Personal Pleasures by Rose Macaulay

Author:Rose Macaulay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Personal Pleasures
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1990-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Elephants in Bloomsbury

Can it be true, or do I dream? Driving at dead of the night (if the night is ever dead) through Tavistock Square, can it be that I discern in the street before me a herd of elephants? Large, grey, tranquil, accompanied by a man with a little stick, I think that I see them pad along the Bloomsbury streets, swinging their heads, their trunks, this way and that, enjoying the air of the cool summer night. Slowly I drive past them; they do not seem concerned. I leave them behind; I see them mirrored in my glass, padding, wagging, pompous, serene, wreathing their lithe proboscis to make me mirth, as if they trod their native jungle tracks.

Native? Were elephants, after all, not native to these islands once? Did they not roam our tangled weald and jungled swamps, trumpeting blithely one to another as cows in pastures trumpet now? Have they, perhaps, never quite vanished, and do they still pad out on a summer night to take the air, tramping round our pleasant squares, breaking off boughs from the trees in the gardens and munching them, one little eye ever open for their bitter foe the dragon? Does the she-elephant go seeking in vain for the mandragora tree, that her husband may eat thereof and turn to her and give her the little elephants which she, never (it is said) he, intermittently craves? And when these little creatures are due, does she pad Thamesward, along the Embankment, seeking steps down into the river, that she may bear them in water, safely out of reach of the dragon? And do the herd go thither always to drink? for they drink not wine, we are told, except in wartime, when they like to get drunk, but will suck up whole rivers of water, and it must be muddy, for they will not drink if they see their own shadow therein.

I recall other things I have heard about elephants: how they hate mice, love sweet flowers, which they will go gathering in baskets, and will not eat the food in their stables until they have decked the mangers with these fragrant nosegays and herbs. I recall how chaste they are, how never there is adultery among them; how they love and defend their young; how, though like to living mountains in quantity, no little dog becomes more serviceable and tractable; how the African elephant has such an inferiority complex that if he do but see an Indian one he trembles and hurries past, by all means to get out of his sight.

I think of their patriotism, how they love their own countries so well that they will not go abroad unless their rulers swear a solemn oath that they shall return; and, even after this, and however well entertained they be with meats and pleasures abroad, they will always weep. The elephants I have just passed were not, I think, weeping; they must, therefore, be native to this land.

I remember how,

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