PROSE FANCIES 
 
 RICHARD LE CALLIENNE
 
 K,. ■ 
 
 \ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 f.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 SECOND SERIES
 
 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD LeGALLIENNE 
 
 HERBERT S. STONE & CO., CHICAGO 
 
 JOHN LANE, LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCVI
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY 
 HERBERTS. STONE it CO. 
 
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 TO MAGGIE LE GALLIENNE, WITH 
 LOVE 
 
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 Poor are the gifts of the poet 
 'Nothing but words! 
 The gifts of kings are gold. 
 Silver and fiocks and herds. 
 Garments of strange soft silk. 
 Feathers of wonderful birds. 
 Jewels and precious stones. 
 And horses white as the milk — 
 These are the gifts of Kings; 
 But the gifts that the poet brings 
 Are nothing but words. 
 
 Forty Thousand words / 
 Take them — a gift of flies ! 
 Words that should have been birds. 
 Words that should have been flowers. 
 Words that should have been stars. 
 In the eternal skies. 
 Forty thousand words! 
 Forty thousand tears — 
 All out of two sad eyes.
 
 PROS E FAN C I E S — I 
 
 A SEVENTH STORY 
 HEAVEN. 
 
 AT one end of the city that I love there 
 . is a tall dingy pile of offices that has 
 evidently seen more prosperous for- 
 tunes. It is not the aristocratic end. It is 
 remote from the lordly street of the fine 
 shops of the fair women, where in the sum- 
 mer afternoons the gay bank clerks parade 
 arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempestuous 
 petticoat. It lies aside from the great ex- 
 change which looks like a scene from 
 Romeo and "Juliet in the moonlight, from 
 the town hall from whose clocked and 
 gilded cupola ring sweet chimes at mid- 
 night, and whence, throned above the 
 city, a golden Britannia, in the sight of all 
 men, is seen visibly ruling the waves — 
 while in the square below the death of 
 Nelson is played all day in stone, with a 
 frieze of his noble words about the pedes- 
 tal. England expects ! What an influ-
 
 6 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ence that stirring challenge has yet upon 
 the hearts of men may be seen by any one 
 who will study the faces of the busy im- 
 aginative cotton brokers, who, in the 
 thronged and humming mornings, sell what 
 they have never seen to a customer they 
 will never see. 
 
 In fact, the end I mean is just the 
 very opposite end to that. It is the end 
 where the cotton that everybody sells and 
 nobody buys is seen, piled in great white 
 stacks, or swinging in the air from the 
 necks of mighty cranes, cranes that could 
 nip up an elephant with as little ado, and 
 set him down on the wharf, with a box <jn 
 his ugly ears for his cowardly trumpeting. 
 It is the end that smells of tar, the domain 
 of the harbour-masters, where the sailor 
 finds a ' home,' — not too sweet, and where 
 the wild sea is tamed in a maze of gran- 
 ite squares and basins, the end where 
 the riggings and buildings rise side by side, 
 and a clerk might swing himself out upon 
 the yards from his top floor desk. Here is 
 the custom-house, and the conversation 
 that shines is full of freightage and dock 
 dues ; here are the shops that sell nothing
 
 PROSE FANCIES 7 
 
 but oilskins, sextants and parrots, and 
 here the taverns do a mighty trade in rum. 
 
 It was in this quarter, for a brief sweet 
 time, that Love and Beauty made their 
 strange home, as though a pair of halcy- 
 ons should choose to nest in the masthead 
 of a cattleship. Love and Beauty chose 
 this quarter, as alas. Love and Beauty 
 must choose so many things — for its 
 cheapness. Love and Beauty were poor, 
 and office rents in this quarter were ex- 
 ceptionally low. But what should Love 
 and Beauty do with an office ? Love was 
 a poor poet in need of a room for his bed 
 and his rhymes, and Beauty was a little 
 blue-eyed girl who loved him. 
 
 It was a shabby, forbidding place, 
 gloomy and comfortless as a warehouse on 
 the banks of Styx. No one but Love and 
 Beauty would have dared to choose it 
 for their home. But Love and Beauty 
 have a great confidence in themselves — a 
 confidence curiously supported by history 
 — and they never had a moment's doubt 
 that this place was as good as another for 
 an earthly Paradise. So Love signed an 
 agreement for one great room at the very
 
 8 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 top, the very masthead of the building, and 
 Beauty made it pretty with muslin curtains, 
 flowers, and daiiity makeshifts of furniture, 
 but chiefly with the light of her own heav- 
 enly face. A stroke of luck coming one 
 day to the poet, the lovers, with that ex- 
 travagance which the poor alone have the 
 courage to enjoy, procured a piano on the 
 kind-hearted hire-purchase system, a system 
 specially conceived for lovers. Then, in- 
 deed, for many a wonderful night that 
 room was not only on the seventh floor, 
 but in the seventh heaven; and as Beauty 
 would sit at the piano, with her long hair 
 flying loose, and her soul like a whirl of 
 starlight about her brows, a stranger peer- 
 ing in across the soft lamplight, seeing her 
 face, hearing her voice, would deem that 
 the long climb, flight after flight of dreary 
 stair, had been appropriately rewarded by 
 a glimpse of Heaven. 
 
 Certainly it must have seemed a strange 
 contrast from the life about and below it. 
 The foot of that infernal stair plunged in 
 the warm rum-and-thick-twist atmosphere 
 of a sailor's tavern — and 'The Jolly Ship- 
 mates * was a house of entertainment by
 
 PROSE FANCIES 9 
 
 no means to be despised. Often have I 
 sat there with the poet, drinking the whisky 
 from which Scotland takes its name, among 
 wondering sea-boots and sou'-westers, who 
 could make nothing of that wild hair and 
 that still wilder talk. 
 
 From the kingdom of rum and tar, you 
 mounted into a zone of commission agents 
 and ship-brokers, a chill, unoccupied region, 
 in which every small office bore the names 
 of half-a-dozen different firms, and yet 
 somehow could not contrive to look busy. 
 Finally came an airy echoing landing, a 
 region of empty rooms, which the land- 
 lords in vain recommended as studios to a 
 city that loved not art. Here dwelt the 
 keeper and his kind-hearted little wife, and 
 no one besides save Love and Beauty. 
 There was thus a feeling of rarefaction in 
 the atmosphere, as though at this height it 
 was only the Alpine flora of humanity that 
 could find root and breathing. But once 
 along the bare passage and through a cer- 
 tain door, and what a sudden translation it 
 was into a gracious world of books and 
 flowers and the peace they always bring. 
 
 Once upon a time, in that enchanted
 
 10 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 past where dwell all the dreams we love 
 best, prcciselv, with loving punctuality, at 
 five in the atternoon, a pretty girlish figure, 
 like Persephone escaping from the shades, 
 stole through the rough sailors at the foot 
 of that sordid Jacob's ladder and made her 
 way to the little Heaven at the top. 
 
 I shall not describe her, for the good 
 reason that I cannot. Leonardo, ever 
 curious of the beauty that was most 
 strangely exquisite, once in an inspired 
 hour painted such a face, a face wrought 
 of the porcelain of earth with the art of 
 Heaven. But, whoever should paint it, 
 God certainly made it — must have been 
 the comment of anv one who caught a 
 glimpse of that little figure vanishing 
 heavenwards up that stair, like an Assump- 
 tion of Fra Angelico's — that is any one 
 interested in art and angels. 
 
 She had not long to wait outside the 
 door she sought, for the poet, who had 
 listened all day for the sound, had ears for 
 the whisper of her skirts as she came down 
 the corridor, and before she had time to 
 knock had already folded her in his arms. 
 The two babes in that thieves' wood of
 
 PROSE FANCIES ii 
 
 commission agents and ship brokers stood 
 silent together for a moment, in the deep 
 security of a kiss such as the richest mil- 
 lionaire could never buy — and then they 
 fell to comparing notes of their day's 
 work. The poet had had one of his rare 
 good days. He had made no money, his 
 post had been even more disappointing 
 than usual, — but he had written a poem, 
 the best he had ever written, he said, as he 
 always said of his last new thing. He had 
 been burning to read it to somebody all 
 afternoon — had with difficulty refrained 
 from reading it to the loquacious little 
 keeper's wife as she brought him some 
 coals — so it was not to be expected that 
 he should wait a minute before reading it 
 to her whom indeed it strove to celebrate. 
 With arms round each other's necks, they 
 bent over the table, littered with the new- 
 born poem, all blots and dashes like the 
 first draft of a composer's score, and the 
 poet, deftly picking his way among the 
 erasures and interlineations, read aloud the 
 beautiful words — with a full sense of 
 their beauty ! — to ears that deemed them 
 more beautiful even than they were.
 
 12 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 The owners of this now valuable copy- 
 right allow me to irradiate my prose with 
 three ot" the verses. 
 
 * Ah ! what,* half chanted, half crooned 
 the poet — 
 
 ' Ah ! what a garden is your hair ! — 
 Such treasure as the kings of old, 
 In coffers of the beaten gold, 
 Laid up on earth — and left it there.' 
 
 So tender a reference to hair whose 
 beauty others beside the poet had loved 
 must needs make a tender interruption — 
 the only kind of interruption the poet 
 could have forgiven — and 'Who,' he 
 continued — 
 
 * Who was the artist of your mouth ? 
 What master out of old Japan. 
 Wrought it so dangerous to man . . .* 
 
 And here it was but natural that laugh- 
 ter and kisses should once more interrupt — 
 
 ' Those strange blue jewels of your eyes, 
 Painting the lily of your face, 
 What goldsmith set them in their place — 
 Forget-me-nots of Paradise ? 
 
 * And that blest river of your voice. 
 Whose merry silver stirs the rest 
 Of water-lilies in your breast . . .'
 
 PROSE FANCIES 13 
 
 At last, in spite of more interruptions, 
 the poem came to an end — whereupon, 
 of course, the poet immediately read it 
 through once more from the beginning, its 
 personal and emotional elements, he felt, 
 having been done more justice on a first 
 reading than its artistic excellencies. 
 
 * Why, darling, it is splendid,' was his 
 little sweetheart's comment ; * you know 
 how happy it makes me to think it was 
 written for me, don't you ?* And she took 
 his hands and looked up at him with eyes 
 like the morning sky. 
 
 Romance in poetry is almost exclu- 
 sively associated with very refined ethereal 
 matters, stars and flowers and such like — 
 happily, in actual life it is often associated 
 with much humbler objects. Lovers, like 
 children, can make their paradises out of 
 the quaintest materials. Indeed, our para- 
 dises, if we only knew, are always cheap 
 enough ; it is our hells that are so expen- 
 sive. Now these lovers — like, if I mis- 
 take not, many other true lovers before 
 and since — when they were particularly 
 happy, when some special piece of good 
 luck had befallen them could think of no
 
 14 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 better paradise than a little dinner together 
 in their seventh-story heaven. 'Ah ! wil- 
 derness were Paradise enow ! ' 
 
 To-night was obviously such an occa- 
 sion. But, alas ! where was the money to 
 come from ? They didn't need much — 
 for it is wonderful how happy you can be 
 on five shillings, if you only know how. 
 At the same time it is difficult to be happy 
 on ninepence — which was the entire for- 
 tune of the lovers at the moment. Beauty 
 laughingly suggested that her celebrated 
 hair might prove worth the price of their 
 dinner. The poet thought a pawnbroker 
 might surely be found to advance ten shil- 
 lings on his poem — the original MS. too 
 — else had they nothing to pawn, save a 
 few gold and silver dreams which they 
 couldn't spare. What was to be done ? 
 Sell some books, of course ! It made 
 them shudder to think how many poets 
 they had eaten in this fashion. It was 
 sheer cannibalism — but what was to be 
 done ! Their slender stock of books had 
 been reduced entirely to poetry. If there 
 had only been a philosopher or a modern 
 novelist, the sacrifice wouldn't have seemed
 
 PROSE FANCIES 15 
 
 so unnatural. And then Beauty's eyes 
 fell upon a very fat informing-looking 
 volume on the poet's desk. 
 
 * Would n't this do ? ' she said. 
 
 ' Why, of course ! ' he exclaimed ; ' the 
 very thing. A new history of socialism 
 just sent me for review. Hang the review ; 
 we want our dinner, do n't we, little one ? 
 And then I 've read the preface, and looked 
 through the index — quite enough to make 
 a column of, with a plentiful supply of 
 general principles thrown in ! Why, of 
 course, there 's our dinner for certain, dull 
 and indigestible as it looks. It 's worth 
 fifty minor poets at old Moser's. Come 
 along. . . .' 
 
 So off went the happy pair — ah ! how 
 much happier was Beauty than ever so 
 many fine ladies one knows who have 
 only, so to say, to rub their wedding rings 
 for a banquet to rise out of the ground, 
 with the most distinguished guests around 
 the table, champagne of the best, and con- 
 versation of the worst. 
 
 Old Moser found histories of socialism 
 profitable, more profitable perhaps than 
 socialism, and he actually gave five-and-
 
 i6 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 sixpence for the volume. With the nine- 
 pence already in their pockets, you will 
 see that they were now possessors of quite 
 a small fortune. Six-and-threepence ! It 
 would n't pay for one's lunch nowadays. 
 Ah ! but that is because the poor alone 
 know the art of dining. 
 
 You need n't wish to be happier and 
 merrier than those two lovers, as they 
 gaily hastened to that bright and cosy 
 corner of the town where those lovely 
 ham-and-beef shops make glad the faces of 
 the passers-by. O those hams with their 
 honest shining faces, polished like mahog- 
 any — and the man inside so happy all 
 day slicing them with those wonderful 
 long knives (which, of course, the superior 
 class of reader has never seen) worn away 
 to a veritable thread, a mere wire, but keen 
 as Excalibur. Beauty used to calculate 
 in her quaint way how much steel was 
 worn awav with each pound of ham, and 
 how much therefore went to the sandwich. 
 And what an artist was the carver ! What 
 a true eye, what a firm, flexible wrist, 
 never a shaving of fat too much — he was 
 too great an artist for that. Then there
 
 PROSE FANCIES 17 
 
 were those dear little cream cheeses and 
 those little brown jugs of yellow cream, 
 come all the way from Devonshire — you 
 could hear the cows lowing across the rich 
 pasture, and hear the milkmaids singing 
 and the milk whizzing into the pail, as 
 you looked at them. 
 
 And then those perfectly lovely sau- 
 sages — I beg the reader's pardon ! I 
 forgot that the very mention of the word 
 smacks of vulgarity. Yet, all the same, I 
 venture to think that a secret taste for 
 sausages among the upper classes is more 
 widespread than we have any idea of. I 
 confess that Beauty and her poet were at 
 first ashamed of admitting their vulgar 
 frailty to each other. They needed to 
 know each other very well first. Yet 
 there is nothing, when once confessed, 
 that brings two people so close as — a 
 taste for sausages. 
 
 ' You darling ! ' exclaimed Beauty, with 
 something like tears in her voice, when 
 her poet first admitted this touch of na- 
 ture — and then next moment they were 
 in fits of laughter that a common taste for 
 a very * low ' food should bring tears to 
 
 /
 
 i8 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 their eyes ! But such are the vagaries of 
 love — as you will know, if you know 
 anything about it — ' vulgar,' no doubt, 
 though only the vulgar would so describe 
 them ; for it is only vulgarity that is 
 always '• refined.' 
 
 Then there was the florist's to visit. 
 What beautiful trades some people ply ! 
 To sell flowers is surely like dealing in 
 fairies. Beautiful must grow the hands 
 that wire them, and sweet the flower-girl's 
 every thought ! 
 
 There remained but the wine mer- 
 chant's, or, had we not better say at once, 
 the grocer's, for our lovers could afford no 
 rarer vintages than Tintara or the golden 
 burgundy of Australia ; and it is wonderful 
 to think what a sense of festivity one of 
 those portly colonial flagons lent to their lit- 
 tle dining-table. Sometimes, I may confide, 
 when they wanted to feel very dissipated, 
 and were very rich, they would allow them- 
 selves a small bottle of Benedictine — 
 and you should have seen Beauty's eyes 
 as she luxuriantly sipped at her green little 
 liqueur glass ; for, like most innocent peo- 
 ple, she enjoyed to the full the delight of
 
 PROSE FANCIES 19 
 
 feeling occasionally wicked. However, 
 these were rare occasions, and this night 
 was not one of them. 
 
 Half a pound of black grapes com- 
 pleted their shopping, and then, with 
 their arms full of their purchases, they 
 made their way home again, the two 
 happiest people in what is, after all, a 
 not unhappy world. 
 
 Then came the cooking and the laying 
 of the table. For all her Leonardo face. 
 Beauty was a great cook — like all good 
 women, she was as earthly in some respects 
 as she was heavenly in others, which I 
 hold to be a wise combination — and, in- 
 deed, both were excellent cooks ; and the 
 poet was unrivalled at 'washing up,' which, 
 I may say, is the only skeleton at these 
 Bohemian feasts. 
 
 You should have seen the gusto with 
 which Beauty pricked those sausages — I 
 had better explain to the un-Bohemian 
 reader that to attempt to cook a sausage 
 without first pricking it vigorously with a 
 fork, to allow for the expansion of its 
 juicy gases, is like trying to smoke a cigar 
 without first cutting off the end — and O!
 
 20 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 to hear again their merry song as they 
 writhed in torment in the hissing pan, like 
 Christian martyrs raising hymns of praise 
 from the very core of Smithficld fires. 
 
 Meanwhile, the poet would be surpass- 
 ing himself in the setting out of the little 
 table, cutting up the bread reverently as 
 though it were for an altar — as indeed 
 it was — studying the effect of the dish 
 of tomatoes, now at this corner, now at 
 that, arranging the flowers with much more 
 care than he arranged the adjectives in 
 his sonnets, and making ever so sumptu- 
 ous an effect with that half a pound of 
 grapes. 
 
 And then at last the little feast would 
 begin, with a long grace of eyes meeting 
 and hands clasping ; true eyes that said 
 ' how good it is to behold you, to be 
 awake together in this dream of life ;' true 
 hands that said *■ I will hold you fast for- 
 ever — not death even shall pluck you 
 from my hand, shall loose this bond of 
 you and me;' true eyes, true hands, that 
 had immortal meanings far beyond the 
 speech of mortal words. 
 
 And it had all come out of that dull his-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 21 
 
 tory of socialism, and had cost little more 
 than a crown ! What lovely things can be 
 made out of money ! Strange to think that a 
 little silver coin of no possible use or beauty 
 in itself can be exchanged for so much 
 tangible beautiful pleasure. A piece of 
 money is like a piece of opium, for in it 
 lie locked up the most wonderful dreams 
 — if you have only the brains and hearts 
 to dream them. 
 
 When at last the little feast grew near 
 its end, Love and Beauty would smoke 
 their cigarettes together ; and it was a 
 favorite trick of theirs to lower the lamp 
 a moment, so that they might see the stars 
 rush down upon them through the skylight 
 which hung above their table. It gave 
 them a sense of great sentinels, far away 
 out in the lonely universe, standing guard 
 over them, seemed to say that their love 
 was safe in the tender keeping of great 
 forces. They were poor, but then they 
 had the stars and the flowers and the great 
 poets for their servants and friends ; and, 
 best of all, they had each other. Do you 
 call that being poor ? 
 
 And then, in the corner, stood that
 
 22 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 magical box with the ivory keys, whose 
 strings waited ready night and day — 
 strange media through which the myriad 
 voices, the inner-sweet thoughts, of the 
 great world-soul found speech, messengers 
 of the stars to the heart, and of the heart 
 to the stars. 
 
 Beauty's songs were very simple. 
 She got little practice, for her poet only 
 cared to have her sing over and over again 
 the same sweet songs ; and perhaps if you 
 had heard her sing ' Ask nothing more 
 of me, sweet,' or ' Darby and Joan,' you 
 would have understood his indifference to 
 variety. 
 
 At last the little feast is quite, quite 
 finished. Beauty has gone home ; her 
 lover still carries her face in his heart as 
 she waved and waved and waved to him 
 from the rattling lighted tramcar j long he 
 sits and sits thinking of her, gazing up at 
 those lonely ancient stars ; the air is still 
 bright with her presence, sweet with her 
 thoughts, warm with her kisses, and as he 
 turns to shut the piano, he can still see her 
 white hands on the keys and her girlish
 
 PROSE FANCIES 23 
 
 face raised in an ecstasy — Beata Beatrix 
 — above the music. 
 
 ' O love, my love ! if I no more should see 
 Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, 
 
 Nor image of thine eyes in any spring — 
 How then should sound upon Life 's darkening slope 
 The ground whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 
 
 The wind of Death 's imperishable wing ! ' 
 
 And then ... he would throw him- 
 self upon his bed and burst into tears. 
 
 ■ • • ■ • 
 
 ' And they are gone ; ay, ages long ago : 
 These lovers fled away into the storm,' 
 
 The seventh-story heaven once more 
 leads a dull life as the office of a ship- 
 chandler, and harsh voices grate the air 
 where Beauty sang. The books and the 
 flowers and the lovers' faces are gone 
 forever. I suppose the stars are the 
 same, and perhaps they sometimes look 
 down through that roof window, and 
 wonder what has become of those two 
 lovers who used to look up at them so 
 fearlessly long ago. 
 
 But friends of mine who believe in 
 God say that He has given His angels
 
 24 1' R O S E FANCIES 
 
 charge concerning that dingy old seventh- 
 floor heaven, and that, for those who have 
 eyes to see, there is no place where a great 
 dream has been dreamed that is not thus 
 watched over by the guardian angels of 
 memory. 
 
 For M. Le G., 
 
 2^ September^ l8g§. 
 
 I
 
 PROSE FANCIES — II 
 
 SPRING BY PARCEL 
 POST 
 
 They've taken all the Spring from the country to the 
 
 town — 
 Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the 
 
 cow , , . 
 
 SO began to jig and jingle my thoughts 
 as in my letters and newspapers this 
 morning I read, buried alive among the 
 solitary fastnesses of the Surrey hills, the last 
 news from town. The news I envied most 
 was that spring had already reached London. 
 ' Now,' ran a pretty article on spring fash- 
 ions, ' the sunshine makes bright the 
 streets, and the flower-baskets, like huge 
 bouquets, announce the gay arrival of 
 spring.' I looked up and out through my 
 hillside window. The black ridge on the 
 other side of the valley stood a grim wall 
 of burnt heather against the sky — which 
 sky, like the bullets in the nursery rhyme, 
 was made unmistakably of lead ; a close 
 rain was falling methodically, and, gener- 
 
 25
 
 26 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ally speaking, the world looked like a 
 soaked mackintosh. It was n't much like 
 the gay arrival of spring, and grimly I 
 mused on the advantages of life in town. 
 
 Certainly it did seem hard, I reflected, 
 that town should be ahead of us even in 
 such a country matter as spring. Flower 
 baskets indeed ! Why, we have n't as 
 much as a daisy for miles around. It is 
 true that on the terrace there the crocuses 
 blaze like a street on fire, that the prim- 
 roses thicken into clumps, lying among 
 their green leaves like pounds of country 
 butter ; it is true that the blue cones of the 
 little grape hyacinth are there, quaintly 
 formal as a child's toy flowers ; yes ! and 
 the big Dutch hyacinths are already shame- 
 lessly enceinte with their buxom waxen 
 blooms, so fat and fragrant — (One is 
 already delivered of a fine blossom. Well, 
 that is a fine baby, to be sure ! say the 
 other hyacinths, with babes no less bonny 
 under their own green aprons — all wait- 
 ing for the doctor sun). Then, among 
 the blue-green blades of the narcissus, here 
 and there you see a stem topped with a 
 creamish chrysalis-like envelope, from
 
 PROSE FANCIES 27 
 
 which will soon emerge a beautiful eye, 
 rayed round with white wings, looking as 
 though it were meant to fly, but remaining 
 rooted — a butterfly on a stalk ; while all 
 the beds are crowded with indeterminate 
 beak and blade, pushing and elbowing each 
 other for a look at the sun, which, how- 
 ever, sulkily declines to look at them. It 
 is true there is spring on the terrace, but 
 even so it is spring imported from the town 
 — spring bought in Holborn, spring de- 
 livered free by parcel post ; for where 
 would the terrace have been but for the 
 city seedsman — that magician who sends 
 you strangely spotted beans and mysteri- 
 ous bulbs in shrivelled cerements, weird 
 little flower mummies that suggest centu- 
 ries of forgotten silence in painted Egyp- 
 tian tombs. This strange and shrivelled 
 thing can surely never live again, we say, 
 as we hold it in our hands, seeing not the 
 glowing circles of colour, tiny rings of 
 Saturn, packed so carefully inside this 
 flower-egg, the folds of green and silver 
 silk wound round and round the precious 
 life within. 
 
 But, of course, this is all the seedsman's
 
 28 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 cunning, and no credit to Nature ; and I 
 repeat that were it not for railways and 
 the parcel post — goodness knows whether 
 we should ever get any spring at all in the 
 country ! Think of the days when it had 
 to travel down by stage-coach. For, left 
 to herself, what is the best Nature can do 
 for you with March well on the way ? 
 Personally, I find the face of the country 
 practically unchanged. It is, to all intents 
 and purposes, the same as it has been for 
 the last three or four months — as grim, 
 as unadorned, as bleak, as draughty, and 
 generally as comfortless as ever. There 
 is n't a flower to be seen, hardly a bird 
 worth listening to, not a tree that is not 
 winter-naked, and not a chair to sit down 
 upon. If you want flowers on your walks 
 you must bring them with you ; songs, 
 you must take a poet under your arm ; and 
 if you want to rest, lean laboriously on 
 your stick — or take your chance of rheu- 
 matism. 
 
