Curiosity and Credulity of the English.—The Wild Indian Woman.—The large Child.—The wandering Jew.—The Ethiopian Savage.—The Great High German Highter-Flighter.—The Learned Pig.
My morning's walk has supplied me with two instances of English credulity. Passing through St George's fields I saw a sort of tent pitched, at the entrance of which a fellow stood holding a board in his hand, on which was painted in large letters "The Wild Indian Woman."—"What," said I to my companion, "do you catch the savages and show them like wild beasts? This is worse than even the slave trade!" "We will go in and see," said he. Accordingly we paid our sixpence each, and, to our no small amusement, found one of the lowest order of the worst kind of women, her face bedaubed with red and yellow, her hair stuck with feathers, drest in cat-skins, and singing some unintelligible gibberish in the true cracked voice of vulgar depravity. A few passers-by, as idle and more ignorant than ourselves, who had in like manner been taken in, were gazing at her in astonishment, and listening open-mouthed to the rogue who told a long story how she came from the wilds of America, where the people are heathen folk and eat one another.—We had not gone a mile further before another showman, with a printed paper on his show-board, invited our attention again—"To be seen here, the surprising Large Child." This was a boy who seemed to be about four years old; and because he was stupid, and could only articulate a few words very imperfectly, his parents swore he was only of eighteen months—and were showing him for a prodigy.
A few years ago there was a fellow with a long beard in London, who professed himself to be the wandering Jew. He did not adhere to the legend, which was of little consequence, as his visitors were not likely to be better informed than himself,—but laid claim to higher antiquity than the Jerusalem shoemaker, and declared that he had been with Noah in the ark. Noah, he said, had refused to take him in; but he got in secretly, and hid himself among the beasts, which is the reason why his name is not mentioned in the Bible; and while he was there the he-goat had given him a blow on the forehead, the mark of which was visible to this day. Some persons asked him which country he liked best of all that he had visited in his long peregrinations: he answered "Spain," as perhaps a man would have done who had really seen all the world. But it was remarked as rather extraordinary that a Jew should prefer the country of the Inquisition. "God bless you, sir!" replied the ready rogue, shaking his head and smiling at the same time, as if at the error of the observation,—"it was long before Christianity that I was last in Spain, and I shall not go there again till long after it is all over!"
Any thing in England will do for a show. At one of the provincial fairs J. saw a shaved monkey exhibited for a Fairy; and a shaved bear in a check waistcoat and trowsers sitting in an armed chair as an Ethiopian savage. The unnatural position to which the poor animal had been tortured, and the accursed brutality of his keeper, a woman, who sate upon his lap, put her arm round his neck, and called him husband and sweetheart and kissed him, made this, he says, the most hideous and disgusting sight he had ever witnessed. A fellow at one of these fairs once exhibited a large dragon-fly through a magnifying glass, as the Great High German Highter-Flighter. But the most extraordinary distance of witty impudence and blind curiosity which I have ever heard of, occurred at Cirencester, in the province of Gloucestershire, where a man showed for a penny apiece, the fork which belonged to the knife with which Margaret Nicholson attempted to kill the King.
Nothing is too absurd to be believed by the people in this country. Some time ago there was a woman who went about showing herself for money, with a story that she had been pregnant three years. There was something extraordinary concerning this impostor; for the house in which she lived, which stood upon the shore in the province, or shire as it is called, of Sussex, had no other walls or roof than laths and brown-paper pitched over. It had stood three years without injury, when the person who related this to me saw it. In the last reign[2] the whole kingdom was astonished by a woman who pretended to breed rabbits, and the king's surgeons were appointed by the state to examine her.—Many persons are living who can remember when the people of London went to see a man get into a quart bottle. This trick was practised for a wager, which some one who knew the world ventured upon its credulity; but as impudent a one was played off by a sharper in the city of Bristol at a later period. He promised to make himself invisible, collected a company of spectators, received their money for admittance, appeared on the stage before them, and saying, "Now, gentlemen and ladies, you see me,"—opened a trap-door and descended, and ran off with his gains.
Any thing that is strange, or that is called strange, a tall man or a short man, a Goitre or an Albino, a white negro or a spotted negro, which may be made at any time with little difficulty and no pain, a great ox or a fat pig, no matter what the wonder be, and no matter how monstrous or how disgusting, it will attract crowds in England. There was a woman born without arms, who made a good livelihood by writing and cutting paper with her toes. One family support themselves by living in a travelling cart, made in the shape of the vessel wherein the English boil water for their tea, the spout of which is the chimney. The learned pig was in his day a far greater object of admiration to the English nation than ever was Sir Isaac Newton. I met a person once who had lived next door to the lodgings of this erudite swine, and in a house so situated that he could see him at his rehearsals. He told me he never saw the keeper beat him; but that, if he did not perform his lesson well, he used to threaten to take off his red waistcoat,—for the pig was proud of his dress. Perhaps even Solomon himself did not conceive that vanity was so universal a passion.
Yet from this indiscriminate curiosity some general good arises. Natural history has been considerably improved by the opportunities afforded of examining rare animals, which would not have been brought from remote countries for the mere purposes of science. Posture-masters and stone-eaters have demonstrated strange and anomalous powers in the human body; and the docility of animals, which has thus been practised upon for the sake of immediate gain, may one day be applied to better and more important purposes. Animals have no natural fear of man:—the birds on a desert island are as fearless as they were in Paradise, and suffer him to approach till he knocks them on the head. The power of the Eastern jugglers, who by a song call forth the serpents from their holes, is not more wonderful than that which has been acquired over bees in England. The horse of the Arab is as well domesticated, and as affectionately attached to his master, as the dog of the European. The cattle from one end of Africa to the other are under the most perfect obedience to their keeper; a boy will collect a herd of a thousand by his whistle; by this easy language they are made to attack an armed enemy as readily as to come to their milker; and they have thus overthrown soldiers who had conquered the elephants of the East and the cavalry of Europe. When man shall cease to be the tyrant of inferior beings, he may truly become their lord.
