)live,-Percival- 4- / — -i 1^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES o; Echoes . . of Whistler The Testament of Omar Khayyam (The Wasiyyat) Comprising : The Hymn of Prayer, The Hymn of Praise, The Marath'i, etc. By LOUIS C. ALEXANDER. 3s. 6d. net. " The beautiful thoughts contained in the Wasiyyat will come as a revelation." — Tatler. " Showing another Omar, not the pagan sot and materialistic wine-bibber, but the pious mystic." — Eventing Sia7idard. " The Testament teems with beauty and delicate phras- ing. . . . Will really repay perusal by saint and sinner alike." — Dundee Adve^ User. "Read these new old verses, and drink their fresh delight." — Yorkshire Observer. " A dainty volume sure to interest readers of the version by Fitzgerald." — Catliolic Tunes. "Glad to welcome the Testament of Omar Khayyam (The Wasiyyat) and other poems." — The Bystander. "Assuredly they are the product of a more reverent mind. " — Birmini^ham Post. "Lovers of Omar Khayyam will welcome . . . the Testament and other shorter poems." — Scotsman. "Noble and beautiful sentiments in this Wasiyyat . . . It is this unmasking of Omar which makes this book of such unusual interest." — Lady's Pictorial. " Deserves a place alongside the better-known Omar." — Glasgow Herald. "We have here revealed to us a devout and aspiring soul." — Sheffield Telegraph. " IVIany beautiful thoughts pithily expre.ssed." — Western Mail. "The thought of the Poem is very fine and, on the whole, finely e.xpressed. If the far nobler Testament is to be widely read, as is much to be desired. . . . " — Christian World. "Mr L. C. Alexander has done a service to Omar's memory, and to literature." — Yorkshire Post. "To lovers of Omar these poems are of immense import- ance." — Aberdeen Joiirnal. "The poetic fervour of the poet has been faithfully observed." — Western Morning Ne-ws. JOHN LONG, LIMITED, London Echoes of Whistler By Louis C. Alexander Author of " The Wasiyyat — The Testament of Omar Khayyam," " The Wife Sealers," "The Book of Ballynoggin," etc. Lond on Jchn Long, Limited Norris Street, Haymarket MCMX. TO WHISTLER You have, of late, been so much with me in spirit that, a little to my own wonderment, I sometimes wish that we had met in the flesh ; or that I possessed, or even had ever seen, some fragment of your material hand-writing. The intelligent Reader will know at what stand-point he is expected to place himself so as to understand rightly, and to discriminate justly. The more especially, as I have only just written two of the essays — the other matter having been composed between four and five years ago. Let the " higher criticism," as it is ridiculously called, dis- cover which most, or least, reflect — or surpass — your inspiration, or influence. To say more than this were silly vanity — or sillier humility. In order that the thought and feeling of two men be attuned to a perfect unison, is bodily communion a necessity — or a limitation ; a facility — or an impediment ? You can supply the answer. Perhaps, I can do so — even better. You know why. A hientot! L. C. ALEXANDER Holly Lodge, Putney, August 1910. i Contents PAGE The Benignant Grace op Yantty - - - 7 The Delicate Art of Misunderstanding - - 15 On the Serene Joy of Insolvency - - - 31 In Loco Parentis ------ 37 A Point of Honour among Thieves - - - 45 On the Artistic Dialect - - - - - 51 On Some Slips of the Tongue - - - - 63 On the Art of being Impertinent - - - 73 On the Art, Craft and Mystery of being Insincere ------- 79 On the Art op Saying Nothing - - - 87 The Conversation of Esthetic People - - 93 On the Art of being Curious - - - - 99 On a Subject of No Importance - - - 105 On Plain Talk - - - - - - - 113 On the Songs of Birds - - - - 117 On the Value of Silence - ■ - - - 123 On the Use of Friends - - - - - 129 On the Smarting Set - - - - - - 137 On Dolls and Idols ------ 143 On Hobbies - - - - - . . - 151 The Extravagances of Virtue - - . - 157 5 45^7271 ART DEPT. 6 Contents PAGE On some Stalking-horses - - - - - 165 On Altruistic Pedantry - - - 177 On Critics -------- 183 On Ruskin -------- 189 On Carlyle - - - - • - - - 195 On Browning - - - - - - - 201 On Whistler - - - - - - - 205 On the Secrecy of Self - - - - 213 In Defence of Ingratitude . - - - 219 An Elegy -------- 237 •Retrospect -------- 239 On the Acceptance of my Picture by the National Gallery - - - - - 241 The Man in Possession . . . . - 245 On Myself . - - 253 The Birth of a Picture - - - - - 259 Echoes of Whistler THE BENIGNANT GRACE OF VANITY I DO not presume to say that every vain person is, of necessity, a divinely -favoured one; nor that every- one gifted with a plentiful endowment of this highly- consolatory and, as the world goes, comfortable and useful grace is a favourite of the Spheres: but I assert boldly that he — and, particularly, she — has very much to be thankful for. Indeed, when one looks around, it is appalling to think what stupendous uprisings of discontent, what tragic despairs, what inappeasable rancours, what voracious envies and general throwings-up of the sponge w^ould meet the eye on every side, were it not for this benign and saving grace. Ave Vanitas consolatrix ! For Vanity not only whispers to the too-credulous heart; she juggles with the mind, she snaps her fingers at reahty, and makes an open mock of truth. She suborns mirrors and milliners; and those comparative men, the drapers, grow rich by bearing false witness in her service. This may, and probably is, the one case in which 7 Echoes of Whistler the end would seem to justify the means; and the recording angel — if he can stand the petty details, the curious names, the fluffy atmosphere and the very vulgar fractions, so as to officiate at all — ^will, I hope, use the hardest of pencils on the flimsiest of paper in taking it all down. It is an innate and ordained desire in the heart of every woman to be beautiful; and he is very shallow who cries out upon her love of adornment, and her unquenchable ambition to be attractive and observed. These feelings are instinctive — more deeply-im- planted, perhaps, than any other. She thinks that she adorns herself to be admired. Nature, smiling behind her hand, says to herself, "So she thinks, but I understand my business: — it is — to be desired." " Suffer thyself to be admired, Nor blush not so to be desired." They most gladly suffer themselves; nay, they offer themselves; and almost project themselves for the purpose above-cited — for the most part, in ignorance of the latent object, which is often not in her mind at all. For, the combination of the sentiments of self- satisfaction, gratified display, real or hoped-for admiration of others, and excitement of envy, may well leave but scant room for other thoughts in chaste bosoms — unless, of course, they are married women. 8 Benignant Grace of Vanity I have frequently seen droves of fashionably- dressed women rejoicing in their seK-attributed beauty and, in the undoubting conviction of their charms, moving pleasantly, and with more than mere complacency, amongst really lovely women, in perfect unconsciousness that they were, them- selves, extremely plain, ungainly and even ugly; — and suffering severely by the contrasts which struck everyone — but them. I have, on such occasions, reflected with deep thankfulness that life had been made not only toler- able but sweet to these women; for here they were, happy and at ease, within a triple mail of protection against rebellion at the decrees of Providence, or the looks of their parents, or the sin of covetousness, or envy, hatred, malice and uncharitableness against handsomer women. Imagine a woman whose looking-glass tells her the same bold unlacquered truth as the eyes of her friends tell them! Now, she might have her intellect derided, and she would not mind a bit; she might even endure a little scandal — with a more or less pleased or pleasing smile ; she might wince a little if her manners were called in question, or her dancing, or her taste in dress, and other matters of that kind; but Woe and War and Furious Hate if any aspersion be cast on her looks! She is perfectly right; and the insulter hes. Also, he or she should die forthwith by refined and drawn- out torments. 9 Echoes of Whistler For she knows that she is beautiful. " Oh, yes, of course. You can take anyone to pieces, if you like — and. who then could stand the process? There's the hair — true; and the fullness — some call it corpulency — true also; and the skin; and, she never pretended to be as young as she was and — Well, but what of the hair? It's better than nine out of ten — and it's genuine, all her own, and that's more than many can say ; and as to the round- ness, the gentle curves that men and some artists admire so much; and the skin with the sleeping brunette and ohve-kissing touch of the south — oh, yes, call it sallow and muddy and bilious; I don't care. Who values your dairy-maid or tea-shop complexions, and who can't make up the whites and reds and that? I've no patience with such non- sense; and I know that I look many, many years younger than" — Etcetera, sans fin. She is a pliilosopher. She smiles at her glass, which smiles triumphantly back, and she and her reflection tell each other many delightful and too- flattering tales. The lower animals, as they are too invidiously termed, afford deeply-interesting character studies, as weU as illustrations of the wise design and far-reaching beneficence in the wide distribution of this grace — which is not restricted to human kind. The intelhgent eye will see how similarly, yet with what diversity, and even inversion. Nature works her matured provisions for both perpetuation and lO Benignant Grace of Vanity for progress ; and how the vanity of the individual subserves the great objectives of the mass. In the springtime, when " the deeper iris comes upon the burnished dove," you shall observe the feathered suitors — the gallant knights, the trou- badours, the minstrels, the swaggerers, the rufiflers and the rest of them — showing oif their fine plumage, or their courage, or their voices, or other advantages or points^ to the coy and, generally, dowdy females whom they desire to impress and fascinate. And therein they show almost human sagacity; for they appeal to the shaUow fancies and irreflective brains of their feminine kind, knowing that twitter and ghtter and titter is about as much as the super- ficial creatures care about, or are capable of under- standing; and that were some winged centenarian of them able to speak he would say, " No hen really loves. It is the male who loves — the female only loves to be loved." Which, of course, is especially true of the human species. Apart from the incidental, and over-rated, aspects of continuation and evolution, an artist — and possibly even reasoning persons — must be impressed by the greater beauty, as well as richer endowments, of the male sex. His is the gorgeous plumage, the finer form, the song, as well as the greater size and strength — in birds; in the higher orders, the antlered head, the majestic figure, the flowing mane — in fact, as in man, all the attributes, features and characteristics of the higher beauty. II Echoes of Whistler And yet — not reckoning in what are called the domesticated animals (except the poultry), which are fed and civilised to the degradation of all sentiment, and to the obliteration of all poetry within them, and which have become almost as unimaginatively brutal as is the majority of mankind — there is not a benighted male amongst them, from a linnet to a leviathan, which does not think the sillier, more affected, and less handsome female sex as being full of charm and grace and gentle loveliness. She views him with material eyes; he regards her with fanciful ones. Her timidities safeguard her security; his temerities insure survivals of the fittest. The male, drone or drudge, is always the dupe — both of female and of fate. I here excise — perhaps exorcise — six eloquent lines wherein I define and demonstrate for all time that that artificial evolution known as Woman is, except as to face and shoulders, speaking generally, devoid of every element of real beauty. For her disproportionate voluminosity of contour, pre- posterous waist, heavy hips and limbs, and thin arms, combine to render her a monstrosity, which only an infatuated convention, an incorrect taste, and a false art can pass as even symmetrical — much less as beautiful. And as to face — Nor is Man left unblessed in a world which would be bleak indeed for many were he not remembered 12 Benignant Grace of Vanity for supplies — in some cases in as profligate liberality as in Woman — of this anodyne, this balm, this opium-pipe, this hashish, this grand leveller — Vanity. " Who would fardells bear? " Who would suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous comparison? Who would get up, and sing, or speak after some super-excellent performance? Who, being sober, would remain jovial in an eighteenpenny brake to a suburban race-course when disdainfully passed by a superb coach and four with beauty on the box-seat and Uvery at the back, and hampers suggestive of champagne and pdte de foie gras (if they are mind-less) and other good things : who — Listen : " I say, mates, what would those budding person- ages on that equipage give to be us? Why, there isn't one of the beatified assemblage that I could not knock out in ten minutes, or drink blind in an hour. And as to appetite! Let them have their thin, sour stuff and kickshaws, and pecks here, and dabs there, and fears of gout and the doctor, and their stiff and starched manners, and mustn't laugh because it's low, nor sing a song with a chorus to it because it isn't fashionable, nor try and chaff the women in another coach because they don't know them! Fancy that, now! We do know how to enjoy ourselves, de-visuahze me! " And he and his friends break into a roaring comic song, of a sort which, not being a minor poet, I can- not undertake to sub-edit like prose. 13 Echoes of Whistler Now, this eighteenpenny gentleman may have a hop-cluster twined in his locks, figuratively speaking ; but it is the kind gods who send him the solace of his contentment — jDcrhaps also that of his garland. And so this great enchantment runs its magic million-rilled course, and all the rills sing and chatter and reflect the boughs and reeds, and laugh up to the udders of the placid kine, and break hke children's dimples to the visits of the flies, and into tiny tinkling cascades at the bathings of the birds; and, at length, they swell the hvelier, stronger tributaries, and they, in their ordinances, gather into the mighty river flowing to the Sea. But ere that river is merged in that great and preg- nant Sea, it seems as if not content with the sweet matins and vespers of its daily tides, but as if seeking a deeper worship, a closer union. And, as it broadens in expanses of estuary, and sleepy inlets and peaceful beaches, freshening and strengthening itseK with the winds from above and the waves from afar, and, like a soul, gains thus fitness for the larger life — so, in the end of things, even the Vanities of man merge in the Purposes of God. 14 THE DELICATE ART OF MISUNDERSTANDING Of all the gallipots of lubricatories of the social machine, and of all the phials of its subtlest essences, and. of all the charms, philtres and natural magics which ease and illume its action, there is none that even approaches in potency and blessedness the dehcate Art of Misunderstanding. To be merely elusive is only to be uncandid; and to be evasive is to be deceptive — except when it is legitimately protective. To be merely sly is only to be dishonest; to be artful is to be unmasculine and despicable. To be guarded without display is most meritorious when Virtue holds the helm — but then it is essentially subjective, though entirely defensive and praise- worthy. When Discretion only steers the barque this attitude may be no more than a lying in ambush, as well as in general ; it may imply suspicion, it may cover design, it may be the watchfulness of either gamekeeper or of poacher — of the thief who wants to catch, or to avoid being caught ; it is of the texture of conspiracy; it savours of latent treason. And to be no more than simply tactful, and simple, 15 Echoes of Whistler and quick-witted, and false, with an engaging air of spontaneity, and much charmingly-indented em- phasis, makes one a useful member of Society, in the ordinary petty sense; but it is, in comparison to the Art of which I write, as water is to wine. For tact is but a matter of the minor conduct and of the lesser concerns of life; whilst this Art, in its higher aspects and uses, is one of principle, and often entails not only much seK-control, but also more self- sacrifice than the world ever knows, or even suspects. Of course, there is the false Art, or, rather, the Art degraded to serve mean and disingenuous purposes — as when one wilfully misunderstands a hint about the tedium or untimeliness of a visit, or the desir- ability of a repayment, or the inopportuneness or unwelcomeness of a topic, and the like. The people who practise this affected obtuseness are impostors, whose hides are thick, whose feehngs are blunted, whose selfishness is as that of a pampered woman, and whose proper pride as that of a con- victed drab. The true Art is, at times, almost heroic. I know the case of a man — in his earHer years, and even down to a point long beyond his prime — handsome, honourable, talented, with good eyes and manners, vivacious but dignified, very modest, though witty, and of exceptional repute for cool courage and daring : and lots of other things besides. Also, with a wife who would probably have liked him had he been a loud, even rough and burly person, with a prosperous pubHc-house, a fast horse and i6 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding inclined to let her drive him to suburban races, and similar exalted things: also with some children. Now, this man knew perfectly well that a number of attractive women within a certain orbit, and in outlying but occasionally-intersecting orbits, thought him a fool, a dunce, a thick-head; and failed to under- stand why husbands or friends spoke so highly of him and of his abilities. And when they could not, on closer observation, continue to think him so phenomenally stupid, they — to his complete apprehension — regarded him as so intensely conceited as to be obhvious of every- thing and, especially, of everybody else. And when this alternative became less tenable, they made it clear to him that intellect must be a curse to a man — unless he became a monk — for it seemed to unfit him for real warm human life, and made him rather an unnatural and selfish being : and so forth. And some pretended to pity his stony-faced wife for being married to a woman-hater. This was conveyed to him, not in the crude and almost brutal way now loosely sketched, but in a hundred pretty, mocking, sly, sneering, provocative, injured, pitying, disdainful, vengeful ways — as some men may imagine, and as all women will know, for themselves. But he made himself an adept in the Art of Mis- understanding, and acted as if he neither saw nor read the eloquent eye, as it flashed, or drooped, or spake, or questioned ; or the tell-tale cheek and mouth, B 17 Echoes of Whistler the contemptuous shrug, the twitching hands — even the abrupt cold shoulder, the angry stamp of the little foot, and the laughing banter inlaid with vicious bitterness. For " hell hath no fury like a woman scorned " — as I would have said had I Uved before Byron. And some of his male friends showed decreasing signs of respect for him or his intelligence and attain- ments, owing to the disparaging influence of their women-folk. He understood it all. Better still, he nobly misunderstood. I knew another man who was once tempted to do a shady thing, and who had to save not only his own honour — that came easy, as a matter of course — but also to save many faces and interests in a difficult, triangular situation. He had accompanied a friend, who was a parlia- mentary candidate, to the borough of his desire — to help to answer questions, receive deputations, and prepare speeches, canvass, etc. They saw many local notabilities and spokesmen of numerous shades, sections and interests. There was much doubt, and some dislike, as regards the candidate; and whilst the politicians, pure and simple, were willing to support him, faute de mieux, the sectionists, or voters with their especial " causes,'' were distrustful and even hostile. Worse still, they were numerous. One day, in the absence of Mr Candidate, the chief representatives of the most active craftisms, cultisms. Delicate Art of Misunderstanding and crankisms in the constituency waited on the man I mean, at his hotel, as a sort of surprise-visit deputation. All the shades, interests, sections, crazes, causes and the rest of it — some generally reputed to be on that side of politics, and others caring nothing for the side but only for their particular movement or aim — had combined in this too-friendly attack. With cheery bluntness, as became a brisk northern town, they assured him that they had talked him over, and made some inquiries about him, and had unanimously resolved to join forces and support hiyn, without its costing him a penny, and return him at the top of the poll. All that he had to do was — to throw his friend over, and to stand on his own account. My friend gathered his wits together in a twinkling — and magnanimously misunderstood them. He made them a pretty speech on closing up their ranks, and showing splendid esprit de corps ; on their " preferring patriotism to party, and party to section ; on the knitting-up of forces in the common cause of Queen and Country, of Liberty, Progress, Education, Economy and Efficiency — " He contrived to have orders sent down for plentiful wines, spirits and accessories, and kept the corner of his eye on the door — " and Efficiency." They had made him very happy in constituting him " the medium of conveying their pleasing and public- spirited promises of united support to their common friend, Mr Candidate," on whose behalf he thanked 19 Echoes of Whistler them profusely, as well as for their honouring him as their messenger ; and he now proposed Mr Candi- date's health, and called for three rousing cheers for him, and led off with a stentorian " Hip, hip, hurrah," and " He's a jolly good fellow." Then he rattled off toasts to the Chairmen of the Associations in the room, and carolled on impress- ively and with hvely dash, and fairly rushed and laughed them along, and let nothing slip in edge- ways by way of explanation; and suddenly dis- covered that he had only just time for his train — if that — and was sure his good friends would excuse him; and the room was entirely at their disposal — ah, yes, those were the cigars he meant ; let a couple more boxes be brought up; so extremely sorry — good-bye, good-bye! They laughed loudly, some at their own folly, some at his. Others concluded that he was clever — but not practical, not practical. A few saw the fine play and said he was a rare chap, but eh! some men don't know how to seize a chance when it's offered them. Mr Candidate was duly returned — having been, as it were, hustled into success by my friend — whom, by the way, he accused of deserting him at a critical period of the contest. He was enlightened, later, by the local chairman, in frank and unmacadamized terms; when his pride was hurt, and he has ever since been cool and resentful to my friend — as is the way of the world. 20 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding The lower animals understand this high art, in varying degrees. I once knew a dog in a farm-house where there were four sons, from twelve to one or two-and- twenty, and, naturally, nearly twice as many dogs — exclusive of those outside the house. This particular dog had a grand reputation for zeal, cleverness and experience in every kind of sport, daring, mischief and wickedness; a delightful dog of not the shghtest reputabihty otherwise. Also, he could poach, steal, guide the horse home- wards when Mr Farmer got too drunk or sleepy in coming from the market-town ; or watch beside him and draw him into a dry ditch when thrown — send- ing the horse home by barkings and bitings, to carry the tidings. Well, he had grown old and fat, and was allowed to sleep before the fire as much as he hked. One day he was thus toasting himself when the talk, as usual, turned on sport and dogs. Some neighbouring farmers' sons had called, and they were going out shooting together. The weather was very disagreeable, and my friend did not apparently care to leave his comfortable quarters. I judged this to be the case from a brief surveying glance which he lazily threw around as he affected to investigate his ear for fleas, and also from the heavy slumber into which he fell with suspicious celerity. There was some chaff about him, and one of the lads asserted that he would start up and be eager 21 Echoes of Whistler to go with them in despite of age, weight and the inclemency of the weather, so soon as he ascertained what was afoot. To convey the necessary information he began to rattle his gun, to call some of the other dogs- still in the stages of being kept under tables by the thick toes of their boots, and under sofa and chairs by their muddied heels — and other tokens and preliminaries, to all of which the sleeper re- mained insensible. Then, a little chagrined — for he had championed the old fellow very loyally — the boy threw a very flavoury game-bag at him ; and finally roused him and thrust a pair of well-worn gaiters under his nose, waking him at the same time with a kick which had in it a touching reminiscence of old times. The veteran sniffed at the game-bag as if he had never seen it before, and as if it carried to him no message from the dead or suggestion of the hving. Then he interrogated those gaiters as with surprised but incurious nose. And, as if no tale had been told him of intentions or objects, he turned his back with languid indifference, and picked up his doze where he had left off when interrupted. And yet those gaiters could always strike his nose, more sharply than a whip-lash, at a furlong or more, in cross blizzards — even though fell-mongers, art dealers, and Bankruptcy Officials were in close prox- imity. There were some shouts of laughter, and observa- tions; he received, and took with dignified resigna- 22 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding tion, a few disgusted kicks, and the youthful party noisily went on their way. He raised his head and cocked one ear as he cast an eye on the door, and, being satisfied, he turned towards me and gave me the most knowing, chuckhng, self-satisfied, and even laughingly-triumphant look that ever came from the eye of a dog. I quite understood; he had perfectly misunder- stood. I patted him, and he came over, put his chin on my knee, and then went pleasantly to sleep beside my rocking-chair. I recollect a cat with which I was on terms of amity. At night a servant would come round to collect the domestic animals, to be shut up, or shut out, as the case might be. There was always a difficulty about this friend of mine — not that I ever incited, or even encouraged him to disobedience or insubordination. When the maid came into the room where I sat smoking, or reading, or thinking — as I thought then — she would most diligently search in all hkely places, and call him, and coax, and threaten, and clatter a saucer to hint at milk. I have even known her to come wafting the fragrance of a jQsh-head, or tapping a sardine-tin, which he comprehended so well. But these blandishments failed to attract or evolve him, and abuse and stampings and whiskings of a tea-cloth were equally ineffective. Then she would say that he must be already out 23 Echoes of Whistler of doors, or with the dogs, or anyway not there, and leave the room. But on the closing of the door he would emerge from some secret hiding-place where he had stayed almost breathlessly during the pursuit, and he would come and rub against my legs and wind in and out around them, and then sit down very close be- side me, and purr most confidingly and contentedly. As plainly as cat ever spoke to a man he said : " We two have sold her again. You and I are too clever for her. Now, let's be comfortable : and if you have any suggestion to make for the spending of a pleasant evening, now's the time." He understood the Art of Misunderstanding. I would rather have killed and eaten that house- maid than betray his beautiful faith in me, and his comrade-like joy in my comphcity. Women — all of whom are natural actresses and instinctive hars — with all their sharpness are not, as a rule, mistresses in the higher reaches of the Art of Misunderstanding. This is doubtless due to their irrepressible vanity and self-consciousness — always at war with their self-control; also, at times, to the short hold that they have on their tempers in spite of their feigned amiabihty. For, if the play should tend that way, they cannot help sidhng and bridling and sparkling and bubbhng, and thus effectively neutrahsing whatever their too- ready tongues may find to say. The affectation becomes too obvious when it is 24 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding contradicted by eye and shoulder, by smile and movement, or sigh, or demureness, or other egoistic manifestation in any one of the myriad forms in which women's shallow feehngs or senses respond to the hghtest touch, or rush to the flattering voice, or to the soft stroke of the wheedhng hand. And many have scarce the intellect to discriminate between " misunderstanding " and simply " not understanding . " I knew a case where a friend of mine was almost impressed to accept an invitation to a fancy-dress ball. The hostess compelled him to name the character that he proposed to impersonate, and he said, " The Minstrel Boy." She said, " Oh, how nice! " Now, my friend was then over forty-five, with a 48-inch waist, a partly bald head, three chins, and rather short bowed legs. Probably she meant something when she said, " How nice! " Who knows? Most assuredly, it was not said sarcastically. In fact, she rather gushed about the poetry of the idea, and got ecstatic over the song ; and then she guttered down and forgot all about it, as women do. A week or two after the ball she met my friend and reproached him with withering asperity on his absence therefrom. Of course, he had never intended to be present. " But, my dear Mrs G ," he pleaded, " you fail to remember that I had to act up to my character. 25 Echoes of Whistler ' The Minstrel Boy to the War hath gone ! ' you know. I couldn't, with propriety, have been at the ball at the same time. Now, could I? " She had no answer, and was obliged to assent. She was convinced — but unsatisfied. She has not yet decided whether she should hate him or not ; she permits him to breathe this vital air in a sort of ad interim manner. She cannot see any way out of his logic, and she vaguely suspects that he is secretly laughing at her. She spoke to her husband about it, after a month or two. He reflected deeply for over a week, studied the words of the song intently, and at last said to her: " He's quite right, my dear. You see, it's this way — if a man isn't in the place he's supposed to be in, he is probably in another. You grant me that? " " Yes, I suppose so," said she, doubtfully. " Well, then, if he's in neither — mark me, neither — then he must be somewhere else." " Must he? " mused she. " Why, of course. Well, that's an alibi.^^ "Oh! " " Yes. Now, this is where he scores, don't you see? ' In the ranks of death you'll find him ! ' Now, do you see the point? " " Good gracious, John! " affrightedly. John reassured her bravely. "Now, he wasn't going to be so gruesome as to make up, and actually come in the character of an alibi, or a corpse; and it shows good taste — much good taste 26 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding and delicacy — and a dashed sight more sense than I would have given the fellow credit for — to put it in the way he did. So that's cleared up, Barbara." " Yes, I suppose so," said Barbara, with as much admiration as any woman ever feels for her own husband. I happened to be present, and clapped John on the back. " Give me a point," said John — " I don't care how intricate it is — and I'll pull it to pieces for you. Only don't hurry me, that's aU." Now, I remember another lady — a charming young matron — ^who, in some talk about a forthcoming Shakespearian masquerade ball, happened to say that she thought of going as Titania. " What a delightful coincidence ! " said, meaningly, a man — a tall and highly-conceited person, " I am going as Oberon." " How perfectly good of you! " she exclaimed, as if impulsively. " I was afraid that nobody would care to come dressed up with a — a — a — funny head, you know" — with charming embarrassment and good breeding. "A funny head! " " Yes," she laughed in silvery trills. " You know I have to say: " ' And let me pull thy long soit ear^, My gentle joy.'" " Oh! " He was very red as he laughed lightly — rire jaune — and said, " Oh, that's Bottom the Weaver, 27 Echoes of Whistler you know, with the ass's head. I meant Oberon, the king of the — " "Oh, hoiv stupid I am! Of course; but he is sO very uninteresting — a sort of cold suet-pudding character — and wants a face to match. Oh, dear me! And shall I have no — a — head — no — long soft ears to pull? " The lament was a sweet dimin- uendo, as she looked around appealingly as it seemed^ and in comical distress. " I am sorry that I — a — can't take the part," re- marked he rather stiffly — after some giggles and titters- in the circle. I ventured to correct the quotation. " Oh," she jumped up brightly from her dejection. "I know what I would like to go in, if I were a man — '* " What? Do tell us—" and so forth. " Malvolio — for one. It does so show off one's clothes — and walk, and that. And — there's another — but that's just too darling a part to give away. Well, I'll tell you. It's Bardolph. Oh, to picture him — jolly, rolhcky, with his lace collar awry, and his shoulder-knot loose, and his dear red, red nose! It's perfectly bewitching, I think. Don't you? '* He assented — tepidly. Some of the women, thinking superficially, thought she was showing off. The men thought her very smart. One sweet calm old lady caught her eye intelli- gently, and nodded encouragement. She understood. I filled an awkward hiatus by observing modestly that there are always numerous representatives of 28 Delicate Art of Misunderstanding the finer characters, but that few had the nerve, or the talent, to impersonate the sinister, and often as powerful and interesting ones. I instanced Caliban. She interrogated my face, read it, and signalled approval by a merry glance, quick as lightning. " Oh, splendid, splendid! " cried she, clasping her hands enthusiastically. " Do, do, Mr go as Mr Tree in Caliban:' Which reminded me, in its elbow sort of combina- tion — ah! how long ago is it — for it sounds almost obsolete — of Toole's conception of Buckstone's Hamlet. " My dear," whispered the sweet, still old lady, with a kiss, " you did that very cleverly indeed. I watched you all the time. Yes, dear, wonderfully well. Why, child, you're trembling and quite cold. Come with me. It's only a bit of reaction. The Art of Misunderstanding is an exceedingly fine one — and not one man in ten thousand understands it, and not one woman in fifty thousand has the nerve and skill to do it properly." In which dictum I entirely concur. 