Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

man, why do you get drunk on smoke and passion? Why are your garments impregnated with the odour of the Indian weed? Why is there a pipe or a cigar always in your mouth? Why is your language more dreadful than that of a Poissarde? Tobacco-smoke is more deleterious than ale, teetotaller; bile more potent than brandy. You are fond of telling your hearers what an awful thing it is to die drunken. So it is, teetotaller. Then take good care that you do not die with smoke and passion, drunken, and with temperance language on your lips; that is, abuse and calumny against all those who differ from you. One word of sense you have been heard to say, which is, that spirits may be taken as a medicine. Now you are in a fever of passion, teetotaller: so, pray take this tumbler of brandy; take it on the homoeopathic principle, that heat is to be expelled by heat. You are in a temperance fury, so swallow the contents of this tumbler, and it will, perhaps, cure you. You look at the glass wistfully⁠—you say you occasionally take a glass medicinally⁠—and it is probable you do. Take one now. Consider what a dreadful thing it would be to die passion drunk; to appear before your Maker with intemperate language on your lips. That’s right! You don’t seem to wince at the brandy. That’s right!⁠—well done! All down in two pulls. Now you look like a reasonable being!

If the conduct of Lavengro with regard to drink is open to little censure, assuredly the use which he makes of his fists is entitled to none at all. Because he has a pair of tolerably strong fists, and knows to a certain extent how to use them, is he a swaggerer or oppressor? To what ill account does he turn them? Who more quiet, gentle and inoffensive than he? He beats off a ruffian who attacks him in a dingle; has a kind of friendly tuzzle with Mr. Petulengro, and behold the extent of his fistic exploits.

Ay, but he associates with prizefighters; and that very fellow, Petulengro, is a prizefighter, and has fought for a stake in a ring. Well, and if he had not associated with prizefighters, how could he have used his fists? Oh, anybody can use his fists in his own defence, without being taught by prizefighters. Can they? Then why does not the Italian, or Spaniard, or Afghan use his fists when insulted or outraged, instead of having recourse to the weapons which he has recourse to? Nobody can use his fists without being taught the use of them by those who have themselves been taught, no more than anyone can “whiffle” without being taught by a master of the art. Now let any man of the present day try to whiffle. Would not anyone who wished to whiffle have to go to a master of the art? Assuredly! but where would he find one at the present day? The last of the whifflers380 hanged himself about a fortnight ago on a bell-rope in a church steeple of “the old town,” from pure grief that there was no further demand for the exhibition of his art, there being no demand for whiffling since the discontinuation of Guildhall banquets. Whiffling is lost. The old chap left his sword behind him; let anyone take up the old chap’s sword and try to whiffle. Now much the same hand as he would make who should take up the whiffler’s sword and try to whiffle, would he who should try to use his fists who had never had the advantage of a master. Let no one think that men use their fists naturally in their own disputes⁠—men have naturally recourse to any other thing to defend themselves or to offend others; they fly to the stick, to the stone, to the murderous and cowardly knife, or to abuse as cowardly as the knife, and occasionally more murderous. Now which is best when you hate a person, or have a pique against a person, to clench your fist and say “Come on,” or to have recourse to the stone, the knife, or murderous calumny? The use of the fist is almost lost in England. Yet are the people better than they were when they knew how to use their fists? The writer believes not. A fisty combat is at present a great rarity, but the use of the knife, the noose, and of poison, to say nothing of calumny, are of more frequent occurrence in England than perhaps in any country in Europe. Is polite taste better than when it could bear the details of a fight? The writer believes not. Two men cannot meet in a ring to settle a dispute in a manly manner without some trumpery local newspaper letting loose a volley of abuse against “the disgraceful exhibition,” in which abuse it is sure to be sanctioned by its dainty readers; whereas some murderous horror, the discovery for example of the mangled remains of a woman in some obscure den, is greedily seized hold on by the moral journal, and dressed up for its readers, who luxuriate and gloat upon the ghastly dish. Now, the writer of Lavengro has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, but would not shrink from the use of poison or calumny; and his taste has little in common with that which cannot tolerate the hardy details of a prizefight, but which luxuriates on descriptions of the murder dens of modern England. But prizefighters and pugilists are blackguards, a reviewer has said; and blackguards they would be provided they employed their skill and their prowess for purposes of brutality and oppression; but prizefighters and pugilists are seldom friends to brutality and oppression; and which is the blackguard, the writer would ask: he who uses his fists to take his own part, or instructs others to use theirs for