The Express.
London, England, 1853-06-17 00:00:00

THE NOBLE SAVAGE.

(Fran Diskens's Household Words.)
To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I
have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider
him a prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition.
His calling rum fire-water, and me • pale face, wholly fail
to reconcile me to hint. I don't care what he calls me.
I call him a savage, and I call a savage a something highly
desirable to be civilised off the face of the earth. I think a
mere gent (which I take to be the lowest form of civilisa-
tion)? better than a howling, whistling, clucking, stomp-
ing, jumping, tearing savage. It is all one to me whether
he sticks • fish.bone through his visage, or bits of trees
through the lobes of his ears or birds' feathers in his head;
whether he flattens his hair between two boards, or spreads
his nose over the breadth of his face, or drags
his lower lip down by great weight*, or
blackens his teeth, or knocks them out. or
paints one cheek red and the other blue, or tattoos him-
self, or oils himself, or rubehis body with fat, or crimps it
with knives. Yielding to whichsoever of these agreeable
eccentricities, he is • savage—cruel, false, thievish, mur-
derous; addicted more or less to grease, entrails, and
beastly customs; a wild animal with the questionable gift
of boasting ; a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty, monoto-
nous humbug.
Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will
talk about him, as they talk about the good old times; how
they will regret his disappearance, in the course of this
world's development, from such and such lands
where his absence is a blessed relief and an in-
dispensable preparation for the sowing of the
very first seeds of any influence that can exalt humanity ;
how, even with the evidence of himself before them, they
will either be determined to believe, or will suffer them-
selves to be persuaded into believing that he is something
which their five senses tell them he is not.

nen was Mr. Catlin, some few years ego, with his
Ojibheway Indians. Mr. Catlin was an energetic earnest
man, who had lived among more tribes of Indians than I
need reckon up here,and who had written a picturesque sad
glowing book about them. With his party of Indians squat-
ting and spitting on the table before him, or dancing
their I miserable jigs after their own dreary manner, he
called, in all good faith, upon his civilised audience to take
notice of their symmetry and grace, their perfect limbs, and
the exquisite expression of their pantomime ; and his
eivilised audience, in all good faith, complied and admired.
Whereas, as mere animals, they were wretched creature',
Tay low in the scale and very poorly formed ; and as men
and women possessing any power of truthful dramatic ex-
pression by means of action, they were no better than the
chorus at an Italian opera Is England—and would have
been worse if such a thing were possible.
views of

lime are no new Rs.._ - the noble savage. The
greatest writers on natural history found him out long ago,
Buffon knew what he wee, and showed why he is the sulky
/r at that he is to his women, and bow it happens
be praised!) that hisrace is spare in numbers.
or evidence of the quality of his moral nature, pass him-
self fora moment and refer to his "faithful dog." Has
he everimproved a dog, or attached a dog, since his nobility
first ran wild in woods, and was brought down (at a very
long shot) by Pope ? Or does the animal that is the.friend
of man always degenerate in his low society ?
It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is
the new thing ; it is the whimpering over him with maud-
lin admiration, and the affecting to regret him, and the
drawing of any comparison of advantage between the
blemishes of civilisation and the tenor of his swinish life.
There may have been a change now and then in dune dis-
eased absurdities, but there is none in him.
Think of the Bushmen. Think of the two men and the
two women who have been exhibited about England for
some years. Are the majority of persons—who remember
the horrid little leader of that party in his festering bundle
of bides, with his filth and his antipathy to water, and hie
straddled legs, and his odious eyes shaded by his brutal
hand, and his cry of " Qu•u-u-n-aaa! " (Bosjesenan for
something desperately insulting I hare no doubt)—con-
scions of an affectionate yearning towards that noble
savage, or is it idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest,
abominate, and abjure him ? I have no reserve
on this subject, and will frankly state that, set-
ting aside that stage of the entertainment when
he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot,
by laying his head on his band and shaking his left leg
—at which time I think it would have been justifiable
homicide to slay him—l have never seen that group sleep-
ing, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, bat
I have sincerely desired that something might happen to
the charcoal smouldering therein, which would cause the
immediate suffocatioa of the whole of the noble strangers.
There is at present a party of Zulu Katfirs exhibiting at
the St. George's Gallery, Hyde-park Corner, Landon.
These noble savages are represented in a most agre-
able manner; they are seen in an elegant theatre,
fitted with appropriate scenery of great beauty, and they
are described iu a very sensible and unpretending lecture,
delivered • ith a modesty which is quite a pattern to all
similar exponents. Though extremely ugly, they are ninth
better shaped than such of their predecessors as I have re-
ferred to; and they are rather picturoque to the eye,
though far from odoriferous to the nose. What.a visitor
left to his own interpretings and imaginings mightsupporms
these noblemen to be about, when they give rein to Ihst,

