ORGEAS AND MIRADOU 
 
 WITH OTHER PIECES
 
 Orgeas and Miradou 
 
 WITH OTHER PIECES 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK /WEDMOR] 
 
 * Nous ne soinmes que par rdme ' 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JAMES BOWDEN 
 
 10, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1896
 
 UNLIKE the imaginative pieces in my other 
 volumes, those which here follow are bound toge- 
 ther by no common name. The connection between 
 them is not obvious enough to warrant it. Yet to 
 the work of any one mind, however varied it may 
 endeavour to be, limits which cannot be transgressed 
 are set quite surely ; and, without repetition, there 
 must needs be relationship. Besides, one has one's 
 moods ; and, it seems to me, the present pieces 
 different indeed as are the scenes they would suggest 
 were conceived in moods not very dissimilar : in 
 hours, perhaps, when that which was borne in most 
 strongly on the mind was the unfashionable truth 
 that even in a time of busy ambition for material 
 things, of earnest energy lavished on superficial 
 pleasure, and, here in London, of a literary "realism " 
 so far from reality that it is ignorantly proud to be 
 bereft of tenderness, the deepest need of nearly 
 every human life is, still, human affection. 
 
 " Orgeas and Miradou " has been passed through 
 the Nineteenth Century and "The Poet on the 
 Wolds" through the Fortnightly Review. "To 
 Nancy " I have so essentially re-worked that I can 
 scarcely with fairness associate it with the periodical 
 in which it first appeared. 
 
 F. W. 
 
 London: October* 1896.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU u 
 
 To NANCY 39 
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS 97
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 B
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU 1 
 
 DREAM OF PROVENCE 
 
 ORGEAS and Miradou had lived together 
 together with no third since the 
 mother had gone from them ; and that 
 was thirteen years ago, when Miradou 
 was five. Since then it was her father 
 who had cared for her : the mother's 
 name was never named between them. 
 Had she died amongst them in her re- 
 cognized place, they must from time to 
 time have talked of her, as well as 
 mourned. Those two hearts, made for 
 affection made for it so much that it 
 was the air they breathed, the bread they 
 
 1 The masculine termination of the feminine name 
 is a Provengai characteristic. In Grasse, Ave Maria! 
 is Vou saludi Mario !
 
 14 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 fed on must have kept of her their ten- 
 derest memory. Death, had he come to 
 her there, could never have really se- 
 parated them could not have banished 
 her from all their thought. Some com- 
 munion still was possible. But the 
 mother had no likeness to these two. 
 Callous at first, and then a disgrace and 
 a humiliation, she had gone out of their 
 lives for ever. One luminous night, be- 
 tween two shining days of August, she 
 and a Piedmontese lover had tramped 
 towards Italy by the long mule paths 
 (was it ?) and the olive groves, and then 
 by the bare hills. 
 
 At first, of course, to Orgeas, the 
 disaster had seemed irreparable. Out 
 of doors, a shame greatest of all because 
 the lover was no Grassois and no French- 
 man, but of the hated Piedmontese 
 rivals in life, and, there in Grasse at least, 
 rivals of necessity in labour. Indoors, it 
 was a sorrow to be brooded on, and it
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 15 
 
 made a dire loneliness. The foreman 
 came home from the printing press, and 
 none but the little child was at home to 
 greet him. 
 
 But the child had taken her place. 
 Months passed, and life became endur- 
 able years, and life became sweet. 
 Parents and children in France are the 
 best of friends generally ; even when no 
 special circumstance and no peculiar 
 demand for affection, bring them more 
 closely together. With Orgeas there 
 was the special circumstance and the 
 peculiar demand. Link upon link was 
 formed, of interest, kindness, and asso- 
 ciation. That was the visible chain. 
 But the invisible ? Well ! they were 
 parent and child, with a mysterious and 
 profound affinity. 
 
 As Orgeas was not wanting in imagina- 
 tion, for a man of his class, he recognized 
 that if, because of his deep love of her, 
 Miradou sufficed for him, not in a measure
 
 1 6 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 quite so unlimited could he suffice for 
 Miradou. Her childish instinct for com- 
 radeship, her girlish longing for the con- 
 fidence and gaiety that may exist between 
 equals, Orgeas never restrained. She 
 was helpful at home, in all material things, 
 and in her recognition of his love for her 
 altogether responsive. But there was no 
 excuse for laying on her few young years 
 the burden of later times. She was 
 happy at home; and beyond home, in 
 the great sunshine, in the sparkling 
 Southern day, Miradou, with her clear 
 eyes and all her figure's lines, laughed 
 herself into womanhood. 
 
 Yet if, since childhood, she had known 
 no trouble greater than the little bankings 
 which give a piquancy to attained plea- 
 sure, and no exertion harder than the 
 labour which just sweetens rest, it was not 
 circumstances that were at the bottom of 
 that : no outside influence not even a 
 father's had brought it about : it was
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 17 
 
 not produced to order. Some of her 
 happy days she owed, of course, to the 
 favoured land, and to the simple life, 
 " cursed with no wide desires and spacious 
 aims." How much she owed, besides, to 
 her own nature, to her pure self and to 
 no other, to her being that which she 
 was to her gay heart that under her 
 glistening eyes danced in its joy of 
 living! Orgeas knew that knew that 
 she brought to him a something, unde- 
 fined, inestimable, which he had never 
 given her. " Eighteen years ! " he re- 
 flected and he understood her well 
 and each year gained upon the last in 
 bewitching merriment and the charm 
 of an occasional and fitting gravity. 
 Eighteen years in which she was warmth 
 and light to him the sight of her quick- 
 ening his footsteps, her movements lifting 
 his soul like a happy and familiar, yet 
 ever varied air! Eighteen years, Mira 
 dou ! And now she was dead.
 
 1 8 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 Dead; yet not dead. No! dead she 
 could not be. Her room indeed was 
 empty; her father, alone. But she was 
 not dead. She would return. 
 
 " On the ninth day," said Orgeas to 
 himself. He said it aloud, filling himself 
 with courage. This was the fourth day 
 only. " On the ninth ! Elle reviendra ! " 
 
 Yet it was true that two days since 
 they had put her in her grave in the 
 cemetery, and on the sun-smitten road, 
 on the descent towards Draguignan, 
 slowly, with hat in hand, as the chief 
 mourner, Orgeas, with blanched face and 
 dreaming eyes, had walked, with his 
 comrades, behind the coffin of pine. 
 And the upturned earth in the cemetery 
 hurriedly, loosely replaced was fresh 
 to-day, unlike every other grave, that 
 had quietly settled, with its recording 
 words, and cross of beads, and wreath of 
 camomile. They had buried Miradou 
 though it was but so lately. They
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 19 
 
 had laid her down. How could she 
 return ? 
 
 If you had gone into her bed-room, in 
 which Miradou died, if you had gone 
 there that evening, you would have seen 
 that though no sign of death or of calamity 
 showed in the little chamber, there was 
 a bed unmade and sheets disordered a 
 pillow with the imprint of a head, and, on 
 the open bed, the lines, as one might 
 fancy, made by the pressure of a figure 
 light and tall. A brush, that was Mira- 
 dou's, lay on the table. There were hair- 
 pins there, and a ribbon. On a peg, 
 near the window, hung Miradou's red 
 pink gown : next to it, the broad hat, 
 low crowned, of brownish yellow straw, 
 which had sheltered her head from the 
 assault of the sun. 
 
 That the things were left there so, and 
 all the place untouched, when the owner 
 of the things, who was the room's mis- 
 tress, had been three days dead, was due
 
 2O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 to a Provengal fancy a faith to some, 
 and by all outwardly maintained that 
 the hour our observation registers as that 
 of death is not for this life after all quite 
 surely the last. Is it the tenderness, 
 perhaps, of a people who must owe some- 
 thing to Classic thought, and may copy 
 Classic reticence ? the delicacy of those 
 on whose memorials of the dead was 
 never written the rude truth : dead they 
 were not averred to be, but absent, 
 journeying, called for a time to ways more 
 distant than those their kindred had 
 trodden paths, nevertheless, from which 
 return was not cut off. Absent, and on 
 a journey : it could never even be hinted 
 that they who had been loved here had 
 finally gone. Yes : the Provengal adap- 
 tation of that tender Classic thought, 
 the Provengal provision for a sentiment 
 so deep that it must not be suddenly 
 shocked, lay in this old tradition of a 
 few days' grace of a humane reprieve.
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 21 
 
 In some vague measure, death was 
 sometimes a choice. If it was chosen 
 hurriedly, might it not too be repented 
 of? 
 
 Whatever may have been the case 
 with the mass of his comrades, Orgeas 
 followed in no merely formal manner the 
 fancy of his land. He was a poet who 
 had written no poetry. His careful 
 common sense in daily life allowed him 
 still to be a dreamer of high dreams. 
 Anxious he was, but he was not tho- 
 roughly downcast. Until the ninth day, 
 Miradou's fate was unsealed. 
 
 So much the popular belief contained 
 to comfort him ; and to it he added his 
 own, born of his knowledge of her love 
 of life, of her gay heart, and of his great 
 yearning. Placed in the grave but three 
 days since placed in the grave so lightly 
 she was wandering now. This was the 
 time of suspense. When it was over, 
 would she return to the life she had
 
 22 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 gladdened, or to the dark tomb she had 
 so shortly rested in ? 
 
 For Orgeas, in his mood to-day, there 
 could be but one answer. He paced from 
 one to another of the rooms they had 
 dwelt in the little flat, high up in the 
 cramped dark street, far up above its 
 shadows and its straitness his room, her 
 room, and the living room. Back to her 
 room again : the window opened wide, 
 that her returning soul might find no 
 obstruction. The caged bird she had 
 tended sang in the sun, in its window- 
 cage. Outside was the great sky, the 
 tall cathedral tower, the bulky soap- 
 works, the distillery chimney. Below, 
 the olive gardens sloped in broad grey 
 waves towards a waveless sea. It was 
 all as it had ever been, these many years 
 of his joy in her. And Orgeas's face 
 brightened with confidence a certain 
 hope so soon to be realised. " Elle se 
 promene. 'Faut attendre ! On the ninth
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 2$ 
 
 day, at the latest before that before 
 the ninth day, bien stir Miradou re- 
 viendra ! " 
 
 He went each morning to his work, 
 punctually as usual. He got himself his 
 breakfast. A neighbour, who pitied him 
 but with whose pity he was scarcely 
 concerned tidied his rooms for him, and 
 made his bed, leaving the chamber of the 
 absent untouched and sacred. It was not, 
 of course, necessary "non vraiment ce 
 ri&tait pas la peine" to think of any paid 
 service. Soon the bright spirit of that so 
 limited household would be again in the 
 accustomed place. " Bien sur / Elle 
 reviendra" 
 
 And so the time went on. 
 
 The seventh day, he fancied his child 
 upon her walk to Maganosc upon the 
 road acacias bordered, upon the great 
 hillside, pursuing its almost level course 
 some halfway up the heights, between 
 plain and mountain ridge ; winding to a
 
 24 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 ravine, and out again to a platform, a 
 promontory, some spur of the particular 
 hill ; yet always level, and tending slowly 
 and with many a dttour, towards Le Bar 
 and the grey mountains. It was her 
 favourite walk with her girl comrades or 
 himself, upon a Sunday, and most of all 
 in Summer and in that Provencal Spring 
 which is a first Summer and a fresher one. 
 She must be now upon that favourite 
 road, tree - shaded, hill - shaded, richly 
 screened from the great westering sun 
 with half Provence beneath her, its swell- 
 ing lowlands, flowers and farms, and, last, 
 in the great distance, the abrupt rising 
 of the jagged Esterel, for a sharp horizon. 
 Just past the little Octroi, the road 
 turned suddenly inwards, made for a 
 minute as if to pierce the hillside, then 
 thought differently, crossed by a high 
 bridge the deep ravine in which a stream 
 gurgled, and then turned to the right 
 again, where, on the gentlest slope, just
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 25 
 
 close below, masses of violet plants grew 
 under the light leaf of the olive, and by 
 the trunks of the olive-trees stood the 
 glazed water pots, burly as casks, holding 
 the water with which the violet plants 
 were from time to time moistened. 1 
 
 This year the winter had been severe 
 for Provence, and, notwithstanding the 
 present splendours of sunshine, flowers 
 were backward. Jonquils and violets 
 alone strewed the floors of the scent- 
 makers. They must wait still for the 
 bushels of roses, whose labyrinthine bud- 
 ding had not begun. 
 
