PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22042, 26 August 1933, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

Since the science of conchology has to do with shells and shellfish, it has quite as much right to include pearls in its embrace as has the humble oyster. Nay more, the true scientist is entitled to exclaim, like Ancient Pistol; “ Why, then, the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.” Add to these considerations the fact that a pearl is after all a shell of sorts, and you have full and adequate reason why a learned conchologist lecturing on “ Cleopatra’s Pear! ” deserves our respectful attention. For close on two thousand years mankind has believed, more or less, that this siren/ of Egypt, for whose eyes, flashing their R.S.V.P., Mark Antony counted the world well lost, drank his health one day in a bowl of vinegar containing in solution a priceless pearl. An exploded myth, now says the scientist. In a lecture at the Auckland University College Mr A. W. Powell, conchologist at the museum, showed the story to be a fallacy. . . . No vinegar, however acid, would dissolve a pearl so rapidly. And if it were possible, one should have great concern for the person partaking of such a potent beverage. Yet history does not record any dreadful consequences- to Cleopatra.

Patent to everyone is the weakness of our conchologist’s ease. Learned though he be in. knowledge of pearls, what knows he of Clcopatras? Has he coldly and scientifically tested the matter? Has ho ever taken a priceless pearl from his lady’s ear, dissolved it in vinegar, and drunk the draught to her eyebrow? What if the pearl bo not all dissolved? The modern maiden drinks the cherry cocktail to her own health, and finds no difficulty in the manipulation of the cherry. And as for the vinegar, a slimming Cleopatra would lose none of her romance. High authority tells us that young ladies with an undue tendency to corpulency are said to drink vinegar freely to improve the figure. But, as vinegar only produces thinness by injuring the digestion, it is . obviously not worth while to run the risk of exchanging slight fullness of habit for chronic dyspepsia.

If Antony was content to lose a world, who should, in a like cause, boggle at losing a mere digestion?

Despite the assertions of our learned conchologists and the acetic, conclusions of our scientists, one still clings to the old legend as Antony clung to Cleopatra. As a magnificent gesture in the right circumstances can it be beaten? The “ Cleopatra pearl cocktail ” has been drunk right down the ages. Horace in his satires pays tribute to it, for Clodius did the very same thing with a pearl from Metclla’s car: Finns Aesopi detractam ex aure Metellae Scilicet ut dectes solldum absorberet, aceto Dilult inslgnem baccam. Did not Sir Thomas Gresham similarly pledge the health of Queen Elizabeth, mutely calling her a Cleopatra? As Hey wood wrote: Here £15,000 at one clap goes Instead of sugar; Gresham drinks the pearl Unto his queen and mistress. Pledge It, lords. A Due de Eichelieu under the fourteenth Louis drank a million livres to the health of his favourite comtesse. True it is that both Gresham and Richelieu reduced their pearl to powder to facilitate the dissolution. But why fingle-fangle with such a quibble when the pearl was drunk? Cleopatra has thus left good behind her, although, according to more than one writer, she is now “ a crier of onions in Hell.” Why “ onions ” ? The Latin for a pearl and for an onion is “ unio.” . Dear “ Civis,” —The writer of an interesting article in the Otago JDaily Times last Saturday gives Kipling credit for the authorship of the once . well-known jingle, “We don’t want to fight,” etc. From over 40 years’ acquaintance with that author’s work I venture the opinion that the versicle in question is out of key with his peculiar genius. Furthermore, and this is probably more to the present , purpose, I seem to remember reading and hearing the “ jingo ” verses, and myself repeating them, back in boyhood, while Kipling was at Westward Ho, or earlier. Was it not. Punch that gave the jingle currency, and was not the occasion one of those recurring crises when a “misunderstanding ” between- ourselves and Russia threatened to take a serious turn?— l am, etc., Interested.

“ Interested ” is right on all counts. Kipling had nothing to do with the jingle. Kipling was born, in 18C5, and was a schoolboy in the ’seventies when the anti-Russian war fever was at its height. It was then that Macdermott’s “ War Song ” went the rounds of the music halls: We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo, i£ we do. We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, N we’ve got the money too. When Disraeli announced in 1878 that the Government was bringing Hindoo troops from India to Malta as a gesture to Europe, the music-hall refrain was at once adapted, and even the grave Spectator gave currency to the parody: We don’t want to fight; but, by Jingo, if we do, We won’t go to the front ourselves, but we’ll send the mild Hindoo.

