Dr. Robert Hickson 27 April 2015 Saint Peter Canisius (d. 1597)

Saint Zita (d. 1278)

An Invitation to The Modern Traveller (1898):Hilaire Belloc's Satirical and Youthful Narrative Verse

--Epigraphs--

There is another side to this;With no desire to prejudice The version of our Leader,I think I ought to drop a hint Of what I shall be bound to print, In justice to the reader....But still these bureaucrats pursued,Until they reached the Captain's tent.They grew astonishingly rude; The Russian simply insolent,Announcing that he had been sent Upon a holy mission,To call for the disarmament Of all our expedition.He said: The miseries of warHad touched his master to the core; It was extremely vexingTo hear him add, he couldn't stand This passion for absorbing land; He hoped we weren't annexing....Blood [i.e., Captain Blood] gave us each a trifling sumTo say that he was deaf and dumb And backed the affirmationBy gestures so extremely rum,They marked him on the writing pad:Not only deaf and dumb, but mad. It saved the situation.If such a man as that (said they)Is Leader, they can go their way.(Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller (1898), pp. 56, 60-61)

***Sin [i.e., Commander Sin], walking out alone in questOf Boa-constrictors that infest The Lagos Hinterland,Got separated from the rest, And ran against a band

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Of native soldiers led by three....Who threaten England's power at sea,And, but for men like Blood and me [i.e., Captain Blood and Mr. Rooter],Would drive her navies from the sea, And hurl her to perdition.(Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller, p. 58)

***Only permit me [i.e., Mr. Rooter] once again To make it clearly understoodThat both those honourable men, Commander Sin and Captain Blood,Would swear to all that I have said,Were they alive; but they are dead!(Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller, pp. 79-80)

***

I never shall forget the wayThat Blood upon this awful dayPreserved us all from death.He stood upon a little mound,Cast his lethargic eyes around,And said beneath his breath:Whatever happens we have gotThe Maxim Gun, and they have not.(Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller, p. 41)

***If we would want to appreciate the comic genius of Hilaire Belloc, and especially the inimitable

comic cadence and comic syntax which mark and unmistakably pervade his 1898 narrative verse satire,

The Modern Traveller,1 we should first consider the larger structure of his work and the nature of his

boastful and mendacious narrative persona, Mr. Rooter.

For, Rooter is the only survivor of the three former associates who went south from England on a

set of adventures into Africa as purported explorers and actual exploiters, speculators and swindlers.

His two other partners were Commander Sin and Captain Blood, who regrettably never returned, but

died under unfortunate conditions on the expedition.

1 Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller (London: Edward Arnold, 1898), 80 pp. in lengthand containing many vivid and indispensably enhancing illustrations within the narrative text by Belloc's close friend, Basil T. Blackwood (B.T.B.). Henceforth, page references to this text will be placed above, in the main body of the essay, and in parentheses.

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Moreover, Rooter early on in his narrative revealed to the eager, interviewing journalist from The

Daily Menace that his two deceased friends were of very different characters:

The world has very rarely seenA deeper gulf than stood between The men who were my friends.And, speaking frankly, I confessThey never cared to meet, unlessIt served their private ends....The contrast curiously keen Their characters could yieldWas most conspicuously seen Upon the Tented Field.Was there by chance a native tribeTo cheat, cajole, corrupt, or bribe?In such conditions Sin would burn To plunge into the fray,While Blood would run the whole concern From fifty miles away. (21, 25-26)

Our Belloc, then as a young twenty-eight-year-old man, rumbustiously chose to write this longer

piece of satirical narrative verse after already writing much of his own playful, often ironic, children's

verse;2 but before he was to become (along with G.K. Chesterton) much more earnestly resistant to

Great Britain's imperial actions in Southern Africa in the Boer War (1899-1902). Belloc and Chesterton

were for the humane scale of the Little England, and not the Big England of the expanding British

Empire. Belloc also knew of the larger colonial struggles already underway in Africa for control of

some of the valuable range of natural (and other) resources there. Several travel narratives of European

explorers in Africa3 were already written and widely read, and more than a few of them had inordinate

exaggerations therein and sometimes much unreliable, indeed deceptive, information as well as

some self-aggrandizement and epic boasting all of which incited a man like Belloc to compose

Satire! We should remember all of this when we now further consider the largely unverifiable Travel

Narrative of Rooter!

When one first hears Mr. Rooter's name, and soon also sees his condescending and supercilious

pretensions as he is interviewed by The Daily Menace, one philologically trained such as I is at once

prompted to look up his name in the Oxford Universal Dictionary on Historical Principles (1955).

