Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 328
My reference to murderers arose from very simple circumstances. On my arrival in Chicago a courteous member of the committee had called for me with a car and asked me whether I would prefer to go and visit the university, which he said covered two square miles (I forget if it was two or twenty), at any rate, whether I would visit the university, or pay a visit to the art galleries, or would like to drive down town and have a drink at his club.
On our way to his club I was immensely struck by the lake front and said so to my host, telling him at the same time that he might make any use of my remark that he liked. The vast boulevards that carried us along Lake Michigan, the lake at that moment being lashed into what I described to my companion as ‘mimic fury’ (told him to put it in the papers if he wished to), gave me the impression of size, of water, in fact the idea of a big lake, which, as I said to my host, I seemed able to seize but not to convey. He told me to hold on to it.
At the club my host introduced me to several of his friends, many of them university men and nearly as well educated as I am. Our talk, that of men of culture, fell on drink, prohibition, women, and naturally murder. One of the men present was kind enough to give me some statistics of the subject for my book, which I wrote down with no intention of using them in my lecture. But my reader will be amazed as I was to learn of the appalling growth of homicide in Chicago: the figures given by my informant reached to one hundred per day and perhaps fifty per night, when they can’t see so well to get at them.
On the strength of this information, on lecturing on Charlemagne that afternoon before the Ladies’ Mandolin and Banjo Club, I used the harmless phrase ‘your city of murderers.’ The effect was extraordinary. I had hardly returned to the hotel before three young men with flashlight cameras came to get my picture and the newspapers next morning carried headlines ‘a city of murderers.’ The next afternoon, by special invitation, I gave a lecture on ‘murder’ at the university, using, of course, my lecture on Charlemagne but making a parallel between Charlemagne and Al Capone, and deriving both their names from the idea of big stuff. The effect was heightened by the Press christening me the ‘Man with the Poison Tongue.’ The civic authorities gave me twenty-four hours to get out of the City, beyond which they could not be responsible.
The time, however, was more than what I needed.
I had already received a telegram from the head office of the lecture bureau ‘Call Pittsburgh something.’ Like a flash, in fact in less than half an hour, I named it ‘The City of Filth’ and received back an answer:
Special lecture arranged with Clean Government League on the platform and filth as the background.
My return lecture at Pittsburgh was to have been, as already indicated, on ‘Charlemagne, the Boy,’ to be delivered before the Young People’s Astronomical Society. But, as I say, the bureau easily arranged a second lecture on the subject, ‘The City of Filth,’ at which I had with me on the platform a number of City aldermen and twenty of the clergy of the City, all of them known to be absolutely clean. I used, of course, my prepared lecture on Charlemagne, the Boy, but dealt with him from the point of view of filth. I made it clear all through, by inference, that if Charlemagne had been as dirty as the average Pittsburgh boy even the Franks would have had no use for him.
My Pittsburgh lecture was followed next morning by a telegram from the Boston office of the bureau which read:
Please send names for Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and, if possible, for New York. Meantime every one here is delighted by your calling Harvard the ‘Cesspool of Conservatism.’ A lecture has been arranged for you in the big hall of the union, the local committee agreeing that you lecture on Charlemagne, the Boy beside the Cesspool. Arrangements are being made for the students to throw you into the Charles River after the lecture.
This was, indeed, a gratifying prospect. The reader will recall that on the occasion of my previous visit my offer to lecture at Harvard, referring to it as the Oxford of America, had come to nothing. The interest shown in the proposal was very small and the attempt of the lecture bureau to get the students to mob me after the lecture met with complete indifference. But now this generous offer to throw me into the Charles guaranteed me the kind of reception a foreign lecturer does not readily forget.
The invitation from Harvard was followed, as might be expected, by a rival invitation from Yale. I say ‘as might be expected,’ though my English readers cannot possibly tell what I mean until I add that if Harvard is the Oxford of America, Yale, situated at New Haven in Connecticut, may be called its Cambridge. What one does to-day, the other did yesterday. Hence there followed an invitation from Yale accepting my idea of a lecture on ‘New Haven as New Heaven’ and carrying with it a promise to throw me into Long Island Sound, a greater distance than at Harvard.
