The Mappined Life

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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"These Mappin Terraces at the Zoological Gardens are a great improvementon the old style of wild-beast cage," said Mrs. James Gurtleberry,putting down an illustrated paper; "they give one the illusion of seeingthe animals in their natural surroundings. I wonder how much of theillusion is passed on to the animals?" "That would depend on the animal," said her niece; "a jungle-fowl, forinstance, would no doubt think its lawful jungle surroundings werefaithfully reproduced if you gave it a sufficiency of wives, a goodlyvariety of seed food and ants' eggs, a commodious bank of loose earth todust itself in, a convenient roosting tree, and a rival or two to makematters interesting. Of course there ought to be jungle-cats and birdsof prey and other agencies of sudden death to add to the illusion ofliberty, but the bird's own imagination is capable of inventingthose--look how a domestic fowl will squawk an alarm note if a rook orwood pigeon passes over its run when it has chickens." "You think, then, they really do have a sort of illusion, if you givethem space enough--" "In a few cases only. Nothing will make me believe that an acre or so ofconcrete enclosure will make up to a wolf or a tiger-cat for the range ofnight prowling that would belong to it in a wild state. Think of thedictionary of sound and scent and recollection that unfolds before a realwild beat as it comes out from its lair every evening, with the knowledgethat in a few minutes it will be hieing along to some distant huntingground where all the joy and fury of the chase awaits it; think of thecrowded sensations of the brain when every rustle, every cry, every benttwig, and every whiff across the nostrils means something, something todo with life and death and dinner. Imagine the satisfaction of stealingdown to your own particular drinking spot, choosing your own particulartree to scrape your claws on, finding your own particular bed of driedgrass to roll on. Then, in the place of all that, put a concretepromenade, which will be of exactly the same dimensions whether you raceor crawl across it, coated with stale, unvarying scents and surroundedwith cries and noises that have ceased to have the least meaning orinterest. As a substitute for a narrow cage the new enclosures areexcellent, but I should think they are a poor imitation of a life ofliberty." "It's rather depressing to think that," said Mrs. Gurtleberry; "they lookso spacious and so natural, but I suppose a good deal of what seemsnatural to us would be meaningless to a wild animal." "That is where our superior powers of self-deception come in," said theniece; "we are able to live our unreal, stupid little lives on ourparticular Mappin terrace, and persuade ourselves that we really areuntrammelled men and women leading a reasonable existence in a reasonablesphere." "But good gracious," exclaimed the aunt, bouncing into an attitude ofscandalised defence, "we are leading reasonable existences! What onearth do you mean by trammels? We are merely trammelled by the ordinarydecent conventions of civilised society." "We are trammelled," said the niece, calmly and pitilessly, "byrestrictions of income and opportunity, and above all by lack ofinitiative. To some people a restricted income doesn't matter a bit, infact it often seems to help as a means for getting a lot of reality outof life; I am sure there are men and women who do their shopping inlittle back streets of Paris, buying four carrots and a shred of beef fortheir daily sustenance, who lead a perfectly real and eventful existence.Lack of initiative is the thing that really cripples one, and that iswhere you and I and Uncle James are so hopelessly shut in. We are justso many animals stuck down on a Mappin terrace, with this difference inour disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobodywants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to lookat. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasphappens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, notours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we doclimb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if ithappens to be a good flowering year for magnolias the neighbourhoodobserves: 'Have you seen the Gurtleberry's magnolia? It is a perfectmass of flowers,' and we go about telling people that there are fifty-seven blossoms as against thirty-nine the previous year." "In Coronation year there were as many as sixty," put in the aunt, "youruncle has kept a record for the last eight years." "Doesn't it ever strike you," continued the niece relentlessly, "that ifwe moved away from here or were blotted out of existence our local claimto fame would pass on automatically to whoever happened to take the houseand garden? People would say to one another, 'Have you seen the Smith-Jenkins' magnolia? It is a perfect mass of flowers,' or else'Smith-Jenkins tells me there won't be a single blossom on their magnoliathis year; the east winds have turned all the buds black.' Now if, whenwe had gone, people still associated our names with the magnolia tree, nomatter who temporarily possessed it, if they said, 'Ah, that's the treeon which the Gurtleberrys hung their cook because she sent up the wrongkind of sauce with the asparagus,' that would be something really due toour own initiative, apart from anything east winds or magnolia vitalitymight have to say in the matter." "We should never do such a thing," said the aunt. The niece gave a reluctant sigh. "I can't imagine it," she admitted. "Of course," she continued, "thereare heaps of ways of leading a real existence without committingsensational deeds of violence. It's the dreadful little everyday acts ofpretended importance that give the Mappin stamp to our life. It would beentertaining, if it wasn't so pathetically tragic, to hear Uncle Jamesfuss in here in the morning and announce, 'I must just go down into thetown and find out what the men there are saying about Mexico. Mattersare beginning to look serious there.' Then he patters away into thetown, and talks in a highly serious voice to the tobacconist,incidentally buying an ounce of tobacco; perhaps he meets one or twoothers of the world's thinkers and talks to them in a highly seriousvoice, then he patters back here and announces with increased importance,'I've just been talking to some men in the town about the condition ofaffairs in Mexico. They agree with the view that I have formed, thatthings there will have to get worse before they get better.' Of coursenobody in the town cared in the least little bit what his views aboutMexico were or whether he had any. The tobacconist wasn't even flutteredat his buying the ounce of tobacco; he knows that he purchases the samequantity of the same sort of tobacco every week. Uncle James might justas well have lain on his back in the garden and chattered to the lilactree about the habits of caterpillars." "I really will not listen to such things about your uncle," protestedMrs. James Gurtleberry angrily. "My own case is just as bad and just as tragic," said the niece,dispassionately; "nearly everything about me is conventionalmake-believe. I'm not a good dancer, and no one could honestly call megood-looking, but when I go to one of our dull little local dances I'mconventionally supposed to 'have a heavenly time,' to attract the ardenthomage of the local cavaliers, and to go home with my head awhirl withpleasurable recollections. As a matter of fact, I've merely put in somehours of indifferent dancing, drunk some badly-made claret cup, andlistened to an enormous amount of laborious light conversation. Amoonlight hen-stealing raid with the merry-eyed curate would beinfinitely more exciting; imagine the pleasure of carrying off all thosewhite minorcas that the Chibfords are always bragging about. When we haddisposed of them we could give the proceeds to a charity, so there wouldbe nothing really wrong about it. But nothing of that sort lies withinthe Mappined limits of my life. One of these days somebody dull anddecorous and undistinguished will 'make himself agreeable' to me at atennis party, as the saying is, and all the dull old gossips of theneighbourhood will begin to ask when we are to be engaged, and at last weshall be engaged, and people will give us butter-dishes andblotting-cases and framed pictures of young women feeding swans. Hullo,Uncle, are you going out?" "I'm just going down to the town," announced Mr. James Gurtleberry, withan air of some importance: "I want to hear what people are saying aboutAlbania. Affairs there are beginning to take on a very serious look.It's my opinion that we haven't seen the worst of things yet." In this he was probably right, but there was nothing in the immediate orprospective condition of Albania to warrant Mrs. Gurtleberry in burstinginto tears.

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