2 For example, Hilaire Belloc's The Bad Child's Book of Beasts and More Beasts (for Worse Children).3 For example, H.M. Stanley's published 1890 Travel Narrative, entitled In Darkest Africa.

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There one finds an apt and manifoldly suggestive definition under the entry rooter, as a noun:

namely, a rooter is an extirpator, eradicator, uprooter (of something); and is also construed with an

out and up,as well as an of. Thus, we may fittingly think of someone who is an uprooter of

truth, or also an uprooter of honour.

Belloc cleverly arranges the questionable Rooter's Interwoven Narrative in fourteen sections

fourteen verse-paragraphs, as it were and these short sections are numbered conveniently with

Roman Numerals (I-XIV). Although, regrettably, I cannot adequately convey the enhancing importance

and redolent charm of Basil Blackwood's own complementary and interwoven illustrations, I hope now

to present enough of Hilaire Belloc's text so as to encourage a reader to read and to savour the

adventurous verse in its entirety and especially to read it aloud, and more than once!

When we first start to read The Modern Traveller, we must try to become oriented, especially

about the Narrator, for he is very swift and sudden:

The Daily Menace, I presume?Forgive the litter in the room.I can't explain to youHow out of place a man like meWould be without the things you see,The Shields and Assegais [Spears] and oddsAnd ends of little savage gods....And so the Public want to hearAbout the expeditionFrom which I recently returned:Of how the Fetish Tree was burned;Of how we struggled to the coast,And lost our ammunition;How we retreated side by side; And how, like Englishmen, we died.Well, as you know [sic!], I hate to boast,And what is more, I can't abideA popular position. (5-6)

We do not yet know how well the journalist from The Daily Menace knows the adventurous

narrator, nor do we ever discover that. But, we do gradually discover that Commander Sin and Captain

Blood (and maybe even Rooter himself) are not really Englishmen, but are presented as having some

obscure origin or a mixture of composite cultures, not Anglo-Saxon; and Sin and Blood are mercenaries

of sorts, one military and the other a financial buccaneer, respectively. (Rooter himself may actually be

a Dutchman of sorts, but even that alien European provenance is not so certain.)

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In the interview granted to the journalist, Rooter tells us that it is, for sure, not a formal

interview (7), and we soon discover that Rooter himself is now writing his book about the Expedition,

and it is soon to be published and made public. But, Rooter will first tell his interviewer (and us) about

Commander Sin:

Poor Henry Sin from quite a child, I fear, was always rather wild;

But all his faults were dueTo something free and unrestrained, That partly pleased and partly pained The people whom he knew.Untaught (for what our times require),Lazy, and something of a liar, He had a foolish wayOf always swearing (more or less); And lastly let us sayA little slovenly in dress,A trifle prone to drunkenness;A gambler also to excess, And never known to pay....4

But really vicious? Oh, no!When these are mentioned, all is said.And thenCommander Sin is dead: De mortuis cui bono? (7-8)

Rooter, after showing his interviewer a picture (indeed a portrait) of Commander Sin, goes on to

characterize him further:

Pray pause awhile, and markThe wiry limbs, the vigorous mien,The tangled hair and dark;The glance imperative and hot, That takes the world by storm:.... He was not bornIn Little England! No!Beyond the Cape, beyond the Horn [the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn],Beyond Fernando Po, [an Island off Equatorial Guinea; once Portuguese?]In some far Isle he saw the lightThat burns the torrid zone,

4 These boldly accented lines were especially appreciated by Hilaire Belloc's beloved poetic friend, Maurice Baring, who quoted them with delight, almost exactly, in his own 1911 book, which was dedicated to their mutual friend, Gilbert K. Chesterton, and entitled The Russian People (London: Methuen & CO. LTD, 1911), p. 56. Baring often quoted Belloc's verse with affection, often allusively and sometimes without mentioning Belloc's name explicitly. A deft and gracious sign of their friendship!