I have not space here to narrate my gratifying success, both on the platform and in the river, at Harvard: nor were the Yale students any less enthusiastic: the dean of one of the faculties in introducing me said that he hoped that after the lecture nothing would be done unbecoming to the high reputation of the college for fair play: he had heard, he said, a rumour that the lecturer would be thrown in the river: he hoped not: something has been said of Long Island Sound. Was this wise? But without further ado he would introduce the lecturer.
Unfortunately a students’ dance after the lecture absorbed the attention of the undergraduates and they had no time to devote to me, but at any rate, several of them assured me of what they would do if I came again.
After my conspicuous success in the greater cities and colleges, I need say little of my triumphs in lesser places. The indignation created at Rome by my referring to it as ‘Water Tank Seventeen, New York Central,’ guaranteed a capacity audience. The people of Buffalo turned out in thousands to see the man who called their city the ‘Old Man’s Home.’ In fact, I realized that I had unearthed a profound truth in American psychology. The Americans, if you praise them, fall asleep. Curse them and they are right there. They like it. When I get time I shall hope in my forthcoming Impressions of America (copies may be ordered now before I write it), to develop this idea more fully. At present I just state it as it stands. Hence the contrast between the drowsy audiences that heard me talk on ‘Charlemagne, the Man,’ and the excited crowds who listened to my lecture on ‘Charlemagne, the Boy.’
The unsophisticated reader (most of my readers are unsophisticated) may wonder how it was possible for me under these circumstances to deliver a lecture on the boyhood of Charlemagne and have it accepted as matter of interest. The reason is very simple. The newspapers always explained that the lecture was filled with veiled illusions to city politics.
Take for example my return lecture in Hicksville, the upstate town where I opened my tour. This was to me the most interesting evening, and the most characteristic of what I have elsewhere called the American temperament (I thought of it myself). I have spoken of the drowsy quiet of the town on my first coming. It seemed now an entirely different place inhabited by another set of people. I had called it, to a Boston reporter, the ‘moron municipality.’ This led at once to an invitation from the town council to speak as their guest. The hall and the adjacent streets were packed with listeners. In my talk on ‘Charlemagne, the Boy,’ every hidden reference to Hicksville went right home. In fact it was understood that ‘Charlemagne’ was just a clever name for ‘Charlie Maine’ who had been superintendent of education the year before last and was to run again. The mayor of Hicksville, who was in the chair, joined good-naturedly in the laugh over my reference to the mayors of the palace. He told me afterwards that my talk would do a lot to clean up Hicksville town politics, which, it appeared, were inconceivably dirty. The mayor got me out of town in his car from the back-stage door of the hall.
My biggest triumph should have been my concluding lecture in New York. I had called the city ‘God’s Grave’ and there had been a protest from many of the clergy against the blasphemy of the term. Success seemed certain when word came from Washington of the order of my deportation from the United States, and the lecture was cancelled. The order was not unexpected. It had been hinted that I was about to call Washington ‘The Whited Sepulchre,’ and was trying to find a name for the President, a thing not yet done. The order for deportation has ended all this, and terminates my American visit.
I have prepared for the Press a farewell interview in which I speak of the great heart of America. Anybody who would like this interview can call here at Ellis Island and get it. Meantime an enthusiastic article in the New York Press under the title Kicked Out, suggests that I might go and say some dirty things about my own country. The idea strikes me as so good that I wonder I never tried it. The only question is whether they are quite up to it at home.
