Munchausen

“ Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe, scholar, swindler, and undoubted creator of Baron Munchausen.
The merit of Munchausen, as the adult reader will readily perceive, does not reside in its literary style, for Raspe is no exception to the rule that a man never has a style worthy of the name in a language that he did not prattle in. But it is equally obvious that the real and original Munchausen, as Raspe conceived and doubtless intended at one time to develop him, was a delightful personage whom it would be the height of absurdity to designate a mere liar. ”

“ Munchausen. “It was noncommittal. Some day when you are older and know less than you do now, you will realise, my dear Diavolo, how valuable a thing is the reply that answereth not.”
Mr. Munchausen paused long enough to let the lesson sink in and then he resumed.
“The Gillyhooly bird is a perfect owl for wisdom of that sort,” he said. “It never lets anybody know what it thinks; it never makes promises, and rarely speaks except to mystify people. ”

“ He is an impostor.’
“‘If your majesty pleases,’ I began.
“‘Silence!’ he cried, ‘I am fierce and I eat men, but I love truth. The truthful man has nothing to fear from me, for I have been converted from my evil ways and since last New Year’s day I have eaten only those who have attempted to deceive me. You will be served raw at dinner to-morrow night. My respect for your record as a man of courage leads me to spare you the torture of the frying-pan. You are Baron Munchausen. ”

“ When travellers are solicitous to be the heroes of their own story, surely they must admit to superiority, and blush at seeing themselves out-done by the renowned Munchausen: I doubt whether any one hitherto, Pantagruel, Gargantua, Captain Lemuel, or De Tott, has been able to out-do our Baron in this species of excellence: and as at present our curiosity seems much directed to the interior of Africa, it must be edifying to have the real relation of Munchausen's adventures there before any further intelligence arrives ”

“ Therefore, my dear friends and companions, have confidence in what I say, and pay honour to the tales of Munchausen. A traveller has a right to relate and embellish his adventures as he pleases, and it is very unpolite to refuse that deference and applause they deserve.
Having passed some time in England since the completion of my former memoirs, I at length began to revolve in my mind what a prodigious field of discovery must be in the interior part of Africa. ”

“ Munchausen.
The Twins readily found the desired cigar, after which Mr. Munchausen settled down comfortably in the hammock, and swinging softly to and fro, told his story.
“My dear old father,” said he, “was the most indulgent man that ever lived. He’d give me anything in the world that I wanted whether he could afford it or not, only he had an original system of giving which kept him from being ruined by indulgence of his children. ”

“ Yet Munchausen has undoubtedly achieved such a place. The Baron's notoriety is universal, his character proverbial, and his name as familiar as that of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, or Robinson Crusoe, mariner, of York. Condemned by the learned, like some other masterpieces, as worthless, Munchausen's travels have obtained such a world-wide fame, that the story of their origin possesses a general and historic interest apart from whatever of obscurity or of curiosity it may have to recommend it. ”

“ William West the bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was a successful anonymous satire upon the English government of the day, while Meusel with equal temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book was a translation of the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a (non-existent) German original by Rudolph Erich Raspe. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1856 calls the book the joint production of Brger and Raspe. ”

“ Nevertheless, I must allow that it was extremely presumptuous in Munchausen to tell half the sovereigns of the world that they were wrong, and advise them what they ought to do; and that instead of ordering millions of their subjects to massacre one another, it would be more to their interest to employ their forces in concert for the general good; as if he knew better than the Empress of Russia, the Grand Vizier, Prince Potemkin, or any other butcher in the world. ”

“ Munchausen.
“Well, I must say,” said Beelzy, with a pleased smile at the very great consequence of his exploit in the lady’s eyes, “if I was a-goin’ to start out to save people’s lives generally I wouldn’t have thought a case o’ whoopin’ cough would be of much use savin’ a man from drownin’, and I’m sure if a feller fell out of a balloon it wouldn’t help him much if he had ninety dozen cases o’ whoopin’ cough concealed on his person ”

