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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORN, 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 A 
 
 fr-
 
 Vignettes
 
 Visfnettes 
 
 A Miniature Journal of 
 Whim and Sentiment 
 
 By Hubert Crackanthorpe 
 
 ' ' • '. • 
 
 John Lane 
 
 The Bodlcy Head 
 
 London and New York 
 
 1896
 
 The /nirsuit of eJ^erience is the refuge of the unimaginative. 
 
 « k • 
 » « « 
 
 .•••»« \ 
 
 •.* ■•'
 
 Vignettes 
 
 V 
 
 
 CON- 
 
 
 TENTS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 At Villeneuve-lhs- Avignon . . . i 
 
 
 Ascension day at Aries . 
 
 
 
 , 6 
 
 
 Spnng in Beam 
 
 
 
 . 9 
 
 
 In the long grass 
 
 
 
 lO 
 
 
 Pau .... 
 
 
 
 II 
 
 
 Castelsarrasin 
 
 
 
 • 13 
 
 
 In the Basque country 
 
 
 
 IS 
 
 
 In the Landcs 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 
 Cette 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 
 On Chelsea Etnbankment 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 
 Pleasant Court 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 The five sister pa nsies 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 Our Lcuiy of the Lane , 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 On the coast of Calvados . 
 
 
 
 26 
 
 
 In Normandy 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 Paris in October 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 
 Im Cdted'Orfrom the train 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 
 Lausanne 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 
 Old Marseilles at Midday 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 
 Monte Carlo . 
 
 
 
 32 
 
 
 At the Certosa di Vol d'Ema . 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 
 Morning at Castcllo 
 
 
 
 36 
 
 
 In the Cavtpo Santo at Perugia 
 
 
 37 
 
 
 4871,44 
 
 ENGLISH
 
 vi 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CON. 
 
 Naples in November : — 
 
 TENTS 
 
 Lafe afternoon in the Strada del Chiaja 39 
 
 
 Frotn Posilipo . . , . -39 
 
 
 In the Strada del Porto 
 
 
 
 40 
 
 
 Moonlight . 
 
 
 
 • 41 
 
 
 At the Theatre Manzoni 
 
 
 
 . 42 
 
 
 Pompeii. 
 
 
 
 ■ 45 
 
 
 In the Bay of Salerno 
 
 
 
 46 
 
 
 Seville Dancing girls 
 
 
 
 ' 47 
 
 
 Sunrise ..... 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 
 Off Cape Trafalgar 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 
 Reverie .... 
 
 
 
 • 51 
 
 
 In Richmo7id Park . 
 
 
 
 52 
 
 
 New Year's Eve 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 
 In St. James' Park 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 
 In the Strand 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 
 Sunday afternoon . 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 
 Reverie 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 
 Enfantillage . 
 
 
 
 O2
 
 Vignettes 
 
 ON the roof of the ruined church 
 we lay, basking amid the hot, 
 powdery heather ; the cinder-coloured 
 roofs of the town flattened out be- 
 neath us — a ragged patch of dead, 
 decayed colour, burnt, as it seemed, 
 out of the rank, luscious green of the 
 Rhone valley. Overhead, a thick, 
 blue sky hung heavy, and away and 
 away, into the steamy haze of mid-day 
 heat, filtered the Tarascon road, a 
 streak of dazzling white. To the 
 east, the sun was beating on the sandy 
 slopes ; to the west, the old Papal 
 palace, like a great, grey, sleeping 
 beast, lifted its long, bare back above 
 the roofs of Avignon. 
 
 The lizards scurried from cranny 
 to cranny across the crumbling 
 wall. Below, in the cloister, a cat 
 was curled by a black stack of brush- 
 wood. The little place stood empty, 
 and stillness seemed to have fallen 
 over all things. 
 
 The warmth lulled one to a de- 
 
 ATVILLE- 
 
 NEUVE- 
 
 LES 
 
 AVIGNON 
 
 April 23
 
 Vignettes 
 
 ATVILLE 
 
 NEUVE- 
 
 LES 
 
 AVIGNON 
 
 licious torpor. I was thinking of the 
 bustling Regent Street pavement, of 
 the rumble of Piccadilly, of newsboys 
 yelling special editions in the Strand, 
 drowsily conjuring up these and other 
 commonplace contrasts. 
 
 Then Jeanne-Marie Latou began 
 to speak. She sat between us, with 
 her legs hunched under her coarse, 
 colourless skirt, and some stray wisps 
 of hair looking dingily yellow against 
 the clean white of her coiffe. As she 
 talked, her brown skin puckered oddly 
 about her tiny, shrunken eyes, and 
 her hands — browned also and squat — 
 clasped themselves around her knees. 
 It was not often that Jeanne-Marie 
 Latou spoke French ; her vocabulary 
 was quite simple and limited, and 
 every now and then, with an impa- 
 tient shake of her head, she would 
 break out into patois. 
 
 She was telling us of her nephew 
 in Tunis — "(/« pays oil on ne voit que 
 des sauvages " — and of the sweetheart
 
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 he had left behind at Barbentane ; 
 repeating by heart, one after another, 
 his queer, bald, little letters — how he 
 had been kicked by his horse (he was 
 a spahi; '■''xouave a cheval^'' she called 
 it), and had been sick ten days in the 
 hospital ; and how, without telling 
 anyone, she had scraped together a 
 hundred sous to send out to him. 
 Somehow, irresistibly, while she chat- 
 tered, I seemed to see that soldier 
 nephew of hers — broad and straight 
 and bronzed, his fez stuck jauntily 
 on the back of his head, noisily no^ant 
 avec des camaradcs with those hundred 
 sous, which old Tante Latou had sent 
 out to him. 
 
 By-and-byc, she related her journey 
 to Valence, in the time when she 
 had worked as a cherry-packer for 
 Madame Charbonnier in the Rue 
 Joseph-Vcrnct, insisting with comi- 
 cal, energetic wrinklings of her fore- 
 head on her contempt for the jargon 
 de rArd'eche She had been to 
 
 AT VILLE- 
 
 NEUVE 
 
 LES 
 
 AVIGNON 
 
 13 — 2
 
 Vignettes 
 
 AT VILLE- 
 NEUVE- 
 
 AVIGNON 
 
 Marseilles, too, last year — that was a 
 great journey — eighteen of them had 
 gone from Villeneuve, '■'■femmes et 
 filles et trois garfons^ dans un train 
 ^ambulant ' — quatre francs et douze sous, 
 alter et retour .... Marseilles^ 
 vous save-z," Jeanne-Marie Latou re- 
 iterated, " c^st quelque chose .... 
 c^st quelque chose .... c'est quelque 
 chose .... enfin^ c'est la plus jolie 
 ville que fai trouvee^ 
 
 Afterwards, starting to recall by- 
 gone times, she described the breaking 
 up of the Chartreuse in quatre-vingt 
 dou-ze, and the selling of the whole 
 building by audion in the little place^ 
 there, below us (not for money — no 
 one in the pays had any money in 
 those days — but tor assignats)^ and, 
 Jeanne-Marie Latou explained, "C^w^c 
 qui avaient peur n'en prenaient pas, et 
 ceux qui n avaient pas peur en pre- 
 naient.'''' And her father, who had 
 been a stone-worker, over there at 
 Les Angles, had bid douze cents francs
 
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 d^assignats for the house where the 
 superieurehzd lived— douze cents francs 
 d'assignats which no one had ever 
 asked him to pay. There Jeanne- 
 Marie Latour had always lived — 
 seventy-seven years, it was now, as 
 near as she could remember — she, 
 and her husband who had been dead 
 these twenty-three years. She could 
 remember the time when the frescoes 
 on the cloister walls were bright and 
 beautiful, and no grass grew between 
 the flags. Yes, she had seen all the 
 other houses pass from family to 
 family ; there were six of them now 
 who had the right to use the old 
 church as a barn, "w^yi;, elle est bien 
 grande^ Peglise^^^ Jeanne-Marie Latou 
 concluded, smiling knowingly at us, 
 " Mais^ quand 7ncme^ Us se chicanent 
 toujour 5." . . . 
 
 And with that, she rose slowly and 
 bid us good-bye, and wished us good 
 health, toddling grotesquely away 
 down the steps. 
 
