Water-Babies — Chapter 4, part 2

So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to be seen there.

But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all.

She liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, “I don’t care about all these things, because they can’t play with me, or talk to me.

If there were little children now in the water, as there used to be, and I could see them, I should like that.

” [Picture: Ellie] “Children in the water, you strange little duck?

” said the professor.

“Yes,” said Ellie.

“I know there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen.

I saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called ‘The Triumph of Galatea;’ and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind.

It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times; and it is so beautiful, that it must be true.

” But the professor had not the least notion of allowing that things were true, merely because people thought them beautiful.

For at that rate, he said, the Baltas would be quite right in thinking it a fine thing to eat their grandpapas, because they thought it an ugly thing to put them underground.

The professor, indeed, went further, and held that no man was forced to believe anything to be true, but what he could see, hear, taste, or handle.

He held very strange theories about a good many things.

He had even got up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have.

Which was a shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions?

You may think that there are other more important differences between you and an ape, such as being able to speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong, and say your prayers, and other little matters of that kind; but that is a child’s fancy, my dear.

Nothing is to be depended on but the great hippopotamus test.

If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than the apes of all aperies.

But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered in one single ape’s brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- greater-greatest-grandmother from having been an ape too.

No, my dear little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and all-important difference between you and an ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore, to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing, at which every one will be very much shocked, as we may suppose they were at the professor.

—Though really, after all, it don’t much matter; because—as Lord Dundreary and others would put it—nobody but men have hippopotamuses in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape’s brain, why it would not be one, you know, but something else.

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than that;

for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found himself the better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never had been, and could not be, any rational or half-rational beings except men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow; that _nymphs_, _satyrs_, _fauns_, _inui_, _dwarfs_, _trolls_, _elves_, _gnomes_, _fairies_, _brownies_, _nixes_, _wills_, _kobolds_, _leprechaunes_, _cluricaunes_, _banshees_, _will-o’-the-wisps_, _follets_, _lutins_, _magots_, _goblins_, _afrits_, _marids_, _jinns_, _ghouls_, _peris_, _deevs_, _angels_, _archangels_, _imps_, _bogies_, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind.

And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove that, and to eat his breakfast overnight; but he did it, at least to his own satisfaction.

Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite right.

Whereon the professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably he was quite right too.

But they did not quarrel in the least; for, when men are men of the world, hard words run off them like water off a duck’s back.

So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop after his claret), and each vowed that the other was the best company he ever met in his life.

What an advantage it is to be men of the world!

From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of little Ellie’s opinion.

So he gave her a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the British Association, in a form suited for the youthful mind.

But, as we have gone over his arguments against water-babies once already, which is once too often, we will not repeat them here.

Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little girl; for, instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the same question over again.

“But why are there not water-babies?

” I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he couldn’t know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a universal negative—I say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply: “Because there ain’t. ” Which was not even good English, my dear little boy; for, as you must know from Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, the professor ought to have said, if he was so angry as to say anything of the kind—Because there are not: or are none: or are none of them; or (if he had been reading Aunt Agitate too) because they do not exist.

And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently, that, as it befell, he caught poor little Tom.

He felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes.

“Dear me!

” he cried.

“What a large pink Holothurian; with hands, too!

It must be connected with Synapta.

” And he took him out.

“It has actually eyes!

” he cried.

“Why, it must be a Cephalopod!

This is most extraordinary!

” “No, I ain’t!

” cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be called bad names.

“It is a water-baby!

” cried Ellie; and of course it was.

“Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!

” said the professor; and he turned away sharply.

There was no denying it.

It was a water-baby: and he had said a moment ago that there were none.

What was he to do?

He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket.

He would not have put him in spirits.

Of course not.

He would have kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the first would have said a little about Tom, and the second all about himself; for of course he would have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long name like that; for they are forced to call everything by long names now, because they have used up all the short ones, ever since they took to making nine species out of one.

But—what would all the learned men say to him after his speech at the British Association?