29 ON THE SERENE JOY OF INSOLVENCY It has often been alleged of Wealth that it hath wings. It has with like frequency been said of Poverty that it hath not a stick to fly with. The truth is the same ; it is only the imagery which differs. No one will deny that riches bring cares, or that want breeds corroding anxiety. Each condition has, doubtless, its consolations — and drawbacks. Against the material comforts of the well-to-do may be set the moral disciplines of the very poor : whilst the degrees between the two — the immoder- ately contented, the insufficiently satisfied — are a moving, heaving mass whose fermentations it were profitless to examine too closely. Like the seK-made man, the neither rich-nor-poor classes gain by being viewed in perspective — and much of it. I care not if it be declaimed against me that I am an improvident person, or extravagant, or heedless of the day after to-morrow, or unwise in my brief day and distant generation. Be it so. Wliat then? I know that the way of the world is to pay your way 31 Echoes of Whistler in it. This done, all else is surplusage, or trimmings — a decoration, or vanity. Indeed, a stern moral philosopher might rightly hold it up as an indulgence in all sorts of empty con- ceits, and more or less conscious airs of superiority to others whom we know well, and respect little ; and of satisfactions of that self whom we preposter- ously esteem and, for the most part, know scarce at all. The dry and almost mechanical virtue of paying one's way is, as a rule of life, on a level with the ideal of it which most persons of the Dutch order of mind entertain. That ideal is to see that a thing " pays." Whatsoever does not " pay " is out of the region of practical value. A thing or a thought may be high, or deep, or true, or beautiful, or noble, but it is put aside as senti- mental, or quixotic, or fanciful, or romantic, or feeble-minded. It must ring on the greasy counter like an every-day coin, or it is rejected — though it may be a nugget of a hundred-fold greater value. To them economics are ethics, and profits, promptly paid, are the supreme law, idea and purpose of all things visible and invisible. Do I grudge those restricted souls these gratifica- tions which inflate their pockets and deplete their hearts? Indeed, no; for under certain conditions it is, perhaps, as well to conform to the world's usages — 32 The Serene Joy of Insolvency and expectations, and so avoid many petty annoy- ances from within and from without — especially from without. But the adhesion to conformity must be largely a matter of convenience — and not necessarily of ability. I exclude from my scope of consideration those who have merely to direct — or, still sadder, to entrust without question or reference — private secretaries or stewards to attend to the sordid vulgarities of paying bills, or checking invoices, or, generally, bothering about their credits or debits. I treat of the more numerous and far more interest- ing classes who, when they pay, sensibly know that they do so — no matter whether out of their plenty or out of their penury. For " 'twas mine, 'tis his " is in the sound of the currency, in the rustle of the bank-note, and, worse still, in the filled-in blanks of the cheque — when in- tended to be irrevocable, or even serious. And, for a longer or shorter period, or to a less or greater degree, a void is created. Something must flow inwards, or something else be temporized for, or something postponed or denied ; and the busy brain — when only busy and not likewise anxious — thinks and calculates and combines con- tinually. For even the moving of a pawn affects the entire board and game. " Credit " — I mean it in the sense of the trust- worthiness of the customer rather than in the trust C 33 Echoes of Whistler accorded by the trader — ^is a demon — when not a phantom. Many men serve long sentences of penal servitude to it — and for it. Yet, in most cases, it is delusive and hollow: and the thought and toil and sacrifice unceasingly devoted to make it appear a solid fact, rather than a convenient and respectable superstition, are enough to suffuse with blushes the cheek of even the hardened worldling. Happy those who can emancipate themselves from this ignoble tyranny, and who know how to " lie in the lilies and feed on the roses of life " without per- petual mental arithmetic, or the wasting of one's available cash! It is only when one has attained the Nirvana of Insolvency that he discovers the sweet restfulness of the calm glades, away from the hard and dusty paths, in the garden of existence. It is also like being in mid-ocean in a luxurious vessel, with ever-keen appetite and agreeable sur- roundings. For one then feels his utter impotence to mend or mar anything on land, and so yields him- self unreservedly to the pleasures of the time being. The man who knows that he is insolvent, and, still more blest, is more than willing that others should share that knowledge, has passed out of one mundane purgatory at least. Not for him now are mean pinchings or harsh self- denials, or schemings or settlings or compromisings, or calculations or balancings, or estimates, or pre- varications, or weighing of moods, tempers or 34 The Serene Joy of Insolvency characters of those discredited spectres, his creditors, or morbid thinkings of the future. He has emerged from the fogs and haK-Hghts into the clear : what he has he keeps. But his serenity of soul should be undimmed by arrogance towards the still-bound slaves to solvency ; and if, perchance, a tear of sympathy for some poor and careworn brother should bedew his eye — for even demi-gods feel pity — it will in no wise lessen his tranquil joy. And even if some erst obsequious person ragingly flourishes his bill — some legal spinner of poisoned webs, some howling chain-makers to Ephesian shrines, some who have fattened and battened on the inordinate gains cannoned off one's simpHcity or ease of disposition — if any of these then play the ghostly farce of invoking the torturings of " the Act," an experience the more may be then cheaply gained. For one will find a Law which hath its trained tormentors, and which, in effect, declares that it is safer to steal £50 than to owe it; for in the former case the thief, though caught red-handed, is not subjected to secret Star-chamber questionings, nor may his wife be forced to testify against him, nor his letters be tampered with, nor his future be put in perpetual jeopardy and disadvantage. To discover this old-world instrumentahty of the gorged parasites, and legal sleuths, and stalled oxen grown obese on their exorbitancies, and the other more or less predatory fauna of the social wilderness, 35 Echoes of Whistler is — after the first bitter taste of indignant disgust — not uninstructive. And, as vinegar to a finely-proportioned salad, it will, to a thoughtful mind and earnest spirit — after a while, and in a way — enhance rather than diminish the Serene joy of Insolvency. 2,^ IN LOCO PARENTIS Olsr the advent of a new idea the mind insensibly inclines itself to its reception, and offers itself as a canvas ready to be painted upon. When, however, that idea has become part and parcel of the mind, like a landlord's fixture, then it regards it as a man would regard some object which had accrued to him, or been evolved out of him, or had, somehow, grown into him; in a word, rather as a budding forth from within, than as a falling on him from without. This reflection is induced by the considera- tion of a case which came recently under my observation. A man, whom for the sake of convenience I shall call Mr A , once told me that he had the plot or scenario of a sort of prose idyll, for which, too, he had an exceedingly happy title. To be accurate, it was a fairly-advanced draft rather than a mere bald outline, or preliminary sketch only. I liked the idea very much. It struck me as dainty, poetic, fanciful, tender, true, strong, with an amplitude of possibility of treatment in a literary and artistic manner. Also, it had a fine moral, a good deal of wit, some touches of broad but discreet humour, and, here and 17 Echoes of Whistler there, some delightful suddennesses of a very pure and natural pathos. Furthermore, it was singularly full of picturesque- ness and colour, and positively glowed with a wealth of situations, of delicate sarcasms, of almost tragic retributions, of almost magic transformations, of a finely-imagined allegory, and of a pervading ideahsm and beauty of the highest tone. The characterisation, too, was well-caught, bright and natural; the dialogue was sprightly, and the descriptions clever, sharply-cut and well-drawn. It will thus be apparent that my warm and, indeed, instant approval was justified. But something happened which stood in the way, at that moment, of my taking up the matter in an active sense, and it glided into the Umbo of things postponed sine die. Imagine, then, my delight at waking up one recent day in full possession of the whole thing and dealing with it, and moving about its parts as if it were a drawing-room suite which had been sixty years in the family. Not, hien entendu, that I ever saw a drawing-room suite of that antiquity outside of some unreliable catalogue or unveracious guide-book; or that I am of a family which is nearly so old, or which could boast of more than one more or less hypothetical grandfather. But that is a parenthesis. I caught myself altering, completing, banishing, recalling, exalting, debasing as if I had not merely 38 In Loco Parentis the acquired interest of an owner, but the innate and inherent rights of an aboriginal ancestor, or original creator. I surprised myself in the act of rehearsal, in the process of revision, in the anticipation of the triumph of public approval — almost in the vision of hard cash as the result of success — which, of course, implies and presupposes the greater miracle of an uncasu- istical pubUsher. Let me here lodge an humble caveat. This last imagining may denote a momentary extravagance and not my normal mentality. Now, here is the remarkable outcome of a singular set of conditions. Another man, whom for the like reason I shall call Mr B , comes to me with practically the same idea, the same title, the same features and char- acteristics in every respect as Mr A.'s. He reads to me parts which I already know by heart — for, of course, he is a Har, a forger, a swindler, a pirate, a thief, and an ungentlemanly person gener- ally — and repeats the " points,"" and so on and so on — the points I have so often recapitulated, adopted, absorbed, and blended into my most secluded con- sciousness. I feel a deep and unutterable repugnance to the whole thing grow up within me, until it submerges my very patience, to hear another word of what has now become a foreign, distasteful, stale and intoler- able thing. I hate it, I loathe it; it is on my nerves, it jars, 39 Echoes of Whistler it grates, it cuts across all the grains; it tortures, it irritates and incites to impatience, violence, bad manners and loose vocabularies. I stamp and vociferate, and I bid the man flee for his life, and everybody to refrain from alluding to the accursed thing — or their blood be on their own heads — for what they are. I tear it from my heart, and wonder why I ever admitted it. I want the whole interior of Lincoln's Inn Fields, in entire isolation, in order to tell myself fittingly what I think of myself for ever having harboured it in my mind — as to the state or value of which I have my own unflattering opinion. And yet I know, all the time, that beneath all this genuinely turbid and turbulent stream there is a pure spring and true undercurrent; and that like a fervid and, naturally, idiotic lover the very intensity of my jealous madness and temporarily-deranged despairs and dislikes proves the depth of my true love; and that the repulsion is rather that caused by the sacrilegious intrusion of the tertium — I mean Mr B. — than by the object pure and simple. And I find myseK denying, on philosophic grounds, the explanation which was giving so much satisfaction to my intellect and so much consolation to my heart. Which is what people in this sparsely-adjectived country caU " funny." (I heard a young, broken-hearted widow, shaken by her sobs, gasp out, with most tender and touching sincerity, after kissing the cold brow of her newly- encoffined husband, " Oh, won't the — the — the — 40 In Loco Parentis house seem funny with — with — without poor T— t— t— om! " Poor thing!) I wonder how I should feel to see Mr B. vivisected — without anaesthetics. His mere immorality in first steahng A.'s work, and then wanting to rob me, is a matter of moment to Society, and to such conscience as may have been left to him after a hfe spent in the practice of minor frauds of an analogous nature. And his boundless impudence and shamelessness were merely the dressing and make-up for the part. I was more incensed by his coarse breaking into my sort of private cave, my oratory, my pet corner, my personal gallery, my guarded treasury, my most intimate desk, my hidden loves and internal puppet- show of most sacred secrecy. I will retire for half an hour daily and devise ingenious agonies for him, and wish that I were autocrat for just one hour. Of course, I should not waste all that most precious time on him. I should begin by ordering the erection of a line of stocks from Mile End Road to the end of Edgware Road — on both sides. I defer the elaboration of further details. Eeprenons ! But ere I do so I apostrophise that man Mr B. — I had only kicked him before, but I have grown angrier since. " Leprous and larcenous person," I say to him, 41 Echoes of Whistler "Hence! Take the last vestige of thy mean and maHgnant shadow from off my tabernacle door. I feel that I am lapsing into blank verse ; but thou art an even more flagrant fraud, and thou shaft not cry me quits on that score. Begone! Would that I could command me an especial cyclone to clear up the atmosphere after thee! " And now I think that I have cut out this interlude of Mr B. It remains with me but as an element or factor in a metaphysical — ^possibly psychological — enigma, I resumed my ungrateful thoughts on the de- spoiled Mr A., whose work I had so heartily assimi- lated as to leave no remembrance of himself in my mind. I went to him apologetically — even penitentially, and I made meek and contrite confession. "That old thing! " he exclaimed in unpremedi- tated heat and disgust. " Oh, for goodness' sake don't mention it. I detest the very recollection of it. I never quite finished it, you know, and now I don't want to hear a word about it. Let's talk of something else." I am horrified and astonished — yet strangely pleased in a secretive way. I denounce him as an unnatural parent; I plead with him to repent, to reconsider his cruel conduct; I endeavour to re- estabhsh his better frame of mind by quotations from, and allusions to, his work. I laud it warmly — almost effusively. But he bangs things, and makes profane and 42 In Loco Parentis even uncivil remarks, and at last even my blood takes on a touch of a warmer zone, and I speak to him — more in anger than in sorrow. I do not spare him. I unfather him, I disauthor him, I repudiate and disavow him, I throw him up, I tell him that the judgment of Solomon was expressly in- tended to apply to this particular case. I charge him with having in some inexplicable way stolen the entire thing from me who must originally have thought it all out, unbeknown to myself, and I try to invent examples and to imagine arguments and authorities. He tells me to go somewhere. Then he offers to make an affidavit that I dictated every word in a trance, if I will pay the Commissioner's fee of eighteen- pence and present him, IVIr A., with a white hat — a new one. I am in loco parentis, but I am sad at heart. That incomplete literary gem is orphaned, cast- away, abandoned. Yet he resigned it all to me ; he is ready to swear a fathom of affidavits — and he is not going to perjure his immortal soul for a white hat ; and who can prove that I did not utter it all in a trance ? Besides, could I possibly so appreciate and admire it if it were the work of any brain but my own? This, I consider, is conclusive. Oh, Sancta Larcenia, I pour out a hbation of ink to thee ! 43 Echoes of Whistler It were scarcely fitting that I offer to thee doves, or lay chaplets at thy shrine. But I know a pubhsher or two whom I would gladly sacrifice thereat, with full and gory rites. Mr A. warmly clasps my hands and says that such vi-cremation would be a joy too deep for words. 44 A POINT OF HONOUR AMONG THIEVES One may safely aver that, whilst most people examine the coins which pass into or through their hands with more or less scrupulous carelessness, few take the trouble to submit their current proverbs to scrutiny — much less to analysis. What is a proverb? A too-flattering phrase, which has itself become meretriciously proverbial, defines it as the wisdom of many and the wit of one That forger of glittering chains out of moonbeams — the maker and utterer of that phrase — could not, without conspicuous immodesty, claim to be com- prised in either the vague majority or the very re- stricted minority postulated by him. He might have established a remote tie of kinship to the latter had it rather occurred to him to say — the wisdom of one and the ready-made wit of many. As one might speak of the Master of the Mint and the million fingerers of the coinage he emits. Yet, even with this useful correction as to the nature of the proverb, it cannot be denied that the wisdom which may be incidental to its genesis is often sardonic or specious, satirical or occult, pro- found or fallacious; also, it is to be suspected at sight — ^provisionally but invariably. 45 Echoes of Whistler It happens at times that a luminous intuition serves all the purpose of a dissection or decomposition. Take, for instance, that plausible proverb, " When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own." What can be falser in principle — and even in fact? When thieves fall out it is the other thieves who profit — their mutual friends, arbitrators, solicitors, confidants and other colleagues or satellites. But now up-end the hoary jingle and read it thus : " When honest men fall out thieves come by what is not their own," and behold the depths of reason- ableness, and breadth and brightness of meaning, thus disclosed. Yet a painful doubt obtrudes itself. It hes in the paucity of those in the virtuous category, and in the crowds and fatted prosperity of those in the shadier one. But truth vindicates herseK — and me. For to the relative handfuls of men of integrity liable to wrangle should be added the simple souls, the inexpert, the intellectually weaker, the cock-sure, the trustful, the loyal, the sentimental, the faddy, the unworldly, and the taker of friendly tips. For the webs are always spread, and every device of trap and ambush always set; it matters nothing to the spiders if the flies blunder in by reason of lovers' quarrels, pohtical disputations, or heated feuds over prior rights to a grain of sugar, or to the patient exploration of a venerable cranium. Still, when I survey mankind with the larger, and less kindly, eye of criticism I cannot conceal from my- 46 Point of Honour among Thieves seK that the negative ethics of thievery have yet to be examined by those who are anxious to observe some of the secrets of human nature — so-called, and so very much miscalled. It has been well remarked that convention is a sort of bastard morality — in operation though, of course, not in motive — and it may vulgarise itself into custom, or sublimate itself into the unwritten law, or even fritter itself into the frivohties of mere etiquette. But it is a force of overwhelming strength in the conduct and concerns of life — differentiated and adapted by a thousand graduated and accommodated understandings to the multifarious interests, ways — and, particularly, by-ways — of men. Of such is the law or tradition of the honour of thieves: as one might say, the punctiho of punters, or the gentihties of gout, or the suavities of society, or the affectations of art. And, more or less, these shams have reality — whatever other seeming reaUties may be sham. It must be a fine-grained mutuality, rather than any codified principle or crystallized procedure, which regulates the dealings — and probably cheats the wrongs — between the members of the gangs, groups, fraternities, partnerships, bands, syndicates, or fortuitous co-operation of units, which go to com- pose the vast community of Thiefdom. The honest and more stupid brain fairly reels at the thought of the interpenetrating and overlapping claims, demerits, inequities, contingencies, risks, 47 Echoes of Whistler odds and unevennesses which must continually cry aloud for adjustment inter se. How are they determined? Take, for example, a case where three gentlemen go out on an enterprise of burglary. One, the sentinel, gets a broken leg in escaping over a wall and falhng into a cucumber-frame, and, being recognised in the infirmary, is sent to finish an old sentence for a quite distinct and anterior offence, on his general record of habit and repute. Another, the brain of the adventure and the driller of the safe, gets caught. He also gets five years. The third man gets unostentatiously away with the family jewels, buys half a street of small houses in a quiet suburb, and becomes, under another name, a ponderously respectable man, of few words, a thick beard, and great helpfulness to the pastor of the new chapel. How shall we spell out the ethics of this trying situation? We may suppose that the pressure of remorse is equal in the three consciences, albeit one only has the power of restitution, which, however, he does not exercise. Possibly, he finds a sort of reversionary morality in some small premiums which he pays by way of subscriptions to the chapel and its various objects, uses and missions. Thus, all three being, for practical purposes, ahgned, it would seem relatively unequal that one should be free and prosperous, and the other two in 48 Point of Honour amonQ[- Thieves the close embrace of stone walls and. the coldest shade of adversity. That is, of course, the superficial view. The free man has all the cares of property, all the anxieties of concealment, and the dreads that his secluded partners may not die in prison, where, he thinks, with an upturned eye, they have many incentives for repentance; and also, as he reflects, not without a suppressed growl, too many goads to memory and sohcitudes for their health. And, whilst the other two, in ignorance of what has befallen him, can sleep soundly, accepting the fortune of war, his slumbers are flecked by uneasy interludes of wakefulness and panoramas of fore- boding apprehension. But he figures it out that, on the whole, they are evens, and that not one brazen farthing are the other two now entitled to claim. This is one aspect of this difficult question. Another — and with it I take my leave of a subject of deep interest alike to the morahst, the immorahst, the sociologist and the metaphysician — may be illustrated in this wise : Two men conceive a hankering for a considerable amount of domestic silver in a certain well-to-do house. One, having carefully ground-baited the position by unconventional attentions and bold admirations to a parlour-maid, is invited to supper one night when the family is at the theatre and the cook and housemaid out for an improvised evening. D 49 Echoes of Whistler The parlour-maid is pretty and extremely hospit- able. The accomplice secretly ransacks the plate de- positaries, explores a locked drawer or two, snatches a few modest glasses of sherry and — after a furtive glance at his colleague, on whose knee sits the fair domestic with a shapely arm twined around his neck — makes his peaceful exit. His friend was not so much in soft dalliance sunk as to be unwatchful. He notes the hour, and tears himself away with some real regrets, and many false excuses and promises ; and, certain that the business, if done at all, must now be over, he goes in search of his operative partner. It is not until he has visited four pubhc-houses other than the trysted one that he discovers him. But a surprise awaits him. Not denying the ilHcit harvest, and even fairly, though roughly, estimating its probable net value — that is, net in the hard professional sense — he declines to share it. His reasoning is irrefutable. Concisely put, it comes to this : " We are quits. I did not participate in the love- making. You had the kisses ; I am entitled to keep the — other spoons." It is a fine point. 50 ON THE ARTISTIC DIALECT Slang is the stronghold of speciahsation. It is, too, the wit of the feeble, the mark of the bold, the bliss of the vulgar, and the tongue of the dissolute and dishonest. But this is of a different texture to that engrafted on clean language and wreaked on recondite meaning by speciahsts of all descriptions — from a corporal of Marines down to a stock-broker, and from a very reverend dean down to the quite irreverent student in the hospitals or the ateliers. They — and many unreflecting persons — imagine that their peculiar expressions, words, idioms and select significations are only the terminology fitted or adapted to their respective walks, crawls, ambles or gallops of hfe, as the case may be. Or, as the course may be : for the processes of many are tortuous and zig-zag or arabesque, or retrograde to all seeming — that is, morally considered; but that is an aside. When a clergyman selects appropriate language for his solemn and stately purposes, and when the scientific man in his discourses finds expression in wondrously flexible, graphic and intelligible phrasing, no one will deny that the claim to terminology is well- founded, any more than he would assert that the use 51 Echoes of Whistler of necessarily technical designations is, in its fitting place, of the nature of argot. This, I think, puts the case very fairly. Besides, this is not a dissertation on Slang, pure and simple — if two such innocent adjectives may, without offence, be attached to such a substantive, like the doves to Venus' car. I often pondered, when hearing men talk of their hobbies, or what they thought might give them some standing with their interlocutors — such as sport in many of its tedious and over-done branches, or Hterature, or art, or theatricals, or fashion — why they all seemed to strain for the use of certain par- ticular phrases, or even words, when ordinary ones would serve as well, and much more readily. I suppose that this may be explained by the desire of people to be thought as of the innermost circles, and most intimate atmospheres in their likings and knowledge, of the subjects on which their memories and vanities might just then be labouring. The conversation of artistic people is interesting — when understood, and imposing — even to the wariest outsider of their own circle. It does not, however, lack sincerity — in confidence; nor enthusiasm — in the very young, or in those grown old, who only then begin to perceive why, apart from mere longevity, they would fain be students once more. I reproduce a httle talk of artistic folk — omitting, or softening, much jargon, and a httle profanity. It may spoil my tale, but it may point my meaning. 52 On the Artistic Dialect I will, for the present treatise, call them respectively Mr Shadrach, Mr Meshach and Mr Abednego. They may also survive this pyre. " Well, now," said Mr Meshach, " I don't call that sloppy rag a pict, you know. It's more like a fellow's gangrened bit of lobster than a sober presentment of a dooced bird of paradise." " That's my opinion too," remarked Mr Abednego, smoking his cigarettes as if against time. " I look on that desecrated piece of sail-cloth as a wipe in the eye of the duffer who doesn't know pigment from paint : and a dashed insult to the artist chap who sees his own heavenly seK to be a genius of the primest brand bar none, by gad! " " Get away," growls Mr Meshach. "I don't see why you fellows should gird and rage at the sinfully- conceived and miserably-begot daub and abortion and abomination doubly d d before the colour- shnger splashed and sprayed his nightmare on this napkin. Take it away, put some treacle on it, and let it work out its confounded destiny by catching flies — and pass that bottle, will you? " , " Flies! " exclaims Mr Shadrach. " Why, that's the very thing the rainbow slasher does, even without the molasses — " " Asses," echoed Mr Meshach. " I say, you fellows," here exclaimed Mr Abednego, " I vote we let up on that poor painter, glazier and decorator as one reads on sign-boards, and see how we're to raise enough to carry us on till old What's- his-name works off those fakes which we've just done 53 Echoes of Whistler for him, for it was partly our spec as well, and he won't advance another blessed penny." " No — the smihng vampire. To think that an illiterate Goth hke that, with an air that thousands are mere counters, and with his thick-piled carpets and Persian rugs and solemn, lordly, frock-coated assistants — that he should have us — you and me and others — on a string, at his heels, on his back doorstep, up in his attics, as if we were scene-painters." " Ah ! it maddens me — " Mr Meshach here swore with considerable fluency. " Easy does it, old chap," tactfully broke in Mr Shadrach, who knew the other's dark moods but too well. " After all, we have our revenges — for we are behind the scenes and can chuckle at the game — the old game, the rats and the traps — and we fabricating the bait, by Jove ! The mock-cheese with the arti- ficial flavour, ha, ha ! ' " Do be quiet and serious, you chaps," pleaded Mr Abednego. " We want to raise a few quid, and the question is — How is it to be done? " " Peacocks," said Mr Meshach, hah derisively, half tentatively. " Or birds o' paradise," laughed Mr Shadrach, with a keen glance at his friends out of the corner of his eye. " Well, now," mused Mr Abednego, " that's very funny — very funny indeed. My wistful mind was thitherward tending also. And if old What's-his- name isn't on, I think I know who will be — " Some names were hazarded by his auditors. 54 On the Artistic Dialect " Yes, either — perhaps, both. So much the better. There's money in it — for a time, at all events. What do you say? " " Say! " cried the two just named, " we vote that we start at once." " That's settled," remarked Mr Abednego with gratified decision. " Now, let's go into Committee of Ways and Means. To begin with, you know I'm pretty good at figure — or any — drawing, but a bit groggy and still unsure, as the song says, on colour — " " Oh," laughed Meshach, " we'll see to that. Vermihon, cobalt, gold paint, arsenic green, sienna, blues of sorts — all sorts, in fact, and pigments bought by the stone and smeared on with a trowel, a lacquer of copal and — there you are! Solomon in all his glory — don't you know. Ha, ha, ha! " There was much hilarity, and another bottle was sent for, " I say," suddenly spoke Mr Shadrach, who had been somewhat thoughtful for some moments, " Look here — this is my idea. You two look up the subject — museums, plates in ornithological works, and so on — and set to work. I can raise a tenner for a month — I think. At all events, I'll have a try. Advance — family group commission, and all that — " " Yes — all right. We know the lay — " laughed one, and the other muttered a benediction over his glass, " Well, then, you two will put the job along while I — write it up," " Good boy, good boy." Both his friends shook 55 Echoes of Whistler his hand with emotion and drank his health. They knew that he at times " did " Academies and Studios on half-terms for some newspaper men; and, oc- casionally, for some of the minor weekUes or country papers, more or less directly — and cheaply. " Let me see, now," he pondered. " Yes — some- thing like this. Stand from under, you chaps. Smoke, or do any mortal thing you like, even singing or clog-dancing, I don't mind — but don't talk to me for a little while. See if this don't buck you up to heroic effort and nerve you to deeds of fame or — what's a lovely sight better — boodle." They smoked in silence, knowing their man, and he wrote with great rapidity, punctuated by snorts of satisfaction, smiles, and an oath or two at a Avished- f or word that seemed to lag. At length the hurrying pen was thrown down, the other men straightened themselves to Hsten, Mr Shadrach mixed himself an adult glass of grog, and read: " ' We have recently had the pleasurable surprise of being included in an extremely-restricted but highly- privileged number of visitors to a certain Studio which, it is safe to predict, will become a shrine for many artistic pilgrims, both European and American. " ' We almost chafe at the reserve which we are at present compelled to exercise. We are in honour bound to be reticent almost to the point of silence. This much, however, we may permit ourselves to say : an artistic pleasure — we might almost aver an artistic revelation — awaits all lovers of the sumptu- 56 On the Artistic Dialect ously beautiful and the resplendently refined. We scarce know any worthy exemplars of the gorgeous in Nature, the ideal in thought, the magnificent in even the material attributes of over-brimming bright- ness of which we had the good fortune to have that highly-favoured private view. "'And not the taste and the higher imagination alone receive their satisfaction in those glorious canvases. There is scarce a heart that can fail to be gladdened, or an eye to be blessed, with the form and the vivid glows, as of tropical forests, and all the profuse opulences of Nature in her most prodigal and prismatic moods. " ' That, in a feeble, hfeless and utterly pale manner some wretched attempts may have been made to forestall the effect which these wonderful pictures are inevitably calculated to have, is a matter for mirth rather than for any serious sohcitude. " ' The artistic world is, like every other, a whisper- ing-gallery. " ' And it also holds on its fringes some individuals who, without any originality, or real ability or assiduity, or patience or, saddest of all, moral scrupulousness, hesitate as little at plagiarism by prophecy as they do at — we must write the words, rise our gorge at them though it may — imitation before execution, and forgery by anticipation. " ' Dismissing these ignoble parasites in, perhaps, the noblest of professions, we will give our readers a gUmpse — but it must be rather of the nature of a peep only — of the secrets of that Studio. 