MODEL MEMOIRS: No. V
THE CRIMINAL MEMOIRS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Note. — It was announced by the European Powers, after the escape of Napoleon from Elba, that he was a criminal at large. Acting on this idea, after his defeat at Waterloo, they made him a prisoner at St. Helena. Not accepting the view of himself, Napoleon missed a fine chance to write the first of the prison memoirs now so popular. He could have handed them out in a talk to the visiting delegation of Bigger and Better Prisons Society, St. Helena Branch, and sold them at 10s. 6d. a volume with a foreword by Sir Hudson Lowe, the Governor of the Island. Even now they may be reconstructed for him, foreword and all.
FOREWORD BY SIR HUDSON LOWE
I am very glad indeed to grant the necessary permission to the publication of the memoirs written by the prisoner William Napoleon Bonaparte. At the present time he is serving a life sentence following on his conviction for aggression, invasion, and overweening ambition. During his stay here he has, however, ceased to ween entirely and has shown a most laudable contrition and regret for the past and for everything he ever did. At his own desire he is altering his name to William, in recognition of the late Mr. Pitt.
During his stay here, Bonaparte has shown a commendable desire to learn the English language, and has got as far as the verb ‘I am.’ He has embraced the Protestant faith, as a Presbyterian, and already understands a part of the Westminster catechism. He has been in every way a model prisoner, having earned already enough good conduct marks to remit one year of his life sentence, retrospectively.
The prisoner strikes me as a man of some intelligence and with a certain knowledge of the world. I feel assured that the publication of his memoirs will aid in deterring others from the errors he has made.
THE MEMOIRS AS GIVEN TO THE DELEGATION
Yes, gentlemen, if I had listened to my good old mother, I should never have been here. Again and again, she said to me, ‘Napoleon, keep straight,’ and if I had kept straight, gentlemen, I should never have gone crooked.
Since I’ve been here on the Island I’ve had access to a lot of good books, for which I want to thank the librarian, and I can see things differently about my career from what I could at the time. I can’t thank the English military critics enough for letting me know that I was too fat at Waterloo, too fat, gentlemen, and drowsy. If I had realized, gentlemen, how fat I was, I would never have undertaken that battle. But I just went slamming ahead, the way fat men do, and I lost it.
But you’ve asked me about my story, and how I came to be here, and above all, how I came to see the light after so much sin. So I’ll do my best at telling you. But I’m not much of a hand, I must warn you, gentlemen, at telling a story. I can write a bulletin about battles and victories with anyone; some of you may have seen that one I wrote about the eagles flying from steeple to steeple till they would alight on Notre-Dame. It was good stuff — wicked though it was — and even here, gentlemen, it stirs me, although now I can see the sin of it and how ungrateful I was to the Government of England and other kind friends who had given me a nice home in the Island of Elba.
But perhaps some gentleman would give me a chew of tobacco. It’s dry talking without something to chew. Thank you.
Well, then, father and mother had a farm near Ajaccio Post Office in Corsica and there my brothers and I were brought up. I have always felt that I owed much of my energy to those early years on the farm, to being up at sunrise to drive the cows from the pasture. With such a beginning I ought to have grown up a hundred per cent American as all farm boys do.
But I started wrong. I was sent away to school in France with my brother Joe and if we had come home again with the fine education we received at Brienne, we could have started a goat farm and very likely done well. I have to admit that Joe was all in favour of it. Years after, when I made him King of Spain, he used to say, ‘I’d rather have goats, they’re quieter.’
But there was a wild streak in all of us, and nothing would do than we must go to Paris, Joe and I first, and afterwards Lou and Luce and the girls, down to Jerry, my youngest brother. Jerry was the youngest and wildest of us all and presently he ran away to the United States, and did well, and married into one of the oldest Baltimore families, a big lift for us Bonapartes. But I made Jerry come home, and he sank back again, went soldiering and I last saw him, I think, at the battle of Waterloo. But I was too fat to keep track of him. But I’m running ahead of my story. I suppose none of you gentlemen carry a drop of brandy? Thank you.