 AT VILLE- 
 
 NEUVE- 
 
 LES 
 
 AVIGNON
 
 AT VILLE 
 
 NEUVE- 
 
 LES 
 
 AVIGNON 
 
 ASCEN 
 SION DAY 
 AT ARLES 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 After she had gone, we stayed a 
 long while up on the hot roof, watch- 
 ing the dark shadows creep from 
 under the broken bridge across the 
 rippling Rhone, as it swept past to- 
 wards the sea. And I wondered more 
 drowsily than ever concerning old 
 Jeanne-Marie Latou, and her soldier 
 nephew, with the spahis^ away over 
 there in Tunis, and that great jour- 
 ney of hers to Marseilles — eighteen 
 of them from the dead little town 
 below, ''^fem?nes et jilles et trots gar- 
 
 ^ons^ dans un train ^ambulant'' — 
 
 quatre francs et dowze sous^ 
 
 aller et retour^ 
 
 THE population pours out from 
 mass, flooding every crooked 
 street — rubicund peasants in starched 
 Sunday blouses ; olive-skinned, Greek- 
 featured Arlesiennes in quaint, lace 
 head-dresses ; strutting petits messieurs
 
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 en chapeau rond and tight-fitting com- 
 plets; shouting shoals of boys ; zouaves, 
 indolent and superb, in flowing red 
 knickerbockers, white spats, and jaun- 
 tily-poised fez. 
 
 A bleating of lambs, plaintive, in- 
 cessant and dirge-like, fills the P/^c*? du 
 Forum; heaped over the gravel they 
 lie, their legs tied under their bellies, 
 and their skinny necks helplessly out- 
 stretched: and beyond, the great, 
 green umbrellas of a regiment of 
 wrinkled beldams — fruit-sellers en- 
 camped in rows before their baskets. 
 . . . . A strange complication of 
 odours — of cheese, of fish and of 
 flowers — floats in the air: at every 
 alley-corner some auctioneer stands 
 posted - shouting, perspiring vendors 
 of knives, pocket-books, glass-cutters, 
 chromo- lithographs, cement, songs, 
 sabots. An old top-hattcd Jew nasally 
 vaunts a winc-tcsting fluid, and tells 
 horrible and interminable tales of vin- 
 tages manufadtured from decayed dates, 
 
 ASCEN- 
 SION DAY 
 AT ARLES
 
 8 
 
 ASCEN 
 SIGN DAY 
 AT ARLES 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 from vinegar aiid sugar, or from plaster- 
 of- Paris ; a travelling pedicure operates 
 on the box-seat of a gorgeously-painted 
 van, to the accompaniment of a big 
 drum and clashing cymbals ; the inevi- 
 table strong man defiantly challenges 
 the crowd to split a flag-stone across his 
 bare, hirsute chest ; and a blind-folded 
 fortune-telling wrench chaunts with 
 mechanical shamelessness the young 
 men's amorous indiscretions. 
 
 Outside the town, the boulevard is 
 gay with the glitter of pedlars' wares, 
 and flapping, gaudy stuffs, red, green 
 and yellow and blue ; travelling show- 
 men are bustling with final prepara- 
 tions, hammering together their skele- 
 ton booths, or unfolding gaunt rolls of 
 battered canvas ; the steam-orchestra 
 of a Grand Musee fin de siecle bellows 
 from its rows of brass-mouthed trum- 
 pets a deafening, wheezy tune ; and 
 everywhere, beneath the tunnel of pale 
 green plane-trees, a thick, drifting 
 tide of men and women.
 
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 OF a sudden it seems to have come 
 — the poplars fluttering their 
 golden green ; the fruit-trees tricked 
 out in fete-day frocks of frail snow- 
 white ; the hoary oaks uncurling their 
 baby leaves ; and the lanes all littered 
 with golden broom. . . . 
 
 The blue flax sways like a sensi- 
 tive sea; the violets peep from amid 
 the moss ; beneath every hedgerow 
 the primroses cluster ; and the rivulets 
 tinkle their shrill, glad songs. . . . 
 
 Dense levies of orchises empurple 
 the meadows, where the butterflies 
 hasten their wavering flight ; the sun- 
 light breathes through the pale-lcafcd 
 woods; and the air is sweet with the 
 scent of the spring, and loud with the 
 humming of wings. . . . 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 It lasts but a week — a fleeting mood 
 of dainty gaiety ; a quick discarding 
 of the brown shabbincss of winter for 
 a smiling array of white and gold, 
 frcsh-grcen, and turquoisc-blue. . . . 
 
 SPRING 
 
 IN 
 BEARN 
 
 May I
 
 lO 
 
 SPRING 
 
 IN 
 BEARN 
 
 IN THE 
 LONG 
 GRASS 
 
 May 13 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 And then, it has flitted, and through 
 the long, parched months re- 
 lentlessly blazes the 
 summer sun. 
 
 A MYSTERIOUS, impenetrable 
 jungle of green stems, quiver- 
 ing with the play of a myriad baby 
 shadows. A close crowd of flowers 
 — naive-faced, white-cheeked daisies ; 
 buttercups, glistening gold ; dande- 
 lions like ragged medallions ; stubbly 
 bearded thistles ; sleek-stalked orchises, 
 white, and mauve, and purple ; corpu- 
 lent, heavy-leafed clover, and skinny 
 ragged robin. And, topping them all, 
 the languidly nodding heads of a thou- 
 sand seeded grasses, and the dishevelled 
 crests of the red sorrel. . . . 
 
 A ceaseless humming of wings — 
 deep-toned and solemn, cheerily bus- 
 tling, high-pitched and idle. . . . 
 
 Hidden in the green-stemmed jun-
 
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 gle, a world of creatures silently busy 
 — hurrying ants ; heavy, gray cock- 
 chafers, drowsily lumbering ; tiny, red 
 spiders, fidgeting from blade to blade ; 
 grasshoppers, with their great sensitive 
 eyes, humanly expressive ; shiny, black 
 beasts, wriggling their scuttling bodies; 
 fierce-looking flying things, their vivid 
 red bodies, now poised motionless, now 
 darting capriciously to and fro. 
 
 One after another they come for a 
 peep at me. A pair of blue-bottles, 
 chasing one another, dash past ; a furry 
 bee chaunts lustily as he bustles from 
 flower to flower; and dark, evil- 
 looking flics hover, hanging their 
 long, sneaking legs. . . . 
 
 I WENT there again to-day; but 
 I did not see her. It is a year 
 now since I met her, sitting alone 
 before her basket, in a corner of the 
 deserted square. Her face was tanned 
 
 II 
 
 IN THE 
 LONG 
 GRASS 
 
 I'AU 
 
 May 14
 
 12 
 
 PAU 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 deep russet, and wrinkled to a tragic 
 listlessncss ; she had eyebrows white 
 as clean linen, and full-veined, tremu- 
 lous hands. When I first spoke to 
 her, I did not know that she was 
 blind. She pulled some handkerchiefs 
 from her basket, and offered them to 
 me in a quavering, far-away voice, 
 explaining that she had hemmed them 
 herself; for she had been brought up 
 as a coutur'iere. I asked her how 
 long she had been blind : — 
 
 " It is forty-eight years since I saw 
 anything, monsieur. When I was 
 
 young I had a great trouble 
 
 For eighteen months I wept, and 
 when I went back to work, my eyes 
 were worn out, and I could see no 
 
 more It is forty-eight years 
 
 now, monsieur^ since I saw anything. 
 .... Heureusement., il riy en a plus 
 pour longtemps . . . . ce sera bientot 
 fini. . . ." 
 
 She spoke simply, and with quiet 
 dignity ; though I could see that she
 
 Vignettes 
 
 was crying a little, as she fingered 
 her handkerchiefs with her full- 
 veined, tremulous hands. 
 
 FROM afar off, high against the 
 sky, we could sec the ragged 
 line of its roofs, like an ancient, tat- 
 tered crest along the back of a preci- 
 pitous, inaccessible-looking hill. 
 
 To reach it we waded the Luys 
 de France, with the water swishing 
 under our horses' bellies, and climbed 
 a mule-track, tight-paved with cob- 
 bles, waywardly winding beneath the 
 contorted limbs of leafy, Spanish 
 chestnuts. The track led us around 
 the outside of the village, close under 
 the shadow of its houses — discoloured- 
 ycllow and musty-white, fissured and 
 bcstained, battered and starved, till 
 everywhere their bones protruded, 
 bulging, bursting beams. 
 
 Low, sloping roofs, moss-grown. 
 
 13 
 
 PAU 
 
 CASTEL- 
 
 SARRA- 
 
 SIN 
 
 May 17
 
 H 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 CASTEL- 
 SARRA- 
 
 SIN 
 
 the colour of old gold, over-lapped 
 the walls, like huge, ill-fitting caps ; 
 shading row upon row of wooden 
 balconies, filled with a decrepid mul- 
 titude of things, which, it seemed, 
 could never have been new — broken 
 earthenware pots ; ricketty rush-bot- 
 tomed chairs ; strips of old linen ; 
 worn-out bass brooms ; stacks of dead 
 branches. . . . 
 
 Two geese, a yellow dog, and a 
 little black pig had the village street 
 all to themselves. The clock on the 
 tower of the whitewashed church 
 pointed half-past ten, though the 
 twilight had not yet come. And 
 our horses' hoofs clattered, almost 
 brutally, past the dank-smelling, mud- 
 floored rooms, and the cracked, worm- 
 eaten shutters, wearily moaning with 
 the dull fatigue of stiff-jointed old 
 age. 
 