57 Echoes of Whistler " ' A curtain is withdrawn and you almost start at the splendour which breaks on your dazzled vision. You ask yourseK, when the first stupor of surprise allows you to do so: In what founts of sunshine, in what depths of sea, in what intensities of equa- torial or Arctic skies, or brilliant dawns, did the artist dip his brush? Or what enchanting garlands of choicest flowers yielded their souls in colour on his palette? " ' You gaze almost breathlessly, for you feel that you are, as it were, in another world. The glow overpowers you.' " Do you want to hear any more of this slosh? " he queries as he moistens his parched throat. He explains that he bit off at that point, as he will have to finish it off according to circumstances — depending on the bargains that may ensue. Also, he will have a lot of paragraphs knocking about in the Press to excite attention — likewise, some denials, or contradictions, or corrections — the usual thing to keep the ball rolhng; finally, he thinks it good enough to get some money on from one or two men who make advances on haff -written books or half -painted pictures, on terms which any ordinarily- degraded demon would be ashamed to quote — without having to fall back on the mythical " family group." Mr Meshach and Mr Abednego were roused to enthusiasm, and the three got excited and somewhat tipsy. " Of course," said Mr Shadrach, " I'll splash in the usual patter about technique, and fights, and 58 On the Artistic Dialect sincerity, and hint of rediscovery of the precious media of the Old Masters, and all that — " " Yes, my son; and don't forget to weigh in some piffle about the brilhant opacities. I haven't a notion what it means, but it is wonderfully impressive," counselled Mr Meshach. " And reel off things about atmosphere," chimed in Mr Abednego, " also ac- centuation, and the perfect cm've, and the veiled sparkle. I'm hanged if I know what a veiled sparkle is; but then, neither does anyone else, and no one likes to admit it, and — " " Oh, ye needna fash, as old Mac says," answered Mr Shadrach. " I've got ropes of jingles of that sort, and it isn't the first furlong of stuff that I've fudged. You whack in the paints, dear boys; I'll ladle out the ink, tra, la, la! " " I say! " exclaimed Mr Meshach, " what a show we three chaps could get up ! Here goes for a ringing title— The Royal Fake Gallery." " Ha, ha! " laughed Mr Shadrach, catching up the idea and putting on an appropriate voice. " Step up ! performance about to commence! Here you are — aU stark, staring, striking, knock-you-over at sight! No deception. Pea -soup, ochre, Prussian blue, mustard, gold; nothing gaudy; strictly subdued; twice as natural as Nature ; adapted for the lowest capacities and the humblest pockets! Step up! Step up!" " Mind your pockets! " from Mr Abednego. " Beware of imitators! " from Mr Shadrach. At this there were roars of laughter. 59 Echoes of Whistler " No connection with any other swindhng con- cern! " shouted Mr Meshach, not to be outdone in warnings. " Hasn't it, though? Where would most of the Galleries — as those fellows with the grandiose air of bankers, and the manners of shop-walkers, call their shops — be without such connections? " queried Mr Shadrach. Mr Meshach got excited and sang out, " Step up, ladies and gentlemen; the quickness of the 'and deceives the heye. If you don't hke the colour, or the name of the artist, or the subject, or the date, we'll change 'em; charges moderate, staff kept special for alterations and repairs. Can alter or re-sign anything you bring. Terms on appUcation. Utmost secrecy observed." There were further exuberances in the same key, and much laughter. Then one, or more, did a kind of step-dance to another's whistling, and some things were upset, and somebody fell down — ^judging by the sound and the mild hilarity of his friends. And the man whom they began by contemning and ended by imitating, and not only so, but also by denouncing him as the infamous Prometheus who had stolen their fire, he heard every word of the colloquy and of the hterature. For he was sitting in the adjoining studio, waiting for its tenant, a friend of his own; and the two studios had been divided by a mere temporary match-boarding. The place was as resonant as a fiddle, and there were cracks and fissures in the wood. He had heard himself named and insulted and ridi- 60 On the Artistic Dialect culed: and he felt it, under the actual conditions, right, proper and seemly to listen — as a hunter does not think himself treacherous for stalking, or a soldier deceitful for strategy, or a householder or wayfarer mean for hearkening to the voices of the burglars or bandits who are conspiring against him ; and especi- ally as he had not come to hsten, but the speaking came to him and at him. And, over and above and beyond all other considerations, it was the richest and rarest of comedies, and he the most interested and exclusive of audiences; and he did not care a withered whisp what anyone else might think of him for hstening. Not that he heard any particular good about him- self. Nor was he even solaced by that sincerest form of flattery — imitation ; for it was a financial speculation and not a deep-souled artistic appreciation by stricken admirers or disciples. Nevertheless, it added to his knowledge of the artistic dialect. Therein he profited — triflingly. They made a heap of money; and Mr Shad- rach's happy, almost brilliant, epigram of " plagiar- ism by prophecy " is a standing joke, though the implied tense imposes no limitations on their enter- prise, or versatihty. They have, I understand, other nefarious ideas. That of the " Nocturnes " they have, for the time being, resolved to keep dark. As befits the subject. 6i ON SOME SLIPS OF THE TONGUE There is never a fold but some lamb lies dead therein, we know; also that there is never a man who never to himseK has said anything worth repeating in pubhc ; and, further, that not a summer cloud but doth blow a ship somewhere home — that ever is worth half a ton of coal in the engine-room. I could multiply these reflections by many reams of foolscap, and with quite as much pointlessness and unoriginaHty as of humour. Let these, however, suffice to show that I am not a man to be trifled with. " Ay, marry; and I am a man who has had losses, and I mind me where — " but I will not continue. I do not wish to say any- thing against the reputations of persons now dead some three and a haK centuries or so. Nobody could ever accuse me of any want of deh- cate consideration in such matters. I prefer to mutilate the quotation rather than revive unpleasant memories, or to suggest any re- flections calculated to bring a blush to, or otherwise rekindle, the cheek of the once fair and damnably- frail persons to whom Justice Shallow alluded. Now, quite unconsciously I was very nearly making a slip of the tongue, but I stopped myself in time. Yet what piquancy may be imparted by a true artist in such things by the sudden arrest at the brink 63 Echoes of Whistler of the expression or impending indiscretion, by means of which attention is imperatively challenged and accent given, whilst it is not the speaker who loosens it. He, indeed, pulls up sharp and short, and holds it back; but everybody else thinks what he has just finely and opportunely refrained to say. There are some slips which seem to be inspired, for they transcend ordinary human genius as they seem to preclude the possibilities of premeditation. For instance, a man asks another for a light for his cigarette and, without apparently thinking what he is speaking, says: " By the way, have you heard how your wife got that hole burned in her new white crepe dress? " Now, here are all the elements of a domestic tragedy. Yet the explanation is absurdly simple. The speaker's wife is a friend of the other man's, and told her of her calamity, caused by a match which she used to light her bedroom gas and which her husband had handed her for the purpose. She was unaware of the minute accident at the time, and afterwards wondered how it happened. In course of time the thing was more or less ex- plained, but a dim cloud ever afterwards hovered in their atmosphere. Not less inappropriately timely was the remark of a man overheard in a railway carriage. A pas- senger complained of the heat, and another of the draught, whilst a third wanted both windows to be opened and the ventilators closed. The fourth man, who had been silent and sympa- 64 On some Slips of the Tongue thetic all round, being a soul that loved peace and eschewed it, blandly suggested: " Suppose we compromise matters by seeing each other d d first, and then opening everything — except the windows." It must have been a blood relation of his who lost himself in a dissertation on slavery in the old days and thundered out: "Out upon ye all, swine of o\v'ners and pigs of abolitionists; it is a case of pork on ham and bacon on gammon, and I am going to exorcise you like the swine who rushed down the ravine, and you shall go to the devil by way of Chicago, and frizzle there hke the deer of St Hubert, who lay down and roasted himself for the saints' supper. But I am not going to eat a darned sausage of you all — don't you think it; I am going to cast you all to Lazarus at the gate." The picture of Lazarus, pelted with roast pork by way of charity, has yet to be painted. Similar to this fervid oration was that of the sailor who declared to his sorrowing mother that he always slept with both eyes open — one on his compass and the other, his weather eye, on his sea-chest. " But," naturally remarked the old lady, " how did you manage to sleep at all? " " Oh, as to that," he answered gaily, " I've only to close them — and I'm off as sound as a church." There's many a slip 'twixt cup and Hp, and more still 'twixt lip and hp. Alas! there's many a cup between the hp and the slip. Least harmful is the simple sip 'twixt cup and lip. E 65 Echoes of Whistler For example : A statesman still, alas ! in the hey- day of power, once observed to a subordinate: " Look here, Mr Blank, how do you expect me to pacify a clamorous deputation with a reply hke that? There's no more matter in it than would swamp a toy boat, and reckless truth enough to sink a squadron. No, no. We must have some airy nothings — some light things, hke facts and figures and stuff of that sort. Please re-cast my reply in that sense and, I say, throw in a touch or two of parsley-sauce. I mean 'persiflage^ This reminds me of the orator who cried vocifer- ously for hberty and Hcence — his real intent being to invoke liberty, and his life-long service in her sacred and highly-remunerative cause. I recall with especial relish the case of a friend of mine who insisted on proposing a toast at a banquet in celebration of something that I have long since forgotten. He perorated almost from the start, winding up somewhat tamely with the announcement that he had started with enthusiam to propose the toast, but he sat down with confusion because he had lost sight of his subject. Another friend recalls to my mind an incident that happened to us in Switzerland. We had been sketch- ing, and a native woman leading a toboggan by a string, as a child draws a tin cart, came and stared at our work. After an unabashed and leisurely interval she remarked to me, in a confidential way : " Ah, monsieur, il faut etre bien imbecile pour venir ici seulement pour cela. Moi, voyez-vous, je 66 On some Slips of the Tongue vous en donnerai autant que vous voiidriez de ces herbes et miserables petites fleurs que vous venez de dessiner avec tant de peine. AUons, vous verrez, messieurs." She was a simple soul, and an intuitive critic. Better still was the experience when I once hailed a Thames boatman and ordered him to row me under Chelsea Bridge, where I bade him paddle gently whilst I made some rough sketches of the underside of the arches. " Say, guv'nor," said he, " what price the top side of them 'ere harches? There ain't much to be got out of these 'ere undersides, is there, sir? " I answered suavely and instructingly that I was going to make a picture of it. " Bli'me! " he exclaimed, " but you're a rum 'un, sir, beggin' yer pardin. I did think you looked a bit off when you 'ailed me — regular bald-'eaded luny, sir, and now I knows it. You sit quite still while I pulls back to my landing; don't yer move now. I ain't got no mind to be drownded with a blankety blank blank lunatic and in sight of England 'Ome and Beauty — not me! " He gave me an intimidating look, and with a few vigorous strokes drove the boat grinding on the bank. " Look 'ere," he said, not unkindly, " you can take my tip, guv'nor. Get some'un to look arter you; you ain't fit to be trusted out alone. No, nor yet with half that money on yer. Give a pore man another bob for a drink and for a-saving of yer life. Thank you, sir. You are a gentleman, though a 67 Echoes of Whistler bit ' off,' but that may be not your fault — no, not entirely your fault. Now, don't you drop into any of them pubs, but you bunk right 'ome — and stay there." Now, I respect that longshorer. There was the stamp of sincerity upon him. He was, possibly, a little inaccurate in his judgment, but there could be no doubt as to his prudence, and no mistaking his benevolence. Perhaps the most characteristic episode in this connection was that of the valet in a hotel in Italy whom fortune had assigned to me. Observing one day that I had not put out my clothes to be brushed after a rather dusty ride on the preceding day, he deliberately began to peel off my coat and vest, with the smiling explanation, assisted by much gesticula- tion: " Ah, signor, you forgot to give me the fehcity of brushing these, before your Excellency rose this morning. Now I shall brush them while you lunch, and wait upon you with these garments at your dessert. Ha ! and you will be cool and picturesque — even as I am when I have mine." He was not only disappointed but. puzzled when I expressed my hesitation to fall in with his views. Then his vivacious face brightened and crumpled into many seamy smiles, and was irradiated with a great idea. He flung what seemed liaK a dozen pairs of hands into the sweet Italian air, danced on one foot, and cried out laughingly and most musically : " Altro, altro! I have it, I have it. His Ex- 68 On some Slips of the Tongue cellency shall not fail of his repast, or its coat of its brushing. Aha ! I shall divest him of his pantaloons and boots also, and he shall go down in his pyjamas, as if just out of bed — being English and drunk; so natural, you see: and yawning admirably — so." He stretched his arms until they almost creaked, and executed one of the most prolonged, dislocating, contagious, inside-out yawns that any biped ever saw or attempted. That was for illustration of his theme, and for my education and guidance. I loved him from that hour, though he despised me for not acting on his dramatic counsel. The which brings to my recollection the experience in a Tyrolese hotel, where a party of us engaged in some solemn jinks of a low order of merit, in the way of a mock theatrical company of small dimensions and no plays. The arrangement was that each player — including, of course, some ladies, visitors hke ourselves, who volunteered for parts — should come on when she or he was ready, or as might be decided by lot, and recite or play a bit, or sing, or dance, or patter, or do tricks, or go through some remembered fragment of some amateur or other performance, without any regard to anybody or anything else under the blue Tyrolean heavens — except one thing. That exception was that every one must go off with the tragic whisper, " Hush, he's dead, but no matter — murder will out! " There were as many utterly unconnected and 69 Echoes of Whistler incongruous " turns " as there were songs or pieces or dances, or card- tricks, or other mild conjuring, or reminiscences of dramatic odds and ends, or mock orators, and other fatuous entertainers — all inde- pendent of each other, but all faithful to the one thread on which the jumble was strung — the re- minder that he (nobody ever knew who he was, or cared) was dead, but — no matter! There was no finish to this drama. When it had gone on long enough, or the audience got tired or thin, or we wanted to go and do something else, we all gathered on the space which we agreed to consider the stage and sang " God save the Queen " and " Auld Lang Syne," and everything was over. One night, however, a lanky old gentleman with a ghttering eye, thin lips, and a slow dehvery in a far- carrying though rasping voice, rose to protest. He said that he had sat out every performance for over a week and was now no wiser than on the first night. He could not make head or tail of the piece, but he did not mind that. What he desired to know, and he insisted on knowing it without any circum- locution, was, who was dead, and who killed him, and why; and if the assassin was known, or caught; and if not, what was the sense of saying so confidently all through the piece that " Murder will out "? Was it out, and if not, why not? And where was the sense of predicting it with such impertinent assurance if they didn't know? And who was responsible for it all, and, more serious still, what was there behind it all? 70 On some Slips of the Tongue A number of serious-minded visitors cried " Hear, hear! " Some of the performers laughed and were denounced; several elderly ladies, with white faces and trembhng hands, collected their wraps and traps and stole hurriedly away; and quite a number of younger ones assumed pretty airs of alarm and fright and clung to the arms of men who did not belong to them, and who bravely reassured them and were repaid with soft smiles and grateful looks and, under the pressure of sudden circumstance and potential peril, the eloquent emphasis of tightening hands and clinging fingers. Finally, the hotel proprietor was sent for. He was just the man to apply the oiled feather to the hitched lock. " Ah, messieurs et mesdames," he said, with a low bow, a rueful countenance, and laying a hand — a large, fat hand — on a shirt-front as broad as a hearth- rug. " That I am desolated not to have the felicity of presenting to you the solution in person. You would have been perfectly content with it — a satis- faction profound, touching, logical — in a word, of the most conclusive. But, alas! it is not now in my power; it was an accident unforeseen by all; the distinguished gentleman who interrogated the dramatic direction was just an instant, a little instant too late. Monsieur the Murderer is out. His return is of the most problematical. I have the honour to wish messieurs et mesdames good-night." " But," insisted the interrogator, " they all said, ' Murder will out—' " 71 Echoes of Whistler " No, no," answered a grave, heavy man with a tawny beard streaked with white, whom nobody had heard speak or laugh or make more sign of interest than the stuffed hawk on its bracket. " No " — we all looked at this sudden manifestation of Hfe and speech. " Wliat they all said was : ' Murdoch will shout.' I am Murdoch — ^Mr Murdoch, of Ardnahuish, Dumfriesshire — and I know I cannot sing, but I'll see ye all dommed before I shout for the delectation of an empty-headed crew like this. And deil cares if he's dead or no ; it's not me, and that ends my concern. And what the glowering Hades it all means, the singing and jabber and louping and what not there, I have been trying to make out myself; but it's, maybe, a daft lot altogether. Murdoch will shout, quoth they! Murdoch will see you all — " The angry conclusion was drowned in roars of laughter, and the lanky old man was seen to hold his head as he tottered out. 72 ON THE ART OF BEING IMPERTINENT However much one may desire to benefit one's own day and generation, nothing is more difficult to the best-intentioned or worst-conditioned than to find one's self thwarted by some who think that they know better, or, what is far worse, actually do know better than you do. This is pre-eminently the case with men who have an idea that their mission in Ufe is to interest other people in matters as to which they, themselves, under- stand but little, and the others do not care at all. Still more galhng is it to find that not only is the subject devoid of attractiveness, and the dilator thereon of adequate information, but that the marked- down, or designed, human target is indifferent, non- receptive, and blankly and even stolidly cold and unresponsive. A deeper note of disappointment may also be struck at times when the human target, in turn, be- comes the artillery, and discloses not only power but distinct speciahsation on the particular points first raised — and finally pulverised. Now, I have been saying all this by way of preface — a preface so deliberately wide and general that it may well fit any literary deliverance, essay or time- destroyer — in order that I might see if, peradventure, 73 Echoes of Whistler any idea should occur to me having any relation whatsoever to the title which I have chosen for this effort. For I hold that the title is, strictly speaking, the essay; all that follows is merely the dilution as it flows from the tap of language and, of necessity, attenuates the crisp and concentrated strength of the titular designation. I could, upon this point, write a very learned — at all events, a very profuse — dissertation of consider- able practical value, but I restrain myself; not be- cause seK-denial is sweet, or discursiveness is bad, or irrelevance is trying, but because I have had a rein- forcement of some thoughts which may claim to be more or less akin to my title. Impertinence may be defined to be the art of saying things which are true in an objectionable manner, or of saying things that are not true in a suave one, or of asking questions which are not discreet, or of ex- pressing opinions which are not welcome or desired. Also it may be said to extend to the doing of things — such as the unbidden introduction of strangers, the thinking oneself privileged to locate himself in a friend's house, the use of his address, the ordering of his servants, the taking one's boots into bed when a guest, the borrowing of books, the making love to his parlour-maid in the middle of the family breakfast, the singing of lyrics with fantastic chorus out of the drawing-room windows on Sunday mornings, the offering to carve because the host hacks the joint, the winking at his wife's mother, the public narration 74 The Art of being Impertinent of his flirtations at the sea-side, the criticism on the domestic cookery and arrangements, and the remarks on the ignorance in the choice of wines and cigars. Women offend in many finely-diversified but poignant ways. They simper and smile and talk softly, but they contrive to say and suggest stabbings and flayings and vivisections with an air of pohte innocence — and angelic diabohsm. As a rule, women have not much to learn in this direction ; it comes so naturally and even congenially to them. It is different with men. There is a natural Effrontery which has no more relation to the high art of Impertinence than brick- making has to Architecture. And there is an uncouth, thick-hided Audacity which is as devoid of every feature and attribute of fine art as a house-painter is of the finished skill and fancy of an Itahan Master. Be it mine to indicate a few principles and canons of this department of social art. Not that it is calculated to be of the remotest utility to anyone — which is, perhaps, one of the justifications for this illuminating essay — but because it may serve to elucidate how many a success is worthlessly won, how many an admission is un- guardedly elicited, and how many a surprise is sprung which frustrates all the sentinels of caution and all the entrenchments of reserve. If to the aspect of ingenuousness be added the 75 Echoes of Whistler lisping accents of ignorance, and the full-orbed gaze of candour with the inflection of soUcitude or child- like curiosity, questions may be asked, or opinions ventured, or comments rattled off, or deliberate inaccuracies advanced, which effectually mask all the arrieres pensees and, in football language, convert a try into a goal. Anyone maybe impudent and clumsy and ill-bred; but it needs subtile delicacy, nerve, dramatic skill, and superfine hypocrisy to be finely impertinent. High dames often make the great error of disdain- ing the pains which have been so useful to them at earlier stages, and of adopting a tone which they fatuously think more fitting to their now exalted stations: they become Insolent. Les extremes se rencontrent. It becomes but a matter of vocabulary: for that is all that separates them from the ladies who sell fish, or retail spirituous liquors. I could give many examples of how women, once launched and ranged, abandon the graceful finesses of their earher and more adventurous years, and lapse into upstart vulgarity, whilst they fondly imag- ine that they are acting on some high code dedicated to the exclusive employment of their caste. A man shall set out with the best intentions to attain a certain object or standard of excellence, or of social success in this accomplishment; but, unless he be especially well-endowed by malign nature, or prepared by sedulous and satanic care, he will at best achieve but a trifling, fluttering result — more 76 The Art of being Impertinent akin to maladroit flippancy than to the finished impertinence of a young girl or an old lawyer; unless, indeed, he be an only son, a male beauty, a hurried critic, or the prosperous owner of a theatre. Yet it should in fairness be set down here that to reach the acme is given to very few — for there must be a certain appearance of honest vacuity, an expression of helpless inexperience and blank-minded- ness, and an artless look of sincerity and touching confidingness. Now, these manifestations of astute and graceful deception necessarily demand a corresponding panoply of means — in the way of face and eye and voice and smile and style and general manner, as well as never-failing tact in richest plentifulness, and of most versatile adaptability. For your true Impertinent must be, according to circumstances, plausible, impulsive, inquisitive, in- gratiating, apologetic, unconscious, indiscreet, sym- pathetic, suggestive, allusive and elusive, and a great many more things. Therefore it is that the observant, and oft-times grieved eye of worldly-knowingness so rarely beholds the exhibition of anything like perfection in this interesting, and reprehensible, art. In the social levels, where so much is show and vanity — and which the spear of Ithuriel could change for only the uglier and the worse, because the real — there must flourish many minor vices and affecta- tions of more or less turpitude or tolerance : and this is one of them. 17 Echoes of Whistler What Impertinent shall stand forth and say that it is Irrelevant? I throw back this poor lexicographic retort with pity and scorn, for true Impertinence has cunning calculation behind it, and definite point before it; and if the methods seem to be simple, and prattling, and playful, and unthinking, it only shows the talent and the gifts — which might well have been turned to a better purpose. 78 ON THE ART, CRAFT AND MYSTERY OF BEING INSINCERE Whenever a man finds himself able to announce to his suffering fellow-creatures that he is a genius, only born before or after his time, or misunderstood in his own time, you may be sure that there is much in him that deserves devout and patient investigation. It does not by any means follow that he is not perfectly accurate in his cataloguing of himself in that tersely-descriptive manner; nor is it proof presumptive to the contrary that he alone should possess that especial knowledge of his place in the economy of existence, or in the parsimony of wit, or in the prodigality of human conceit. Yet who shall say that this may not be the half- unconscious overflow of the hidden springs, like the lisped numbers of the poet so born and who, there- fore, untimely breaks through the beneficent but, alas! too temporary barriers of inarticulation? The cold-hearted man may smile — that is to say, he may execute those labial movements or facial twitches which, in such as he, represent that divine ripple on the face of the good and true — and say that that claimant to the larger heritages of the gifts of heaven is a fool — tout court: a fool positive and essential, as, in less happy phrase, Thersites said of Ajax. 79 Echoes of Whistler But then it is easy to retort that a man with a refrigerated soul is as incapable of forming a correct judgment in such a case as an uncultured Laplander is to conceive of the inner life of Ispahan, or depict the glowing flora of Cashmere, from the bare evolu- tions of his unassisted imaginations. Similarly, no one can confidently claim to be a favourite of fortune, or a disinherited of the gods, or the sport of fate, or the victim of fortuity, or the protagonist of causes, or the emissary of destiny, or the martyr for a fad, or, indeed, anything in par- ticular, because somebody or another will assuredly start up and deride the pretension. What makes the reviler the more odious is that he adduces no evidence whilst demanding it on the other side ; nor does he advance any arguments ; nor is he even decently civil. He merely looks practical and worldly-wise, and, as he thinks, unnonsensical; and he ejaculates, sneers, or coughs out an epithet — often profanely tinctured — and proudly deems that he has as effectually disposed of the unbusiness-like assumption as if he had formulated his reasons in a book, or laid about him with a dogma, or seen the postulant safely consigned to a lunatic asylum. Now, here is an object lesson. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the claimants are not sincere. The hundredth is insane. Fifty times out of a hundred the critics are not sincere; the other fifty are asses. But around each there cluster and group listeners, sympathisers, laughers, friends, borrowers, syco- 80 The Art, etc., of being Insincere phants, accepters of dinner invitations, frequenters of At Homes. There are, too, the tea-drinkings and smoking- room drivelhngs, and social intermingHngs of all sorts, where talk flows, and reason stands lost in thought and wonder as she hears the surges of vacuity break on the sounding beaches of barren babble. And all these are the mixers, blenders, diluters, sophisticators, retailers, annotators, sub-editors, clippers, garnishers, spicers, cooks and dishers-up of all that the others have said, and of the debased currencies which they circulate inter se ; and each and everyone, when not an idiot, is artfully, craftily, secretly insincere. This swift glance is, however, descriptive rather than instructive ; and yet, withal, not without some slight design to pique the inert, and to rouse the ambitious — to ground-bait the shallows of simpHcity, and deftly to refract the lights of ignorant genuine- ness, or ingenuous implicitness. Here, however, the magnitude of my task looms up and almost discourages me. For, the infinite diversity of character, feature, voice, condition and other scaffoldings and vehicles for the display of this Art, precludes the use of specific prescriptions or dogmatic counsel. Even axiomatic suggestion may only be administered with diffidence, and not untinged with doubt. For human frailty has scarce a stronger trait than its unreflecting and almost simian imitativeness — unless it be its blunt unperception of inappropriate- F 8i Echoes of Whistler ness, or its moral strabismus of vision in things re- lating to social life. Were I to lay down rules, by-laws and regulations for the nice adjustment and governance of the means for the cultivation and practice of Insincerity as one of the Arts, the chances are that people would seize upon those least adapted to their especial capacities and, what is more serious, to the nature of their physical endowments — or deprivations. Unwittingly I might thus inspire the small nervous man, with a weak voice and a stuttering tongue, to play the part of the bluff and burly individual who laughs loudly, slaps you on the back, is jovial, out- spoken, hearty — using all the advantages of bigness of voice and frame as the hoarding on which he exhibits the painted, but false, evidences of — his assumed honesty; whilst he, behind it, sits and cunningly deceives. Or, we shall have the saddening spectacle of a buoyant brunette, with dancing eyes and bubbhng giggles, and hvely unrest, trying — and spoiHng — the part of the lazy and stupid blonde, who can sit beside a sane or dull man who is talking the most un- mitigated stuff, looking up at him with great adoring eyes, and worshipping with rapt au", and humble smiles, and soft sighs, and musical, confidential httle laughs — all make-beUeve, and all perfect Art ; hiding her own want of ideas, and anointing him with the delicate and invincible flattery that makes a man the easy spoil and prey of the woman who knows how to administer it. 82 The Art, etc., of being Insincere But where were she without the great well-opened, vacant eye, or the fixity of manner, or the low velvety chucklings, or the complexion that lends itseK to ecstatic reds and affrighted whites, and the murmuring sweetnesses of voice, and all the many imjihcations of interest, admiration, appreciation — or anything else that the prosy idiot chooses to imagine, or the rosy nymph to suggest? It is not difficult to multiply misfits of this kind by the thousand : for independent thought is rare, and the true sense of the incongruous and the dispro- portionate — still rarer. Possibly, a practical course to adopt would be to leave the feminine gender to the ample magazines of the devices and desires of their own hearts, as the Liturgy hath it, in all that appertains to the facile dissimulations, the innate slynesses and the acquired hypocrisies which they wear and handle with so much consummate naturalness, presence of mind, and deadly success. To them would I whisper a low word of caution and advice : Work on your own especial points. With assiduity and care you may attain a degree of proficiency that shall make you possibly prosperous, probably hated, and almost certainly — uncanonized. For the coarser palates of the less supple-minded mascuhne gender I am in no condition to undertake a compendious work in many volumes, to correspond, however indifferently, to the greater range of his interests. Politics, Finance, Business, Diplomacy, Horses, 83 Echoes of Whistler Fishing, Ambition, Vanity, Love, and many more widely-gaping moulds present themselves into which the molten words of wisdom might flow in an un- hallowed stream, as regards this particular thesis. But Man is not left unfledged : and if his methods are, at times, relatively crude, they are wonderfully varied and elastic, and so effective that they have but little to learn, except a touch of finish or of gloss or of refinement, here and there — as to which their wives, or their eyes if they but use them, can easily put them right in that merely superficial aspect of this great and popular Artifice. But let it not be supposed that I confess to any inability to deal adequately with this vast subject — save in the matter of mere bulk. It is not egotism which prompts this observa- tion — which must, however, not be construed as an apology. A deeper, because an inner, consciousness hints that I might illustrate a panorama even more graphically than an encyclopa3dia — a panorama entitled: THE GREAT MUNDANE BAL MASQUfi " Every man and woman has his or her own Make- up, Wig-maker, Mask-designer, Costumier, Dresser, Powderer, Puffer, Master of his own Ceremonies, Treasurer of her own Secrets, Dissimulator, Liar, Braggart, Baggage, Hypocrite, Humbug, etc., etc. All the Fun of the Fair — and Foul! All masked — 84 The Art, etc., of being Insincere many double-masked : Endless variety : Picturesque disguisements ! " But the Panorama does not show how the whirling Night wears to the Dawn. Nor, how at Dawn there comes — the Great Un- masking. 