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1. William Lipscomb: The Monkey and the Old Ape 2. Paul-Hyacinthe Loyson - transl. Georges Dodds: My Monkey 3. Emma Louise: The Pet Monkey |
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Once a young monkey seeking food, The Monkey and the Old Ape
Pick'd a green filbert in a wood,
Cramm'd it into his mouth in haste,
Eager its promised sweets to taste;
But his wry face and upheav'd eyes,
Shew'd that he lik'd not much his prize,
"What could have tempted my old mother,
Of nuts to make so great a pother?
Surely," he says, "she meant a cheat,
When she said these were good to eat.
This is what all wise grannams do,
They never tell us aught that's true.
Strange, that they're not content to rule us,
Unless with lies they cheat and fool us."Then in disgust without delay
He threw his new-found spoil away.
An old Ape watching where 'twas thrown,
Running soon seiz'd it as her own,
And quickly crack'd it with a stone;
Tast"ed it first and liked it well,
Ate it and threw away the shell,
And thus -- "In future, my young friend,
Let me exertion recommend.
Your mother never meant a cheat,
When she said nuts were good to eat;
Her words, nor truth, nor kindness lack'd,
But e'er you taste they must be crack
Labour buys all things be assur'd,
And nothing's without toil procur'd."
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" Suddenly, a stone rolling down, a cry!...The pick exposed a beast's cranium, already cambered, most extraordinary, whose empty sockets were, for me, filled with a limitless gaze, breaking through thousands of centuries: the ancestor, the ancestor brought back to life!" My Monkey
("A young writer's mad scientist," 1907.)
"The Revs. Bouyssonie and Bradon have just discovered an ape-man."
("All the newspapers," 1908.)
Here he finally is, under the Cupola. Who's that? The "Pithecanthropus" by Jove! The press has failed to inform us which language the recipient used to answer the investiture speech which Mr. Edmond Perrier adressed to him: let us not offend any nationality and say that it was Esperanto.
All the same, I am a wee bit tickled with satisfaction, having much pushed for his candidacy; for today I pride myself to have, for the first time in his life -- or of his survival, if you prefer -- to have brought this grandfather to the theatre.
I'll let you imagine with what excitement I made my way to the museum yesterday. When, equipped with an introduction from Mr. Perrier, I rang at Mr. Boule's laboratory door, do you know? he had just left! The president of the Council, to whom nothing human or pre-human is unknown, had, between a hearing and an arraignment had run over like me to present his card to the Ancestor.
"Is it true!..." I cried out, ignoring all polite greetings to my host under the influence of my burning impatience. "Has the missing link finally been found?"
"You approach me," answered Mr. Boule, not without a malicious smile, "in the same manner as Mr. Clemenceau; he planted himself over there by the fossil, exclaiming: "Ah, there it is, it is no longer a myth..." And with a exquisite courtesy, itself on the way to becoming prehistoric, the head of the laboratory introduced me to their new guest.
It is a petrified cranium, covered with a warm patina of rust on an ivoty background, and this streaking lends it a look of liveliness beneath the stigmata it acquired within the strata of -- Man or brute? One cannot decide, it is perfect in its ambiguity: the numerous clues which ornament it and point to the simian race are indisputable, yet, nonetheless, to cite another scientist, M. Manouvrier, whom I went to consult on his perch in the nether regions of the Dupuytren museum, where he collects our family portraits, it is nonetheless "a true Parisian's brain!" Clemenceau himself recognized himself in it, and he knows what he's talking about, I think. Indeed, this poor parent returning to us from the depths of his domains after a fifty thousand years' exile, feel very much at ease in our electric luxury; this elderliest of the elderly's baldness imposes respect; you, my reader, in a few years you'll take on such a summary aspect, and I'd like to see you in fifty thousand! The skulls to scale
Finally, in order to finish describing it to you, I note this most symbolic but chance occurrence: the first pick-blows of good priests who exhumed him marked his forehead as with a sign of honor, at the very site where human thought was initiated.
I asked the reknowned palaeontologist "Do you believe this discovery, by itself, to corroborate the theory of evolution as it applies to the origins of man?"