 Toiling up the hill, on the other 
 side, we met a crooked old woman, 
 barefooted, clad in a single frayed
 
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 shirt, carrying a truss of sainfoin on 
 her head. 
 
 " Adechats^'' she mumbled mechani- 
 cally, and toiled on barefooted up the 
 stony path, steadying the truss 
 of sainfoin with both 
 hands. . . . 
 
 15 
 
 CASTEL- 
 
 SARRA- 
 
 SIN 
 
 IN THE 
 BASQUE 
 
 May 23 
 
 ALL day an intense impression of 
 lusty sunlight, of quivering country 
 golden-green .... a long, white 
 road that dazzles, between its rust- 
 ling dark-green walls ; blue brawling 
 rivers; swelling upland meadows, 
 flower-thronged, luscious with tall, 
 cool grass; the shepherd's thin-toned 
 pipe ; the ragged flocks, blocking the 
 road, cropping at the hedge-rows as 
 they hurry on towards tlie mountains ; 
 the slow, straining teams of jangling 
 mules — wine-carriers coming from 
 Spain ; through dank, cobbled vil- 
 lage streets, where the pigs pant
 
 i6 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 IN THE 
 
 BASQUE 
 
 COUNTRY, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LANDES 
 
 May 27 
 
 their bellies in the roadway, and the 
 sandal-makers flatten the hemp be- 
 fore their doors ; and then, out again 
 into the lusty sunlight, along the 
 straight, powdery road that dazzles 
 ahead interminably towards a myste- 
 rious, hazy horizon, where the land 
 melts into the sky. . . . 
 
 And, at last, the cool evening 
 scents ; soft shadows stealing beneath 
 the still, silent oaks ; and, all at once, 
 a sight of the great snow-mountains, 
 vague, phantasmagoric, like a mirage 
 
 in the sky ; and of the hills, all 
 
 indigo, rippling towards a pale 
 
 sunset of liquid gold. 
 
 SINCE sunrise I had been travel- 
 ling — along the straight-stretch- 
 ing roads, white with summer sand, 
 interminably striped by the shadows 
 of the poplars ; across the great,
 
 Vignettes 
 
 parched plain, where, all the day's 
 length, the heat dances over the 
 waste land, and the cattle bells float 
 their far-away tinkling; through the 
 desolate villages, empty but for the 
 beldames, hunched in the doorways, 
 pulling the flax with horny, tremu- 
 lous fingers; and on towards the de- 
 solate silence of the flowerless pine- 
 forests. . . . 
 
 And there the night fell. The sun 
 went down unseen ; a dim flickering 
 ruddled the host of tree trunks ; and 
 the darkness started to drift through 
 the forest. The road grew narrow 
 as a footpath, and the marc slacken- 
 ing her pace, uneasily strained her 
 white neck ahead. 
 
 Out of the darkness a figure sprang 
 beside mc. A shout rang out^ — ^words 
 of an uncouth patois that I did not 
 understand. And the mare, terrified, 
 galloped forward, snorting, and swerv- 
 ing from side to side. . . . 
 
 And a strange, superstitious fear 
 
 17 
 
 IN THE 
 LANDES
 
 i8 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 IN THE 
 LANDES 
 
 CETTE 
 
 June J, 
 Midday 
 
 crept over me — a dreamy dread of 
 the future ; a helpless presentiment 
 of evil days to come ; a sense, too, 
 of the ruthless nullity of life, of the 
 futile deception of effort, of bitter re- 
 volt against the extindlion of death, 
 a yearning after faith in a vague sur- 
 vival beyond. . . . 
 
 And the words of the old proverb 
 returned to me mockingly: — 
 
 " The eye is not satisfied with seeing, 
 nor the ear with hearing." 
 
 A PURE stretch of sky ; aflatsweep 
 of sea ; cobalt-blue, rich and 
 opaque, pervading all things. In the 
 harbour, battered, blue-painted barges, 
 their decks loaded with oranges; barge- 
 men in blue blouses, asleep across the 
 glaring pavement ; and along the quay, 
 indefinitely, as far as the eye can reach, 
 row upon row of barrels, repeating 
 from their up-turned ends the same
 
 Vignettes 
 
 19 
 
 stifling note of colour. . . . The 
 sea licks the jetty wall, lazily, rhyth- 
 mically : everywhere a sensation 
 of listless oppression, of life- 
 less torpor. . . . 
 
 I HAVE sat there, and seen the 
 winter days finish their short- 
 spanned lives, and all the globes of 
 light, crimson, emerald, and pallid 
 yellow, start, one by one, out of the 
 russet fog that creeps up the river. 
 
 But I like the place best on these 
 hot summer nights, when the sky 
 hangs thick with stifled colour, and 
 the stars shine small and shyly. For 
 then the pulse of the city is hushed, 
 and the scales of the water flicker 
 golden and oily under the watching 
 regiment of lamps. The bridge clasps 
 its gaunt arms tight from bank to 
 bank, and the shuffle of a retreating 
 
 CETTE 
 
 ON 
 CHELSEA 
 EMBANK- 
 MENT 
 
 June 26 
 
 C — 2
 
 20 
 
 ON 
 CHELSEA 
 
 EMBANK- 
 MENT 
 
 PLEA- 
 SANT 
 COURT 
 
 June 28 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 figure sounds loud and alone in the 
 quiet. . . . 
 
 There, if you wait long enough, 
 you may hear the long wail of the 
 siren, that seems to tell of the an- 
 guish of London, till a train hurries 
 to throttle its dying note, roaring 
 and rushing, thundering and blazing 
 through the night, tossing its white 
 
 crest of smoke, charging across 
 
 the bridge, into the dark 
 
 country beyond. . . . 
 
 I 
 
 T is known only to the inhabitants 
 of the quarter. To find it, you 
 must penetrate a winding passage, 
 wedged between high walls of dismal 
 brick. Turn to the right by the 
 blue-lettered advertisement of Kop's 
 Ale, and again to the left through 
 the two posts, and you come to 
 Pleasant-court. And when you are
 
 Vignettes 
 
 21 
 
 there, you can go no farther ; for 
 at the far end there is no way out. 
 
 There are thirteen houses in Plea- 
 sant-court — seven on the one side, 
 and six on the other. They are alike, 
 every one ; low-w^alled as country 
 cottages; built of blackish brick, 
 with a six-foot plot before each, and 
 slate roofs that glimmer wanly on 
 the wet, winter mornings. 
 
 But winter is not the season to 
 see Pleasant-court at its best. The 
 drain-sluice is always getting choked, 
 so that pools of mud and brown wa- 
 ter loiter near the rickety fence that 
 flanks each six-foot enclosure ; and, 
 at Christmas-time, "most everyone 
 is a bit out," and young Hyams in 
 the Walworth-road stacks half his 
 back shop with furniture from Plea- 
 sant-court ; and all day long the chil- 
 dren of the lodger at No. 5 never stop 
 squalling with chapped faces, and the 
 "Lowser's" wife makes much com- 
 motion at nights, threatening to "set- 
 
 PLEA- 
 
 SANT 
 
 COURT
 
 22 
 
 PLEA- 
 SANT 
 COURT 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 tie " her husband, and sending her 
 four children to clatter about the 
 pavement. 
 
 In the summer, however, everyone 
 smartens up, and by the time that 
 sultry June days have come. Plea- 
 sant-court attempts a rural air. On 
 the left-hand side a jaded creeper 
 pushes its grimy greenery under the 
 w^indows ; some of the grass plots 
 grovi^ quite bushy with tough, wiz- 
 ened stalks; and the geranium pots 
 at No. 7 strike flaming specks of 
 vermilion. 
 
 Last March the " Lowscr " and 
 his wife and his four children moved 
 over to Southwark ; the lodger at 
 No. 5 is in work again ; and now 
 the quiet of seclusion is restored to 
 Pleasant-court. 
 
 The children sprawl the afternoon 
 through on the hot alley floor ; Mrs. 
 Hodgkiss hangs her washing to bulge 
 and flap across the court, like a line 
 of white banners ; and on the airless
 
 Vignettes 
 
 evenings, the women, limp, with their 
 straggling hair, and loose, bedraggled 
 skirts, lean their bare, fleshy elbows 
 over the fence, lingering to gossip 
 before they go to dinner. 
 
 And on Saturday nights, the in- 
 habitants of Pleasant-court troop out 
 to join the rumble and the rattle of 
 the Walworth-road, and to swell the 
 life that shuffles down its pavement, 
 past the flaring naphtha lights, the 
 
 stall-keepers bawling in the gut- 
 ter, and every shop ablaze 
 with gross jets of gas. 
 