 Of course your specialists, your botan- 
 ists, your nature-detectives, will tell you 
 otherwise. They have surprised a violet 
 in the act of blossoming ; after long and
 
 PROSE FANCIES 29 
 
 excited chase have discovered a clump 
 of primroses in their vv^ild state ; seen one 
 butterfly, heard one cuckoo. But as one 
 swallow does not make a summer, it takes 
 more than one cuckoo to make a spring. 
 I confess that only yesterday I saw three 
 sulphur butterflies, with my own eyes ; I 
 admit the catkins, and the silver-notched 
 palm ; and I am told on good colour au- 
 thority that there is a lovely purplish bloom, 
 almost like plum bloom, over certain copses 
 in the valley ; by taking thought, I have 
 observed the long horizonal arms of the 
 beech growing spurred with little forked 
 branches of spear-shaped buds, and I see 
 little green nipples pushing out through 
 the wolf-coloured rind of the dwarf fir- 
 trees. Spring is arming in secret to attack 
 the winter — that is sure enough, but 
 spring in secret is no spring for me. I 
 want to see her marching gaily with green 
 pennons, and flashing sun-blades, and a 
 good band. 
 
 I want butterflies as they have them at 
 the Lyceum — ' butterflies all white,' ' but- 
 terflies all blue,' ' butterflies of gold,' and 
 I should particularly fancy ' butterflies all
 
 30 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 black.' But there, again, you see, — you 
 must go to town, within hearing of Mrs. 
 Patrick Campbell's voix d'or. I want the 
 meadows thickly inlaid with buttercups and 
 daisies ; I want the trees thick with green 
 leaves, the sky all larks and sunshine ; I 
 want hawthorn and wild roses — both at 
 once; I want some go, some colour, some 
 warmth in the world. O where are the 
 pipes of Pan ? 
 
 The pipes of Pan are in town, playing 
 at street corners and in the centres of 
 crowded circuses, piled high with flower- 
 baskets blazing with refulgent flowery 
 masses of white and gold. Here are the 
 flowers you can only buy in town ; simple 
 flowers enough, but only to be had in 
 town. Here are fragrant banks of violets 
 every few yards, conflagrations of daffodils 
 at every crossing, and narcissus in scented 
 starry garlands for your hair. 
 
 You wander through the Strand, or along 
 Regent street, as through the meadows of 
 Enna — sweet scents, sweet sounds, sweet 
 shapes, are all about you ; the town but- 
 terflies, white, blue and gold, ' wheel and 
 shine ' and flutter from shop to shop, sud-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 31 
 
 denly resurgent from their winter ward- 
 robes as from a chrysalis ; bright eyes flash 
 and flirt along the merry, jostling street, 
 while the sun pours out his golden wine 
 overhead, splashing it about from gilded 
 domes and bright-faced windows — and 
 ever are the voices at the corners and the 
 crossings calling out the sweet flower 
 names of the spring ! 
 
 But here in the country it is still all 
 rain and iron. I am tired of waiting for 
 this slow-moving provincial spring. Let 
 us to the town to meet the spring — for : 
 
 They've taken all the spring from the country to the 
 town — 
 Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the 
 
 cow; 
 And if you want a primrose, you write to London now, 
 And if you need a nightingale, well, — Whiteley sends it 
 down.
 
 PROSE FANCIES — III 
 
 THE GREAT M E R R Y- 
 G O-R O U N D 
 
 ¥ 
 
 IN an age curious of new pleasures, the 
 merry-go-round seems still to maintain 
 its ancient popularity. I was the other 
 day the delighted, indeed the fascinated, 
 spectator of one in full swing in an old 
 Thames-side town. It was a very superior 
 example, with a central musical engine 
 of extraordinary splendour, and horses that 
 actually curvetted, as they swirled madden- 
 ingly round to the strains of ' 7"he Man 
 that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.' 
 How I longed to join the wild riders ! But 
 though I am a brave man, I confess that 
 to ride a merry-go-round in front of a 
 laughter-loving Cockney public is more 
 than I can dare. I had to content myself 
 with watching the faces of the riders. I 
 noticed particularly one bright-eyed little 
 girl, whose whole passionate young soul 
 seemed to be on fire with ecstacy, and for 
 
 32
 
 PROSE FANCIES 33 
 
 whom it was not difficult to prophesy 
 trouble when time should bring her within 
 reach of more dangerous excitements. 
 Then there was a stolid little boy, dull and 
 unmoved in expression as though he v/ere 
 in church. Life, one felt sure, would be 
 safe enough, and stupid enough, for him ; 
 the world would have no music to stir or 
 draw him. The fifes would go down the 
 street with a sweet sound of marching feet, 
 and the eyes of other men would brighten 
 and their blood be all glancing spears and 
 streaming banners, but he would remain 
 behind his counter ; from the strange hill 
 beyond the town the dear, unholy music, 
 so lovely in the ears of other men and 
 maids, would call to him in vain, and morn- 
 ing and evening the stars would sing above 
 his draper's shop, but he never hear a 
 word. 
 
 What particularly struck me was the 
 number of quite grown-up, even elderly, 
 people who came and had their penny- 
 worth of horse exercise. Now it was a 
 grave young workman quietly smoking his 
 pipe as he revolved ; now it was a stout 
 middle-aged woman returning from mark-
 
 34 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 eting, on whom the Zulu music and the 
 whirling horses laid their irresistible spells. 
 Unless ye become as little children ! 
 
 Is the Kingdom of Heaven really at 
 hand ? For, indeed, men and women, and 
 perhaps particularly literary men and 
 women, are once more becoming as little 
 children in their pleasures. 
 
 Seriously, one of the most curious and 
 significant of recent literary phenomena is 
 the sudden return of the literary man to 
 physical, and so-called ' Philistine', pleas- 
 ures and modes of recreation. Perhaps 
 Stevenson set the fashion with his canoe 
 and his donkey. But at the moment that 
 he was valiantly daring any one to tell 
 him whether there was anything better 
 worth doing ' than fooling among boats,' 
 Edward Fitzgerald, all unconscious and 
 careless of literary fashions, was giving still 
 more practical expression to the physical 
 faith that was in him, by going shares in a 
 Lowestoft herring-lugger, and throwing his 
 heart as well as his money into the fortunes 
 of its noble skipper ' Posh.' A literary 
 man par excellence^ Mr. Lang reproaches 
 his sires for his present way of hfe —
 
 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 * Why lay your gipsy freedom down 
 And doom your child to pen and ink?' 
 
 35 
 
 and by steady and persistent golfing and 
 writing about angling and cricket, comes 
 as near to the noble savage as is possible 
 to so incorrigibly civilised a man. Mr. 
 Henley — that Berserker of the pen — 
 sings the sword with a vigour that makes 
 one curious to see him using it, and we all 
 know Mr. Kipling's views on the matter. 
 Then Mr. Bernard Shaw rides a bicycle ! 
 
 Those men of letters whose inclinations 
 or opportunities do not lead them to these 
 out-of-door and more or less ferocious, 
 pleasures seek to forget themselves at the 
 music hall, the Aquarium or the numerous 
 Earl's Court exhibitions. They become 
 amateurs of foreign dancing, connoisseurs 
 of the trapeze, or they leave their great 
 minds at home and go up the Great Wheel. 
 Earl's Court, particularly, is becoming 
 quite a modern Vauxhall — Tan-ta-ra-ra ! 
 Earl's Court! Earl's Court! — and Mr. 
 Imre Kiralfy, with his conceptions and 
 designs, is to our generation what Albert 
 Smith was to the age of Dickens and Ed- 
 mund Yates.
 
 36 IMl O S E FANCIES 
 
 It takes some experience of life to real- 
 ise how right this is ; to reahse that, after 
 all our tine philosophies and cocksure 
 sciences, there is no better answer to the 
 riddle of things than a good game of cricket 
 or an exciting spin on one's * bike.* The 
 real inner significance of Earl's Court — 
 Mr. Kiralfy will no doubt be prepared to 
 hear — is the failure of science as an 
 answer to life. We give up the riddle, 
 and enjoy ourselves with our wiser chil- 
 dren. Simple pleasures, no doubt, for the 
 profound ! But what is simple, and what 
 is profound ? 
 
 The simple joy we get from ' fooling 
 among boats ' on a summer day, the thrill 
 of a well-hit ball, the rapture of a skilful 
 dive, are no more easy to explain than the 
 more complicated pleasures of literature, 
 or art, or religion. And why is it — to 
 come closer to our theme — that the 
 round or the whirling have such attraction 
 for us ? What is the secret of the fasci- 
 nation of the circle ? Why is it that the 
 turning of anything, be it but a barrel- 
 organ or a phrase, holds one as with an 
 hypnotic power ? I confess that I can
 
 PROSE FANCIES 37 
 
 never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, how- 
 ever needy. Think of the pleasure of 
 driving that vi^heel all day, the merry chirp 
 of the knife on the stone, and the crisp 
 bright spray of the flying sparks ! Why, 
 he does * what some men dream of all 
 their lives ' ! Wheels of all kinds have 
 the same strange charm; mill-wheels, 
 colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water- 
 wheels, and wheeling waters : there may — 
 who knows ? — have been a certain pleas- 
 ure in being broken on the wheel, and, at 
 all events, that hideous punishment is an- 
 other curious example of the fascination of 
 the circle. It would take a whole volume 
 to illustrate the prevalence of the circle in 
 external nature, in history, and, even more 
 significant, in language. We all know, or 
 think we know, that the world is round — 
 
 ♦ This orb — this round 
 Of sight and sound,' 
 
 as Mr. Quiller Couch sings — though I 
 remember a porter at school who was sure 
 that it was flat, and who used to say that 
 Hamlet's 
 
 * How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world!'
 
 38 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 was a cryptic reference to Shakespeare's 
 secret belief in his theory. Many of the 
 things we love most are round. Is not 
 money, according to the proverb, made 
 round that it may go round, and are not 
 the men most in demand described as 'all- 
 round men' ? Nor are all-round women 
 without their admirers. Events, we know, 
 move in a circle, as time moves in cycles 
 — though, alas ! not on them. The bal- 
 let and the bicycle are popular forms of the 
 circle, and it is the charm of the essay to 
 be ' roundabout.' 
 
 Again, how is it that that which on a 
 small scale does not impress us at all, 
 when on a large scale impresses us so 
 much? What is the secret of the im- 
 pressiveness of size, bulk, height, depth, 
 speed, and mileage ? Philosophically, a 
 mountain is no more wonderful than a 
 mole-hill, yet no man is knighted for 
 climbing a mole-hill. One little drop of 
 water and one little grain of sand are 
 essentially as wonderful as ' the mighty 
 ocean ' or ' the beauteous land ' to which 
 they contribute. A balloon is no more 
 wonderful than an air-bubble and were
 
 PROSE FANCIES 39 
 
 you to build an Atlantic liner as big as the 
 Isle of Wight it would really be no more 
 remarkable than an average steam launch. 
 Nobody marvels at the speed of a snail, 
 yet, given a snail's pace to start with, an 
 express train follows as a matter of course. 
 Movement, not the rate of movement, is 
 the mystery. Precisely the same materi- 
 als, the same forces, the same methods, 
 are employed in the little as in the big of 
 these examples. Why should mere ac- 
 cumulation, reiteration, and magnification 
 make the difference ? We may ask why ? 
 But it does, for all that. If we answer 
 that these mammoth multiplications im- 
 press us because they are so much bigger, 
 taller, fatter, faster, etc., than we are, the 
 question arises, How many times bigger 
 than a man must a mountain be before it 
 impresses us ? Perhaps the problem has 
 already been tackled by the schoolman 
 who pondered how many angels could 
 dance on the point of a needle. 
 
 However, these and similar first princi- 
 ples, it will readily be seen, are far from 
 being irrelevant for the visitor at the Earl's 
 Court Exhibition. No doubt they are
 
 40 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 continually discussed by the thousands who 
 daily and nightly throng that very charm- 
 ing dream-world which Mr. Kiralfy has 
 built ' midmost the beating' of our 'steely 
 sea.' 
 
 To an age that is over-read and over-fed 
 Mr. Kiralfy brings the message : ' Leave 
 your great minds at home, and go up the 
 Great Wheel ! ' and I heard his voice and 
 obeyed. The sensation is, I should say, 
 something between going up in a balloon 
 and being upon shipboard — a sensation 
 compounded, maybe, of the creaking of 
 the circular rigging, the pleasure of rising 
 in the air, the freshening of the air as you 
 ascend, the strange feeling of the earth 
 receding and spreading out beneath you, 
 the curious diminution of the people below 
 — to their proper size. You will hear 
 original minds all about you comparing 
 them to ants, and it is curious to notice 
 the involuntary feeling of contempt that 
 possesses you as you watch them. I be- 
 lieve one has a half-defined illusion that 
 we are growing greater as they are grow- 
 ing smaller. Ants and flics ! ants and 
 flies ! with here and there a fiery centipede
 
 PROSE FANCIES 41 
 
 in the shape of a District train dashing in 
 and out amongst them. We lose the 
 power of understanding their motions, and 
 their throngs and movements do indeed 
 seem as purposeless at this height as the 
 hurry-scurrying about an ant-hill. At this 
 height, indeed, one seems to understand 
 how small a matter a bank smash may 
 seem to the Almighty •, though, as a lady 
 said to me — as we clung tightly together 
 in terror ' a-top of the topmost bough ' — 
 it must be gratifying to see so many 
 churches. 
 
 Those who would keep their illusions 
 about the beauty of London had better 
 stay below, at least in the daytime, for it 
 makes one's heart sink to look on those 
 miles and miles of sordid grey roofs hud- 
 dled in meaningless rows and crescents, 
 just for all the^world like a huge child's 
 box of wooden bricks waiting to be arranged 
 into some intelligible pattern. Of course, 
 this is not London proper. Were the 
 Great Wheel set up in Trafalgar Square, 
 one is fain to hope that the view from it 
 would be less disheartening — though it 
 might be better not to try.
 
 42 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 By night, except fur the bright oases of 
 the Indian Exhibition, the view is httle 
 more than a black blank, a great inky plain 
 with faint sparks and rows of light here 
 and there, as though the world had been 
 made of saltpetre paper, and had lately 
 been set fire to. Were you a traveller 
 from Mars you would say that the world 
 was very badly lighted. But, for all that, 
 night is the time for the Great Wheel, for 
 the conflagration of pleasure at our feet 
 makes us forget the void dark beyond. 
 Then the Wheel seems like a great re- 
 volving spider's web, with fireflies entan- 
 gled in it at every turn, and the little 
 engine-house at the centre, with its two 
 electric lights, seems like the great lord 
 spider, with monstrous pearls for his eyes. 
 And, as in the daytime the height robs the 
 depth of its significance, strips poor hu- 
 manity of any semblance of impressive or 
 attractive meaning, at night the efi^ect is 
 just the reverse. What a fairy world is 
 this opening out beneath our feet, with its 
 golden glowing squares and circles and 
 palaces, with its lamplit gardens and pago- 
 das, and who are these gay and beautiful
 
 PROSE FANCIES 43 
 
 beings flitting hither and thither, and pass- 
 ing from one bright garden to another on 
 the stream of pleasure ! If this many- 
 coloured, passionate dream be really human 
 life, let us hasten to be down amongst it 
 once more ! And, after all, is not this 
 flattering night aspect of the world more 
 true than that disheartening countenance 
 of it in the daylight? Those golden 
 squares and glowing gardens and flashing 
 waters are, of course, an illusion of the 
 magician Kiralfy's, yet what power could 
 the illusion have upon us without the re- 
 alities of beauty and love and pleasure it 
 attracts there ?
 
 PROSE FANCIES — IV 
 
 THE BURIAL OF ROMEO 
 AND JULIET 
 
 ONE morning of all mornings the citi- 
 zens of Verona were startled by 
 strange news. Tragic forces, to 
 which they had been accustomed to pay 
 little heed, had been at work in their city 
 during the dark hours, and young Romeo 
 of the Montagues, handsome, devil-me- 
 care lad as they had known him, and little 
 Juliet of the Capulets, that mad-cap, 
 merry, gentle young mistress, lay dead, 
 side by side in the church of Santa Maria. 
 
 Death! surely they were used to death! 
 and Love, flower of the clove! they were 
 used to love. But here were love and death, 
 that somehow they could not understand. 
 So they hurried in wondering groups to 
 Santa Maria, that they might gaze at the 
 dead lovers, and thus perhaps come to un- 
 derstand. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their 
 
 44
 
 PROSE FANCIES 45 
 
 guests in the vault of the Capulets, with 
 a strange smile of welcome for all who 
 came. And their presence-chamber was 
 bright with candles and flowers, and sweet 
 with the sweet smell of death. The air 
 that had drunk in their wild words and 
 their last long looks of heavenly love still 
 hung about the dark corners, as the air 
 where a rose has been holds a little while 
 the memory of its breath. Yes ! that 
 morning, in that dank but shining tomb, 
 you might draw into you the very breath 
 of love. The air you breathed had passed 
 through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had 
 been etherialised with her holy passion, 
 and washed clean with her lovely words. 
 And now, for a little while yet, it feasted 
 on the fair peace of their glad young faces. 
 To-morrow, or the next day, or the next 
 week, they would belong to the unvisited 
 treasure-house of the past, but now this 
 morning of all mornings, this day that 
 could never come again, they still belonged 
 to the real and radiant present. 
 
 Flowers there are that bloom but once 
 in a hundred years, but here in this tomb 
 had blossomed one of those marvellous
 
 46 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 flowers that bloom but once throughout 
 eternity. Poets and kings in after-times, 
 O men of Verona, will yearn to have 
 seen what you look upon to-day. For 
 you, you thick and greasy citizens, are 
 chosen out of all time to behold this 
 beauty. There were once in the world 
 thousands of men and women who had 
 heard the very words of Christ as they fell 
 from His lips, words that we may only 
 read. There have been men, actual, liv- 
 ing, foolish men, who have looked on at 
 the valour of Horatius, men who, from 
 the crowded banks of the Nile, have 
 watched the living body of Cleopatra step 
 into her gilded barge, men who, standing 
 idle in the streets of Florence, have seen 
 the love-light start in the great Dante's 
 eyes, seen his hand move to his laden 
 heart, as the little Beatrice passed him by 
 among her maidens. Base men of the 
 past, by the indulgent accident of time, 
 have been granted to behold these wonders, 
 and now for you, O men of Verona, a 
 like wonder has been born. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their
 
 PROSE FANCIES 47 
 
 guests in the vault of the Capulets, with 
 a strange smile of welcome for all who 
 came. 
 
 It had been an innocent little desire, 
 yet had all the world come against it. It 
 had been a simple little desire, yet too 
 strong for all the world to break. 
 
 Strange this enmity of the world to love, 
 as though men should take arms against 
 the song of a bird, or plot against the 
 opening of a flower. 
 
 But now, what was this strange homage 
 to a love that a few hours ago had no friend 
 in all the daylight, a fearful bliss beneath 
 the secret moon ? But yesterday a stupid 
 old nurse, a herb-gathering friar, a rascally 
 apothecary, had been their only friends, 
 and now was all the world come here to 
 do their bidding. 
 
 No need to steal again beneath the 
 shade of orchard walls, no need again to 
 heed if lark or nightingale sang in the red- 
 dening east. For the world had grown 
 all warm to love, warm and kind as June 
 to the rose. 
 
 Three days lay Romeo and Juliet re-
 
 48 IM^ O S E FANCIES 
 
 ceiving their guests in the vault of the 
 Capulets, with that strange smile of wel- 
 come for all who came. Three days the 
 world worshipped the love it could not un- 
 derstand, but still came dense and denser 
 throngs to worship. For the news of the 
 wonderful flower that had blossomed in 
 Verona had gone far and wide, and trav- 
 ellers from distant cities kept pouring in 
 to look at those strange young lovers, who 
 had deemed the world well lost so that 
 they might leave it together. 
 
 Then the governor of the city decreed, 
 as the time drew near when the two lovers 
 must be left to their peace,and it was ill that 
 any should lose the sight of this marvel, 
 that on the fourth day they should be car- 
 ried through the streets in the eyes of all 
 the people, and then be buried together in 
 the vault of the Capulets — for by this 
 burial in the same tomb, says the old 
 chronicler, who was first honoured with the 
 telling of their sweet story, the governor 
 hoped to bring about a peace between the 
 Montagues and Capulets, at least for a 
 little while. 
 
 Meanwhile, though Verona was a city
 
 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 49 
 
 of many trades and professions, and love 
 and death were idle things, yet was there 
 little said of business all these days, and 
 little else done but talk of the two lovers, 
 of whom, indeed, it was true, as it has 
 seldom been true out of holy writ, that 
 death was swallowed up in victory. Dur- 
 ing these days, also, there stole a strange 
 sweetness over the city, as though the 
 very spirit of love had nested there, and 
 was filling the air with its soft breathing 
 — as when, in the first days of spring, the 
 birds sing so sweetly that broken hearts 
 must hide away, and hard hearts grow a 
 little kind. Men once more spoke kindly 
 to their wives, and even coarse faces wore 
 a gentle light — just as sometimes at even- 
 ing the setting sun will turn to tenderness 
 even black rocks and frowning towers. 
 
 There were many wild stories afloat 
 about the end of the lovers. Some said 
 one way, and some another. By some 
 the story went that Romeo was already 
 dead before Juliet had awakened from her 
 swoon, but others declared that the poison 
 had not worked upon him until Juliet's 
 awakening had made him awhile forget
 
 50 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 that he was to die. There were those 
 who professed to know the very words of 
 their wild farewell, and in fact there had 
 been several witnesses of Juliet's agony 
 over the body of her lord. These had 
 told how first she had raved and clung to 
 him, and called him 'Romeo,' *■ Sweet Sir 
 Romeo,' ' Husband,' and many flower- 
 like names, and had petted him and wooed 
 him to come back. Then on a sudden 
 she had cried, ' God-a-mercy — how cold 
 thou art!' and looked at him long and 
 strangely. Then had she grown stern, 
 and anon soft. ' Canst thou not come 
 back, my love? Then must I follow 
 thee. Not so far art thou on the way of 
 death, but that I shall overtake thee, and 
 together shall we go to Pluto's realm, and 
 seek a kinder world.' 
 
 Thereat she had plunged Romeo's dag- 
 ger into her side, though some said she 
 had stopped her heart's beating by the 
 strong will of her great love. Yea — 
 such were the distracted rumours — some 
 averred that at the last she had cursed 
 Christ and his saints, and called upon 
 Venus, whom, it was rumoured in awe-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 51 
 
 struck whispers, was being worshipped 
 once more in secret corners of the world. 
 
 It was strong noon when, on the fourth 
 day, Romeo and Juliet were carried 
 through the bright and solemn streets, that 
 the world might be saved ; saved as ever 
 by the spectacle and the worship of a mys- 
 terious nobility, an uncomprehended great- 
 ness, a beauty which haunts not its daily 
 dreams, lifted up by the humble gaze of 
 devout eyes into the empyrean of greater 
 souls, stirred to an unfamiliar passion, and 
 fired with glimpses of a strange, unworldly 
 truth. 
 
 In the light of the sun, the faces of the 
 two lovers, as they lay amid their flowers, 
 seemed to have grown a little weary, but 
 they still wore their sweet and royal smile, 
 and their laurelled brows were very white 
 and proud. 
 
 And in the faces that looked upon them, 
 as they moved slowly by, with sweet death 
 music, and the hushed marching of feet, 
 and the wafted odour of lilies, there was to 
 be seen strangely blent a great pity for 
 their tragedy and a heavenly tenderness
 
 52 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 for their love. It was like a dream pass- 
 ing down the streets of a dream, so deep 
 and tender was the silence, for only the 
 hearts of men were speaking ; though here 
 and there a girl sobbed, or a young man 
 buried his face in his sleeve, and the stern- 
 est eyes were dashed with the holy water 
 of tears. And with the pity and tender- 
 ness, who shall say but that in all that 
 silent heart-speech there was no little 
 envy of the two who had loved so 
 truly and died in the springtide of their 
 love, before the ways of love had grown 
 dusty with its summer, or dreary with its 
 autumn, before its dreams had petrified 
 into duties, and its passion deadened into 
 use ? 
 
 'Would it were thou and I,' said many 
 wedded eyes one to the other, delusively 
 warm and soft for a moment, but all cold 
 and hard again on the morrow. 
 
 And maybe some poet would say in his 
 heart : 
 
 ' If you loved her living, my Romeo, 
 what were your love could you but see 
 her dead ! ' for indeed life has no beauty 
 so wonderful as the beauty of death.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 53 
 
 And, as in all places and times, there 
 was a base remnant that gaped and wor- 
 shipped not, and in their hearts resented 
 all this distinction paid to a nobility they 
 could not recognise, as the like had 
 grumbled when Cimabue's Madonna had 
 been carried through the streets in glory. 
 But of these there is no need that we 
 should take account, any more than of 
 the beasts that meed head down amid 
 the pastures outside the town, knowing 
 not of the wonder that was passing within. 
 For the ass will munch his thistles though 
 the Son of Man be his rider, nor will the 
 sheep look aside from his grazing though 
 Apollo be the herdsman. 
 