“ Their liveliness and animal exuberance are as strong a contrast to the immoveable form into which they are swathed when infants, as the flutter of a butterfly is to its torpidity as a chrysalis; indeed a fanciful person might be apt to suppose, that on emerging from their bandages, they indemnify themselves for the previous constraint by a life of perpetual fidget, and that the same re-action takes place as in the case of Munchausen's horn, which played for half an hour of its own accord when unfrozen. ”

“ You should never despair, Munchausen being your general; and therefore be brave, be courageous, and fortune shall second your endeavours. Let us advance undaunted in pursuit, and follow the fierce Wauwau even three times round the globe, until we entrap her. ”

“ Munchausen, transferring the luscious goobers to Angelica, suddenly remembered that he had something to say to the Imps’ father, and hurriedly left them.
“Do you suppose that’s true, Diavolo?” whispered Angelica as their friend disappeared.
“Well it might happen,” said Diavolo, “but I’ve a sort of notion that it’s ’maginary like the Gillyhooly bird. Gimme a peanut.”
XV
A LUCKY STROKE “Mr. Munchausen,” said Ananias, as he and the famous warrior drove off from the first hole at the Missing Links, “you never seem to weary of the game of golf. ”

“ If any one of his audience had heard of Munchausen he would have dismissed him as a poor imitation of this man who would seem to have dropped down into their filthy and lawless quarter from a sphere where things happened unknown to men on this planet. They dimly recognized that he was a fallen gentleman, for at long intervals good churchmen from the foreign territory of Broadway or Fifth Avenue came to remonstrate and plead. They never came a second time and they usually spent the following week in bed.
But Masters was democratic enough in manner ”

“ Reinhard, in an answer to an attack made upon his hero for bringing out Munchausen as a pot-boiler in German and English simultaneously, definitely stated in the Berlin Gesellschafters of November 1824, that the real author of the original work was that disreputable genius, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and that the German work was merely a free translation made by Brger from the fifth edition of the English work. ”

“ I have always wanted to kill a whale. ‘Captain,’ said I, ‘can’t you tie an anchor onto a hawser, and bait the flukes with a boa constrictor and make sure of him?’ He looked at me contemptuously. ‘Whales eats fish,’ said he, ‘and they don’t bite at no anchors. Whales has brains, whales has.’ ‘What shall we do?’ I asked. ‘Steam closer,’ said the Captain, and we did so.”
Munchausen took a long breath and for the moment was silent. ”

“ I have set all right with Munchausen; who would not own that he was at all offended, and said, as you do, that his daughter did not stay long enough, nor appear enough at Hamburg, for you possibly to know that she was there. But people are always ashamed to own the little weaknesses of self-love, which, however, all people feel more or less. ”

“ In common with a large number of other great men in history Baron Munchausen has suffered because he is not understood. I have observed with wondering surprise the steady and constant growth of the idea that Baron Munchausen was not a man of truth; that his statements of fact were untrustworthy, and that as a realist he had no standing whatsoever. Just how this misconception of the man’s character has arisen it would be difficult to say. ”

“ Munchausen. “I and a great many others lived through the wars and are living yet.”
“Well, how about the missionaries?” said Diavolo. “I didn’t know they had Decoration Day in the Cannibal Islands.”
“I didn’t either until I got there,” returned the Baron. “But they have and they have it in July instead of May. It was one of the most curious things I ever saw and the natives, the men who used to be cannibals, like it so much that if the missionaries were to forget it they’d either remind them of it or have a celebration of their own. ”

“ Steam-yachts are not much good to swing in under an apple tree, and very few piazzas that I know of are big enough—”
“Oh, now, you know what I mean, Uncle Munch,” Diavolo retorted, tapping Mr. Munchausen upon the end of his nose, for a twinkle in Mr. Munchausen’s eye seemed to indicate that he was in one of his chaffing moods, and a greater tease than Mr. Munchausen when he felt that way no one has ever known. “I mean for horse-back riding, which would you rather have?” ”