 THESE are their names — Car- 
 lotta, Lubella, Belinda, Aniin- 
 ta, Clarissa. By the old bowling- 
 green they stand, a little pompously 
 perhaps, with a slight superfluity of 
 dignity, conscious of their own full, 
 comely contours — a courtly group of 
 rotund dames. Heavy Carlotta, the 
 
 23 
 
 PLEA- 
 SANT 
 COURT 
 
 THE FIVE 
 SISTKR 
 PANS Its 
 
 August 19
 
 24 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 THE FIVE 
 
 SISTER 
 
 PANSIES 
 
 OUR 
 
 LADY OF 
 
 THE 
 
 LANE 
 
 Sept. 17 
 
 eldest, lover of blatant luxury, over- 
 blown, middle-aged, in her gown of 
 rich magenta, all embroidered with 
 tawdry gilt ; Lubella, wearing portly 
 velvet of dark purple, sensual, indo- 
 lent, insolent as an empress of old, 
 gleaming her thin, yellow eye ; in- 
 significant Belinda, bedecked in silly, 
 sentimental mauve, all for dallying 
 with the facile gossip of galanterie, 
 gushing, giggling, gullible ; unso- 
 phisticated Aminta, with tresses of 
 flaming gold, amiable and obvious as 
 a common stage heroine ; and Cla- 
 rissa, the youngest, slyly smirking 
 the while, above her frock of 
 milk-white innocence. 
 
 WHENEVER the London sun 
 touches the small, dusky 
 shops with a jumble of begrimed 
 colour— the old gold and scarlet of 
 hanging meat ; the metallic green of
 
 Vignettes 
 
 mature cabbages; the wavering rus- 
 set of piled potatoes ; the sharp white 
 of fly-bills, pasted all awry — then the 
 moment to see her is come. You 
 will find her, bareheaded and touzled ; 
 her dingv, peaked shawl hanging 
 down her back, and in front the 
 bellying expanse of her soiled apron ; 
 blocking the pavement ; established 
 by her own corner of the Lane, all 
 littered with the cries of children, and 
 the fitful throbbing of the asphalte 
 beneath the hollow hammering of 
 hoofs. 
 
 She carries always a baby by her 
 breast ; her bare forearms are as 
 bulky as any man's; in her eyes is 
 a froward scowl ; and, when she 
 laughs, it is with a harsh, strident 
 gaiety. But she never fails to wear 
 her squalid portliness with a robust 
 
 and defiant dignity, that makes 
 
 her figure definitely symbolic 
 
 of Cockney maternity. 
 
 25 
 
 OUR 
 
 LADY OF 
 
 THE 
 
 LANE
 
 26 
 
 ON THE 
 COAST OF 
 CALVA- 
 DOS 
 
 Sept. 26 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 THE leaden sea plashed her indo- 
 lent rhythm : all along the 
 lonely shore the orchards stood mo- 
 tionless, sombre, metallic-looking in 
 the lifeless, thunder-charged air ; and 
 amid a rugged flare of smoky flame, 
 the sun went down in the West. 
 
 A baby breeze rustled past, fleeing 
 before the distant storm : then, all 
 
 grew 
 
 still 
 
 again. 
 
 w 
 
 hile. 
 
 across 
 
 the 
 
 horizon, a quiet rift broke, revealing 
 a long, lurid line of fantastic coast — 
 mysterious, desolate valleys, and ragged 
 towering cliffs. 
 
 The leaden sea plashed her indo- 
 lent rhythm ; and the bleak bulk of 
 a steamer, pitching in the offing. 
 
 beast in distress, 
 again, fresh and cool. 
 
 moved like a 
 
 And once 
 carrying the scent of the storm, the 
 breeze came fleeing, trailing an inky 
 stain over the sea ; and across the 
 West there defiled a vague squadron 
 of gigantic pillars of rain. 
 
 The parched trees swayed their
 
 Vignettes 
 
 27 
 
 boughs, uneasily whispering j and, of 
 a sudden, wrapping all things in a 
 dense shroud of dark-grey mist, clat- 
 tered the ponderous rain. 
 
 And overhead, on, through the 
 growing night, tlic white, jagged 
 flashes of lightning, and the frenzied 
 flight of the screaming wind, and the 
 
 dull booming of thunder told of 
 
 the great, distant battle of 
 
 the clouds. 
 
 A MAUVE sky, all subtle; a dis- 
 creet rusticity, daintily modern, 
 femininely delicate; a whole finikin 
 arrangement of trim trees, of rectan- 
 gular orchards, of tiny, spruce houses, 
 tall-roofed and pink-faced, with white 
 shutters demurely closed. Here and 
 there a prim farmyard; a squat 
 church-spire; and blouscd peasants 
 jogging behind rotund white horses, 
 
 ON THE 
 COAST OK 
 CALVA- 
 DOS 
 
 IN NOR- 
 MANDY 
 
 Sept. 30
 
 28 
 
 IN NOR- 
 MANDY 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 along a straight and gleaming road. 
 
 In all the landscape no trace of the 
 
 slovenly profusion of the pifturesque ; 
 
 but rather a distinguished reticence 
 
 of detail, fresh, coquettish, 
 
 almost dapper. 
 
 I 
 
 PARIS IN 
 OCTOBER 
 
 October 4 
 
 PARIS in Oaober— all white and 
 a-glitter under a cold, spark- 
 ling sky, and the trees of the boule- 
 vards trembling their frail, russet 
 leaves; garish, petulant Paris; com- 
 placently content with her sauntering 
 crowds, her monotonous arrangements 
 in pink and white and blue; ever 
 busied with her own publicity, her 
 tiresome, obvious vice, and her 
 parochial modernity coquetting 
 with cosmopolitanism. . . .
 
 Vignettes 
 
 29 
 
 O TRIPS of ruddy earth: poplars la cOte 
 
 FROM 
 THE 
 ' TRAIN 
 
 Vs3 flecked with gold, and vine 
 yards with autumn red; the dark 
 sleek Saone; and beyond, the pale 
 green plain, spacious and smooth, 
 stretching away and away towards j 
 the blue haze that wraps the Cote 
 d'Or, hesitating and soft as the lines 
 of a woman's body. 
 
 The sun sets, trailing a wash of 
 pale, watery gold ; torn, inky clouds 
 spatter the sky; sombre shadows fill 
 
 the acacia-groves ; and on, on, 
 
 pounds the train, untiring, 
 
 rhythmically throbbing. 
 
 October 6 
 
 o 
 
 " Tout paysaf^e est un dial d\ime." 
 
 FTEN must Amicl, who lived lausan- 
 his life on tlie shores of this 
 great lake, have brooded over her 
 moods. Deep-blue, she lies plunged ^tocr: 
 in silent meditation ; wrapped in the 
 opal-tinted mists of evening, she
 
 30 
 
 LAUSAN- 
 NE 
 
 OLD MAR 
 SEILLES 
 
 AT 
 MIDDAY 
 
 October lo 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 dreams the vague, glad dreams of 
 fancy ; now she smiles, she laughs 
 even, as little ripples, all gilded by 
 the sun-rays, trip across her surface ; 
 she has her grey days of gloom, and 
 her dark days of despair : she has also 
 her jours defete^ and her jours de grande 
 toilette^ under a sky heavy-loaded with 
 blue : often, in the moonlight, she lies 
 white, tranquil, statuesque, like a beau- 
 tiful, sleeping woman : at times her 
 humour is bewilderingly capricious ; 
 the fleeting, furious rages of a spoilt 
 child sweep across her ; or, ink- 
 coloured, she sulks during long 
 hours, sullenly wrathful. 
 
 UP every staircase-street — dark 
 crevasses, pinched between 
 tall, peeling cliffs ; along the quay, 
 flaunting, tattered, brawling colours, 
 sweating and swarming with noisy life 
 — negroes. Chinamen, Arabs, Lascars,
 
 Vignettes 
 
 Italians, Greeks — the angry hum of 
 a thousand tongues and the clatter of 
 straining mules. ... At midday, 
 when all the smooth stone pavement 
 lies bathed in lusty sunshine, you 
 may feel the pulse of old Marseilles 
 quicken to fever-heat its turbulent 
 throbbing. . . . 
 
 Across the sea, polished as a pool of 
 molten metal, the Southern sun strews 
 his golden highway ; the frail forest 
 of masts stiffens, congealed like a fine 
 etched pattern ; side by side lie the herds 
 of steamers, silent, drowsy, vermilion- 
 bellied beasts; and over there, to the 
 left, high above the city, the slim sil- 
 houette of Notrc-Dame de la Garde 
 shows a glimmer of dusky gilt. , . . 
 Oh ! for the crude crowd of bla- 
 tant hues and the flood of fierce 
 vitality that belong to old 
 Marseilles at midday ! 
 
 31 
 
 OLD MAR- 
 SEILLES 
 
 AT 
 MIDDAY
 
 32 
 
 MONTE 
 CARLO 
 
 October 15 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 HIGH, beneath the lofty dome 
 of sullen sky, like a great 
 white globe of elc6lric light, the full 
 moon hangs ; beyond the bay, the 
 twinkling lights of Monaco are 
 dropping long golden tears into the 
 sea : no breath of breeze to sway the 
 black drooping palms ; only the full, 
 solemn phrase of Gounod's " Ave 
 Maria," slowly recurring to linger in 
 the still, grave air of the night. . . 
 
