James Branch Cabell - Taboo
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James Branch Cabell >> Taboo
But Horvendile had fled, bewildered by the ways of Philistia's adepts
in starch and fetters, and bewildered in particular to note that a
mummy, so generally esteemed a kindly and well-meaning fossil,
appeared quite honestly to believe that all literature came out of
the beer-cellar of Paff, or Pfaff, or had some similarly Teutonic
sponsor; and that handball was the best training for literary
criticism; and that the cookery-books of fifty years ago had something
to do with Horvendile's account of his journeying, from he did not
know where toward a goal which he could not divine, now being in the
garbage pile. It troubled Horvendile because so many persons seemed to
regard the old fellow half seriously.
5--How It Appeared to the Man in the Street
Still, Horvendile was not quite routed by these heaped follies. "For,
after all," says Horvendile, in his own folly, "it is for the normal
human being that books are made, and not for mummies and men of law
and scavengers."
So Horvendile went through a many streets that were thronged with
persons travelling by compulsion from they did not know where toward a
goal which they could not divine, and were not especially bothering
about. And it was evening, and to this side and to that side the men
and women of Philistia were dining. Everywhere maids were passing hot
dishes, and forks were being thrust into these dishes, and each was
eating according to his ability and condition. No matter how
poverty-stricken the household, the housewife was serving her poor
best to the goodman. For with luncheon so long past, all the really
virile men of Philistia were famished, and stood ready to eat the
moment, they had a dish uncovered.
So it befell that Horvendile encountered a representative citizen, who
was coming out of a representative restaurant with a representative
wife.
And the sight of this representative citizen was to Horvendile a tonic
joy and a warming of the heart. For this man, and each of the
thousands like him, as Horvendile reflected, had been within this hour
sedately dining with his wife,--neither of them eating with the zest
and vigor of their first youth, perhaps, but sharing amicably the more
moderate refreshment which middle-age requires,--without being at any
particular pains to conceal the fact from anybody. Here was then,
after all, the strong and sure salvation of Philistia, in this quiet,
unassuming common-sense, which dealt with the facts of life as facts,
the while that the foolish laws, and the academical and stercoricolous
nonsense of Philistia, reverberated as remotely and as unheeded as
harmless summer thunder.
"Sir," says elated Horvendile, "I perceive that you two have just been
eating, and that emboldens me to ask you--"
But at this point Horvendile found he had been knocked down, because
the parents of the representative citizen had taught him from his
earliest youth that any mention of eating was highly indecent in the
presence of gentlewomen. And for Horvendile, recumbent upon the
pavement, it was bewildering to note the glow of honest indignation in
the face of the representative citizen, who waited there, in front of
the restaurant he usually patronized....
COLOPHON
Here, rather vexatiously, the old manuscript breaks off. But what
survives and has been cited of this fragment amply shows you, I think,
that even in remote Philistia, whenever this question of "indecency"
arose, everybody (including the accused) was apt to act very
foolishly. It has attested too, I hope, the readiness with which you
may read ambiguities into the most respectable of authors; as well as
the readiness with which a fanatical training may lead you to imagine
some underlying impropriety in all writing about any natural function,
even though it be a function so time-hallowed and general as that to
which this curious Dirghic legend refers.
A POSTSCRIPT
(_French of C.J.P. Garnier_)
The swine that died in Gadara two thousand years ago
Went mad in lofty places, with results that all men know--
Went mad in lofty places through long rooting in the dirt,
Which (even for swine) begets at last soul-satisfying hurt.
The swine in lofty places now are matter for no song
By any prudent singer, but--_how long, O Lord, how long?_
_EXPLICIT_
BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL
_Biography_:
BEYOND LIFE
FIGURES OF EARTH
DOMNEI
CHIVALRY
JURGEN
TABOO
THE LINE OF LOVE
GALLANTRY
THE CERTAIN HOUR
THE CORDS OF VANITY
FROM THE HIDDEN WAY
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER'S NECK
THE EAGLE'S SHADOW
THE CREAM OF THE JEST
_Genealogy_:
BRANCH OF ABINGDON
BRANCHIANA
THE MAJORS AND THEIR MARRIAGES