Gilbert Chesterton: Manalive

It had originated, not with Innocent Smith, but with Michael Moon. He was in a strange glow and pressure of spirits, and talked incessantly; yet he had never been more sarcastic, and even inhuman. He used his old useless knowledge as a barrister to talk entertainingly of a tribunal that was a parody on the pompous anomalies of English law. The High Court of Beacon, he declared, was a splendid example of our free and sensible constitution. It had been founded by King John in defiance of the Magna Carta, and now held absolute power over windmills, wine and spirit licences, ladies traveling in Turkey, revision of sentences for dog-stealing and parricide, as well as anything whatever that happened in the town of Market Bosworth. The whole hundred and nine seneschals of the High Court of Beacon met once in every four centuries; but in the intervals (as Mr. Moon explained) the whole powers of the institution were vested in Mrs. Duke. Tossed about among the rest of the company, however, the High Court did not retain its historical and legal seriousness, but was used somewhat unscrupulously in a riot of domestic detail. If somebody spilt the Worcester Sauce on the tablecloth, he was quite sure it was a rite without which the sittings and findings of the Court would be invalid; or if somebody wanted a window to remain shut, he would suddenly remember that none but the third son of the lord of the manor of Penge had the right to open it. They even went to the length of making arrests and conducting criminal inquiries. The proposed trial of Moses Gould for patriotism was rather above the heads of the company, especially of the criminal; but the trial of Inglewood on a charge of photographic libel, and his triumphant acquittal upon a plea of insanity, were admitted to be in the best tradition of the Court.

But when Smith was in wild spirits he grew more and more serious, not more and more flippant like Michael Moon. This proposal of a private court of justice, which Moon had thrown off with the detachment of a political humourist, Smith really caught hold of with the eagerness of an abstract philosopher. It was by far the best thing they could do, he declared, to claim sovereign powers even for the individual household.

“You believe in Home Rule for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for homes,” he cried eagerly to Michael. “It would be better if every father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better, because nobody would be killed. Let’s issue a Declaration of Independence from Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that garden to support us, and when the tax-collector comes let’s tell him we’re self-supporting, and play on him with the hose. ...Well, perhaps, as you say, we couldn’t very well have a hose, as that comes from the main; but we could sink a well in this chalk, and a lot could be done with water-jugs... Let this really be Beacon House. Let’s light a bonfire of independence on the roof, and see house after house answering it across the valley of the Thames! Let us begin the League of the Free Families! Away with Local Government! A fig for Local Patriotism! Let every house be a sovereign state as this is, and judge its own children by its own law, as we do by the Court of Beacon. Let us cut the painter, and begin to be happy together, as if we were on a desert island.”

“I know that desert island,” said Michael Moon; “it only exists in the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’ A man feels a strange desire for some sort of vegetable milk, and crash comes down some unexpected cocoa-nut from some undiscovered monkey. A literary man feels inclined to pen a sonnet, and at once an officious porcupine rushes out of a thicket and shoots out one of his quills.”

“Don’t you say a word against the ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’” cried Innocent with great warmth. “It mayn’t be exact science, but it’s dead accurate philosophy. When you’re really shipwrecked, you do really find what you want. When you’re really on a desert island, you never find it a desert. If we were really besieged in this garden, we’d find a hundred English birds and English berries that we never knew were here. If we were snowed up in this room, we’d be the better for reading scores of books in that bookcase that we don’t even know are there; we’d have talks with each other, good, terrible talks, that we shall go to the grave without guessing; we’d find materials for everything– christening, marriage, or funeral; yes, even for a coronation– if we didn’t decide to be a republic.”

“A coronation on ‘Swiss Family’ lines, I suppose,” said Michael, laughing. “Oh, I know you would find everything in that atmosphere. If we wanted such a simple thing, for instance, as a Coronation Canopy, we should walk down beyond the geraniums and find the Canopy Tree in full bloom. If we wanted such a trifle as a crown of gold, why, we should be digging up dandelions, and we should find a gold mine under the lawn. And when we wanted oil for the ceremony, why I suppose a great storm would wash everything on shore, and we should find there was a Whale on the premises.”

“And so there IS a whale on the premises for all you know,” asseverated Smith, striking the table with passion. “I bet you’ve never examined the premises! I bet you’ve never been round at the back as I was this morning– for I found the very thing you say could only grow on a tree. There’s an old sort of square tent up against the dustbin; it’s got three holes in the canvas, and a pole’s broken, so it’s not much good as a tent, but as a Canopy–” And his voice quite failed him to express its shining adequacy; then he went on with controversial eagerness: “You see I take every challenge as you make it. I believe every blessed thing you say couldn’t be here has been here all the time. You say you want a whale washed up for oil. Why, there’s oil in that cruet-stand at your elbow; and I don’t believe anybody has touched it or thought of it for years. And as for your gold crown, we’re none of us wealthy here, but we could collect enough ten-shilling bits from our own pockets to string round a man’s head for half an hour; or one of Miss Hunt’s gold bangles is nearly big enough to–”

The good-humoured Rosamund was almost choking with laughter. “All is not gold that glitters,” she said, “and besides–”

“What a mistake that is!” cried Innocent Smith, leaping up in great excitement. “All is gold that glitters– especially now we are a Sovereign State. What’s the good of a Sovereign State if you can’t define a sovereign? We can make anything a precious metal, as men could in the morning of the world. They didn’t choose gold because it was rare; your scientists can tell you twenty sorts of slime much rarer. They chose gold because it was bright–because it was a hard thing to find, but pretty when you’ve found it. You can’t fight with golden swords or eat golden biscuits; you can only look at it–an you can look at it out here.”

With one of his incalculable motions he sprang back and burst open the doors into the garden. At the same time also, with one of his gestures that never seemed at the instant so unconventional as they were, he stretched out his hand to Mary Gray, and led her out on to the lawn as if for a dance.

The French windows, thus flung open, let in an evening even lovelier than that of the day before. The west was swimming with sanguine colours, and a sort of sleepy flame lay along the lawn. The twisted shadows of the one or two garden trees showed upon this sheen, not gray or black, as in common daylight, but like arabesques written in vivid violet ink on some page of Eastern gold. The sunset was one of those festive and yet mysterious conflagrations in which common things by their colours remind us of costly or curious things. The slates upon the sloping roof burned like the plumes of a vast peacock, in every mysterious blend of blue and green. The red-brown bricks of the wall glowed with all the October tints of strong ruby and tawny wines. The sun seemed to set each object alight with a different coloured flame, like a man lighting fireworks; and even Innocent’s hair, which was of a rather colourless fairness, seemed to have a flame of pagan gold on it as he strode across the lawn towards the one tall ridge of rockery.