85 ON THE ART OF SAYING NOTHING If " a soft answer turns away wrath," as the preacher saith, " angry words stir up strife; " and this is as true to-day as it was thousands of years ago. But it is also undeniable that a steady taciturnity is the most maddening and murder- justifying in- vention of the surhest, sulkiest, and wiliest. of devils. There are several kinds of this unpatented and ingenious art or craft. The sullen, silent, pig-headed man who hears all you have to say — at all events, all you have said — and utters never a word, is of one kind — generally, a knave. The ultra patient-looking, strained, pained, in- wardly-enduring, and all too submissive and resigned woman who listens to you, and sighs and looks away as if crushing down her wrongs and sorrows, is another type — most frequently, a humbug. There is another sort — the person who looks wise, stares you full in the face, occasionally nods with a mock-comprehending air, and smiles in a vague omnivocal way, is yet another example of the species. He is nearly always an impostor. Nor is he far removed from this variety who keeps up, whilst you are speaking, a mild and studied accompaniment of eyes that he makes to beam, and 87 Echoes of Whistler expressive faculty of moving hands and, at suitable intervals, monosyllabic interjections, or the briefest of colourless ejaculations, conveying the impression of real or affected interest. This Hstener is difficult to judge by the mere description of his manner. The man, the nature of the communication or conversation, his opinion of the speaker, and many other circumstances have to be known before he can be posted to the precise foHo into which he properly fits. It may be a perfectly honest way of showing that his attention is sustained, or to encourage the talker, or that he is awake. It may betoken respect, or sympathy, or surprise, or admiration, or curiosity ; or it may be only a pretence, a polite by-play with a well-bred concealment of weariness, or impatience, or indifference. Anyway, this class of Hstener stands like a Colossus, with one foot within the bounds of the silent, and the other on the brink of the responsive. There are, however, very many who, for social, pohtic and other worldly reasons, have sedulously cultivated the art of saying Nothing with more or less volubility. Thought was given to man to enable him to dissemble his speech. This is, I think, an improvement on Talleyrand. Nor does it, of necessity, partake of the inner nature and intent of falsehood, in its ordinary acceptation. There may be apparent insincerities ; but one must discriminate between that kind which is undiluted falsehood and sham, and that other aspect of it which 88 On the Art of saying Nothing is in-shot with good sense, and underlaid with kindly feeling, and with benign, or even useful, purpose of an unselfish character. It were hard to carry on the business of the world if the art of saying Nothing, at greater or lesser length were neglected, or banished from the intercourses of men — and, still more, of women. And in this order of ideas, as the French say, it is unquestionably easier to say voluminously, rather than too curtly, the Nothing that averts pain, or truth, or inconvenience, or displeasure, or candour, or prematureness, or ill-blood, scandal, loss, prejudice, seK-committal — and a long list of other more or less pleasant or disagreeable possibilities, or consequences, of the nether life. The reasoned reason, the diverted point, the out- poured frankness which is all bubble and no squeak, the deft turning-aside, the well-poised phrase, the balanced gush, the sudden enthusiasms, the quickly- improvised laughs and brimming smiles, the watchful tacts and vigilant reserves — evince themselves ac- cording to the idiosyncrasy of each individual. Temperament, intelligence, experience, feeling, determine the manner in which relatively -pardonable evasion expresses itself — whether in clouds of in- volution, or feigned missings of .the mark, amused ignorings of the challenge, clever assumptions of sudden stupidity, zealous confidings of the utterly irrelevant and trivial, and so forth ; or by the closely- packed equivocation of a mere aspirate, the double meaning of a shrug, the uncertain suggestiveness of a 89 Echoes of Whistler look, or of the lifting eyebrow — and a hundred other tricks of undeceptive deceit. It is given but to the genius, the cultured cynic, the alert wit, to say their Nothing in a sparkling word or a telhng phrase. The middle-aged or elderly women of title have, without the intellect, the ready smartness to cloak the evasiveness of their minds by the agihty of their imaginations; and they do it, too, without turning a natural hair. Suppressed truth is the slim shadow of the Spoken Nothing. Social perjury is the dim avenue of the Something Said. And he to whom the artful Nothing has been pro- mulgated in such diverse tones is not always a noodle. Athwart the many manners in which the Nothing has been said to him — from the declamatory and convincing, through the confidential or humorous or mysterious, to the whispering, sketchy, shadowy — he oft-times perceives that there is no needle in the hay- stack, nor a single golden grain in all the chaff; and he tries to think that it was the kindhest and most touching considerateness that spared him, or fooled him; and he feels a corresponding gratitude. But, sometimes the most astute man fails to catch the real inmost nuance of the Art ; or his vanity leads him off the true trail. Have I not heard with my own ears men say, to my very face, that my pictures, even whilst I was as yet experimenting, were something subhme, and almost too good for human nature's daily food? 90 On the Art of saying Nothing And did I not also learn by the usual, and chiefly by the unusual, channels of information, that there were those — and many — who derided them, and made mocking remarks about me, and pointed fingers of scorn at my works, and prophesied very rough things about me? Ah me! — and the whirligigs of time! For lo! the goats of those days turn out to be the sheep of to-day. But this is too artless. Nevertheless, it is nothing to what I could say — were I not illustrating the art of how not to say it. 91 ON THE CONVERSATION OF ESTHETIC PEOPLE Were I asked to designate the people whom, of all others in this world of shams and pretence, I would least care to meet I would unhesitatingly reply — aesthetic persons of either sex. Not that they are otherwise objectionable beyond the rest, but because they affect a bearing, a tone — even an atmosphere — of a peculiar, distinct, super- lative, and altogether more sensitive nature than all others who are, and who scarce deserve to be, alive on this unhappy planet. I have occasionally wondered why, and upon what grounds, any patience or toleration is extended to these rattlers of dry peas in painted bladders. Who has not observed these creatures of artificial ecstasies, of mock transcendentalisms, of make- believe divings and soarings into abysses and emf)y- reans, of apprehendings of imaginary meanings, latent beauties, and submerged truths? They are the possessors of a sedulously-manu- factured manner, and of a diction which is their stock-in-trade, and which they decant as if it were their exclusive liturgy. This brief description were all too incomplete with- out reference to their lofty pride, and the shrivelling 93 Echoes of Whistler contempt with which they regard, and speak of, those more prosaic and ordinary people who make no pretence to their own exalted stand-points; or who make any claim to share their raptures, or insights; or, in a word, have the daring to think that their commonplace Staffordshire pottery can ever be akin to the Sevres and Dresden china of the Esthetic Elect, who call them Phihstines and other opprobrious names. I once met a few of these Esthetics in a house in London, and I hstened to their conversation with a delight that was not unmixed with astonishment. A man — one who painted somewhat, and who also made poetry — was talking to several other people, men and women. Said he : " Ah, when I cast my eyes around me and see how deeply sunk in vice is the entire dark world — vice of false drawing, false colouring, false motif, false grouping — above all, false ideahty — I am almost inchned to weep bitter tears of anguish for my fellow- men — comparatively speaking." " Yes," a lady sighed, " it is very dreadful. And no help, alas! no help — unless you, dear master, come to the aid of a blinded world." And she wrung her hands, and noted with a pleased look that the women envied her bracelets, and that the men admired her pretty bare arms. "If," slowly resumed the man whom this woman hadcalled "themaster," "if I thought that thedescent as if into the hells of Dante, or as into the highways and by-ways of a greater than he, could rescue a 94 Conversation of ^Esthetic People generation so lost to all idea of true art, to every conception of real inner beauty, to every aspiration of the inchoate soul and the unfathomable mind, then — ah, then what a sublime mission it were to recall the benumbed sense of man back to the recti- tude of line, to the glory of hue, to the subhmity of shadow, to the consolation of perspective — as these great attributes of Art are designed in the secret Heavens, and vouchsafed to the worshipping Earth ! " This was spoken with such nice adjustment of voice and emphasis and feeling that, apart entirely from the intent of the words, I felt almost carried away, and I murmured a somewhat vague " True, true." Thus encouraged, and from a somewhat unex- pected quarter — for the key was pitched, and melody designed, chiefly to impress me — the others were the " ready chorus " — he grasped my hand, called me Brother, and in broken tones went on — after a few gurgling or sighed exclamations of adoration from the women : " Yes, to restore the real Golden Age, and bring us back to the Arcadian life, when all the coarse realities that now hem us in and suffocate us shall vanish; and in a sweet and pure, and correctly-delineated and chastely-sung symbolism, we shall pass existences of idylhc simplicity and universal love ; and, above all, Uve and breathe the refined air of True Art! " Not to be outdone by the lady of the bracelets, another fair enthusiast rose up and fervently kissed the eloquent speaker, after which startHng perform- ance she affected to weep tears of artistic sensibility. 95 Echoes of Whistler A second man there, who had been fidgeting some- what for an opening, here apostrophised nothing in particular, and observed: " Go — back to thy shmes, oh, Spirit of SeK and of Pelf; blind, and blurred, and banned! And come, ah, come, chaste nymph, with garlands in tiiy locks, and grace in every fold of thy flowing robes, and beauty in thine eye and face — bringing us the promise of goodness that is really good, of truth that is really true, of secrets from afar known to us alone! " Here he seemed to be rent with so many complex emotions that he absently placed one hand on the snowy shoulder of the youngest and fairest woman there, who rather nestled to the touch, as I thought ; and he continued in a rhapsody to the like tenor — the whole being a sort of introductory announcement of the subject of the picture he was painting. I hope that it is not a want of charity which impels me to gratitude that the work so heralded has never yet found nail or buyer. Then — because the grand bow cannot be always kept on the heroic bend — the conversation broke gradually from bulk to item, and became easy and retail, but always unreal, stilted, superior, select, and in almost a language of its own. Two or three of the feminine ^Esthetics discerned in me possibilities of hope — that is, of triumph; and with lovely zeal tried to win my too ardent soul into communion with their misty sect. I was then relatively young — and not insusceptible. 96 Conversation of Esthetic People I, somehow, gravitated to one monitress — she of the round, white, desecrated shoulder : and the others drifted away on the arms of mere good-looking Philistines. If ever I come across that insolent rhapsodist who dared to place his sacrilegious palm on the loveliest shoulder in England — She detests the fellow, she tells me ; and it was only from surprise, and the desire to avoid a scene, and the knowledge that he was not quite right in his mind, that she did not then and there resent the unpardon- able outrage. The villain! She laughed, however, and said that they were all cranks — when not humbugs. " But it was such fun! " she added, " and, besides, it was all the rage just then," and she did not want to be " out of it." Truly, the conversation of Esthetic people is a fearful and wonderful thing. But a little of it goes an amazingly long way. 97 ON THE ART OF BEING CURIOUS It is not of the slightest use to repeat that only the veriest tyro can mistake a genuine Turner or Velas- quez — because there are none of either ; and if there were, they have long ago been rejected as mean and libellous imitations, and gone to pieces with neglect or, worse still, been purchased by American million- aires as authentic, to the great glee of the swindling dealers. And that dealers can be swindlers is less amazing than that there should be found amongst them even an occasional or exceptional honest man — and him the brotherhood would regard as weak-minded, and load him up, if they could, with unfashionable Masters of more than doubtful paternity. I know whereof I declare, and I speak that which I know, when I say that there are no greater Barabases of any countries than those soft-spoken, well-dressed, pompous individuals who talk so coolly of hundreds, and even of thousands — the picture-dealers. Shall I tell how old canvases are converted into genuine Masters; how pictures are altered, copied, done up, forged ; how genuine pictures of undoubted value and authenticity, which may be left with them for cleaning, or valuation, or sale, will have the signature smudged, or other distinctive mark changed 99 Echoes of Whistler or blurred, so that the copy they make of it may appear to be the genuine one according to the secret catalogues kept, and that which they return, often with pitying smiles or contemptuous shrugs, con- demned as poor and worthless imitations? And of the high prices given at auction sales by great dealers, who are themselves the secret sellers as well as the public buyers, and who thus secure an advertisement which is well worth the amount they pay as commission to the auctioneer; and, what is more valuable to them, a sort of hall-mark and standard of price which makes their demand for a small profit beyond the Active figure seem so reason- able and fair? Or of the trick of exposing a canvas by a well- known artist and, at the same time, under cover of an unchallenged authenticity, fob off on visitors some of the veriest and most blatant imitations of other artists who would turn in their graves did they know the frauds perpetrated not in but upon their names? Again, is it not a practice in various Capitals of dealers to arrange exhibitions of the works of some particular artist, and, for that purpose, to borrow, with many fulsome prayers and ample guarantees, from all accessible owners of the works of that painter? But the complaisant lenders little think what goes on within the closed doors of those thickly-carpeted rooms, I know. I know of one case where over a dozen pictures were copied by expert men, and the copies taken away to ICO On the Art of being Curious be finished by still abler hands, after which — age and other adventitious aids being imparted — they were sent away, to be re-imported later with all sorts of plausible stories and heavily-vouched credentials — including family seals, official certificates, old cata- logues, and so forth. The frames, of course, were genuinely of the times alleged, and that gave ad- ditional coherence and plausibility to the imposture. And then would come the comedy. The owner of the genuine picture would be written to, mysteriously and discreetly, some time after the return of his picture, and then be told, with much show of sympathy and pathos, that he had been hving in a fool's paradise all these years, and that he had been fondly nursing an imitation. Then — ashamed, alarmed, indignant — he would, with much parade of reverence, and almost of worship, be shown the imported copy, with its back encrusted with seals and signatures, and also the certificates, yellow and falling to pieces at the folds and creases ; and be minutely instructed, with the air of being initiated into the innermost mysteries of the trade, in a number of little points of a highly technical kind, in a terminology of its own ; and so on, and so on. The upshot invariably was — the exchange of the two pictures — a heavy cheque being very thankfully given for the highly artificial documents, and the dealer being left in possession of the undoubted original into the bargain. But it is, perhaps, not well to push the art of being curious too far in this direction, else could I tell a lOI Echoes of Whistler tale, not of isolated but of general and almost customary deception, forgery and fraud, that would astonish as it would enhghten; but that would be rather a digression from my main object in this informal writing. The art of being curious is a very ancient one. It must have had its rise in the brain of the first germ of animated existence which threw out a feeble feeler in its effort to know what was going on in the locality; and it rose by natural gradations to the plucking of the tree of knowledge, whence " man's disobedience and his woe." There are those who pretend that curiosity is the tonic for learning. Others, as unreliable, aver that it is the pretext for not minding one's own business. And yet another group of thinkers opines that it is the innate search into the causation of things in general, and the insatiable interrogation point which makes philosophy so sublime, and little boys so pestiferous. These, however, are but the natural or involuntary motions of minds debased by heredity or habit, like unwholesome and exoteric appetites, for which no merit can be justly claimed at their worst, and no retribution can be too severe at their best. For it is not art— ART. Leaving aside such abstract, dull and unpractical subjects as the cosmos, seen and unseen, and its laws, reasons, mysteries, tendings, fates and other incidents of that nature, the subject of this paper presents itself in all its delicious fascinations and profundities. 1 02 On the Art of beino- Curious For, obviously, it is not enough merely to desire to know what is no concern of yours; that is easy, and evinces itself even, and intolerably, in the artless lispings of infant innocence, of volatile young woman- hood, of mature but idle brainlessness, and of grave and unreverend spinsterhood. The art of being curious necessarily implies, and is involved in, that of satisfying the cravings of that depraved condition of mind and being, without the consideration of which all the pearls which I am stringing on this worthless theme were as meaningless as the leaves which the Sybil flung to the winds. That art, in its higher and least useful aspects, is the concealment of its own pains and aims by adroit feignings of interest, neat allures of flattery, affected humilities, child-like unreserves and thirsts for in- struction, calls for more light, conscientious anxieties for accuracy, sweet cooing sympathies, and whispered confidences of deHberate invention, in order to evoke correction; and, generally, all the trickeries of im- pudence, hypocrisy, and deceit. Moths — monkeys — men — c'est egal — except in de- gree, range, and means. I will not touch on any of the collateral issues of this sterile subject; it is too trite to refer to the miser who hoards the purloined grain of knowledge thus acquired, or to the prodigal who gossipingly scatters far and wide what his filchings and coaxings and assiduities have garnered for him. Yet the thoughtful mind may sorrowfully reflect 103 Echoes of Whistler that much of good candle is thus wasted on a scurvy and contemptible game. And I, as I wonderingly glance at these pages, have still more regretfully to remind myself that I leave much to observe of the art of being curious — in the passive sense of being personally strange, eccentric, not as others; remarkable by reason of assumed address, or of studied pecuharity. But that aspect of this wide subject is as much beyond the intellectual reach of the common essayist as it is below the moral attention of the ordinary reader. I might have descanted on it at considerable length, but modesty constrains me to say that I could not have been more discursive — and I would not have been less illuminating. 104 ON A SUBJECT OF NO IMPORTANCE Whether the idea be welcome or distasteful it is, nevertheless, correct to assert that nothing is less becoming to the sedate mind, or more decorous in a frivolous one, than the being assumed to be saintly. For, not all the waters of the multitudinous seas can wash out the innate hostility with which every man and woman regards the person who is reputed to be virtuous — that is to say, less wicked than that average person, who feels the bare possi- bility of it as of the nature of a personal slight and grievance. It is rather the splenetic breathing of vanity, hurt in the implied comparison, than the tributary sigh to the unpossessed virtues, which prompts the envious sentiment. For the subject, in its true essence, is really of no importance — to the majority of people. Of course, there is the conventional goodness as per schedule — orthodox, official, standardised; and that is perfectly correct, sound, and eminently re- spectable. It is even popular — in certain quarters. Nor would I, or any serious-minded writer, say a word to weaken it. On the contrary, I would, were 105 Echoes of Whistler it in my power, aggrandise it, idealise it, spiritualise it, vitalise it. For then it would be a force, a living, fertilising, ennobling Influence and Energy, a beneficial Solver of the riddles of life, an unfailing Guide towards the House Beautiful — a Key to its portals, a Title to its heritages. But, if it were possible for me to speak in this sense to people generally, I should be put down as a crank, or a fool, or a humbug. My action would be summed up in that solitary adjective of the English man or Avoman, by which he would express the sound of Gabriel's trimap, or the Resurrection, or a death- dealing earthquake, or sanguinary revolution, or an Archbishop's suicide, or a monarch's abdication, or the tricks of a tamed seal or of a trained flea, or a poem of Tom Hood's, or a novel of Charles Dickens, or the patter of a clown, or a comet, or the nebular hypothesis, or chemical affinity, or electrical mystery, or strange coincidence, or anything wonderful, singular, sublime, great, generous, but not understood — the one word — FUNNY. Now, I am not, and never was, funny ; and I shiver at the bare possibility of being associated with the dreadful inanity of that word. Yet the language does contain several other adjectives — of a cleanly nature, too — which might be occasionally employed with propriety and ap- positeness. One far day, it may be respectfully hoped, some Scotch or Irish writer may enlarge on this text. 1 06 A Subject of no Importance The English people are so busy money-making, cricketing, and footballing, that they let their junior partners find brains and brightness for the common stock of the national life. The apphcation of the dread but trivial epithet, in the case which I have imagined, would not, of itself, be conclusive to show that the subject is of no im- portance, in view of the poverty-stricken prodigahty of its employment. But the mental attitude of my supposed hearers would, I submit, be glaringly manifested thereby. Although devoid of interest to the great bulk of those clever enough to consider the subject unimport- ant, it may be usefully noted that there may be sections of the community, more or less unfashionable, to whom it has an attraction, and for whom it is even a reality. Not that that comes to much in the way of evidence of the extent or intensity of the addiction to virtue ; but it is something to know that a behef in it, and respect for it, are sincere enough to bear the strain of allusion — perchance even to tolerate the license of exhortation, whence it is but a stej) to the blessedness of growth — the striking of expanding roots deeper and wider, the uprearing aloft of greater boughs and multiplied branches. But I speak rather of those social levels where worldliness is everything and unworldliness (1 do not mean that of the unselfish or the simple-hearted, which is merely " funny," and an open and univers- ally availed-of temptation to all and sundry to come 107 Echoes of Whistler and gull and plunder — or anything other than the material, commonplace, ordinarily-reputable wisdom of the globe,) is extremely " funny," or would be so spoken of did any one dare to mention it. Those levels are like a switchback railway — an alternation of swift ups and downs, a few bumps and gasps, and the journey is over; and if you wish to continue, you simply repeat and re-repeat — and get what satisfaction you can out of the proceed- ing, and from the somewhat casual ghmpses which you get of the landscape, and of humanity on other cars, during your travels from one barren point to another. You may discourse on anything almost that you please — assuming that you have an idea or two in concealment upon you, or a thought that may, with more or less effort, straggle into the birth of enuncia- tion. You may talk of the news, or of your boots, or of books, or cookery, or a music-hall singer, or the Prime Minister, or appendicitis, or novels, songs or plays, or mushrooms, or Art, and a thousand other things on which people may feign rhapsodies, affect knowledge, or pretend care or concern. But you may no more allude to the obscure circum- stance that you have — much less that you are — a Soul, than you may proclaim, from the top of the grand piano, that you have a hvely rattlesnake in your coat-tail pocket. With much greater fitness than they know, the too-elastic adjective of " funny " would be preceded by the profligately-abused adverb " awfully." io8 A Subject of no Importance So Society exposes, more or less lavishly or in- decorously, the bosom that conceals the heart, and titters or prettily shivers at the thought of any higher or better existence ; and votes it bad form to hint at such dreadful things when people are wanting to enjoy themselves in a nice and fashionable way: especially if, at the same time, dearly-satisfying envies, and vulgar admirations, can be excited to rise as incense, and with its cheap and voluntary wreaths to encircle the vapid heads, and to lusciously dull further the deadening sense. Last of all they die also : and not another odd-and- end, or a knick-knack, or a kickshaw, save their own characters and records, accompanies them to the greater world and the incorporeal life. And that also, after the first dazed look around, they will sum up to themselves, with awesome dread, as " awfully funny," because so surprising, and demo- cratically discriminating. Let it be, however, admitted that it is given but to few to stalk through the mortal promenade — or tread-mill, or drudgery, or triflery, or harlequinade, or misery, or lunacy, or penitentiary, rounded off by a sleep, which men call Hfe — without meeting, here and there, some loiterers or dreamers who drift out of the broad, rushing current of existence, and seek tranquiUity and reflection in obscure and peaceful by-ways and corners. Such men are the moral tramps and philosophic vagrants — having here " no abiding city," and cul- tivating no petty localisation of a lesser type. 109 Echoes of Whistler To them, alike in their freedoms and in their restraints — in the savage happiness of the sunny dry- ditch, without a sixpenceor a care ; in the casual homes of rigid civilisation and compulsory ablutions; or in the too chaste seclusion of stony correction, or re- tribution or rancour — life is full of colour, and song and breeze and wonder; of love, of storm, of growth and changeless change; of hints which become in- sights and, possibly, of ghmpses that become re- minders beyond the " sleep and the forgetting," and the " elsewhere setting " of the Soul that rose with them. To them meditating, even though they but " see as through a glass darkly," the subject of this little rambhng essay differently appeals. But then they — unless professionally concerned, when, of course, it would be conceded to them, within the limits of good form, hien entendu — are, them- selves, " funny " — even " awfully funny," in the common, smug, fashionable, worldly, conforming, imitative, prosaic, unimaginative estimation; and, generally, of no influence, and commanding no respect. But to the community at large, judging from their acts and deeds, and knowing their ignorances, folhes, superficialities, materialities, animahsms — to say nothing of sins and vices — the possession of a Soul is a hjrpothesis which at times faintly presents itself to an indifferent mind, and gets dismissed with a smile, or a sniff, or a sigh — or a yawn. It is less appreciably owned than a watch, and im- measurably less cared for or thought of; a something no A Subject of no Importance to be locked away in a cupboard; a death's head, a kill-joy to be stowed away behind the heaviest draperies; a thing which it is feeble-mindedness to mention, and practical hard sense to ignore; in a word, it is a Subject of No Importance. But. . . . Ill ON PLAIN TALK I OFTEN amuse myself by the question — What would people do if they had to express themselves on all occasions in the simplest, barest and most hterally- correct way possible? Not that this is by any means a novel reflection. There have been parables, tales, comedies, and even tragedies — as I can well imagine — on this sub- ject; and numberless men have speculated on the state of Society under such a condition of Uving, or of having a state of Society at all — for long. Still, the idea has some aspects of hypothetical interest because, reduced to its simplest form, it comes to this: I speak to you exactly and undisguisedly what I think, and you speak to me exactly and undisguisedly what you think ; and what each has said to the other is irrevocable and unforgettable; and look and tone, and accent and emphasis, and other incidents and accompaniments of speech, add point, colour, tem- perature, weight to the thing said. And then Memory, at odd times, turns on her panoramas, and we sit, perhaps in quite a different mood and mental frame, and behold the passing can- vases, and we seem to look at the famihar scenes from new and distorted — or, possibly corrected — angles; H 113 Echoes of Whistler and every line and light and shadow is deepened, or heightened. Fresh angers possess us; new-born resentments spring up within us; we fail to consider that we repeat in the gloom of Vespers what was meant for the glow of Matins ; and the literal word is death to our peace, and would be so to the other man — but for the hmitations and prejudices of organised human society. It is, however, not altogether profitless to contem- plate a state of matters where the brutalities of per- fect candour might co-exist with the soft amenities of gentle life. Let us, for instance, imagine a country so heaven- forgotten as not to have yet evolved from the pristine condition of articulate vertebrata. Yet even such a condition falls short of, because it transcends, the abject level of normal unreserved outspokenness; for, as we well know, the relatively lower animals have their reasons and capacities for varied suppression, or over emphasis, wheedhng, hectoring, sycophancy, imposture, fear, arrogance, and all the studied wiliness and dissimulations of their superiors in the scale of animated being — with much of analogous motive. We cannot attain to the Absolute: but we may imagine a state of barbaric frankness sufficiently licentious and simple to meet the needs of the con- templative mind. Take a Yorkshire colliery row, or, indeed, almost any Yorkshire assemblage — short of the really cul- tured and morally clean, though very restricted, 114 On Plain Talk minority — and yon will, when you come to under- stand the dialect and the slang, discover a shuddering depth of callous candour that may well make you gasp and stare, and wonder that any survivors remain to carry on the awful addiction to Plain Talk. Yet even here, as in New England, a gross vein of slyness quahfies the egotistical and unfeeling habit: cunning tempers brutality, and the itching palm controls the rough loud tongue; and in the cause of gain even Yorkshire, or native New England, may put on a veneered civility — and make you pay for it. Plain Talk may be said to be a sort of luxury of the rich man to a poor relation, whilst he fingers the little cheque which he is about to bestow, and which he feels himself called upon to accompany with a homily, to his own exceeding moral elevation — ^for the moment. It is also the candidate's affected address to work- ing-class voters ; or it is the Hp-smacking indulgence of certain social reformers; the mask of the astute poHtician ; the stalking-horse of the shady morahser ; the subterfuge of the mean, the cant of the coarse, the bluff of the culpable, the false pluck of the coward, the other voice of the serpent, and the weapon of the knave: a pestilence when genuine, a leprosy when sham. Now, am I the man to misunderstand varnish — its vapid vices, and its virulent virtues? Yet unvarnished speech delights me not, because it is unplaned as well. For pohsh you must have smooth, at all events prepared, surfaces. 115 Echoes of Whistler Rougli-hew your ends as you will, and make your destiny what you care; it is you who will have to sleep with it. But let Plain Talk be not as much as mentioned among you, if you would earn the tolerance of men and avoid the contempt of devils — whose chief is said to be a gentleman, in a manner of speaking. Besides, are there not so many apphances within the easy reach of every man — women have their own especial armouries, by heritage and acquisition — by which he can attain every, or any, nefarious aim with- out violence or noise? Plain Talk is as little to be excused as is the use of a knobbed bludgeon to a man who has at his easy command hidden but keen stilettos, and poisoned gloves, and deadly nosegays, and smart sohcitors, and " tips " for bets or gambles, and the genius to borrow from you, the hmitless capacity to prove ungrateful, the talent to inveigle and deceive, the ability to slander you skilfully. And Plain Talk has a hundred aggravations and plausibiHties, and insolent demands on your con- fidence, to which you are expected to yield at the first brazen notes of the overture. Cave ! ii6 ON THE SONGS OF BIRDS No man lives who does not love the songs of birds. Not only are birds the sweetest, purest and most varied of songsters, they also are the best vocalists in the world, with the truest of tones and the most liquid of notes. They are, too, the most enchanting and least shy or affected of artists — enjoying their own art and rapturously admiring their own performances, yet with an engaging modesty that humanity cannot attain. To hear a bird singing, even in captivity, is to hear the voice of Nature chanting to the heart, like winds or streams or tides — only with an infinitude of tender- ness, and delicacy, and indescribable charm. Nor is it the music only that appeals so strongly to even the dullest fancy and the coldest heart. There is the inexhaustible lightness, naturalness, innocence, joy, solemnity, gaiety, poetry, prattling- ness; and there is challenge and emulation, and the hymns of morn and eve. And there is even gossip, too. I believe that a time will come when men may become so good and pure-souled that they may be admitted to share the thoughts and concerts of the birds ; and be greatly improved by that closer inter- course and gracious privilege. 