 The moonbeams spangle with silver 
 the twin minarets of the temple of 
 Chance ; and stately officials swing 
 back its portals to meet the silent tide 
 of worshippers that ceaselessly ebbs 
 and flows, blackening the broad flight 
 of marble steps. 
 
 Within, through the great marble 
 vestibule, where the shuffle of feet 
 rings hollow, they hurry to huddle 
 around the bright green shrines of 
 the goddess, to await, with tense, 
 
 yellow faces, the unflagging tide 
 of her relentless caprices.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 33 
 
 I SAT on the terrace of the old 
 palace, waiting for the coming 
 of the rain-clouds. The sunshine was 
 gone, and with it the city's witty 
 sparkle; the sirocco's breath puffed 
 warm and moist ; and Florence, all 
 ruddled and sullen, lay chaunting her 
 ponderous notes of bronze. 
 
 Below, knee-deep in the yellow, 
 straggling stream, a fisherman swayed 
 his net, slowly straining the supple 
 framework ; and while I watched him, 
 of a sudden, a fitful longing to see 
 tJic place again laid hold of me — to 
 sec it, just as it had been last year, on 
 that mellow September afternoon, all 
 garnished with soft light, all fragrant 
 with coquettish simplicity and pleas- 
 ant, prosperous peace. And soon, as 
 the sky darkened, and the rain-clouds 
 — a sombre, swelling herd — gathered 
 above the cypresses of San Miniato, I 
 seemed to hear the organ's stately 
 roll, and to perceive, through the 
 obscurity of the half-darkened chapel, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CERTOSA 
 
 DI VAL 
 
 D'EMA 
 
 October 20
 
 34 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CERTOSA 
 
 DI VAL 
 
 D'EMA 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 a crowding circle of white-robed 
 figures. The chaunt of the church 
 bells beat the air : all else seemed stilled 
 — love and the quickening joy of life 
 — and with a sort of childish incon- 
 sequence, bred perhaps of the curious, 
 literary habit, I fell to envying them 
 a little — those tall, white-robed fathers 
 — their miniature rows of monkish 
 gardens, and their solitary pacings 
 beneath the pale-lemon cloisters. . . 
 
 So I started to go there, rattling 
 through the dust in the face of the 
 coming storm. By the roadside, the 
 grey olives matched the sky ; all 
 around, the vines hung delicately 
 dying, drooping in tired curves their 
 fragile garlands of pallid-gold leaves ; 
 and here and there peeped specks of 
 scarlet, like lingering traces of some 
 bygone y?/^. 
 
 But, before we had climbed the 
 hill, the rain came — a deliberate pre- 
 lude of monstrous drops ; and a veil, 
 as of grey gauze, blurred the white-
 
 Vignettes 
 
 35 
 
 CERTOSA 
 DI VAL 
 D'EMA 
 
 faced villas peoplins; the hill-sides, and at the 
 changed the cypresses to dim, spiky 
 sentinels. . 
 
 It was Brother Agostino who came 
 to the gate, greeting me, so I fancied, 
 with a quick smile of recognition ; 
 then, before the groups of noisy village 
 youths and raffish, Florentine cabmen, 
 who encumbered the corridor, his 
 features dropped back to the patient 
 vacancy of habitual fatigue. 
 
 Over the tiled floor of the cloister- 
 court rattled the dance of tJie rain ; 
 the great well, over-grown with rank 
 grass, wore a forlorn, decrepit air ; 
 and a musty scent, as of approaching 
 decay, floated over the vast garden. 
 
 In the chapel, a band of blatant 
 Americans joined us, listening com- 
 placently to Brother Agostino's per- 
 fundtory explanations concerning the 
 frescoes, the stained-glass windows, 
 the exquisite tomb of tlie monastery's 
 founder. 
 
 And the place seemed all changed ; 
 
 D— 2
 
 36 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CERTOSA 
 
 DI VAL 
 
 D'EMA 
 
 MORN- 
 ING AT 
 CASTEL- 
 LO 
 
 October 30 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 its fine distindlion was gone: the old 
 Certosa exposed to the hurried gaze 
 of every passing tourist ; and stern- 
 faced Brother Agostino, footsore and 
 weary, degraded to the role of a 
 common, obsequious guide. 
 
 THE morning's breath tastes cool 
 and clean. The distant hills 
 seem yet asleep, tranquil and dark — 
 a long, low, wavering wall. Above 
 the plain floats a lingering, pearly 
 film, and the air grows busy with a 
 vague rumour of awakening life — 
 the rumble of wheels, the cracking 
 of whips, the plaintive whistling of 
 far-ofF trains. 
 
 On its way to Florence the early 
 train swings by ; hordes of brown- 
 skinned, bare-footed ciiildren sprawl 
 noisily along all the street ; the men 
 lean idly watching the ceaseless tale
 
 Vignettes 
 
 of lean barrocci^ lumbering, jolting 
 over the crooked flags; and before 
 every open doorway the w^omen group 
 their chairs, to sit at their straw- 
 plaiting the long day through. . . . 
 
 Beyond, across the dusty-green of 
 countless olives, you can see the glit- 
 tering roofs of Florence, the Duorno's 
 burly dome, and the pale outline of 
 Giotto's tower ; but it is rather the 
 sense of old-world slowness, the con- 
 tinual accumulation of friendly, trivial 
 
 incident, that makes the intimate 
 
 charm of this suburban 
 
 street .... 
 
 THE young moon hangs amid a 
 steely sky ; the laud, empty 
 and darkening, rolls like a billowing 
 sea towards the Western orange glow ; 
 and iiigh behind us the tall hill lifts 
 Perugia's ragged silhouette. 
 
 Down the steep road they came — 
 
 37 
 
 MORN- 
 ING AT 
 CASTEL- 
 LO 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CAMI'O 
 
 SANTO AT 
 
 PERUGIA 
 
 November i
 
 38 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 IN THE j grave bourgeois; bands of brown-faced 
 SANTO AT youths, chewing thin cigars; aged 
 
 PERUGIA pejisant-women, with faded, wrinkled 
 eyes ; chattering country-girls, gaudy 
 handkerchiefs around their hair ; tod- 
 dling children ; uncouth men from 
 the mountains, sullenly wrapped in 
 fur-trimmed cloaks, while, posted in 
 rows on either side, the crippled 
 beggars offer their dusty hats, and 
 whine for charity in the Virgin's 
 name. 
 
 Before the red gate of the Campo 
 Santo the crowd surges ; within, every 
 alley is black with the press of people. 
 It is the day of the dead. To visit 
 the dead all the town is come. 
 
 . . . The pale specks of a myriad, 
 tiny lamps ; the glow of garlands 
 against the crowding slabs of snow- 
 white marble, that mark the child- 
 ren's graves ; the glitter of every 
 small, spruce mortuary chapel ; and 
 the glad scent of freshly-scattered 
 flowers.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 Death loses its squalor; and 
 
 becomes something demure, 
 
 sociable, almost gay. . . . 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CAMPO 
 
 SANTO AT 
 
 PERUGIA 
 
 39 
 
 NAPLES 
 IN NO- 
 VEMBER 
 
 Late after- 
 noon in the 
 
 UP the squalid, ill-paved street, 
 lumber the great landaus — 
 an interminable, toiling stream, carry- 
 ing home from the corso the morose, 
 sallow-faced ladies of the Neapolitan stradadd 
 
 ... Chiaja 
 
 nobility, and crushing on either side 
 
 the hedge of gaping hobblede- °^*'" "' 
 
 hoys that line the niggardly 
 pavement. 
 
 HEAPED beneath us all Naples, 
 white and motionless in the 
 silent blaze of the midday sun ; cir- 
 cling the bay, still and smooth and 
 blue as the sky above, a misty line 
 of white villages; dark, velvety sha- 
 dows draping the hills; on the hori- 
 
 Froin 
 Fosilipo 
 
 Nov. 12
 
 40 
 
 Fro»i 
 Posilipo 
 
 In the 
 
 Strada del 
 
 Porto 
 
 Nov. 1 2 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 zon, rising abruptly, Capri's notched 
 
 silhouette — tout semhle suer la heaute — 
 
 la bonne et f ranch e heaute criarde 
 
 des pays chauds europeens. 
 
 A STRIP of treacherous pavement 
 slimy with garbage ; the wan 
 flicker of foul lanterns, vaguely re- 
 vealing the black shapes of sail-like 
 awnings above a network of mysteri- 
 ous masts; and the sodden, continu- 
 ous uproar of a reeking crowd — 
 hawkers of fruit, of fish, of assorted 
 cigar-ends— fiercely clamouring toge- 
 ther in the darkness. . . . 
 