 At length the sacred pageant was ended, 
 gone like the passing of an aerial music, 
 and the people went to their homes silent, 
 with haunted eyes ; while the Earth, which 
 had given this beauty, took it back to her- 
 self, and one more Persephone of human 
 loveliness was shut within the gates of the 
 forgetful grave.
 
 PROSE FANCIE S — V 
 
 VARIATIONS UPON 
 WHITEBAIT 
 
 AVERY Pre-Raphaelite friend of mine 
 came to me one day and said, a 
 propos of his having designed a very 
 Early English chair: 'After all, if one 
 has anything to say one might as well put 
 it into a chair ! ' 
 
 I thought the remark rather delicious, 
 as also his other remark when one day in 
 a curiosity-shop we were looking at an- 
 other chair, which the dealer declared to 
 be Norman. My friend seated himself in 
 it very gravely, and after softly moving 
 about from side to side, testing it, it would 
 appear, by the sensation it imparted to the 
 sitting portion of his limbs, he solemnly 
 decided: ' I don't think \.\\^ flavour of this 
 chair is Norman ! ' 
 
 I thought of this Pre-Raphaelite brother 
 as the Sphinx and I were seated a few 
 evenings ago at our usual little dinner, in 
 
 54
 
 PROSE FANCIES 55 
 
 our usual little sheltered corner, on the 
 Lover's Gallery of one of the great London 
 restaurants. The Sphinx says that there 
 is only one place in Europe where one can 
 really dine, but as it is impossible to be 
 always within reasonable train service of 
 that Montsalvat of cookery, she consents 
 to eat with me — she cannot call it dine — 
 at the restaurant of which I speak. I be- 
 ing very simple-minded, untravelled and 
 unlanguaged, think it, in my Cockney 
 heart, a very fine place indeed, with its 
 white marble pillars surrounding the spa- 
 cious peristyle and flashing with a thousand 
 brilliant lights and colours : with its stately 
 cooks, clothed in white samite, mystic 
 wonderful, ranged behind a great altar 
 loaded with big silver dishes, and the 
 sacred musicians of the temple ranged be- 
 hind them — while in and out go the 
 waiters, clothed in white and black, 
 waiters so good and kind that I am com- 
 pelled to think of Elijah being waited on 
 by angels. 
 
 They have such an eye for a romance, 
 too, and really take it personally to heart 
 if it should befall that our little table is
 
 56 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 usurped by others that know not love. I 
 like them, to(j, because they really seem to 
 have an eye for the strange beauty and 
 charm of the Sphinx, quite an unexpected 
 taste for Botticelli. They ill-conceal their 
 envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the 
 meditative pauses between the courses, I 
 see them romantically reckoning how it 
 might be possible by desperately saving up, 
 by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unex- 
 ampled despatch and sweetness in their 
 ministrations, how it might be possible in 
 ten years' time, perhaps even in five — 
 the lady would wait five years ! and her 
 present lover could be artistically poisoned 
 meanwhile! — how it might be possible to 
 come and sue for her beautiful hand. 
 Then a harsh British cry for 'waiter' 
 comes like a rattle and scares away that 
 beautiful dream-bird, though, as the poor 
 dreamer speeds on the quest of roast beef 
 for four, you can see it still circling with 
 its wonderful blue feathers around his 
 pomatumed head. 
 
 Ah, yes, the waiters know that the 
 Sphinx is no ordinary woman. She can- 
 not conceal even from them the mystical
 
 PROSE FANCIES 57 
 
 star of her face, they too catch far echoes 
 of the strange music of her brain, they too 
 grow dreamy with dropped hints of fra- 
 grance from the rose of her wonderful heart. 
 
 How reverently do they help her dofF 
 her little cloak of silk and lace : with 
 what a worshipful inclination of the head, 
 as in the presence of a deity, do they 
 await her verdict of choice between rival 
 soups — shall it be 'clear or thick'? 
 And when she decides on 'thick,' how re- 
 lieved they seem to be, as if — well, some 
 few matters remain undecided in the uni- 
 verse, but never mind, this is settled for- 
 ever — no more doubts possible on one 
 portentous issue, at any rate — Madame 
 will take her soup ' thick.' 
 
 ' On such a night ' our talk fell upon 
 whitebait. 
 
 As the Sphinx's silver fork rustled 
 among the withered silver upon her plate, 
 she turned to me and said : 
 
 ' Have you ever thought what beautiful 
 little things these whitebait are ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, yes,' I replied, ' they are the 
 daisies of the deep sea, the threepenny- 
 pieces of the ocean.'
 
 58 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 'You dear!' said the Sphinx, who is 
 alone in the world in thinking me awfully 
 clever. ' Go on, say something else, some- 
 thing pretty about whitebait — there's a 
 subject for you!* 
 
 'I'hen it was that, fortunately, I remem- 
 bered my Pre-Raphaelite friend, and I 
 sententiously remarked : ' Of course, if 
 one has anything to say one cannot do 
 better than to say it about whitebait. 
 Well, whitebait 
 
 But here, providentially, the band of 
 the beef — that is, the band behind the 
 beef; that is, the band that nightly hymns 
 the beef (the phrase is to be had in three 
 qualities) — struck up the overture from 
 ' Tannhauser,' which is not the only 
 music that makes the Sphinx forget my ex- 
 istence -, and thus, forgetting me, she mo- 
 mentarily forgot the whitebait. But I 
 remembered, remembered hard — worked 
 at pretty things, as metal workers punch 
 out their flowers of brass and copper. 
 The music swirled about us like golden 
 waves, in which swam myriad whitebait, 
 like showers of tiny stars, like falling
 
 PROSE FANCIES 59 
 
 snow. To me it was one grand proces- 
 sional of whitebait, silver ripples upon 
 streams of gold. 
 
 The music stopped. The Sphinx 
 turned to me with the soul of Wagner in 
 her eyes, and then she turned to the waiter : 
 *■ Would it be possible,' she said, ' to per- 
 suade the bandmaster to play that wonder- 
 ful thing over again ? ' 
 
 The waiter seemed a little doubtful, 
 even for the Sphinx, but he went off to the 
 bandmaster with the air of the man who 
 has at last an opportunity to show that he 
 can dare all for love. Personally, I have 
 a suspicion that he poured his month's sav- 
 ings at the bandmaster's feet, and begged 
 him to do this thing for the most won- 
 derful lady in the world; or perhaps the 
 bandmaster was really a musician, and 
 his musician's heart was touched — 
 lonely there amid the beef — to think 
 that there was really someone, invisible 
 though she were to him, some shrouded 
 silver presence, up there among the beef- 
 eaters, who really loved to hear great 
 music. Perhaps it was thus made a night
 
 6o PROSE FANCIES 
 
 he has never forgotten ; perhaps it changed 
 the whole course of his life — who knows ? 
 The sweet, reassuring request may have 
 come to him at a moment when, sick at 
 heart, he was deciding to abandon real 
 music forever, and settle down amid the 
 beef and the beef-music of Old England. 
 
 Well, however it was, the waiter came 
 back radiant with a ' Yes ' on every shin- 
 ing part of him, and if the ^ Tannhauser * 
 had been played well at first, certainly the 
 orchestra surpassed themselves this second 
 time. 
 
 When the great jinnee of music had 
 once more swept out of the hall, the 
 Sphinx turned with shining eyes to the 
 waiter : 
 
 ' Take,' she said, ' take these tears to 
 the bandmaster. He has indeed earned 
 them.' 
 
 'Tears, little one,' I said. 'See how 
 they swim like whitebait in the fishpools 
 of your eyes ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, yes, the whitebait,' rejoined the 
 Sphinx, glad of a subject to hide her emo- 
 tion. ' Now tell me something nice
 
 PROSE FANCIES 6i 
 
 about them^ though the poor little things 
 have long since disappeared. Tell me, 
 for instance, how they get their beautiful 
 little silver vi^aterproofs ? ' 
 
 * Electric Light of the World,' I said, 
 ' it is like this. While they are still quite 
 young and full of dreams, their mother 
 takes them out in picnic parties of a billion 
 or so at a time to where the spring moon 
 is shining, scattering silver from its purse 
 of pearl far over the wide waters — silver, 
 silver for every little whitebait that cares to 
 swim and pick it up. The mother, who has 
 a contract with some such big restaura- 
 teur as ours, chooses a convenient area of 
 moonlight, and then at a given sign they 
 all turn over on their sides, and bask and 
 bask in the rays, little fin pressed lov- 
 ingly against little fin — for this is the 
 happiest time in the young whitebait's 
 life : it is at these silvering parties that 
 matches are made and future consignments 
 of whitebait arranged for. Well, night 
 after night, they thus lie in the moonlight, 
 first on one side, then on the other, till by 
 degrees, tiny scale by scale, they have be-
 
 62 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 come completely lunar-platcd. Ah! how 
 sad they arc when the end of that happy 
 time has come.' 
 
 ' And what happens to them after 
 that? ' asked the Sphinx. 
 
 ' One night when the moon is hidden 
 their mother comes to them with treach- 
 erous wile, and suggests that they should 
 go ofF on a holiday again to seek the moon 
 — the moon that for a moment seems 
 captured by the pearl fishers of the sky. 
 And so off they go merrily, but, alas, no 
 moon appears, and presently they are 
 aware of unwieldy bumping presences upon 
 the surface of the sea, presences as of huge 
 dolphins, and rough voices call across the 
 water, till, scared, the little whitebaits turn 
 home in flight — to find themselves some- 
 how meshed in an invisible prison, a net 
 as fine and strong as air, into which, O 
 agony, they are presently hauled, lovely 
 banks of silver, shining like opened coffers 
 beneath the coarse and ragged flares of 
 yellow torches. The rest is silence.' 
 
 ' What sad little lives ! and what a 
 cruel world it is ! ' said the Sphinx — as she
 
 PROSE FANCIES 63 
 
 crunched with her knife through the body 
 of a lark, that but yesterday had been sing- 
 ing in the blue sky. Its spirit sang just 
 above our heads as she ate, and the air 
 was thick with the grey ghosts of all the 
 whitebait she had eaten that night. 
 
 But there were no longer any tears in 
 her eyes.
 
 PROSE FANCIES— VI 
 
 THE ANSWER OF 
 THE ROSE 
 
 THE Sphinx and I sat in our little box 
 at Rom^'O and Juliet. It was the first 
 time she had seen that fairy-tale of 
 passion upon the stage. I had seen it 
 played once before — in Paradise. There- 
 fore, I rather trembled to see it again in 
 an earthly play-house, and as much as pos- 
 sible kept my eyes from the stage. All I 
 knew of the performance — but how much 
 was that ! — was two lovely voices making 
 love like angels ■■, and when there were no 
 words, the music told me what was going 
 on. Love speaks so many languages. 
 
 One might as well look. It was as 
 clear as moonlight to the tragic eye within 
 the heart. The Sphinx was gazing on it 
 all with those eyes that will never grow 
 old, neither for years nor tears; but though 
 I seemed to be seeing nothing but an ad- 
 vertisement of Paderewski pianos on the 
 
 64
 
 PROSE FANCIES 65 
 
 programme, I saw it — O did n't I see it? 
 — all. The house had grown dark, and 
 the music low and passionate, and for a 
 moment no one was speaking. Only, 
 deep in the thickets of my heart, there 
 sang a tragic nightingale that, happily, 
 only I could hear; and I said to myself, 
 ' Now the young fool is climbing the or- 
 chard wall ! Yes, there go Benvolio and 
 Mercutio calling him; and now — 'he 
 jests at scars who never felt a wound ' — 
 the other young fool is coming out on to 
 the balcony. God help them both ! They 
 have no eyes — no eyes — or surely they 
 would see the shadow that sings " Love ! 
 Love ! Love ! " like a fountain in the 
 moonlight, and then shrinks away to 
 chuckle " Death ! Death ! Death ! " in the 
 darkness ! * 
 
 But, soft, what light from yonder win- 
 dow breaks ! 
 
 The Sphinx turned to me for sympathy 
 — this time it was the soul of Shakespeare 
 in her eyes. 
 
 'Yes!' I whispered, 'it is the Opening 
 of the Eternal Rose, sung by the Eternal 
 Nightingale ! '
 
 66 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 She pressed my hand approvingly ; and 
 while the lovely voices made their heav- 
 enly love, I slipped out my silver-bound 
 pocket-book of ivory and pressed within it 
 the rose which had just fallen from my 
 lips. 
 
 The worst of a great play is that one is 
 so dull between the acts. Wit is sacri- 
 lege, and sentiment is bathos. Not an- 
 other rose fell from my lips during the 
 performance, though that I minded little, as 
 I was the more able to count the pearls that 
 fell from the Sphinx's eyes. 
 
 It took quite half a bottle of champagne 
 to pull us up to our usual spirits, as we sat 
 at supper at a window where we could 
 see London spread out beneath us like a 
 huge black velvet flower, dotted with fiery 
 embroideries, sudden flaring stamens, and 
 rows of ant-like fireflies moving in slow 
 zig-zag processions along and across its 
 petals. 
 
 ' How strange it seems,' said the Sphinx, 
 *■ to think that for every two of those mov- 
 ing double-lights, which we know to be 
 the eyes of hansoms, but which seem up 
 here nothing but gold dots in a very bar-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 67 
 
 baric pattern of black and gold, there are 
 two human beings, no doubt, at this time 
 of night — two lovers, throbbing with the 
 joy of life, and dreaming, heaven knows 
 what dreams. 
 
 ' Yes,' I rejoined ; ' and to them I 'm 
 afraid we are even more impersonal. 
 From their little Piccadilly coracles our 
 watch-tower in the skies is merely a radi- 
 ant fagade of glowing windows, and no 
 one of all who glide by realises that the 
 spirited illumination is every bit due to 
 your eyes. You have but to close them, 
 and every one will be asking what has 
 gone wrong with the electric lights.' 
 
 A little nonsense is a great healer of the 
 heart, and by means of such nonsense as 
 this we grew merry again. And anon we 
 grew sentimental and poetic, but — thank 
 heaven! we were no longer tragic. 
 
 Presently I had news for the Sphinx. 
 ' The rose-tree that grows in the garden 
 of my mind,' I said, 'desires to blossom.' 
 
 ' May it blossom indeed,' she replied; 
 ' for it has been flowerless all this long 
 evening ; and bring me a rose fresh with 
 all the dews of inspiration — no florist's
 
 68 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 flower, wired and artificially scented — no 
 bloom of yesterday's hard-driven brains.' 
 
 '■I was only thinking,' I said, '■a propos 
 of nightingales and roses, that though all 
 the world has heard the song of the night- 
 ingale to the rose, only the nightingale has 
 heard the answer of the rose. You know 
 what I mean ? ' 
 
 ' Know what you mean! Of course, 
 that 's always easy enough,' retorted the 
 Sphinx, who knows well how to be hard 
 on me. 
 
 ' I 'm so glad,' I ventured to thrust 
 back ; * for lucidity is the first success of 
 expression : to make others see clearly 
 what we ourselves are struggling to see, 
 believe with all their hearts what we are 
 just daring to hope, is — well, the religion 
 of a literary man! ' 
 
 * Yes, it 's a pretty idea,' said the Sphinx, 
 once more pressing the rose of my thought 
 to her brain ; 'and, indeed, it's more than 
 pretty. . . .' 
 
 'Thank you!' I said humbly. 
 
 ' Yes, it 's true — and many a humble 
 little rose will thank you for it. For, 
 your nightingale is a self-advertising bird.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 69 
 
 He never sings a song without an eye on 
 the critics, sitting up there in their stalls 
 among the stars. He never, or seldom, 
 sings a song for pure love, just because 
 he must sing it or die. Indeed, he has a 
 great fear of death, unless — you will guar- 
 antee him immortality. But the rose, the 
 trusting little earth-born rose, that must 
 stay all her life rooted in one spot till some 
 nightingale comes to choose her — some 
 nightingale whose song maybe has been 
 inspired and perfected by a hundred other 
 roses, which are at the moment pot-pourri 
 — ah, the shy bosom-song of the rose . . .' 
 
 Here the Sphinx paused, and added ab- 
 ruptly — 
 
 ' Well, there is no nightingale worthy 
 to hear it!' 
 
 ' It is true,' I agreed, ' O trusting, little 
 earth-born rose ! ' 
 
 * Do you know why the rose has thorns ? * 
 suddenly asked the Sphinx. Of course I 
 knew, but I always respect a joke, par- 
 ticularly when it is but half-born — 
 humourists always prefer to deliver them- 
 selves — so I shook my head. 
 
 ' To keep off the nightingales, of course,*
 
 70 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 said the Sphinx, the tone of her voice 
 holding in mocking solution the words 
 ' Donkcv' and 'Stupid,' — which I rec- 
 ognized and meekly bore. 
 
 * What an excellent idea ! ' I said. ' I 
 never thought of it before. But don't you 
 think it 's a little unkind ? For, after all, 
 if there were no nightingales, one should n't 
 hear so much about the rose ; and there is 
 always the danger that if the rose continues 
 too painfully thorny, the nightingale may 
 go off and seek, say, a more accommo- 
 dating lily.' 
 
 ' I have no opinion of lilies,' said the 
 Sphinx. 
 
 ' Nor have I,' I answered soothingly, 
 'I much prefer roses — but . . . 
 but . . .' 
 
 ' But what ?' 
 
 'But — well, I much prefer roses. 
 Indeed I do.' 
 
 ' Rose of the World,' I continued with 
 sentiment, ' draw in your thorns. I can- 
 not bear them.' 
 
 'Ah!' she answered eagerly, 'that is 
 just it. The nightingale that is worthy of 
 the rose will not only bear, but positively
 
 PROSE FANCIES 71 
 
 love, her thorns. It is for that reason 
 she wears them. The thorns of the 
 rose properly understood are but the 
 tests of the nightingale. The nightingale 
 that is frightened of the thorns is not 
 worthy of the rose — of that you may be 
 sure ' 
 
 ' I am not frightened of the thorns,' I 
 managed to interject. 
 
 ' Sing then once more,' she cried, ' the 
 Song of the Nightingale.' 
 
 And it was thus I sang : — 
 
 Rose of the World, a nightingale, 
 A Bird of the World, am I, 
 
 1 have loved all the world and sung all the world, 
 
 But I come to your side to die. 
 
 Tired of the world, as the world of me, 
 
 I plead for your quiet breast, 
 I have loved all the world and sung all the world — 
 
 But — where is the nightingale's nest ? 
 
 In a hundred gardens I sung the rose, 
 
 Rose of the World, I confess — 
 But for every rose I have sung before 
 
 I love you the more, not less. 
 
 Perfect it grew by each rose that died. 
 
 Each rose that has died for you, 
 The song that I sing — yea, 'tis no new song, 
 
 It is tried — and so it is true.
 
 72 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 Petal or thorn, yea ! I have no care, 
 
 So that I here abide. 
 Pierce me, my love, or luss me, my love, 
 
 But keep me close to your side. 
 
 I know not your kiss from your scorn, my love, 
 Your breast from your thorn, my rose. 
 
 And if you must kill me, well, kill me, my love ! 
 But — say "t was the death I chose. 
 
 ' Is it true .?' asked the Rose. 
 
 * As 1 am a nightingale,* 1 replied ; and 
 as we bade each other good-night, I 
 whispered : 
 
 ' When may I expect the Answer of the 
 Rose ? •
 
 PROSE FANCIES— VII 
 
 ABOUT THE SE 
 CURITIES 
 
 WHEN I say that my friend Mat- 
 thew lay dying, I want you so 
 far as possible to dissociate the 
 statement from any conventional, and cer- 
 tainly from any pictorial, conceptions of 
 death which you may have acquired. 
 Death sometimes shows himself one of 
 those impersonal artists who conceal their 
 art, and, unless you had been told, you 
 could hardly have guessed that Matthew 
 was dying, dying indeed sixty miles an 
 hour, dying of consumption, dying because 
 some one else had died four years before, 
 dying, too, of debt. 
 
 Connoisseurs, of course, would have 
 understood ; at a glance would have 
 named the sculptor who was silently 
 chiselling those noble hollows in the 
 finely modelled face — that Pygmalion 
 who turns all flesh to stone — at a glance 
 
 73
 
 74 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 would have named the painter who was 
 cunningly weighting the brows with dark- 
 ness that the eyes might shine the more 
 with an unaccustomed light. Matthew 
 and I had long been students of the strange 
 wandering artist, had begun by hating his 
 art (it is ever so with an art unfamiliar to 
 us) and had » ndcd by loving it. 
 
 *■ Let us see what the artist has added 
 to the picture since yesterday,' said Mat- 
 thew, signing to me to hand him the 
 mirror. 
 
 ' H'm,' he murmured, ' he's had one 
 of his lazy days, I'm afraid. He's hardly 
 added a touch — just a little heightened 
 the chiaroscuro, sharpened the nose a trifle, 
 deepened some little the shadows round 
 the eyes . . .' 
 
 ' O why,' he presently sighed, ' does 
 he not work a little overtime and get it 
 done .? He's been paid handsomely 
 enough . . ." 
 
 ' Paid,' he continued, 'by a life that is 
 so much undeveloped gold-mine, paid by 
 all my uncashed hopes and dreams . . .' 
 
 * He works fast enough for me, old fel-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 75 
 
 low,' I interrupted, ' there was a time, was 
 there not, when he worked too fast for 
 you and me ? * 
 
 There are moments, for certain people, 
 when such fantastic unreality as this is the 
 truest realism. Matthew and I talked like 
 this with our brains, because we hadn't 
 the courage to allow our hearts to break 
 in upon the conversation. Had I dared to 
 say some real emotional thing, what effect 
 would it have had but to set poor tired 
 Matthew a-coughing ? and it was our aim 
 that he should die with as little to-do as 
 practicable. The emotional in such situa- 
 tions is merely the obvious. There was 
 no need for either of us to state the elem- 
 entary feelings of our love. I knew that 
 Matthew was going to die, and he knew 
 that — I was going to live ; and we pitied 
 each other accordingly, though I confess 
 my feeling for him was rather one of 
 envy — when it was not congratulation. 
 
 Thus, to tell the truth, we never men- 
 tioned ' the hereafter.' I don't believe it 
 even occurred to us. Indeed, we spent 
 the few hours that remained of our friend-
 
 76 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ship in retailing the latest gathered of those 
 good stories with which we had been ac- 
 customed to salt our intercourse. 
 
 One of Matthew's anecdotes was, no 
 doubt, somewhat suggested by the occa- 
 sion, and I should add that he had always 
 somewhat of an ecclesiastical bias, and 
 would, I believe, have ended some day as a 
 Monsignor, a notable ' Bishop Blougram.' 
 
 His story was of an evangelistic 
 preacher who desired to impress his con- 
 gregation with the unmistakable reality of 
 hell-fire, ' You know the Black Country, 
 my friends,' he had declaimed, 'you have 
 seen it, at night, flaring with a thousand 
 furnaces, in the lurid incandescence of 
 which myriads of unhappy beings, our 
 fellow-creatures (God forbid ! ) snatch a 
 precarious existence, you have seen them 
 silhouetted against the yellow glare, run- 
 ning hither and thither as it seemed from 
 afar, in the very jaws of the awful fire. 
 Have you realized that the burdens with 
 which they thus run hither and thither 
 are molten iron, iron to which such a 
 stupendous heat has been applied that it 
 has melted, melted as though it had been
 
 PROSE FANCIES 77 
 
 sugar in the sun — well ! returning to hell- 
 fire, let me tell you this, that in hell they 
 eat this fiery molten metal for ice-cream! 
 yes ! and are glad to get anything so cool.' 
 
 It was thus we talked while Matthew 
 lay dying, for why should we not talk as 
 we had lived ? We both laughed long 
 and heartily over this story, perhaps it 
 would have amused us less had Matthew 
 not been dying ; and then his kind old 
 nurse brought in our lunch. We had 
 both excellent appetites, and were far from 
 indifferent to the dainty little meal which 
 was to be our last but one together. I 
 brought my table as close to Matthew's 
 pillow as was possible, and he stroked my 
 hand with tenderness in which there was a 
 touch of gratitude. 
 
 * You are not frightened of the bacteria ! ' 
 he laughed sadly, and then he told me, 
 with huge amusement, how a friend (and 
 a true, dear friend for all that) had come 
 to see him a day or two before, and had 
 hung over the end of the bed to say fare- 
 well, daring to approach no nearer, mop- 
 ping his fear-perspiring brows with a 
 handkerchief soaked in ' Eucalyptus ' !
 
 78 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ' He had brought an anticipatory elegy, 
 too,' said my friend, ' written against my 
 burial. I wish you 'd read it for me,' and 
 he fidgeted for it in the nervous manner 
 of the dying. Finding it among his 
 pillows, he handed it to me saying, 'you 
 need n't be frightened of it. It is well 
 dosed with Eucalyptus.' 
 
 We laughed even more over this poem 
 than over our stories, and then we dis- 
 cussed the terms of three cremation socie- 
 ties to which, at the express request of my 
 friend, I had written a day or two before. 
 