 On the left-hand side of the Maganosc 
 road there was one place that Miradou 
 had often paused at, just before the road 
 along the hill-side made for the very 
 depths of the ravine and then turned 
 
 1 The right to draw water from the springs at the 
 hillside belongs to each olive-farmer for short and fixed 
 periods. Hence the necessity of storage in those fields 
 which are flower gardens.
 
 26 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 sharply, outwards again, towards the long 
 village with its styleless church but quaint 
 campanile towards the vast olive gardens 
 that sloped to the plain. There was an 
 iron gate, high, elegant, and dignified, as 
 of some old-world villa, and, within and 
 behind it, a gravelled way, too broad for 
 a footpath, yet now, by the great inroad 
 of untended shrubs, too narrow for a 
 carriage drive. Quickly the way curved 
 a little enough to prevent its further 
 course from being seen from gate or high 
 road. Unrestrained foliage of darker 
 and of lighter green some of the trees 
 perhaps sun-smitten and some in shadow 
 made of the place a tangle and a 
 mystery. You only guessed. Above 
 the mass of greenery there rose just here 
 at hand, by the very roadside, the grace 
 of the eucalyptus a shimmer of silver 
 and from some unreached recess the top 
 of a sombre cypress lifted itself against 
 the background of thickly clothed hillside.
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 2 7 
 
 Had there once been a villa there ? 
 Miradou had wondered was it now dis- 
 mantled and done with ? Or were the 
 stately gate and the curved road and that 
 particular garden but a secondary and 
 now disused entrance to some greater 
 property by the side of the hills ? Not 
 many steps along the drive, just within 
 sight from the gate, stood, on a space of 
 overgrown and neglected grass, a stone 
 pedestal, like the base of a statue. In 
 past years had some Diana, with her 
 arrows, paused on the stone, a foot still 
 lifted, but her chase suddenly stopped ; 
 or was there a lyre there, and Apollo ; 
 or had some slim figure of Silence put 
 finger on lip in that enclosed place, 
 wherein for long, amidst the wayward 
 greenery, no step of man had stirred ? 
 
 It was Miradou's garden in her 
 imagination long her very own. 
 
 At night, Orgeas thought of it fancied 
 it all, from the excluding gate on to the
 
 28 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 statue's pedestal, and pictured every 
 branch of every tree. There must be 
 Miradou walking. And at night, when 
 the breeze stirred, the eucalyptus boughs 
 would sway in the darkness, and the 
 sombre cypress perhaps would have a 
 gesture, a bend to right and to left, as 
 the tempered wind passed over it and 
 was gone. 
 
 And now on the eighth day it was 
 almost the dawn. Had Miradou left her 
 garden as the daylight came to it ? And 
 the child was wandering where ? 
 
 An hour later, Orgeas looked out of 
 his window. But the early morning sun- 
 light, that was accustomed all these 
 recent times of the belated Spring to 
 make upon house front and shutter its 
 shifting pattern of cool gold, was not 
 visible at all. Clouds that were tangible 
 mist drifted over the mountains seemed 
 for a time to have a substance solid 
 almost as the earth's ; as measurable, as
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 29 
 
 closely defined. Then there were heavy 
 raindrops, and then a pelting of waters. 
 The distance was clean gone, and 
 suddenly the narrowed world of street 
 and house-front was one uniform slate 
 colour. 
 
 Again, that eighth morning, Orgeas 
 trudged to his work. By midday there 
 was sunshine. Where was Miradou ? 
 Seeking shelter from its white flash and 
 blinding glare in the deep shadow and 
 coolness of some always opened church 
 the Cathedral perhaps, or the Oratoire, 
 or St. Thomas in the lane the Sceurs 
 de St. Thomas had taught Miradou, in 
 their school, next door. 
 
 Most likely the Cathedral. Behind 
 the altar, there, by the benches where the 
 choristers practise, where the little organ 
 is the great one's deputy, in the western 
 gallery. Yes ; the Cathedral. She had 
 her favourite picture there ; she looked 
 at it at Vespers ; at Benediction it spoke
 
 3O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 to her. Not Fragonard's famous " Feet 
 Washing," which a chandelier obscured ; 
 but Subleyras's " Assumption," with its 
 touch of modernness and of the actual 
 world its observant crowd of Apostles 
 who were gens du monde somehow ; its 
 Virgin, a very pleasant, well-bred French- 
 woman you might meet in Grasse to-day, 
 though dressed a little differently. That 
 was so homely. Painted so, you could 
 understand it, quite. 
 
 Or now thought Orgeas, absent- 
 minded, at his work and silent, with no 
 smile for any comrade, for the ninth day 
 was drawing near, and his anxiety in- 
 creased now that it was afternoon, and 
 the shadows were long and the ways 
 cooler on the road to Auribeau, the down- 
 ward road to the plain now that it was 
 that hour, was Miradou there, stepping 
 past the rose gardens, past the orchards 
 starred with the white of cherry blossom 
 or flushed with rose-du-Barry bloom of
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 3! 
 
 some early peach tree a splash of colour 
 thrown wantonly amidst the green and 
 the gray past the lowland meadows 
 from amidst whose ampler herbage the 
 chapel of Our Lady of Valcluse lifts it- 
 self, screened by trees ? Did Miradou 
 stop ? Scarcely. Only twice in the year 
 would anybody dream of entering the de- 
 serted chapel, pilgrim-crowded on its 
 particular fete-day. She had come on 
 to Auribeau, the massed village, perched 
 on the pointed hill gone on along the 
 rising road past the cork trees that over- 
 looked the bend of the river : the Siagne, 
 limpid, green as a lake, lying deep in the 
 ravine of the shadowed hills. There ! 
 was Miradou there ? But when would she 
 return again, and the little house welcome 
 her, and the heart that was hers so wholly 
 leap again for joy ? 
 
 She was on no far-away journey. 
 Distant Auribeau, more distant Gourdon 
 they had not seen her to-day. She
 
 32 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 was nearing home now. Very close. 
 She was waiting was biding her time. 
 
 He knew it Orgeas knew it. She 
 was in their town to-night. On the 
 Cours, by the terrace, or in the patch of 
 city garden, by Fragonard's bust, or 
 higher up, by the Proven9al poet's by 
 Bellaud de la Bellaudiere's. The lovers 
 on the seat there, by the trees, in the 
 darkness as she passed, were they con- 
 scious of the ghost of her form ? At 
 least they were happier. She carried 
 happiness as a garment. They were 
 more joyful, or were more at rest those 
 lovers never guessing the cause. For 
 Miradou was there. She had passed, 
 had turned, had paused. Very near was 
 Miradou. Now perhaps under his own 
 dark house-front, under the home of 
 Orgeas : her step unrecognized only be- 
 cause it was silent; but surely there, 
 amidst the clattering steps of the living. 
 The next was the ninth day.
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 33 
 
 After a night in which he had slept 
 but little, Orgeas had risen early, and, 
 having hurried his clothes on, had thrown 
 wide the shutters, and into the dark 
 chambers there streamed the morning. 
 The day before, he had given out, at the 
 printing press, that that day they were 
 not to expect him ; he could not work 
 that day, for that day she would come. 
 Would it be possible, he had asked him- 
 self, before deciding it so, to fulfil his 
 tasks as usual at each accustomed hour, 
 and then, at nightfall only, to walk home, 
 and a minute to settle it there or not 
 there ; come back and tired of wandering, 
 or back no more for ever, and dead 
 indeed ? That crisis was unendurable 
 to stake all in a minute, as it were, upon 
 the hazard of the die ; the division be- 
 tween hope and fear, narrowed, refined, 
 to a pin's point. It was not in Humanity 
 to bear it thus, with such a suddenness 
 of knowledge. He would walk himself
 
 34 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 and walk until he was done for. In the 
 morning he would walk ; in the afternoon, 
 would wait. 
 
 So Orgeas made his way, that ninth 
 morning, along the very road whose 
 every turn, when thinking of Miradou, 
 he had most completely realised. It was 
 the road to Maganosc, the road past her 
 garden. He tramped along by the two 
 forges, by the great coach-house, the 
 hotel, and the Baronne's villa, and the 
 English Church, and the Octroi, and the 
 turning to Malbosc. He was well on 
 the road to Maganosc now ; soon, the 
 turn inwards, the railing and the wrought- 
 iron gate and Miradou's garden ; the 
 eucalyptus no breeze stirred, in the sudden 
 radiant summer ; the stiffened cactus, 
 silvery gray ; the magnolia ; the cypress 
 black ; and, as he peered upwards, far 
 above it, trees climbing the hillside, till 
 at last, amongst limestone crags, only the 
 pines held their own. The Summer was
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 35 
 
 come, to welcome Miradou back ; the 
 overflowing ardours of the sun announced 
 to Orgeas the new season ; and in the 
 stainless daylight and the subtle air his 
 hope was made a confidence. He walked, 
 he almost sprang, up a steep olive-ground, 
 and reached from it and paced an hour 
 a level mule path, the country's ancient 
 way. And from the mule path, through a 
 mist of olive leaves, there was the warm 
 and golden plain, and deep blue shadows 
 of the Esterel, and leagues of distant water 
 gleaming silvery in the fortunate day. 
 
 Coming down again, he talked to a 
 peasant, and picked some flowers for 
 Miradou, under the shade of the olives. 
 
 It was time to go homewards, now 
 fully time. One o'clock struck from 
 Maganosc tower. It would be the begin- 
 ning of the afternoon when he should 
 arrive and be ready for her his feet 
 hurrying up the staircase, to her rooms 
 in the narrow street: to Miradou'shome.
 
 36 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 She was not there yet, however. He 
 found that when he got there. Of course 
 not yet. But a little later. Orgeas sat 
 in expectation. There was much to 
 think about ; so much there would be to 
 say to her. The time would pass, not 
 very slowly. And she would soon come. 
 
 " Bien stir" he said to himself, with the 
 phrase of days ago the phrase with 
 which the lonely man had comforted the 
 earliest hours of his threatened loss 
 " Bien stir, elle reviendra / . . . O ! pour 
 stir/" 
 
 He sat brooding, waiting. She must 
 come before the sunset of that ninth, 
 decisive day. Yes, it would have to be 
 before the sunset. Sunset fixed it. That 
 he knew. 
 
 But the sun was high yet was it not ? 
 It was well above the circle of the hills. 
 He looked out of the window, and in the 
 street he noticed where a certain shadow 
 fell. He came back, and sat down. He
 
 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 37 
 
 rose again, and wandered in and out of 
 Miradou's room that was just as she left 
 it ; and sat again ; and wandered. And 
 then he went to his window, and out of it 
 he leaned, and looked again for the 
 shadow. How much longer the shadow! 
 Yet, of course, there was time. 
 
 Orgeas was seated awhile, once more, 
 in his own chair, in his particular corner. 
 Facing it was Miradou's chair, and by 
 Miradou's chair, her footstool. On the 
 table stood the flowers he had brought 
 for her. On the mantelpiece there was left, 
 still why of course there was left, still a 
 bit of her work. From her chair she had 
 but to lift her hand and could take her 
 work. That very night she would take her 
 work. She was coming, now, to take it. 
 
 Surely it was not so light now, in the 
 room, as it had been. No ; it was not so 
 light. Orgeas knew that. The light 
 seemed creeping away. 
 
 The silvery sound of a church bell,
 
 38 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 musical, soothing, struck him next. But 
 it was Vespers. Was it, though, quite 
 so late ? Yes, it was Vespers Vespers 
 at the Cathedral. Well ? Miradou must 
 be there. She would be coming now. 
 Certainly now. She was on the stairs, now. 
 
 Pale and the ghost of himself, for all 
 his sustained trusting, Orgeas waited for 
 her who was wandering ghost no more, 
 A woman again ; his child ; his hand 
 could press her. Her head was against 
 his head. He held her wrist; feeling 
 the throb of her pulses. The long, the 
 long suspense was all but over. Miradou 
 would be here. 
 
 It was getting darker now. It was 
 much, much darker. Was there any 
 colour in the flowers ? And Miradou's 
 print gown, that hung on a peg by the 
 window it was the child's red gown, 
 remember What was the colour of 
 Miradou's red gown ? Had the curtain 
 any colour ? 
 
 Grasse, April, 1895.
 
 TO NANCY.
 
 TO NANCY. 
 
