Setting The Donkey (And Others) By The Ears

The Weekly Machen

Without a doubt, the following article is the most humorous dispatch that I have yet read from Arthur Machen’s journalistic pen. From shop to pub, and from farm to zoo, Machen records a series of inane escapades of an animal imitator terrorizing the animal world. (Perhaps, this is why they rebelled?) Machen’s choice narration gives the reader clues to how he felt about the assignment. The performer, Carl Lyn, is certainly an obscure figure today.

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Setting The Donkey (And Others) By The Ears
by
Arthur Machen
February 10, 1914

“With a lamp-glass,” said Mr. Carl Lyn, “we can face lions.”

I doubted this myself, but Mr. Lyn gave the order to his chauffeur as we started from Maskelyne and Devant’s, where Mr. Lyn imitates wild and tame beasts and amazes human beings, and so we stopped at the first hardware shop on the northward way, and a lamp-chimney was purchased. The shopman was perplexed; he was not used to people who bought lamp-chimneys and tested them by the making of a roaring, bellowing sound.

The shopman was left perplexed; we shot northward awhile, and then stayed at a place of refreshment, not to be more clearly described, since whisky is wicked.

Here Mr. Lyn clapped his hands to his mouth; and instantly there was the sound of battle; cat strove against cat, and fierce cries rent the air. And then came forth the black and white Tom of the establishment, with tail like the brush of a fox, and claws ready for the fight, and gleaming eyes.

The cat stood there for a moment, and looked wildly about it, and saw no other cat, and dashed madly away, horror-stricken; a cat convinced of miracles, if there ever was one.

A Painful Moment

In fact, the whole morning’s ride was mixed with such marvels. We halted a while at a dairy farm at Finchley. Here were steady, sensible cows making the best of the winter grass. Mr. Lyn began to low, modulating his voice from a deep rumbling murmur and swelling into a resounding bellow; and behold! the whole herd bade farewell to decency and calm restraint. They kicked up their heels and lowed back again and rushed forward. Mr. Lyn bellowed like a bull; they broke out into queer antics; he capered in the air—a respectable citizen in a silk hat and frock coat—and the cows capered after him; the plains and hills of Finchley resounded with roarings.

Later there was a painful moment. Mr. Lyn had snuck out of the field and was setting the poultry by the ears. He laid an egg—vocally—he crowed like a bantam cock, like a Brahma, like a Cochin China; and the fowls were answering him and beering up as best they could against a state of things which they seemed to think was not quite fair, somehow; when a patient old cow put her head over the fence and looked him straight in the face. He shrunk, ashamed at being found out, whinnied like a horse as the best way of getting over an awkward situation and jumped into the car. He said, “Dang!” as he did so, wishing to be taken for the Farm Bailiff; but I do not think that this deceived even the ducks.

Exchanges with a Donkey

We left our characters behind us at the Finchley farm, and fled, like eighteenth-century highwaymen, along the Great North-road, till we drew near to Chipping or High Barnet, and felt safe from the pursuit of those deluded cows. Here the villain Lyn fell to his work again. He saw a good and quiet donkey in a field, as innocent and guileless a beast as any man should desire to see. Lyn snatched a kind of megaphone from his driver, and, crouching behind the hedge, began to hee-haw through the horn with all his might. Of course, the donkey went to shrieking hysterics, and I thanked heaven that I had long ago bidden farewell to all the solemnities and respectabilities of life.

Horse Goes Round

In truth, the situation was indefensible. It was made no better by the entrance on the scene of a tired-looking horse, who came with an air of great amazement from distant part of the field, and fell to whinnying, “God bless my soul, what’s the meaning of this?” with all his might. The man Lyn with his big red trumpet answered him in his own language, and the old horse forthwith went round and round at full speed in a circus ring of his own imagination. The donkey brayed, the horse whinnied, the man with the trumpet answered them both; and the people who went by looked astonished. I remembered that the stocks still stand on Hadley Common, and was thankful when we fled back on our track to London.

We took the Zoo on our way, and brought no peace to it. Mr. Lyn fell at once into a thin whistling, pretending that he was a Cape squirrel, and little brown people came out of their houses, and seeing his hat knew they had been deceived. Then he lifted the lamp-glass, and little rhinoceros heaved up its heavy and unwieldy bulk, and went cantering clumsily round its pond, with a perplexed and gloomy aspect. Within elephants squealed back at them. The rhinoceros stood still suddenly, and stared in stupid horror at such base duplicity.

A Merry Lion

But Mr. Lyn did not care. With one breath, a very piercing, not to say excruciating breath, he professed to be a wild ass of Tibet, and convinced that savage, stubborn, but unsuspecting character. And the shrieking frenzy of this loud unamiable beast—he bites—had not abated, when the Brazilian tapir, a harmless though exotic hog, was impelled to answer grunt by grunt. But I believe the tapir thought it was ghosts.

There was, however, one sensible beast who did not believe in the lamp-glass. He was a lion, and his keeper said he was lazy—I did not know lions were expected to work. But, full of good-humour; this worthy lion rolled on his back, cocked a merry eye, and proffered his chin to be scratched, which was done immediately, to the good beast’s huge gratification.

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