117 Echoes of Whistler I try to imagine a little party of human beings and birds meeting for converse and song. The vast differences in the objects of interest and points of view would be excelled only by the chasmal divergencies on the subject of music. There is a kind of music that would set every bird a-singing with all its soul in its song — the music of the great melodists of Earth — Mozart, Hadyn, Rossini, Mendelssohn, a few other German and most of the Itahan composers. And there is another kind that would of a surety affect them in a very different way — the classical article, I mean — energetically and enigmatically scored for the pretended rhapsodist, the bangist, the twiddlist, the physical-force endurist, the manual gymnast, the hearer without nerves, the utterly- abandoned impostor, the mock transcendentalist, the sniffing sham idealist in such things. I shall name no names. Were I able, I should make frequent pilgrimages to certain graves, on which I would dance irreverent jigs, whilst pelting their un- merited monuments with mud, and other expressions. The happiness is not altogether unhallowed which fills me as I contemplate the conditions and vocations of the fugue-grinders, sonata-spinners, recondite recitativists, abstruse and unheavenly harmonists, whose tedious blatancy was well calculated to invite despair, when it did not impel to crime — when it did not lull to slumber. Nothing tended better to faire dormir — debout. I take no note of the birds which the generality of ii8. On the Songs of Birds people consider to be unmusical, but which have their own canons of taste and standards of excellence — for which, conceivably, a higher education is necessary for due appreciation. It is, rather, to the well-known httle friends of our lives that I am wishful to direct some httle attention in this highly unlearned essay. Let not the gentle reader start : I have no intention to weigh natural history into his mind, nor to serve out any technical hash of other men's labours — and my lootings. I see at this very moment, with my mind's eye, a dear friend, sitting in a shady nook in his garden, writing and looking up from time to time to watch the two faithful pairs of thrushes and blackbirds on his close-shaven lawn, whilst the shining ants take short cuts across the written pages. And I know that never does he hear the lark but his heart thrills to his song, as if he were a dreamy boy again instead of a white and peppery patriarch. And he cherishes them — the song-birds — but not in captivity. I think they know him ; I am sure they don't fear him — from the sitting mothers in the liedges with whom he is, or was, on visiting terms, to the robin who struts up to his very toes, and cranes his neck to look up at him with an air of putting his hands in his pockets or behind his coat-tails, and of being, himself, every inch as good and big as he is. And am I ignorant of the wiggings which he re- ceived, which even his explanation that it was the competing nightingales which kept him smoking so 119 Echoes of Whistler late, or so early, in the garden failed to annul or even to mitigate? He has about him soloists of all sorts, and, all in- dependent as they are, they form glorious choirs. It is certain that no man can be irretrievably bad so long as he can be touched by the song of a bird. And, when I say this, I am not insensible to the fact that there are bird-fanciers, and bird music- teachers, and competitors, and even showmen; and that, in the North, colliers and pitmen and foundry- men have matches, and make wagers and so on, in connection with birds and their songs. It is precisely because I do remember these classes, and their habits and doings, that I declare that opinion and conviction. They are bird-lovers all, and lovers, too, of their pets' sweet melodies; every note, inflection, turn, change, sound and syllable they know — moreperfectly, in most cases, than their paternoster, and almost as well as their monotonous low language or unpictur- esque oaths. That love is the well undefiled — the rest is but the scum. I have known a bird hung out, in a cage not much larger than a band-box, by a top window in, perhaps, the most crowded thoroughfare in the world. And as that bird sang, in a very ecstasy of enjoy- ment, showering down — as if it were the dews from angels' wings — rills and cascadings of shrill, sweet, varied, far-carrying music, in spite of the roaring street below, not a driver but looked up and smiled , 1 20 On the Songs of Birds nor a male on the pavements, hurrying or dawdUng, but would raise his eyes and pleasurably listen. And not a hearer but would, be it only for the instant — as we think — be the better for the hearing. The bird is, no doubt, open to the influences of rivalry; that stimulates his song — possibly, his in- ventiveness, certainly his imitativeness also. He sings well, too, in his courtships and during subsequent passages of domestic life. But, in the main, he sings for singing's sake, for the pure joy and delight of it. And supreme, unapproachable, and almost sacred is the lark, soaring high above earth, above his mate and nest and young ones, and singing, ever singing, his rippling songs of praise. Full of surpassing beauty, sweetness, volume, theme, and even mysterious suggestivness, is the nightingale's deep song. But the lark is, as it were, the mystic acolyte at celestial altars ; his song touches our hearts on Earth and carries our thoughts to Heaven. 121 ON THE VALUE OF SILENCE The mind of man is so constructed that, no matter what the circumstances may be, he wants always to find another man to tell him all about them. Nor does he stop there. He is not less anxious to convince somebody else that he knows rather more than he does about his concerns — and rather less about his own. This feehng is variously accounted for by scientific men of all shades of opinion, fancy, and inter-dis- agreement. There is not one, however, who does not satisfy himself that all the others are hopelessly wrong. In taking up the task of elucidation of this remark- able and pertinacious propensity, I can only express the humble hope that this contribution to a subject of deep pathological interest may lead to a more elabor- ate inquiry, and probably result in lasting benefit to the whole — over-estimated — human family. I address myself to that facet of the problem which touches everyone, high or low, ignorant or learned, grave or frivolous, callous or sensitive ; and that is, the Value of Silence. Yet, what is Silence? To reply that it is stillness, or absence of noise, 123 Echoes of Whistler were absurd; for the one word is but an imperfect synonym, and the other an insuiSicient negative. Besides, it were not much easier to answer the question — What is noise? It is loss of time to respond in equivalents; and pointless and misleading to give lengths and velocities of waves and undulations in whatever number of places of decimals. I ask, therefore, once more — What is Silence? The gentle, hurried, undeveloped reader can scarcely be expected to give, or wait for, a perfect answer. At this point it is well to pause and to put the interrogation — Can we estimate the value of that which we cannot define, and which, in reality, has no existence ; yet, like space, serves a place for that which has or, at all events, is a medium for much that is impalpable, and is almost a minor form of force? I could, of course, enlarge upon these points, but it is not necessary, nor would it be grateful. It is safe to aver that the greater number of my readers will sum up the matter, to their limited and impohte satisfaction, on the too simple drying-up hypothesis. In a sense — an extremely narrow sense, naturally — they are not wide of a solution in a rule-of-thumb way — ^reserving the interpretation entirely to the intercourse of men and communities. And, if pressed, I would not greatly oppose the application of this homely, trite, and undoubtedly vulgar but admirably-concentrated, definition — or, at 124 On the Value of Silence least, a fair working substitute for a definition — to the widened areas brought into the field of con- templation by the many circumstances of our com- plex civiUsation and social hfe. Thus simphfied, if not reinforced, I, and this time more confidently, adduce some observations on the Value of Silence in its phase of shut-upism. I do not intend to go too deeply into the philosophy of the case, or the conveniences or poHtenesses or prudences. It is enough that, at present, I discuss the Value of Silence from the point of view of self- esteem only. I hold it as an incontrovertible fact that no man can be made to be silent if he desires to speak. You may suppress him, gag him, untongue him; you may cover his head in sacks, or sit upon it, or stone him ; but if he insists on speaking you cannot prevent him. Now, if this be apphed a miUionfold, and in daily action, it will be apparent that we have to reckon with no small human frailty — or diabohc demonstration. But if to this be added the innumerable occasions in which mutual wants, duties, pleasures, business have to be assisted, if not even expressed, by speech, the thought becomes overwhelming that Silence is the empty, hfeless vault in which the human race would wither and die — could it not break it at will. Where, then, is the Value of Silence? It is said to be Golden. He was a thick-skulled, conceited heathen who said so. It is the deadhest and most galenatonous 125 Echoes of Whistler Lead. Speech alone is the refined ore of Havilah — especially your own . Who would no t prefer hf e , even in a palace, with the golden-mouthed Chrysostom, to existence, even in the stillest cloister, with a Wilhani the Silent? Better the sweet chatter of a child — nay, even the babbling, laughing inanities of a pretty girl— than the most double-locked silence of the most arch-wrinkled sage. It is all a question of time and truth, of respect, of thought, of fittingness, of wit, of toleration and no monopoly. It is, furthermore, a question of pleasant assents and impHcations, and dehcious rests — especially at a Beethoven concert, and at most piano and violin recitals. Silence comes, too, as repose, as the cool summer evenings come after the loud and heated days. Nor would many, having visited a Trappist monastery or a convent of perpetual silence, become so enamoured of the hfe as to renounce the world with all its sounds — for good. Now, it is open to all men of enterprising mood and philosophic mind to serve a term of one or more months' hard labour in any prison of his choice or fancy. The experiment is easy and cheap. A critic or two killed — not too painlessly; an eminent lawyer or two kidnapped and held to ransom — not too modestly; a few motorists rolled out under their own wheels — not too thickly ; a few 126 On the Value of Silence M.P.'s ducked — not too briefly; a few picture-dealers and publishers eviscerated — not too suddenly : — and there you are. The kind friend to give you away will never be lacking. But even in that stone retreat you would still be unable to ponder deeply on the Value of Silence, for the pride and memory of your great deed would be stronger than the merely abstract intellectual satisfaction of your research; and you would want to be continually teUing yourself about it, at full length. There would not be silence, in the real sense, for you would be there. Man cannot be altogether bounded by the stone walls and iron bars of even model prisons. Still, there is in those secluded grots — especially in the long and stilly nights — a good deal of other shut-upism. But that is of quite another kind. 127 ON THE USE OF FRIENDS If a man were asked to nominate the gifts that he might prize the most, or with which he could dispense with the greatest amount of ease and unconcern, he would in all probability say that they were Love and Friendship. And therein he would, at the same time, prove his wisdom and his folly. It has been held by the oldest, and most f ooHsli, of our race that a man cannot live a complete, or even an agreeable, hfe without one or other of these inner flawings, or outer incrustations — or even both. It is too often presumed that a certain amount of fever, and mental loss of balance for a longer or shorter period, must necessarily assail every son of Adam and Eve. The daughters do not seriously count ; they are but the echoing shells, the soft clay, the shallow babbling brooks, the pretty limited creatures who simply love Love, and who mistake their gratitude and gratified vanity for love itself. Their reasoning powers are so restricted that they do not perceive that their very vanities are but the traps and cheats of Nature, which whispers to them that it is sweet to be admired, and secretly chuckles — for it merely tricks them to be acquired, for its own calculated objects. I 129 Echoes of Whistle r Nature is grand and beautiful. It is also rigidly utilitarian, and, to that end, most designing. Why should there be this general and, it seems to me, preposterous article of faith that a man must pass through an ordered endemic of the mind and fancy called love, just as he must go through measles and chicken-pox, and other ordained programmes of that kind? Possibly, it might be answered, for an analogous reason — a kind of vaccination, prophylactic, re- sistance; poisons against stronger poisons which await one in later life ; baptisms in the material founts of the lower hf e ; internments in fresh folds of mortality; steepings and dulhngs of the spirit, to be endured for purposes of Earth and to be combated, surmounted, conquered for purposes of Heaven. Who can tell? Man may wrestle with the eternal enigma. Woman does not care a button-hook. He who undertakes to set in array his calm medita- tions on the Use of Friends must needs be a phil- osopher, a man of the world — and of experience — particularly, of experience. There is, perhaps, no field in the wide realms of human sociology which can yield such a rich and remunerative harvest to him who, with a humble but zealous, selfish and worldly-wise heart, addresses him- self to the cultivation of the Art of Using his Friends. To begin with, the great secret is to have in one's orbit — or to glide, break, bound, bounce or other- wise insinuate oneself into the orbits of other and, 130 On the Use of Friends necessarily, better and more guileless persons — men and women who may be flattered or otherwise in- duced to become friends to you ; whilst you, calmly ambuscaded behind your apparent self, play this friendship skiKully, and derive your pleasure and profit therefrom. But, the gentle and envious reader may fairly ask, " But how is it to be done? I see the boughs bending beneath the ripening and refined fruit; but how am I to gather it, and be unsuspected? I am a trusted, an esteemed guest, and can only admire prettily the treasures of my friends. I cannot patently snatch them, or filch them in the burglarious hours of night." There is reason in the plaint ; I go further — and confess its pathos. And it appeals to me in a marked and even ex- ceptional manner — for I have, alas ! been on the wrong side all my brief life on Earth. I have always been in the subjective case: and, when I had something worth being deprived of by abstruse and serpent-charming methods, the nomin- atives became the possessives — and I had to borrow at usury, whilst my friends kept on placidly owing to me, and denying themselves no good thing that my money could buy for them. Yet, shall I repine when I reflect on the twice-blest effects of the moral education which I thus suffered, and which impart chastened, but austere, joys to the shady groves of retrospect! For if, on the one hand, I have at length learnt to 131 Echoes of Whistler reverence and esteem at their true value the simple mind, the confiding, unsuspecting, flattered, fluttered, hustled, bustled, sophisticated, gulled and super- latively " had " friends — the passive geMus, the un- kneaded putty, the dough-nuts, the soft roes, the ^olian strings, the pleased, willing, easy, even fussy dupes, the Used: on the other hand, I have been enlightened as to the office and the arts, and even virtues, of the Users. The unexpected lights fall on the surprised orbs; and emotions, inexpressible in mere poor words, spring forth, and well over, until the heart that labours with the howling blasts that surge through its chambers, aches for that it cannot effectually dam the eyes. The world — the world, that is, of human men — is ineradicably one-sided. Indeed, it cynically admits the odious charge, for it speaks habitually of " half the world," and the " other half " of it. And this is, unhappily, true in retail as in gross : in the smallest society, and even family. And, in a sense which exceedingly few are likely to apprehend, it is also true of the individual man; but this thought is too deep. Only children, sages, and spirits may seize the hem of the trailing cloud. Let, however, any man of a proper equilibrium of mind set himself to review, if only in some side-lights, this absorbing subject of Use — from the User's point of view. He cannot fail to be struck, on the very threshold 132 On the Use of Friends of his inquiry, with the remarkable versatihty of talents, and diversity of moral attributes, which must go to the making of a successful User. He must, in the first place, have an emphatic sense of his own desires, or requirements — which have the automatic powers of self-expansion — and be able to build up a generously-capacious edifice of acquisitive- ness. Then, he must be a consummate judge of human nature — and, notably, of its virtues. For the man who has once helped you, or taken an interest in you, feels a glow of patronage, a sense of protectorship, a pleasing feehng of being a species of minor lord ; and is much more likely to help again. And these home-grown satisfactions have their holy function, else real gratitude — the vice of helots and the virtue of none — might be expected; and that would but abrade the fine gloss and texture, as of a butter-fly's wing, of the User's finest sentiments — by clattering her reminding tablets on his warily- cocked ear. And tact also must he possess, and perseverance, and, after a time, unbounded courage and abandoned unceremoniousness ; and — in certain cases — well- judged arrogance, or simulated indifference, or resist- less familiarity; with endless other qualities which must be brought into constant practice. The deserving User is not only as the man who can put other men's hands at the end of his own arms, as is said of born rulers and leaders of men, but he can do infinitely better: he can put the other men's 133 Echoes of Whistler hands into the other men's pockets — for his own advantage and gain. Not gain in its mere chinking sense is here alone meant. These resomiding truths equally apply to social and political matters; to Hterary and artistic products which friends may be induced to praise, and other friends, perchance, to buy; and to the end- less aims, ends, furtherings, featherings, betrayals, resentments, advancements, favours, influences, and a thousand and one matters and things impossible to enumerate, and generally comprised in the words Sundries— or, less elegantly, " Use for all they're worth." For, mark you, it is the friend who is the traitor; the enemy cannot be so. C'est tou jours le brave homme qui vous tromjm : on se defle des autres. Doubtless, the Users think that their ministry begins and ends with themselves, and with the uses they make of their abihties and opportunities; but that were indeed to narrow the reach and range of their mission. They have, little as these bhnd servitors of destiny have imagined it, been themselves but the Used in turn — and in a higher and better sense. They have induced merit in the other class — at all events, some moral disciphne — whilst they have, themselves, made a good thing of it. The Used may, in the long run, reap— more or less. But it is the Users who have more enduringly 134 On the Use of Friends sown; they have harrowed evanescently ; and they will gather their reward many times retm-ned into their own bosoms; though they may have ceased to be merely impenitent. For they will be incapable of restitutions. 135 ON THE SMARTING SET I THINK at odd moments that Earth has some few features of a laughable nature, and that some credit is due to the fact that she has made her own comedies, farces and burlesques; and that, having made them, she retains her capacity to be amused with them, I am by no means sure that she is not as highly interested in the manufacture as she is in the shelv- ing, superannuation, or destruction, of these fantastic creations of her idle, silly, vicious or over-fed moments. There is, of course, nothing new — often, not even in mere form — in these hollow manifestations of the frivolously-inferior side of the human character, and which I might justly call the vivaciously-inane, or the freakily-vain. When last heard of they were known as the Smart Set; and to be considered a member of such a class, caste, or coterie was — possibly, is still — deemed by many men and more women as a delicious and soul- uplifting compliment — when it should, by rights, provoke a rush of fists to the head, or the leap of a poignard to the ribs. It is, however, more likely to provoke an invitation to a smart function of some sort or another. It was on the Smart Set that I intended to drop a few remarks. A dear departed but ever-present ^37 Echoes of Whistler friend suggested the better title which I have adopted. It greatly enlarges the horizon, for it comprehends also those who suffer by their contiguity or, at all events, those who have to live in the same hemisphere. " Let the galled jade wince " — I have no rancours left me, not even disdains. Sour was I never. Some little playfulness of mood and mind, taking the airy shapes of Fancy, lightly clad in gossamers that re- flected the sunshine; some little deftness in a flavouring of the cup with a squeeze of irony, a touch of causticity, a spice of epigram, a drop of sarcasm — some of all this may have been fitfully mine, but no more. Not that it is at all desirable, or even necessary, to descant on such obvious expressions of a poor taste and an absent or barren mind. Because it is not at all a likely thing that the person who finds a charm, a solace, or even a gratification in such flashy pursuits, pranks, or pleasures should be morally or mentally capable of gauging his or her own vacuity or degradation. And to those who are saner — and who see in this world, and in life, a good deal more than the fluttering vanities of display, and the hunt for notoriety, flattery, and frivolous excitements — these miserable, dancing and bobbing flies in a sunbeam are as smoke to the eyes and as ashes to the mouth. Now, I am not going to quarrel with anything in the nature of lightness of heart, or of sport, or play, or even of f eastings and gatherings, or any of the fun of the fair — especially for the young. 138 On the Smartino: Set They have to be brought to market and Junket- hall ; even the dancing-booth is a good place for the business — as such. I am not inclined, however, to forego the duty of leaving on this portion of my subject a few observa- tions. I have no idea that there is. any inclination to fasten upon any particular class of people the stigma of wasting time, money, health, and seK-respect upon sensational displays which are often silly in the ex- treme — and sometimes idiotic. Nor do I think that it should be forgotten that not a few persons, who do know better, take some part in these stupidly insensate matters, which bring to the cheek of sensibility the blush of shame for the common consanguinity. There can be no dispute that even a man of some power of endurance must, sooner or later, succumb to the demands that smartness — social smartness — makes on the most heroic and besotted of our race. Nor would even a robust and abandoned baboon long survive the physical sham, and the moral dry-rot. There may be some phantom of hope for their eventual restoration to decency, reason, and moral light — so long as they remain unseared to the point of smarting — if even at sporadic moments they reflect on their wretched caperings and struttings and peacockings, and perpetual beatings of the big drums of notoriety, and hysterical letting off of their ninepenny fireworks. Have I not said enough to show that, after all, it is 139 Echoes of Whistler the Smart Set which is in reality the Smarting Set; and that the spectators of the sorry shows may laugh, or grieve, or pity, or be indignant, and use all too inadequate expressions, and moralise — and be a lot of money in pocket, besides? Hence, whilst I condemn I also reprieve. I would give much were it possible to be able to sit in judgment on these butterflies and moths of Society, and sentence them to the penances of sobriety of mind, of charity, and of decency of demeanour. I should also prescribe some exceptional penalties for the male section of this miserable category — with an added weight of punishment for those who really knew better but who, for ulterior ends, swim in the shallow and nauseous stream. As to the poor, tawdry, witless, gadding, chattering, vanity-sodden apes in angels' forms — the women — I would not waste even the breath that goes to the smoking of a cheroot, or to the utterance of an un- meant imprecation, upon them — for it were useless waste of lung-power and speech. Yet, could they be made to see with understanding eyes and unwontedly-feeling hearts, how much un- deserved pain and sorrow is being daily and hourly endured by creatures more meritorious than them- selves, they might, perchance, draw from that sight a reproof that no other teacher could haK so effectively administer to them. That is, if the impression lasted long enough in their superficial and unsteady minds — prone to fling themselves eagerly and foolishly into every whim of 140 On the Smartini{ Set showiness, and novelty of posturing, in that garish pantomime which they take for human existence. I thought at starting that I should laugh at my subject, and especially at the subjects of my subject ; but it has made me, not only pensive but, in- dignantly melancholy. Still, it is sweet also to think that this precious set is, and must of necessity be, a smarting one: for before the heahng blessing of self-contempt comes along, and the wholesome whispers of self-rej)roach, what jealousies, rivalries, intriguings, hypocrisies, disappointments, ruins, and concealed miseries of a thousand kinds must they suffer ! Yea, and keep on smiling, and pretending all the while as if they were on an Olympus, or in an Elysium of their most ex- clusive own — though in their secret minds they know full well that the trumpery envies which they excite, and the silly admiration which they covet, are but poor rewards for their laborious games and costly struttings. Who of them — even the nether-worldUest of men or most feather-brained of women — would like this epitaph on their ignoble tombs: " She was Smart." " He Smarted." But, be the epitaph there or not, the arduous pre- paration for that too-distinctive condition would not be thrown away ; the insufficient nomenclature might be modified, but the fervent reality would long and retributingly be theirs ! They would continue of the Smarting Set. I have done my best to warn ; and your yawns shall not mitigate my moral satisfactions. 141 ON DOLLS AND IDOLS He who would predict that a time may ever come when children will discard dolls may safely be allowed to prophesy that their elders will abandon idolatry — in one or other of its many forms. For that which the doll is to the little girl — the woman in outhne — the idol is to the older person, in that it is the containing, as well as the sustaining, point of all that he chooses to attribute to it, or with what he, himself, invests it. That thought within its inmost shrine is more frequently than not as fantastic, unreal, unreasonable, or distorted as is the strange, expressionless, and often headless, disarticulated, or otherwise mutilated pre- sentment of the little people. From time whereof the mind of man goeth not to the contrary, parents have furnished their children with dolls of one kind or another, in clay, wood, bone, metal, rag, and almost every kind of other material. Oldest Egyptians, pre-historic savages, ancient Aztecs — every age, race, degree — all practically recognised the natural need of the infantile heart and mind — probably prompted, in the beginnings of things, by the instinctive efforts of their boys and girls to make to themselves imitations — or, at all events, representatives or even mere suggestions — of familiar or interesting objects. 143 Echoes of Whistler The fetish was a development, and so much the iigher in appearance, and the less certain in benignity, as the adult was, in every way, in comparison with the child. That a doll — the word must be taken in an ampler sense than merely as an image of a human being — is a thing on which the imagination lavishes all its wealth of creativeness, and all its endowments of life and colour ; that it is the subject of sympathy, sohcitude, and even affectionate devotion; that it becomes comrade, confidant, consoler — all this is matter of universal assent. Nor is the reflection rare that dolls serve also, in their very simple and pleasing way, the purposes of education. They inculcate thoughtfulness, care, neatness, memory — even industry in the case of girls; and heaven alone knows what else they teach the tiny women's hearts. As to boys, whose dolls run rather to animals, warriors, sailors, niggers, and the like — as their toys tend to ships, chariots, engines, guns and other manly objects, so distinct from the domestic assortments of their sisters — who can question that these con- genial playthings, and, very often, beloved friends, exercise a potent influence on their thoughts, fancies and feelings, and go some way in the formation of their characters, however crude the mere art ! To the observant mind it is not at the stage of more or less correct misrepresentation that the higher interest arises. 144 C)n Dolls and Idols " The Cliild is father to the Man." But the minute girl is mother, grandmother, maiden aunt, nurse, governess, teacher, housekeeper, brides- maid, sempstress, companion, gossip, and sponsor to the Woman. Also several other unenumerated relationships. Thus, the love of dolls, in their many forms and diversified adaptations and casts is inteUigible and lovable. But quite another train of thought is awakened when it is seen that there is scarce a child which does not make an especial favourite of some subject, though battered out of resemblance, crippled out of shape, and, so far as any gross third party can per- ceive, devoid of even any particular association — such as, with older folk, might constitute a link of idea, or of sentiment, as regards other people. I knew a little boy who had engines, carts, arks, trains, soldiers, cannon, and quite a stud of wooden horses — from the square-built roadster with sym- metrical patterns of round red spots, to the well- painted dapple greys, real-skinned roans, and well- turned-out browns and bays. And yet the dearest steed — on which he expended his choicest care, his prettiest names, his closest hugs, and his warmest kisses — was the mere body of an old wooden horse, curved on the back, flat on the under-side, flush on the flanks, without a head or even a neck, and, literally, not the ghost of a leg to stand on. And without any colour save that of the kitchen- K 145 Echoes of Whistler table, and a poor sequel of only three hairs where the tail had been, and the four holes in which the vertical kneeless legs had once been glued — a mere piece of wood to the eye of anybody else : but, to him, it had ceased to be a doll; it had become an idol. Similarly, I have been on confidential terms with a very little girl who, being an only child, with many fond relatives and numerous friends of the family, had a very extensive collection of dolls of all sorts and sizes, in a bewildering variety of dresses and costumes. She prized them all, of course; each had a name and an especial character, temper and accomplish- ments assigned to her or him — and all were dear to her heart and pride. But there was one which, hke a lobster, had shed an arm, a leg, the entire top and back of her head, and one beady eye. Not a dressy doll at her best, nor one of an ex- ceptionally fair visage, or standing smile, even in the flower of her newness and beauty; rather dowdy, too, and, for the most part, not a httle grimy. But, for some secret reason — certainly not sym- pathy with her misfortunes, nor because of any special regard, or even memory, of the donor — that unpre- possessing and rather dissolute-looking ruin of once fair doll-hood was beloved beyond all her sisters. Her mistress always placed her in the seat of honour, told her all her secrets, and shared all joys and griefs and disgraces and disappointments with her, and confided to her her most intimate opinions about her 146 On Dolls and Idols relatives, and visitors, and other girls whom she knew ; and of plans and parties and promises ahead. And, in a word, she would have parted with all her other dolls, and even their clothing, rather than with this tenderly-loved, cherished and trusted but hideous little bundle. For it had become an idol, and was no longer a mere doll. Now, that little boy and girl — they were both relations of mine — could not explain this; the doll was one thing in itself, another thing to any ordinary spectator; but, to the child, what was it, in reality, that it had become? What, of itseK,had the child imparted to the object : with what thoughts, or sentiments, or indefinable fancies, had it invested it? How far was it, in effect, a sort of mirror of the child's own inner being — an unconscious reflection, apparent to itseK alone? The thing was idealised; it was a beautiful idolatry. For, as they grow older they but change their dolls. Somebody once remarked that a girl must always have something or somebody to worship. He might have extended his remarks to boys also. Indeed, it is doubtful whether, of the two, a boy is not more inclined to break and sally out of himself in admiration of others than a girl who, at an earlier age, becomes studious and solicitous of herself, and anxious to gather in rather than, like her brothers, to expend in the way of worship and liking for others — save, perhaps, in the most limited sense which, again, is but part of her own individualisation. 