 WEYMOUTH, 
 
 September, 
 
 IT happens that I have seen much of you, 
 Nancy, at an eventful moment eventful 
 for yourself I mean, in your life and your 
 career and here, because I like you, and 
 like to think of and reflect on you, there 
 is written down, straight and full, the 
 record of my impression : concealing no- 
 thing, though written to yourself : a letter 
 absolutely frank, looking all facts in the 
 face ; for, young though you are, you are 
 intelligent enough to bear them. My 
 letter you may find tedious, perhaps, but 
 at all events unusual ; for letters, even 
 when detailed, generally omit much, hide 
 some part of a thought put the thing in
 
 42 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 a way that pleases the writer, or is in- 
 tended to please the receiver. Here am 
 I at the end of my first page, Nancy, 
 and all preface ! Well, I shall recall, 
 to begin with, how it was that I met 
 you. 
 
 Acquit me, please, of any general love 
 of your over-praised Music Hall. Neither 
 it nor the Theatre counts for much in my 
 life. I like you personally : I imagine 
 a Future for you ; but I am not anxious 
 for <( the status of the profession." Life, 
 it is just possible, has other goals than 
 that of being received in smart drawing- 
 rooms whatever Art you practise, its 
 practice is your reward. Society, my 
 dear, has bestowed of late upon the 
 stage "lover" an attention that is mis- 
 placed. We are getting near the end of 
 it : and, at afternoon teas, the cabotin, in a 
 frock coat, no longer dominates the situ- 
 ation. Youths from the green-room 
 have, in the Past, over the luncheon-
 
 TO NANCY. 43 
 
 table, imparted to me, with patronage, 
 their views about Painting; to me, Nancy, 
 to your old friend, who has painted for 
 thirty years a full Academician one year 
 since, with but few honours (as men call 
 them) left to gain : few years, alas ! in 
 which to live to gain them. Child as 
 you are, your common sense that neatly- 
 balanced little mind of yours, so unusually 
 clear that neatly-balanced mind assures 
 you that it is not the profession you 
 follow, but what you have been able to 
 do in it, and what you really are, that 
 gives you I mean, of course, gives any 
 one legitimate claim to be in privileged 
 places, to be motioned to the velvet of 
 the social sward. " Artist," indeed ! As 
 well expect to be received with welcome 
 for having had sufficient capital to buy a 
 camp stool and a few feet of German 
 moulding with which to frame a canvas 
 sent to the Dudley Gallery, as to be 
 suffered to dictate and to dogmatise in 
 D
 
 44 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 virtue of a well-worn coat and an appear- 
 ance at a London theatre ! 
 
 You have read so far, and yet I have 
 not reminded you how it was that you 
 and I came to know each other. It was 
 just two years ago, in this same town 
 from which I write to you. I saw a 
 photograph that struck me, at the door 
 of your place of entertainment at the 
 door of the " People's Delight." The 
 face was young but I have known 
 youth. Pretty, it was but a fashionable 
 portrait-painter lives with prettiness. It 
 was so monstrously refined ! 
 
 At three o'clock, they said, there would 
 be an entertainment Miss Nancy Nan- 
 son would certainly be seen. And in I 
 went, with a companion old Sir James 
 Purchas, of Came Manor my host more 
 than once in these parts. Sir James, you 
 know, is not a prey to the exactions of 
 conventionality, and there was no reason 
 why the humble entertainment your
 
 TO NANCY. 45 
 
 lounge and shelter offered to the tripper 
 should not afford us half an hour's amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 The blazing September afternoon you 
 recollect September with the glare of 
 the dog days. The " people," it seemed, 
 were not profiting that day by the 
 " People's Delight," for the place was 
 all but empty everyone out of doors 
 and we wandered, not aimlessly indeed, 
 but not successfully, among those cav- 
 ernous, half-darkened regions, among the 
 stalls for fruits and sweets and cheap 
 jewelry, in search of a show. A turn, 
 and we came suddenly on rows of empty 
 chairs placed in front of a small stage, 
 with drawn curtain; and, at a money- 
 taker's box (for reserved seats, as I sup- 
 posed) leaning over the money-taker's 
 counter, in talk with someone who came, 
 it may be, from a selling-stall there was 
 a child, a little girl. Sir James touched 
 my arm, directing my attention to her,
 
 46 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 and I took the initiative said to the 
 little girl : " We came to see Miss Nancy 
 Nanson. You can tell us, perhaps, when 
 is the show going to begin ? " " There 
 won't be any entertainment this after- 
 noon," the girl answered ; " because, you 
 see, there isn't any audience. I am 
 Miss Nancy Nanson." The dignity of 
 the child ! 
 
 The fact was, you remember, that 
 photograph at the entrance gave the im- 
 pression of a girl of seventeen ; and I 
 did not at all connect it with the figure 
 of the silver- voiced, well-spoken, elegant 
 child, who proved to be yourself since 
 then my model and my youthful friend. 
 But the moment you spoke, and when 
 my eyes, still not quite used to the 
 obscurity, took in your real face and 
 those refined expressions, the identity 
 was established, though the photograph, 
 with its dexterous concealment, showed 
 more the Nancy Nanson you were going
 
 TO NANCY. 47 
 
 to be, than the Nancy Nanson that you 
 were. I was pleased, nevertheless ; and 
 we talked about yourself for a few 
 minutes ; and when you said (because I 
 asked you) that there would be an enter- 
 tainment next day, I told you we would 
 come to see it, certainly. And Sir James 
 was indulgent. And I am a man of my 
 word. 
 
 And now there is a bit we can afford 
 to hurry over ; for the next stage of our 
 acquaintance does not advance, appre- 
 ciably, the action of your story. We 
 came ; we saw your entertainment : your 
 three turns : singing, dancing : and pretty 
 enough it was ; but yet, so-so. You 
 were such a pleasant child, of course we 
 applauded you so refined, yet singing, 
 tolerably, such nonsense. Even then, it 
 was your charming little personality, you 
 know it was not your performance that 
 had in it attractiveness. Next day, I 
 left the neighbourhood.
 
 48 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 For two years after that, I never saw 
 Miss Nancy Nanson, " vocalist and 
 dancer " ; only once heard of and read of 
 you only once, perhaps, thought of you. 
 The once was last Christmas your 
 name, I saw, was advertised in a panto- 
 mime played by "juveniles." I might, 
 it is just possible, have gone to see 
 it. But the average " juvenile ! " 
 think ! and then, the influenza and the 
 weather ! 
 
 Well ! this present glowing September, 
 Nancy glowing and golden as it was 
 two years ago brought me again, and 
 very differently, into touch with you. 
 The Past is over. Now I fix your at- 
 tention for you are still patient with 
 me I fix your attention on the Present, 
 and I point out to you, in detail I realise 
 to myself how the time is critical, event- 
 ful ; how you stand, Nancy, upon a 
 certain brink. I am not going to pro- 
 phesy what you may be ; but I tell you
 
 TO NANCY. 49 
 
 what you are. The real You, you know : 
 something better and deeper than that 
 which those seven pastels, any or all of 
 them together, show you my delighted 
 notes of your external beauty ; touched, 
 I think, with some charm of grace that 
 answers well to your own ; and mimick- 
 ing, not badly, the colours and contours 
 of your stage presence. Nothing more. 
 Chance gleams an artist's " snap-shots " 
 at Miss Nancy Nanson, vocalist and 
 dancer, at sixteen. (Sixteen yesterday.) 
 Butjj/0# No ! 
 
 This present September a fortnight 
 since I came again to Weymouth ; this 
 time alone ; putting up at the old "Glou- 
 cester " (it was George the Third's house) 
 from which I write to you ; and not at 
 Came Manor in the neighbourhood. In 
 the Weymouth of to-day one is obliged, 
 in nearly every walk, to pass the " Peo- 
 ple's Delight " your cheap vulgarity, my 
 dear, that the great Georgian time would
 
 5O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 have resented. I passed it soon, and the 
 two names biggest upon the bills were, 
 " Achilles, the Strong Man " there are 
 things in which even a decayed watering 
 place cannot afford to be behind the 
 fashion, and the "strong man" is in 
 fashion to-day " Achilles, the Strong 
 Man," then, and " Miss Nancy Nanson." 
 Again did I go in ; took the seat, exactly, 
 that I had taken two years since, in the 
 third row of chairs ; and while a band of 
 three made casual, lifeless, introductory 
 music, I waited for the show. 
 
 The curtain rose presently on a great, 
 living, breathing, over-energetic statue 
 a late Renaissance bronze, by John of 
 Bologna, he seemed that muscular piece 
 of colour and firm form, that nigger, 
 posed effectively, and of prodigious force. 
 " John of Bologna " but you never heard 
 of him ! Then he began his operations 
 Achilles, the Strong Man holding, 
 and only by his teeth, enormous weights ;
 
 TO NANCY. 51 
 
 and rushing round with one, two, hun- 
 dredweight, as if it were a feather ; 
 lifting, with that jaw of his, masses of 
 iron ; crashing them on the stage again, 
 and standing afterwards with quivering 
 muscles, heaving chest. Applause I 
 joined in it myself in common courtesy 
 and then the curtain fell. 
 
 A wait. The band struck up again 
 it was your first turn. A slim and dainty 
 figure, so very slight, so very young, in a 
 lad's evening dress, advanced with swift- 
 ness towards the footlights, and bowed in 
 a wide sweep that embraced everyone. 
 Then you began to sing and not too 
 well, you know a song of pretty-enough 
 sentiment ; the song of a stripling whose 
 sweetheart was his mother. His mother, 
 she sufficed for him. It suited your 
 young years. A tender touch or two, 
 and with a boy's manliness. Applause ! 
 You vanished. 
 
 You vanished to return. In a girl's
 
 52 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 dress this time, with movements now 
 more swift and now more graceful. An- 
 other song, and this time dancing with it. 
 It was dancing you were born for. " She 
 has grown another being and yet with 
 the old pleasantness in these two years," 
 I thought. "A child no longer." In 
 colour and agility you were a brilliant 
 show. I have told you since, in talking, 
 what I thought of you. You were not a 
 Sylvia Grey, my dear ; still less that 
 other Sylvia Voltaire praised, contrasting 
 her with the Camargo. The Graces 
 danced like Sylvia, Voltaire said like 
 the Camargo, the wild nymphs. No ! 
 you were not Voltaire's Sylvia, any more 
 than you were Sylvia Grey. Sylvia 
 Grey's dance is perfect, from the waist 
 upwards as an observant actress pointed 
 out to me, with whom I saw it. Swan- 
 like in the holding and slow movement 
 of the head and neck ; exquisite in the 
 undulations of the torso. Where Sylvia
 
 TO NANCY. 53 
 
 Grey ends I mean where her remark- 
 ableness ends (for she has legs like 
 another, I take it) you, my dear, begin. 
 Your modelling wants an Ingres to do 
 it justice. The slimness of the girl, and 
 what a fineness, as of race ; and then, the 
 agility of infinite practice, and sixteen 
 young years ! 
 
 A third turn then it was that you 
 were agile most of all. The flying feet 
 went skyward. Black shoes rushed, 
 rocket-like, so far above your head, and 
 clattered on the floor again ; whilst 
 against the sober crimson of the 
 background curtain a dull, thin stuff, 
 stretched straightly gleamed the white 
 of moving skirts, and blazed the boss of 
 brightest scarlet that nestled somewhere 
 in the brown gold of your head. Then, 
 flushed and panting, it was over. 
 
 Next day, in a gaunt ante-room, or 
 extra chamber, its wooden floor quite 
 bare, and the place furnished only with
 
 54 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 a couple of benches and a half-voiceless 
 semi-grand piano the wreck of an Erard 
 that was great once in that big, bare 
 room, Nancy, where my pastels since 
 have caught your pose in lilac, rose and 
 orange, but never your grave character, 
 I came upon, and closely noted, and, for 
 a quarter of an hour, talked to, a sedate 
 young girl in black a lady who, in all 
 her bearing, ways, gesture, silver voice, 
 was as refined as any, young or old, that 
 I have been in contact with in my 
 long life and I have lived abundantly 
 amongst great ladies, from stately, rest- 
 ful Quakeress to the descendant of the 
 "hundred Earls." No one is more re- 
 fined than you. This thing may not 
 last with you. Whether it lasts, depends, 
 in great measure, upon the life you lead, 
 in the strange world opening to you. 
 Your little craft, Nancy, your slender 
 skiff, will have some day to labour over 
 voluminous seas.
 
