ABSTRACT
1831
Excerpts from Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle (1831)—taken here from the first edition. For more serious remarks by Peacock, see No. 18.
Of the personages represented in the dialogue, Lady Clarinda and the Rev. Dr. Folliott are ‘straight’ characters, the latter being even a sort of touchstone to Peacock’s own views; Mr. MacQuedy and Mr. Trillo are caricatures, the first of a Scotch political economist, the second perhaps of the poet Thomas Moore. The split between Sir Walter Scott the poet and the anonymous author of Waverley allowed Scott to be represented by both Mr. Chainmail and the enchanter.
LADY CLARINDANext to Mr. Skionar, sits Mr. Chainmail, a good-looking young gentleman, as you see, with very antiquated tastes. He is fond of old poetry, and is something of a poet himself. He is deep in monkish literature, and holds that the best state of society was that of the twelfth century, when nothing was going forward but fighting, feasting, and praying, which he says are the three great purposes for which man was made. He laments bitterly over the inventions of gunpowder, steam, and gas, which he says have ruined the world. He lives within two or three miles, and has a large hall, adorned with rusty pikes, shields, helmets, 322swords, and tattered banners, and furnished with yew-tree chairs, and two long old worm-eaten oak tables, where he dines with all his household, after the fashion of his favorite age.
At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond; and, proceeding on their voyage, fell into a discussion on legendary histories.
LADY CLARINDAHistory is but a tiresome thing in itself: it becomes more agreeable the more romance is mixed up with it. The great enchanter has made me learn many things which I should never have dreamed of studying, if they had not come to me in the form of amusement.
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTWhat enchanter is that? There are two enchanters: he of the north, and he of the south.
MR. TRILLORossini?
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTAye, there is another enchanter. But I mean the great enchanter of Covent Garden: he who, for more than a quarter of a century, has produced two pantomimes a year, to the delight of children of all ages; including myself at all ages. That is the enchanter for me. I am for the pantomimes. All the northern enchanter’s romances put together, would not furnish materials for half the southern enchanter’s pantomimes.
LADY CLARINDASurely you do not class literature with pantomime?
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTIn these cases, I do. They are both one, with a slight difference. The one is the literature of pantomime, the other is the pantomime of literature. There is the same variety of character, the same diversity of story, the same copiousness of incident, the same research into costume, the same display of heraldry, falconry, minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery, 323devilry, robbery, poachery, piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology, demonology, architecture, fortification, castrametation, navigation; the same running base of love and battle. The main difference is, that the one set of amusing fictions is told in music and action; the other in all the worst dialects of the English language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral or political truth, any thing having a tendency, however remote, to make men wiser or better, to make them think, to make them ever think of thinking; they are both precisely alike: nuspiam: nequaquam: nullibi: nullimodis. 1
LADY CLARINDAVery amusing, however.
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTVery amusing, very amusing.
MR. CHAINMAILMy quarrel with the northern enchanter is, that he has grossly misrepresented the twelfth century.
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTHe has misrepresented every thing, or he would not have been very amusing. Sober truth is but dull matter to the reading rabble. The angler, who puts not on his hook the bait that best pleases the fish, may sit all day on the bank without catching a gudgeon. 2
MR. MAC QUEDYBut how do you mean that he has misrepresented the twelfth century? By exhibiting some of its knights and ladies in the colors of refinement and virtue, seeing that they were all no better than ruffians, and something else that shall be nameless?
MR. CHAINMAILBy no means. By depicting them as much worse than they were, not, as you suppose, much better. No one would infer from his pictures, that theirs was a much better state of society than this which we live in.
MR. MAC QUEDYNo, nor was it. It was a period of brutality, ignorance, fanaticism, and tyranny; when the land was covered with castles, and every castle contained a gang of banditti, headed by a titled robber, who levied contributions with fire and sword; plundering, torturing, ravishing, burying his captives in loathsome dungeons, and broiling them on gridirons, to force from them the surrender of every particle of treasure which he suspected them of possessing; and fighting every now and then with the neighbouring lords, his conterminal bandits, for the right of marauding on the boundaries. This was the twelfth century, as depicted by all contemporary historians and poets.
324MR. CHAINMAILNo, sir. Weigh the evidence of specific facts; you will find more good than evil. Who was England’s greatest hero; the mirror of chivalry, the pattern of honor, the fountain of generosity, the model to all succeeding ages of military glory? Richard the First. There is a king of the twelfth century. What was the first step of liberty? Magna Charta. That was the best thing ever done by lords. There are lords of the twelfth century. You must remember, too, that these lords were petty princes, and made war on each other as legitimately as the heads of larger communities did or do. For their system of revenue, it was, to be sure, more rough and summary than that which has succeeded it, but it was certainly less searching and less productive. And as to the people, I content myself with these great points: that every man was armed, every man was a good archer, every man could and would fight effectively, with sword or pike, or even with oaken cudgel; no man would live quietly without beef and ale; if he had them not, he fought till he either got them, or was put out of condition to want them. They were not, and could not be, subjected to that powerful pressure of all the other classes of society, combined by gunpowder, steam, and fiscality, which has brought them to that dismal degradation in which we see them now. And there are the people of the twelfth century.
MR. MAC QUEDYAs to your king, the enchanter has done him ample justice, even in your own view. As to your lords and their ladies, he has drawn them too favorably, given them too many of the false colors of chivalry, thrown too 325attractive a light on their abominable doings. As to the people, he keeps them so much in the background, that he can hardly be said to have represented them at all, much less misrepresented them, which indeed he could scarcely do, seeing that, by your own showing, they were all thieves, ready to knock down any man for what they could not come by honestly.
MR. CHAINMAILNo, sir. They could come honestly by beef and ale, while they were left to their simple industry. When oppression interfered with them in that, then they stood on the defensive, and fought for what they were not permitted to come by quietly.
MR. MAC QUEDYIf A., being aggrieved by B., knocks down C., do you call that standing on the defensive?
MR. CHAINMAILThat depends on who or what C. is.
THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTTGentlemen, you will never settle this controversy, till you have first settled what is good for man in this world; the great question, de finibus, which has puzzled all philosophers. If the enchanter has represented the twelfth century too brightly for one, and too darkly for the other of you, I should say, as an impartial man, he has represented it fairly. My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything. There is no question about the amusement,—amusement of multitudes; but if he who amuses us most, is to be our enchanter https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203197714/254e2ecd-d5b8-442c-88c8-ec996459d95d/content/ifig0002_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> 1 then my enchanter is the enchanter of Covent Garden.