In way of answer, Mr. Boule set up six skulls all in a row, in the same order as I had them exposed in the foyer of the Antoine Theatre: that of a chimpanzee first, then progressing according to merit, that is, according to their level of development, the skulls of Java man, of the Neanderthal, that of Chapelle-aux-Saints, that of a present day Australian aborigene, and finally the head of Homo sapiens. From end to end, its continuity unsolved, stood this chain, and my gaze slipped from one skull to another with neither jar nor surprise, without even a hint that each of these small intervals represented a millenial abyss!
The proof thus appears to have been made, as much as it can in such circumstances, namely through the logic of similarity and of imperious presumptions: the birth certificate of humanity was signed in untracked jungle of the Quaternary, by the hairy hand of an anthropoidal creature. From the day Darwin prophesied this Missing link, like Le Verrier the planet Neptune, the orthodox screamed in unison: "Show it to us!..." But, every time one shows them, they recuse themselves: "It is only a fragment," or again "a degenerate!" Last year, some of my esteemed colleagues from the fossilar press, and especially M. Paul Souday, were deriding me with their best madman's smiles. "This young author will believe anything: he bases upon a fable the social tone of his work! Never, never has one discovered the missing link..." What do you say this time, dear colleague? I had the of showing you Eugè Dubois' pithecanthropus, which you ignored. From monkey to man: A comparison of skulls
Did you hear speak of the Chapelle-aux-Saints pithecanthropus? This one is much more remarkable, being the first to have consented to show us his face, rather than stealthily taking his leave and throwing in our face the crown of his skull. And how convincing his testimony when one considers that this last arrival has filled a void, not at the originating point, but the terminal one of our ancestry, in immediate proximity to man! We know live on the same floor. Thus, my dear friends of orthodoxy, you have only one escape route left before you must give up, it is to insist that one dig up a thoughtful pithecanthropus from beneath the crypt of Notre-Dame, holding in his skeletal hands a piece of parchment with the following notice: "I am the missing link, the son of an ape and the father to man."
There remains, it is true, an objection of a completely different order, and this I will breathe a word of to you, for it was presented to me not so long ago in This Week in Religion published in Geneva, one of the great mouthpieces of Protestantism; namely, that one has found traces of man from long before those of pithecanthropus. This is indeed true. But one forgets a single fact -- and here I translate the throughts of the scientists I have consulted -- that is, when this man resuscitates, he who already made weapons and tools which have survived his bones, he will find himself even more monkey-like than the pithecanthropus! Beware then this supreme hope in the unknown: it is this ill-timed support which you build over your heads. And then, gentlemen, take refuge in brother Loisy's symbolism which allows one to interpret anything, but play fair before science, your last card is lost, for one must agree that those two brave priests from Corrèze, who found a pithecanthropus in a chapel where saints stood ensconced, did therby play quite a monkey's prank to the orthodoxy of Pius X, as well as that of Calvin!
While M. Boule went off to get me his report, which is published elsewhere at the same time as these lines, I took up in both hands the skull of the Ancestor and told him:
"You who hand me this most sordid mirror, I admit it; I see myself face to face in you; Litanies to the Pithecanthropus
"Don't begin to think that I draw any vanity from seeing my origins plunge to such depths as you; but I have gained the pride of having aspired to some nobility through your own efforts; you are beautiful already in your efforts to reach me;
"At first, in its wisdom, the Spirit did not create, but searched for itself through evolution; is it any less the Spirit, if it does find itself?
"Therefore, in the case of a stumble, falling from grace occurs no longer at the bottom, but at the very top of the ladder. You are to us both an encouragement to forever improve ourselves, and a warning to not succumb to the weight of the past; we now know to where we would fall!
"Truly, you were the religious animal, the mystical ape, you who sported a beast's features yet died on your knees, in the ritual posture in which you were found;
"And I bow towards you, to take communion in your religion, which did not deceive you any more than your race, but has moved beyond; for my most enlightened thought, like your dim imagination, is choked by anxiety before a mystery which has grown as it became more distant;
"The kiss was no doubt unknown in your days; if I could have, by anachronism, fallen, long ago, under your grasp, O ancestor! Your bite would have been the only sort of embrace I would have experienced;
"Which is why I wish to return to you, with a better sense of piety, that which your long hidden efforts have done for me..."