 TO NANCY. 55 
 
 You remember what you told me, in 
 the great ante-room, standing by the 
 wreck of the Erard, that your fingers 
 touched. All your life to that time. 
 You were frankness absolutely ; standing 
 there in your dull, black frock that be- 
 came you to perfection ; standing with 
 hat of broad, black straw the clear-cut 
 nose, the faultless mouth, the bright- 
 brown hair curled short about your head, 
 and the limpid look of your serene eyes, 
 steadily grey. It was interesting, and 
 amusing too, your story. I told you, you 
 remember, how much you had got on, 
 how changed you were, what progress I 
 had noticed. And you said a pretty 
 " Thank you." It was clear that you 
 meant it. We were friends. I asked 
 who taught you so far as anything can 
 be taught in this world,- where, at bottom, 
 one's work, one's progress, is one's own. 
 You said, your mother. And I told you I'd 
 seen your name in some London Christ-
 
 56 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 mas play-bill. " I had a big success," 
 you said. What a theatrical moment ! 
 the one occasion in all my little deal- 
 ings with you in which I found the tra- 
 ditions of " the profession " stronger with 
 you than your own personal character. 
 Now, your own personal instinct is to be 
 modest and natural ; the traditions of 
 "the profession" are to boast. You did 
 boast, Nancy ! You had a big success, 
 had you ? Perhaps, for yourself ; I do 
 not say you failed. But the piece my 
 dear, you know it was a frost. Did it 
 run three weeks ? Come now ! And 
 someone, out of jealousy, paid four 
 guineas she or her friends did to get 
 you a bad notice somewhere in back- 
 stairs journalism. And they got it, and 
 then repented of it. You were friends 
 with them afterwards. But what a world, 
 Nancy'! a world in which, for four 
 guineas, a scoundrel contributes his part 
 towards damning your career !
 
 TO NANCY. 57 
 
 You remember, before I asked if I 
 might make some sketches of you, you 
 were turning over a song that had been 
 sent you by "a gentleman at Birming- 
 ham." He had had it "ruled" for you, 
 and wanted you to buy it for three 
 pounds. It was " rather a silly song," 
 you thought. I settled myself quietly to 
 master the sense, or, as was more pro- 
 bable, the nonsense, of it. My dear, it 
 was blank rubbish! But you were not 
 going to have it, you said. " Mamma 
 would never buy a song I didn't like and 
 take to." That was well, I thought. 
 And then you slowly closed the ruined 
 Erard, and were going away. But on 
 the road down-stairs, remember, I per- 
 suaded you to ask your mother that you 
 might give me sittings.^ I told you who 
 I was. And in the gaunt ante-room, lit 
 well from above, I had a sitting next day. 
 It was the first of several. And your 
 mother trusted me, and trusted you, as
 
 58 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 you deserve to be trusted. And we 
 worked hard together, didn't we ? you 
 posing, and I drawing. And there are 
 seven pastels which record tant bien que 
 mal, my dear the delightful outside of 
 you, the side the public might itself see, 
 if it had eyes to really see the flash of 
 you in the dance, snow-white or carmine ; 
 and I got all that with alacrity "swift 
 means " I took, to " radiant ends " the 
 poise of the slim figure, the white frock 
 slashed with gold, the lifted foot, and 
 that gleam of vivid scarlet in your hair 
 against the background of most sober 
 crimson. 
 
 This tranquil Sunday I devote to 
 writing to you, is the day after your last 
 appearance at the " People's Delight." 
 You and your mother, very soon, you 
 tell me, leave Weymouth and your old 
 associations it is your home, you know 
 and you leave it for ever. The country, 
 you admit, is beautiful, but you are tired
 
 TO NANCY. 59 
 
 of the place. I don't much wonder. 
 And you leave it the great bay, the 
 noble chalk Downs, the peace of Dorset 
 and its gleaming quiet you leave it for 
 lodgings in the Waterloo Road. For 
 you must be amongst the agents for the 
 Halls. Though you have been upon the 
 Stage since you were very little, you have 
 but lately, so you say, "put your heart into 
 it." Well ! it is not unnatural. But no 
 more Sunday drives into the lovely 
 country, recollect, with your brother, who 
 is twenty-one and has his trade; and 
 your uncle, who is in a good way of busi- 
 ness here, you said your uncle, the 
 plumber. 
 
 And so, last night being your last night, 
 Nancy, it was almost like a Benefit. As 
 for your dancing, you meant, I knew, to 
 give us the cup filled yes, filled and 
 running over. I had noticed that, on 
 some earlier evening, when Little Lily 
 Somebody a dumpling child, light of
 
 6O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 foot, but with not one " line " in all her 
 meaningless, fat form when Little Lily 
 Somebody had capered her infantile 
 foolishness, to the satisfaction of those 
 who rejoice in mere babyhood, someone 
 presented her with a bouquet. And you 
 danced, excellently, just after her you, 
 height and grace, slimness and soul 
 and someone, with much effusion, handed 
 you up a box of chocolates. And you 
 smiled pleasantly. I saw there was a 
 little conflict in your mind, however, 
 between the gracious recognition of what 
 was well-enough meant, and the resent- 
 ment well, the resentment we can hardly 
 call it : the regret, at all events at 
 being treated so very visibly as a child 
 and yesterday you were to be sixteen ! 
 So I myself who, if this small indignity 
 had not been offered you, might con- 
 ceivably have given you, in private, at 
 all events, a basket of fine fruit I meant 
 to offer you flowers. It might have been
 
 TO NANCY. 6 1 
 
 fruit, I say, if smuggled into the ante- 
 room where I had done my pastels ; for 
 I had seen you once there, crunching, 
 quite happily, imperfect apples between 
 perfect teeth your perfect teeth, almost 
 the only perfect things, Nancy, in an im- 
 perfect world. 
 
 But it had to be flowers. So I sent 
 round to the dressing-room, just as you 
 were getting ready, two button-holes 
 merely wired button-holes of striped 
 carnations, red or wine-coloured. They 
 were not worn in your first turn. They 
 were not worn in your second. In your 
 third turn, I espied them at your neck's 
 side, in the fury of your dance. Already 
 there are people, I suppose, who would 
 have thought those, striped carnations 
 happy tossed, tossed to pieces, in the 
 warmth of your throat. 
 
 Your second turn, last night, you know, 
 was in flowing white, slashed with gold 
 old-gold velvet with pale stockings.
 
 62 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 The third when the flowers died happy 
 in your riot in pure white alone, with 
 stockings black. You remember the 
 foot held in your hand, as you swing 
 round upon the other toe and one up- 
 lifted leg seen horizontal, in its straight 
 and modelled slimness. 
 
 My dear what were my little flowers ? 
 Who could have known when you had 
 finished the great things still to come ? 
 When the applause seemed over, and the 
 enthusiasm of some subaltern from Dor- 
 chester was, as I take it, abated or sup- 
 pressed when the applause was over, a 
 certain elocutionist (Mr. Paris Brown, 
 wasn't it ?) brought you again upon the 
 stage, and saying it was your last appear- 
 ance, made you some presentation : a 
 brooch from himself, "of no intrinsic 
 value " he informed us I willingly be- 
 lieved him a bracelet from I don't know 
 who that had an " intrinsic value," I 
 surmise and a bouquet, exquisite ! It
 
 TO NANCY. 63 
 
 was " From an admirer," Mr. Paris 
 Brown, the elocutionist, read out, from 
 an accompanying card. Then he con- 
 gratulated you upon your Past; pro- 
 phesied as to your Future ; and, in regard 
 to the presents to you, he said, in words 
 that were quite happily chosen because, 
 Nancy, they were reticent while they 
 were expressive "She is but a girl; 
 and she has done her duty by the man- 
 agement. Long may she be a credit to 
 her father and mother ! " Your mother 
 I was well aware of your mother I 
 respect; and you, you love her. But 
 your father he was invented, I think, 
 for the occasion, as an additional protec- 
 tion, should the designs upon you of the 
 admirer from Dorchester prove to be not 
 altogether such as -they ought to be. 
 The precaution was unnecessary ; it was 
 taking Time by the forelock. Our young 
 friend looked ingenuous, and smitten 
 grievously you seem so big upon the
 
 64 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 stage, Nancy so grown up, I mean. I 
 could, I think, have toned down his 
 emotions, had I told him you were a 
 bare sixteen. 
 
 Nancy, there is for me a certain 
 pathos in this passage of yours from 
 childhood into ripening girlhood ; a book 
 closed, as it were ; a phase completed ; 
 an ending of the way. " What chapter 
 is to open ? Nancy Nanson what phase 
 or facet of her life," I ask myself, " is now 
 so soon to be presented ? What other 
 way, what unfamiliar one, is to follow her 
 blameless and dutiful childhood ? " I had 
 a restless night, Nancy. Thinking of 
 this, one saw ridiculously perhaps a 
 presage in the first bouquet, a threat in 
 the first bracelet in the admirer's card. 
 Would she be like the rest ? at least, so 
 many of them. Besmirched, too ? 
 
 Remember, Nancy, I am no Puritan at 
 all. I recognise Humanity's instincts. 
 There is little I do not tolerate. I
 
 TO NANCY. 65 
 
 recognise the gulf that separates the 
 accidentally impolitic from the essentially 
 wrong. But we owe things to other 
 people to the World's laws. We have 
 responsibilities. Noblesse oblige ; and all 
 superiority is Noblesse. " She must not 
 be like the rest," I said, last night, in 
 broken dreams ; " dining, winking, leer- 
 ing even, since sold at last and made 
 common." In broken dreams, last night 
 or in wakeful hours your feet tossed 
 higher ; your gay blood passed into the 
 place electrical, overpowering. You can 
 be so grave and sweet, you know ; and 
 you can be so mad. 
 
 Have you ever lain awake, in the 
 great, long darkness, and watched in the 
 darkness a procession the people of 
 your Past and all your Future ? But 
 you have no Past. For myself, I have 
 watched them. My mother, who is long 
 gone ; those who were good to me, and 
 whom I slighted ; the relations who failed
 
 66 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 me ; the friend I lost. And the uncertain 
 figures of the Future ! But the line of 
 the Future is short enough for me for 
 you, it is all yours. Last night, it seemed 
 to me, the dark was peopled with your 
 enemies ; with your false friends, who 
 were coming always coming the un- 
 avoidable crowd of the egotistic de- 
 stroyers of youth. Their dark hearts, I 
 thought, look upon her as a prey : some 
 of them cruel, some of them cynical, yet 
 some of them only careless. And I 
 wished that last night had not come 
 your sixteenth birthday with the ap- 
 plause, and gifts, and menacing triumph. 
 
 There are women, perhaps, men can- 
 not wrong since they have wronged 
 themselves too much. " This is a good 
 girl," I said ; and my over-anxious mind 
 in real affection for her cries out to 
 all the horrid forces of the world : " Leave 
 Nancy!" 
 
 Nancy, when you read this, you smile
 
 TO NANCY. 67 
 
 and naturally atyour most sombre friend . 
 You think, of course, with all the reckless 
 trust, courageous confidence, of girlhood, 
 " So superfluous ! So unnecessary ! " 
 
 Go the straight way! . . . Whatever 
 way you go, I shall always be your 
 friend. 
 
 CLEMENT ASHTON. 
 
 [/ have obtained access to a remaining por- 
 tion of the Correspondence between this dis- 
 tinguished member of the Royal Academy 
 and Miss Nancy Nanson of the Variety 
 Stage. I see that the young lady's are the 
 more numerous and the shorter letters ; 
 and in them, as they proceed, I seem to dis- 
 cern some change of tone a rather quick 
 transition or development (call it what 
 you will), which, if it is really there, is 
 unlikely to have escaped the eye of her cor- 
 respondent, and may perhaps have pre-
 
 68 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 pared him, in a certain measure, for an 
 incident which, nevertheless, disturbed him 
 seriously. That at least is my own read- 
 ing of the letters in the round hand 
 of Miss Nanson. But I am possibly 
 wrong.] 
 
 WEYMOUTH : 
 September y>th. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON 
 
 As I suppose you leave Weymouth 
 to-day I will send this to London. It is 
 only to thank you very much for your 
 long letter and your kindness to me, in 
 which Mother joins. I hope you are 
 well. 
 