 By-and-bye, through the obscu- 
 rity, peers the glossy vermilion of 
 piled capsicums, the scarlet sparkle 
 of bleeding pomegranates, and the 
 hard flashing of scattered, silvery 
 sardines. Here and there, behind 
 a chestnut-brazier that shoots long.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 licking tongues of ruddy flame, the 
 vacant, battered countenance of some 
 a^ed crone ; or amid a frenzied crack- 
 ing of whips the clattering passage of 
 a team of trembling mules, straining 
 at a lean-shafted, high-wheeled cart, 
 passing across the street, to disappear, 
 engulfed in cavernous blackness, be- 
 neath a noisome archway. Bands of 
 sailors jostle their way down the alley, 
 rudely rebuffing the obscene advances 
 of slatternly women ; the night grows 
 airless and stifling, under the dingy 
 stars that speckle the black strip of 
 sky overhead ; and the street comes 
 to possess a satanic fascination, 
 almost epic in its in- 
 tensity. . . . 
 
 41 
 
 In the 
 
 Strada del 
 
 Porto 
 
 THE long line of lamps casts 
 countless, trembling pillars of 
 dusky gold into the sea: the night is 
 full of stifled light — a pale, quivering 
 
 Moonlight 
 
 Nov. a9
 
 42 
 
 Moonlight 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 At the 
 Theatre 
 Manzotii 
 
 Nov. 26 
 
 suffusion of mysterious blue. The 
 Castello d'Oro floats, black as ink, 
 like a shapeless hulk ; across the 
 empty sky a solitary, ghostly cloud 
 lies sleeping ; somewhere, beyond the 
 bay, the moonlight is dancing ; and 
 the rhythm of the sleek, rolling waves 
 drowsily, lazily, rises and falls. 
 
 A boy and a girl lean together, 
 watching the waves: some mando- 
 lines start a faint twanging ; the dis- 
 tant rattle of a cab — then all is quiet ; 
 and the glow above Vesuvius, sullenly 
 
 pulsing, alone breaks in upon 
 
 the delicate serenity of the 
 
 night. . . . 
 
 I HAVE been to many first-nights 
 there, for I have found a certain 
 childish charm in the small, shabby, 
 blue-and-white theatre, the tiers of 
 minute boxes, close-packed with faces, 
 the noisy Neapolitan pit, and the in-
 
 Vignettes 
 
 evitable row of callow critics, sucking 
 their pencil-stumps, each with his hat 
 tight-jammed behind his head. 
 
 But especially there lingers in my 
 mind the memory of a certain brief, 
 mediaeval drama, where a little flaxen- 
 haired lady, wearing a low-cut dress 
 of arsenic-green satin, passionately 
 implored mercy of a curly-pated 
 knight in a shirt of maroon-coloured 
 velvet, for a great wrong she had done 
 him. She wept piteously, poor little 
 creature, tearing tremulously at her 
 fluffy locks, and on her knees appeal- 
 ing to us all to help her. But the 
 little knight kept his wooden gaze 
 obdurately averted from her, till, ex- 
 hausted, she sank dying on to a gilt- 
 legged couch. 
 
 The actors were only marionettes. 
 The httle lady was somewhat ob- 
 viously painted, and the little ktiight 
 stood a trifle stiffly, as if suffering 
 slightly from stage-fright. Hut the 
 pit sat the scene out in breathless 
 
 43 
 
 Ai the 
 Thfatre 
 Manzoni
 
 44 
 
 At Uic 
 Theatre 
 Manzoni 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 silence, and the row of callow critics 
 sucked their pencil-stumps with re- 
 newed vigour, and jammed their hats 
 tighter behind their heads. For in 
 some curious, inexplicable way the 
 thing was quite moving — he was so 
 brutal, the little curly-pated knight 
 in his shirt of maroon-coloured vel- 
 vet ; and she, poor, sobbing, little 
 flaxen-haired lady, pleaded so despe- 
 rately. . . . 
 
 Once before, in my childhood, 
 through a half-closed door, I saw a 
 girl plead with that same tense fra- 
 gility. She, too, had flaxen hair, and 
 wore a low-necked dress of green 
 satin ; and he, the man, stood stiffly, 
 turning his gaze away from her, ob- 
 durately. And each scene, as I now 
 compose them, seems to contain a 
 
 kindred underlying element of 
 grotesque unreality.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 IT was an old mill. There were 
 white columns of peeling plaster 
 flanking the granary, and stacks of 
 frowsy brushwood blocking the door. 
 Part of it had fallen away ; tall, rank 
 grass grew between the rottening 
 rafters of the roof; and remnants 
 of battered frescoes, that had once 
 adorned the walls of the upper rooms, 
 were now spread bare to sun and 
 wind and rain. And the meal-troughs 
 were full of blossoming wild-flowers. 
 Beside the mill stood a small, square 
 Moorish house, roofed with lava, 
 scowling with dirt; and beside the 
 house, guarding a public well, was 
 a gaunt crane of mouldering wood. 
 Across the sleekly rippling mill-stream 
 a ragged peasant family were ranged 
 the length of a strip of powdery soil 
 — the father, the mother, two sons, 
 four daughters, and a toddling child 
 — and beyond them stretched the 
 great dead-grey expanse of roofless 
 walls — the sun-dried corpse of the 
 
 45 
 
 POMPEII 
 
 Nov. 28
 
 46 
 
 POMPEH 
 
 IN THE 
 
 HAY OF 
 
 SALERNO 
 
 Nov. 30 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 ruined Roman town. In the twilight 
 the sea lay towards Capri the colour 
 of yellow mud ; and Vesuvius, turning 
 a vague, velvety black, was trickling 
 his smoky breath towards the bay. 
 
 There was a great immobility in 
 the air— an immobility that seemed 
 born of long ages: and, somehow, 
 more than the ruined town itself — 
 defaced by German tourists and uni- 
 formed guides — this corner of the 
 
 country supplied a bitter sense of 
 
 shortness of life, the impassive 
 
 sloth of time. ... 
 
 TO gaze across the black sweep 
 of sea, out into the mystery 
 of the night ; to hear the restless 
 waves slowly sighing through the 
 darkness, as they beat the rocks a 
 thousand feet beneath ; to love a 
 little so, with quiet pressure of hands.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 and listlessly to ponder on strange 
 meanings of life and love and death. 
 
 And so, amid a still serenity of 
 dreamy sadness, to forget the mad 
 turmoil of passion, to grow indifferent 
 to all desire, and to wait, while the 
 heart fills full of grave gratitude to- 
 wards an unknown God. 
 
 And then, once more, to under- 
 stand how life is but a little thing, 
 and love but a passionate illusion, 
 
 and to envy the sea her sigliing 
 
 in the days when the end 
 
 shall have come. 
 
 THE entertainment draws to its 
 close, for it is past four in the 
 morning. In the hall, several of the 
 oil-lamj->s have already sputtered out ; 
 the rest arc burning with dull, blear- 
 eyed weariness. A score of unshaven 
 Spaniards, close muffled in capas and 
 lowering sombreros^ sprawl in limp 
 
 47 
 
 IN THE 
 
 BAY OF 
 
 SALERNO 
 
 SEVILLE 
 
 IJANCING 
 
 GIRLS 
 
 IJcccmbcrio
 
 48 
 
 SEVILLE 
 
 DANCING 
 
 GIRLS 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 attitudes over the empty benches, and 
 the circle of gaudy women that fill 
 the stage sit listless, pasty-faced, som- 
 nolent. 
 
 And then, for the last time, the 
 frenzy passes. The guitars start their 
 sudden, bitter twanging, and the 
 women their wild, rhythmical beating 
 of hands. 
 
 Amid volleys of harsh, frenzied 
 plaudits la Manolita dances, swaying 
 her soft, girlish frame with a tense, 
 exasperated restraint ; supple as a ser- 
 pent ; coyly, subtly lascivious ; lan- 
 guidly curling and uncurling her bare 
 white arms. 
 
 Out in the cold night air, as 
 
 I hasten home through the narrow, 
 
 sleeping streets, her soft, girlish frame 
 
 still sways before my eyes, 
 
 to the bitter twanging 
 
 of guitars.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 TO ride alone beneath the stars, 
 through the long indefinite 
 hours of the night ; to climb the 
 slumbering mountain-hulks ; to hear 
 the dull roar of the river, toiling 
 unwearied through the darkness be- 
 low ; to break, with a sudden clat- 
 tering of hoofs, the gloomy stillness of 
 distant village-streets, and on through 
 the twilight that precedes the dawn, 
 to journey, without flagging, high 
 up against the sky, across a desolate, 
 limitless plain. 
 
 To scout the future ; to unlearn 
 the past ; and to brood vaguely, as 
 the night broods. 
 
 To elude desire; to disdain the 
 tlirill of hate; to forget the long 
 acliing of love, and to commune, in 
 tender serenity, with the grave-eyed 
 Spirit of Rest. 
 