And, bringing the beast's skull to my lips, I piously kissed it.
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[26] Emma Louise. 1869. The Pet Monkey. The Independent 21(1071): 3. [A monkey who steals from the pantry dies after its hand is badly injured by a door]Harry and Alice were yery busy digging op their gardens and planting the flower-seeds, which by and by would spring np into spotted "four o'clocks," gay "ladies' slippers," and bright, many-colored "morning glories," which the children admired so much last year. But as the sun rose higher and higher the little hands grew weary and the limbs tired, and they were glad to seek a cool resting-place on the piazza, where Aunt Fanny was sitting, busy with her knitting.
"Auntie, please tell us the monkey story you spoke about last night," said Harry, when he and Alice had settled themselves satisfactorily. Harry knew well that Aunt Fanny seldom refused any request of his; so, very soon she began:
"When I was a little girl, an old friend of mine brought me from Africa a funny little monkey, named Jocko. He was only six months old when he arrived; and his queer, expressive face, droll manners, and good temper made him a favorite with all. He and I were constant playmates. For hours together we would stay out in the sunshine; and he would keep me laughing nearly all the time -- sometimes running over the trees as fast as a bird could fly, and swinging himself from the smallest twig, then down again to the ground, frightening the tiny, downy chickens, which would, of course, enrage the mother, and send her flying after Jocko, who the next instant would be sitting in the top of the highest tree, looking most unconcernedly at the worried hen. And, as she would be composing her rumpled feathers, thinking herself safe from her tormentor, Jocko would descend, and give her feathers a jerk, and then be off as before.
"Then, when I would sit down on the grass, Jocko would perch himself on my shoulder and smooth my hair with his little black hands, and put his face to mine, as if he would say, 'I love you, and would like to kiss you.' Do you wonder I loved the little fellow, Harry? I could relate much more about his funny ways, but it would take too much time. The dinner-bell will ring soon," Aunt Fanny remarked.
"But he had one very bad habit, of which he could not be cured. Whenever opportunity offered, he would slip into the pantry, and steal as much cake and pie as he could carry; then, getting away alone, would stuff himself until he became sick. Then he would look so sorrowful, I would beg not to have him punished, and so things went on, until my pet became very troublesome.
"But one day, having found no one in the kitchen, he had slipped into the pantry, and, as usual, had filled his hands with cake. Then he heard some one coming, he made one spring for the door; but, not being quite quick enough, the wind shut the door so suddenly that his hand was badly crushed.
"Oh! how the poor little fellow cried and moaned; and how I felt when I saw the blood trickling down. And, finally, when Jocko grew so weak from loss of blood that he seemed to faint, almost as a human being would, I cried outright. But I coaxed him till he drank some wine, which revived him; and when his hand was bound up, he seemed quite well again.
"The next day I went out to walk. And when I returned, I heard Jocko's pitiful whine upon the trellis. And when I came up, he dropped into my arms, and laid his head against me, as if he was so tired; and then I discovered his hand was bleeding profusely. He had hurt it in some way. And so I bound it up again, and offered him more wine; but he would not take it. So, after petting him a long time, I carried him out to his little house, gave him his supper, and left him for the night, thinking he was nearly well again.
"The next morning I went out to see my pet. But there was a stillness about his little house that gave me a sudden, painful chill, and something seemed to tell me 'Jocko is dead.' I did not trust myself to enter and see; but, after a time, my big brother came up, and, looking in, saw my worst fears were true. Jocko was stretched upon his little bed, his poor sore hand crossed over the other, his eyes closed, and his face wore such a sad, touching expression! I have not forgotten it to this day. He was quite dead from loss of blood. I knew well that Jocko had done very wrong in slipping into the pantry and stealing so; but I thought only, 'My pet is dead, is dead!' and I was inconsolable for a time. But my brother soothed me; and, finally, with his assistance, I laid Jocko carefully in a basket, and we buried him with loving hands under the old willow-tree, and for years afterward I carefully kept the grass and flowers growing over the grave of my best-loved pet and playmate, Jocko."
