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The Mayor of Troy, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Prologue |
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_ Good wine needs no bush; but this story has to begin with an apology. Years ago I promised myself to write a treatise on the lost Mayors of Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, recalled only by some neat byword or proverb current in the Delectable (or as a public speaker pronounced it the other day, the Dialectable) Duchy. Thus you may hear of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God when the town jail was enlarged"; "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting in his own light"; "the Mayor of Tregoney, who could read print upside-down, but wasn't above being spoken to"; "the Mayor of Calenick, who walked two miles to ride one"; "the Mayor of East Looe, who called the King of England 'Brother.'" Everyone remembers the stately prose in which Gibbon records when and how he determined on his great masterpiece, when and how he completed it. "It was at Rome: on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started in my mind." So I could tell with circumstance when, where and how I first proposed my treatise; and shall, perhaps, when I have concluded it. But life is short; and for the while my readers may be amused with an instalment.
Of course, if you don't know Troy, you will miss half the reason of my eagerness. Simple, egregious, adorable town! Shall I go on here to sing its praises? No; not yet. The reason why I could learn nothing concerning him is that, soon after 1832, when the Reform Bill did away with Troy's Mayor and Corporation, as well as with its two Members of Parliament, someone made a bonfire of all the Borough records. O Alexandria! And the man said at the time that he did it for fun! This brings me to yet another Mayor--the Mayor of Lestiddle, who is a jolly good fellow. Nothing could be handsomer than my calling the Mayor of Lestiddle a jolly good fellow; for in fact we live at daggers drawn. You must know that Troy, a town of small population (two thousand or so) but of great character and importance, stands at the mouth of a river where it widens into a harbour singularly beautiful and frequented by ships of all nations; and that seven miles up this river, by a bridge where the salt tides cease, stands Lestiddle, a town of fewer inhabitants and of no character or importance at all. Now why the Reform Bill, which sheared Troy of its ancient dignities, should have left Lestiddle's untouched, is a question no man can answer me; but this I know, that its Mayor goes flourishing about with a silver mace shaped like an oar, as a symbol of jurisdiction over our river from its mouth (forsooth) so far inland as a pair of oxen yoked together can be driven in its bed. He has, in fact, no such jurisdiction. Above bridge he may, an it please him, drive his oxen up the riverbed, and welcome. I leave him to the anglers he will discommodate by it. But his jurisdiction below bridge was very properly taken from him by order of our late Queen (whose memory be blessed!) in Council, and vested in the Troy Harbour Commission. Now _I_ am Chairman of that Commission, and yet the fellow declines to yield up his silver oar! We in Troy feel strongly about it. It is not for nothing (we hold) that when he or his burgesses come down the river for a day's fishing the weather invariably turns dirty. We mislike them even worse than a German band--which brings us no worse, as a rule, than a spell of east wind. Nevertheless, the Mayor of Lestiddle is a jolly good fellow, and I am glad that his townsmen (such as they are) have re-elected him. One day this last summer he came down to fish for mackerel at the harbour's mouth, which can be done at anchor since our sardine factory has taken to infringing the by-laws and discharging its offal on the wrong side of the prescribed limit. (We Harbour Commissioners have set our faces against this practice, but meanwhile it attracts the fish.) It was raining, of course. Rowing close up to me, the Mayor of Lestiddle asked--for we observe the ordinary courtesies-- what bait I was using. I answered, fresh pilchard bait; and offered him some, delicately forbearing to return the question, since it is an article of faith with us that the burgesses of Lestiddle bait with earthworms which they dig out of their back gardens. Well, he accepted my pilchard bait, and pulled up two score of mackerel within as many minutes, which doubtless gave him something to boast about on his return. He was not ungrateful. Next week I received from him a parcel of MS. with a letter saying that he had come across it, "a fly in amber," in turning over a pile of old Stannary records. How it had found its way among them he could not guess. A fly in amber, quotha! A jewel in a midden, rather! How it came among his trumpery archives I know as little as he, but can guess. Some Lestiddle man must have stolen it, and chosen them as a safe hiding-place. It gave me the clue, and more than the clue. I know now the history of that Mayor of Troy who was so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the year following. Listen! Stretch out both hands; open your mouth and shut your eyes! It is a draught of Troy's own vintage that I offer you; racy, fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so that it carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine. You know the old recipe for Wine of Cos, that full-bodied, seignorial, superlative, translunary wine. Yet I know not how to begin. "Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum." "I will sing you Troy and its Mayor and a war of high renown," that is how I want to begin; but Horace in his _Ars Poetica_--confound him!--has chosen this very example as a model to avoid, and the critics would be down on me in a pack. Very well, then, let us try a more reputable way. _ |
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