 Then having smoked a cigar and drunk 
 a glass of port together (for the assured 
 dying are allowed to ' live well '), Matthew 
 grew sleepy, and tucking him beneath the 
 counterpane, I left him, for, after all, he 
 was not to die that day. 
 
 Circumstances prevented my seeing him 
 again for a week. When I did so, entering 
 the room poignantly redolent of the strange 
 sweet odour of antiseptics, I saw that the 
 great artist had been busy in my absence. 
 Indeed, his work was nearly at end. Yet 
 to one unfamiliar with his methods, there 
 was still little to alarm in Matthew's face.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 79 
 
 In fact, with the exception of his brain, 
 and his ice-cold feet, he was alive as ever. 
 And even to his brain had come a certain 
 unnatural activity, a life as of the grave, a 
 sort of vampire vitality, which would as- 
 suredly have deceived any who had not 
 known him. He still told his stories, 
 laughed and talked with the same uncon- 
 querable humour, was in every way alert 
 and practical, with this difference, that he 
 had forgotten he was going to die, that the 
 world in which he exercised his various 
 faculties was another world to that in 
 which, in spite of his delirium, we ate our 
 last boiled fowl, drank our last wine, 
 smoked our last cigar together. His talk 
 was so convincingly rational, dealt with 
 such unreal matters in so every-day a 
 fashion, that you were ready to think that 
 surely it was you and not he whose mind 
 was wandering. 
 
 ' You might reach that pocket-book, and 
 ring for Mrs. Davies,' he would say in so 
 casual a way that of course you would 
 ring. On Mrs. Davies's appearance he 
 would be fumbling about among the papers 
 in his pocket-book, and presently he would
 
 8o PROSE FANCIES 
 
 say, with a look of frustration that went 
 to one's heart — ' I 've got a ten-pound 
 note somewhere here for you, Mrs. Uavies, 
 to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow 
 I seem to have lost it. Yet it must be 
 somewhere about. Perhaps you '11 find it 
 as you make the bed in the morning. I'm 
 so sorry to have troubled you. . . .* 
 
 And then he would grow tired and doze 
 a little on his pillow. 
 
 Suddenly he would be alert again, and 
 with a startling vividness tell me strange 
 stories from the dreamland into which he 
 was now passing. 
 
 I had promised to see him on Mon- 
 day, but had been prevented, and had 
 wired to him accordingly. This was 
 Tuesday. 
 
 * You need n't have troubled to wire,' 
 he said. ' Did n't you know I was in 
 London from Saturday to Monday ? ' 
 
 * The doctor and Mrs. Davies did n't 
 know,' he continued, with the creepy 
 cunning of the dying, ' I managed to slip 
 away to look at a house I think of taking 
 — in fact I've taken it. It's in — in — 
 now, where is it ? Now is n't that silly ?
 
 PROSE FANCIES 8i 
 
 I can see it as plain as anything — yet I 
 cannot, for the Hfe of me, remember 
 where it is, or the number. ... It 
 was somewhere St. John's Wood way 
 . never mind, you must come and 
 see me there, when we get in. . . .' 
 
 I said he was dying in debt, and thus 
 the heaven that lay about his death-bed 
 was one of fantastic Eldorados, sudden 
 colossal legacies, and miraculous windfalls. 
 
 ' I have n't told you,' he said presently, 
 ' of the piece of good luck that has befallen 
 me. You are not the only person in luck. 
 I can hardly expect you to believe me, it 
 sounds so much like the Arabian nights. 
 However, it's true for all that. Well, one 
 of the little sisters was playing in the gar- 
 den a few afternoons ago, making mud- 
 pies or something of that sort, and she 
 suddenly scraped up a sovereign. Pres- 
 ently she found two or three more, and 
 our curiosity becoming aroused, a turn or 
 two with the spade revealed quite a bed of 
 gold, and the end of it was that on further 
 excavating, the whole garden proved to be 
 one mass of sovereigns. Sixty thousand 
 pounds we counted . . . and then, what
 
 82 PROSE ?^ A N C I E S 
 
 do you think — it suddenly melted away. 
 
 • • • 
 
 He paused for a moment, and continued, 
 more in amusement than regret — 
 
 * Yes — the government got wind of it, 
 and claimed the whole lot as treasure- 
 trove ! ' 
 
 *■ But not,' he added slyly, ' before I 'd 
 paid off two or three of my biggest bills. 
 Yes — and — you '11 keep it quiet, of course, 
 there 's another lot been discovered in the 
 garden, but we shall take good care the 
 government doesn't get hold of it this 
 time, you bet.' 
 
 He told this wild story with such an air 
 of simple conviction that, odd as it may 
 seem, one believed every word of it. But 
 the tale of his sudden good fortune was 
 not ended. 
 
 ' You 've heard of old Lord Osterley,' 
 he presently began again. ' Well, con- 
 gratulate me, old man, he has just died 
 and left everything to me. You know 
 what a splendid library he had — to think 
 that that will all be mine — and that grand 
 old park through which we 've so often 
 wandered, you and I. Well, we shall
 
 PROSE FANCIES 83 
 
 need fear no gamekeeper now, and of 
 course, dear old fellow, you '11 come and 
 live with me — like a prince — and just 
 write your own books and say farewell to 
 journalism forever. Of course, I can 
 hardly believe it 's true yet. It seems too 
 much of a dream, and yet there's no doubt 
 about it. I had a letter from my solicit- 
 ors this morning, saying that they were 
 engaged in going through the securities, 
 and — and — but the letter 's somewhere 
 over there, you might read it. No? 
 Can't you find it .? It 's there somewhere 
 about, I know. Never mind, you can see 
 it again . . . ' he finished wearily. 
 
 ' Yes ! ' he presently said, half to him- 
 self, ' it will be a wonderful change ! a 
 wonderful change ! ' 
 
 At length the time came to say good- 
 bye, a good-bye I knew must be the last, 
 for my affairs were taking me so far away 
 from him that I could not hope to see him 
 for some days. 
 
 ' I 'm afraid, old man,' I said, ' that I 
 mayn't be able to see you for another 
 week.' 
 
 ' O never mind, old fellow, don't worry
 
 84 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 about me. I 'm much better now — and 
 by the time you come again we shall know 
 all about the securities.' 
 
 The securities! My heart had seemed 
 like a stone, incapable of feeling, all those 
 last unreal hours together, but the pathos of 
 that sad phrase so curiously symbolic, sud- 
 denly smote it with overwhelming pity, 
 and the tears sprang to my eyes for the 
 first time. 
 
 As I bent over him to kiss his poor 
 damp forehead, and press his hand for the 
 last farewell, I murmured — 
 
 * Yes — dear, dear old friend. Wc shall 
 know all about the securities . . .'
 
 PROSE FANCIES— VIII 
 
 THE BOOM IN 
 YELLOW 
 
 GREEN must always have a large 
 following among artists and art 
 lovers ; for, as has been pointed 
 out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign of 
 a subtle artistic temperament. There is 
 something not quite good, something 
 almost sinister, about it — at least, in its 
 more complex forms, though in its simple 
 form, as we find it in outdoor nature, it is 
 innocent enough ; and, indeed, is it not 
 used in colloquial metaphor as an adjective 
 for innocence itself ? Innocence has but 
 two colours, white or green. But Becky 
 Sharp's eyes also were green, and the green 
 of the aesthete does not suggest innocence. 
 There will always be wearers of the green 
 carnation ; but the popular vogue which 
 green has enjoyed for the last ten or 
 fifteen years is probably passing. Even 
 the aesthete himself would seem to be 
 
 85
 
 86 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 growing a little weary of its indefinitely 
 divided tones, and to be anxious for a 
 colour sensation somewhat more positive 
 than those to be gained from almost im- 
 perceptible nuances of green. Jaded with 
 over-refinements and super-subtleties, we 
 seem in many directions to be harking back 
 to the primary colours of life. Blue, crude 
 and unsoftened, and a form of magenta, 
 have recently had a short innings ; and 
 now the triumph of yellow is imminent. 
 Of course, a love for green implies some 
 regard for yellow, and in our so-called 
 aesthetic renaissance the sunflower went 
 before the green carnation — which is, 
 indeed, the badge of but a small schism of 
 aesthetes, and not worn by the great body 
 of the more catholic lovers of beauty. 
 
 Yellow is becoming more and more 
 dominant in decoration — in wall-papers, 
 and flowers cultivated with decorative 
 intention, such as chrysanthemurns. And 
 one can easily understand why : seeing 
 that, after white, yellow reflects more 
 light than any other colour, and thus min- 
 isters to the growing preference for light 
 and joyous rooms. A {QVf yellow chrys-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 87 
 
 anthemums will make a small room look 
 twice its size, and when the sun comes out 
 upon a yellow wall-paper the whole room 
 seems suddenly to expand, to open like a 
 flower. When it falls upon the pot of 
 yellow chrysanthemums, and sets them 
 ablaze, it seems as though one had an 
 angel in the room. Bill-posters are be- 
 ginning to discover the attractive qualities 
 of the colour. Who can ever forget 
 meeting for the first time upon a hoarding 
 Mr. Dudley Hardy's wonderful Yellow 
 Girl, the pretty advance guard of To-Day ? 
 But I suppose the honour of the discovery 
 of the colour for advertising purposes rests 
 with Mr. Colman ; though its recent boom 
 comes from the publishers, and particularly 
 from the Bodley Head. The Tellorv Book 
 with any other colour would hardly have 
 sold as well — the first private edition of 
 Mr. Arthur Benson's poems by the way, 
 came caparisoned in yellow, and with the 
 identical name, Le Cahier "Jaune ; and no 
 doubt it was largely its title that made the 
 success of The Tellow Aster. In literature, 
 indeed, yellow has long been the colour of 
 romance. The word ' yellow-back ' wit-
 
 88 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 nesses its close association with fiction ; 
 and in France, as we know, it is the all 
 but universal custom to bind books in 
 yellow paper. Mr. Heinemann and Mr. 
 Unwin have endeavoured to naturalise the 
 custom here ; but, though in cloth yellow 
 has emphatically ' caught on,' in paper it 
 still hangs fire. The ABC Railway 
 Guide is probably the only exception, and 
 that, it is to be hoped, is not fiction, Mr, 
 Lang has recently followed the fashion 
 with his Tellow Fairy Book; and, indeed, 
 one of the best known figures in fairydom 
 is yellow — namely, the Yellow Dwarf, 
 Yellow, always a prominent Oriental 
 colour, was but lately of peculiar signifi- 
 cance in the Far East; for were not the 
 sorrows of a certain high Chinese official 
 intimately connected with the fatal colour ? 
 The Yellow Book, the Yellow Aster, the 
 Yellow Jacket ! — and the Yellow Fever, 
 like ' Orion ' Home's sunshine, is always 
 with us ' somewhere in the world,' The 
 same applies also, I suppose, to the Yellow 
 Sea, 
 
 Till one comes to think of it, one hardly 
 realises how many important and pleasant
 
 PROSE FANCIES 89 
 
 things in life are yellow. Blue and green, 
 no doubt, contract for the colouring of 
 vast departments of the physical world. 
 ' Blue !' sings Keats, in a fine but too little 
 known sonnet — 
 
 *. . . 'Tis the life of heaven — the domain 
 
 Of Cynthia — the wide palace of the sun — 
 The tent of Hesperus, and all his train — 
 The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun. 
 Blue ! 'Tis the life of waters . . . 
 Blue ! Gentle cousin of the forest green, 
 Married to green in all the sweetest flowers.' 
 
 Yellow might retort by quoting Mr. 
 Grant Allen, in his book on The Colour 
 Sense, to the effect that the blueness of sea 
 and sky is mainly poetical illusion or inac- 
 curacy, and that sea and sky are found 
 blue only in one experiment out of four- 
 teen. At morning and evening they are 
 usually in great part stained golden. Blue 
 certainly has one advantage over yellow; in 
 that it has the privilege of colouring some 
 of the prettiest eyes in the world. Yellow 
 has a chance only in cases of jaundice 
 and liver complaint, and his colour scheme 
 in such cases is seldom appreciated. 
 Again, green has the contract for the 
 greater bulk of the vegetable life of the
 
 90 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 globe ; but his is a monotonous business, 
 like the painting of miles and miles of pal- 
 ings, grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, 
 ad infinitum ; whereas yellow leads a rov- 
 ing versatile life, and is seldom called upon 
 for such monotonous labour. The sands 
 of Sahara are probably the only conspicu- 
 ous instance of yellow thus working by 
 the piece. It is in the quality, in the di- 
 versity of the things it colours, rather than 
 in their mileage or tonnage, that yellow is 
 distinguished ; though for that matter, we 
 suppose, the sun is as big and heavy as 
 most things, and that is yellow. Of 
 course, when we say yellow we include 
 golden, and all varieties of the colour — saf- 
 fron, orange, flaxen, tawny, blonde, topaz, 
 citron, etc. 
 
 If the sun mav reasonably be described 
 as the most important object in the world, 
 surely money is the next. That, as we 
 know, is, in its most potent metallic form, 
 yellow also. The 'yellow gold' is a fa- 
 vourite phrase in certain forms of poetrv ; 
 and ' yellow-boys ' is a term of natural 
 affection among sailors. Following the 
 example of their lord the sun, most fires
 
 PROSE FANCIES 91 
 
 and lights are yellow or golden, and it is 
 only in times of danger or superstition that 
 they burn red or blue. And, if yellow be 
 denied entrance to beautiful eyes, it enjoys 
 a privilege which — except in the case of 
 certain indigo-staining African tribes, who 
 cannot be said to count — blue has never 
 claimed, that of colouring perhaps the 
 loveliest thing in the world, the hair of 
 woman. Hair is naturally golden — unnatu- 
 rally also. When Browning sings pathetic- 
 ally of ' dear dead women — with such 
 hair too ! ' he continues: — 
 
 ' What 's become of all the gold 
 Used to hang and brush their bosoms ' — 
 
 not ' all the blue ' or '• all the brown,' 
 though some of us, it is true, are con- 
 demned to wear our hair brown or blue- 
 black. But such are only unhappy excep- 
 tions. Yellow or gold is the rule. The 
 bravest men and the fairest women have 
 had golden hair, and, we may add, in ref- 
 erence to another distinction of the colour 
 we are celebrating, golden hearts. Hair 
 at the present time is doing its best to con- 
 form to its normal conditions of colour. 
 Numerous instances might be adduced of
 
 92 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 its changing from black to gold, in obedi- 
 ence to chemical law. ' Peroxide of hy- 
 drogen ! ' says the cynic. ' Beauty ! ' says 
 the lover of art. 
 
 And it might be argued, in a world of 
 inevitable compromise, that the damage 
 done to the physical health and texture of 
 the hair thus playing the chameleon may 
 well be overbalanced by the happiness, 
 and consequent increased effectiveness, of 
 the person thus dyeing for the sake of 
 beauty. Thaumaturgists lay much stress 
 on the mystic influence of colours ; and 
 who knows but that if we were only 
 allowed to dye our hair what color we 
 chose, we might be different men and 
 women. Strange things are told of women 
 who have dyed their hair the color of 
 blood or of wine, and we know from 
 Christina Rossctti that golden hair is nego- 
 tiable in fairyland — 
 
 • " You have much gold upon your head," 
 
 They answered all together ; 
 
 " Buy from us with a golden curl." 
 
 Whether Laura could have done busi- 
 ness with the goblin merchantmen with 
 an oxidized curl is a difficult point, for
 
 PROSE FANCIES 93 
 
 fairies have sharp eyes ; and though it 
 be impossible for a mortal to tell the real 
 gold from the false gold hair, the fairies 
 may be able to do so, and might reject the 
 curl as counterfeit. 
 
 Again, if in the vegetable world green 
 almost universally colours the leaves, yel- 
 low^ has more to do with the flowers. The 
 flowers we love best are yellow : the cow- 
 slip, the daffodil, the crocus, the butter- 
 cup, half the daisy, the honey-suckle, and 
 the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has its 
 turn even with the leaves ; and what an 
 artist he shows himself when, in autumn, 
 he ' lays his fiery finger ' upon them, light- 
 ing up the forlorn woodland with splashes 
 — pure palette-colour of audacious gold ! 
 He hangs the mulberry with heart-shaped 
 yellow shields — which reminds one of 
 the heraldic importance of ' or ' — and he 
 lines the banks of the Seine with phan- 
 tasmal yellow poplars. And other leaves 
 still dearer to the heart are yellow like- 
 wise ; leaves of those sweet old poets 
 whose thoughts seem to have turned the 
 pages gold. Let us dream of this : a 
 maid with yellow hair, clad in a yellow
 
 94 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 gown, seated in a yellow room, at the 
 window a yellow sunset, in the grate a 
 yellow fire, at her side a yellow lamplight, 
 on her knee a Yellow Book. And the 
 letters we love best to read — when we 
 dare — are they not yellow, too ? No 
 doubt some disagreeable things are reported 
 of yellow. We have had the yellow- 
 fever, and we have had pea-soup. The 
 eyes of lions are said to be yellow, and the 
 ugliest cats — the cats that infest one's 
 garden — are always yellow. Some med- 
 icines are yellow, and no doubt there are 
 many other yellow disagreeables ; but we 
 prefer to dwell upon the yellow blessings. 
 I had almost forgotten that the gayest 
 wines are yellow. Nor has religion for- 
 gotten yellow. It is to be hoped yel- 
 low will not forget religion. The sacred 
 robe of the second greatest religion of the 
 world is yellow, ' the yellow robe ' of the 
 Buddhist friar ; and when the sacred har- 
 lots of Hindustan walk in lovely proces- 
 sion through the streets, they, too, like 
 the friars, are clad in yellow. Amber is 
 yellow ; so is the orange ; and so were 
 stage-coaches and many dashing things of
 
 PROSE FANCIES 95 
 
 the old time ; and pink is yellow by lamp- 
 light. But gold-mines, it has been proved, 
 are not so yellow as is popularly supposed. 
 Hymen's robe is Miltonically ' saffron,' 
 and the dearest petticoat in all literature 
 — not forgetting the ' tempestuous ' gar- 
 ment of Herrick's Julia — was ' yaller.' 
 Yes! 
 
 ' 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, 
 An 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Thee- 
 baw's Queen.' 
 
 Is it possible to say anything prettier 
 for yellow than that ?
 
 PROSE FANCIES — IX 
 
 LETTER TO AN UNSUCCESS- 
 FUL LITERARY MAN 
 
 ¥ 
 
 MY DEAR SIR: — I agree with 
 every word you say. You have 
 my entire sympathy. The world 
 is indeed hard, hard to the sad — particu- 
 larly hard to the unsuccessful. A sure 
 five hundred a year covers a multitude of 
 sorrows. It is ever an ill wind for the 
 shorn lamb. If it be true that nothing 
 succeeds like success, it is no less sadly 
 true that nothing fails like failure. And 
 when one thinks of it, it is only natural, 
 for every failure is an obstruction in the 
 stream of life. Metaphorical writers are 
 fond of saying that the successful ride to 
 success on the back of the failures. It is 
 true that many rise on stepping-stones of 
 their dead relations — but that is because 
 their relations have been financial suc- 
 cesses. In trut! , instead of the failure 
 making the fortune of the successful, it is 
 
 96
 
 PROSE FANCIES 97 
 
 just the reverse. A very successful man 
 would be the more successful were it 
 not for the failures — on whom he has 
 either to spend his money to support, or 
 his time to advise. The strong are said 
 to be impatient towards the weak — and 
 is it to be wondered at, in a world where 
 even the strongest need all their strength, 
 in a sea where the best swimmer needs all 
 his wind and muscle and skill to keep 
 afloat? If success is sometimes 'unfeel- 
 ing ' towards failure, failure is often unfair 
 to success. Of course, 'it is He that 
 hath made us and not we ourselves,' but 
 that is a text that cuts both ways ; and 
 when all is said and done, the failure de- 
 tracts from the force in the universe; he 
 is the clog on the wheel of fortune. To 
 say that the successful man benefits by 
 the failure of others is as true as it would 
 be to say that the ratepayer benefits by 
 the poor rates. You use the word ' charla- 
 tan' somewhat profusely, of several suc- 
 cessful writers, and no doubt you are right. 
 But you must remember that it is a favour- 
 ite charge against the gifted and the for- 
 tunate. Because we have failed by fair
 
 98 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 means, we are sure the other fellows have 
 succeeded by foul. And, moreover, one is 
 apt to forget how much talent is needed 
 to be a charlatan. Never look down 
 upon a charlatan. Courage, skill, per- 
 sonal force or charm, great knowledge of 
 human nature, dramatic instinct, and in- 
 dustry — few charlatans succeed (and no 
 one is called a charlatan till he does suc- 
 ceed, be his success as low or high as you 
 please) without possessing a majority of 
 these qualities; how many of which — it 
 would be interesting to know — do you 
 possess .'' 
 
 Indeed, it would seem to need more 
 gifts to be a rogue than an honest man, 
 and there is a sense in which every great 
 man may be described as a charlatan — 
 plus greatness ; greatness being an almost 
 indefinable quality, a quality, at any rate, 
 on which there is a bewildering diversity 
 of opinion. 
 
 You seem a little cross with publishers 
 and editors. They have not proved the 
 distinguished, brilliant, and sympathetic 
 beings you imagined them in your boyish 
 dreams. No doubt, publishers and editors
 
 PROSE FANCIES 99 
 
 enter hardly into the kingdom of heaven. 
 But then, you see, they don't care so 
 much about that ; they are much more 
 interested in the next election at certain 
 fashionable clubs. It is really a little hard 
 on them that they should suffer from the 
 ignorant misconception of the literary 
 amateur. It is only those who have had 
 no dealings with them who would be un- 
 fair enough to expect publishers or editors 
 to be literary men. They are business 
 men — business men par excellence — and 
 a good thing, too, for their papers and 
 their authors. You lament their merce- 
 nary view of life; but, judging by your 
 letter, even you are not disposed to regard 
 money as the root of all evil. 
 
 You cannot understand why you have 
 failed where others have succeeded. You 
 have far more Greek than Keats, more 
 history than Scott, and you know nineteen 
 languages — ten of them to speak. With 
 so many accomplishments, it must indeed 
 be hard to fail — though you do not seem 
 to have found it difficult. You have 
 travelled, too — have been twice round the 
 world, and have a thorough knowledge of
 
 100 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 the worst hotels. Certainly, it is singular. 
 Nevertheless, I must confess that the 
 dullest men I have ever met have been 
 professors of history ; the worst poets have 
 not only known Greek, but French as 
 well ; and, generally speaking, the most 
 tiresome of my acquaintances have more 
 degrees than I have Latin to name 
 them in. Alas ! it is not experience, or 
 travel, or language, but the use we make 
 of them, that makes literary success, 
 which, one may add, is particularly de- 
 pendent — perhaps not unnaturally — on 
 the use we make of language. A book may 
 be a book, although there is neither Latin 
 nor Greek, nor travel, nor experience — in 
 fact 'nothing' in it; and though, like my- 
 self, you may pay an Oxford professor a 
 thousand a year to correct your proofs, you 
 may still miss immortality. 
 
 To these intellectual and general equip- 
 ments you add goodness of heart, sincerity 
 of conviction, and martyrdom for your 
 opinions ; you are, it would seem, like 
 many others of us, the best fellow and 
 greatest man of your acquaintance. Permit 
 me to remind you that we are not talking
 
 PROSE FANCIES loi 
 
 of goodness of heart, of strength or beauty 
 of character, but of success, which is a thing 
 apart, a fine art in itself. 
 
 You confess that you are somewhat un- 
 practical: you expect others — hard-worked 
 journalists who never met you — to tell you 
 what to read, how to form your style ! and 
 how ' to get into the magazines.' You 
 are, you say, with something of pride, but 
 a poor business man. That is a pity, for 
 nearly every successful literary man of 
 the day, and particularly the novelists, 
 are excellent business men. Indeed, 
 the history of literature all round has 
 proved that the men who have been 
 masters of words have also been masters 
 of things — masters of the facts of life for 
 which those words stand. Many writers 
 have mismanaged their affairs from idleness 
 and indifference, but few from incapacity. 
 Leigh Hunt boasted that he could never 
 master the multiplication table. Perhaps 
 that accounts for his comparative failure 
 as a writer. Incompetence in one art is 
 far from being a guarantee of competency 
 in another, and a man is all the more 
 likely to make a name if he is able to
 
 I02 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 make a living — though, judging from 
 Coleridge, it seems a good plan to let 
 another hard-worked man support one's 
 wife and children. On the other hand, 
 though business faculty is a great deal, it 
 is not everything : for a man may be as 
 punctual and methodical as Southev, and 
 yet miss the prize of his high calling, or 
 as generally 'impossible' as Blake, and 
 yet win his place among the immortals. 
 
 In fact, after all, success in literature has 
 something to do with writing. In tem- 
 porary success, industry and business fac- 
 ulty, and an unworked field — be it Scot- 
 land, Ireland, or the Isle of Man (any 
 place but plain England!) — are the chief 
 factors. For that more lasting success 
 which we call fame other qualities are 
 needed, such qualities as imagination, 
 fancy, and magic and force in the use of 
 words. Can you honestly say, O beloved, 
 though tiresome, correspondent, that these 
 great gifts are yours ? Judging from your 
 letter — -but Heaven forbid that I should 
 be unkind ! For, need I say I love you 
 with a fellow-feeling ? Do you think that 
 you are the onl\' unappreciated genius on the
 
 PROSE FANCIES 103 
 
 planet — not to speak of all the other un- 
 appreciated geniuses on all the other planets. 
 Thank goodness, the postal arrangements 
 with the latter are as yet defective ! Others 
 there are with hearts as warm, minds as 
 profound, and style at least as attractive, 
 who languish in unmerited neglect. Mil- 
 tons inglorious indeed, though far from 
 mute. 
 