 I remain yours sincerely, 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 MR. CLEMENT ASHTON. 
 
 ioo YORK ROAD, WATERLOO ROAD. 
 Oct. 24. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON 
 
 I thought I should like to let you
 
 TO NANCY. 69 
 
 know that I have come to London. I 
 have not an engagement yet, but have a 
 Pantomime engagement in view. 
 
 With best wishes I remain yours sin- 
 cerely 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 CLEMENT ASHTON, ESQ : R.A. 
 
 ioo YORK ROAD, WATERLOO ROAD. 
 Nov. 5. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON 
 
 I was so sorry I was out when you 
 called. If I had known you were com- 
 ing, I would have stayed at home. We 
 are very comfortable here, thank you. 
 The landlady is awfully nice. I would 
 come and see you if you appointed a 
 time. 
 
 I think you will be glad to hear that 
 I'm engaged as principal girl for the 
 Pantomime at the Theatre Royal, H ox- 
 ton, by R. Solomon, Esq. In about a
 
 7O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 month we shall begin rehearsing I am 
 engaged for eight weeks. 
 
 We hope you are well. 
 
 Hoping to see you soon, with my best 
 wishes, in which Mother unites, I am 
 yours very sincerely 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 ioo YORK ROAD, WATERLOO ROAD. 
 November 20. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON 
 
 It was so kind of you to take me to 
 the Theatre yesterday afternoon. I must 
 write to tell you so. How nice Miss 
 Annie Hughes was ! She makes you 
 laugh and cry. I like her more than 
 any actress I have ever seen. The man 
 was funny, wasn't he ! 
 
 Thank you again. With best regards 
 from Mother, believe me yours sincerely 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 P.S. I am to do an extra Saturday 
 at the Bedford, Camden Town, and
 
 TO NANCY. 71 
 
 have an early turn next week at the 
 Washington, Battersea. I am very 
 pleased, as I am tired of "resting." 
 When we go to Hoxton we shall take 
 lodgings where there is a piano. I 
 have been practising an acrobatic trick 
 for the Pantomime. The public likes 
 them. The Theatre Royal, Hoxton, is 
 more for the masses than the classes. 
 
 THE WALK, HOXTON, 
 
 Christmas Day. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON 
 
 O ! thank you for remembering us 
 on Christmas Day. I was so pleased. 
 We hope you will come to see the Panto. 
 It went very well last night. I go very 
 well so far. My voice sounds splendid 
 here. It is not lost in the glass roof, as 
 at the "People's Delight." 
 
 I have been so very, very busy rehears- 
 ing, I have seen very little of Hoxton 
 yet, so I do not know how I shall like it.
 
 72 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 I shall know better soon; now that we 
 have started the Panto. 
 
 With best wishes for a happy Christ- 
 mas from Mother and from me, I am 
 yours sincerely and gratefully, in haste, 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 THE WALK, HOXTON, 
 6th January. 
 
 I am glad you came to see me yester- 
 day afternoon. How did you like me ? 
 But it was so flat. I am sorry you came 
 to a matinde. Half the house are mere 
 children, then. In the evening it is dif- 
 ferent. And they cut out part of my 
 song yesterday. It made me cry I was 
 so cross. I generally jump about much 
 more. I am much merrier. Mother and 
 I shall be so pleased if you have time to 
 come again. 
 
 Sincerely yours in haste, 
 
 N. NANSON. 
 
 P. S. Mr. Solomon wants to engage
 
 TO NANCY. 73 
 
 me for next year, he says. And for 
 better money. 
 
 THE STUDIOS, WESTMINSTER, 
 1th January. 
 
 DEAR NANCY, 
 
 No, I did not think you were up to 
 the mark yesterday. It was a ragged 
 performance. I write, of course, frankly. 
 First then, as to your singing, I never 
 very much believed in that. But you 
 would sing much better if you knew that 
 you sang badly. You would then under- 
 stand that I was serious when I told you, 
 what you really wanted was singing 
 lessons. Voice production, my dear. And 
 your speaking voice is excellent. You 
 used it well upon the whole, yesterday. 
 A little careless, I thought a mistake 
 sometimes, in the emphasis. But what 
 is pantomime dialogue ! I will come 
 again, if you like me to see you, and you
 
 74 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 will do all that better. For agility in 
 dancing, for vivacity in action, you 
 seemed as good as it is possible to be. 
 And you take in every point even 
 yesterday I noticed, you believed in 
 every bit of the story. To do so, and 
 to live in it, is the foundation of an 
 actress. Yes, with your intelligence, 
 with your alertness, your quick life, 
 actress just as much as dancer you may 
 very well be. 
 
 You come to Westminster, next week, 
 any morning except Wednesday. I must 
 make one more drawing of you. Not a 
 pastel this time. I have long since done 
 with pastels of you. They are good as 
 far as they go. Your colour and your 
 dress, your movement and your pose, 
 they record not at all unhappily. But I 
 want a careful drawing a drawing in 
 line and shall make it perhaps in pencil ; 
 perhaps even in silver-point. You are 
 such a strange, variable child, you see
 
 TO NANCY. 75 
 
 there is not one subject in you, but a 
 hundred ; and I shall not be contented 
 till I have, somewhere else than in my 
 memory, the eyebrow's line, the delicate 
 low forehead, the fine nose, half Greek 
 (and it gains so in character as you throw 
 your mind into your work) all that and 
 the curve of the open nostril. This 
 moment, they are at my fingers' ends. 
 And your grave sweetness ! 
 
 Frank, is it not ? Yet I am not a 
 foolish person, making up to you. I am 
 not a vulgar flatterer of the first prettiness 
 in the street. You know how much I 
 am an artist heart and soul, my dear 
 by which I mean, that unlike too 
 many of my brethren, I am not only a 
 painter. 
 
 Your " notices " are good, I see. Very 
 good. I congratulate you. The time is 
 coming perhaps when you will patronise 
 me when you will even be so very 
 great that you will quite " cut " me. " No, 
 
 F
 
 76 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 no," I hear you say indeed you said it 
 when I saw you last " No, no, Mr. 
 Ashton, I should never do that ! " You 
 say it with your voice and with your 
 steady eyes you say it even more. 
 Until next week, then ! 
 
 I am sincerely yours, 
 
 CLEMENT ASHTON. 
 
 THE WALK, HOXTON, 
 loth February. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON, 
 
 Mother says, How long since we 
 have seen you ! You said you would 
 come again to our Panto. Since that, 
 remember, I have been to Westmin- 
 ster, to sit to you. They are going to 
 publish one of the drawings, are they ? 
 You will put my name to it, won't 
 you ? 
 
 Saturday is my last night. Mother 
 says, Can you come then ? I shall have 
 all my admirers. And the boys in the
 
 TO NANCY. 77 
 
 gallery though you say I sing so badly 
 all the boys in the gallery taking up 
 my song. After Saturday, I am booked 
 for the Halls. 
 
 Yesterday I was taken a long drive to 
 Hagley Wood. It is near Barnet. I 
 have had a great deal of. attention here. 
 I am yours very sincerely, 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 P.S. Mr. Ashton, we allow you to say 
 anything. Be sure and tell me what you 
 think, if you come Saturday. 
 
 THE STUDIOS, WESTMINSTER : 
 Sunday ', i6th Feb : 
 
 MY DEAR NANCY : 
 
 Yes, you allow me to say anything 
 for a lifetime divides us and because 
 I am a friend of yours I shall say the bare 
 truth. I saw you yesterday, as you know, 
 for you espied me from the stage. From 
 the point of view of a theatrical success,
 
 78 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 the thing was quite undoubted. You 
 were a mass of nerves. You came across 
 the house to us. The footlights ceased 
 to be. Your effect was extraordinary. 
 Shylock's " How much more elder art 
 thou than thy years ! " the thing he said 
 to Portia is a remark which may be 
 made, no doubt, with reasonableness, 
 to many little ladies at the theatre. 
 There is nothing like the theatre for 
 ageing you. You, Nancy, are now, not 
 five months, but two years older than 
 you were last autumn. At first I was 
 afraid for your health. That last time 
 that you came to me, to the studio, your 
 face was quite drawn : not only its 
 expressions, its very lines, had aged. 
 You were pale ; you were worn. And 
 sixteen ! 
 
 But yesterday that was all right, again ; 
 and, Nancy, it was the deeper You that 
 had altered. I I was always an idealist, 
 remember, and so you will forgive me.
 
 TO NANCY. 79 
 
 I go down to the grave, when my time 
 comes, poet, after all, far more than 
 craftsman. Those changes, more or less, 
 that I notice in you those changes not 
 for the better, I mean I was never 
 blind to the possibility of them. Idealist 
 though I am, I foresaw them I foresaw 
 them, with forebodings. 
 
 There was my first long letter to you. 
 It will be well, perhaps, that I shall not 
 say anything more in detail. But read 
 that again the last part of it, I mean. 
 Do so and be warned. 
 
 But no the detail shan't be spared 
 you ; though what it really comes to I 
 tell you from my heart all that it really 
 comes to, is, that you will be " spoilt." 
 " Spoilt " or " ruined ? " You are so sen- 
 sible in many things. Clever, I don't 
 know that you are, except in your pro- 
 fession. It all runs in that one channel 
 with you. Quickness of " study, "closeness 
 of observation, immediate faultless power
 
 8O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 of mimicry, vivacity, agility in the dance 
 all that we know ; and then at home your 
 sensitiveness, your quickness, and your 
 helpful tact. But as to books, as to pic- 
 tures, as to music beyond your showy 
 music of the theatre, as to the things that 
 happen in the world, and that interest 
 people these things are all nothing to 
 you. Who can wonder ! Your whole 
 little eager heart is in your work. Your 
 work is your play too and the whole of 
 your play. But a thirst for admiration, 
 my dear, and vanity ! Will you split, like 
 the others, on that rock ? 
 
 Last night, your face had new expres- 
 sions. There were things I never saw in 
 it, before. In that palace-scene, the slim 
 young thing how queenly you were, in 
 the white silk, spangled with silver : how 
 queenly, and withal a little contemptuous, 
 a little scornful ! I watched you, Nancy, 
 with a keenness horribly inconvenient for 
 you or the scornful look, the bored look,
 
 TO NANCY. 8 I 
 
 the blast look (I have said the worst that 
 I can say) would have passed perhaps 
 unperceived. They were there. 
 
 Again, you acted to the house too much. 
 I am not finding fault with you technically 
 for that though you did, I think, over- 
 do it. I am talking to the girl, and not 
 to the stage character. There was one 
 look at the Boxes : at a private Box 
 rather but I spare you. 
 
 Now who on Earth can be the people 
 who have had this influence upon you ? 
 hour by hour ; drop by drop, I suppose : 
 here a little and there a little in the life 
 I begin to hate for you. . . . But it is 
 no use hating it. I suppose that I could 
 take you from it, if I liked. I have the 
 money to no overwhelming claims on 
 me. But you would leave all this un- 
 willingly : and, in the end, ought you to 
 leave it ? 
 
 My dear Nancy, I will spare you any 
 more. But in my letter, read what
 
 82 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 I have not actually written. Imagine 
 yourself talked to, very gravely : fancy 
 yourself receiving a good, long, serious 
 talking to. Think ! Think ! I have 
 finished. 
 
 My dear child, you are a good girl at 
 heart, you know and such an eager 
 little fiery one, when you are not grave 
 and sober. The stuff is in you out of 
 which they make Sisters of Charity. 
 The stuff is in you out of which But 
 No! Why? 
 
 I am your old and fatherly, yourgrand- 
 fatherly friend, if you prefer it 
 
 CLEMENT ASHTON. 
 
 Tuesday, Feb. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. ASHTON, 
 
 I cried so much when I read your 
 letter. For you have been very kind to 
 me. I suppose I deserved it. 
 
 NANCY.
 
 TO NANCY. 83 
 
 BURFORD PLACE, EDGWARE ROAD, 
 
 Thursday, Feb. zoth. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON, 
 
 We have moved. Until I get into 
 a burlesque at Easter, I am working 
 the Halls. This week, Sam Collins's at 
 Islington. On Monday I have a new 
 song at the " Met." the Metropolitan, 
 in Edgware Road ; nine o'clock. I do 
 a new dance. Mamma has made me a 
 new dress heaps of pink roses, on dull 
 black. Also at Gatti's, Westminster 
 Bridge Road, at 10.15. 
 
 Sincerely yours and gratefully, 
 
 NANCY NANSON. 
 
 BURFORD PLACE, EDGWARE ROAD, 
 
 Tuesday, Feb. 25. 
 