The ‘‘ Jingo ” song has left a long tail behind it. With changing times, the disappearance of Beaconsfield, and the advent of the “Little Englander,” “ Jingo ” became a term of reproach. When Tennyson wrote his “ Hands all Round ” to revive the patriotic spirit of his countrymen,'an irreverent parodist appeared with the counterblast of “ Drinks all round,” announced as being “ an attempt to arrange Mr Tennyson’s noble words for truly patriotic, Protectionist, and anti-aboriginal circles”:

A health to Jingo Brat, and then A health to shell, a health to shot I The man who hates not other men I deem, no perfect patriot. To all who hold all England mad We drink ; to all who’d tax her food! We pledge the man who hates the Rad. We drink to Bartle Frere and Proude. Drinks all round! Here’s to Jingo, king and crowned! To the great cause of Jingo drink, my boys, ■ And the great name of Jingo, round and round. To all the companies that long To rob, as folk robbed years ago; To all that wield the double tlions. From Queensland round to Borneo. To all that, under Indian skies. Call Aryan man a blasted nigger. To all capacious enterprise; To rigour everywhere and vigour. Am! so on. Thus does the peri of (.ho parodist run away .with him, till ho sells his soul to make a rhyme. A correspondent who lias evidently forgotten his Shakespeare asks me the question, “ Who was the first to say * Brevity is the soul of wit’?” Expressed in these words the proverb was first uttered by Polonius; Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit And (ediousness the limbs and outward nourishes. But the truth itself is as old as speech. Says Sophocles, ‘‘Many wise things are bound up in short speech,” And Pliny the younger: “Nihil aequo in causis agendis ut brevitas placet,”—in the pleading of causes nothing pleases so much as brevity. In full keeping with these classical references to the wit that lies in brevity is the fact that the. classical languages lend them superlatively to the packing of wit and sense into phrases of small compass. Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici ” has had a numerous imitative progeny. For example, Turenne’s message, “ The enemy came, was beaten, I’m tired, goodnight.” Also that of John Sobieski, when at the head of the Poles he heat hack the Turkish tide from the walls of Vienna, “ ! came, I saw, God conquered.” Voltaire oiree

challenged Piron to a trial of epistolary brevity. He went to the country leaving to his competitor the parting greeting “Eo rus.” Piron capped it by replying “I” (go). Lord Tredegar, set down to reply to a toast, was unexpectedly called upon to respond to an earlier one. He rose and said, “ Resurgam,” then sat down again. Well known is Sir Francis Drake’s legendary report to Queen Elizabeth of the rout of the Spanish Armada: “ Cantharidos ” (the Spanish fly). Also Lord Napier's despatch on the success of his Indian campaign: “Peccavi” (I have Scinde). Talleyrand wrote a letter of condolence to a lady who had lost her husband. All he said was “ Helas, Madame.” A few months later he heard of her engagement. He wrote a letter of congratulation, containing the words “ Ho, Ho, Madame.” When Victor Hugo sent the manuscript of his “ Les Miscrables ” to the publishers, his letter merely said, “ ”. The reply of the publishers was This example surely wins the championship. As a final example we may take a Milwaukee marriage service. “Have her?” “Yes.” “Have him?” “Yes.” “Married, two dollars.” Quoted in a London weekly is a story of Charles Reade in illustration of the common failing of men of distinction and power to regard the rest of mankind as unnecessary excrescences. One day Charles Reade, on entering the Bodleian Library, found some one in occupation of the seat he was accustomed to occupy. He flew in a rage to the librarian, crying, “Do you , know who I am? I am Charles Reade. Is this fellow such a man as Charles Reade? ” Examples of like import* are not far to seek. This ex-Kaiser had such a kink. One day, when visiting the atelier of a Berlin sculptor, he found fault with the angle of an arm of a statue. The sculptor mildly ventured to remark that it was anatomically correct. Whereupon the Kaiser drew his sword, struck off the arm and said, “ You’ll alter it now.” This method of discussion has all the gentle persuasiveness of the knock-down argument of Peter in the “ Tale of a Tub”: Look ye, gentlemen, to 'convince you what a couple of blind, positive, ignorant, wilful puppies ye are, I will use but this plain argument, that G—— will confound you both eternally if you offer to believe otherwise.

Conversation under these conditions is as much a conversation as a schoolflogging is a fight. “ The reciprocity is all on one side.” A story not unlike that of Charles Reade is told of Thackeray—with the boot on the other foot: Thackeray, having to deliver a lecture on George IV at Oxford, called on the vice-chancellor to ask permission. He presented his card, saying, “ I’m Thackeray,” expecting an effusive reception. The vicechancellor looked. blankly and somewhat arrogantly at the card and the man. Thackeray stammered “The novelist, you know.” “ Sir, I cannot recollect your name. Are you a member of the university? ” Thackeray: "‘Vanity Fair.’ you know.” Vice-chancellor: “ Oh, yes! I .have heard of ‘ Vanity Fair ’; it is mentioned in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’” . Civis.