The Golden Age
By
Kenneth Grahame
"'T IS OPPORTUNE TO LOOK BACK UPON OLD TIMES, AND
CONTEMPLATE OUR FOREFATHERS. GREAT EXAMPLES GROW
THIN, AND TO BE FETCHED FROM THE PASSED WORLD.
SIMPLICITY FLIES AWAY, AND INIQUITY COMES AT LONG
STRIDES UPON US.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Contents
PROLOGUE--THE OLYMPIANS
A HOLIDAY
A WHITE-WASHED UNCLE
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
THE FINDING OF THE PRINCESS
SAWDUST AND SIN
"YOUNG ADAM CUPID"
THE BURGLARS
A HARVESTING
SNOWBOUND
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
THE ARGONAUTS
THE ROMAN ROAD
THE SECRET DRAWER
"EXIT TYRANNUS"
THE BLUE ROOM
A FALLING OUT
"LUSISTI SATIS"
PROLOGUE: THE OLYMPIANS
Looking back to those days of old, ere the gate shut behind me, I
can see now that to children with a proper equipment of parents
these things would have worn a different aspect. But to those
whose nearest were aunts and uncles, a special attitude of mind
may be allowed. They treated us, indeed, with kindness enough as
to the needs of the flesh, but after that with indifference (an
indifference, as I recognise, the result of a certain stupidity),
and therewith the commonplace conviction that your child is
merely animal. At a very early age I remember realising in a
quite impersonal and kindly way the existence of that stupidity,
and its tremendous influence in the world; while there grew up in
me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague
sense of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the
practice of vagaries--"just choosing so:" as, for instance, the
giving of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable
creatures, when it might far more reasonably have been given to
ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of
chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy--
of their good luck--and pity--for their inability to make use of
it. Indeed, it was one of the most hopeless features in their
character (when we troubled ourselves to waste a thought on them:
which wasn't often) that, having absolute licence to indulge in
the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might
dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the
most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth
and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun--free to fire
cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one
of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o'
Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their own accord,
though they betrayed no greater delight in the experience than
ourselves.
On the whole, the existence of these Olympians seemed to be
entirely void of interests, even as their movements were confined
and slow, and their habits stereotyped and senseless. To
anything but appearances they were blind. For them the
orchard (a place elf-haunted, wonderful!) simply produced so many
apples and cherries: or it didn't, when the failures of Nature
were not infrequently ascribed to us. They never set foot within
fir-wood or hazel-copse, nor dreamt of the marvels hid therein.
The mysterious sources--sources as of old Nile--that fed the
duck-pond had no magic for them. They were unaware of Indians,
nor recked they anything of bisons or of pirates (with pistols!),
though the whole place swarmed with such portents. They cared
not about exploring for robbers' caves, nor digging for hidden
treasure. Perhaps, indeed, it was one of their best qualities
that they spent the greater part of their time stuffily indoors.
To be sure, there was an exception in the curate, who would
receive unblenching the information that the meadow beyond the
orchard was a prairie studded with herds of buffalo, which it was
our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those
whoops that announce the scenting of blood. He neither laughed
nor sneered, as the Olympians would have done; but possessed of a
serious idiosyncrasy, he would contribute such lots of
valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this particular sort of
big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and eminent
position could scarce have been attained without a practical
knowledge of the creature in its native lair. Then, too, he was
always ready to constitute himself a hostile army or a band of
marauding Indians on the shortest possible notice: in brief, a
distinctly able man, with talents, so far as we could judge,
immensely above the majority. I trust he is a bishop by this
time,--he had all the necessary qualifications, as we knew.
These strange folk had visitors sometimes,--stiff and colourless
Olympians like themselves, equally without vital interests and
intelligent pursuits: emerging out of the clouds, and passing
away again to drag on an aimless existence somewhere out of our
ken. Then brute force was pitilessly applied. We were captured,
washed, and forced into clean collars: silently submitting, as
was our wont, with more contempt than anger. Anon, with unctuous
hair and faces stiffened in a conventional grin, we sat and
listened to the usual platitudes. How could reasonable people
spend their precious time so? That was ever our wonder as we
bounded forth at last--to the old clay-pit to make pots, or to
hunt bears among the hazels.
It was incessant matter for amazement how these Olympians would
talk over our heads--during meals, for instance--of this or the
other social or political inanity, under the delusion that these
pale phantasms of reality were among the importances of life. We
illuminati, eating silently, our heads full of plans and
conspiracies, could have told them what real life was. We had
just left it outside, and were all on fire to get back to it. Of
course we didn't waste the revelation on them; the futility of
imparting our ideas had long been demonstrated. One in thought
and purpose, linked by the necessity of combating one hostile
fate, a power antagonistic ever,--a power we lived to evade,--we
had no confidants save ourselves. This strange anaemic order of
beings was further removed from us, in fact, than the kindly
beasts who shared our natural existence in the sun. The
estrangement was fortified by an abiding sense of injustice,
arising from the refusal of the Olympians ever to defend,
retract, or admit themselves in the wrong, or to accept similar
concessions on our part. For instance, whenI flung the cat
out of an upper window (though I did it from no ill-feeling, and
it didn't hurt the cat), I was ready, after a moment's
reflection, to own I was wrong, as a gentleman should. But was
the matter allowed to end there? I trow not. Again, when Harold
was locked up in his room all day, for assault and battery upon a
neighbour's pig,--an action he would have scorned, being indeed
on the friendliest terms with the porker in question,--there was
no handsome expression of regret on the discovery of the real
culprit. What Harold had felt was not so much the
imprisonment,--indeed he had very soon escaped by the window,
with assistance from his allies, and had only gone back in time
for his release,--as the Olympian habit. A word would have set
all right; but of course that word was never spoken.
Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does
not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows
of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A
saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in
Arcadia ego,--I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I
too have become an Olympian?