 And then, while the night slinks 
 awav across the hills, to push on 
 towards the sunrise; to watch the 
 marshalling of ruddy heralds across 
 
 49 
 
 SUNRISE
 
 50 
 
 SUNRISE 
 
 OFF CAPE 
 TRAFAL- 
 GAR 
 
 December i8 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 the East, and at last to meet the 
 
 Great God's dazzling glory, 
 
 bursting in splendour across 
 
 the empty land. 
 
 WE paced the bridge together, 
 chatting till his watch should 
 be done. The dim, uneasy outline 
 of the steamer's bows loomed before 
 us ; now and again we could feel her 
 pulse quicken, her sinews tighten, as, 
 like a living thing, she flinched from 
 each lashing of the waves. 
 
 He was telling me tales of the 
 yellow fever at Rio de Janeiro, of 
 the crowd of vessels lying in the 
 harbour without a soul on board, of 
 six weeks he had spent in the hos- 
 pital there, where twelve hundred 
 fever-stricken creatures lay packed on 
 the floor of a single ward, and the 
 doftors dared only shout to the pa- 
 tients from behind a railed gangway.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 And, while he still talked, up from 
 the East crept the first flicker of the 
 dawn, revealing flocks of ruddy-sailed 
 smacks tossing off the Spanish shore ; 
 then, slowly, the throng of black 
 billows turned to reddish-green, and 
 across the sky, from behind the 
 African coast, poured a deep, blood- 
 red stain. The mirage rose, lifting 
 into space the low line of black hills, 
 and the growing glow set a carpet 
 of cloud ablaze, till it hung, stretched 
 
 across the sky, like a vast awning 
 of beaten, burnished copper. 
 
 I DREAMED of an age grown 
 strangely pidturesque — of the 
 rich enfeebled by monotoiums ease ; 
 of the shivering poor clamouring 
 nightly for justice; of a helpless 
 democracy, vast revolt of the ill- 
 informed ; of priests striving to be 
 rational : of sentimental moralists 
 
 51 
 
 OFF CAPE 
 TRAFAL- 
 GAR 
 
 REVERIE 
 December 35 
 
 E — 2
 
 52 
 
 REVERIE 
 
 IN RICH- 
 MOND 
 PARK 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 prote6ling iniquity ; of middle-class 
 princes ; of sybaritic saints ; of com- 
 placent and pompous politicians ; of 
 dodlors hurrying the degeneration of 
 the race ; of artists discarding possi- 
 bilities for limitations; of pressmen 
 befooling a pretentious public ; of 
 critics refining upon the 'busman's 
 methods ; of inhabitants of Camber- 
 well chattering of culture. 
 
 And I dreamed of this great, dreamy 
 London of ours ; of her myriad fleet- 
 ing moods ; of the charm of her por- 
 tentous provinciality ; and I awoke 
 all a-glad and hungering for 
 life. 
 
 IN the wan, lingering light of the 
 winter afternoon, the park stood 
 all deserted ; sluggishly drowsing, so 
 it seemed, with its spacious distances 
 muffled in greyness ; colourless, fabu- 
 lous, blurred. One by one, through
 
 Vignettes 
 
 the damp, misty air, loomed the tall, 
 stark, lifeless, elms. Overhead there 
 lowered a turbid sky, heavy-charged 
 with an unclean yellow. And, amid 
 the ruddy patches of dank and rotten- 
 ing bracken, the little mare picked 
 her way noiselessly. The rumour of 
 life seemed hushed ; there was only 
 the vague, listless rhythm of the creak- 
 ing saddle. . . . 
 
 The daylight faded ; a shroud of 
 ghostly mist enveloped the earth, 
 
 and up from the vaporous dis- 
 tance crept slowly the even- 
 ing darkness. . . . 
 
 I 
 
 T was New Year's eve. The old, 
 old scene. A London night; a 
 heavy-brown atmosphere splashed with 
 liquid, golden lights; the bustling mar- 
 ket-place of sin ; asilent crowd of black 
 figures drifting over a wet, flickering 
 pavement. 
 
 53 
 
 IN RICH- 
 MOND 
 PARK 
 
 NEW 
 
 YKARS 
 
 EVE 
 
 December 31
 
 54 
 
 NKW 
 
 YEAR'S 
 
 EVE 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 The slow, grave notes from a church 
 tower took command of the night. 
 The last one faded : the old year had 
 slipped by. And then a woman laugh- 
 ed — a strident, level laugh ; and there 
 swept through all the crowd a mad, 
 feverish tremor. The women ran one 
 to the other, kissing, wildly welcom- 
 ing the New Year in ; and the men, 
 shouting thickly, snatched at them as 
 they ran. And the cabmen touted 
 eagerly for fares. 
 
 Across the road, by a corner, a 
 street missionary stood on a chair — 
 an undersized, poorly clad man, with 
 a wizened, bearded face. 
 
 ..." Repent . . . repent . . . 
 and save your souls to-night from the 
 eternal torments of hell-fire." 
 
 The women jostled him, pelted him 
 with foul gibes ; and one — a young 
 girl — broke into a peal of hysterical 
 laughter. 
 
 And I mused wonderingly on 
 the ugliness of sin.
 
 Vignettes 
 
 A SULLEN glow throbs over- 
 head : golden will-o'-wisps are 
 threading their shadowy groupings 
 of gaunt-limbed trees; and the dull, 
 distant rumour of feverish London 
 waits on the still, night air. The 
 lights of Hyde Park corner blaze 
 like some monster, gilded constella- 
 tion, shaming the dingy stars ; and 
 across the East there flares a sky-sign 
 — a gaudy, crimson arabesque. 
 
 And all the air hangs draped in 
 the mysterious, sumptuous splendour 
 of a murky London 
 night. . . . 
 
 THE city disgorges. 
 All along the Strand, down 
 the great, ebbing tide, the omnibuses, 
 a congested press of gaudy craft, drift 
 westwards, jostling and jamming their 
 tall, loaded decks, with a clanking of 
 chains, a rumble of lumbering wheels. 
 
 55 
 
 IN ST. 
 
 JAMES'S 
 
 PARK 
 
 January 15 
 
 IN I' I IK 
 STRAND 
 
 January 27
 
 56 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 IN THE 
 STRAND 
 
 a thudding of quick-loosed brakes, a 
 humming of hammering hoofs. . . . 
 
 The empty hansoms slink silently 
 past ; the street hawkers — a long row 
 of dingy figures — line the pavement- 
 edge ; troops of frenzied newsboys 
 dart yelling through the traffic ; and 
 here and there a sullen-faced woman 
 struggles to stem the tide of men. 
 
 Somewhere, behind Pall Mall, un- 
 heeded the sun has set: the sky is 
 powdered with crimson dust ; one by 
 one the shops gleam out, blazing 
 their windows of burnished glass; the 
 twilight throbs with a ceaseless shuffle 
 
 of hurrying feet ; and over all 
 
 things hovers the spirit of 
 
 London's grim unrest. 
 
 SUNDAY 
 AFTER- 
 NOON 
 
 February 20 
 
 IT was a little street, shabbily sym- 
 metrical — a double row of insig- 
 nificant, dingy-brick houses. Muffled
 
 Vignettes 
 
 in the dusk of the fading winter after- 
 noon, it seemed sunk in squalid, list- 
 less slumber. In the distance a church- 
 bell was tolling its joyless mechanical 
 Sunday tale. 
 
 A man stood in the roadway, dron- 
 ing the words of a hymn-tune. He 
 was old and decayed and sluttish : he 
 wore an ancient, baggy frock-coat, 
 and, through the cracks in his boots, 
 you could sec the red flesh of his feet. 
 His gait was starved and timid : the 
 touch of the air was very bitter. And 
 when he had finished his singing, he 
 remained gazing up at the rows of 
 
 lifeless windows, with a look of 
 dull expcilancy in his blood- 
 shot, watery eyes. 
 
 THE English Midlands, sluggishly 
 effluent, a massy profusion of 
 well-upholstcred undulations ; Nor- 
 
 57 
 
 SUNDAY 
 AFTER- 
 NOON 
 
 RiiVKRIE 
 April IS
 
 58 
 
 REVERIE 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 mandy, coquettish, almost dapper, 
 in its discreet rusticity, its finnikin 
 spruceness, its distinguished reticence 
 of detail ; the plains of Lombardy in 
 midsummer, all glutted with luscious 
 vegetation ; Switzerland, tricked out 
 in cheap sentimentality, in a catch- 
 penny crudity of tone ; Andalucia, 
 savagely harsh, with its bitter, exaspe- 
 rated colouring. . . . 
 
 In every country there links a per- 
 sonality, and the contemplation of the 
 memories of the lands where one has 
 lived, of the books one has cherished, 
 of the women one has loved, brings 
 with it a strange sense of the incom- 
 prehensible promptings of caprice. 
 
