For drink the attendant poured a liquor of exquisite appearance into tall glasses of incredible thinness and delicacy. The soft light of the room seemed reflected into iridescent opal colours both from the liquid and the glass.
“What is it?” I asked of Dr. Oom as I held the marvellous beverage up to the light.
“Your tongue,” he said, “hath no speech for it. With us it is called Slooch.”
“Is it intoxicating?” I asked.
“Not in the least,” replied Dr. Oom. “Indeed,” he continued, “I can see from your questions how far our world has travelled from the Earth-as-it-was. Were it not for my knowledge of history, I should be at a loss to answer your question. But sit, stranger, eat and drink and I, too, will partake with you of a friendly bite as it approaches even now the equidistant point between my last meal and my next.”
As we ate, Dr. Oom proceeded to explain to me how the questions of what we used to call prohibition had long since been entirely solved. All that was needed, he said, was to discover a beverage which, like Slooch, was stimulating and exhilarating but not intoxicating. Slooch, he explained, could easily bring one to laughter or tears, or might even provoke a desire to sing, or set up a noble anger, or at times induce a profound sleep — but it was not intoxicating. He explained the matter further but I was unable to follow entirely the explanations which he gave. It seemed to turn on the idea that what is “intoxicating” is a matter of legal definition, so that by arduous improvement of the law all danger of intoxication was cut out.
When we had at last finished Dr. Oom said, “Well, I suppose we had better begin. You wish to ask me, I am sure, all kinds of questions about the new world in which you find yourself.”
I took out my pencil and notebook and nodded.
“What shall I start with,” said Dr. Oom, “or rather how likes it you that I lay on? How about currency and coinage, would you like me to begin with that?”
“No,” I said, “never mind currency and coinage. I never had much grip on that.”
“The Gold Standard,” began Dr. Oom.
“I know,” I said. “It was already doomed. Try something else.”
“Would you like,” said Dr. Oom, “to ask me about wages and labour and what is now the relation of the capitalistic classes, as you used to call them, to the workers? Let me talk about that, eh?”
“No, please don’t,” I replied. “I had got so fed up with that before I fell asleep that I really don’t care about it one way or the other.”
“The problem,” said Dr. Oom reflectingly, stroking his majestic beard as he spoke, and disregarding my interruption, “proved in the end amazingly simple. But the manner and method in which it was solved involves a rather detailed intricate narration, partly in Old English, of what has happened in the industrial world in two hundred years. However, I will try—”
“No,” I said, “please don’t, Dr. Oom — I presume you are Doctor. Please don’t. Let’s get on to something with a little more go to it.”
Oom began again.
“Among the many things which will surprise you most in the world you are about to visit is the prolongation of human life. In the days when you lived I believe that the average duration of human life was about fifty-eight years decimal four. It is now — but you will see for yourself when you meet our old men. I am sure you will be delighted and surprised to see what a snappy lot of bright old men we have among us.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “But I can get all that in figures later on, can’t I? Give me something that sounds a little more like a news item or a feature story.”
“How about peace and war?” said Dr. Oom.
“I think I can guess all that,” I answered. “The nations came together and agreed to abolish war.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Oom, “by a vote of thirty-one to thirty. It was a close thing but it got through.”
A silence fell upon us during which Dr. Oom refilled his glass from the flagon and drank its contents with a reflecting air.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
“Why, of course!” said I.
The same idea had evidently struck us both at the same moment. “Of course,” I repeated, “you should have first shown me this new world and what it looks like. This chamber, as a matter of fact, has a passageway leading out upon the ‘leads’ and balconies of the vast building in which it is constructed—”
“How did you know that?”
“Oh, it always does,” I said. “Come, lead me out upon the roof and let me see the changed world that lies about me.”
Oom rose and without a word led me through a side door and along a short passage, and then out upon a flat balustraded roof from which, in an instant vision, appeared a vast panorama illumined with brilliant sunshine and reaching to the horizon.
Great Heavens! Was this the city I had known! Whither had gone the tall skyscrapers reaching to the clouds? Where was the long reach of the wide Hudson, the vast suspension bridge hung like an aerial web from shore to shore? Where was it all gone? or how had it changed to this? I turned to Dr. Oom, who stood beside me, quietly smiling at my evident and utter astonishment.
“Can this,” I said, pointing to the vision around me, “can this be New York?”
“New York?” said Oom. “No, of course not. This is London.”
The exhilaration which had kindled in his face died out of it. In fact he looked rather crestfallen. “Yes,” he said, “this is London. What made you think it New York?”
“Why, I fell asleep in New York,” I said.
“I believe that’s right,” said Dr. Oom, reflecting. “You did, very likely. There was a sort of patriotic exchange of hundred year sleepers between England and America and you must have come over in that lot. In fact, now I think of it, you did.
“But sit down, sit down,” he said, recovering his animation and indicating a stone bench overlooking the balustrade. “Sit down and let me tell you of this vast city, every detail of which will surprise you. You notice that it is all covered in with glass, do you not? — I mean, dost not thou? That must give you, a being of a previous world, quite a jolt, doesn’t it?”