147 Echoes of Whistler Idols are as various as are human characters or crazes, and every man and woman has a pet altar somewhere stowed away, with the little shaded lamp burning before the secret ikon. And some have a pantheon to themselves. In many cases the idol is — themselves. In others, it is a wife — rarely, if ever, a husband — or other vain image; or a child — for a brief hour; or a politician, or an actor, or an author — sometimes a cook. Numerous, grotesque, frightful, intricately-sym- bolical, costly, beautiful, as have been, and even are, the graven images which have received human prayer and adoration, the ungraven images have had a vaster range of form, and, even at this moment, an almost universal but intensely-diversified worship — of the most outrageous folly in some cases, of the most lovely and idiotic seK-subjugation in others. The girl will idolise some trumpery lover, or, more likely, some other girl's trumpery lover, and will picture him to her heated fancy as cast in heroic mould and manly beauty, when he is, in all likelihood, a very ordinary, spindle-shanked individual with a rather pimply face. And she will dream of him as soaring with noble ambitions and heaving with volcanic passions, when, all the time, his mind does not rise much beyond the rolling of his own cigarettes or the holding of his own at pool. She has made an idol of Higgins — she will, of course, find it all out some day should she marry him. As a rule, women marry other women's idols. It is a singular reflection that whereas woman — elusive, 148 On Dolls and Idols penetrating woman — has a quick and almost dog-like intuition into character, she becomes the veriest fool, dupe, and imbecile the moment that she allows her imagination to circle around a man. And this also shows the demoralising effect of idolatry. But infatuated, silly, reckless — and always un- scrupulous — as may be a woman's worship — as everything else of hers — that of a man who " falls in love " as he supposes, is a thousand-fold more melan- choly and debasing. It is not a dream but a superstition — an infatuation, a hazy insanity, an ague, a fever, a nightmare, a humihation, and a sorry, silly spectacle for sane men and saddened angels. The poor fool thinks that he has discovered a fresh corner of Eden, with seraph-planted flowers whose entrancing colours and sweet odours he was the first and only man to see. And all the while it is a poor cemetery, with some paper garlands stuck about; and she plays up to the Eden idea — and talks him over in a practical, business-like way with her mother and sisters, or friends. And when he marries her — having toiled and courted, and besought, and prayed and propitiated and all that, when he had only to beckon and she would have run to his arms — even to his feet — he will wake up. But sometimes it happens that the doomed man remains doating, and beheving, and he little thinks, whilst myrrhing and frankincensing his prejDosterous 149 Echoes of Whistler idol, that she has her own private wax-worii gallery, the grouping and figures of which she evokes in her moments of reverie — or of fond and traitorous make- believe when in his very arms. Passons ! They are false gods all — the idols; but they vary as do the hearts and minds and fancies of human creatures — from the bigotry of disinterested admira- tion, or loyal devotion, or blind affection, or in- ordinate folly, to the fatuous and contemptible self- worship, or the devouring emptiness of social position, or money, or other ephemeralities scarcely worth tabulating. I saunter amongst these paltry fanes, saluting, here and there, the idol erected by true love in its many manifestations, by fond illusion, by sincere friend- ship ; and I sigh as I think of the hungry heart and absurd brain of man. But I smile, and am warm and happy in the thought that the children are the real philosophers and, did we but know it, teachers also; for to them are vouchsafed, with loving adaptiveness, those symbols, allegories and hieroglyphs of higher truths and deeper mysteries than the priests of Isis and Osiris knew — their dolls. For whilst, like the Athenians, their elders have bordered the highways of life with idols as many as are their follies and fancies, their weaknesses and their wants, the Httle soft hands of the children dress the white altar of the Unknown God. 150 ON HOBBIES There are innumerable persons who have, outside their ordinary avocations, or because of none, pursuits, tastes, and activities which are good-humouredly, if profanely, called Hobbies. The title has become expressive, but too general. There are studies hke Astronomy, Chemistry, Entymology, Pisiculture, Electricity, Botany, and a hundred more, with or without laboratories or appliances and means of research, experiment, or demonstration. There are pursuits hke photography, carpentry, turning, raising of poultry, rabbits, pigeons and song- birds, gardening, tinkering, music, and many others. There are the grave and fascinating hobbies of collection, in its higher and finer sense: objects of taste, or of historical interest; or of connection with Science, Industry, Literature, Sociology, in their countless branches, lines, issues and forms — from pre-historic flints to mediaeval umbrellas, from them to the latest coins. There are also earnest collectors of a class of objects of relatively smaller value, but to which attaches the personal touch and association, such as the walking-sticks, snuff-boxes, arms, arm-chairs, night-caps, apparel, beds or boots, or other belongings 151 Echoes of Whistler of distinctive persons of note in past times — and now completely deceased. These varied devotions of time, thought, care and cash are all very praiseworthy, and yield their pos- sessors much charm and pleasure and legitimate pride, as is but right; and they undoubtedly raise their lives in refinement, knowledge and even usefulness. They are also, in a greater or less degree, public benefactors, and they have their reward — and deserve more. There are also collectors of stamps — real stamps — for some of which high prices are paid, and not hand- somely-printed albums of them; and they have doubtless their gratifications — at which mystery I have ceased to marvel, as one does in presence of the Insoluble. It has at times seemed strange to me that what I may pohtely, but unrespectf ully, designate the Minor Collector has unduly circumscribed his horizon and limited his choice of subjects. Instead of crowding into over-trodden paths, and being stuck in petrified ruts, and making their hobbies too cheap by the number of riders, and too dear by their inter-competitions, they might well consider what other unexplored fields lie ready for cultivation, and harvests ripe for gathering, at normal or even sub-normal prices, Not only would they thus have the satisfaction of originality, but also the unspoiled breadth of selection combined with unfanciful figures; also the solid prospects of earher fame, and of later profits. 152 On Hobbies Some men are born to be not witty but the cause of wit in others, and. not lucky, but the pointer or setter, and even bringer, of fortune to many portions of the human family — and to die dull, poor, and, naturally, unappreciated and unthanked. But that reflection, and sad remembrance, shall not refrigerate my bosom, or restrain me from scattering, with over-brimming hands, the golden grain of sug- gestion to my less imaginative or nimble-minded brothers. Prometheus did not steal fire from heaven for his individual use alone. I institute no comparison, for that were immodest and unbecoming. But I yield my entire hearth to my fellow-creatures — in a manner of speaking ; I dismantle my grate ; I retain not a cinder nor a spark for myself; glare or glow, blaze or blow — I give all to my kindred — and much good may it do 'em ! Listen, then, oh, my brothers, in the obscure chambers of whose heads many soft breezes wander, or idling bees hum ; and take in a few reefs in your ears! Here's a List of New and Original Subjects. It is not trade-marked or copyrighted. I ask no royalties. I hint at no testimonials — I do not even anticipate a monument — for some time to come. The hst as aforesaid: Umbrella Handles. False Teeth of Illustrious Persons. 153 Echoes of Whistler Warming-pans of Civilised Eaces. Latchkeys. Powder Futfs of Renowned Actresses. Dog Collars of Distinguished Ladies. Photographs of the Great, the Fair, the Good and the Not Good. Champagne Corks from Mess Tables. Prospectuses. Tobacco-stoppers of Eminent Burglars. Orders to view Great Houses. False Noses. Portraits of Conspicuous Beadles. Hairs from Heads of Executioners. Kestaurant Menus. Cast Horse-shoes. Chips from Black Marias. Jokes. Bad Money. LO.U.'S. Borrowed Books. It is not to be inferred that finality is set to this instructive array, which may be extended in other worthy directions in future editions of this Titanic work. II saute aux yeux that, if this had been printed for jjrivate circulation only, some points, not strictly laudable in principle nor altogether unadventurous in practice, might have been indicated, and some theses, sickhed o'er with the pale cast of ethics, might have been discussed. For a material-minded man must perceive that a zealous collector can develop a highly-acquisitive opportunism, to be exercised with adroitness and assiduity, and guarded by caution and care; and thus, with perseverance and sincerity, accumulate miscellaneously, impartially, and lucratively. Such things as other people's silver spoons, knick- 154 On Hobbies knacks, jewels, letters, and many other stowabilities and portabilities, naturally occur to a thoughtful and enterprising collector. Women have, in this region of mental and digital occupation, many precious advantages, as so often falls to them. Not only are their chances greater and more in- timate, but the range of items roams more widely; and their natural capacities for assumption and con- cealment, and their cultivated abilities in artifice and easy assimilation, must be of a utihty not far removed from an especial endowment. I arrest my philanthropic and all too pregnant pen. I think that I have traced, though but in faintest outline, how the intellect may be strengthened, the spirit refreshed, the heart made more sympathetic, the habits more sociable and unrestrained — and one's assets materially augmented. I am not unprepared for the moralist's lifted brows of doubt, or for his down-pressed asjject of censori- ousness; but I shall not argue. My simple answer will establish mine integrity : Such gatherers are not responsible beings. My vindication is complete. I may not be understood in my own day. A reverential posterity may do me justice. I do not particularly desire that attention from my con- temporaries. I have my reasons. 155 ON THE EXTRAVAGANCES OF VIRTUE When one reflects that human Hfe is made up so largely of errors and ignorances, and affected so con- siderably by passions, and the minor but clamant calls of divers wants, it is rather pleasing to think that Virtue exists at all, or, existing, is able to main- tain a more or less faltering being. But, when Virtue is mentioned, the word must not be taken as applying exclusively to the higher group of moral conformities — which, indeed, differentiate Man from the other animals, and without which Life were a chaos and the Soul an objectless, bewildered and tortured demon. There is a group — a subordinate group, it may be conceded — of Virtues which, being of diversified origin and, in some respects, of doubtful utility and not irreproachable inherency — is a legitimate subject for the philosopher's scalpel and lens. Of such, to cite but a few, are : Consistency Punctuality Svstem "On Principle " Econuniy Firm u ess. This Ust might easily be expanded in a most in- structive and unpleasant manner, " but it suflficeth," as the gentle Mercutio said of his wound. 157 Echoes of Whistler Were I racked, or thumb-screwed, or otherwise inebriated, or tormented to choose which of these second-class Virtues I least love, and would with the smallest of pangs part with, I should at once declare for the banning and banishing of Consistency. The man or woman who is guided by this sleek deception — ^which masquerades as a Virtue when it is only a heavy-faced wooden image, daubed and decked to resemble some holy saint glowing in a cathedral window — is worse than an infidel ; he or she is a fool. For the worship of one's seK is much more demented than that of one's ancestors. And the besotment is the greater as the worshipper is continually receding from himself, and fails to perceive the strange inversions that, as he grows in years, he should be wiser, and take on the larger and sounder views from greater knowledge and wider experience. In a word he should, as he gets older and stouter, " Broaden down from precedent to precedent," not in the corporeal sense alone. A maddening yet cold-blooded Virtue is Punctu- ality. It is a moral alarum-clock, a measured line, an exacting and relentless tyranny. It aims at the enslaving of humanity — " for its good," of course! — and Time itself is used as the implement of coercion and suffering. The guest who likes his fish, and his hostess' temper, unspoilt will pay to this leaden and remorse- less Virtue a transient and severely-restricted homage — if he accepts the dinner invitation. 158 On the Extravaorances of Virtue <~ But there the wise citizen of the world will part company with this heavy-browed horological merit. For it is, socially, very trying; financially, it is pointedly noxious; and it is pitilessly calculated to bring most pleasant indolences, easy-goings, and careless procrastinations to untimely ends. " System," in the vital signification of the word, is a cruel gaoler who walks about clanking keys and gyves and fetters, and ever repeating rules and by- laws as if they were the litanies of the souls of the men and women who were once laws unto them- selves; hved the fives of their unrestrained hearts and fancies; and went for "grand slam" in their pleasures and pursuits. This unyielding keeper of the Procrustean bed- chamber is a gaunt vexer of the spirit and of the flesh, always imposing its cast-iron formulas, and cramping our lives by minute limitations and in- flexible measurements. Had the Wise King been confronted with the proposition he would doubtless have varied his fine aphorism to read: "Better is an improvised and even short-commoned picnic in a warm dry-ditch than a stalled ox with horse-radish sauce, Yorkshire pudding and hot plates in the best-regulated model prison." More objectionable, because less self-convinced and sincere than the cultists of the disagreeable Virtues already named, is the man who affects to do, and most frequently not to do, things " On principle." In nine cases out of ten he is a smooth and glacial 159 Echoes of Whistler impostor; in the tenth case he is a narrow-minded bigot, or a conceited prig, or a weak-kneed mono- maniac, or a genuine hero in a small way, as when a man voluntarily deprives himself of his tobacco or wine for the sake of example to others. In the overwhelming majority of instances this peculiar Virtue is but a pretext for meanness and hard-heartedness. The man who declines to subscribe to some charity or object, or to give to a casual poor, or to help with his name (if not with his purse) some good purpose or movement, or to extend a generous hand to a friend in trouble — the list could be lengthened con- siderably — always sHnks behind this cowardly and hypocritical hedge of refusing " On principle." Of that man — beware ! Look at his eye, his mouth, his sickly, false smile — and distrust him in all things. His bones are marrowless, and his nose will be held down closely on Pluto's grindstones. There is a fussy, hustling, worldly, and unamiable little Virtue — Economy — which might be relatively tolerable in the abstract were it not for a wearing habit of lecturing, and of getting on one's nerves with statistics, moraUsings and unsparing arithmetic. I respect her at all times ; I love her — at a distance ; I adore her, as at the square of her remoteness; I indite penitential odes to her when my pockets are empty ; I repeat her wise maxims and mathematical counsels — when I have nothing to spend. And then, with her wisdom crying aloud in all the recesses of memory, and appeahng like battering-rams 1 60 On the Extravarances of Virtue to all the walls of reason, I become profligate of ex- penditure — as regardless of expense as of payments — in a word, as profusely spendthrift as this estimable, practical, prosaic Virtue is extravagant in parsimony. A rigid and redoubtable Virtue is Firmness, which screws up like a vice, and holds down hke an anchor. It is a Virtue for lofty contemplation, cold chills, uneasy memories of childhood, and mixed recollec- tions of miscellaneous but forgettable reading. Everybody thinks he has Firmness — especially the pig-headed. Now, this grand, historic, noble and utterly for- bidding quaHty is too grand for poor human natvu'e's simple ration. It is in perfect harmony with antique Romans, Monarchs, Great Commanders of Armies and Fleets, Satraps, Hon-tamers, teachers, warders, nurses, debtors, captains at sea, bankers, cooks, martyrs, conspirators, refractory paupers, intending slayers of picture-dealers and of pubhshers — and other great, good and eminent persons. But I prefer the homeher and much more familiar habit of Obstinacy to this fearsome assumption of Firmness, in the placid and unromantic walks of common Ufe. But this is only because I have the faculty of analysis, and the grace of profundity, to discriminate between the two. Some affect to be able instinctively to distinguish the one from the other ; but they delude themselves, for the most part. Who, for instance, can undoubtingly pronounce L l6l Echoes of Whistler which is which when a schoolmaster persists in flog- ging a boy who refuses to answer? And one may sweetly muse as to what was in the minds of the Spanish crowds, which always cried to the Jew about to be burned for his faith : "Be firm, Don Israelo; don't abjure; don't kiss the cross. Be firm! " For the gentle populace did not want to lose the enjoyment of the roasting ahve of a fellow-creature; his soul was an immaterial item. Their piety was sohd and unquestionable : but they did not too seriously propound to themselves the questions as to whether he had become convinced by the arguments presented to him in the torture- chambers, and was ready— at the supreme moment— to renounce his own religion and assume that of his zealous mentors — or tormentors — or if still unsatisfied and heretical. They took a somewhat secular view of the entertainment. For in the former case the shouted advice should, in sheer logic, have been: " Be obstinate." Inasmuch as the invitation to " be firm " obviously could apply only in the latter. But people are, collectively as well as individually, often indefinite in idea and loose in expression. There are subordinate sides, and even uses, of this Virtue — such as its service, by persistence in the formation of Habit, with all its incalculable saving of mental wear and tear ; and also in its suave influence in helping the incubation of the selfishness which has i6z On the Extravagances of Virtue not the taint of modesty, and of the dogmatism that has not the varnish of reasonableness. Now, this happens to be a Virtue which I claim to understand well, for I, myself, am Firm. Everybodij else is obstinately obstinate. 163 ON SOME STALKINQ = HORSES There are so many varieties of horses that to select any one species might seem a sort of reflection upon the others left in abeyance or obhvion, or, at all events, unnoticed. But the Stalking-horse, in his metaphorical guise, plays so many parts in the drama of life, or, to be more accurate, plays his one uniform part in such diversity and even versatility of manner, that he claims attention and description with pre-eminent impera- tiveness. Yet what terse sketch or essay can do more than indicate, rather than catalogue, some of the more patent, or flagrant, forms in which he appears in this unhappy hunting-ground — the world! I do not mean the occasional hire or hack — the making or the using of a mask, a bhnd, an expedient, an opportunity, a trick on the emergency, a dodge on the improvisation, a pretence ad hoc, a hoisting of false colours on a particular cruise ; or by whatso- ever other term the ruse, the hypocrisy, and the swindle may be designated, or qualified. Casting my thoughts around me I perceive, amid the moors and fells and crags and torrents of social life, droves and herds of such steeds in the Wild, and studs and stables of great extent in the Tame ; by which 165 Echoes of Whistler terms of Wild and Tame I mean to specify the natural tendency, and the cultivated addiction, respectively — with, of course, an intensified jierdition in respect of the latter. The beast of whom I am now treating is that which has become welded into the nature, air, action and, apparently, essence of the man or woman. The merely accidental or temporary assumption, employ- ment, or utihsation thereof is posted to a different account in the Great Ledger. Who, for instance, has not met the brusque man — and, though more rarely or offensively, woman — with his off-handed manners, coarse directness and nakedness of speech, calculated rudeness, and general bearing of uprightness and down-straightness and no nonsense about him? He glories in liis unvarnished, and evenunsmoothed, surfaces, so that all may see the native grain without any artificiahty or insincerity of pohsh; and he fairly bombards with unasked evidence of his perfect genuineness, and honesty, and incapacity to deceive. Beware of him ; behind that Bluff stalking-horse he is cool, cunning, cruel; he is a dangerous man in an especially dangerous ambuscade. With woman it is less the cover for plot and design — dear as these are to her heart — than the sort of permanent way, as engineers call it, on which she runs her rough-hewn hauteurs, her lacerating insol- ences and, not infrequently, her coarser tastes. Her candour is venom; her bluntness is high art — of its kind. i66 On some Stalkino- Horses Less rough-edged and better veneered is the Breezy stalking-horse, with its catchy bonhommie, easy famiharity, and ahnost contagious cheeriness. Its good humour is ahnost belhgerently exhilarating. Careless, light of touch, gay and hearty of voice and face, facile of smile, and ready of sparkle, this dis- guisement is alluring and disarming and, to its practical-minded owner, exceedingly useful and productive. A cross-bred nag is the Frivolous — the never-seri- ous, superficial, irrelevant rattle ; the chaffy, laughy, giggly, speak-before-think, irresponsible being, of either sex, though chiefly of the other one. Of course, and alas! this is too often natural in excitable, shallow, cheaply-organised persons — the sort of poor creatures who swarm into the world, and out of it, and can be estimated only in bulk, for their in- dividualities are insignificant; or, at best, by the great gross. But this character is often assumed, and engrafted on the real one ; and then it is very insidious, because no one dreams of taking precautions ; and curiosities are satisfied, confidences entrapped, and judgment clouded. Men employ it to cloak falsehood, fraud, parasitism, trick; women resort to it for vanity, invitations, intimacies, concealment, dissimulation; also the seeming flippancy not seldom masks aggressive coquetry, and even vicious advances and scarce- covert encouragements — or incitements. Close by is stalled a daintier, though allied, ambler 167 Echoes of Whistler — the Ethereal. Dreamy of eye, soft of mouth, spindley of leg, silky of coat, long of mane, gentle of manner, noiseless of hoof; a high-flier, a Pegasus, a steed wandered from the team of Aurora, a beautiful spirit from some equine heaven once again encased in form; a most attractive and interesting im- posture. This impersonation is, however, relatively rare; for one must have certain fitting quahfications of face and voice, and histrionic abihty, as well as some brains, imagination, and education to carry it off successfully. Also the circumstances of position must be ac- commodating, for it is obvious that anyone engaged in an active, hustling life — such as a lawyer, or horse- dealer, or stockbroker, or book-maker, or picture- merchant, or political woman, or social intriguer, or busybody, or retail trader, or scheming publisher, or plumber, or policeman on traffic duty, or tax- collector, or money-lender, or burglar, and others too tedious to name — would be unfitted to play the part with even an approximate plausibility. For unworldliness is the keynote of this especial affectation — which requires much talent to simulate ignorance, and to sustain convincingly a seeming inabihty to do a sum in simple addition, whilst con- ceahng its own intricate private algebra. Behind this superior sort of animal the social hunter aims at emancipation from many, or most, of the arduous duties of existence, and as much as possible from the unpleasantnesses attendant on i68 On some Stalking- Horses the requisite superfluities, and even necessities of mortal life — particularly as to payment for the same. Being in debt and difficulties — which are recounted with an amused air of bewilderment and incapacity to understand — he naturally looks to others, quite as a matter of course, to help him, or rather to take the entire matter off his heedless and helpless shoulders ; and borrows something additional for his personal requirements. Have I not been patronisingly recognised from smart hansoms or hired broughams, as I sat on a two-penny bus, by my ethereal friend, who was pay- ing munificent largesse out of the money lent him by me an hour before? And, at another time, after he had wrung my hand and murmured choking thanks too deep for words at my somehow saving him — (he did not really under- stand the business, you know; it was some epic of a ruffian sheriff's officer, and a thing called a cheque that I had given him which was to effect something or other, he could not quite make out what — except that I was so very good and clever, a sort of conjurer, you know, for these things were quite beyond his knowledge) — I happened into a famous restaurant Avith a foreign friend, and found mine other one with a merry group in evening dress, and the table almost groaning beneath champagne bottles. I did not crave for an introduction, and feigned not to see him ; but his head waiter looked pleased as he put the gold portion of the pourboire into his watch j)Ocket, and the haK-crowns and smaller coins, the 169 Echoes of Whistler remaining part thereof, into a more spacious one in another garment. I heard him tell Delilah where the theatre box was, and I wondered whether my £25 would last out the week . Unscrupulous when hard up, and prodigal when well off, this type of sportsman considers that, be- tween the two, he establishes a sort of moral average. And he knows that the man who has once helped is under a kind of prescriptive obligation to help again; for has he not been given the right to go to him at all times, with all or any of his tales, and to expect, if not to demand, further assistance? And is not he filled with that vague contempt which the recipient of a disinterested favour so very often feels for the grantor thereof? Therefore, he foists himself to the right and to the left, and canters easily along the pleasantest paths, and has visions of soul and trances of thought, and incommunicable warblings of heart and fancy and tongue ; and his friends and dupes are his hewers of wood and his drawers of water. In striking contrast is the slow and heavy Matter- of-fact animal, about which there is such ostentation of prosaic commercialism, and absence of all senti- ment whatsoever. It is caparisoned in home-spun. Such things as romance, or humour, or non-decalogue morality, or ideality, or eloquence, or beauty, or non- ready-reckoner motive, or honour, are treated as unintelligible as a healthy shire dray-horse would regard a treatise on botany. " Give me facts, facts," he cries. " I'm a matter- 170 On some Stalking-Horses of-fact man, I am. There's no nonsense about me; no high-falutin, or stuff of that sort. What I don't see I don't beheve; and what I do see I want to prove ; and what I prove I want in a short, sharp and handy shape. That's me." Yes, that's him. Now, this character is frequently genuine, and takes advantage of itself to impose on others as a safe, clear- headed, practical adviser and guide ; a frank speaker, an indehcate person of phenomenal honesty — because of the apparent inability to be a rogue. And there is the danger. Sometimes, in the real cases of the men with ultra- Dutch mind and nature, the comic aspect presents itself — of course, quite unconsciously. I knew a man Avho once said to me, " Read Glad- stone's speech? What, I? Three columns! Now, why can't he have said it all in ten minutes, instead of spinning it out like this? " " But," I answered, " a man has to develop his argument, give his reasons, illustrate his meanings, appeal to the feelings, the minds, and even the im- aginations of his hearers, elevate them to his levels, and adorn his speech with variety and colour in form as well as with life and weight and warmth in sub- stance — " and more to the like intent. Whereunto that man replied : " I call that all gammon and rubbish. Who on earth wants all that windbag stuff? And what's the good of it? What I want is the point — the short point, and there you are, you know." 171 Echoes of Whistler "I see," I said; "bald, bare and brief; wrapped up and thrown at you like a pellet? " " That's it — exactly. Bald and the rest of it — chucked to hit me between the eyes : and that's what I call practical, practical, and no ornamental humbug about it." A temptation came to me and I — embraced it. I said reflectively : " I think I begin to see your way of looking at things. I was almost about to say that there is a good deal to be said about it — but that would be antithetical, for an expanded dissertation on the merits of extreme compression might be to the short point as is the highly-attenuated aggregation of infinitely-segregated molecules to the ulterior con- cretion or minute mass into which its destined atoms are eventually to run ; or rather as are the environing and, from dynamic, magnetic and chemical points of view, determining conditions which control, in the essential particulars of time, energy, velocity, temperature, and the passive even more than the active inter-relations, and attractive as well as formative influences and reactions — to say nothing for the moment of that interpenetration not less of material than that which we, in our ignorance, term the impalpable or, better still, the silent and invisible forces in regions — " "Eh? " said my friend. " I was dealing with your short point," I explained, " and I was clearing the ground to come to it, and to say how entirely I was disposed to agree with you." 172 On some Stalking-Horses " Oh! " said my friend, dubiously. I apologised and proceeded to propitiate him. " I see exactly where you are. Let me see if I am right." My friend looked uneasy. I went on briskly. " Here," said I, in a smart and business-like way, " here's the play of Hamlet, for instance, in no less than five long acts, and full of dialogue, soliloquies — " " Jaw, jaw, jaw," interpolated my friend. " Just so," I replied, " and the short point may be cut down and expressed in a few lines, like a police- court paragraph in the morning papers." " That's what I say," cried my friend with alacrity. " For ^example," I proceeded, "Hamlet was the crown prince; father dead; mother married her brother-in-law, who somehow became king. Hamlet didn't like it, sulked, and went a bit off his head; thought he saw his father's ghost, which made him worse; cut lots of capers and talked a lot; cheeked his mother; threw over his sweetheart, who went silly and drowned herself ; killed her old father, and came to a bad end in a fencing bout with her brother, who used a poisoned sword which, in the scrimmage, stuck himself also; mother died of poison that the king had got for Hamlet, as a second string to his bow ; and he sticks the old chap with the poisoned foil, and then gets polished off as well. Simply, butcher's shop all round. That's all, stripped of its verbiage — as you call it." " That's it, that's it," shouted my friend with 173 Echoes of Whistler enthusiasm. " There you are, short and sweet, and to the point. By Jove ! I never heard a finer hterary effort, nor ever understood the play before as I do now." He pressed my hand and went on, almost in a rapture : " By George! it's the finest bit of literary genius I ever came across — it is indeed. Why, I believe you could boil down all Shakespeare into the four sides of a sheet of foolscap." I admitted that it was possible. " You should make a fortune," said he, admiringly, and, I believe, not quite unenviously. " Why, only fancy a theatrical manager giving half a dozen or more plays every night, and saving immensely in^salaries, dresses, and all that — as well as not boring audiences with yards and yards of talk! The short point — that's what's wanted nowadays." I consented to think it over, as well as his sugges- tion to publish a short-pointed Shakespeare, on the foolscap scale. Philistine! Oh, no; merely English — the Saxon or Scandinavian Enghsh unblest with a brightening unveracious strain of Celtic blood. There are sundry other Stalking-horses of whom I proposed to treat — such as the Grand-manner, the Poor-and-lowly, Invahdism, Sympathy, Indiscretion, Eccentricity, Absent-mindedness, Silence, Advice- seeking, and others which it were of much interest, and great uselessness, to trot out, and highly un- profitable, though righteous, to dissect. 174 On some Stalking- Horses But even the mere enumeration will suggest the tale and strike the moral, with a continued vibration or reminder, after this learned treatise shall have been laid aside — just as after the dying cadences of some grand harmony there is the sigh of the remainder- wind in the organ-pipes. Let me, however irregularly, conclude with a warm tribute of justice to the only honest horse, in a figurative sense — the simply-structured and un- decorated Clothes-horse. Yet even that is but a skeleton, a formless lay- figure, a frame for whatever may be spread on it. And, alas! this, too, is sometimes humiliated to the uses — of a mere Screen! 