“ Munchausen's travels have in fact been ascribed to as many different hands as those of Odysseus. But (as in most other respects) it differs from the more ancient fabulous narrative in that its authorship has been the subject of but little controversy. Many people have entertained erroneous notions as to its authorship, which they have circulated with complete assurance; but they have not felt it incumbent upon them to support their own views or to combat those of other people. ”

“ A snake is rather inclined to mind its own business unless he finds it necessary to do otherwise. Occasionally too you’ll find a snake with a truly amiable character. I’ll never forget my old pet Wriggletto, for instance, and as long as I remember him I can’t help having a warm corner for snakes in my heart.”
Here Mr. Munchausen paused and puffed thoughtfully on his cigar as a far-away half-affectionate look came into his eye.
“Who was Wriggletto?” asked Diavolo, transferring a half dollar from Mr. Munchausen’s pocket to his own. ”

“ It is a curious fact that of that class of literature to which Munchausen belongs, that namely of Voyages Imaginaires, the three great types should have all been created in England. Utopia, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, illustrating respectively the philosophical, the edifying, and the satirical type of fictitious travel, were all written in England, and at the end of the eighteenth century a fourth type, the fantastically mendacious, was evolved in this country. Of this type Munchausen was the modern original, and remains the classical example. ”

“ Now the stories mainly relate to sporting adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary of the baron that Munchausen contracted the habit of drawing such a long-bow as a measure of self-defence against his invaluable but loquacious henchman, the worthy R�emeyer. But it is more probable, as is hinted in the first preface, that Munchausen, being a shrewd man, found the practice a sovereign specific against bores and all other kinds of serious or irrelevant people, while it naturally endeared him to the friends of whom he had no small number. ”

“ Munchausen, resolved after Diavolo’s whack, to side against him. “You’ve just about hit it, Angelica. It wasn’t polite of you in the first place, to disturb his snakeship in his nap, and having done so, I can’t see why Diavolo wanted to kill him.”
“Oh, pshaw!” said Diavolo, airily. “What’s snakes good for except to kill? I’ll kill ’em every chance I get. They aren’t any good.” ”

“ Munchausen. “If you should ask me to tell you a story I’d have to do it, even if you were to demand the full particulars of how I spent Christmas with Mtulu, King of the Taafe Eatars, on the upper Congo away down in Africa—which is a tale I have never told any one in all my life.”
“It sounds as if it might be interesting,” said the Twins. “Those are real candy names, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” said the Baron. “Taafe sounds like taffy and Mtulu is very suggestive of chewing gum. That’s the curious thing about the savage tribes of Africa. ”

“ Yes, most truly do I advise thee unto thy good, and speak unto thee, most valiant Munchausen, with the greatest esteem, and wish thee to succeed in thy voyage; for it is said, that in the interior realms of Africa there are tribes that can see but just three inches and a half beyond the extremity of their noses; and verily thou shouldest moderate thyself, even sure and slow; they stumble who walk fast. But we shall bring you unto the Lady Fragrantia, and have her opinion of the matter. ”

“ Often, before our big black Munchausen had blown his fill, our little white Munchausen, fired by the illustrious example of his pattern, would come gallantly dashing in, to give his exploits and achievements a little airing likewise. ”

“ THE POETIC JUNE-BUG, TOGETHER WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE GILLYHOOLY BIRD “Uncle Munch,” said Diavolo one afternoon as a couple of bicyclers sped past the house at breakneck speed, “which would you rather have, a bicycle or a horse?”
“Well, I must say, my boy, that is a difficult question to answer,” Mr. Munchausen replied after scratching his head dubiously for a few minutes. “You might as well ask a man which he prefers, a hammock or a steam-yacht. ”