 With the fiu6luations of mood, 
 Musset seems puerile or passionate ; 
 Amicl, lachrymose or exquisitely per- 
 ceptive ; Baudelaire, macabre or im- 
 passively statuesque ; Pater, tortuous 
 or infinitely dexterous; Meredith, 
 irksome or gorgeously prismatic. 
 
 There are women whom we wor-
 
 Vignettes 
 
 shipped years ago, who would cer- 
 tainly fail to move us to-day ; books 
 that enthralled us in our childhood, 
 which we hesitate to open again ; 
 places we had read of with delight, 
 and for that reason shrink from sur- 
 veying. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 And so to-night, beneath the lime- 
 tree, by the dog-rose hedge, whilst 
 the grass-hoppers scrape their cease- 
 less chorus, and the flies roam like 
 specks of gold, and the fawn-coloured 
 cattle stalk home from the pastures, 
 I wonder dreamily how I have come 
 to love so steadfastly the whole way- 
 ward grace of this country-side — the 
 melancholy of its wide plains, burnt 
 to dun colour by the Southern sun ; 
 the desolate silence of those dark, 
 endless pine forests that lie beyond; 
 the hesitating contours of wooded 
 slopes; the distant Pyrenees, a long, 
 ragged, snow-capped wall ; the daz- 
 zling-white roads, stretching between 
 
 59 
 
 REVERIE
 
 6o 
 
 REVERIE 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 their tall, slim poplars, straight to- 
 wards the horizon ; the tumble-down, 
 white-faced villages, huddled on the 
 hilltops ; their battered, sloping roofs, 
 tilted all awry, like loose-fitting, 
 peaked caps of faded-red tiles; the 
 farmyards, strewn with dingy ox- 
 bedding, and littered with a decrepit 
 multitude of objeds, which, it seems, 
 can never have been new — broken 
 earthenware pots, rickety, rush-bot- 
 tomed chairs, stacks of dead branches, 
 still rustling their brown, winter 
 leaves ; the slow-paced oxen plough- 
 ing the land ; the peasants, men, 
 women, and children, swaying in line 
 as they sow the maize, with the 
 poultry pecking behind ; the jangling 
 bells of the dilapidated, yellow-wheeled 
 courier ; the market-days, the sea of 
 blue berets^ the press of blue blouses, 
 the incoherent waving of ox-goads, 
 the bristling of curved horns, the 
 shifting mass of sleek, fawn-coloured 
 backs ; the narrow, ramshackle streets
 
 Vignettes 
 
 of the town ; the line of plane-trees 
 on the place cCarmes^ beneath which 
 groups of grave bourgeois are for ever 
 pacing ; and the Gave, spurting over 
 the rocks, under the old Norman 
 bridge. . . . 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 The sun slips behind a bank of 
 inky cloud, slowly trailing its pale- 
 green stain, and the old, penetrating 
 charm of this tiny corner of the 
 earth returns, and the old longing to 
 bind myself to it, to have my place 
 in its life, always, through the years 
 to come. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 The oxen have gone their way 
 along the road ; the lengthy twilight 
 shadows steal across the garden ; from 
 the church-spire up on the hill tlie 
 Angelus rings out ; quite near at 
 hand a tree-frog starts piping his 
 shrill, clear note, and the cockchafers 
 their angry whirling; and tiien, of a 
 sudden, the violet night has fallen. 
 
 6i 
 
 REVERIE
 
 62 
 
 REVERIE 
 
 ENFAN- 
 TILLAGE 
 
 April 23 
 
 Vignettes 
 
 wrapping all earth and sky in her 
 mysterious, impenetrable 
 blackness. 
 
 H 
 
 AVE you never longed to 
 wander there, in that won- 
 derful cloudland beyond the sea, 
 where, like droves of monstrous cattle, 
 close-huddled and drowsy, they lie 
 the day through — the comely, milk- 
 white summer clouds, slow and sleek 
 and swelling ; the quick-scudding 
 darkling clouds, tattered with travel- 
 ling across the sky ; the mighty 
 thunder-clouds, violet and lowering ; 
 the flocks of fluffy-white baby clouds ; 
 and all the sun's great gaudy guard, 
 from the daintily gilded sunset spars 
 to the blood-red bands that frequent 
 the South ? 
 
 Sometimes, at even-fall, when the 
 sea lies calm in her opal tints, you
 
 Vignettes 
 
 63 
 
 may discern the distant lines of their enfan- 
 strange, fantastic home, vague, phan- 
 tasmagoric, like a mirage beyond the 
 horizon. 
 
 Perhaps, after death, we may linger 
 there, and watch them silently sail 
 away towards the lands we have 
 loved long ago ! . . . 
 
 FINIS
 
 mm JOHN LANE 
 
 
 THE JS. 
 
 BODLEY 
 
 HEAD^ 
 
 VIGOS"^ 
 
 "BODLEIAN 
 LONDON" 
 
 CATALOCUE?/PUB LICATION S 
 i^BELLES Ll'.TTRKS'iMzi'iVw':^
 
 i8g6. 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETTRES 
 
 (Including some Transfers) 
 
 Published by John Lane 
 
 Vigo Street, London, W. 
 
 f 
 
 ADAMS {FRANCIS). 
 
 Essays in Modernity. Cr. 8vo. 5^. net. [Shortly. 
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 The Lower Slopes : A Volume of Verse. With title-page 
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 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 ARCADY LIBRARY (rHE)— continued. 
 
 Vol. I. Round About a Brighton Coach Office. 
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 \_In preparation. 
 
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 [ Third Edition. 
 
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 Young Ofeg's Ditties. A translation from the Swedish 
 of Ola Hassson. With title page and cover design 
 by Aubrey I3eardsley. Cr. 8vo. 3^. 6d. net.
 
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 E^E'S LIBRARY. 
 
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 Vol. I. Modern Women : an English Rendering of 
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 Frauen.' By Hermione Ramsden. (Subjects: — 
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 Amalie Skram; Marie Bashkirtseff ; A. Ch. Edgren- 
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 FIELD {EUGENE). 
 
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 Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. By Gertrudb 
 
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 GARNETT (RICHARD). 
 
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 Dante, Petrarch, Camoens. CXXIV Sonnets ren- 
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 Italian Lyrists of To-Day. Translations in the origi- 
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 Also 25 copies large paper. 15^. net.
 
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 HAZLirr {WILLIAM). 
 
 Liber Amoris ; or, The New Pygmalion. Edited, 
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 To which is added an exact transcript of the original 
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 JOHNSON (PAULINE). 
 
 The White Wampum : Poems. With title-page and 
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 JOHNSTONE (C. E.). 
 
 Ballads of Boy and Beak. With a title-page designed 
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 Vol. xix. The Three Impostors. By Arthur 
 Machen. 
 
 {
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 KEYNOTES SERIES —continued. 
 
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 Vol. XXI. The British Barbarians. By Grant 
 
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 Vol. XXII. In Homespun. By E. Nesbit. 
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 Yol. xxvii. Maris Stella. By Marie Clothilde 
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 LE GALLIENNE (RICHARD). 
 
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 10 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 LE GALLIENNE {RICHARD). 
 
 English Poems. Revised. Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 4.C. 6d. 
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 George Meredith : Some Characteristics ; with a Biblio- 
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 LYNCH {HANNAH). 
 
 The Great Galeoto, and Folly or Saintliness. 
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 MARZIALS {THEO.). 
 
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 THE MATE AIR SET. 
 
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 Vol. II. The Joneses and the Asterisks : a Story in 
 
 Monologue by Gerald Campbell. With 
 
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 Townsend. \Second Edition.
 
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 MEREDITH {GEORGE). 
 
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 MILLER (JOAQUIN). 
 
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 MONKHOUSE (ALLAN). 
 
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 NESBIT (£.)• 
 
 A Pomander of Verse. With a title-page and cover 
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 In Homespun (See Keynotes Series). 
 
 NETTLESHIP (J. T.). 
 
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 Excursions in Criticism : being some Prose Recre 
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 The Yellow Book. 
 
 An Illustrated Quarterly. Pott 4I0, Js. net. 
 
 Volume I. April 1894, 272 pp , 15 Illustrations. [Out 0/ print. 
 Volume II. July 1894, 364 pp , 23 Illustrations. 
 Volume HI. October 1S94, 280 pp., 15 Illustrations. 
 Volume IV. January 1895, 285 pj)., 16 Illustrations. 
 Volume V. April 1895, S'? PP-j '4 Illustrations. 
 Volume VI. July 1895, 335 PP-> '^ Illustrations. 
 Volume VII. October, 1895, 320 pp., 20 Illustrations. 
 Volume VIII. January 1S96, 406 pp., 26 Illustrations. 
 Volume IX. April 189O, 256 pp., 17 Illustrations.
 
 UNIVER'!"^ "'■"MTA, LOS ANGELES 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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