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pantumi.iiie expression which is quite settled to be the
altar nt the noble savage. I cannot possibly cone‘ive ;
to it I. so much too luminous fur my personal
th.t it COUTtil no idea to my mind beyond u Rewind stamp•
ine, ramping, and raving, remarkable (us everything in
ssvag.. life is) for its dire unit 'unity. Hut let us—with the
iaterpt:ter assistance, of which I fur one stand so much
in so .d—wee what the noble savage dues in Zulu Kaffir-
land.

life noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom
he 'Omits his Ii(• and limbs witheut a murmur or ques•
lion, and whose whole life is passed chin deep in • lake of
h!000l, bet who, After killing incessantly, is in fits turn
killed by his relations and friends, the momenta gray hair
a,•pears on his head. Al the noble savage'. wars with his
fellow savages (and he takes no pleasure in anything else)
are wars of ext. rmination—whieh is the best thing I know
of him, and the meet comfortable to my mind wh.ii I look at
Lam. Ile has nos moral feelings of any kind, sort, or
description; and Lis " mission ' may be summed up as
simply diabolical.
The e'er= mica with which he faintly divenifiee his
life are, of course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a
wife he appears before the kennel of the gentleman whom
be has selected fur his father-in-law, attended by a party
of male friends of a very stymie flavour, who screech and
whistle and stamp an utter of so many cows for the young
lady's hand. 'lbis chosen lather-in.law—also supported by a
hitb-flavoured party of male friends—screeches, whistles,
and yells tieing seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that
there never was such a daughter in the market as
his daughter, and that he must have six more
cows. he son-in-law and his select circle of backers,
serech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that they will
give three more cows. The father-in-law (an old deluder,
overpaid at the beginning) accepts four, and rises to bind
the bargain. The whole party, the young lady included,
then falling into epileptic convulsions, and screeching,
whistling, stamping, and yelling together—and nobody
taking any melee of the young lady (whose charms are not
to b. thought of without a shudder)—the noble savage is
considered married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps
at him by way of congratulation.
When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and
mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately
perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A.
leaned personage, called an lmyanger or V Doctor, is
insmeoliately sent for to Nailer the Unit tie. or smell out
the witch. The male inhabitants of the kraal being bested
on th • ground, the learned doctor, got up like a grisly bear,
appear., and administers a dance of a most terrific nature,
during the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly
gnashes hit teeth and howls, " I am the original physician
to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow, yow, yow ! No con-
mush.° with any other establishment. Till till, till ! All
other Uoitargarties are feigned CostargUties, 801.00,
Bar.. ' but I perceive here a genuine sad real Umtargar-
Illoah Howls Bomb ! in whose blood 1, the original
lmyanger and Nookerer, Bliszerum Boo! will wash
theoc bear's claws of mine. 0 yow yow yow ;" AU this
- an ten • the I d physician is looking oat among thistles-
Lee facts for some unfortunate man who owes him a cow,
i. who has gives him any small offence, or against whom,
without offence, he has conceived a spite. Him he
fails to Nooker u the Umtargartie, and he is instantly
keeled. la the absence of such an individual, the usual
pe.ctice is to Nooker the quietest end most gentlemanly
person in company. But the nookering is invariably ful-
lowed on the spot by the butchering.
Some of the noble savages in whom air. Catlin wan so
strong!, interested, and the diminution of whose numbers
by nos and small-pox greatly affected him, bail a custom
not unlike this, though much more appalling and disgust-
ing in its odic: us details.
The I.olllell heina at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian
torn, and the noble savage being saki) in the shade, the
thief has sometime the condescension to come forth, and
lighten the !shout by looking at it. On these occasions he
seats himself is his own savage chair, and is attended by his
shield-bearer; who holds over his heads shield of cowhide
—in shape I.ke an immense muscle shell—tearfully end
wowlerlitily, after the of a theatrical supernume-
rary. But lest the great man should forget his great-
ness in the contemplation of the bumble works of
agriculture, there suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for
the purpose, called a l'raiser. This literary gentleman
wears a leopard's head over his own, and a dress of tigers'
Lib ; lie has the appearance of having came expries on his
hind legs from the mlogical Gardens; and he inconti- '
meetly strikes no the chief's praises, plunging and tearing
all the while. There is a frantic wickedness in this brute's
manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out "Oh what a
delightful chief he is! 0 what a delicious quantity of blood
be sheds! 0 how majestically be laps it up. 0 how
charmingly cruel he is ! 0 bow he tears the flesh of his
enemies and crunches the bones ! 0 how like the titer and
the leopard and the wolf and the bear Le is! 0, row row
row, bow fond I am of him! "—which might tempt the
Society of Friends to charge at a hand-gallop into the
Swartz-lisp location and exterminate the whole kraal.
When war is afoot among the noble savages—which is
always—the chief holds a council, to ascertain whether it is
the opinion of his brother' and friends in general that the
enemy shall he exterminated. On this occasion, after the
performance of an Ciusebeuss, or war song—which is ex-
actly like all the other songs—the chief makes a at etch to
his brothers and friends, arranged in single file. No parti-
cular order is observed during the delivery of this address,
but every gentleman who finds himself excited by the sub-
ject, instead of crying " Hear, bear," as is the custom with
us, darts from the rank, and tramples out the life, or
crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or *coops out
the eyes, or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of
atrocities on the body of an imaginary enemy. Several
gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and pounding
away without the least regard to the orator, that illustrious
person is rather in the position of an orator in an Irish
House of Commons. But several of these scenes of savage
life bear a Wrong generic resemblance to an Irish election,
and I think would he extremely well received and under-
stood at Cork.