 The engagement at Gatti's only lasts 
 a week, Mr. Ashton. And I am not 
 to be in the Burlesque, at Easter. 
 They say that I am too refined. Am 
 I not going to be a favourite, then ?
 
 84 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 We have our ups and downs haven't 
 we ? I have tried for that music-hall 
 kept by that faddy lady, the philan- 
 thropist. She is very severe. Why, 
 she won't let you take up your skirts, 
 even ! I say, and Mother says, she ought 
 to keep a chapel not a music-hall. 
 
 NANCY. 
 
 BURFORD PLACE, EDGWARE ROAD, 
 March $th. 
 
 DEAR MR. ASHTON, 
 
 It was very nice of you to come to 
 tea with us, and then to say that you 
 enjoyed it. It was nothing to ask you to ! 
 Another time we shall be differently 
 situated. I have a new engagement, 
 with much better money. You can see 
 it in the Stage. I was recommended 
 by a gentleman. He seems to have a 
 great deal of influence. Mamma doesn't 
 like him, I'm afraid. / sometimes wonder, 
 Is he really nice ? Really !
 
 TO NANCY. 85 
 
 The engagement began the night be- 
 fore last. Two turns after me, Queenie 
 Perkins comes on the star of the Halls, 
 you know. She is very rough. You 
 would say, rude. She's not a bad sort, 
 perhaps ; but well ! 
 
 Last night, she had a cold, and couldn't 
 sing. She has it often. If I had a bad 
 cold, I should go straight to bed, and take 
 hot Bovril. Queenie does different. She 
 stays away, of course ; but finds the 
 only thing for her is having supper with 
 her friends, at Restaurants, in Regent 
 Street. 
 
 Mr. Ashton I shall never try that ! But 
 Queenie Perkins goes to supper every 
 evening, with three gentlemen in tall 
 hats. 
 
 To-day I was photographed, in dancing 
 dress. In seven positions. One of them 
 suck a strain. And they kept me in 
 it so long, I had to say, " Look sharp ! 
 Hurry up ! That hurts me, you know.
 
 86 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 I can't keep like that." The man was 
 cross. 
 
 In dire haste, 
 
 N. N. 
 
 BURFORD PLACE. 
 
 You were always kind to me. I want 
 to see you. Mother is wild. And you, 
 you will never forgive me. 
 
 From 
 
 NANCY. 
 
 WESTMINSTER, 
 i8M April. 
 
 MY DEAR NANCY, 
 
 Well ! I have been ; have seen 
 you ; seen your mother ; have come 
 back ; and, all to-day, have thought of 
 you. 
 
 At least I hurried to make the matter 
 smoother for you at home, though, sooner 
 or later that would have been managed,
 
 TO NANCY. 87 
 
 anyhow ; for you and your mother are at 
 one, generally. She is so really fond of 
 you, and you of her. I have not done 
 much for you. 
 
 And now what can I do ? I know very 
 little of what happened, after all. I 
 avoided knowing it. My business if I 
 have any is to wait. " Did I," I ask 
 myself, "lose any opportunity of action ? " 
 Could I have stepped in, to stop you ? 
 Nancy, I talk brutally, though I would 
 not know, with definiteness, any detail 
 but the valuation set by me on 
 chastity that is of the body alone were 
 it that that was in question might be 
 perhaps three half-pence. One friend at 
 all events you have, between whom and 
 yourself no mad outrageous freak of 
 yours, could raise insuperable barriers. 
 And you feel that. 
 
 Some people might ask, then, Why was 
 I concerned, months ago, for your Future ? 
 I will tell. The deterioration, the slow
 
 88 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 change in you, that must be coming or 
 have come ; the undermining and dete- 
 rioration, I say that is the deep injury, 
 the thing that I foresaw the thing to 
 mourn about. You are at home with the 
 vulgar, and are familiar with the bad. My 
 very words draw round you like a curse. 
 I haven't the heart left to sketch in words 
 a sure decline. . . . And, if I had, why 
 should I overdo it ? 
 
 This escapade of Wednesday some- 
 thing or other (and I won't know what) 
 with the man who helped you to your new 
 engagement whatever happened, Was it 
 done by you for gain, for sudden greed, for 
 ambition, for vanity ? Answer yourself 
 not me. I f it had been done for love- 
 well then at all events I might have 
 thought of your Future differently. If 
 even, just for pleasure ! 
 
 Nancy, I must make excuses for you 
 excuses in any case. Once in your short 
 life at least, you have been near to Want
 
 TO NANCY. 89 
 
 that winter you and your Mother came 
 out into the Strand, from the empty 
 treasury of a bogus Management, with 
 sixpence in your pockets, instead of a 
 salary. Yes, sixpence it was that was 
 your salary. You told me so yourself. 
 And your voice "went" in that cruel Win- 
 ter weather, as the little figure, with its 
 slender grace, slid through the fog and 
 blackened rain and reeking river mists of 
 December in London. After that, Money, 
 which seems to some people a small thing 
 in the distance so sure, so unimportant 
 must have loomed large and of immense 
 importance, in the near foreground, to 
 you. " Better money." I've learnt your 
 phrase it sounds almost a Heaven to 
 you. 
 
 Again, of course, we have our moods. 
 We may be taken unawares. Judgment 
 goes principle. All your life, Nancy 
 with only trivial exceptions, after all your 
 life is good to this hour. And in all our
 
 9O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 lives, every day has its own difficulties : 
 every hour is a choice. Good and dili- 
 gent, and sweet and bright, wise too and 
 helpful week after week, month after 
 month, you answer to your helm : and 
 then there comes one hour which leaves 
 you rudderless. I should be hard on 
 you indeed, if I remembered only that 
 hour if I forgot the ninety and nine. 
 My dear Nancy, I am not hard on you ! 
 
 It is late at night when I write this. 
 And, in my thoughts, you have been with 
 me the whole of the day. The story 
 can't be an unusual story and I am a 
 man of the world, or ought to be. No, the 
 story can't be an unusual story : but the 
 girl is an unusual girl. 
 
 Well, you must live it down, my dear 
 must have done with it forget it. 
 But then there is the deterioration some 
 deterioration at least that made the thing 
 possible. And what more may be pos- 
 sible mend and patch and cobble as we
 
 TO NANCY. 91 
 
 will ? The little Nancy ! And I have 
 seen you wince at an untimely and pre- 
 suming stare wince and shrink like a 
 wind-buffeted flower. 
 
 All day you have been in my thoughts. 
 When I was setting my palette in the 
 morning : arranging the light : screwing 
 up the easel, waiting for the sitter, who 
 was late theyare always late I thought 
 " She has made a mess of it poor little 
 Nancy foolish minx ! " I was very silent 
 with my sitter. I was scarcely even 
 polite. She noticed it ; and it affected her. 
 The sitting was a failure. I bowed the 
 lady out Nancy Nanson in my thoughts. 
 The luncheon table was all wrong : not 
 a thing as it ought to have been. " Nancy 
 Nanson, at the Devil, poor girl ! " A 
 walk in the streets, afterwards. The 
 omnibuses rattling past me in Victoria 
 Street. " Nancy Nanson is it all up 
 with her ? " Nothing else. The bell of 
 Christ Church, Westminster, a tinkle for 
 G
 
 92 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 Evensong. " The day goes on, then ! 
 Nancy Nanson ! " Afterwards, in the 
 quiet of St. James's Park, near Birdcage 
 Walk, the clear sound of the bugle the 
 recall to barracks. "Nancy Nanson!" 
 And then, the space of the Park water, 
 calm, as I saw it from the foot-bridge, by 
 the five poplars and the April evening 
 sky, clear and serene. " Nancy Nanson 
 at the Devil poor girl ! The Devil, 
 perhaps. The dear and clever, irrespon- 
 sible child ! " 
 
 Nancy, I've no more blame for you. 
 The vials of my anger are poured out. 
 Months ago, I said, " I shall always be 
 your friend." " Go the straight way ! " I 
 said. And I believed you would. What a 
 collapse if I must say to you to-night, only 
 this word, "When you most want me, 
 count on me ! " But only to say that ! 
 
 Nancy ! with deep regard and real 
 affection, 
 
 CLEMENT ASHTON.
 
 TO NANCY. 93 
 
 Post-script. But I can't end like this. 
 For when you want to be reproached the 
 least, some of my sentences sound hard. 
 Be hopeful ! For, as it seems to me 
 the more I think of you whatever hap- 
 pened, the quite irreparable has not hap- 
 pened. And, if it had ! Surely, surely, 
 you can forget, for ever, one mad hour ! 
 And, from whatever point, you can begin 
 "the journey homeward" to yourself. 
 You can be the real You again ; the real 
 Nancy your very characteristic, the per- 
 fection of the contrast between the wild- 
 ness of the theatre and your happy 
 quietude. 
 
 You were a little fool the other day, 
 were you not ? And you were on deep 
 waters. But I believe that you did not 
 go under. 
 
 And so, dear Nancy and in any case 
 it's at home I must think of you. With 
 that golden wig, that adds piquantly 
 perhaps, and yet abominably to your
 
 94 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 years, the maddening dancer is put off. 
 The brown-haired child, in the plain dress, 
 is in her place the short brown hair, the 
 quiet eyes, the tender, sensitive mouth. 
 Your lodging-house parlour is ornamented 
 with a play-bill, and photographs are stuck 
 about the mantelpiece Miss Marie 
 Dainton, is it ? and your uncle, the 
 plumber ; and, again, a celebrity of the 
 Halls ; and somebody else, who was nice 
 to you, a year ago, at Weymouth ; some 
 comrade you were fond of: "She's a 
 dear girl," you said. In the lodging- 
 house parlour, your mother sits beside 
 the fireplace, combing out the golden wig, 
 after its last night's service. The kettle, 
 in preparation for tea-time, not far off, is 
 at the side of the fire. It begins to sing. 
 You, Nancy, sit beyond the table, on a 
 cane-bottomed chair ; with your knees 
 crossed as I saw you, that first time I 
 called on you in London. Your hands, 
 so young, so nervous, and so highly bred,
 
 TO NANCY. 95 
 
 smooth out upon your lap a bit of wool- 
 work, that you whose instinct is to please 
 and to be pleasant are doing for your 
 landlady. And, in the glow of the 
 fender, lies curled up, warm and sleep- 
 ing, that grey kitten rescued from 
 misery, four days before, by you : won 
 to you by your magnetism, or your kind- 
 ness they are both the same. In the 
 morning, when your mother leaves your 
 bed leaves the tired child, worn out by 
 the theatre, to an hour's extra resting 
 the soft grey thing, that you bewitched 
 and cared for, creeps to your side is 
 happy. 
 
 Did they ever teach you, at your school, 
 I wonder, verses of Wordsworth on the 
 stock-dove ? What did the stock-dove 
 
 sing ? 
 
 He sang of love with quiet blending, 
 Slow to begin, and never ending ; 
 Of serious faith, and inward glee. 
 That was the song the song for me !
 
 96 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 Nancy ! the spirit of the stock-dove's 
 song lies in the deepest heart of Nancy 
 Nanson. 
 
 C. A. 
 
 Scarborough, Oct., '95 London, July, '96.
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS.
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 
 
 \The short and in some cases scarcely 
 connected Notes which here follow, are 
 taken from amongst the papers of the poet, 
 one of whose more serious experiences as 
 a few readers may remember forms the 
 subject of ' The New * Marienbad Elegy ' ' 
 in a volume called " English Episodes" 
 The Notes now printed have for me a 
 somewhat melancholy interest, as, if not 
 quite the last, they must certainly be almost 
 the last little writings of my friend which 
 I shall be permitted to see. England is no 
 doubt rich in poets, of major or minor 
 importance, but he who was once a not un- 
 hopeful candidate for the Laureateship 
 he with whom, and with whose belated 
 fondness for Miss Sylvia Rawson, " The
 
 TOO ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 New 'Marienbad Elegy ' " was concerned 
 is no longer with us. A victim of the dire 
 pest which we were wont to speak of very 
 foolishly as " the fashionable malady" my 
 friend died, after a few days illness, in the 
 Ides of March. 
 
 In common with so many of his 
 acquaintances, I was myself suffering at 
 that moment from the complaint which 
 slew him. I had been in communication 
 with him on the Saturday of one week on 
 the Wednesday of the next he was dead. 
 He died lonely in his rooms in Half Moon 
 Street. He was fifty-nine years old. 
 