 Believe me, you are not alone. In 
 fact, there are so many like you that it 
 would be quite easy for you to find society 
 without worrying me. And for all of us, 
 there is the consolation that, though we 
 fail as writers, we may still succeed as 
 citizens, as husbands and fathers and 
 friends. As Whitman would say — be- 
 cause you are not Editor of The Times do 
 you give in that you are less than a man ? 
 There are poets that have never entered 
 into the Bodley Head, and great prose 
 writers who have never sat in an editorial 
 chair. Be satisfied with your heavenly 
 crowns, O you whining unsuccessful, and 
 leave to your inferiors the earthly five- 
 shilling pieces.
 
 PROSE FANC I ES — X 
 
 A POET IN THE 
 CITY 
 
 ¥ 
 
 ' In the midway of this our mortal life, 
 I found me in a gloomy wood, astray.' 
 
 I (AND when I say I, I must be 
 understood to be speaking dramatic- 
 ally) only venture into the City once 
 a year, for the very pleasant purpose of 
 drawing that twelve-pound-ten by which 
 the English nation, ever so generously 
 sensitive to the necessities, not to say 
 luxuries of the artist, endeavours to ex- 
 press its pride and delight in me. It 
 would be a very graceful exercise of grati- 
 tude for me here to stop and parenthesise 
 the reader on the subject of all that twelve- 
 pound-ten has been to me, how it has quite 
 changed the course of my life, given me 
 that long-desired opportunity of doing my 
 best work in peace, for which so often I 
 vainly sighed in Fleet Street, and even 
 allowed me an indulgence in minor luxuries 
 
 104
 
 PROSE FANCIES 105 
 
 which I could not have dreamed of enjoy- 
 ing before the days of that twelve-pound- 
 ten. Now not only peace and plenty, but 
 leisure and luxury are mine. There is 
 nothing goes so far as — Government 
 money. 
 
 Usually on these literally State occa- 
 sions, I drive up in state, that is, in a 
 hansom. There is only one other day in 
 the year on which I am so splendid, but 
 that is another beautiful story. It, too, is 
 a day and an hour too joyous to be ap- 
 proached otherwise than on winged wheels, 
 too stately to be approached in merely 
 pedestrian fashion. To go on foot to draw 
 one's pension seems a sort of slight on the 
 great nation that does one honour, as 
 though a Lord Mayor should make his 
 appearance in the procession in his office 
 coat. 
 
 So I say it is my custom to go gaily, 
 and withal stately, to meet my twelve- 
 pound-ten in a hansom. For many reasons 
 the occasion always seems something of an 
 adventure, and I confess I always feel a 
 little excited about it — indeed, to tell the 
 truth, a little nervous. As I glide along
 
 io6 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 in my state barge (which seems a much 
 more proper and impressive image for a 
 hansom than ' gondola,' with its remin- 
 iscences of Earl's Court) I feel like some 
 fragile country flower torn from its roots, 
 and bewildcringly hurried along upon the 
 turbid, swollen stream of London life. 
 
 The stream glides sweetly with a pleas- 
 ant trotting tinkle of bells by the green park- 
 side of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear 
 the sirens singing, and to see them combing 
 their gilded locks, on the yellow sands of 
 Piccadilly Circus — so called, no doubt, 
 from the number of horses and the skill of 
 their drivers. Here are the whirling pools 
 of pleasure, merry wheels of laughing 
 waters, where your hansom glides along 
 with a golden ease — it is only when you 
 enter the First Cataract of the Strand that 
 you become aware of the far-distant terri- 
 ble roar of the Falls ! They are yet nearly 
 two miles away, but already, like Niagara, 
 thou hearest the sound thereof — the fateful 
 sound of that human Niagara, where all 
 the great rivers of London converge : the 
 dark, strong floods surging out from the 
 gloomy fastnesses of the East End, the
 
 PROSE FANCIES 107 
 
 quick-running streams from the palaces of 
 the West, the East with its waggons, the 
 West with its hansoms, the four winds 
 with their omnibuses, the horses and car- 
 riages under the earth jetting up their 
 companies of grimy passengers, the very 
 air busy with a million errands. 
 
 You are in the rapids — metaphorically 
 speaking — as you crawl down Cheapside, 
 and here where the Bank of England and 
 the Mansion House rise sheer and awful 
 from, shall we say, this boiling cauldron, 
 this ^hell' of angry meeting waters — 
 Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, Queen 
 Victoria Street and Cheapside, each ' run- 
 ning,' again metaphorically, ' like a mill 
 race' — here in this wild maelstrom of 
 human life and human conveyances, here 
 is the true ' Niagara in London,' here are 
 the most wonderful falls in the world — 
 the London Falls. 
 
 *- Yes ! ' I said softly to myself, and I 
 could see the sly, sad smile on the face of 
 the dead poet, at the thought of whose 
 serene wisdom a silence like snow seemed 
 momentarily to cover up the turmoil — 
 'Yes!' I said softly, ' there is still the
 
 io8 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 same old crush at the corner of Fenchurch 
 street ! ' 
 
 By this time I had disbursed one of my 
 two annual cab fares, and was standing a 
 little forlorn at that very corner. It was 
 a March afternoon, bitter and gloomy; 
 lamps were already popping alight in a 
 desolate way, and the east wind whistled 
 mournfully through the ribs of the passers- 
 by. A very unflower-like man was de- 
 jectedly calling out ' daffadowndillies' close 
 by. The sound of the pretty old word, 
 thus quaintly spoken, brightened the air 
 better than the electric lights which sud- 
 denly shot rows of wintry moonlight along 
 the streets. I bought a bunch of the poor, 
 pinched flowers, and asked the man how 
 he came to call them ^ daffadowndillies.' 
 
 *■ D'vunshur,' he said, in anything but a 
 Devonshire accent, and then the east wind 
 took him and he was gone — doubtless to 
 a neighbouring tavern ; and no wonder, 
 poor soul. Flowers certainly fall into 
 strange hands here in London. 
 
 Well, it was nearing four, and if I 
 wanted a grateful country's twelve-pound- 
 ten, I must make haste ; so presently I
 
 PROSE FANCIES 109 
 
 found myself in a great hall, of which I 
 have no clearer impression than that there 
 were soft little lights all about me, and a 
 soft chime of falling gold, like the rippling 
 of Pactolus. I have a sort of idea, too, 
 of a great number of young men with 
 most beautiful moustaches, playing with 
 golden shovels; and as I thus stood 
 among the soft lights and listened to the 
 most beautiful sound in the world, I 
 thought that thus must Danae have felt 
 as she stood amid the falling shower. But 
 I took care to see that my twelve sover- 
 eigns and a half were right number and 
 weight for all that. 
 
 Once more in the street, I lingered 
 awhile to take a last look at the Falls. 
 What a masterful alien life it all seemed 
 to me. No single personality could hope 
 to stand alone amid all that stress of pon- 
 derous, bullying forces. Only public com- 
 panies, and such great impersonalities, could 
 hope to hold their own, to swim in such a 
 whirlpool — and even they, I had heard it 
 whispered far away in my quiet starlit gar- 
 ret, sometimes went down. ' How,' I 
 cried, ' would —
 
 no PROSE FANCIES 
 
 '. . my tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your 
 
 deeps and heights 
 Rush of suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery 
 clash of meteorites,* 
 
 again quoting poetry. 1 always quote 
 poetry in the City, as a protest — more- 
 over, it clears the air. 
 
 The more people buffeted against me 
 the more I felt the crushing sense of 
 almost cosmic forces. Everybody was so 
 plainly an atom in a public company, a 
 drop of water in a tyrannous stream of 
 human energy — companies that cared 
 nothing for their individual atoms, streams 
 that cared nothing for their component 
 drops; such atoms and drops, for the most 
 part, to be had for thirty shillings a week. 
 These people about me seemed no more 
 like individual men and women than indi- 
 vidual puffs in a mighty rushing wind, or 
 the notes in a great scheme of music, are 
 men and women — to the banker so many 
 pens with ears whereon to perch them, to 
 the capitalist so many *■ hands,' and to the 
 City man generally so many ' helpless 
 pieces of the game he pla-,s ' up there in 
 spidery nooks and corners of the City.
 
 PROSE FANCIES iii 
 
 As I listened to the throbbing of the 
 great human engines in the buildings 
 about me, a rising and a falling there 
 seemed as of those great steel-limbed 
 monsters, weird contortionists of metal, 
 that jet up and down, and writhe and 
 wrestle this way and that, behind the long 
 glass windows of great water-towers, or 
 toil like Vulcan in the bowels of mighty 
 ships. An expression of frenzy seems to 
 come up even from the dumb tossing steel, 
 sometimes it seems to be shaking great 
 knuckled fists at one and brandishing 
 threatening arms, as it strains and sweats 
 beneath the lash of the compulsive steam. 
 As one watches it, there seems something 
 of human agony about its panic-stricken 
 labours, and something like a sense of pity 
 surprises one — a sense of pity that any- 
 thing in the world should have to work 
 like that, even steel, even, as we say, 
 senseless steel. What, then, of these 
 great human engine-houses ! Will the 
 engines always consent to rise and fall, 
 night and day, like that ? or will there 
 some day be a mighty convulsion, and 
 this blind Samson of labour pull down the
 
 112 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 whole engine-house upon his oppressors? 
 Who knows? These are questions for 
 great politicians and thinkers to decide, 
 not for a poet, who is too much terrified 
 by such forces to be able calmly to esti- 
 mate and prophesy concerning them. 
 
 Yes! if you want to realise Tennyson's 
 picture of * one poor poet's scroll' ruling 
 the world, take your poet's scroll down to 
 Fenchurch street and try it there. Ah, 
 what a powerless little ' private interest' 
 seems poetry there, poetry 'whose action 
 is no stronger than a flower.' In days of 
 peace it ventures even into the morning 
 papers, but, let only a rumour of war be 
 heard, and it vanishes like a dream on 
 doomsday morning. A County Council 
 election passeth over it and it is gone. 
 
 Yet it was near this very spot that 
 Keats dug up the buried beauty of Greece, 
 lying hidden beneath F"insbury Pavement! 
 and in the deserted City churches great 
 dramatists lie about us. Mavbe I have 
 wronged the City — and at this thought I 
 remembered a little bookshop but a few 
 yards away, blossoming like a rose right 
 in the heart of the wilderness.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 113 
 
 Here, after all, in spite of all my whirl- 
 pools and engine-houses, was for me the 
 greatest danger in the City. Need I say, 
 therefore, that I promptly sought it, hov- 
 ered about it a moment — and entered. 
 How much of that grateful governmental 
 twelve-pound-ten came out alive, I dare 
 not tell my dearest friend. 
 
 At all events I came out somehow re- 
 assured, more rich in faith. There was a 
 might of poesy after all. There were 
 words in the little yellow-leaved garland, 
 nestling like a bird in my hand, that would 
 outlast the bank yonder, and outlive us all. 
 I held it up. How tiny it seemed, how 
 frail amid all this stone and iron. A mere 
 flower — a flower from the seventeenth 
 century — long-lived for a flower ! Yes, 
 an immortelle.
 
 PROSE FANCIES — XI 
 
 BROWN ROSES, 
 
 . T I 7'ELL, I never thought to see 
 
 Y Y this day, sir,' said Gibbs, with 
 
 something like tears in his 
 
 voice, as he reluctantly plied his scissors 
 
 upon Hyacinth Rondel's distinguished 
 
 curls. 
 
 ' Nor I, Gibbs — nor I ! ' said Rondel, 
 sadly, relapsing into silence again, with his 
 head meekly bent over the white sheet 
 spread to catch his shorn beauty. 
 
 'To think of the times, sir, that I have 
 dressed your head,' continued Gibbs, 
 whose grief bore so marked an emphasis, 
 ' and to think that after to-day . . .' 
 
 ' But you forget, my dear Gibbs, that I 
 shall now be a more constant customer 
 than ever ! ' 
 
 ' Ah, sir, but that will be different. It 
 will be mere machine-cutting, lawn-mow- 
 ing, steam-reaping — if you understand me 
 — there '11 be no pleasure in it — no artis- 
 tic pleasure, I mean.' 
 
 114
 
 PROSE FANCIES 115 
 
 * Yes, Gibbs, and you are an artist — I 
 have often told you that.' 
 
 ' Ah, sir, but I am coming to the con- 
 clusion that it is better not to be an artist 
 
 — better to be born just like every one 
 else. In these days one suffers too much. 
 Why, sir, I have n't in the whole of my 
 business six heads like yours, and I go on 
 cutting all the rest, week in and week out, 
 just for the pleasure of dressing those six 
 
 — and now there '11 only be five.' 
 
 * * * 
 
 .;),*' It looks like a winding-sheet,' mused 
 -Rondel presently, after a long silence, 
 broken only by the soft crunch and click 
 of the fatal scissors, as they feasted on the 
 beautiful brown silk. 
 
 ' It do, indeed, sir,' said Gibbs, with a 
 shudder, as another little globe of golden 
 brown rolled down into Rondel's lap. 
 
 ' Poor brown roses ! ' sighed the poet, 
 after another silence; 'they are just like 
 brown roses, are n't they, Gibbs ? ' 
 
 ' They are, indeed, sir.' 
 
 *■ Brown roses scattered over the wind- 
 ing-sheet of one's youth — eh, Gibbs ? ' 
 
 ' They are, indeed, sir ! '
 
 ii6 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ' That 's rather a pretty image, don't 
 you think, Gibbs ? ' 
 
 *■ Indeed, I do, sir ! ' 
 
 *■ Well, well, they have bloomed their 
 last ; and when Juliet's white hands come 
 seeking with their silver fingers white 
 maidens lost in the brown enchanted for- 
 est, there will not be a rose left for her to 
 gather.' 
 
 *■ Believe me, sir; I would more gladly 
 have cut off your head than your hair — 
 that is, figuratively speaking,' sobbed the 
 artist-in-hair-oils. 
 
 ' Yes, my head would hardly be missed, 
 you are quite right, Gibbs ; but my hair! 
 What will they do without it at first nights 
 and private views ? It was worth five 
 shillings a week to many a poor paragraph- 
 writer. Well, I must try and make up 
 for it by my beard ! ' 
 
 ' Your beard, sir ? ' exclaimed Gibbs in 
 horror. 
 
 ' Yes, Gibbs, for some years I have 
 been a Nazarene, that is, a Nazarite, for 
 the top half of my head ; now I am going 
 to change about, and be a Nazarite with 
 the lower. The razor has kissed my
 
 PROSE FANCIES 117 
 
 cheeks and my chin and the fluted column 
 of my throat for the last time.' 
 
 ' You cannot mean it, sir,' said Gibbs, 
 suspending his murderous task a moment. 
 
 ' It 's quite true, Gibbs.' 
 
 * Does she wish that, too, sir ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, that, too.' 
 
 *■ Well, sir, I have heard of men making 
 sacrifices for their wives, but of all the 
 cruel . . .' 
 
 *■ Please don't, Gibbs, it does no good. 
 And Mrs. Rondel's motive is a good one.' 
 
 ' Of course, sir. I cannot presume — 
 and yet, if it would n't be presuming, I 
 should like to know why you are making 
 this great, I may say this noble, sacrifice.' 
 
 'Well, Gibbs, we're old friends, and 
 I '11 tell you some day, but I hardly feel 
 up to it to-day.' 
 
 ' Of course not, sir — of course not ; it 's 
 only natural,' said Gibbs tenderly, while 
 the scissors once more took up the con- 
 versation.
 
 PROSE FANCIES — XII 
 
 THE DONKEY THAT LOVED 
 A STAR 
 
 ^^T^HAT is how the donkey tells his 
 
 J. love ! ' I said one day, with intent 
 to be funny, as the prolonged 
 love-whoop of a distant donkey was heard 
 in the land. 
 
 ' Do n't be too ready to laugh at don- 
 keys,' said my friend. 
 
 ' For,' he continued, * even donkeys 
 have their dreams. Perhaps, indeed, the 
 most beautiful dreams are dreamed by 
 donkeys.' 
 
 * Indeed,' I said, ' and now that I think 
 of it, I remember to have said that most 
 dreamers are donkeys, though I never ex- 
 pected so scientific a corroboration of a 
 fleeting jest.' 
 
 Now, my friend is an emment scientist 
 and poet in one, a serious combination, 
 and he took mv remarks with seriousness 
 at once scientific and poetic. 
 
 ii8
 
 PROSE FANCIES 119 
 
 * Yes,' he went on, *■ that is where you 
 clever people make a mistake. You think 
 that because a donkey has only two vowel 
 sounds wherewith to express his emotions, 
 he has no emotions to express. But let 
 me tell you, sir . . .' 
 
 But here we both burst out laughing — 
 *■ You Golden Ass ! ' I said, ' take a 
 munch of these roses ; perhaps they will 
 restore you.' 
 
 ' No,' he resumed, ' I am quite serious. 
 I have for many years past made a study 
 of donkeys — high-stepping critics call it 
 the study of Human Nature — however, 
 it 's the same thing — and I must say that 
 the more I study them the more I love 
 them. There is nothing so well worth 
 studying as the misunderstood, for the very 
 reason that everybody thinks he under- 
 stands it. Now, to take another instance, 
 most people think they have said the last 
 word on a goose when they have called it 
 "a goose!" — but let me tell you, 
 sir . . .' 
 
 But here again we burst out laughing — 
 
 'Dear goose of the golden eggs,' I said, 
 
 * pray leave to discourse on geese to-night
 
 120 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 — though lovely and pleasant would the 
 discourse be — to-night I am all agog for 
 donkeys.* 
 
 ' So be it,' said my friend, ' and if that 
 be so, I cannot do better than tell you the 
 story of the donkey that loved a star — 
 keeping for another day the no less fascin- 
 ating story of the goose that loved an 
 angel.' 
 
 By this time I was, appropriately, all ears. 
 
 ' Well,' he once more began, ' there 
 was once a donkey, quite an intimate 
 friend of mine, and I have no friend of 
 whom I am prouder, who was unpracti- 
 cally fond of looking up at the stars. He 
 could go a whole day without thistles, if 
 night would only bring him stars. Of 
 course he suffered no little from his fellow 
 donkeys for this curious passion of his. 
 They said well that it did not become 
 him, for indeed it was no little laugh- 
 able to see him gazing so sentimentally at 
 the remote and pitiless heavens. Donkeys 
 who belonged to Shakespeare societies re- 
 called the fate of Bottom, the donkey who 
 had loved a fairy, but our donkey paid 
 little heed. There is perhaps only one
 
 PROSE FANCIES 121 
 
 advantage in being a donkey — namely, a 
 hide impervious to criticism. In our 
 donkey's case it was rather a dream that 
 made him forget his hide — a dream that 
 drew up all the sensitiveness from every 
 part, from hoof, and hide, and ears, so that 
 all the feeling in his whole body was cen- 
 tred in his eyes and brain, and those, as 
 we have said, were centred on a star. He 
 took it for granted that his fellows should 
 sneer and kick out at him ; it was ever so 
 with genius among the donkeys, and he 
 had very soon grown used to these atten- 
 tions of his brethren, which were powerless 
 to withdraw his gaze from the star he 
 loved. For though he loved all the stars, 
 as every individual man loves all women, 
 there was one star he loved more than any 
 other; and standing one midnight among 
 his thistles, he prayed a prayer, a prayer 
 that some day it might be granted him to 
 carry that star upon his back, — which, 
 he recalled, had been sanctified by the 
 holy sign, — were it but for ever so short 
 a journey. Just to carry it a little way, 
 and then to die. This to him was a 
 dream beyond the dreams of donkeys.
 
 122 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ' Now, one night,' continued my friend, 
 taking breath for himself and me, 'our 
 poor donkey looked up to the sky, and lo ! 
 the star was nowhere to be seen. He 
 had heard it said that stars sometimes fall. 
 Evidently his star had fallen. Fallen ! 
 but what if it had fallen upon the earth ? 
 Being a donkey, the wildest dreams seemed 
 possible to him. And, strange as it may 
 seem, there came a day when a poet came 
 to his master and bought our donkey to 
 carry his little child. Now, the very first 
 day he had her upon his back, the donkey 
 knew that his prayer had been answered, 
 and that the little swaddled babe he carried 
 was the star he had prayed for. And, 
 indeed, so it was; for so long as donkeys 
 ask no more than to fetch and carry for 
 their beloved, they may be sure of beauty 
 upon their backs. Now, so long as this 
 little girl that was a star remained a little 
 girl, our donkey was happy. For many 
 pretty years she would kiss his ugly muzzle 
 and feed his mouth with sugar — and thus 
 our donkey's thoughts sweetened day by 
 day, till from a natural pessimist he blos- 
 somed into a perfectly absurd optimist, and
 
 PROSE FANCIES 123 
 
 dreamed the donkiest of dreams. But, 
 one day, as he carried the girl who was 
 really a star through the spring lanes, a 
 young man walked beside her, and though 
 our donkey thought very little of his talk 
 
 — in fact, felt his plain "hee-haw" to be 
 worth all its smart chirping and twittering 
 
 — yet it evidently pleased the maiden. It 
 included quite a number of vowel-sounds, 
 though if the maiden had only known, it 
 did n't mean half so much as the donkey's 
 plain monotonous declaration. 
 
 ' Well, our donkey soon began to realise 
 that his dream was nearing its end ; and, 
 indeed, one day his little mistress came 
 bringing him the sweetest of kisses, the 
 very best sugar in the very best shops, but 
 for all that our donkey knew that it meant 
 good-bye. It is the charming manner of 
 English girls to be at their sweetest when 
 they say good-bye, 
 
 ' Our dreamer-donkey went into exile 
 as servant to a woodcutter, and his life was 
 lenient if dull, for the woodcutter had no 
 sticks to waste upon his back ; and next 
 day his young mistress who was once a 
 star took a pony for her love, whom some
 
 124 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 time after she discarded for a talented 
 hunter, and, one fine day, Hke many of her 
 sex, she pitched her affections upon a 
 man — he too being a talented hunter. To 
 their wedding came all the countryside. 
 And with the countryside came the don- 
 key. He carried a great bundle of fire- 
 wood for the servants' hall, and as he waited 
 outside, gazing up at his old loves the stars, 
 while his master drank deeper and deeper 
 within, he revolved many thoughts. But 
 he is only known to have made one remark 
 — in the nature, one may think, of a grim 
 jest — 
 
 *■ " After all !' he was heard to say, " she 
 has married a donkey, after all." 
 
 ' No doubt it was feeble ; but then our 
 donkey was growing old and bitter, and 
 hope deferred had made him a cynic'
 
 PROSE FANCIES— XIII 
 
 ON LOVING ON E * S 
 ENEMIES 
 
 ¥ 
 
 LIKE all people who live apart from 
 it, the Founder of the Christian re- 
 ligion was possessed of a profound 
 knowledge of the world. As, according 
 to che proverb, the woodlander sees noth- 
 ing of the wood for its trees, so those 
 who live in the world know nothing of 
 it. They know its gaudy, glittering sur- 
 face, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and the 
 paste-diamonds with which it bedecks 
 itself; they know its music halls and its 
 night clubs, its Piccadillies and its politics, 
 its restaurants and its salons ; but of the 
 bad — or good? — heart of it all they 
 know nothing. In more meanings than 
 one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner ; 
 and Christ certainly knew as well as saved 
 the sinner. 
 
 But none of His precepts show a truer 
 knowledge of life and its conditions than 
 
 125
 
 126 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 His commandment that wc should love 
 our enemies. He realised — can we doubt ? 
 — that without enemies the Church He 
 bade His followers build could not hope 
 to be established. He knew that the 
 spiritual fire he strove to kindle would 
 spread but little unless the four winds of 
 the world blew against it. Well, indeed, 
 may the Christian Church love itsenemies, 
 for it is they who have made it. 
 
 Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that 
 wants to get on, there is nothing like a few 
 hearty, zealous enemies. Most of us 
 would never be heard of if it were not for 
 our enemies. The unsuccessful man 
 counts up his friends, but the successful man 
 numbers his enemies. A friend of mine 
 was lamenting, the other day, that he 
 could not find twelve people to disbelieve 
 in him. He had been seeking them for 
 years, he sighed, and could not get be- 
 yond eleven. But, even so, with only 
 eleven he was a very successful man. In 
 these kind-hearted days enemies are be- 
 coming so rare that one has to go out of 
 one's way to make them. The true in- 
 terpretation, therefore, of the easiest of
 
 PROSE FANCIES 127 
 
 the commandments is — make your ene- 
 mies, and your enemies will make you. 
 
 So soon as the armed men begin to 
 spring up in our fields, we may be sure 
 that we have not sown in vain. 
 
