The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
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_, _ph[oe]nixes_, _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 ph[oe]nomena 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_,
_C[oe]lius 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._
_Hops._
_Ambergris._
_Mandrake pillows._
_Dormouse fat._
_Hares' ears._
_Starvation._
_Camphor._
_Salts and senna._
_Musk._
_Opium._
_Strait-waistcoats._
_Bullyings._
_Bumpings._
_Blisterings._
_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 Sally._
_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._
_Hom[oe]opathy._
_Parr's Life Pills._
_Mesmerism._
_Pure Bosh._
_Exorcisms, for which they 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.
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