Ouida 「Maria Louise Ramé」
Quality of Mercy: Wild Beast Shows
「1896-Aug」Ouida 「Maria Louise Ramé」 “Quality of Mercy: Wild Beast Shows,” Nineteenth Century 40「Google Books」(1896-Aug): 293-305.
Wild Beast Shows
Many wild-beast shows of the present hour are as cruel as were the gladiatorial games of Rome, and far less manly. I can imagine no possible argument which can be put forward for the license awarded to the travelling caravans which attend fairs and feasts all the world over, and which are the hells of animal torture. What is called the taming of beasts is the most cruel, demoralizing, and loathsome of pursuits; the horrible wickedness of its methods is known to all, and the appetite it awakens and stimulates in the public is to the last degree debasing. Yet not the smallest effort is made to end it.
The encouragement of menageries, where wild animals are cowed and maltreated into trembling misery, and forced to imitate the foolish attitudes and comedies of men, lies entirely with the public—with the world at large. If the nations were in any true sense civilized, such forms of diversion would, I repeat, be insupportable to them. Dancing dogs, dancing bears, performing wolves, enslaved elephants, would one and all, from the lion tortured on a bicycle in a circus to the little guinea-pig playing a drum in the streets—would be one and all so sickeningly painful to a truly civilised public that the stolid human brutes who live by their suffering would not dare to train and exhibit them.
With what pretension can a world call itself humane when in its codes all ‘wild’ animals are unprotected by laws, and may be treated with whatever brutality is desired? When it it is a question for the dweller in a jungle to kill a wild beast or be killed himself, one can understand that he chose the first of the two alternatives. But this is no excuse for the man in cities to drag a captured lion to make the sport of fools, and to perish wretchedly of diseased joints and thwarted longings.
It is idle to speak of the civilisation of a world in which such things are possible. From a hygienic point of view alone these poor tormented creatures, cooped up in filthy cages, breathing fetid air night and day, hearing each other’s piteous cries, having no single want or instinct gratified, ill fed, diseased, miserable, and ravaged by parasites, must be one of them most unwholesome centres of contagion conceivable. A polar bear is at this moment being taken through Europe for exhibition in a caravan; he is kept in a cage in which he cannot turn; he has a pan of water two inches deep, and a few ounces of bread as his only food!
This is permissible by law.