And what would Ellie say, after what he had just told her?

There was a wise old heathen once, who said, “Maxima debetur pueris reverentia”—The greatest reverence is due to children; that is, that grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest they should set them a bad example.

—Cousin Cramchild says it means, “The greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys.

” But he was raised in a country where little boys are not expected to be respectful, because all of them are as good as the President:—Well, every one knows his own concerns best; so perhaps they are.

But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very great temptation for him.

But some people, and I am afraid the professor was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence in their elders.

Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes, my darling, it is a water-baby, and a very wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little I know of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years’ honest labour.

I

was just telling you that there could be no such creatures; and, behold!

here is one come to confound my conceit and show me that Nature can do, and has done, beyond all that man’s poor fancy can imagine.

So, let us thank the Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature for all His wonderful and glorious works, and try and find out something about this one;”—I think that, if the professor had said that, little Ellie would have believed him more firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him better, than ever she had done before.

But he was of a different opinion.

He hesitated a moment.

He longed to keep Tom, and yet he half wished he never had caught him; and at last he quite longed to get rid of him.

So he turned away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of anything better to do; and said carelessly, “My dear little maid, you must have dreamt of water-babies last night, your head is so full of them.

” Now Tom had been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the while; and had kept as quiet as he could, though he was called a Holothurian and a Cephalopod; for it was fixed in his little head that if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again.

But, when the professor poked him, it was more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage, he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, and bit the professor’s finger till it bled.

“Oh!

ah!

yah!

” cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and was gone in a moment.

“But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!

” cried Ellie.

“Ah, it is gone!

” And she jumped down off the rock, to try and catch Tom before he slipped into the sea.

[Picture: Ellie, the professor and Tom] Too late!

and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell some six feet, with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.

The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her, and cried over her, for he loved her very much: but she would not waken at all.

So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess, and they all went home; and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there quite still; only now and then she woke up and called out about the water-baby: but no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not tell, for he was ashamed to tell.

And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not help putting them on; and she flew with them out of the window, and over the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a very long while.

And this is why they say that no one has ever yet seen a water-baby.

For my part, I believe that the naturalists get dozens of them when they are out dredging; but they say nothing about them, and throw them overboard again, for fear of spoiling their theories.

But, you see the professor was found out, as every one is in due time.

A very terrible old fairy found the professor out; she felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and took the lunars of him carefully inside and out; and so she knew what he would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book, as they say in the dear old west country; and he did it; and so he was found out beforehand, as everybody always is; and the old fairy will find out the naturalists some day, and put them in the _Times_, and then on whose side will the laugh be?

So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there and then.

But she says she is always most severe with the best people, because there is most chance of curing them, and therefore they are the patients who pay her best; for she has to work on the same salary as the Emperor of China’s physicians (it is a pity that all do not), no cure, no pay.

So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not content with things as they are, she filled his head with things as they are not, to try if he would like them better; and because he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in worse things than water-babies—in _unicorns_, _fire-drakes_, _manticoras_, _basilisks_, _amphisbænas_, _griffins_, _phoenixes_, _rocs_, _orcs_, _dog-headed men_, _three-headed dogs_, _three-bodied geryons_, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, though they know nothing about the matter, and never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months; and perhaps they were right, as they are now and then.

So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on his case; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other: else what use is there in being men of science?

But at last the majority agreed on a report in the true medical language, one half bad Latin, the other half worse Greek, and the rest what might have been English, if they had only learnt to write it.

And this is the beginning thereof— “_The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of whose symptomatic phœnomena we had the melancholy honour_ (_subsequently to a preliminary diagnostic inspection_) _of making an inspectorial diagnosis_, _presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles_, _we proceeded_”— But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew; for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran for her life, and locked herself into her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the words and strangled by the sentence.

A boa constrictor, she said, was bad company enough: but what was a boa constrictor made of paving stones?

“It was quite shocking!

What can they think is the matter with him?