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But where it lay was never quiteIndubitably known.Himself inclined to Martinique,His friends to Farralone. [Farralon Islands off San Francisco, California?]But why of this discussion speak?The Globe was all his own! [A Globalist and a Globalist Imperial Mercenary!]Oh! surely upon such a birthNo petty flag unfurled!He was a citizen of earth,A subject of the world! (10)

Rooter will now introduce us to Commander Sin's sharp contrast in character, Captain Blood,

William Blood, who is sometimes called Bill:

Now William Blood, or, as I stillAffectionately call him, Bill,Was of a different stamp;One who, in other ages bornHad turned to strengthen and adornThe Senate or the Camp.But Fortune, jealous and austere,Had marked him for a great careerOf more congenial kindA sort of modern Buccaneer,Commercial and refined.Like all great men, his chief affairsWere buying stocks and selling shares....But such a task could never fill His masterful ambitionThat rapid glance, that iron will,Disdained (and rightfully) to make A profit here or there, or takeHis two per cent. Commission.His soul with nobler stuff was fraught; The love of country, as it oughtHaunted his every act and thought....Till, after many years, the deep Imperial emotion,That moves us like a martial strain,Turned his Napoleonic brain To company promotion [to speculative, even deceitful, projects].... And Blood was always there....A little whirlpool turned aboutThe form immovable and stout, That marked the Millionaire....Blood was another pair of shoes:

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A man of iron, cold and hard,He very rarely touched a card,But when he did he cheated.....There was our Leader in a phrase:A man of strong decisive ways,But reticent and grimThis reticence, which some have called hypocrisyWas but the sign of nature's aristocracyThough not an Englishman, I own,Perhaps it never will be known What England lost in him. (18-19, 23-24, 27)

So, now, we finally know if we may trust Rooter that neither Captain Blood (the Leader of

the Expedition to Africa) nor Commander Sin himself was an Englishman. Blood, moreover, as

mentioned above, is shown to be a kind of mercantile and financial Buccaneer; and Sin was a military-

naval Mercenary and yet, to boot, a Versifier of sorts:

And Sin (who had a happy knackOf rhyming rapidly and well Like Cyrano de Bergerac)....But this fastidious taste [about a pt de foie gras]Succeeded in a startling way;At Dinner [aboard] on the following day They gave us Bloater Paste. [a fatty herring spread]Wellhearty Pioneers and rough Should not be over nice;I think these lines are quite enough, And hope they will sufficeTo make the Caterers [aboard] observeThe kind of Person whom they serve. (29-30)

Rooter then lets us see the things he puts in his Diary, which make us start to wonder about him

and his reliability. For example, he tells his Daily Menace Interviewer, as follows:

At sea the days go slipping past.Monotonous from first to lastA trip like any other oneIn vessels going south. The sun Grew higher and more fiery. [as we approached Africa]We lay and drank, and swore, and played At Trick-my-neighbor in the shade;And you may guess how every sight,However trivial or slight,Was noted in my diary....On June the 7th after dark

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A young and very hungry shark Came climbing up the side. [up the side of the ship]It ate the Chaplain and the MateBut why these incidents relate? The Public must decide,That nothing in the voyage outWas worth their bothering about,Until we saw the coast, which looksExactly as it does in books.Oh! Africa, mysterious Land!Surrounded by a lot of sand And full of grass and trees,And elephants and Afrikanders,And politics and Salamanders,...And native rum in little kegs,And savages called Touaregs....And tons of diamonds, and lotsOf nasty, dirty Hottentots,And coolies coming from the East;And serpents, seven yards long at least And lions that retainTheir vigour, appetite and rageIntact to an extreme old age And never lose their mane.[Opulent Africa] Mined for goldBy lordly Solomon of old,Who sailing northward to Perim [Island at the entrance of the Red Sea, off Yemen]Took all the gold away with him, And left a lot of holes;Vacuities that bring despair To those confiding soulsWho find they have bought a share In marvellous horizons, whereThe Desert terrible and bare Interminably rolls....Vast Continent! Whose cumbrous shapeRuns from Bizerta to the Cape [of Good Hope](Bizerta on the northern shore, [of Tunisia] Concerning which, the French they sworeIt never should be fortifiedWherein that cheerful people lied)....To thee, dear goal, so long deferredLike old neasin a word [as in Virgil's Aeneid and the meeting of Dido] To Africa we came.We beached upon a rising tideAt Sasstown on the western side; [of Africa, on the coast of Liberia] And as we touched the strand [of Liberia, near the Ivory

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Coast ]I thought(I may have been mistook)I thought the earth in terror shook To feel its Conquerors land. (33-34, 35-36, 38my emphasis added)

Rooter then tells how now that they are in Liberia and trying to arrange an excursion with some

help from the local natives, they were fortunate to find some prestigious local assistance:

In getting up our CaravanWe met a most obliging man,The Lord Chief Justice of Liberia, And Minister of the Interior...And in a single dayProcured us Porters, Guides, and kit,And would not take a sou for it Until we went awayBut when we went away, we foundA deficit of several poundWe wondered how this fellow madeHimself so readily obeyed,And why the natives were so meek;Until by chance we heard him speak,And then we clearly understoodHow great a Power for Social Good The African can be....We did the thing that he projected,The Caravan grew disaffected, And Sin and I consulted;Blood understood the Native mind.He said: We must be firm but kind. A Mutiny resulted. (39-41my emphasis added)

But their fearsome Leader, Captain Blood, knew how at once to deal with this revolt according

to Rooter's own account of the sequel and we shall now see the effects of Blood's stern countenance:

He marked them in their rude advanceHe hushed their rebel cheers;With one extremely vulgar glanceHe broke the Mutineers.(I have a picture in my bookOf how he quelled them with a look.)We shot and hanged a few, and thenThe rest became devoted men.

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And here I wish to say a wordUpon the way my heart was stirred By those pathetic faces.Surely our simple duty hereIs both imperative and clear;While they support us, we should lendOur every effort to defend,And from a higher point of viewTo give the full direction due To all the native races. (42my emphasis added)

After Rooter's Expedition will soon also encounter some further Adventures and Misadventures

Enriching Opportunities for Land-Development Schemes and Swindles; Dangerous Wild Animals;

Foreign Foes; Disease and the Plague; Desertion by their Caravan-Porters; and Capture by the Native

Tribe and Their Savage King (64) Captain William Blood himself will now show another slippery

side of his Character, after he is first forthrightly asked by the Tribal King himself to suggest a fitting

amount to be sought for his own Ransom and consequent full Release to go back to England.

After our Threesome, while mercifully out on Parole, had ungratefully tried but failed to

ambush and slay the Tribal Monarch himself during his solitary and usual Morning Stroll:

The King was terribly put out;To hear him call the guard and shout, And stamp, and curse, and raveWas (as the Missionaries say)A lesson in the Godless wayThe heathen will behave.He sent us to a Prison, madeOf pointed stakes in palisade And there for several hoursOur Leader [Blood] was a mark for bricks,And eggs and cocoanuts and sticks, And pussy-cats in showers.Our former porters seemed to bear A grudge against the Millionaire. [Captain Blood] (68-69my emphasis added)

Rooter now only refers to his friend, Bill impersonally as the Millionaire, and almost as if the

Natives would know that financial fact. And then the Loyal Rooter resumes his Tale:

And yet the thing I minded most Was not the ceaseless teasing(With which the Captain was engrossed),Nor being fastened to a post

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(Though that was far from pleasing);But hearing them remark that theyLooked forward to the following day. (69my emphasis added)

Though there are already hints of Rooter's disloyalty (as well as loss of earlier-pretended personal

affection) to include his blatant trivialization of the suffering of others, especially his own Leader's

now we shall see the ruse Rooter and Sin in common propose to the Tribal King, but only after

Blood slyly gives an unexpectedly demeaning characterization of himself. For, it was Blood's specious

way of trying to lower the price of his own Ransom, at least as the Perfidious Rooter himself now

claims:

On seeing our acute distress,The KingI really must confess Behaved uncommon handsome;He said he would release the threeIf only Captain Blood and he Could settle on a ransom,And it would clear the situationTo hear his [Blood's] private valuation.

My value, William Blood began,Is ludicrously small.I think I am the vilest manThat treads this earthly ball;My head is weak, my heart is cold,I'm ugly, vicious, vulgar, old,Unhealthy, short and fat.I cannot speak, I cannot work,I have the temper of a Turk, And cowardly at that. (71-72my emphasis added)

After Blood's moral and economic estimation of himself in this awkward situation, the Tribal

King (who seemed upon the whole/ a man urbane and well inclined (64) and who behaved

uncommon handsome (71)) was now still graciously indignant, but then finally became provoked:

The King was irritated, frowned,And cut him [Blood] short with Goodness Gracious!Your economics are fallacious!I quite believe you are a wretch,But things are worth what they will fetch. [But every man has got his price, (70), said Wise Blood himself, as well, before.] I'll put your price at something round,Say, six-and-thirty thousand pound?

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But just as Blood began with zest,To bargain, argue, and protest, Commander Sin and I [the Perfidious Rooter!]Broke in: Your Majesty was toldAbout a certain bag of gold; If you will let us try, [i.e., Sin and Me, while Blood remains as Hostage!]We'll find the treasure, for we knowThe place to half a yard or so.(72italics in original; my bold emphasis added)

Now Our Belloc will artfully convey Rooter's Imposture even further, as the Narrator himself,

with his False Compassion, revealingly now says:

Poor William! The suspense and painHad touched the fibre of his brain; So far from showing gratitude, [for our proposal to retrieve the gold!]He cried in his delirium: Oh!For Heaven's sake, don't let them go.Only a lunatic would take So singular an attitude,When loyal comrades for his sake Had put their very lives at stake. (72-3my emphasis added)

Belloc's Irony is precious and inimitable and it now increases: both by way of the King's

Stipulation and Conditional Permission for the Gold-Search, and by way of the Subtle Transition that

comes at the very Commencement of the next Verse-Chapter.