 One, though not perhaps the most 
 essentially important of the objects of my 
 friend's ambition, remained unattained ; 
 but though the Laureateship never came to 
 be his, he was talked of kindly at our Club, 
 the "Times" and "Standard" not to 
 speak of weekly organs recorded his 
 achievements in well-disposed paragraphs, 
 the "Daily Chronicle" with admirable
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. IOI 
 
 promptitude devoted a column and a half 
 to the final settlement of his position, and 
 it is now possible that Mr. Onslow Ford 
 may be commissioned to execute a dust, 
 which some gifted literary brother of my 
 friend not perhaps entirely insensible of 
 the uses of advertisement may eventually 
 unveil, with a neat speech. My friend 
 does not go wholly unrewarded, and a 
 character miich misunderstood during his 
 lifetime, by reason of the irony inseparable 
 from intelligence and the vanity insepar- 
 able from literary pursuit, is likely, I 
 think, in the near Future to have justice 
 done to it. Unaccustomed to wear his 
 heart upon his sleeve, he was, during his 
 lifetime, too little credited with the depth 
 of emotion that was really his. 
 
 In regard to the brief Notes to which 
 my present words are a lamentably lengthy 
 introduction and one that he would him- 
 self have condemned, for his demand was 
 ever for terseness they would appear to be
 
 IO2 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 memoranda made during one of the many 
 visits paid by the poet to houses in the 
 country. The particular visit of which 
 we are accorded scanty glimpses here, was 
 paid, at Whitebarns, in the East Riding, 
 in October, 1 894 more than a year after 
 that Buxton sojourn of which record has 
 already been published, and about Jive 
 months before his death. 
 
 Like " The New ' Marienbad Elegy! " 
 these later memoranda chronicle his 
 private thought, and so, it may be, throw 
 a little further light on the character of 
 my friend. They would seem to point to 
 the fact that with Walter Savage Landor, 
 he " Nature loved, and, after Nature, 
 Art." And when one considers the not 
 unappreciative comments upon " Florence " 
 and " Adela " the latter was his hostess 
 on the Wolds comments made, as I have 
 indicated already, some twelve months 
 after the record of his devotion to Sylvia 
 Rawsonfresh confirmation would seem
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 1 03 
 
 to be afforded of the generally entertained 
 theory, that, in the male breast, the exist- 
 ence of an abiding passion is not incom- 
 patible with the pleased recognition of what 
 may be a merely temporary charm. 
 
 But his Notes shall speak for themselves^ 
 
 Visits. 
 
 I find that visits tire me dreadfully, 
 unless I know my host or hostess well, 
 and there is nothing of a house-party to 
 whose ways I must conform, and of 
 whose momentary and artificial ensemble 
 I must form a part. It used not to be so. 
 But now, although directly I am in it, I 
 like the company of men and women, the 
 tax Society levies on my strength tends 
 to increase. I grow consciously old. A 
 lonely man at home, it might be thought 
 I should prefer the table, the drawing- 
 room, the country houses, of others, to 
 the silence of my rooms or the casual
 
 IO4 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 conversation of a Club. There are moods 
 in which I do. But seldom is a visit 
 over with me a country house visit 
 without my vowing to myself that though 
 I like it, I won't undertake it again. It 
 disturbs work. It throws you into an 
 atmosphere never really your own, and to 
 be changed again so soon and that is 
 tiring. Why then am I at Whitebarns ? 
 I might fairly ask myself, were I naive 
 enough to exact that conduct should 
 square always with conviction. And the 
 answer ? They do not expect too much 
 from me at Whitebarns ; and though I do 
 not know them intimately, they are at 
 least sympathetic. The " they " of the 
 last clause, perhaps, is Adela. She, if 
 she likes me, likes me for myself ; not for 
 the reputation based on books written by 
 the " me " of fifteen years ago. This is 
 at least refreshing. And when I met 
 her as a bride, at Lady Wimpole's a year 
 since, young Mrs. Pontifex had never
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 105 
 
 heard of me that was refreshing too. 
 And now, in my own mind, because I 
 like her, she is " Adela." But we have 
 no real friendship. Her cousin, Mildred 
 Summers who is staying here and 
 Florence too who lives in the neighbour- 
 hood I know much better. Mildred I 
 analyse, and find her interesting since 
 complicated. Florence is only sunshine ; 
 nothing else and I do not analyse sun- 
 shine. Besides Mildred Summers and 
 myself there is at present but one guest 
 a very constant one and that is Lady 
 Sledmere, Adela's mother, to whom our 
 young host, Pontifex, is dutiful. The 
 Bishop is to be here, it seems, for a day or 
 two, before I go ; and not with him, I 
 hear a certain Mr. Ullmann, an in- 
 fluential person in the West Riding 
 constituency Pontifex represents. For 
 myself, I await the Bishop. Time will 
 prove. He may be over busy with his 
 Visitation.
 
 IO6 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 October Morning. 
 
 I love their autumn garden in the sharp 
 bright morning, when sunlit lawns, still 
 dewy, lie patched with greyish silver. In 
 the border, by the pathside, full-blos- 
 somed stocks, lilac and puce-coloured, 
 stand sturdily above the mould. At 
 breast-height, over its mass of rich green 
 leafage, the dahlia shows a crimson face 
 to the sun. And in the brilliant air, un- 
 certain, intermittently, flutter the wings 
 of the last butterfly. 
 
 October Afternoon. 
 
 It is late now in the afternoon, and the 
 light, level again, but warm and mellow 
 and diffused, strikes the bared, slender 
 limes, glows in and out among the thinned 
 leaves of the chestnut-trees, with their 
 embrowned gold against the solid black- 
 green yew ; the leaves not thinned only, 
 and all their form revealed, but rustling 
 crisp and dry, with their life spent and
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 1 07 
 
 their days numbered a frosty night, 
 an autumn rainfall, an October wind, 
 a sudden breeze even, and down they 
 eddy or down are swept, and the 
 tree marks one stage more of Autumn's 
 triumph. 
 
 October Sunset. 
 
 The great tract of the sky, in this 
 October sunset, is empty, clear, and 
 colourless luminous still, yet with neither 
 form nor flush but, just above the line 
 of the horizon, a single pile of cloud 
 masses itself, solidly steel-blue, broken 
 only once by a bar of saffron. Below a 
 sky so vivid, positive, defined so sharply, 
 the land itself, at this approach of even- 
 ing, looks less material than the heavens. 
 Except in the near foreground nothing 
 is certain. Here, the long garden wall, 
 the terrace, the lawn with its trained 
 yew-tree, are things to touch and to be 
 sure of; beyond them, seen from this 
 H
 
 IO8 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 place, raised moderately above the river, 
 but less high than whatever the ascend- 
 ing road next skirts beyond them is the 
 landscape of a dream. You surmise in 
 it, no doubt, some rolling miles of Eng- 
 lish farm and woodland. Patches of 
 hazy gold say it is autumn. Water 
 gleams somewhere ; but, in the vague- 
 ness, only memory tells you it is a stream 
 not great enough to dominate a land- 
 scape, and not so small as to be lost 
 in it. 
 
 Mildred. 
 
 Four various impulses do battle in the 
 heart of Mildred wage in that breast of 
 hers their long, uncertain fight. A girl 
 of her intelligence must crave at times 
 for steady, intellectual progress. It is 
 natural that she should feel the fascina- 
 tion of present pleasure. All the best of 
 her womanhood finds itself at peace in 
 the consciousness of tender deeds. Blind
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 1 09 
 
 instinct drives her to be fashionable. 
 Charged with ideals so unstable, so many, 
 and so much at variance, how can she 
 quite succeed ? May not life, so weighted, 
 tend to be little else than an unwilling 
 compromise a concession, graceless after 
 all, and finally barren ? 
 
 The Bishop. 
 
 \ should be well content for the Bishop 
 to stay longer. He goes to-morrow. 
 All that he promised to be, from manner 
 and face, in the one sermon I heard him 
 preach in London, he assuredly is. Of 
 ecclesiastical pretensions, not a trace ; 
 not a trace either of that exaggerated 
 bonhomie, that " going one better " in per- 
 mitted worldliness, which, out of pure 
 affability no doubt, is apt to be, in social 
 intercourse, a trick of favourite Divines. 
 This man is weighted by his task. He 
 is too earnest to think how to conciliate ; 
 and the impression that he makes he
 
 IIO ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 never recognises. What does conciliate, 
 is not an intended word, a prepared atti- 
 tude ; it is his whole being. We like 
 him for what he is the incarnation of 
 devotedness to labour, and of common 
 sense. His words, all strong and straight. 
 Roughish, manly, energetic breathing 
 heavily, lumbering along : a whale in a 
 drawing-room, but, in the country, a 
 banner and a sword. . . . And the 
 English Church has "had its day," 
 has it! 
 
 Sufferers. 
 
 Good-natured folk of small experience 
 and narrow understanding, lavish con- 
 tinually their sympathy on the incom- 
 petence of fools. Had Heaven granted 
 them a wider vision, they would have 
 some pity for the capable on whom fools 
 wreak their mischief. . . . The Bishop 
 said at lunch something of this kind. I 
 put it down as best I can.
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. I I I 
 
 A Wold Farm. 
 
 These great farms of the Wolds of 
 which a dozen make the estate of Pon- 
 tifex, my host are many of them of six 
 hundred, some of a thousand acres. 
 Much of the land is corn-land, potato 
 field, and turnip field, but much of it, 
 upon the long backs of the hills, bare 
 sheep-walk, crossed by the white chalk 
 road a main road here, and here and 
 there a cart track and dotted with 
 low thorn-trees bent with the great wind 
 from the eastern sea. The grey stone 
 farmhouse, with its whitewashed out- 
 buildings, shows itself after perhaps a 
 lonely mile ; substantial, square with its 
 enclosed walled garden and its great 
 hay mows, a whole group of them, 
 and behind them a screen from the 
 north, a screen from the grey east 
 a cluster of ash-trees, and here and 
 there, statelier and more luxuriant, a 
 sycamore.
 
 112 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 Postman. 
 
 The rural postman, who lives at Dug- 
 gleby, a mile from Wharram, starts on his 
 rounds, from Wharram station post-office, 
 at half past eight, and, walking seventeen 
 miles over the Wolds, delivers and col- 
 lects from house to house at Burdale, 
 Sledmere, Fimber, and between these 
 places, on his road, and finishes again at 
 Wharram at about half past three. His 
 daily task, in August heat, in autumn 
 rains, in sharp hard winter, and when in 
 the late springtime the snow lies thickly, 
 still, about the feet of the Wolds. I 
 walked with him to-day from his last 
 lonely farm to Wharram Station. 
 
 Mr. Ullmann. 
 
 Now what on earth has Mr. Ullmann, 
 the new guest, to do with Whitebarns 
 Whitebarns with Mr. Ullmann ? Does 
 Lady Sledmere tolerate him as a matter 
 of policy ? It must be that. And she
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 113 
 
 stretches a point in doing it. He is a 
 thinly-cultivated nouveau riche, with in 
 place of serious intelligence an affable 
 but wearisome inquiry for "anything 
 fresh." The fine, the simply beautiful, 
 the merely true that has no charm for 
 him, or value ; it is just the fresh. Semi- 
 German and Radical, fiercely and igno- 
 rantly atheistic, a hater of the thing that 
 is, calling aloud, with cheerful shallow- 
 ness, for " Progress," you feel by every- 
 thing he says yet more by everything 
 that he ignores that he is but a parasite 
 on English Life : no part of its organism. 
 
 Death and Mr. Ullmann. 
 
 Mr. Ullmann is not well. As persons 
 scarcely destitute of ordinary feeling, we 
 are anxious, of course, that even Mr. 
 Ullmann shall be spared as long as pos- 
 sible to a world whose Past and Present 
 he considers misguided, and for whose 
 Future he is willing to legislate. But
 
 I 14 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 one thing we are sure of that when, 
 whether to-day or ten years hence, Death 
 claims Mr. Ullmann, it will be found 
 that he has left instructions to be care- 
 fully cremated, and, above all, " with no 
 so-called religious ceremony." For that 
 would be an insult to his penetration. 
 His masculine good sense must assert 
 itself to the end, and not for him, at all 
 events, the procession through the church- 
 yard, and the words which less emanci- 
 pated souls have been accustomed to 
 receive as of august comfort " I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life." The quiet 
 churchyard " I am the Resurrection and 
 the Life." But it is painful to contemplate 
 the possibility of such an affront, offered 
 to the intelligence of Mr. Ullmann ! 
 