175 ON ALTRUISTIC PEDANTRY It were an altogether narrow, unjust and unfair definition of Pedantry to term it the vain-glorious showing-off of knoAvledge, or the finical or spiky insistence on minute points, or the unreasoning bigotry of ultra- technical exactitude. It is beyond all question that men and women delight in the thought, or hope, that other people con- sider them superior in some way or another. If they have, or fancy that they have, any gift or grace beyond the common herd, they rightly wish to dis- play it, and to receive the admiration, respect, or worship which would thus inure to them — even if such superiority consist of no more than certain acquirements — results of personal assiduity, rather than of heaven-bestowed talent. I am, however, now contemplating the pedantry which is not vanity, which is not even egotistical, and which is rather the disinterested outcome of the desire to render its knowledge serviceable to others — and the service gratifying to itself. And this I designate Altruistic Pedantry. To the proper constitution of this exalted, sacred, and acrid virtue there must go much jagged dog- matism, and huge quantity of cold zeal, solemn self- confidence, and complete disregard of the feelings of M 177 Echoes of Whistler others, or the fitness of the occasion, or of scason- ableness of the time. The predominant desire of the Altruistic Pedant is to be a benefactor. The sub-sentiment is the satisfaction whicli fills a well-informed and well-meaning mind — conscious of being better-informed and better-meaning than others — when uttering its words of methodically- stacked and tabulated knowledge, unsought counsel, and more or less inept application, from a pedestal. This sedate and reputable but, I fear me, unloved class of beings may be roughly divided into two chief categories — the Corrective and the Instructive. I have, in a spirit so even that it might also be described as judicial — but for its impartiality — weighed the one against the other, to discover which most, or least, deserved the thanks and blessings of mankind. Alas, that it should have to be so recorded ! It is " least " that the beam kicketh, in the gross; and as to the detail, as well might one balance a bane against a curse, or a plague against a pestilence. Plus cela differe plus c'est la meme chose. When you tell a good story it is doubtless salutary to have it re-edited, and your errors put right; but the feehng created at the moment is not as if the wells of gratitude gushed forth their sweetest flow. And when you have at last found, or made, the nice opportunity for the anecdote which you have garnered and cherished as something unique and fresh, it is unquestionably useful and proper to have 178 On Altruistic Pedantry it annotated there and then, and the authentic names, dates, places, and incidents ground out to replace those erroneously narrated by you ; but your thanks are apt to lack the glow and the fragrance which the priceless service of thrice-accursed precision so eminently deserves. The Spaniards have a proverb to the effect that the D-v-1 tempts every man, but that some men tempt the D-v-1. Parenthetically, it may be noted that women are not mentioned. It were superfluous. This is painfully true — as every one Avill find who, in presence of such a social philanthropist, ventures on a quotation, or is unable to verify it as to author- ship, or work, or context. Swift retribution and shame are his lot. Of course, it is designed for his eventual good, and for the cultivation of habits of greater care and accuracy; but he feels justifiably- homicidal in the present tense. Forgivingly one may take the being pulled up in the matter of statistics ; but the being set down in the matter of grammar rubs the gentle soul athwart the grain of placid contentment. And in these conscientious exercises the Altruistic Pedant, who seeks but the benefit of his victim, disregards every consideration other than his domin- ant and undiscrimating ambition to improve the other's mind. It is an unlamentable fact that he is not appreci- ated to the full measure of his merits and motives. I know that he has the stoicism of a police sergeant, 179 Echoes of Whistler the blunt indelicacy of a Yorkshireman, and the pos- sible fortitude of a martyr for the sake of sheer stubborn superiority. There is something not unpleasing in the thought of his martyrdom. I may safely vouch for it that ninety-nine per cent of his friends and acquaintances would cheerfully picnic around the pyre, bake jjotatoes in the wood ashes, and hire fiddlers to play dance-music to them during — and especially after — the incinderating programme. Less unendurable than this ever-correcting, re- vising, punctuating and finger-posting banality, whose very virtues lean to vice's side, is the Instruc- tive Altruistic Pedant. He burns with a dull, damp, smouldering glow, to improve each shining moment of every passing hour, as fated opportunity presents itseh; and to add to human lore out of the unoriginal store of his stolid mental warehousings. He has recipes for everything. He will discuss her cooking with his hostess — and criticise it, and instruct her to make better souj), and tastier sauces, and lighter pastry; he will find texts in everything, and spin endless sermons out of himself, on them all. At meals, every article will be subject for dissertation and for the copious dis- semination of much ill-timed and useless knowledge. To every item its explanation; to every allusion its lecture. The flour of the bread on the table, the milk, the butter, the fish, the bacon, eggs, sugar, coffee, tea, mar- i8o On Altruistic Pedantry malade; the porcelain, the electro-plate, the cutlery, the letters beside his plate, the newspapers on the side-table, the cottons and wools of the napery and the habiliments about him, their very make and hues — all are pegs for instructive discourses, full of facts and figures — accurate, interesting, mind-filling, and utterly wearisome. There are, naturally, speciahsts in the various walks, waddles, struts, saunters, or runs of this great division. I have glanced at the pedagogue, There are many others. There is the zealous and unselfish pedant in the matter of Hygiene, who is everlastingly measuring you cubic contents of air, preaching about your drains, inculcating open windows at night, and murderously- racking ventilations by day; and otherwise maldng you dread his presence, his unholy famiharity with poly-syllabic microbes, his convincing and unjjleasant facts, his positive assertions, and uncompromising but unsohcited advice — emphasized almost to command. And when the shaft of counsel is winged by the feathers of elucidation its whirr is as deadly as its barb. The Dietist crank is a bleak enthusiast, and his unsavoury studies or recollections of physiological mysteries, or chemical analyses, are extremely trying and unappetising. The Temperance enthusiast is, when he becomes an Altruistic Pedant, a sincere apostle — and an earnestly- affrighting spectre at the feast, or death's head on the i8i Echoes of Whistler table. His motives are most worthy, and his methods conduce to madness — if not to inebriety. I draw a merciful pen through a good deal which I leave the reader to recall to his own mind — if this essay has left him the capacity, as regards both power and room. These reflections might be greatly and uselessly expanded, but I refrain. Let it not, however, be supposed that I hold in light esteem the promulgators of facts, the propa- gators of knowledge, the scatterers broadcast of infor- mation. " Wisdom crieth aloud " with many voices — most of them harsh, and highly dispensable. And as Tennyson sighed : " Knowledge comes — but Wisdom lingers." It is not profane to wish that it were Wisdom that came and Knowledge — the knowledge corros- ively shed and ladled out by Altruistic Pedants — that lingered. Yet let me not be unjust. Pedants would be tolerable — were it not for their good memories. 182 ON CRITICS It is not my intention, in the cursory remarks which I am about to write, to say much that is either true or new. I prefer to set down a few observations which may possibly be of use to some aspiring artist or author, rather by way of indurating him to attack than by way of obviating it. And, firstly, I would say to such a person, " Do not let the thought of what any Critic may say in the least degree affect your mind. The Critic is but a hired jackal and thrives on carrion. Don't bother your head about him." I would add : " Never let the thought that a Critic may praise or blame influence your work. Critics, for the most part, are incompetent judges, or disappointed men, or over- worked fags, or underpaid jobbers — giving picks and pecks at honest work, and endeavouring, where they have a shred of conscientiousness or honour left, to gauge a picture by a sniff, or a book by a smell; and to compress into a hasty column of fluent balderdash the perfunctory glances and shp- shod bastings which take the place of real, pains- taking, and time-consuming labour." Do not I know them — the Critics — the glib, the 183 Echoes of Whistler hurried, the owners of a dozen phrases, the weavers of the appreciations which are ignorant rhapsodies or condemnations; and, for the most part, monuments of presumption, and more or less mahgnant or careless scamping! Having said this much it behoves a fair-minded essayist to admit that, here and there, may be found a man amongst the Critics, as a just man in the Cities of the Plain, who does try to master his subject, and to render it its fair meed of approbation — or the reverse. But the majority of them are ignorant, hustled, unreliable in point of metier, and often also in point of 7norale, and working under pressures of time, space, and other contingencies ; oft-times lending and borrowing notes and opinions the one from, or to, the other, so as to save trouble and thus club work and, heaven save the mark ! opinion — that is, where the " opinion " has not been suppHed by author or artist himself, in confidence. Now, one would imagine that a Critic — exceptions, of course, apart — must of necessity be a person of objectionable character, loose morals, and trouble- some habits. But it is not so. Indeed, a happier set of men does not exist. For, consider : a Critic has only to look at a picture — or see another fellow who has seen it, or says that he has seen it — and he straightway writes of it as seems good to his irresponsible and uninformed little soul, or as his loves, hates, prejudices or interests may dictate. And tlie Artist who has devoted years 184 On Critics to his training and education, and months to the work criticised, finds himseK judged out of hand by, maybe, a young and confident person of neither reading, knowledge, preparation, or even the super- ficial experience gained by travel abroad, or famiharity with the great collections at home. The rapidity, cursoriness, casualness of such a Critic's view of a work of art are unknown to the innocent and simple reader of the papers; and many thus form opinions or prepossessions which often are inimical to the cause of art, as they are unjust to the artists. How are the pubHc to know that such criticisms are worse than worthless — for the public, unfortun- ately, Hke to have their opinions found for them instead of doing so themselves. Is there any remedy? I see none, unless it be a fine of scaffolds from Putney to Poplar, with such a critic as I have sketched (not the able, laborious, honest though, mayhap, in his honesty, hostile critic) swinging on each gibbet — and an outraged artist pulhng his leg. I often marvel that men do not turn up who, for a consideration, would engage the whole imbecile, or corrupt, or unquahfied, or over-hurried gang to become leaders of banditti, or brigands, or holders-up of bank cashiers, or kidnappers of beloved hving or sacred dead. There is scarcely any other rank of life in which so good a choice could be made. I know that I am writing with undue absence of 185 Echoes of Whistler indignation and heat; but that is not because I fail to feel keenly, but rather because the necessity for maintaining a magisterial calmness of temper and mind imposes restraint upon me. Were it not so I might be tempted to employ language which, though amply warranted by the circumstances, might yet be regarded, by those better acquainted with the subject than I am, as verging on emphasis — and even tending to vigour. I have, individually speaking, no resentments to satisfy, nor even any complaints to urge — now. True, there are some few — certainly not more than forty or so — or I may say sixty as a fairly-approxi- mated outside number — whom I should wish, on general grounds, to submit to a few novel, and un- hastened processes of torture. Let the startled and too gentle reader be reassured and breathe more freely; I do not mean the rack, the thumbscrew, the maiden, the faggot; not even the tread-mill or the cat-o'-nine-tails. These are crude, coarse, inartistic — and insufficient. More refined, and infinitely more exquisite, is the torment I would administer — more in sorrow than in anger, and more in hope than in sorrow; for my purpose would be disciplinary and reformatory, not vindictive ; and my object large and broad — destined to bear beautiful fruit wherever men and women labour to transmute the beauty of their conceptions into pictures, or pour loving truth into books from the crucibles of their own hearts. I would make every man-jack of them work hard, 1 86 On Critics long, painfully, expensively, self -sacrificing ly, hope- fully, passionately, for years and years — bearing up against neglect, disappointment, failure, poverty, suffering; and then, when they had produced their best and latest pictures, statues, poems, novels, essays — I should present to them their present actual selves as the Critics who, hke themselves, can ruin a hope, or blast a career over a cigarette, swap snappy reviews over a bar-counter, fudge half a column from a catalogue, and a comment from some other paper ; or evolve the lot from a tired brain, a knack of the pen, and a lack of conscience. But no; a finer, a nobler revenge would be mine. I would criticise them, myself. And I would rub it in — for I would be just. 187 ON RUSKIN John Ruskin was a man who, witli all his virtues, was not without a certain jjathetic interest, and not undeserving of a certain pity. Brought up amidst surroundings, and under in- fluences, of an unhappy and deleterious nature, it is indeed small marvel that he should have lived to illustrate how large a share of mischief it often falls to a httle man to perform. And, in all human probabihty, had it not been for the fortuitous but beneficial influences which fell on his way, he would have gone to swell the already lengthy list of failures and derehcts which are pointed to as landmarks, or as floating menaces on the oceans of human existence. Ruskin had abilities of a certain sour and repellent order. He could preach hke a mathematical master , he could demonstrate like a parson ; he could criticise like a scurillous penny-a-hner ; he could morahse like a Scotch weaver ; he could describe like a young lady at a finishing school, iind he could deal with public questions hke a pious grocer. He had, however, one distinguishing but very unique, and singularly effective, useful, and convinc- ing advantage — a large private income. That justice I must, and do, render him. To deny 189 Echoes of Whistler it, or to decry it, or belittle it, were not in the interests of truth, or in the honest discharge of an essayist's duty. But, this declared, there remains very little which can be truly borne to the credit side of the account which posterity demands to be rendered to it by all who call upon it for remembrance, or recognition, or renown. Success sedulously denied herself to him as an artist or an architect : though some tracts or fugitive productions of his — marred though they were by stilted affectations — had a certain passing vogue with the few who take sententiousness and avoirdu- poisity for statehness of style, and pomposity and iteration, with the suitable ringing of the changes, for eloquence and graphic word-painting. He posed as a Sage, a Teacher, a Reprover, a Brakeman on the car of progress, the High Priest of Art, the Prophet of Life — a sort of John the Baptist when he was not a Jeremiah, a Jeremiah when he was not a Pecksniff; and he enacted the parts with con- siderable versatihty, acumen, and a terminology which was unquestionably grave, plastic and copious — sometimes almost falling to prettiness, and sometimes almost rising to turgidity. Were the rules which ordinarily govern the minds and lives of the greater part of the community — the average sane — to be applied to the judgment of Ruskin, posterity would very justly demand some explanation of his influence or, at all events, evan- escent prominence. 190 On Ruskin Perspective, as he liiniseK would have said, is essential to the proper estimate of everything — a building, a man, a reputation. It is, therefore, so much of loss in the fair considera- tion of Ruskin that his departure from this field of existence — all of which he treated as a pulpit for liim- seK, and a class-room for mankind — was protracted to a date when it is less easy to so perceive the true proportions — without that trifling effort of independ- ent intellectuality which the common mind is too indolent to make. But this was, by no means, an isolated instance of the strange perversities which made him one of the most strangely-difficult men on the face of the globe which he patronised, and whose many peoples and nmltifarious, vexed, and interwoven interests he de- sired to control, to alter, to set back to ante-Middle Age periods and to Heptarchy models. Yet — I confess it — I loved him. Not for what he ever did, in later times, " all the currents of my being set for " him; nor for what he wanted to be — though I cannot be so ungratefully oblivious as to be unmindful of the many hours when I sought the sanctuary of solitude, or the solaces of wild companionship, for the better enjoyment of his solemn pontificates — and of the abject and senseless docility of those who affected to be his disciples — and to understand him. But I loved him for him- seK — his true, inner, crass, conceited, cross-grained, great-brained, and majestic crankiness. Perhaps, too, an atom of seK-gratulation and vain- 191 Echoes of Whistler glory may mingle in the affectionate regard in which I held him : for he conferred on me the rare distinction of public excommunication. There are benefits — even unconscious ones — which imprint themselves ineffaceably on the soul. This was one of those meteor-like events — rare, signal, emphatic, unforgettable. It might, more or less captiously, be suggested that Ruskin was probably less bent on distinguishing me than on vindicating his own popedom. But, even if this supposition be correct — and I am scarcely in a position to controvert it — it would be but one more example of that ambition that destroys and devours the finer feelings of the heart. For the time has come to take the world into our confidence : Ruskin loved me — loved me as no Jacob ever loved a Benjamin — with a modulated gloAv, well- curbed intensity, and burglar-proof secrecy; wisely, but alas ! not too well. But, in justice to him, I must place it on record that this was not the only sacrifice which his seK-appointed hierarchism exacted from him — wringing the heavy price of real sorrow for imaginary greatness, or the brief illusion of ignorant notoriety. For — I have every reason to believe that this is disclosed for the very first time — the most dearly- cherished of Ruskin's deep-hidden dreams and de- sires was to exemplify, in his own stately beauty and statuesque mould — the Apollo Belvedere. But Fate had indeed been cruel to him: his hair was too straight. 192 On Ruskin He was thrust back on Marcus Aurelius — with modifications more or less suitable or successful. But, if Ruskin, out of the fulness of the load and over-mastering calls of duty to himself, felt impelled to crush down the love he bore me — the one true, tender drop in the chiselled fount of his affections — and with dissembled agonies perform the awful and gloom- inspiring double-shuffle of " bell, book and candle," I cannot, in fairness to myself, leave to him the monopoly of greatness of occasional soul. I must stand absolved of imputation, or suspicion, of personal vanity if I yield to the exigencies which, at times, start up in the essayist's or biographer's path ; and for an instant step on the stage, myself, in the cause of that strife for accuracy, impartiality, and completeness which presses, with the weight of so many atmospheres, upon my conscience as an honest and painstaking writer. It is, then, in an utter paroxysm of magnanimity and in the voracious interests of unverifiable history that I must at last submit to have this avowal wrested from me. Whatever repute accrued to Ruskin in latter years was due as much to the encouragement which I obtained for him exteriorly, as it was to the hints, lessons, correctings and sub-editings which absorbed so many of my days — that might have been far worse employed in painting; and so many nights — that would have been so much more profitably and pleasantly devoted to sleep. And — the reflection, if not consoling or even N 193 Echoes of Whistler sardonic, is, at least, not without an uncertain shade of satisfaction — with all my anxious endeavour I was unable to prevent the unpremature whelming of his name in the dark and swift waters of Lethe. I have now fished him out and set him up; and another generation of gibbering and mutually- imitative apes, and solemn, long-faced humbugs can abase themselves before the resuscitated idol — until another Gothic sham supplants him. Farewell, oh. Master! oh, Seer! oh, Sheik! oh — but no matter now. Yet Ruskin was a man in whom were the possi- bihties of high thoughts, the detestation of low meannesses, the dim glimpses of a pure virtue, the flickering flame of feeble devotion — the elements of fitness for a Clerk of Works, the shadow of a dream of a Better Man. He was also a fair grammarian. 194 ON CARLYLE I DARE say that many may consider me an unfit person to write on Carlyle. I share that view. But this very inappropriateness is, perhaps, a true justification for the effort, as it is, probably, a proof of impartiahty. It is not given to every man to have a biographer so entirely detached, and whose mind is so legiti- mately vacant with regard to his subject's concoc- tions of one form or another. I sometimes think, in the leisures and enforced calms of my present retreat, that if we could really see ourselves as others do not see us, we might obtain some very unique and even unexpected side-views of ourselves — and of others. This reflection has no especial reference to anything in particular. To resume. It cannot be denied that amongst the great in- fluences of the Nineteenth Century, Carlyle was — next, probably, to myself — one of the most marked, and of the most potent. He wielded a pen as paviours wield a rammer, or hammer, or whatever that airy instrument may be called ; and he had a sourness of tongue which might have been sweetened by an infusion of acetic acid, 195 Echoes of Whistler But his thoughts were great — ^great ahnost as my Impressions. Yes; lofty as the Himalayas, profound as tlie hollowest depths of ocean, arid as Sahara, crabbed as Labrador, and rough as Texas ; with a grim Germanic style of arduous unintelligibility and artificial dis- tortion and inversion; and seldom smooth enough to save even the stoutest intellectual ankles from dislocation, when trying to walk over his too un- macadamized paths. Yet his teaching has a purpose — a high, a noble, a holy purpose — but it would require a burglar's outfit, an engineer's skill, a chemist's explosives to get at it. Hence his success, and the enthusiasm of his disciples. I speak with the natural emotion of one who also toiled hard to be misunderstood — chiefly by himself ; and who knows how much better and easier it is to excite the imaginations of others than to enhance one's own. I do not propose to enter upon anything Uke an analysis of what Carlyle may have fancied that he thought. To do so were to impart to him body for a supposititious soul, and soul to a body of fantastic- ally-fabricated angularities, and rehearsed spontane- ities, and denatured and unreal naturalisms. Still, it may not be without some futile utility if I step aside for an instant from the impersonal attitude which my present position — literary and otherwise — imposes on me, and dwell for a short while on the strange figure of one who, in his time, 196 On Carlyle filled no small space in the thick but empty heads of men and, in his own conception of himself, no small proportion of the universe, He was pre-eminently a Scot — a Lowland Scot. Like some of his countrymen of that description and class, he aimed, with success, at the exaggeration of his natural rudeness in order to air his cheap and insolent independence, and equality with more civilised beings. He Avas not, however, without some redeeming traits, such, for instance, as a secret desire to be con- sidered a wit ; and a deeply-cherished admiration for the works of one Whistler — a painter person of not the shghtest just pretension to any merit whatsoever, though he might, had Fate been propitious, been successful as a curate, or family lawyer, possibly even as a Prime Minister, But, misplaced though sedulously suppressed, as was this last worship of his innermost soul, it probably served its purpose: for it tempered the gall of this Gaelic Scot — who, after all, was more of a Frisian than a Border Pict — and it very probably saved him from becoming altogether a Uterary blister on the chest of poor, over-doctored, credulous, and almost idolatrous humanity. That he did some intelligible writing, at odd and seK-forgetful moments, is not to be denied — even by his most perfervid admirers. But this only aggravates his manifold sins and iniquities, because it shows that there were within the potentialities, however elementary and inchoate, 197 / Echoes of Whistler of a fairly meritorious and painstaking delver and diver, and hedger and ditcher, in the turbulences of men and nations — or the grovellings and morbidities of human hfe and actions. He adored strength like a slave at heart ; he lashed at flunkeydom in the spirit of a flunkey ; he vituper- ated with a pile-driver; he painted with a besom. His metaphysics were as his wit, and vice versa; his moralisings as his digestion; and his humour was to the Rabelais he imitated as were his philosophings to the Goethe whom he, with his Frisian stolidity of imagination and coarse native dullness of fine perception, injured by his praise — when he did not insult him by his boorish patronage. Society talked of Carlyle — and wisely shunned him, Carlyle talked at Society — and still more wisely avoided it. He, like Peel, had no manners, but — and be this said to his credit — like Welhngton, he had no small- talk. But, en revanche, his back-talk was copious, ener- getic, vulcanic, virulent, and often merited the reprisals which an adulating and unthinking public spared him — ^preferring, itself, to take the kicks, and leaving him to ingather the haKpence. But at times there awakened within him — ^perhaps, there struggled through him — another spirit which wrestled with his German mists, and violent dis- articulations of the English language, and the churlishness and vanity of his nature — the mock prophetism which he almost adopted as a creed — and 198 On Carl vie the dyspepsia which as mercifully kept him from taking his moniimentahty in too serious a Ught. If it was not another, an inner and a better Carlyle — or a distinct Other — avaihng itself by some strange blind or mysterious caprice of choice of the instru- mentaUty of his physical being, tel quel — then the man was a marvel, a prodigy, an enigma, a monstrosity. For he had fitful, fragmentary ghmpses and in- sights of brightnesses, and of truths lying behind and below and beyond us, and the things about us : and one forgets the man, with all his acidulations and affec- tations, his violences and virulences, his obscurities and grotesquenesses ; and almost grows pale with the wonder and awe of the thoughts which spring from the void, and at the altitude and daring of his seekings and questionings of the Unseen. How may we reconcile such abnormal conjunctions or co-existence of quahties, attributes, aptitudes — or, at least, exhibitions, disclosures, outcomes — of so antagonistic a nature; of amalgams so un- afhnitive, and of mixtures so antipathetic? What was the secret? Another hand, at another time, to another genera- tion, may give the answer — I cannot. My modesty restrains me. Yet it is not because I have failed to bring a mind unbiassed and unprejudiced to the point of indiffer- ence — an indifference that almost leans to aversion — to the consideration of my subject. The contrary is the case, indeed; for all that I have said about his writings has been unindustriously gathered from the 199 Echoes of Whistler prattle of some silly women, the gushing of some blatant youths, the off-handed thrown-off remarks of some hurried and uneducated journalists, and the mumbhngs of some chill - blooded and halting- memoried elders. I, voyez vous, never read a line of Carlyle in my life. 200 ON BROWNING ]5rowning is one of the most colossal frauds who ever learnt to write a hne of ungrammatical English. He seems to have learnt also that the English language held many words the meanings of which were too obscure and undefined for common use; and so he annexed them as so much unclaimed pro- perty, and turned them to his vile and wicked account. He, fortunately for himseK but, as the event proved, most unhappily for the world at large, married a lady who was as undoubtedly gifted as a poetess, as he was as a possible school-master in a colhery village. Not that he was altogether a fool. In fact, he was a very astute jDcrson ; and he contrived to raise a very fair name and revenue by an unabashed and unre- pented-of audacity. There never was a case of greater courage and greater acumen than his in asserting so loudly that he was a poet, until the world — ass that it is ! — took him at his word, and made-beheve to like his poetry — undigested and indigestible stuff as it was. His wife idolised him, and idealised him — as clever women often do their louts of husbands or lovers — and made him, in a literary and monetary sense. 20I Echoes of Whistler I do not wish to do him an injustice, but I cannot do the cause of hterature an injury by withholding my whole-hearted view that he was one of the most pronounced humbugs of the century. In saying this I am aware that I am treating him with much undue leniency : but I feel that if he, on the one hand, is to be consigned to an eternity of ignominious obhvion, the public, on the other hand, deserves to be condemned because of the easy facihty with which it allows itself to be gulled and lulled and dulled and pulled by any self-asserting mountebank — be it in the way of Uterature, or pohtics, or socialdom, or any other of the lines on which it runs its cars. I do not deny that Browning did write. So much must be admitted in the way of mere fact; but so much also must be set down as indictment, and self -arraignment . I will go even further, and confess that he wrote some things which may be regarded as good — that is, good enough to serve as a warning to others — and a parsing lesson to young scholars. But of poetry — the poetry that appeals to head and heart and nerve and fibre — the poetry of nature, of man, of hope and joy and love, and beauty of labour, duty, and devotion, of the life beyond the grave, and righteousness and judgment and temperance — of the Resurrection and the Life — of the Ultimate and the Eternal — was there ever a vestige, a hint, a shadow in all his writing? Yet, I must not forget a few — a very few — ^good and worthy performances — spirited, ringing, crisp and picturesque; but having said this — nothing more 202 On Browning is left to be recorded. The failure is complete; and it is also dismal. Browning deliberately made a jorte of the incom- prehensible, tortuous, involved, and, if all the truth is to be told, the unintelligible and unmeaning. Browning Societies sprang up, having for their aim the better study of the Master — the Master! That meant, naturally, the importing into him the working of their own minds and fancies. The tliurifers were a thousand times better than their idol and high priest; and he, grimly enough, often said that he looked to these Societies to evolve for him, or make for him, some meaning out of the lines he had piled together. I have not the least hesitation in saying that the greater part of what Browning had heaped up might advantageously be detached into single lines, and put together again haphazard, anyhow — like shuffling packs of cards. Some sequence might so accrue, and the run of the lines would not suffer in the slightest degree. Indeed, it is distinctly open to predict that ad- ventitious sense and unexpected coherence would be the result of such a method of treatment. I cordially recommend this practical suggestion to those Browning Societies which may have developed enough fatuity to be still in existence. Reflections crowd on me as I conclude. I was misunderstood — nearly always. Browning was understood — hardly ever. The more we resemble each in that respect the less we are alike. 203 Fxhoes of Whistler I knew Browning. To know him was to wish him dead. Browning knew me, a Httle. Had he known me less he had been better. Fancy idles with the thought that, had our lives been thrown together for a short, close, sweet period, two grass-grown mounds might have marked the remains of Browning slain by Whistler, and of Whistler most justly done to death by Browning : and posterity would have shed hogsheads of tributary tears — for posterity had then been spared a double set of inflictions. Alas ! it was not to be. 204 ON WHISTLER Many persons are in the habit of saying that Whistler was a good deal of a humbug, both in Art and in other matters of greater importance. I am not going to controvert that opinion — or article of superstition, or faith — because I am a good deal of that way of thinking, myself. I consider that I am in a particularly-favoured position to understand my subject, inasmuch as I have been in close personal relation with him all my Hfe — and his; and I venture to say that he had not many thoughts or feehngs which I did not share. As an Artist he was unquestionably eccentric and even meretricious; and Ruskin was perfectly right when he stigmatized his bizzare productions as living lies, and loose-livers of the worst type of bastard Byzantism, and more to the same cheerful effect. Of course, Ruskin claimed that he was vindicating EngHsh art — the art of S*****n, and s*****n, and R**d, and M****s, and E***e, and E******n, and E*****t, and p******s, and S*****y M*****s, and S******d, and J***y M*e, and G****y, and C******e, andO*****e, and s******y H**l, and Charles Russell, li*******n, and George Lewis, and E****d C****e, 205 Echoes of Whistler and C****n, and Obadiah, and G******m, and 0'H***n, and Captain G**** the betting man, and Captain B**** the ladies' man, and General Boom, and Admiral Bang, and all the rest of the blessed lot. Nor am I going to quarrel with the view, held with the tenacious conviction of demonstrated knowledge, that Whistler was, in his time, much of a nuisance. For one thing, he had not the least glimmering of an idea how to treat a critic, or how to betray a friend. His extreme want of ordinary common-sense showed itself on almost every occasion on which he was called upon to act, or do anything in the least degree sensible, or money-making; and no greater proof of mental imbecihty or moral depravity than this can possibly be adduced. Nor can it be fairly claimed for him that he pos- sessed any of those quaUties which secure the esteem of men, or the devotion of women. He was too egotistical for the one, and too vain for the other; for women are quick to see their own features in any glass, however uncouth; and men are generally too much in love with themselves to tolerate self-love in another. Besides, he had peculiarities of temper, suddennesses of mood, mordancy of phrase, scorn of pettiness, independence to the point of arrogance, and charity to the point of improvidence, which, with other inexcusable obsessions, justified the disdainful esti- mate which so many of his contemporaries, who least knew him, formed of his character. 