Rooter now simply says in his own untrustworthy narrative persona:

The King was perfectly contentTo let us find it;and we went. [Sin and I]But as we left we heard him say, If there is half an hour's delay The Captain will have passed away. (73my emphasis added)

Rooter and Sin, having made no further inquiries about this manifestly strict condition, nor even

making any request for a further clarification or alleviation, they both took off!

The next Verse-Chapter (Chapter XIV the last one in the Poem) then immediately begins with

the following words ironic words about those Bounders (and Seeming Deserters), Sin and Rooter:

Alas! Within a single weekThe Messengers despatched to seek Our hiding-place had found us, [and sent by the clearly suspicious King!]We made an excellent defense

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(I use the word in legal sense), But none the less they bound us. (Not in the legal sense at all But with a heavy chain and ball).With barbarism past beliefThey flaunted in our facesThe relics of Our Noble Chief; [Captain Blood himself]With insolent grimaces,Raised the Historic Shirt beforeOur eyes, and pointed to the floorTo dog-eared cards and loaded dice; [implements for cheating!]It seems they sold him by the slice.Well, every man has got his price.(74-75my emphasis added)

As we approach the end of the Poem also the end of Rooter's Shameless Boasts and his Self-

Vaunting Proofs of Virtue amidst his own purported Torture we now first all-too-flippantly hear

from the Loutish Rooter about the way such a good friend Sin had died:

The horrors followed thick and fast,I turned my head to give a lastFarewell to Sin; but, ah!, too late,I only saw his horrid fateSome savages around a potThat seemed uncomfortably hot;And in the centre of this group [inside the pot]My dear companion making soup.(75my emphasis added)

The love of a friend is a touching thing!

Rooter's Heroic Boasts now once again begin:

And I was very glad to seeThat they were going to torture me....They hung me up above the floorHead downwards by a rope;They thrashed me half an hour or more,They filled my mouth with soap; [a condign punishment for Liars?]The jobbed [sic] me with a pointed pole [jabbed me?]To make me lose my self-control, But they did not succeed.Till (if it's not too coarse to state)There happened what I simply hate, My nose began to bleed....My calm and my contemptuous smile Compelled them to proceed....They tried a dodge that rarely fails,

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The Tub of Regulus with Nails[The Roman Hero-General tortured at Carthage]The cask is rather rude and flatBut native casks are all like thatThe nails stuck in for quite an inch,But did I flinch? I did not flinch.In tones determined, loud and strongI sang a patriotic song. [Regulus of Rome was also a Patriot!](76-78my emphasis added)

May we now try to imagine the countenance and bearing of the Journalist from The Daily Menace

as he is listening to all this?

But now will come Mr. Rooter's Final Doxology along with his words of Solid Self-

Admiration:

Thank Heaven it [the Torture] did not last for long! My misery was past;My superhuman courage roseSuperior to my savage foes; They worshipped me at last.With many heartfelt compliments,They sent me back at their expense,And here I am returned to findThe pleasures I had left behind.(79my emphasis added)

Is it not touching to see the grief Rooter still feels for his tortured and deceased Companions Two?

He is now, however, more concerned about his London reception, and he is especially happy just

To go the London rounds!To note the quite peculiar airOf courtesy, and everywhere The same unfailing public trustIn manuscript that fetches justA thousand!...a thousand clearOf heavy, round, impressive, dear,Familiar English pounds!(79my emphasis added)

The Cash Nexus is still of moment to our Patriot, Regulus Rooter, and thus he is first very

attentive to gain the Unfailing Public Trust.

By way of his sustained and artful Irony, Hilaire Belloc certainly knows how to give us a true

Comic Catharsis, and thereby to teach us many moral matters of moment in a subtle, as well as in a

rumbustious manner. The salt of his irony is enlivening.

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May more and more readers feel worthily invited now to read aloud the entire narrative verse-

satire, The Modern Traveller, as well as all of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses for Children; and also

his delightfully sustained Prose Satire, entitled The Mercy of Allah.

--Finis-- 2015 Robert Hickson

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