 Properly understood, an enemy is but a 
 negative embodiment of our personalities 
 or ideas. He is an involuntary witness to 
 our vitality. Much as he despises us, 
 greatly as he may injure us, he is none the 
 less a creature of our making:. It was we 
 who put into him the breath of his malig- 
 nity, and inspired the activity of his malice. 
 Therefore, with his very existence so 
 tremendous a tribute, we can afford to 
 smile at his self-conscious disclaimers of 
 our significance. Though he slay us, we 
 made him — to ' make an enemy,' is not 
 that the phrase ? 
 
 Indeed, the fact that he is our enemy is 
 his one raison d^ctre. That alone should 
 make us charitable to him. Live and let 
 live. Without us our enemy has no oc- 
 cupation, for to hate us is his profession. 
 Think of his wives and families ! 
 
 The friendship of the little for the great 
 is an old-established profession ; there is but
 
 128 PROSE FANCI?:S 
 
 one older — namely, the hatred of the little 
 for the great ; and, though it is perhaps 
 less officially recognized, it is without 
 doubt the more lucrative. It is one of 
 the shortest roads to fame. Why is the 
 name of Pontius Pilate an uneasy ghost of 
 history ? Think what fame it would have 
 meant to be an enemy of Socrates or 
 Shakespeare ! Blackwood^ s Magazine and 
 The Quarterly Review only survive to-day 
 because they once did their best to strangle 
 the genius of Keats and Tennyson. Two 
 or three journals of our own time, by the 
 same unfailing method, seek that circula- 
 tion from posterity which is denied them in 
 the present. 
 
 This is particularly true in literature, 
 where the literary enemy is as organized a 
 tradesman as the literary agent. Like the 
 literary agent, he naturally does his best to 
 secure the biggest men. No doubt the 
 time will come when the literary cut-throat 
 — shall we call him ? — will publish dainty 
 little books of testimonials from authors, 
 full of effusive gratitude for the manner in 
 which they have been slashed and blud- 
 geoned into fame. ' Butcher to Mr. Grant
 
 PROSE FANCIES 129 
 
 Allen ' may then become a familiar legend 
 over literary shop-fronts : — 
 
 'Ah ! did you stab at Shelley's heart 
 
 With silly sneer and cruel lie ? 
 And Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats, 
 To murder did you nobly try ? 
 
 You failed, 'tis true ; but what of that ? 
 
 The world remembers still your name — 
 'Tis fame, /or yoti, to be the cur 
 
 That barks behind the heels of Fame. ' 
 
 Any one who is fortunate enough to 
 have enemies will know that all this is far 
 from being fanciful. If one's enemies 
 have any other raison d'etre beyond the 
 fact of their being our enemies — what is 
 it .? They are neither beautiful nor clever, 
 wise nor good, famous, nor, indeed, passa- 
 bly distinguished. Were they any of 
 these, they would not have taken to so 
 humble a means of getting their living. 
 Instead of being our enemies, they could 
 then have afforded to employ enemies on 
 their own account. Who, indeed, are our 
 enemies? Broadly speaking, they are all 
 those people who lack what we possess. 
 
 If you are rich, every poor man is 
 necessarily your enemy. If you are beau-
 
 130 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 tiful, the great democracy of the plain and 
 ugly will mock you in the streets. 
 
 It will be the same with everything you 
 possess. The brainless will never forgive 
 you for possessing brains, the weak will 
 hate you for your strength, and the evil for 
 your good heart. If you can write, all 
 the bad writers are at once your foes. If 
 you can paint, the bad painters will talk 
 you down. But more than any talent 
 or charm you may possess, the pearl of 
 price for which you will be most bitterly 
 hated will be your success. You can be 
 the most wonderful person that ever ex- 
 isted so long as you don't succeed, and 
 nobody will mind. ' It is the sunshine,' 
 says some one, 'that brings out the adder.' 
 So powerful, indeed, is success that it has 
 been known to turn a friend into a foe. 
 Those, then, who wish to engage a few 
 trusty enemies out of place need only 
 advertise among the unsuccessful. 
 
 P,S. — For one service we should be 
 particularly thankful to our enemies — they 
 save us so much in stimulants. Their 
 unbelief so helps our belief, their nega- 
 tives make us so positive.
 
 PROSE FANCIES— XIV 
 
 THE DRAMATIC ART 
 OF LIFE. 
 
 IT is a curious truth that, whereas in 
 every other art deliberate choice of 
 
 method and careful calculation of effect 
 are expected from the artist, in the greatest 
 and most difficult art of all, the art of life, 
 this is not so. In literature, painting, or 
 sculpture you first evolve your conception, 
 and then after long study of it, as it 
 glows and shimmers in your imagination, 
 you set about the reverent selection of 
 that form which shall be its most truthful 
 incarnation, in words, in paint, in marble. 
 Now life, as has been said many times, is 
 an art too. Sententious morality from 
 time past has told us that we are each 
 given a part to play, evidently implying, 
 with involuntary cynicism, that the art of 
 life is — the art of acting. 
 
 As with the actor, we are each given 
 a certain dramatic conception for the ex-
 
 132 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 pression of which we have precisely the 
 same artistic materials — namely, our own 
 bodies, sometimes including heart and 
 brains. One has often heard the com- 
 plaint of a certain actor that he acts him- 
 self. On the metaphorical stage of life 
 the complaint and the implied demand are 
 just the reverse. How much more in- 
 teresting life would be if only more people 
 had the courage and skill to act themselves, 
 instead of abjectly understudying some one 
 else. Of course, there are supers on the 
 stage of life as on the real stage. It is 
 proper that these should dress and speak 
 and think alike. These one courteously 
 excepts from the generalisation that the 
 composer of the play, as Marcus Aurelius 
 calls him, has given each of us a certain 
 part to play — that part simply oneself: a 
 part, need one say, by no means as easy as 
 it seems ; a part most difficult to study, 
 and requiring daily rehearsal. So difficult 
 is it, indeed, that most people throw up the 
 part, and join the ranks of the supers — 
 who, curiously enough, are paid much 
 more handsomely than the principals. 
 They enter one of the learned or idle pro-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 133 
 
 fesslons, join the army or take to trade, 
 and so speedily rid themselves of the irk- 
 some necessity of being anything more 
 individual than ' the learned counsel/ 
 'the learned judge,' 'my lord bishop,' or 
 'the colonel,' names impersonal in applica- 
 tion as the dignity of 'Pharaoh,' v^^hereof 
 the name and not the man was alone im- 
 portant. Henceforth they are the Church, 
 the Law, the Army, the City, or that 
 vaguer profession, Society. Entering one 
 of these, they become as lost to the really 
 living w^orld as the monk who voluntarily 
 surrenders all will and character of his 
 own at the threshold of his monastery : 
 bricks in a prison wall, privates in the line, 
 peas in a row. But, as I say, these are 
 the parts that pay. For playing the others, 
 indeed, you are not paid, but expected to 
 pay — dearly. 
 
 It is full time we turned to those on 
 whom falls the burden of those real parts. 
 Such, when quite young, if they be con- 
 scientious artists, will carefully consider 
 themselves, their gifts and possibilities, 
 study to discover their artistic ratson d'etre 
 and how best to fulfil it. He or she will
 
 134 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 say : Here am I, a creature of great gifts 
 and exquisite sensibilities, drawn by great 
 dreams, and vibrating to great emotions; 
 yet this potent and exquisite self is as yet, 
 I know, but unwrought material of the 
 perfect work of art it is intended that I 
 should make of it — but the marble where- 
 from, with patient chisel, I must liberate 
 the perfect and triumphant Me ! As a 
 poet listening with trembling ear to the 
 voice of his inspiration, so I tremulously 
 ask myself — what is the divine concep- 
 tion that is to become embodied in me, 
 what is the divine meaning of Me? How 
 best shall I express it in look, in word, in 
 deed, till my outer self becomes the truth- 
 ful symbol of my inner self — till, in fact, 
 I have successfully placed the best of my- 
 self on the outside — for others besides 
 myself to see, and know and love ? 
 
 What is my part, and how am I to 
 play it ? 
 
 Returning to the latter image, there are 
 two difficulties that beset one in playing a 
 part on the stage of life, right at the out- 
 set. You are not allowed to 'look ' it, or 
 'dress' it! What would an actor think,
 
 PROSE FANCIES 135 
 
 who, asked to play Hamlet, found that he 
 would be expected to play it without make- 
 up and in nineteenth century costume ? 
 Yet many of us are in a like dilemma with 
 similar parts. Actors and audience must 
 all wear the same drab clothes and the 
 same immobile expression. It is in vain 
 you protest that you do not really belong 
 to this absurd and vulgar nineteenth cen- 
 tury, that you have been spirited into it 
 by a cruel mistake, that you really belong 
 to mediaeval Florence, to Elizabethan, 
 Caroline, or at latest Queen Anne Eng- 
 land, and that you would like to be allowed 
 to look and dress as like it as possible. It 
 is no use; if you dare to look or dress like 
 anything but your own tradesmen — and 
 other critics — it is at your peril. If you 
 are beautiful you are expected to disguise 
 a fact that is an open insult to every other 
 person you look at ; and you must, as a 
 general rule, never look, wear, feel, or say 
 what everybody else is not also looking, 
 wearing, feeling, or saying. 
 
 Thus you get some hint of the difficulty 
 of playing the part of yourself on this 
 stage of life.
 
 136 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 In these matters of dressing and look- 
 ing your part musicians seemed granted an 
 immunity denied to all their fellow-artists. 
 Perhaps it is taken for granted that the 
 musician is a fool — the British public is 
 so intuitive. Yet it takes the same view 
 of the poet — without allowing him a like 
 immunity. And, by the way, what a fine 
 conception of his part had Tennyson : of 
 the dignity, the mystery, the picturesque- 
 ness of it. Tennyson would have felt it 
 an artistic crime to look like his publisher; 
 yet what poet is there left us to-day half 
 so distinguished-looking as his publisher? 
 
 Indeed, curiously enough, among no 
 set of men does the desire to look as com- 
 monplace as the rest of the world seem so 
 strong as among men of letters. Perhaps 
 it is out of consideration for the rest of 
 the world ; but whatever the reason, im- 
 mobility of expression and general medi- 
 ocrity of style are more characteristic of 
 them at present then even the military. 
 
 It is surely a strange paradox that we 
 should pride ourselves on schooling to 
 foolish insensibility, on eliminating from 
 them every mark of individual character,
 
 PROSE FANCIES 137 
 
 the faces that were intended subtly and 
 eloquently to image our moods — to look 
 glad when we are glad, sorry when we are 
 sorry, angry in anger, and lovely in love. 
 
 The impassivity of the modern young 
 man is indeed a weird and wonderful 
 thing. Is it a mark to hide from us the 
 appalling sins he none the less openly 
 affects? Is it meant to conceal that once 
 in his life he paid a wild visit to 'The 
 Empire' — by kind indulgence of the 
 County Council ? that he once chucked 
 a barmaid under the chin, that he once 
 nearly got drunk, that he once spoke to a 
 young lady he did not know — and then 
 ran away? 
 
 One sighs for the young men of the 
 days of Gautier and Hugo, the young men 
 with red waistcoats who made asses of 
 themselves at first nights and on the barri- 
 cades, young men with romance in their 
 hearts and passion in their blood, fear- 
 lessly sentimental and picturesquely every- 
 thing. 
 
 The lover then was not ashamed that 
 you should catch radiant glimpses of his 
 love in his eyes — nay ! if you smiled
 
 138 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 kindly on him, he would take you by the 
 arm and insist on you breaking a bottle 
 with him in honour of his mistress. Joy 
 and sorrow then wore their appropriate 
 colours, according, so to say, to the 
 natural sumptuary laws of the emotions — 
 one of which is that the right place for the 
 heart is the sleeve. 
 
 It is the duty of those who are great, or 
 to whom great destinies of joy or sorrow 
 have been dealt, to wear their distinctions 
 for the world to see. It is good for the 
 world, which, in its crude way, indicates 
 the rudiments of this dramatic art of life, 
 when it decrees that the bride shall walk 
 radiant in orange blossom, and the mourner 
 sadden our streets with black — symbols 
 ever passing before us of the moving vicis- 
 situdes of life. 
 
 The mourner cannot always be sad, or 
 the bride merry ; the bride indeed some- 
 times weeps at the altar, and the mourner 
 laughs a savage cynical laugh at the grave ; 
 but for those moments in which they 
 awhile forget parts more important than 
 themselves, the tailor and the dressmaker 
 have provided symbolical garments, just as
 
 PROSE FANCIES 139 
 
 military decorations have been provided 
 for heroes without the gift of looking 
 heroic, and sacerdotal vestments for the 
 priest, who, like a policeman, is not 
 always on duty. 
 
 In playing his part the conscientious art- 
 ist in life, like any other actor, must often 
 seem to feel more than he really feels at a 
 given moment, say more than he means. 
 In this he is far from being insincere — 
 though he must make up his mind to be 
 accused daily of insincerity and affecta- 
 tion. On the contrary, it will be his very 
 sincerity that necessitates his make-believe. 
 With his great part ever before him in its 
 inspiring completeness, he must be care- 
 ful to allow no merely personal accident 
 of momentary feeling or action to jeopard- 
 ize the general effect. There are mo- 
 ments, for example, when a really true 
 lover, owing to such masterful natural 
 facts as indigestion, a cold, or extreme 
 sleepiness, is unable to feel all that he 
 knows he really feels. To 'tell the truth,' 
 as it is called, under such circumstances, 
 would simply be a most dangerous form of 
 lying. There is no duty we owe to truth
 
 140 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 more imperative than that of lying stoutly 
 on occasion — for, indeed, there is often no 
 other way of conveying the whole truth 
 than by telling the part-lie. 
 
 A watchful sincerity to our great con- 
 ception of ourselves is the first and last 
 condition of our creating that finest work 
 of art — a per.'^onality; for a personality, 
 like a poet, is not only born, but made.
 
 PROSE FANCIES— XV 
 
 THE ARBITRARY CLASSIFI- 
 CATION OF SEX. 
 
 IN an essay on Vauvenargues Mr. John 
 Morley speaks with characteristic caus- 
 ticity of those epigrammatists ' who 
 persist in thinking of man and woman as 
 two different species,' and who make ver- 
 bal capital out of the fancied distinction in 
 the form of smart epigrams beginning '■Les 
 femmes.^ It is one of Shakespeare's car- 
 dinal characteristics that he understood 
 woman. Mr. Meredith's fame as a novel- 
 ist is largely due to the fact that he, too, 
 understands women. The one spot on the 
 sun of Robert Louis Stevenson's fame, so 
 we are told, is that he could never draw a 
 woman. His capacity for drawing men 
 counted for nothing, apparently, beside 
 this failure. Evidently the Sphinx has not 
 the face of a woman for nothing. That 
 is why no one has read her riddle, trans- 
 lated her mystic smile. Yet many people 
 
 141
 
 142 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 smile mysteriously, without any profound 
 meanings behind their smile, with no other 
 reason than a desire to mystify. Perhaps 
 the Sphinx smiles to herself just for the 
 fun of seeing us take her smile so seriously. 
 And surely women must so smile as they 
 hear their psychology so gravely discussed. 
 Of course, the superstition is invaluable to 
 them, and it is only natural that they 
 should make the most of it. Man is sup- 
 posed to be a complete ignoramus in re- 
 gard to all the specialised female * depart- 
 ments ' — from the supreme mystery of 
 the female heart to the humble domestic 
 mysteries of a household. Similarly, men 
 are supposed to have no taste in women's 
 dress, yet for whom do women clothe 
 themselves in the rainbow and the sea- 
 foam, if not to please men ? And was not 
 the high-priest of that delicious and fas- 
 cinating mystery a man — if it be proper to 
 call the late M. Worth a man — as the 
 best cooks are men, and the best waiters .'' 
 It would seem to be assumed from all 
 this mystification that men are beings clear 
 as daylight, both to themselves and to 
 women. Poor, simple, manageable souls,
 
 PROSE FANCIES 143 
 
 their wants are easily satisfied, their psy- 
 chology — which, it is implied, differs little 
 from their physiology — long since mapped 
 out. 
 
 It may be so, but it is the opinion of 
 some that men's simplicity is no less a 
 fiction than women's mysterious complex- 
 ity, and that human character is made up 
 of much the same qualities in men and 
 women, irrespective of a merely rudimen- 
 tary sexual distinction, which has, of 
 course, its proper importance, and which 
 the present writer would be the last to wish 
 away. From that quaint distinction of 
 sex springs, of course, all that makes life 
 in the smallest degree worth living, from 
 great religions to tiny flowers. Love and 
 beauty and poetry, Shakespeare's plays, 
 Burne-Jones's pictures, and Wagner's 
 operas — all such moving expressions of 
 human life, as science has shown us, spring 
 from the all-important fact that ' male 
 and female created He them.' 
 
 This everybody knows, and few are fool 
 enough to deny. Many people, however, 
 confuse this organic distinction of sex with 
 its time-worn conventional symbols ; just
 
 144 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 as religion is commonly confused with its 
 external rites and ceremonies. The com- 
 parison naturally continues itself further; 
 for, as in religion, so soon as some tradi- 
 tional garment of the faith has become out- 
 worn or otherwise unsuitable, and the pro- 
 posal is made to dispense with or substitute 
 it, an outcrv immediately is raised that re- 
 ligion itself is in danger — so with sex, no 
 sooner does one or the other sex propose 
 to discard its arbitrary conventional char- 
 acteristics, or to supplement them by oth- 
 ers borrowed from its fellow-sex, than an 
 outcry immediately is raised that sex itself 
 is in danger. 
 
 Sex — the most potent force in the uni- 
 verse — in danger because women wear 
 knickerbockers instead of petticoats, or 
 military men take to corsets and cosmetics ! 
 
 That parallel with religion may be pur- 
 sued profitably one step further. In 
 religion, the conventional test of your 
 faith is, not how you live, not in your 
 kindness of heart or purity of mind, but 
 how you believe — in the Trinity, in the 
 Atonement ; and do you turn to the East 
 during the recital of the Apostles' Creed ?
 
 PROSE FANCIES 145 
 
 These and such, as every one knows, are 
 the vital matters of religion. And it is 
 even so with sex. You are not asked for 
 the realities of manliness or womanliness, 
 but for the shadows, the arbitrary exter- 
 nalities, the fashions of which change from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 To be truly womanly, you must never 
 wear your hair short ; to be truly manly, 
 you must never wear it long. To be 
 truly womanly, you must dress as daintily 
 as possible, however uncomfortably ; to be 
 truly manly, you must wear the most hide- 
 ous gear ever invented by the servility of 
 tailors — a strange succession of cylinders 
 from head to heel ; cylinder on head, 
 cylinder round your body, cylinders on 
 arms and cylinders on legs. To be truly 
 womanly, you must be shrinking and cling- 
 ing in manner and trivial in conversation, 
 you must have no ideas and rejoice that 
 you wish for none ; you must thank Heaven 
 that you have never ridden a bicycle or 
 smoked a cigarette ; and you must be 
 prepared to do a thousand other absurd 
 and ridiculous things. To be truly manly, 
 you must be and do the opposite of all
 
 146 PROSE P^ A N C I E S 
 
 these things, with this exception — that 
 with you the possession of ideas is optional. 
 The finest specimens of British manhood 
 are without ideas, but that, I say, is, gen- 
 erally speaking, a matter for yourself. It 
 is indeed the only matter in which you 
 have any choice. More important matters, 
 such as the cut of your clothes and hair, 
 the shape of vour face, the length of your 
 moustache and the pattern of your cane — 
 all these are very properly regulated for 
 you by laws of fashion, which you could 
 never dream of breaking. You may break 
 every moral law there is — or rather, was 
 — and still remain a man. You may be a 
 bully, a cad, a coward and a fool, in the 
 poor heart and brains of you ; but so long 
 as you wear the mock regimentals of con- 
 temporary manhood, and are above all 
 things plain and undistinguished enough, 
 your reputation for manhood will be se- 
 cure. There is nothing so dangerous to a 
 reputation for manhood as brains or beauty. 
 In short, to be a true woman you have 
 onlv to be pretty and an idiot, and to be a 
 true man you have only to be brutal and 
 a fool.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 147 
 
 From these misconceptions of manliness 
 and womanliness, these superstitions of 
 sex, many curious confusions have come 
 about. The, so to say, professional differ- 
 entiation between the sexes had at one 
 time gone so far that men were credited 
 with the entire monopoly of a certain set 
 of human qualities, and women with the 
 monopoly of a certain other set of human 
 qualities ; yet every one of these are qual- 
 ities which one would have thought were 
 proper to, and necessary for, all human 
 beings alike, male and female. 
 
 In a dictionary of a date (1856) when 
 everything on earth and in heaven was 
 settled and written in penny cyclopedias 
 and books of deportment, I find these de- 
 licious definitions : — 
 
 Manly : becoming a man ; firm ; brave ; 
 undaunted \ dignified ; noble ; stately ; not 
 boyish or womanish. 
 
 Womanly : becoming a woman ; femi- 
 nine ; as womanly behaviour. 
 
 Under Woman we find the adjectives 
 — soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, kind, 
 civil, obliging, humane, tender, timorous, 
 modest.
 
 148 P R () S E FANCIES 
 
 Who can doubt that the dictionary 
 maker defined and distributed his adjec- 
 tives aright for the year 1856? Since 
 then, however, many alarming heresies 
 have taken root in our land, and some are 
 heard to declare that both these sets of 
 adjectives apply to men and women alike, 
 and are, in fact, necessities of any decent 
 human outfit. Otherwise the conclusion 
 is obvious, that no one desirous of the 
 adjective 'manly' must ever be — soft, 
 mild, pitiful and flexible, kind, civil, 
 obliging, humane, tender, timorous, or 
 modest ; and no one desirous of the ad- 
 jective 'womanly' — be firm, brave, un- 
 daunted, dignified, noble, or stately. 
 
 But surely the essentials of 'manliness * 
 and ' womanliness * belong to man and 
 woman alike — the externals are purely 
 artistic considerations, and subject to the 
 vagaries of fashion. In art no one would 
 think of allowing fashion any serious 
 artistic opinion. It is usually the art 
 which is out of fashion that is most truly 
 art. Similarly, fashions in manliness or 
 womanliness have nothing to do with real 
 manliness or womanliness. Moreover,
 
 PROSE FANCIES 149 
 
 the adjectives ' manly ' or ' womanly,' ap- 
 plied to works of art, or the artistic sur- 
 faces of men and women, are irrelevant — 
 that is to say, impertinent. You have 
 no right to ask a poem or a picture to look 
 manly or womanly, any more than you have 
 any right to ask a man or a woman to look 
 manly or womanly. There is no such 
 thing as looking manly or womanly. There 
 is looking beautiful or ugly, distinguished 
 or commonplace, individual or insignifi- 
 cant. The one law of externals is beauty 
 in all its various manifestations. To ask 
 the sex of a beautiful person is as absurd 
 as it would be to ask the publisher the 
 sex of a beautiful book. Such questions 
 are for midwives and doctors. 
 
 It was once the fashion for heroes to 
 shed tears on the smallest occasion, and 
 it does not appear that they fought the 
 worse for it ; some of the firmest, bravest, 
 most undaunted, most dignified, most no- 
 ble, most stately human beings have been 
 women ; as some of the softest, mildest, 
 most pitiful and flexible, most kind, civil, 
 obliging, humane, tender, timorous and 
 modest human beings have been men.
 
 ISO PROSE FANCIES 
 
 Indeed, some of the bravest men that ever 
 trod this planet have worn corsets, and it 
 needs more courage nowadays for a man 
 to wear his hair long than to machine-gun 
 a whole African nation. Moreover, quite 
 the nicest women one knows ride bicycles 
 — in the rational costume.
 
 PROSE FANCIES — XVI 
 
 THE FALLACY OF 
 NATION 
 
 IT IS, I am given to understand, a 
 familiar axiom of mathematics that 
 no number of ciphers placed in front 
 of significant units, or tens or hun- 
 dreds of units, adds in the smallest de- 
 gree to the numerical value of those 
 units. The figure one becomes of no 
 more importance however many noughts 
 are marshalled in front of it — though, in- 
 deed, in the mathematics of human nature 
 this is not so. Is not a man or vi^oman 
 considered great in proportion to the num- 
 ber of ciphers that walk in front of him, 
 from a humble brace of domestics to 
 guards of honour and imperial armies ? 
 
 A parallel profound truth of mathemat- 
 ics is, that a nought, however many times 
 it be multiplied, remains nought ; but 
 again we find the reverse obtain in the 
 mathematics of human nature. One 
 
 151
 
 152 PROSK FANCIES 
 
 might have supposed that the result of one 
 nobody multiplied even fifty million times 
 would still be nobodv. However, such is 
 far from being the case. Fifty million 
 nobodies make — a nation. Of course, 
 there is no need for so many. I am reck- 
 oning as a British subject, and speak of 
 fifty million merely as an illustration of 
 the general fact that it is the multiplication 
 of nobodies that makes a nation. ' Increase 
 and multiply ' was, it will be remembered, 
 the recipe for the Jewish nation. 
 
 Nobodies of the same colour, tongue, 
 and prejudices have but to congregate to- 
 gether in a crowd sufficiently big for other 
 similar crowds to recognise them, and then 
 thev are given a name of their own, and 
 become recognised as a nation — one of 
 the ' Great Powers.' 
 