Anyway, we went to Paris just at the time of the excitement over the French Revolution and I think you’ve heard what happened? I joined the army, got in with the wrong crowd, and some of them put me up to the idea of stopping the French Revolution. I stopped it by shooting grapeshot at it, an idea that no one had thought of before. Then I went down with a pretty tough crowd to Toulon and beat up the English, and then one dark night went out with a gang and conquered Belgium. And after that I was always out at night, conquering something, for months together — with the same crowd, Bill Ney, and Joe Murat, and Nick Soult, and dare-devils of that sort.
But you know the whole story, gentlemen, and I needn’t repeat it. The wickedness of it was not so much in anything we did as what we planned to do. Do you know that at one time we actually planned to invade England; another time a lot of the boys went right across Spain and captured Lisbon and made the English sail them home again: and later than that, quite a bit later, a big crowd of us went to Russia and burnt Moscow. Most of those boys, gentlemen, never came back and their poor mothers have no one to thank for it but me. I suppose no gentleman has another drop of brandy? Thank you — I get a little wheezy, you see, with talking. I’m over fifty, gentlemen, and I’ve led a hard life.
But, as I say, I never realized the mistakes I made till it was all over. Looking over it now with the help of books and military criticism, I can see that my career was one long series of fatal errors. I’ve spoken of the battle of Waterloo, where I was too fat. On the other hand when I tried to conquer Egypt I was too thin. My fatal mistake at the great battle of Leipzig in 1813 — I’ve read all about it since — was that I didn’t keep my rear covered. A true strategist always has his rear resting on something. On the other hand at the big battle at Borodino — that’s just outside of Moscow — I lost out by refusing to uncover my rear. In Spain I forgot about the heat. In Russia I miscalculated the cold. In short there was a fatal blunder in every campaign.
Honestly, gentlemen, I don’t think I ever ought to have been born. It was a big mistake. But it appears, from what I read, that it had to be. I represented, so it seems, military autocracy emerging from mob rule, and so I had to emerge. My trouble was, as I get it from reading about my career, that I had to represent a lot of things and got no chance to be myself. I represented the fall of feudalism and the birth of imperialism and the rise of nationalism and the fall of Methodism. What chance has a fellow who represents all that to strike out for himself?
Still, I’m not complaining, at least not in that sense. But since some of you have asked me if I have any complaints to make while you’re here, I’ll say yes, gentlemen, I have. In the first place, I don’t like the way my name is already being used in the newspapers, I mean in connection with their advertising matter. I say to myself if this kind of thing has got started already in 1820, what will it be like a hundred years from now?
I’ll show you what I mean. Here is a journal that’s just come over from the United States with an advertisement for winter blankets. It says, ‘Napoleon used to say, “Keep the feet warm and your kidneys will look after themselves,”’ I admit, gentlemen, that I did say that, I said it in Russia one day to Marshal Augereau. He was complaining of the cold and I asked him, ‘Where does it get you, Augereau?’ and he answered, ‘Right in the kidneys.’ I said, ‘Keep your feet warm, Augereau, and your kidneys will never bother you.’ But when I said this, it was as a private remark to Marshal Augereau.
Or look at this one, ‘Napoleon used to say, “Deep breathing sets up a diaduction of the oxygen in the lungs.”’ Yes, I said it all right — I said it to the Pope the day of my coronation, for fear he might faint, but I meant it only for the Pope, and not for use in connection with a bathroom exercise machine; and I certainly did not say to the Pope, ‘Ten minutes on the floor of the bathroom every morning will make a new man of you.’ He had no bathroom; never had had.
There’s more than that. I don’t like the way they are starting to call all sorts of people ‘Napoleons.’ Here’s a fellow who is being named ‘the Napoleon of financiers.’ I might stand for that. But I don’t like this other man, in the tailor business, calling himself the Napoleon of trouser-cutters. That’s not fair to me. I never cut trousers. It was all done for me by Marie Louise — she was a good wife, gentlemen, and bred up in Austria as a woman should be. Excuse me, if the remembrance of her affects me for a moment. Thank you, yes, another glass of brandy? You’re very kind. Some day I hope they call a brandy after me.