” said she to the old nurse.

“That his wit’s just addled; may be wi’ unbelief and heathenry,” quoth she.

“Then why can’t they say so?

” And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the vales re-echoed—“Why indeed?

” But the doctors never heard them.

So she made Sir John write to the _Times_ to command the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words;— A light tax on words over three syllables, which are necessary evils, like rats: but, like them, must be kept down judiciously.

A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as _heterodoxy_, _spontaneity_, _spiritualism_, _spuriosity_, _etc.

_ And on words over five syllables (of which I hope no one will wish to see any examples), a totally prohibitory tax.

And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived from three or more languages at once; words derived from two languages having become so common that there was no more hope of rooting out them than of rooting out peth-winds.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a scholar and a man of sense, jumped at the notion; for he saw in it the one and only plan for abolishing Schedule D: but when he brought in his bill, most of the Irish members, and (I am sorry to say) some of the Scotch likewise, opposed it most strongly, on the ground that in a free country no man was bound either to understand himself or to let others understand him.

So the bill fell through on the first reading; and the Chancellor, being a philosopher, comforted himself with the thought that it was not the first time that a woman had hit off a grand idea and the men turned up their stupid noses thereat.

Now the doctors had it all their own way; and to work they went in earnest, and they gave the poor professor divers and sundry medicines, as prescribed by the ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates to Feuchtersleben, as below, viz.

— 1. _Hellebore_, _to wit_— _Hellebore of Æta_.

_Hellebore of Galatia_.

_Hellebore of Sicily_.

_And all other Hellebores_, _after the method of the Helleborising Helleborists of the Helleboric era_.

_But that would not do_.

_Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles would not stir an inch out of his encephalo digital region_.

2. _Trying to find out what was the matter with him_, _after the method of Hippocrates_, _Aretæus_, _Celsus_, _Coelius Aurelianus_, _And Galen_.

But they found that a great deal too much trouble, as most people have since; and so had recourse to— 3. _Borage_.

_Cauteries_.

Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes, which (says Gordonius) “will, without doubt, do much good.

” But it didn’t. _Bezoar stone_.

_Diamargaritum_.

_A ram’s brain boiled in spice_.

_Oil of wormwood_.

_Water of Nile_.

_Capers_.

_Good wine_ (_but there was none to be got_).

_The water of a smith’s forge_.

_Ambergris_.

_Mandrake pillows_.

_Dormouse fat_.

_Hares’ ears_.

_Starvation_.

_Camphor_.

_Salts and senna_.

_Musk_.

_Opium_.

_Strait-waistcoats_.

_Bullyings_.

_Bumpings_.

_Bleedings_.

_Bucketings with cold water_.

_Knockings down_.

_Kneeling on his chest till they broke it in_, _etc.

etc. _; _after the mediæval or monkish method_: _but that would not do_.

_Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles stuck there still_.

Then— 4. _Coaxing_.

_Kissing_.

_Champagne and turtle_.

_Red herrings and soda water_.

_Good advice_.

_Gardening_.

_Croquet_.

_Musical soirées_.

_Aunt Salty_.

_Mild tobacco_.

_The Saturday Review_.

_A carriage with outriders_, _etc.

etc. _ After the modern method.

But that would not do.

And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and had shot at the Queen, killed all his creditors to avoid paying them, or indulged in any other little amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would have given him in addition— The healthiest situation in England, on Easthampstead Plain.

Free run of Windsor Forest.

The _Times_ every morning.

A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to shoot three Wellington College boys a week (not more) in case black game was scarce.

But as he was neither mad enough nor bad enough to be allowed such luxuries, they grew desperate, and fell into bad ways, viz.

— 5. _Suffumigations of sulphur_.

_Herrwiggius his_ “_Incomparable drink for madmen_:” Only they could not find out what it was.

_Suffumigation of the liver of the fish_ * * * Only they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray could not well procure them a specimen.

_Metallic tractors_.

_Holloway’s Ointment_.

_Electro-biology_.