 Beyond those differences in colour, 
 tongue, and prejudices, there is really no 
 difference between the component units — 
 or rather ciphers — of all these several na- 
 tional crowds. You have seen a proces- 
 sion of various trades-unions filing toward 
 Hyde Park, each section with its particu- 
 lar banner of a strange device : ' the United
 
 PROSE FANCIES 153 
 
 Guild of Paperhangers,' ' the Ancient 
 Order of Plumbers,' and so on. And you 
 may have marvelled to notice hou^ alike 
 the members of the various carefully dif- 
 ferentiated companies were. So to say, 
 they each and all might have been plumb- 
 ers ; and you could n't help feeling that it 
 would n't have mattered much if some of 
 the paperhangers had by mistake got walk- 
 ing amongst the plumbers, or vice versa. 
 
 So the great trades-unions of the world 
 file past, one with the odd word ' Russia ' 
 on its banner ; another boasting itself 
 ^Germany' — this with a particularly 
 bumptious and self-important young man 
 walking backward in front of it, in the 
 manner of a Salvation Army captain, and 
 imperiously waving an iron wand ; still 
 another ' nation ' calling itself ' France ' ; 
 and yet another, boasting the biggest brass 
 band, and called ' England.' Other 
 smaller bodies of nobodies, that is, smaller 
 nations, file past with humbler tread — 
 though there is really no need for their 
 doing so. For, as we have said, they are 
 in every particular like to those haughtier 
 nations who take precedence of them. In
 
 154 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 fact, one or two of them, such as Norway 
 and Denmark — were a truer system of 
 human mathematics to obtain — are really 
 of more importance than the so-called 
 greater nations, in that among their no- 
 bodies they include a larger percentage of 
 intellectual somebodies. 
 
 Remembering that percentage of wise 
 men, the formula of a nation were perhaps 
 more truly stated in our first mathematical 
 image. The wise men in a nation are as 
 the units with the noughts in front of 
 them. And when I say wise men I do 
 not, indeed, mean merely the literary men 
 or the artists, but all those somebodies 
 with some real force of character, people 
 with brains and hearts, fighters and lovers, 
 saints and thinkers, and the patient indus- 
 trious workers. Such, if you consider, 
 are really no integral part of the nation 
 among which they are cast. They have 
 no part in what are grandiloquently called 
 national interests — war, politics, and 
 horse-racing to wit. A change of Govern- 
 ment leaves them as unmoved as an elec- 
 tion for the board of guardians. They 
 would as soon think of entering Parliament
 
 PROSE FANCIES 155 
 
 or the County Council, as of yearning to 
 manage the gasworks, or to go about with 
 one of those carts bearing the legend 
 'Aldermen and Burgesses of the City of 
 London' conspicuously upon its front. 
 Their main concern in political changes is 
 the rise and fall of the income tax, and, be 
 the Cabinet Tory or Liberal, their rate 
 papers come in for the same amount. It 
 is likely that national changes would affect 
 them but little more. What more would 
 a foreign invasion mean than that we 
 should pay our taxes to French, Russian, 
 or German officials, instead of to English 
 ones ? French and Italians do our cook- 
 ing, Germans manage our music, Jews 
 control our money markets ; surely it 
 would make little difference to us for 
 France, Russia, or Germany to undertake 
 our government. The worst of being 
 conquered by Russia would be the neces- 
 sity of learning Russian ; whereas a little 
 rubbing up of our French would make us 
 comfortable with France. Besides, to be 
 conquered by France would save us cross- 
 ing the Channel to Paris, and then we 
 might hope for cafes in Regent Street, and
 
 156 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 an emancipated literature. As a matter of 
 fact, so-called national interests are merely 
 certain private interests on a large scale, 
 the private interests of financiers, ambitious 
 politicians, soldiers and great merchants. 
 Broadly speaking, there are no rival nations 
 — there are rival markets ; and it is its 
 Board of Trade and its Stock Exchange 
 rather than its Houses of Parliament that 
 virtually govern a country. Thus one 
 seaport goes down and another comes up, 
 industries forsake one country to bless 
 another, the military and naval strengths 
 of nations fluctuate this way and that; and 
 to those whom these changes affect they 
 are undoubtedly important matters — the 
 great capitalist, the soldier, and the politi- 
 cian ; but to the quiet man at home with 
 his wife, his children, his books, and his 
 flowers, to the artist busied with brave 
 translunary matters, to the saint with his 
 eyes filled with ' the white radiance of 
 eternity,' to the shepherd on the hillside, 
 the milkmaid in love, or the angler at his 
 sport — what are these pompous commo- 
 tions, these busy, bustling mimicries of 
 reality? England will be just as good to
 
 PROSE FANCIES 157 
 
 live in though men some day call her 
 France. Let the big busybodies divide her 
 amongst them as they like, so that they 
 leave one alone with one's fair share of 
 the sky and the grass, and an occasional, not 
 too vociferous, nightingale. 
 
 The reader will perhaps forgive the 
 hackneyed references to Sir Thomas 
 Browne peacefully writing his Religio 
 Medici amid all the commotions of the 
 Civil War, and to Gautier calmly correct- 
 ing the proofs of his new poems during 
 the siege of Paris. The milkman goes 
 his rounds amid the crash of empires. It 
 is not his business to fight. His business 
 is to distribute his milk — as much after 
 half-past seven as may be inconvenient. 
 Similarly, the business of the thinker is 
 with his thought, the poet with his poetry. 
 It is the business of politicians to make 
 national quarrels, and the business of the 
 soldier to fight them. But as for the poet 
 — let him correct his proofs, or beware the 
 printer. 
 
 The idea, then, of a nation, is a grandilo- 
 quent fallacy in the interests of commerce 
 and ambition, political and military. All
 
 158 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 the great and good, clever and charming 
 people belong to one secret nation, for 
 which there is no name unless it be the 
 Chosen People. These are the lost tribes 
 of love, art, and religion, lost and swamped 
 amid alien peoples, but ever dreaming of a 
 time when they shall meet once more in 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Yet though they are thus aliens, taking 
 and wishing no part in the organization of 
 the ' nations ' among which they dwell, 
 this does not prevent those nations taking 
 part and credit in them. And whenever a 
 brave soldier wins a battle, or an intrepid 
 traveller discovers a new land, his par- 
 ticular nation flatters itself as though it — 
 the million nobodies — had done it. With 
 a profound indifference to, indeed an active 
 dislike of, art and poetry, there is nothing 
 on which a nation prides itself so much as 
 upon its artists and poets, whom, invariably, 
 it starves, neglects, and even insults, as 
 long as it is not too silly to do so. 
 
 Thus the average Englishman talks of 
 Shakespeare — as though he himself had 
 written the plays; of India — as though 
 he himself had conquered it. And thus
 
 PROSE FANCIES 159 
 
 grow up such fictions as ' national great- 
 ness ' and * public opinion.' 
 
 For what is 'national greatness' but the 
 glory reflected from the memories of a few 
 great individuals ? and what is ' public 
 opinion ' but the blustering echoes of the 
 opinion of a few clever young men on the 
 morning papers ? 
 
 For how can people in themselves little 
 become great by merely congregating into 
 a crowd, however large ? And surely 
 fools do not become wise, or worth listen- 
 ing to, merely by the fact of their banding 
 together. 
 
 A ' public opinion' on any matter except 
 foot-ball, prize-fighting,and perhaps cricket, 
 is merely ridiculous — by whatever brutal 
 physical powers it may be enforced — 
 ridiculous as a town council's opinion upon 
 art ; and a nation is merely a big fool with 
 an army.
 
 PROSE FANCIES— XVII 
 
 THE GREATNESS OF 
 MAN 
 
 IGNORANT, as I inevitably am, dear 
 reader, of your intellectual and spirit- 
 ual upbringing, I can hardly guess 
 whether the title of my article will impress 
 you as a platitude or as a paradox. Good- 
 ness knows, some men and women think 
 quite enough of themselves as it is, and, 
 from a certain momentary point of view, 
 there may seem little occasion indeed to 
 remind man of his importance. 
 
 I refer to your intellectual and spiritual 
 upbringing, because I venture to wonder 
 if it was in the least like my own. I was 
 brought up, I rejoice to say, in the bosom 
 of an orthodox Puritan family, I hope 
 that family rejoices too. I was led and 
 driven to believe that man was everybody, 
 and that God was somebody — and that 
 not merely the Sabbath, but the whole 
 universe, was made for man : that the 
 
 j6o
 
 PROSE FANCIES i6i 
 
 stars were his bed-time candles, and that 
 the sun arose to ensure his catching the 
 8.37 of a morning. 
 
 On this belief I acted for many years. 
 Every young man believes that there is no 
 god but God, and that he is born to be His 
 prophet — though perhaps that belief is 
 not so common nowadays. I am speaking 
 of many years ago. 
 
 Science, however, has long since 
 changed all that. Those terrible Muses, 
 geology, astronomy, and particularly biol- 
 ogy, have reduced man to a humility 
 which, if in some degree salutary, becomes 
 in its excess highly dangerous. Why 
 should one maggot in this great cheese of 
 the world take itself more seriously than 
 others ? Why dream mightily and do 
 bravely if we are but a little higher than 
 the beasts that perish ? Nature cares 
 nothing about us, and her giant forces 
 laugh at our fancies. The world has no 
 such meaning as we thought. Poets and 
 saints, deluded by unhealthy imaginations, 
 have misled us, and it is quite likely that 
 the wild waves are really saying nothing 
 more important than ' Beecham's Pills.'
 
 i62 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ' Give us a definition of life,' I asked a 
 certain famous scientist and philosopher 
 whom I am privileged to call my friend, 
 ' Nothing easier ! ' he gaily replied. ' Life 
 is a product of solar energy, falling upon 
 the carbon compounds, on the outer crust 
 of a particular planet in a particular corner 
 of the solar system.' 
 
 'And that,' I said, ' really satisfies you 
 as a definition of life — of all the wistful 
 wonder of the world ! ' And as I spoke I 
 thought of Moses with mystically shining 
 face upon the Mount of the Law, of 
 Ezekiel rapt in his divine fancies, of 
 Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, of 
 Christ's agony in the garden ; the golden 
 faces of the great of the world passed as in 
 a dream before me, — soldiers, saints, 
 poets, and lovers. I thought of Horatius 
 on the bridge, of the holy and gentle soul 
 of St. Francis, of Chatterton in his splen- 
 did despair, and in fancy I went with the 
 awe-struck citizens of Verona to rever- 
 ently gaze at the bodies of two young 
 lovers who had counted the world well 
 lost if they might only leave it together. 
 
 The carbon compounds !
 
 PROSE FANCIES 163 
 
 I took down Romeo and "Juliet^ listened 
 to its passionate spheral music, and the 
 carbon compounds have never troubled me 
 again. 
 
 Love laughs at the carbon compounds, 
 and a great book, a noble act, a beautiful 
 face, make nonsense of such cheap form- 
 ulas for the mystery of human life. 
 
 Yet this parable of the carbon com- 
 pounds is a fair sample of all that science 
 can tell us when we come to ultimates. We 
 go away from its oracles with a mouthful of 
 sounding words, which may seem very 
 impressive till we examine their emptiness. 
 What, for example, is all this rigmarole 
 about solar energy and the carbon com- 
 pounds but a more pompous way of put- 
 ting the old scriptural statement that man 
 was made of the dust of the ground ? To 
 say that God took a handful of dust and 
 breathed upon it and it became man, is no 
 harder to realize than that solar rays fall- 
 ing upon that dust should produce human- 
 ity and all the various phantasmagoria of 
 life. If anything, it is more explanatory. 
 It leaves us with an inspiring mystery for 
 explanation.
 
 i64 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 In saying this, I do not forget our debt 
 to science. It has done much in clearing 
 our minds of cant, in popularising more 
 systematic thinking, and in instituting 
 sounder methods of observation. In some 
 directions it has deepened our sense of 
 wonder. It has broadened our conception 
 of the universe, though I fear it has been 
 at the expense of narrowing our concep- 
 tion of man. With Hamlet it contemptu- 
 ously says, ' What is this quintessence of 
 dust ! ' It is so impressed by the mileage 
 and tonnage of the universe, so abased 
 before the stupendous measurements of the 
 cosmos, the appalling infinity and eternity 
 of its space and time, that it forgets the 
 marvel of the mind that can grasp all 
 these conceptions, forgets too that, big 
 and bullying as the forces of nature may 
 be, man has been able in a large measure 
 to control, indeed to domesticate, them. 
 Surely the original fact of lightning is little 
 more marvellous than the power of man 
 to turn it into his errand-boy or his horse, 
 to light his rooms with it, and imprison it 
 in pennyworths, like the genius in the 
 bottle, in the underground railway. Mere
 
 PROSE FANCIES 165 
 
 size seems unimpressive when we contem- 
 plate such an extreme of littleness as say 
 the ant, that pin-point of a personality, 
 that mere speck of being, yet including 
 within its infinitesimal proportions a clever 
 busy brain, a soldier, a politician, and a 
 merchant. That such and so many facul- 
 ties should have room to operate within 
 that tiny body — there is a marvel before 
 which, it seems to me, the billions of miles 
 that keep us from falling into the jaws of 
 the sun, and the tonnage of Jupiter, are 
 comparatively insignificant and conceiv- 
 able. 
 
 No, we must not allow ourselves to be 
 frightened by the mere size and weight of 
 the universe, or be depressed because our 
 immediate genealogy is not considered 
 aristocratic. Perhaps, after all, we are 
 sons of God, and as Mr. Meredith finely 
 puts it, our life here may still be 
 
 * ... a little holding 
 To do a mighty service.' 
 
 ' Things of a day ! ' exclaims Pindar. 
 *■ What is a man .'' What is a man not ? ' 
 
 It is good for our Nebuchadnezzars, the 
 kings of the world, and conceited, success-
 
 i66 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ful people generally, to measure themselves 
 against the great powers of the universe, to 
 humble their pride by contemplation of the 
 fixed stars ; but a too humble attitude 
 toward the Infinite, a too constant ponder- 
 ing upon eternity, is not good for us, un- 
 less, so to say, we can live with them as 
 friends, with the inspiring feeling that, 
 little as we may seem, there is that in us 
 which is no less infinite, no less cosmic, 
 and that our passions and dreams have, as 
 Mr. William Watson puts it, ' a relish of 
 eternitv.' 
 
 Readers of Amiel's ' Journal ' will know 
 what a sterilising, petrifying influence his 
 trance-like contemplation of the Infinite 
 had upon his life. Amiel was simply 
 hypnotised by the universe, as a man may 
 hypnotise himself by gazing fixedly at a 
 star. 
 
 Mr. Pater, you will remember, has a 
 remarkable study of a similar temperament 
 in his hnag'inary Portraits. Sebastian van 
 Storck, like Amiel, had become hypnotised 
 by the Infinite. It paralysed in him all 
 impulse or power *to be or do any limited 
 thing.'
 
 PROSE FANCIES 167 
 
 ' For Sebastian, at least,' we read, 'the 
 world and the individual alike had been 
 divested of all effective purpose. The 
 most vivid of finite objects, the dramatic 
 episodes of Dutch history, the brilliant per- 
 sonalities which had found their parts to 
 play in them, that golden art, surrounding 
 one with an ideal world, beyond which 
 the real world was discernible indeed, but 
 etherealised by the medium through which 
 it came to one ; all this, for most men so 
 powerful a link to existence, only set him 
 on the thought of escape — into a formless 
 and nameless infinite world, evenly grey. 
 Actually proud, at times, of his 
 curious, well-reasoned nihilism, he could 
 but regard what is called the business of 
 life as no better than a trifling and weari- 
 some delay.' 
 
 This mood, once confined to a few 
 mystics, is likely to become a common 
 one, is already, one imagines, far from in- 
 frequent — so the increase of suicide 
 would lead us to suppose. Robbed of his 
 hope of a glorious immortality, stripped of 
 his spiritual significance, bullied and be- 
 littled by science on every hand, man not
 
 i68 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 unnaturally begins to feel that it it no use 
 taking his life seriously, that, in fact, it 
 betrays a lack of humour to do so. While 
 he was a supernatural being, a son of God, 
 it was with him a case of noblesse oblige; 
 and while he is happy and comfortable he 
 docs n't mind giving up the riddle of the 
 world. It is only the unhappy that ever 
 really think. Hut what s he to do when 
 agony and despair come upon him, when 
 all that made his life worth living is taken 
 from him ? How is he to sustain himself, 
 where shall he look for his strength or his 
 hope ? He looks up at the sky full of 
 stars, but he is told that God is not there, 
 that the city of God is long since a ruin, 
 and that owls hoot to each other across 
 its moss-grown fanes and battlements ; he 
 looks down on the earth, full of graves, a 
 vast necropolis of once radiant dreams, 
 with the living for its phantoms — and 
 there is no comfort anywhere. Happy is 
 he if some simple human duty be at hand, 
 which he may go on doing blindly and 
 dumbly — till, perhaps, the light come 
 again. It is difficult to offer comfort to 
 such a one. Comfort is cheap, and we
 
 PROSE FANCIES 169 
 
 know nothing. When life holds nothing 
 for our love and delight, it is difficult to 
 explain why we should go on living it — 
 except on the assumption that it matters, 
 that it is, in some mystical way, supremely 
 important, how we live it — and what we 
 make of those joys and sorrows, which, 
 say some, are but meant as mystical trials 
 and tests. 
 
 Sebastian van Storck refused *■ to be or 
 do any limited thing,' but the answer to 
 his mysticism is to be found in a finer 
 mysticism, that which says that there is no 
 limited act or thing, but that the signifi- 
 cance, as well as the pathos, of eternity is 
 in our smallest joys and sorrows, as in 
 our most everyday transactions, and the 
 greatness of God incarnate in His humblest 
 child. 
 
 This, the old doctrine of the micro- 
 cosm, seems in certain moments, moments 
 one would wish to say, of divination, 
 strangely plain and clear — when, in Blake's 
 words, it seems so easy to 
 
 '. . . see a world in a grain of sand, 
 And a heaven in a wild flower ; 
 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 
 And Eternity in an hour.'
 
 170 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 Perhaps in the street, an effect of light, 
 a passing face, yes, even the plaintive 
 grind of a street organ, some such every- 
 day circumstance, affects you suddenly in 
 quite a strange way. It has become uni- 
 versalised. It is no longer a detail of the 
 Strand, but a cryptic symbol of human 
 life. It has been transfigured into a thing 
 of infinite pathos and infinite beauty, and, 
 sad or glad, brings to you an inexplicable 
 sense of peace, an unshakable conviction 
 that man is a spirit, that his life is indeed 
 of supreme and lovely significance, and 
 that his destiny is secure and blessed. 
 
 Matthew Arnold, ever sensitive to such 
 spiritual states, has described these trance- 
 like visitations in ' The Buried Life ' : 
 
 ' Only, but this is rare — 
 
 When a beloved hand is laid in ours, 
 
 When, jaded with the rush and glare 
 
 Of the interminable hours, 
 
 Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear. 
 
 When our world-deafen' d ear 
 
 Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd — 
 
 A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, 
 
 And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again : 
 
 The eyes sink inward, and the heart lies plain, 
 
 And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. 
 
 A man becomes aware of his life's flow. 
 
 And hears its winding murmur ; and he sees 
 
 The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
 
 PROSE FANCIES 171 
 
 'And there arrives a lull in the hot race 
 Wherein he doth forever chase 
 That flying and elusive shadow, rest. 
 An air of coolness plays upon his face, 
 And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 
 And then he thinks he knows 
 The hills where his life rose, 
 And the sea where it goes.' 
 
 ' To be or do any limited thing' ! What, 
 indeed, we ask in such hours, is a limited 
 thing, when all the humble interests of 
 our daily life are palpably big with eternity .'' 
 Is the first kiss of a great love a limited 
 thing ? though there is, unhappily, no de- 
 nying that it comes to an end ! When a 
 young husband and wife smile across to 
 each other above the sleep of their little 
 child — is that a limited thing.? When 
 the siren voices of the world blend together 
 on the lips of a young poet, and with rapt 
 eyes and hot heart he makes a song as 
 of the morning stars — is that a limited 
 thing .'' Are love, and genius, and duty 
 done in the face of death — are these lim- 
 ited things.? I think not — and man, in- 
 deed, knows better. 
 
 Greatness is not relative. It is absolute. 
 It is not for man to depress himself by 
 measuring himself against the eternities and
 
 172 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 the immensities external to him. What 
 he has to do is to look inward upon him- 
 self, to fathom the eternities and the 
 immensities in his own heart and brain. 
 
 And the more man sees himself forsaken 
 by the universe, the more opportunity to 
 vindicate his own greatness. Is there no 
 kind heart beating through the scheme of 
 things? — man's heart shall still be kind. 
 Will the eternal silence make mock of his 
 dreams and his idealisms, laugh coldly at 
 ' the splendid purpose in his eyes ' ? Well, 
 so be it. His dreams and idealisms are 
 none the less noble things, and if the gods 
 do thus make mock of mortal joy and pain 
 — let us be grateful that we were born 
 mere men. 
 
 Moreover, he has one great answer to 
 the universe — the answer of courage. 
 He is still Prometheus, and there is no 
 limit to what he can bear. Let the vult- 
 ures of pain rend his heart as they will, he 
 can still hiss ' coward ' in the face of the 
 Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at his 
 sufferings — thanks to the spirit of humour, 
 that most blessed of ministering angels, 
 without which surely the heart of humanity
 
 PROSE FANCIES 173 
 
 had long since broken, by which man is 
 able to look with a comical eye upon 
 terrors, as it were taking themselves so 
 seriously, coming with such Olympian 
 thunders and lightnings to break the spirit 
 of a mere six foot of earth ! 
 
 But while his courage and his humour 
 are defenses of which he cannot be 
 disarmed, whatever be the intention of the 
 Eternal, it is by no means certain that 
 nature does not mean kindly by man. 
 Perhaps the pain of the world is but the 
 rough horseplay of great powers that mean 
 but jest — and kill us in it: as though 
 one played at ' tick ' with an elephant ! 
 
 Perhaps, after all, who knows — God is 
 love, and His great purpose kind. 
 
 Surely, when you think of it, the exist- 
 ence in man of the senses of love and pity 
 implies the probability of their existence 
 elsewhere in the universe. 
 
 ' Into that breast which brings the rose 
 Shall I with shuddering fall . ' 
 
 So runs the profoundest thought in 
 modern poetry — and need I say it is Mr. 
 Meredith's ? 
 
 As the fragrance and colour of the rose
 
 174 PRC)SE FANCIES 
 
 must in some occult way be properties of 
 the rude earth from which they are drawn 
 by the sun, may not human love also be 
 a kindly property of matter — that myste- 
 rious life-stuff in which is packed such 
 marvellous potentialities ? Evidently love 
 must be somewhere in the universe — 
 else it had not got into the heart of man ; 
 and perhaps pity slides down like an angel 
 in the rays of the solar energy, while 
 there is the potential beating of a human 
 heart even in the hard crust of the carbon 
 compounds. 
 
 I confess that this seems to me no mere 
 fancy, but a really comforting speculation. 
 Pain, we say, is inherent in the scheme of 
 the universe ; but is not love seen to be 
 no less inherent, too ? 
 
 There must be some soul of beauty to 
 animate the lovely face of the world, some 
 soul of goodness to account for its saints. 
 If the gods are cruel, it is strange that man 
 should be so kind, and that some pathetic 
 spirit of tenderness should seem to stir 
 even in the bosoms of beasts and birds. 
 
 Meanwhile, we cannot too often insist
 
 PROSE FANCIES 175 
 
 that, whatever uncertainties there be, man 
 has one certainty — himself. Science has 
 really adduced nothing essential against his 
 significance. That he is not as big as an 
 Alp, as heavy as a star, or as long-lived as 
 an eagle, is nothing against his proper im- 
 portance. Even a nobleman is of more 
 significance in the w^orld than his acres, 
 and giants are not proverbial for their in- 
 tellectual or spiritual qualities. The ant 
 is of more importance than the ass, and 
 the great eye of a beautiful woman is more 
 significant than the whole clayey bulk of 
 Mars. 
 
 After all the scientific mockery of the 
 old religious ideal of the importance of 
 man, one begins to wonder if his Ptolemaic 
 fancy that he was the centre of the uni- 
 verse, and that it was all made for him, 
 is not nearer the truth than the pitiless 
 theories which hardly allow him equality 
 with the flea that perishes. 
 
 Suppose if, after all, the stars were really 
 meant as his bedtime candles, and the 
 sun's purpose in rising is really that he 
 may catch the 8.37 !
 
 176 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 For, as Sir Thomas Browne says in his 
 solemn English, 'there is surely a piece of 
 Divinity in us, something that was before 
 the elements, and owes no homage unto 
 the sun.' 
 
 The long winter of materialistic science 
 seems to be breaking up, and the old ideals 
 are seen trooping back with something 
 more than their old beauty, in the new 
 spiritual spring that seems to be moving in 
 the hearts of men. 
 
 After all its talk, science has done little 
 more than correct the misprints of religion. 
 Essentially, the old spiritualistic and poetic 
 theories of life are seen, not merely weakly 
 to satisfy the cravings of man's nature, but 
 to be mostly in harmony with certain 
 strange and moving facts in his constitu- 
 tion, which the materialists unscientifically 
 ignore. 
 
