Taboo Part 1

Taboo.

by James Branch Cabell.

THE DEDICATION

_Laudataque virtus crescit_

"b.u.t.tons, a farthing a pair!

Come, who could buy them of me?

They're round and sound and pretty, And fit for girls of the city."

TO JOHN S. SUMNER

(_Agent of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice_)

For no short while my indebtedness to you has been such as to require some sort of public acknowledgment, which may now, I think, be tendered most appropriately by inscribing upon the dedication page of this small volume the name to which you are daily adding in significance.

It is a tribute, however trivial, which serves at least to express my appreciation of your zeal in re-establis.h.i.+ng what seemed to the less optimistic a lost cause. I may to-day confess without much embarra.s.sment that after fifteen years of foiled endeavors my (various) publishers and I had virtually decided that the printing of my books was not likely ever to come under the head of a business venture, but was more properly describable as a rather costly form of dissipation. People here and there would praise, but until you, unsolicited, had volunteered to make me known to the general public, n.o.body seemed appreciably moved to purchase.

One by one my books had "fallen dead" with disheartening monotony: then--through what motive it would savor of ingrat.i.tude to inquire,--you came to remedy all this in the manner of a philanthropic sorcerer, brandis.h.i.+ng everywhither your vivifying wand, and the dead lived again. At once, they tell me, the patrons of bookstores began to ask, not only in whispers for the _Jurgen_ which you had everywhere so glowingly advertised, but with frank curiosity for "some of the fellow's other books."

Whereon we of course began to "reprint," with, I rejoice to say, results which have been very generally acceptable. Barring a few complaints as to the exiguousness of my writing's salacity,--a salacity which even I confess you amiably exaggerated in attributing to my literary manner all qualities which the average reader most desires in novelists,--there has proved to be in point of fact, as my publishers and I had dubiously believed for years, a gratifying number of persons, living dispersedly about America, prepared to like my books when these books were brought to their attention. The difficulty had been that we did not know how to reach these widely scattered, congenial readers. But you--like Sir James Barrie's hero--"found a way."

I cannot say, in candor, that your method of exegetical criticism has always and in every respect appealed to me. Its applicability, for one thing, seems so universal that it might, for aught I know, be employed to interpret the dicta of Ackermann and Macrobius, or even the canons of Doctors Matthews and Sherman herein cited, and thus open dire vistas wherein critic would prey on critic, and the most respectable would be locked in fratricidal strife. Moreover, I have applied your method to many of the Mother Goose rhymes with rather curious results.... But happily, I have here to confess to you, not any disputable literary standards I may harbor, but only my unarguable debt.

In brief, your aid obtained for me overnight the hearing I had vainly sought for a long while; and of such thaumaturgy my appreciation will never be, I trust, inadequate. I therefore grasp at the first chance to express this appreciation in--as I have said,--a form which seems not quite inept.

_Dumbarton Grange_ _December, 1920._

Of _The Mulberry Grove_ the following editions have been collated:

(1) The _editio princeps_ of Mansard 1475. An excellent edition, having, says Garnier, "nearly all the authority of an MS." This edition served as the basis of all subsequent editions up to that of Tribebos, 1553, which then took the lead up to the time of Bulg, who judiciously reverted to that of Mansard.

(2) Bulg, in 4 vols. Strasburg. 1786-89. And in 2 vols. Strasburg.

1786. Both editions containing the Dirghic text with a Latin version, and the scholia and indices.

(3) Musgrave, concerning whose edition Garnier is of opinion that, though it appeared later, yet it had been made use of by Bulg. 2 vols.

Oxon. 1800. Reprinted, 3 vols. Oxon. 1809-10.

(4) Vanderhoffen, with scholia, notes, and indices. 7 vols. London.

1807-25. His notes reprinted separately. Leipsic. 1824.

MEMOIR OF SaeVIUS NICANOR

_Saevius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit_

"She went to the tailor's To buy him a coat; When she came back He was riding the goat."

Saevius Nicanor, one of the earliest of the Grammarians, says Suetonius, first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching; and, besides, made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, were said to have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he informs us that he was a free man, and had a double cognomen.

It is reported that in consequence of some aspersion attached to the character of his writing, he retired into Sardinia, and, says Oriphyles, devoted the remainder of his days to the composition of sardonic[1] literature.

[Footnote 1: Ackermann reads "Sardinian." It is not certain whether the adjective employed is [Greek: sardanios] or [Greek: sardanikos]. I suspect that Oriphyles here makes an intentional play upon the words.]

He is quoted by Macrobius, whereas divers references to Nicanor in _La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_ would seem to show that this writer was viewed with considerable esteem in mediaeval times. Latterly his work has been virtually unknown.

Robert Burton, for the rest, cites Saevius Nicanor in the 1620 edition of _The Anatomy of Melancholy_ (this pa.s.sage was subsequently remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:--

"As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth (saith Saevius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of divers Writers, and that _sine injuria_, I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their Authors' names, but still said this was Cleophantus', that Philistion's, that Mnesides', so said Julius Ba.s.sus, so Timaristus, thus far Ophelion: I cite and quote mine own Authors (which howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance and opposite to their affected fine style, I must and will use) _sumpsi, non surripui_, and what Varro _de re rustica_ speaks of bees, _minime malificae quod nullius opus vellicantes faciunt deterius_, I can say of myself no less heartily than Sosimenes his laud of Nicanor."

PROLEGOMENA

_Nec caput habentia, nec caudam_

"I had a little husband, no bigger than my thumb, I put him in my pint-pot, and there I bid him drum."

Pre-eminently the most engaging feature of a topic which pure chance and impure idiocy have of late conspired to pull about in the public prints,--I mean the question of "indecency" in writing,--is the patent ease with which this topic may be disposed of. Since time's beginning, every age has had its literary taboos, selecting certain things--more or less arbitrarily, but usually some natural function--as the things which must not be written about. To violate any such taboo so long as it stays prevalent is to be "indecent": and that seems absolutely all there is to say concerning this topic, apart from furnis.h.i.+ng some impressive historical ill.u.s.tration....

The most striking instance which my far from exhaustive researches afford, sprang from the fact, perhaps not very generally known, that the natural function of eating, which nowadays may be discussed intrepidly anywhere, was once regarded by the Philistines, of at all events the Shephelah and the deme of Novogath, as being unmentionable. This ancient tenet of theirs, indeed, is with such clearness emphasized in a luckily preserved fragment from the Dirghic, or pre-Ciceronian Latin, of Saevius Nicanor that the readiest way to ill.u.s.trate the chameleon-like traits of literary indecency appears to be to record, as hereinafter is recorded, what of this legend survives.

Bulg and Vanderhoffen, be it said here, are agreed that it is to this legend Milton has referred in his _Areopagitica_, in a pa.s.sage sufficiently quaint-seeming to us (for whom a more advanced civilization has secured the right of free speech) to warrant an abridged citation:--

"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser?

whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by the Philistines?"

THE LEGEND

_Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura_

"I love little p.u.s.s.y, Her fur is so warm."