_Valentine Greatrakes his Stroking Cure_.

_Spirit-rapping_.

_Holloway’s Pills_.

_Table-turning_.

_Morison’s Pills_.

_Homœopathy_.

_Parr’s Life Pills_.

_Mesmerism_.

_Pure Bosh_.

_Exorcisms_, _for which the read Maleus Maleficarum_, _Nideri Formicarium_, _Delrio_, _Wierus_, _etc.

_ But could not get one that mentioned water-babies.

_Hydropathy_.

_Madame Rachel’s Elixir of Youth_.

_The Poughkeepsie Seer his Prophecies_.

_The distilled liquor of addle eggs_.

_Pyropathy_.

As successfully employed by the old inquisitors to cure the malady of thought, and now by the Persian Mollahs to cure that of rheumatism.

_Geopathy_, _or burying him_.

_Atmopathy_, _or steaming him_.

_Sympathy_, _after the method of Basil Valentine his Triumph of Antimony_, _and Kenelm Digby his Weapon-salve_, _which some call a hair of the dog that bit him_.

_Hermopathy_, _or pouring mercury down his throat to move the animal spirits_.

_Meteoropathy_, _or going up to the moon to look for his lost wits_, _as Ruggiero did for Orlando Furioso’s_: _only_, _having no hippogriff_, _they were forced to use a balloon_; _and_, _falling into the North Sea_, _were picked up by a Yarmouth herring-boat_, _and came home much the wiser_, _and all over scales_.

_Antipathy_, _or using him like_ “_a man and a brother_.

” _Apathy_, _or doing nothing at all_.

_With all other ipathies and opathies which Noodle has invented_, _and Foodle tried_, _since black-fellows chipped flints at Abbéville_—_which is a considerable time ago_, _to judge by the Great Exhibition_.

But nothing would do; for he screamed and cried all day for a water-baby, to come and drive away the monsters; and of course they did not try to find one, because they did not believe in them, and were thinking of nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles; having, as usual, set the cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the cause.

So they were forced at last to let the poor professor ease his mind by writing a great book, exactly contrary to all his old opinions; in which he proved that the moon was made of green cheese, and that all the mites in it (which you may see sometimes quite plain through a telescope, if you will only keep the lens dirty enough, as Mr. Weekes kept his voltaic battery) are nothing in the world but little babies, who are hatching and swarming up there in millions, ready to come down into this world whenever children want a new little brother or sister.

Which must be a mistake, for this one reason: that, there being no atmosphere round the moon (though some one or other says there is, at least on the other side, and that he has been round at the back of it to see, and found that the moon was just the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet that the man in the moon went about on Midsummer-day in Macintoshes and Cording’s boots, spearing eels and sneezing); that, therefore, I say, there being no atmosphere, there can be no evaporation; and therefore the dew-point can never fall below 71. 5° below zero of Fahrenheit: and, therefore, it cannot be cold enough there about four o’clock in the morning to condense the babies’ mesenteric apophthegms into their left ventricles; and, therefore, they can never catch the hooping-cough; and if they do not have hooping-cough, they cannot be babies at all; and, therefore, there are no babies in the moon.

—Q.

E.

D.

[Picture: Man in rain] Which may seem a roundabout reason; and so, perhaps, it is: but you will have heard worse ones in your time, and from better men than you are.

But one thing is certain; that, when the good old doctor got his book written, he felt considerably relieved from Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and a few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride and vain-glory, and from blindness and hardness of heart; which are the true causes of Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and of a good many other ugly things besides.

Whereon the foul flood-water in his brains ran down, and cleared to a fine coffee colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very fine clean fresh-run fish did begin to rise in his brains; and he caught two or three of them (which is exceedingly fine sport, for brain rivers), and anatomised them carefully, and never mentioned what he found out from them, except to little children; and became ever after a sadder and a wiser man; which is a very good thing to become, my dear little boy, even though one has to pay a heavy price for the blessing.

[Picture: Bat with man’s face]