 It was important, and has been helpful, 
 to insist that man is an animal, but it is 
 still more important to insist that he is a 
 spirit as well. He is, so to say, an animal 
 by accident, a spirit by birthright : and, 
 however homely his duties may occasionally
 
 PROSE FANCIES 177 
 
 seem, his life is bathed in the light of a 
 sacred transfiguring significance,its smallest 
 acts flash with divine meanings, its highest 
 moments are rich with ' the pathos of 
 eternity,' and its humblest duties mighty 
 with the responsibilities of a god.
 
 PROSE FANCIES—XVIII 
 
 DEATH AND TWO FRIENDS 
 
 A DIALOGUE 
 
 (To the memory of J. S. and T. C. L. ) 
 
 ¥ 
 
 Persons: Scriptor and Lector.* 
 
 LECTOR : But do you really mean, 
 Scriptor, that you have no desire 
 for the life after death ? 
 Scriptor : I never said quite that. Lec- 
 tor, though perhaps I might almost have 
 gone so far. What I did say was that we 
 have been accustomed to exaggerate its 
 importance to us here and now, that it 
 really matters less to us than we imagine. 
 Lector : I see. But you must speak 
 for yourself, Scriptor. I am sure that it 
 
 *This dialogue was written originally as a rejoinder to 
 certain criticisms on a book of mine entitled, The Re- 
 ligion of a Literary Man — Religio Scriptoris — 
 hence the names given to the two ' persons.' It was 
 written in March, 1 894, before an event in the writer's 
 life to which, erroneously, some have supposed it to refer. 
 
 178
 
 PROSE FANCIES 179 
 
 matters much to many, to most of us. It 
 does, I know, to me, 
 
 ScRiPTOR : Less than you think, my 
 dear Lector. Besides, you are really too 
 young to know. It is true that, as years 
 go, you are ten years my senior, but what 
 of that? You have that vigorous health 
 which is the secret of perpetual youth. 
 You have not yet realised decay, not to 
 speak of death. The immortality of the 
 soul is a question wide of you, who have 
 as yet practically no doubt of the immor- 
 tality of the body. But I — well, it would 
 be melodramatic to say that I face death 
 every day. The metaphor applies but to 
 desperate callings and romantic complaints. 
 To some Death comes like a footpad, sud- 
 denly, and presents his pistol — and the 
 smoke that curls upward from his empty 
 barrel is your soul. 
 
 To another he comes featureless, a 
 stealthily accumulating London fog, that 
 slowly, slowly chokes the life out of you, 
 without allowing you the consolation of a 
 single picturesque moment, a single grand 
 attitude. For you, probably. Death will 
 only come when you die. I have to live
 
 i8o PROSE FANCIES 
 
 with him as well. I shall smoulder for 
 years, you will be carried to heaven, like 
 Enoch, in a beautiful lightning — 
 
 ' A simple child 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 What can it know of death ? * 
 
 That 's you, my dear Lector, for all 
 your forty years. 
 
 Lector: All the more reason, Scriptor, 
 that you should desire a hereafter. You 
 sometimes talk of the work you would do, 
 if you were a robust Philistine such as L 
 Would it not be worth while to live again, 
 if only to make sure of that magnum opus 
 — just to realise those dreams that you 
 say are daily escaping you \ 
 
 Scriptor : Ah ! so speaks the energetic 
 man, eager to take the world on his shoul- 
 ders. I know the images of death that 
 please you. Lector — such as that great 
 one of Arnold's, about ' the sounding 
 labour-house vast of being.' 
 
 But, Lector, you who love work so 
 well — have you never heard tell of a 
 thing called Rest ? Have you never 
 known what it is to be tired, my Lector ?
 
 PROSE FANCIES i8i 
 
 — not tired at the end of a busy day, but 
 tired in the morning, tired in the Mem- 
 nonian sunHght, when larks and barrel- 
 organs start on their blithe insistent 
 rounds. No, the man who is tired of a 
 morning sings not music-hall songs in his 
 bedroom as he dashes about in his morn- 
 ing bath. But will you never want to go 
 to bed. Lector ? Will you be always like 
 the children who hate to be sent to bed, 
 and think that when they are grown up 
 they will never go to bed at all ? Yet in 
 a few years' time how glad they are of the 
 stray chance of bed at ten. May it not be 
 so with sleep's twin brother ? In our 
 young vigour, driven by a hundred buoy- 
 ant activities, enticed by dream on dream, 
 time seems so short for all we think we 
 have to do; but surely when the blood 
 begins to thin, and the heart to wax less 
 extravagantly buoyant, when comfort 
 croons a kettle-song whose simple spell no 
 sirens of ambition or romance can over- 
 come — do n't you think that then ' bed- 
 time ' will come to seem the best hour of 
 the day, and ' Death as welcome as a friend 
 would fall ' .?
 
 1 82 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 Lector : But you are no fair judge, 
 Scriptor. You say my health, my youth, 
 as you waggishly call it, puts me out of 
 court. Yet surely your ill-health and low 
 spirits just as surely vitiate your judgment ? 
 
 Scriptor : Admitted, so faras my views 
 are the outcome of my particular condition. 
 But you forget that the condition I have 
 been supposing is not merely particular, 
 but, on the contrary, the most general 
 among men. Was it not old age ? — 
 which, like youth, is independent of years. 
 You may be young beyond your years, I 
 may be old in advance of them •, but old 
 age does come some time, and with it the 
 desire of rest. 
 
 Lector : But does not old age spend 
 most of its thought in dwelling fondly on 
 its lost youth, hanging like a remote sun- 
 rise in its imagination ? Is it not its one 
 yearning desire just to live certain hours of 
 its youth over again ? — and would the old 
 man not give all he possesses for the cer- 
 tainty of being born young again into 
 eternity ? 
 
 Scriptor : He would give everything 
 — but the certainty of rest. After sev-
 
 PROSE FANCIES 183 
 
 enty years of ardent life one needs a long 
 sleep to refresh us in. Besides, age may 
 not be so sure of the advantages of youth. 
 All is not youth that laughs and glitters. 
 Youth has its hopes, which are uncertain ; 
 but age has its memories, which are sure ; 
 youth has its passions, but age has its com- 
 forts. 
 
 Lector : Your answers come gay and 
 pat, Scriptor, but your voice betrays you. 
 In spite of you, it saddens all your words. 
 Tell me, have you ever known what it is 
 actually to lose any one who is dear to you ? 
 Have you looked on Death face to face ? 
 
 Scriptor : Yes, Lector, I have — but 
 once. It is now about five years ago, but 
 the impression of it haunts me to this hour. 
 Perhaps the memory is all the keener be- 
 cause it was my one experience. In a 
 world where custom stales all things, save 
 Cleopatra, it is all the better, perhaps, not 
 to see even too much of Death, lest we 
 grow familiar with him. For instance, 
 doctors and soldiers, who look on him 
 daily, seem to lose the sense of his terror 
 — nay, worse, of his tragedy. Maybe it 
 is something in his favour, and Death, like
 
 i84 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 others, may only need to be known to be 
 loved. 
 
 Lector : But tell me, Scriptor, of this 
 sad experience, which, even now, it moves 
 you to name ; or is the memory too sad 
 to recall ? 
 
 ScRiPTOR : Sad enough, Lector, but 
 beautiful for all that, beautiful as winter. 
 It was winter when she of whom I am 
 thinking died — a winter that seemed to 
 make death itself whiter and colder on her 
 marble forehead. It is but one sad little 
 story of all the heaped-up sorrow of the 
 world ; but in it, as in a shell, I seem to hear 
 the murmur of all the tides of tears that 
 have surged about the lot of man from the 
 beginning. 
 
 There were two dear friends of mine 
 whom I used to call the happiest lovers in 
 the world. They had loved truly from 
 girlhood and boyhood, and after some 
 struggle — for they were not born into 
 that class which is denied the luxury of 
 struggle — at length saw a little home 
 bright in front of them. And then Jenny, 
 who had been ever bright and strong, sud- 
 denly and unaccountably fell ill. Like
 
 PROSE FANCIES 185 
 
 the stroke of a sword, like the stride of a 
 giant, Death, to whom they had never 
 given a thought, was upon them. It was 
 consumption, and love could only watch 
 and pray. Suddenly my friend sent for 
 me, and I saw with my own eyes what, at 
 a distance, it had seemed impossible to be- 
 lieve. As I entered the house, with the 
 fresh air still upon me, I spoke confidently, 
 with babbling, ignorant tongue. ' Wait 
 till you see her face ! ' was all my poor 
 stricken friend could say. 
 
 Ah ! her face ! How can I describe it ? 
 It was much sweeter afterwards, but now 
 it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, 
 almost wicked, so thin and full of inky 
 shadows. She sat up in her bed, a wizened 
 little goblin, and laughed a queer, dry, 
 knowing laugh to herself, a laugh like the 
 scraping of reeds in a solitarv place. A 
 strange black weariness seemed to be 
 crushing down her brows, like the ' un- 
 willing sleep ' of a strong narcotic. She 
 would begin a sentence and let it wither 
 away unfinished, and point sadly and al- 
 most humorously to her straight black 
 hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead
 
 i86 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was 
 strangely keen. And yet she did not 
 know, was not to know. How was 
 one to talk to her — talk of being well 
 again, and books and country walks, 
 when she had so plainly done with all 
 these things ? How bear up when she, 
 with a half-sad, half- amused smile 
 showed her thin wrists? — how say that 
 they would soon be strong and round 
 again? Ugh! she was already beginning 
 to be different from us, already putting off 
 our body-sweet mortality, and putting on 
 the fearful garments of Death, changing be- 
 fore our eyes from ruddy familiar humanity 
 into a being of another element, an ele- 
 ment we dread as the fish dreads the air. 
 Soon we should not be able to talk to her. 
 Soon she would have unlearnt all the 
 sweet grammar of earth. She was no 
 longer Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mys- 
 teries at which the flesh crept. She was 
 going to die. 
 
 Have you never looked ahead toward 
 some trial, some physical trial, maybe an 
 operation ? — for perhaps the pains of the 
 body are the keenest, after all — those of
 
 PROSE FANCIES 187 
 
 the spirit are at least in some part meta- 
 phor. You look forward with dread, yet 
 it is at last over. It is behind you. And 
 have you never thought that so it will be 
 with death some day ? Poor little Jenny 
 was to face the great operation. 
 
 Next time I saw her she was dead. 
 In our hateful English fashion, they had 
 shut her up in a dark room, and we had to 
 take candles to see her. I shall never 
 forget the moment when my eyes first 
 rested on that awful snow-white sheet, so 
 faintly indented by the fragile form be- 
 neath, lines very fragile, but oh ! so hard 
 and cold, like the indentations upon frozen 
 snow ; never forget my strange unaccount- 
 able terror when he on one side and I on 
 the other turned down the icy sheet from 
 her face. But terror changed to awe and 
 reverence, as her face came upon us with 
 its sweet sphinx-like smile. Lying there, 
 with a little gold chain round her neck 
 and a chrysanthemum in the bosom of her 
 night-gown, there was a curious regality 
 about her, a look as though she wore a 
 crown our eyes were unable to see. And 
 while I gazed upon her, the sobs of my
 
 i88 PRO SE F A NC I ES 
 
 friend came across the bed, and as he 
 called to her I seemed to hear the eternal 
 Orpheus calling for his lost Eurydice. 
 Poor lad! — poor maid! Here, naked 
 and terrible, was all the tragedy of the 
 world compressed into an hour, the Me- 
 dusa-face of life that turns the bravest to 
 stone. Surely, I felt, God owed more than 
 He could ever repay to these two lovers, 
 whom it had been so easy to leave to 
 their simple joys. And from that night 
 to this I can never look upon my white 
 bed without seeing afar off the moment 
 when it, too, will bear the little figure of 
 her I love best in the world, bound for her 
 voyage to the Minotaur Death ; just as I 
 never put off my clothes at night, and 
 stretch my limbs down among the cool 
 sheets, without thinking of the night when 
 I shall put off my clothes for the last time 
 and close my eyes for ever. 
 
 Lector : But, my friend, this is to feel 
 too much ; it is morbid. 
 
 ScRiPTOR : Morbid ! How can one 
 really feel and not be morbid ? If one be 
 morbid, one can still be brave. 
 
 Lector : But surely, true-lover as you
 
 PROSE FANCIES 189 
 
 are, it would be a joy to you to think that 
 this terrible parting of death will not be 
 final. We cannot love so well without 
 hoping that we may meet our loved ones 
 somewhere after death. 
 
 ScRiPTOR : Hopes ! wishes ! desires ! 
 What of them ? We hope, we desire all 
 things. Who has not cried for the moon 
 in his time ? But what is the use of talk- 
 ing of what we desire ? Does life give us 
 all we wish, however passionately we wish 
 it, and is Death any more likely to listen 
 to the cry of our desires ? Of course we 
 wish it^ wish it with a pathetic urgency 
 which is too poignant to bear, and which 
 the wise man bravely stifles. It would all 
 be different if we knew. 
 
 Lector : But does not science even, of 
 late, hold out the promise of its probabil- 
 ity ? — and the greatest poets and thinkers 
 have always been convinced of its truth. 
 
 ScRiPTOR : The promise of a proba- 
 bility ! O my Lector, what a poor sub- 
 stitute is that for a certainty ! And as 
 for the great men you speak of, what does 
 their ' instinctive ' assurance amount to 
 but a strong sense of their own existence
 
 190 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 at the moment of writing or speaking ? 
 Does one of them anywhere assert im- 
 mortality as z fact — a fact of which he 
 has his own personal proof and knowledge 
 — a scientific, not an imaginative, theo- 
 logical fact ? Arguments on the subject 
 are naught. It is waste of time to read 
 them ; unsupported by fact, they are one 
 and all cowardly dreams, a horrible hypo- 
 critical clutching at that, which their writ- 
 ers have not the courage to forego. 
 
 Lector : Yet may not a dream be of 
 service to reality, my friend ? Is it not 
 certain that people are all the better and 
 all the happier for this dream, as you call 
 it } — for what seems to me this sustaining 
 faith ? 
 
 ScRiPTOR : Happier i* Some people, 
 perhaps, in a lazy, unworthy fashion. But 
 'better'? Well, so long as we believed 
 in ' eternal punishment' no doubt people 
 were sometimes terrified into 'goodness ' 
 by the picture of that dread vista of tor- 
 ment, as no doubt thev were bribed into it 
 by the companion picture of a green, un- 
 bounded Paradise ; but, O my friend, what 
 an unworthy kind of goodness, the mere
 
 PROSE FANCIES 191 
 
 mask of virtue ! And now that the Inferno 
 has practically disappeared from our theol- 
 ogy, the belief in eternal life simply means 
 unlimited cakes and ale, for good and evil 
 alike, for all eternity. How such a belief 
 can be moralising I fail to understand. To 
 my mind, indeed, far from being moralising 
 this belief in immortality is responsible for 
 no inconsiderable portion of the wrong and 
 misery of the world. It is the baneful 
 narcotic which has soothed the selfish and 
 the slothful from the beginning. It is 
 that unlimited credit which makes the 
 bankrupt. It simply gives us all eternity 
 to procrastinate in. Instead of manfully 
 eating our peck of dirt here and now, we 
 leave it and all such disagreeables to the 
 hereafter. 
 
 ' He said, " I believe in Eternal Life," 
 As he threw his life away — 
 
 What need to hoard ? 
 
 He could well afford 
 To squander his mortal day. 
 With Eternity his, what need to care ? — 
 A sort of immortal millionaire.' 
 
 Lector : I am glad to be reminded, 
 Scriptor, that you are a poet, for the line 
 of your argument had almost made me 
 
 \
 
 192 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 forget it. One expects other views from 
 a poet. 
 
 ScRiPTOR : When, my dear Lector, will 
 we get rid of the silly idea that the poet 
 should give us only the ornamental view 
 of life, and rock us to sleep, like babies, 
 with pretty lullabies ? Is it not possible to 
 make /acts sing as well as fancies ? With 
 all this beautiful world to sing of — for 
 beautiful it is, however it be marred; with 
 this wonderful life — and wonderful and 
 sweet it is, though it is shot through with 
 such bitter pain; with such certainties for 
 his theme, we yet beg him to sing to us 
 of shadows ! 
 
 And you talk of * faith.' ' Faith ' truly 
 is what we want, but it is faith in the life 
 here, not in the life hereafter. Faith in 
 the life here ! Let our poets sing us that. 
 And such as would deny it — I would 
 hang them as enemies of society. 
 
 Lector : But, at all events, to keep 
 to our point — you at least hope tor im- 
 mortality. If Edison, say, were suddenly 
 to discover it for us as a scientific cer- 
 tainty, you would welcome the news ? 
 
 Scriptor: Well, yes and no ! Have
 
 PROSE FANCIES 193 
 
 you seen the *■ penny ' phonographs in the 
 Strand ? You should go and have a penny- 
 worth of the mysteries of time and space ! 
 How long will Edison's latest magic 
 toy survive this popularisation, I wonder ? 
 For a little moment it awakens the sense 
 of wonder in the idly curious, who set the 
 demon tube to their ears ; but if they 
 make any remarks at all, it is of the 
 cleverness of Mr. Edison, the probable 
 profits of the invention — and not a word 
 of the wonder of the world ! So it would 
 be with the undiscovered country. I was 
 blamed the other day as being cheaply 
 smart because I said that if ' one traveller 
 returned,' his resurrection would soon be 
 as commonplace as the telephone, and that 
 enterprising firms would be interviewing 
 him as to the prospects of opening branch 
 establishments in Hades. Yet it is a per- 
 fectly serious, and I think true, remark ; 
 for who that knows the modern man, with 
 his small knowingness, and his utter in- 
 capacity for reverence, would doubt that 
 were Mr. Edison actually to be the 
 Columbus of the Unseen, it would soon 
 be as overrun with gaping tourists as
 
 194 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 Switzerland, and that within a year rail- 
 way companies would be advertising 
 *■ Hank-holidays in Eternity ' ? 
 
 No ! let us keep the Unseen — or, if it 
 must be discovered, let the key thereof be 
 given only to true-lovers and poets.
 
 PROSE FANCIES— XIX 
 
 A SEAPORT IN THE MOON. 
 
 NO ONE is SO hopelessly wrong 
 about the stars as the astronomer, 
 and I trust that you never pay any 
 attention to his remarks on the moon. 
 He knows as much about the moon as a 
 coiffeur knows of the dreams of the fair 
 lady whose beautiful neck he makes still 
 more beautiful. There is but one opinion 
 upon the moon — namely, our own. And 
 if you think that science is thus wronged, 
 reflect a moment upon what science makes 
 of things near at hand. Love, it says, is 
 merely a play of pistil and stamen, our 
 most fascinating poetry and art is ' degen- 
 eration,' and human life, generally speak- 
 ing, is sufficiently explained by the 'carbon 
 compounds ' — God-a-mercy! If science 
 makes such grotesque blunders about 
 radiant matters right under its nose, how 
 can one think of taking its opinion upon 
 matters so remote as the stars — or even 
 
 195
 
 196 PROSE P^ A NCI ES 
 
 the moon, which is comparatively near at 
 hand ? 
 
 Science says that the moon is a dead 
 world, a cosmic ship littered with the 
 skeletons of its crew, and from which 
 every rat of vitality has long since escaped. 
 It is the ghost that rises from its tomb 
 every night to haunt its faithless lover, 
 the world. It is a country of ancient 
 silver mines, unworked for centuries. 
 You may see the gapmg mouths of 
 the dark old shafts through your tele- 
 scopes. You may even see the rusting 
 pit tackle, the ruinous engine-houses, and 
 the idle pick and shovel. Or you may 
 say that it is counterfeit silver, coined to 
 take in the young fools who love to gaze 
 upon it. It is, so to speak, a bad half-a- 
 crown. 
 
 As you will ! but I am of Endymion's 
 belief — and no one was ever more inti- 
 mate with the moon. For me the moon 
 is a country of great seaports, whither all 
 the ships of our dreams come home. 
 From all quarters of the world, every day 
 of the week, there are ships sailing to the 
 moon. They are the ships that sail just
 
 PROSE FANCIES 197 
 
 when and where you please. You take 
 your passage on that condition. And it is 
 ridiculous to think for what a trifle 
 the captain will take you on so long a 
 journey. If you want to come back, just 
 to take an excut^ion and no more, just to 
 take a lighted look at those coasts of rose 
 and pearl, he will ask no more than a glass 
 or two of bright wine — indeed, when the 
 captain is very kind, a flower will take you 
 there and back in no time ; if you want 
 to stay whole days there, but still come 
 back dreamy and strange, you may take a 
 little dark root and smoke it in a silver 
 pipe, or you may drink a little phial of 
 poppy-juice, and thus you shall find the 
 Land of Heart's Desire ; but if you are 
 wise and would stay in that land forever, 
 the terms are even easier — a little powder 
 shaken into a phial of water, a little piece 
 of lead no bigger than a pea and a farthing's 
 worth of explosive fire, and thus also you 
 are in the Land of Heart's Desire forever. 
 I dreamed last night that I stood on the 
 blustering windy wharf, and the dark ship 
 was there. It was impatient, like all of 
 us, to leave the world. Its funnels belched
 
 198 P R O S E F A N C 1 E S 
 
 black smoke, its engines throbbed against 
 the quay like arms that were eager to 
 strike and be done, and a bell was beating 
 impatient summons to be gone. The dark 
 captain stood ready on the bridge, and he 
 looked into each of our faces as we passed 
 on board. '■ Is it for the long voyage ? ' he 
 said. 'Yes! the long voyage,' I said — 
 and his stern eyes seemed to soften as I 
 answered. 
 
 At last we were all aboard, and in the 
 twinkling of an eye were out of sight of 
 land. Yet, once afloat, it seemed as though 
 we should never reach our port in the 
 moon — so it seemed to me as I lay awake 
 in my little cabin, listening to the patient 
 thud and throb of the great screws, beat- 
 ing in the ship' side like a human heart. 
 
 Talking with my fellow-voyagers, I was 
 surprised to find that we were not all vol- 
 unteers. Some in fact complained piti- 
 fully. They had, they said, been going 
 about their business a day or two before, 
 and suddenly a mysterious captain had laid 
 hold of them, and pressed them to sail this 
 unknown sea. Thus, without a v/ord of 
 warning they had been compelled to leave
 
 PROSE FANCIES 199 
 
 behind them all they held dear. This one 
 felt was a little hard of the captain ; but those 
 of us whose position was exactly the 
 reverse, who had friends on the other side, 
 all whose hopes indeed were invested there, 
 were too selfishly expectant of port to be 
 severe on the captain who was taking us 
 thither. 
 
 There were three friends I had especially 
 set out to see : two young lovers who had 
 emigrated to those colonies in the moon 
 just after their marriage, and there was 
 another. What a surprise it would be to 
 all three, for I had written no letter to say 
 I was coming. Indeed, it was just a sud- 
 den impulse, the pistol flash of a long 
 desire. 
 
 I tried to imagine what the town would 
 be like in which they were now living. I 
 asked the captain, and he answered with a 
 sad smile, that it would be just exactly as 
 I cared to dream it. 
 
 * Oh, well then,' I thought, ' I know 
 what it will be like. There shall be a 
 great restless, tossing estuary, with Atlantic 
 winds forever ruffling the sails of busy 
 ships, ships coming home with laughter,
 
 200 PROSE FANCIES 
 
 ships leaving home with sad sea-gull cries 
 of farewell. And the shaggy tossing water 
 shall be bounded on either bank with high 
 granite walls, and on one bank shall be a 
 fretted spire soaring with a jangle of bells, 
 from amid a tangle of masts, and under- 
 neath the bells and the masts shall go 
 streets rising up from the strand, streets 
 full effaces, and sweet with the smell of 
 tar and the sea. O, captain, will it be 
 morning or night when we come to my 
 city ? In the morning my city is like a 
 sea-blown rose, in the night it is bright 
 as a sailor's star. 
 
 ' If it be early morning, what shall I do ? 
 I will run to the house in which my friends 
 lie in happy sleep, never to be parted 
 again, and kiss my hand to their shrouded 
 window; and then I will run on and on 
 till the city is behind and the sweetness of 
 country lanes is about me, and I will 
 gather flowers as I run, from sheer wan- 
 tonness of joy, and then at last, flushed 
 and breathless, I will stand beneath her 
 window. I shall stand and listen, and I 
 shall hear her breathing right through the 
 heavy curtains and the hushed garden and
 
 PROSE FANCIES 201 
 
 the sleeping house will bid me keep 
 silence, but I shall cry a great cry up to 
 the morning star, and say, " No, I will 
 not keep silence. Mine is the voice she 
 listens for in her sleep. She will wake 
 again for no voice but mine. Dear one, 
 awake, the morning of all mornings has 
 come ! " ' 
 
 As I write, the moon looks down at me 
 like a Madonna from the great canvas of 
 the sky. She seems beautiful with the 
 beauty of all the eyes that have looked up 
 at her, sad with all the tears of all those 
 eyes; hke a silver bowl brimming with 
 the tears of dead lovers she seems. Yes, 
 there are seaports in the moon, there are 
 ships to take us there.
 
 PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, 
 CHICAGO, FOR THE PUBLISHERS, 
 HERBERT S. STONE &. CO. MDCCCXCVI.
 
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