 Judgments. 
 
 When it is given to me to hear a 
 woman pronouncing any judgment on a 
 man, in matters of the sexes, I am, I fear,
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 115 
 
 a little apt to consider, With how much 
 wisdom a seal would legislate for a but- 
 terfly ! . . . I said something of that 
 sort to Mr. Ullmann, over the cigarettes ; 
 but that intelligent doctrinaire rejoined, 
 crushingly, that he considered women to 
 be the equals of men. It was not their 
 equality that I was doubting, for a 
 moment only their similarity. 
 
 Sources of Wisdom. 
 
 One is amused, sometimes, when one 
 considers what are the different stand- 
 ards people appeal to the things or per- 
 sons they are most in sympathy with : 
 the sources for them, therefore, of all 
 wisdom. With some, the source of wis- 
 dom is the favourite clergyman who 
 must be Ritualist, if he is not Evan- 
 gelical. With others with the very 
 young man about Town, for instance 
 another man still more "about Town": a 
 senior by five years or so : a Court of
 
 Il6 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 final Appeal. With some of us it is 
 Lord Bacon, with some of us the poets, 
 with some the Bible, in which (sane men 
 agree, indeed) Poetry utters its pro- 
 foundest note. " What is it with Mr. 
 Ullmann ? " I asked myself at lunch, hav- 
 ing perforce to hear his voice, and looking 
 at him for a minute over feathery chrys- 
 anthemums. He finds no wisdom in the 
 Church not even benevolence in her 
 no wisdom in the recorded thought 
 of thoughtful men ; in the lessons of 
 History ; in the illuminations of Suffer- 
 ing ; no wisdom in the poets. So much 
 superior is this good man to those who 
 have gone before, that he invents 
 and naturally his own panaceas. But if 
 there is a voice to which he listens 
 with deference well, I think it must 
 be the voice of eager and disquieted 
 Radical women, shrill and rapid on 
 the platforms of the manufacturing 
 towns.
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. I Ij 
 
 Florence. 
 
 Florence, last night, drove over here to 
 dinner. I was glad to sit at her side. 
 Some people say of her that she dis- 
 tributes smiles. But to put it so, is to 
 state the matter amiss. It is rather that 
 when she is present you feel you are hap- 
 pily wrapped in the one great smile of 
 her delightful personality. 
 
 October Trees. 
 
 Now, in this mid-October in the North, 
 you have the gold and green of the 
 horse-chestnut, the yet more varied tints 
 and some of them much deeper of 
 the beech, the russet limes, the beauty of 
 the witch-elm, and here and there the 
 copper of the oak-trees. There is little 
 change in the sycamore, and little in the 
 ash they shed their leaves much later, 
 shrivelled with unsuspected dryness ; the 
 green just dead and gone, and in its place 
 no autumnal warmth.
 
 I 1 8 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 Wind in the Yew-Trees. 
 
 To hear the wind most soothingly, with 
 its shrewdness softened, you must hear it 
 in Italy, through a grove of cypresses, or 
 in the country of the Wolds, through an 
 Irish yew. When the October wind 
 blows hardest, lower and higher boughs 
 do but touch each other with the slow 
 gentleness of old-world figures in a cere- 
 monious dance they are but plumes that 
 nod, but velvet that touches velvet. 
 
 Adela. 
 
 The nice young thing is happy with her 
 husband, with her married life, and in her 
 country house, her good-natured and large 
 society she is quite happy in all these, 
 in her unexacting way. But just some- 
 times, when some one not superior to, 
 indeed, but still a little more flexible, im- 
 pressionable, or magnetic, than the people 
 she is accustomed to live with, crosses 
 her path for an hour, some further illu-
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 119 
 
 ruination of her face, some prouder and 
 more joyous consciousness of self in her 
 blue and radiant eyes, betrays that liking 
 to give pleasure which is instinctive and 
 innate in the most womanly women, and 
 shows her momentary sense of the exis- 
 tence of a great vista a vista Adela will 
 never explore. 
 
 Pontifex. 
 
 Ruddy and square-shouldered, big- 
 calved and large of hand, a yachtsman 
 and a golfer, as well as a sportsman, 
 Adela's husband suggests good nature 
 and much long sound sleep, the morning 
 tub, a hearty breakfast, and a perfect in- 
 capacity for physical fatigue. He is off, 
 now, with his shooting party will tramp 
 the fields till dusk while Adela is prac- 
 tising the songs of Chaminade and Valerie 
 White, which soothe our evening hours. 
 To-morrow he will go to London. And, 
 as I said before, they have found for him
 
 I2O ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 his mother-in-law, rather, has found for 
 him a seat in the House. He is not an 
 ardent politician, but the extremely wide- 
 awake connection who guides his steps 
 considers that when a young man goes to 
 Town it is better he should have some- 
 thing definite to be busy about. " You 
 know, it keeps him out of mischief," 
 his mother-in-law, Lady Sledmere, de- 
 clares to me, quite frankly. But in the 
 character of Adela I find a more satisfac- 
 tory basis for the stability of the manage. 
 
 Lady Sledmere. 
 
 By what freak of Heaven has it been 
 ordained that Lady Sledmere should be 
 the mother of Adela? I don't know 
 that these two have anything in common, 
 except good nature and good sense. I 
 trace in their features, their expression, 
 no similarity. And can it be that Adela's 
 artistic and rebellious locks, of freshened 
 gold, will acquire, one day, the heated
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 121 
 
 yellow and the coarser texture of the 
 maternal coiffure that Adela's light step 
 will develop ever into her mother's un- 
 compromising tread ? Yet Lady Sled- 
 mere is admirable in her own way. The 
 old-fashioned Evangelical, of times gone 
 by, would have described her as "worldly." 
 But she is not conspicuously selfish ; she 
 is absolutely honest ; not even especially 
 pleasure-seeking; and quite without a 
 vice. How then "worldly"? Would 
 not the Evangelical have been mistaken ? 
 Not so completely as it seems. Lady 
 Sledmere has but transferred to others 
 those wishes for material benefit she 
 might have concentrated on herself. For 
 Adela, for Pontifex, for any child that 
 may be born to them, she invokes the 
 good things of our present world, its 
 more material possessions. Not the 
 capacity to enter deeply into learning, 
 poetry, music, art ; and not the spirit 
 that would spend itself in helpfulness and
 
 122 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 charity. But social prestige ; it may be, 
 Court favour; wealth at least undi- 
 minished ; the easy pleasures of the 
 passing day ; a life prolonged to its last 
 limits, and after it the vague, the vague ! 
 There, Lady Sledmere stops wishing. 
 
 Affection. 
 
 What may have first brought Pontifex 
 and Adela together I know not. But 
 does it greatly matter ? The more I see 
 of them the more certain I become that 
 they are to-day happy ; and as I prepare 
 to leave them, I ask, with little apprehen- 
 sion of the answer, " Should not that 
 happiness last ? " They are both so un- 
 exacting ; and, though Adela's is the 
 gentler and more sensitive nature, both 
 are at bottom good. Seeing their hap- 
 piness remembering too, that they 
 would scarcely claim to be beyond the 
 commonplace I think, at moments, even 
 now, of one who was not commonplace
 
 THE POET ON THE WOLDS. 123 
 
 at all. And of her happiness Sylvia! 
 But her happiness is secure. It lies in 
 her own nature. She and I shall meet 
 no more. 
 
 I am supposed to be successful. In 
 Society I can contrive not always arti- 
 ficially can contrive to be gay. In the 
 street, sometimes of an evening in the 
 street in London, or here on the village 
 high-road, or on the paths of the Wolds 
 I see two people, husband and wife, it 
 may be ; lover and sweetheart ; father 
 and daughter, perhaps linked together 
 happily. Arm in arm, with one thought. 
 And with so little ambition. Just 
 satisfied. I am supposed to be success- 
 ful. I have exerted an influence, and 
 have a position. It is difficult to say 
 what things will last ; but perhaps not all 
 my verse is jerry-built. And I have 
 known men, and have appreciated 
 women. To whom do I belong? Or need 
 I belong to no one ? A deep question ! 
 I
 
 124 ORGEAS AND MIRADOU. 
 
 But, anyhow, on my way through life, 
 in these later, elder years, as I leave one 
 group and just perhaps touch another, 
 yet adhere, as it seems, nowhere having 
 a second place in so many friendships, 
 yet with no soul who would want me 
 first in all the world I begin to feel the 
 situation. Others have something last- 
 ing. Nothing lasts, perhaps, for me, but 
 the green earth I am fond of, and the 
 healing air the wind which is music 
 always, as it beats over open land and 
 the great pageant of the sky, whose 
 beauty I worship. Yes ; an unending 
 spectacle, an immense Presence. . . . 
 But its response to me where ? 
 
 Could we but always remember that 
 we are not so separate as we seem that 
 it is we who make ourselves separate ! 
 
 Marseilles, March, '95 London, April, '96.
 
 MR. WEDMORES SHORT STORIES. 
 PASTORALS OF FRANCE. 
 
 (A Last Love at Pornic Yvonne of Croisic The Four Bells 
 of Chartres. ) Fourth Edition. 
 
 " ' Pastorals of France ' is a work of singular 
 quaintness and beauty." Contemporary Review. 
 
 " In their simplicity, their quietude, their tender- 
 ness, their fidelity to the life they depict, ' Pastorals 
 of France ' are almost perfect." Spectator. 
 
 " The publication of ' Pastorals of France ' may 
 be said to have revealed not only a new talent, but 
 a new literary genre. . . . The charm of the writing 
 never fails." Bookman. 
 
 " Mr. Wedmore is a writer who unites fineness 
 of sentiment with the literary touch. His books 
 are studies in the romance of reality." Athenaum. 
 
 RENUNCIATIONS. 
 
 (A Chemist in the Suburbs A Confidence at the Savile 
 
 The North Coast and Eleanor.) Third Edition. 
 
 With portrait by J. J. Shannon, 
 
 " ' Renunciations ' belongs to the highest order of 
 imaginative effort. It makes plain to us some of the 
 innermost workings of the heart." Academy. 
 
 " The sketch of Richard Pelse, the chemist, in 
 ' Renunciations,' is a pure joy. The story of his 
 life is told with a power not unworthy of the now 
 disabled hand that drew for us the lonely old age 
 of Monsieur Parent." New Review. 
 
 "The stories in 'Renunciations 'are quite unusual. 
 The picture of Richard Pelse, with his one moment 
 of romance, is exquisite." St. James's Gazette. 
 
 " We congratulate Mr. Wedmore on his vivid, 
 wholesome, and artistic work, so full of suppressed 
 feeling and of quiet strength." Standard. 
 
 [P.T.O.
 
 MR. WEDMORE'S SHORT STORIES. 
 ENGLISH EPISODES. 
 
 (The Vicar of Pimlico The Fitting Obsequies Katherine 
 
 in the Temple Justice Wilkinshaw's Attentions The New 
 
 'Marienbad Elegy.') Second Edition. 
 
 "Distinction is the characteristic of Mr. Wed- 
 more's manner. . . These things remain upon the 
 mind as seen not read of." Daily News. 
 
 " In ' English Episodes ' we have another proof 
 of Mr. Wedmore's unique position. We hardly 
 think of his ' Pastorals of France ' and ' Renuncia- 
 tions ' as 'stories,' but rather as life-secrets and 
 heart's blood, crystallized somehow and, in their 
 jewel form, cut with exceeding skill by the hand 
 of a master-workman. So is it with ' English 
 Episodes.'"^ World. 
 
 " Mr. Frederick Wedmore has gained for himself 
 an enviable reputation. He has a place of his own 
 among the few successful writers of the short story. 
 His style has distinction ; has form. He has the 
 poet's secret how to bring out the beauty of com- 
 mon things, the romance that underlies everyday 
 character and ordinary life. He is a realist who 
 finds it possible not to report ill of humanity. He 
 carefully distinguishes between love and passion, 
 and paints every phase of the emotion as success- 
 fully as he avoids the slightest allusion to the 
 instinct." Saturday Review. 
 
 " Mr. Wedmore is a singularly fine and sane and 
 carefully deliberate artist. His short stories are 
 not long stories in essence or abbreviation. They 
 abandon the complex narrative for the simpler 
 episode ; and in the quality of their difference lies 
 the secret of their literary vitality." Westminster 
 Gazette.
 
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