In all these ceremonies the noble savage bolds forth to
the utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to
turn hint to some civilised aceouat) we may learn, I think,
that as egotism is one of the most offensive and contempti-
ble littleness a civilised man can exhibit, lo it is really in-
compatible with the interchange of ideas ; inasmuch as if
we all talked about ourselves we should soon have no lice
tenets, and must be all yeUing and screeching at once on
our own separate accounts: making society hideous. It is
my opinion that if we retained in us anything of the noble
savage, we could not get rid of it too soon. But the
fact is clearly otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry
question, substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly
nothing of the Zulu Kaffir left. The endurance of
despotism is one great distinguishing mark of a savage
always. The improsing world has quite got the better of
that too. In like manner, Paris is a civilised city, and the
Theatre Fraegais a highly civilised thesis'; and we shall
never heir, and never have heard in these later dsys (of
course) of the Praiser there. No, no, civilised poets have
better work to do. As to Nookering Umtargarties, there
are no pretended Unrargarties is Europe, and no European
powers to Nosiker them ; that would be mere Appian,
subornation, small malice, superstition, and false pre-
tence. And as to private Umtarganies, are we not in the
year eighteen hundred and lifty•three, with spirits rapping
at our doers ?
To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have
anything to learn from the noble savage, it is what to avoid.
Hu virtues are a table ; his happiness is a delusion ; his
nobility, nonsense. We have no greater justification fur
being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to
a William ahakspeue or an Isaac Newton ; but he passes
away before an immeuurably better and higher power
than ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the
world will be all the better when his place knows him no
more.