206 On Whistler The possibility that, behind these defects — which he took so Httle pains to hide, and, indeed, ahnost seemed ostentatious to exhibit — there might hn-k some httle germ of good, or even some strugghng hope for a far-off ray of decent respectability — apparently occurred to nobody. There was no reason why it should do so. Yet he was proud enough to have cared ; but it mattered little to the world, or to him — especially to the world. He did not make enemies — they made themselves. He made friends : they, for the most part, unmade him. The world snarled at him : he laughed at it ; but the world has no feehngs, and he had no seK-pity. Each thought the other had the Avorst of it, and both were mistaken — more or less. The balance has still to be struck between them. But this brief sketch of one who, with all his faults, was worth knowing — by one who, with all his im- perfections, is perhaps best qualified to write of him — were incomplete without a few words on what, in his moments of inflated elation and grotesque exaggera- tion, he was pleased to call his Art. Why, "udth such avenues to wealth as the plumbing business, such roads to fame as the Central Criminal Court, such easy flights to favour as the running of a snip-snap paper, or a horse, or a theatrical company, or being the husband of a pretty and lively actress, or the City Editor of a great paper, or a superior official of the Bankruptcy Court — and many other calHngs, and more or less devious walks of life — why, 207 Echoes of Whistler it may be most fairly asked, did he, of all men, choose Art? In fact, why does anybody do so? But that were to open too wide a problem. He probably chose Art — as most men choose their wives — by accident. And he possibly deluded himself into the persuasion that he had a gift, a talent, a liking that way ; very much as the same seK-loving, seK-flattering way in which Ruskin may have induced himself to beheve that he had a capacity for judging another equally incompetent man's attempt at work. For vanity is your arch-sophist; and the plastic will becomes virile, and the empty head mistakes its void echoings for the drum-beats on the road to glory, and all the pulses keep step — and it is all, in most cases, nothing but conceit and imposture. But the sorry truth is not admitted — especially by those most concerned; and so the farce, or other show is played out to the end. Whistler chose Art — no matter now why, or whether he, or the world, had been better or happier had he made a different choice. For himself I may, perhaps, be able to give an answer. For the world — that must remain one of the in- soluble enigmas of this terrestial sphere. It is pro- bable that many volumes will yet be written, many erudite Uves elevated, many societies formed, many friends parted, famihes torn in twain, communities disrupted — possibly even nations estranged — over 208 On Whistler the controversy — a controversy that we, in this epoch or cycle, can neither settle nor avert. Time, the CEdipus that reads the secrets of all the Sphinxes, can alone write Finis at its concluding page : and it is open to grave doubt if, in the after years, it will do so. His Art was to him a shrine, a goddess, a Memnon calling the Morning, a world of forms, colours, com- binations, truths, decipherings, suggestions, gropings, stretchings-forth, and guessings unknown and un- recognisable in the common world — or elsewhere; and the meaning of which he with a modesty — I may say with a humihty and a candour large even to exuberance — often declared that he longed to catch, and would gratefully have taught to him by any gifted and better-endowed soul who might perceive it. Such, I imagine — except as to the lowliness of mind and the frankness — must have been the unsatisfied desires which petrified in the heart of Browning. Whistler's art was " a thing apart," like " woman's love," to use the words of Byron. It also resembled it in its wealth of glow, its warmth, its dehcacy, its capriciousness, its whimsicahty, its utter want of real purpose, and general transitoriness of complexion, temperature, durabihty — and value. He could paint, no doubt; but who, unless a Royal Academician, cannot do that? But he aimed to do more than paint. He wanted — or pretended — to dream in colour, or in black and white — and he can be said to have failed only if Wagner can be said to have failed, who set out to o 209 Echoes of Whistler express by Music so much that is considered to be rather in the domain of the poet pure and simple. Can form, colour, soimd ever take the place of words? But, if Whistler laboured at this sublime enigma, and left the answer to be given by the Ages, he had neither doubt nor difficulty as regards the converse. To few men has it been ever given in a greater, deeper, fuller measure than to him to be able to em- body and convey in words all the forces, shades, and even impHcations of form, colour and sound — and especially colour; from the most plutonic and dynamic imprecation of wrath — to the subtlest and most ethereal witherings of scorn. It was a marvellous endowment, an instrument of infinite capacity and variety — responding to the hghtest touch of playfulness, sarcasm, mirth; the deep notes that betokened the anger, that was there only in pretence ; the Ughter tones that rippled the suggestion of contentment or joy — which were still more truly absent. He was singularly fortunate in that his native stores of picturesque malediction were helped by the prismatic French collection which he lovingly col- lated, not less than by a piquant and fertile origin- ahty of his own. Such was the Man; such was his Art. My task is done. I have endeavoured to perform it charitably but firmly; and whatever fitful likings I may have had for my subject have been resohitely 2IO On Whistler subordinated to the determination to be im- partial. I venture to think that I have been successful. The world may never again see another AVhistler — ■ or another Art like his. Tlie world does not want to. 211 ON THE SECRECY OF SELF Whenever I reflect on the subject of SeK I always assume that all men are more or less ahke — and dissimilar. It is always a question with me whether mankind is to be taken seriously or sadly, the product of especial providentialism or of fortuitous chance; that is, so far as respects his actions, fortunes, char- acter, outward manifestation and inward chaos, possibility, dumbness, dormancy, or deadness. Yet, is consciousness of them a necessary condition of any qualities — -either of mind or of soul ? Is abstruse botanical knowledge a necessary quali- fication to the seed or bulb in a florist's shop-drawers or cupboards, for their own life and development; or is their ignorance of the secrets so mysteriously packed, folded and contained within themselves any lessening of their latent vitality, or a bar to their later glory of form and colour and odour — and, in a word, soul and body? Of course, this is most unphilosophical, I admit; and I shall not argue on what, after all, is a pleasing speculation — a question addressed to the zephyr that gently stirs the tips of the leaves, and is answered by the perfumes of the roses which preen themselves in the dew. 213 Echoes of Whistler Not that I shrink from argument — be it on meta- physics, biology, bi-metahsm, natural history, or the higher mathematics — in the first and last of which, especially. Destiny betrayed her trusteeship for humanity and me, by diverting my incipient in- tellect to weightier matters. I feel that I am digressing, if not trifling. I am as the timid youth who toys with his heart on the dentist's front steps — the recreant molar throbbing not more achingly and forebodingly than his fearful auricles. For I set out to write on the Secrecy of Self ; and I stand before the prison door with the keys janghng in my hesitating and trembling hands. Yet why should my courage flag or fail me, and why should I recoil from the task which I set for myself ? Did I set myself this task ? It seemed a light and deliberate thing to me to choose this title for this morning's essay. But it has come upon me that it was not so. I have been playing in the shallows of memory. I must wade deeper ; I have yet many lessons to learn — and to unlearn. Ulysses was a fabled visitor, so was Dante ; they are imagined to have seen many scenes and spirits. A greater poet than Dante — Ezekiel — for an in- stant hfted a curtain on a spirit scene of grand and powerful sublimity. I read it when a boy, and have never forgotten it. 214 On the Secrecy of Self But what poet has described the descent of a soul into itseK? And what poet can? I cannot see my guide; I apprehend a voice that I do not hear, I grow weak under waves of regret, I burn with blushes for panoramas of unnoticed mercies, and patiences, and most wonderful, sustained and harmonious thoughts for me and cares of me, and pardons and forbearances to me: and — feeble, breathless, adoring — I bend low, low, low, in unutter- able gratitude and praise. Again I digress — involuntarily; but I reverently and thankfully draw the veil behind me. There is an introspection which is a precious discipline. I can conceive of its being the dearest of pangs, the most torturing of dehghts, the most sophistical of reasonings, the most slavish of adulators, the most plausible of apologists, the most good-natured of confessors and absolvers. Also I can conceive of an introspection which is morbid, microscopic and unwholesome — fostering a low self-love by an affected knowledge and detesta- tion of self, and hmiting everything within that close and darksome boundary. With such a psychological bacteriology I have no patience, nor inchnation to meddle. Nor indeed — now that I think of the title I traced at the head of this article — do I clearly see the connection or coherence. 215 Echoes of Whistler For I had set out with a scalping knife and a com- plete armoury and equipment of dissecting hard- ware, figuratively speaking; and I had intended to convey the impression that I was humming, to the tune of the old hunting song : A-vivisecting we will go. It is a pregnant, meaning, and even fascinating title — the Secrecy of Self; and, when I first thought of it, it seemed as if I could indite a book, or a shelf of books, on the subject. And now I am as bleakly bare of ideas as is a fashionable woman, a cavalry officer, an agricultural labourer, or an R.A. It may not, however, be denied that many persons, who have any idea of their own natures, take no trouble to learn what, or who, they really are. I assert, fearlessly, that less than one in a hundred has ever taken the shghtest concern in himself, in the sense of a knowledge of his true essence and raison d'etre. Yet what a field of investigation and discovery awaits him! Never a Columbus, a Cortez, a Pizzaro, a Living- stone, a Stanley sought, or found, regions so vast, so rich, so varied, so lovely, so fearful, so fertile, so wild. It is when the Individual is regarded, and not the Race : the man who lives and moves and works and laughs; who is anxious about things, or enjoys things, and actively concerns himself in his affairs 216 On the Secrecy of Self of family, business, society, politics, pleasures, pur- suits, hobbies, and the thousand and one interests of ordinary, decent, vigorous hfe in its many rela- tions, aspects, duties, iniquities and compensations; it is then that the Secrecy of Self — that busy and most complex Self — are worth considering. And it is he who should — even though it be at long intervals — take stock of the many hidden items that do not figure in his books of account, or on his filed inventories. But, perhaps, it were best to seal up the deposi- tories, to build up the bins of the soured wines and the broken bottles. Let Conscience tell over the sins, negligences and ignorances ; let Reason recount the follies, fancies, frivolities, fallacies, futilities; let Honour burn and tingle at the uncandours, hypo- crisies, artfulnesses, shadinesses. Have your struggle, your ineffective excusings and hollow palhations, your remorses, penitences, vows — ^perchance, prayers — and, ring down. Leave everything else to dark- ness, dust, decay. For there lie the memories that will not die, and must not five ; that come at untoward times and sit as unbidden guests ; that husband and wife, growing grey together, keep from each other ; that friend con- ceals from friend, child from parent, sister from sister, each and all from all and each : but none from God. To Him — the Mighty, the Terrible, the Head of all the thunders and the forces of the universe, the Majesty beyond all thought, the Hohness in Whose 217 Echoes of Whistler sight the very heavens are not clean and the very angels not undefiled; and Who hates sin and im- purity, and reads the heart that can keep nothing from His eye. To Him only is the stuffed bosom bared — the supreme Judge, the merciful Father. It is not always mere despair, flinging up wild helpless arms; nor utter helplessness, fleeing to the only remaining sanctuary. It is the Soul — stained, soiled, sorrowful, sin-laden as it is — awakening in the love that casts out fear, and remembering its sonship — though so utterly unworthy. The Secrecy of Self may be, and often is, a miser- able collection. But it is sacred, even if sealed or secret, to the Man himself — the Owner of that SeK. And in many a patient, suffering, noble, misunder- stood, weak, and unselfish heart the Secrecy of Self is the Secrecy of God : and, in the day when He " shall make up His jewels " that soul will shine, perhaps not least, amongst those beautiful radiances. 2I8 IN DEFENCE OF INGRATITUDE I ONCE, among other assorted things, told the story of Androcles and the Lion to a boy of eight or nine, and I am convinced that I sowed in his fresh unspoilt mind disdain for that once-respected animal, and some pity for myself. Had the Hon rent Androcles it would have been delightfully horrible and proper, and nobly fierce — besides replenishing his larder; for lions eat a good deal, and they hke their viands fresh, and the ac- cident in this case must necessarily mean scant rations for a time. That little boy, I could see, despised the lion for not " playing the game," Androcles — that opportune but neglected provender — for a sneaking sort of mar-sport, and me for being soft and unbusiness- hke. His two brothers are footballers, and his sister is going to marry a Yorkshireman. This set me thinking on a subject with which I was extremely familiar rather than really acquainted — Ingratitude. This misjudged, but unengaging, quality is generally considered to be natural in kings, vicious in slaves — — " Ingratitude is the vice of slaves " — and habitual in the greater portion of the community. 219 Echoes of Whistler Were this graduation perfect the helots would seem to be on a higher moral pedestal than their inferior betters — their masters. The less said about kings and princes the better. There are, of course, the unsophisticated, whose simple natures and untaught minds have wells and springs of disposition which they are too ignorant, or too indolent, or too mean-spirited, or too uncal- culating to blend, or tincture, or flavour out of their crude sincerities. And also there are the children and animals — stand- ing for truth, and for extreme simplicity. But as I intend this to be a philosophical paper they must be ruled out. besides, it would require a volume to demonstrate the absolute inability of anyone to deal adequately with this subject in relation to animals and children, though I could make mine manifest in the first few sentences of the preface; but this must not be held to lessen the difficulty of the task — quite the reverse, in fact. Were gratitude a merit it would be necessary to assume that kings are ungrateful as of especial augmentation of original sin; and that slaves are so virtuous that to resemble monarchs in this respect is to harbour an esoteric fly in the ointment of their gentle hearts; and that the bulk of Society is, in this regard, irretrievably inoculated with this regal but also popular prepossession — or endowment, mellowing into practice and habit. He was a man of keen insight — perhaps also a 220 In Defence of Ingratitude brutal cynic or soured moralist — who said that " gratitude is the hvely sense of favours to come." But it is only a gHttering mockery, or the cold- dra"\vn hypocrisy of the parasite. I dissociate my- seK from it. My metaphysics are better grounded and my view is broader. But, after all, gratitude is not my theme, except by impHcation or parenthesis, for I am contemplat- ing Ingratitude in a sense wider than mere antithesis. Otherwise, the position were, indeed, a cramped field, a bald schedule, a barren jDoint involving departure almost on the point of arrival, a mere reading of labels — utterly unprofitable for all thought- ful and heart-searching purposes. The higher interest is to examine the mental and psychological processes which make Ingratitude so agreeable, so self -consoling and, in more than one elevating and far-reaching aspect, useful. It is universally conceded that Character is innate and unchangeable, but that Conduct is the product of cultivation — and this means some self-knowledge. To dissimulate the former, and to beguile with, the latter, shows knowledge of one's fellow-men, and goes to the making of successful pohticians and other seekers — the Worldly Wisemen in many shades, degrees, and vain or sHmy versatiUties. Furthermore, there is that potent factor Tempera- ment — with its growths of insensibihties, apathies and moral numbnesses — moving, or making, the churls, and sometimes the shams, of the great human hive; or, depth still lower, the self-convinced wlio 221 Echoes of Whistler will not admit that they are self-blinded, and who thus fall into that almost inconceivable superstition — that they believe in themselves! Shakespeare expresses the objective thought in " a very creditable " manner, as I once heard a Scotch gentleman say of a beautiful work in its distinguished author's presence: " Blow, blow, thou winter wind Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude ; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho ! Sing, heigh-ho I unto the green holly ; Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then, heigh-ho, tlie holly I This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot. Though thou the waters warp Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not. Heigh-ho I Sing, heigh-ho ! etc." ■ What comforts did Amiens think that song gave to the Duke? The minstrel reminds me rather of the sentimental ass, in Sterne's journey, mumbhng his bitter artichoke. The benefits are not really " forgot " — as circum- stances or things, apart from the aromas of sentiment and service : they are remembered — as events or items, but apart from their settings of sympathy and sacrifice. " Benefits forgot! " Is it not rather for the bene- factor to forget? 222 In Defence of Incjratitude The Beneficiary does remember the friend; he will want to use him again. As to the kindly act, it is to the soul's good of the one, and to the material interest of the other, that it be steeped deeply and swiftly in Lethe. Reason out the matter: Ingratitude is — perhaps, flippantly — assumed to be the opposite, the negative of gratitude. Were this all the subject would be easily disposed of — provided that all were agreed about the pre- sumed positive — Gratitude. The popular definition of that positive is — a feel- ing of enduring thankfulness. But if this were accurate, would not Gratitude be a sort of moral and social canker, a highly inconvenient, artificial and embarrassing evil, a tacit servitude? Confined to animals, children and simple-minded folk it is, as they are, of no importance. But the philosopher and sociologist is bound to regard this subject in its broader facets and expanses. The benefactor is indebted to the beneficiary for his help in the higher development — so cheaply acquired: he were doubly bannable to cry out for thankings, which might be demoralising to him, and degrading to the other. Does that httle boy (who has never again asked me to tell him a story) owe me thanks — though my intentions were good and noble? Why, unless that particular animal was an excep- tional degenerate, that entire species has become to him a mere idealisation, an imposture, a usurpation and a fraud. Mea culpa ! 223 Echoes of Whistler Do I owe him any for launching my mind on this upheaving inquiry ? No ; it was involuntary on his part. [I wish that he had been digested to his ultimate atom and button in the lions' den at the Zoological Gardens or ere I had spoken to him.] To return. Some formalities and observances must be expected and maintained in the world. The gracious customs of social intercourse — the pleasing though often over-eifusive acknowledg- ments for slight favours, service, or attentions, evolv- ing the pretty and over-modest deprecations; and, generally, the outward and visible signs and suavities of ordinary life — are not necessarily insincere, so long as they are regarded at their true value as, mainly, the comphments and courtesies of good manners. But why should anyone be grateful in the common or serious acceptation of the word? Is he to be penahsed because another man is kind, or heroic, or sensitive? What though he may be the accidental, or the occasional, or even the frequent subject of any of these displays, is he to be bound in clanking fetters all his hfe, instead of adjudging himseh to be the legitimate partner, or complement, of the mere " doer "? But for him, the latter might have lost op- portunity of progress, and become warped, or stunted, or otherwise injuriously-affected by the suppression of those benevolences, braveries, or chivalries of his nature — and which, by the way, cost him nothing to begin with. 224 In Defence of Ingratitude And this is also a further reason why he should not be amerced and taxed by an impost of gratitude. Listen to the direct plea — rather than to the medi- ary argument. The subjective person, the so-called Ingrate, speaks: "Depolarize your words; and so escape their tyranny. The bastard process is — the change into strange equivalents and casuistries. Substitute Ignoringness for Ingratitude, and ' economic ' for ' mercenary ' — and see how you raise both the matter in question, and the treatment thereof. " I speak to you, the performer, the doer, the benefactor. It is an absurd word — this last; more fittingly and inherently mine than yoiu-s ; but never mind. " Think of the subtle grace, the ineffable dehcacy of even feigning to forget benefits rendered, and the like ; how ease of bearing is promoted, social harmony increased and personal dignity maintained and fostered, by the avoidance of awkwardness on both sides, and by the retention of serene naturalness and mutual equipoise. On every ground Ignoringness is a duty of the doer to the other man, as well as to himself and to Society; and which that other, the recipient, owes it to his own pride and higher at- tributes — also to some other considerations — to cultivate and to practise — with or without such well-filed-and-fitted reservations and justifications as may seem good in his eyes — or otherwise. " The poet's man was to ' do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.' p 225 Echoes of Whistler " I respect those blushes too highly to provoke them into ostentations. " I am quite ready to establish my case incon- trovertibly. "For, if I had the mean pangs of anxiety, or the gnawings of want, the horrors of impending shame, or danger, or difficulty — and you came forward and helped — of course it was serviceable at the time, and so I then felt it and, I think, so I said. For misery, weakness, peril are fearful and unmanning things, and cause one to overlook the fact that emotion is nob compatible with true political economy, anymore than that any stray or chance Uttle swirl or eddy is indi- cative of, or determined by, the real under-currents. " Did you contrast my squahd cares and grovel- ling despairs and wretched impuissances with your easeful tranquillities and over-running means; or, as the case may have been, with the stirring human- ities and divinities within you; for you may have helped out of your poverty, or to your personal detriment ; and did you then, with deep gra,tef ulness and humility, ask^ ' Who maketh us to differ? ' " Or did you wrap your soul in the gratification of conceit and pride and self-satisfaction? " In either case, whether humbly-ennobhng or vain-gloriously inflated, you had your rich reward. What more should you wish, or exact? " Look you! I am, as it were, the grindstone. " You reap off me the cleansing and the brighten- ing, the edge and the point. I have the turmoil and the grit and the grime and the lapidian loss. 226 In Defence of Ingratitude " And yet you expect me to thank you! " Ingrate! " I am not fatuous and I do not deny facts; in- deed, they are my strong point. " I simply place them in the kaleidoscope of the higher reasoning and, by the appropriate turns and twirls, cast them into new forms and patterns — or, more severely expressed, designs. " I do not deny the material side of certain trans- actions. " I admit that I gained by the sweat of your brow; but, surely, you must see a new gleam in the dignity of labour which enables you to earn and bestow gifts or loans — which is the same thing, with a difference — upon relative fellow-creatures less blest with the talents of assiduity or prudence. " But yours, all the time, were the warm joys and the chaste glows of goodness, or of self-gratulation, and also the swelhng sense of patronage and liigh- steppingness. " And, not only did I furnish you with the Httle play: I suppHed also the stage and the properties. " Like an Emperor, you could behold the entire entertainment in absolute solitude. " Vulgarity alone would desire an audience to witness your altruistic singularity at the expense of my humihation. " As well call on me to erect you a mast, and run up for you your gaudiest bunting, and break out at its head your most personal banner. " Debt ! Ah ! What is your real debt to me ? 227 Echoes of Whistler " I save you from the hypertrophy of your virtues; I raise you, by opportunity, to the state of a duode- cimo providence ; I reveal you to yourself — the man who pities, risks, gives, helps; who is be-hung with strings which others find it so easy to pull; who accumulates secretions of exquisite pains as the sole harvest of unselfish self-sacrifice; and yet I am, by some bigots, deemed wanting in proper feeling be- cause I proudly ignore that fetish Gratitude — which should more rightly be set up in my groves, for your adoration." I read the foregoing observations one evening, in a reckless mood, to some sober-minded friends, and others, with astonishing success. One man said: " I quite agree — though I could not quite follow all the subtle philosophising. I don't see why I should consider myself under any obhgation for any- thing for ever. Perhaps, if all were known, some- body did more to or by him, and, if that does not equaHse matters all round, I don't know what will. I'm not going to bother my head any more about him ; why should I? and if his looks convey anything like arrogance — ^his feeling hurt or disappointed I don't care about — the upstart shall hear from me. " Then, as you say, he had all the pleasure of doing it ; and some can't help rushing forward at the very first tap of the drum, as you may say. They are so constituted, and they only obey the law of their being. " But that is no reason why, to use your words, 228 In Defence of Ingratitude I should swing a censer of incense to him — even if he did risk his hfe for me, or befriend me, or forgive me, or benefit me in one way or another. He couldn't avoid acting as he did. " Again, in another point of view, some nasty- questions might arise. How, for instance, did he, or his father, acquire his means or his influence. 'Twas his, 'tis mine, yes; but how came it to be his first? It seems to me that we may well call a halt, and a truce, and a settlement of, as well as upon, this score. " And, after aU, any amount so used has not dis- appeared from the general fund, the pubHc domain, the treasury of that vast unit. Humanity; or even that more restricted one Society — though so un- scientifically dealt with by the one-time holder." Here he drifted into abstruse Sociahsms, and then emerged well contented — being ignorant of the subject. Another bald-head, who thinks that he is a mathe- matician when we all know him to be a poet, and who has a wit so dehcate and elusive that only one or two men really understand him, whilst others variously esteem him Satanic, saintly, silly, profound, fierce, hard, abstract, drivelhng, wise, gentle — took the word ; you rarely caught his drift. " I was much struck," said he, "by Mr 's reference to the common, though floating, stock — which possibly is also true of Ideas. "The actual material — say money — is still here; like an asteroid it remains in our solar system though lost to sight — lurking in the fastnesses of complicated 229 Echoes of Whistler groupings, circling unidentifyingly in loosely-aggre- gated rings or vast thin belts, or darting in widening orbits, or drawn into nebulous spirals, transformed into vapours, or welded with other vagabondages of its kind to build up, in the ages, new planets or satellites. " Out of sight — true; but man may allay his anxieties by the reflection that it is not lost to the System, and calmly sleep with the consolatory thought — of which he cannot too often remind him- self — that somewhere, within the sphere of influence of the Orb of Day, that atom, or that mass, of matter is ' around.' " So the great human system is not the poorer; there has been no alienation, but only a trifling di- version; the grand total is the same, standing un- affected by the mere individual incidence; the beneficiary is to the good, and the benefactor, so- called, has been benefited, in despite of himself if he only knew it, beyond his sacrifices or deserts. The former is advantaged merely in his require- ments, but the latter in the advancement of his moral nature. " The redundancy of gain is on his side. " What more can he desire? What more does he get? " A man of great promise — even of profuse promises — set his face hard and began very quietly. We knew him, and he knew himself — and us. " That little lyrical apostrophe of Shakespeare's, which, less grudgingly than your Scotch friend, I may 230 In Defence of Ingratitude fairly term meritorious," he began, when several voices broke in upon him to suggest " creditable " instead. "Well," he resumed, "of course I withdraw the half- baked stodgy expression. Those hnes, hke leagues on leagues and mounts on mounts of writing to the same effect, express but the reflections, the sighs, the experiences — even the outcries — of the one part. " The complaints are natural though, perhaps, narrow and one-sided. " Have we sufficiently considered the aphorism about the Vice of Slaves? I think not. " Ingratitude is vice in him, because he had no liberty, nor independence, nor equality — scarcely self-respect — to vindicate. Why should he step out of the category of the animal and the child? It was wanton and almost mutinous; it thus was branded on him as a 'vice.' His other brands had relation to him as 'property.' " That was the Pagan view, which forgot that he was, after all, a man, and not a mere article for use or sale or purchase. "As to that category, it will be said that they act instinctively. "Doubtless: instinct is a good guide for those who have not reason. " Is not this the true solution — and justification — of Ingratitude? " Why else should it be so strong a social factor, if not also a moral element — a benign product of the play of various forces — reactions almost to the point of revolt, revolts almost to the verge of subversion 231 Echoes of Whistler — but all making for the dignity of man, for the needs of the lower hf e and for the meeds of the higher one ? " The law of compensations is not confined to physics; there is something greater than conserva- tion of energy, and that is refinement of feehng and of thought. " Now, glance an instant at the wonderfully-astute and effective way in which the human mind accom- phshes these redressings and levelHngs. " It is worth while. " You confer a favour, as it is loosely called, on a man. Passing over the first unpremeditated and ill-controlled exhibition of thanks — which is, after all, another way of describing the expression of relief, or effervescence of excitement, or nervous rebound — why is it that you touch in him a fine quick thread of contempt for you, and a strengthened chord of seK-importance in himself? " In a word, he thinks the less of you, and the more of himself. He knows you better now — your inner man, the springs whereby you may be moved; he has your true measure, he has penetrated the secret tabernacles of your heart, he has sounded your brain, he knows that you are for him an available asset; his every thought becomes tinged, almost saturated with a hidden scorn for you, which has for its com- panion a heightened sentiment of self-superiority, greased by something like the pride of possession. " Nor is this all. " It may be, and it often is, that a man does not — sometimes he dares not — study closely what goes 232 In Defence of Ingratitude on in his own mind; and because the idea of obKga- tion is irksome and hurtful, he labours needlessly in the fabrication of lob-sided equations and fantastic rearrangements of forms, dimensions, distances, grada- tions, hues ; he argues and sophisticates ; he tries to evaporate the real and to sohdify the imaginary ; and, generally, he gives himself much avoidable trouble. " Indeed, regarding him superficially, one might almost conclude that he is trying hard to get rid of the oppression, and the offence of your continued existence, by the imputation to you, in all your in- nocence and unconsciousness, of insufferable airs, pre- sumptions, moral claims and the hke ; and so he churns himself up to spleen and dislike, which in due course attain the temperature and tenacity of resentment; and thus he balances the account — as he thinks. " One must look deeper than the conflicts or the promptings of vanity. " That alone would not dispose of everything — satisfactorily, at all events. " Why should the man you help or serve or save — it may be with hazard, sacrifice, pain, difficulty — nurture and nourish feelings of ill-will towards you, and endeavour to weave shrouds around your acts — not around you, corporeally, for he may want you again? " I could go on propounding; but I will pass to my conception of the sweet reasonableness of In- gratitude — which is something grander than the somewhat cold, crude candours recently enunciated — due to unscientific methods of discussion. " It often happens that in the effort to find points 233 Echoes of Whistler of view which are agreeable, if evasive; and argu- ments which are captivating, if inexact; theories all too plastic, and conclusions all too gay ; one really encounters truths smihng under strange masks, and knowledge lurking in unexpected nooks; and the wind often comes in answer to your whisthng. " I Hke the idea of the planetary commonweal, and the great terrestrial balance-sheet. ' The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof,' and man is vested in it — in many unequal degrees. There are changes and transmissions and movements; but the vast total is constant, as scientists say. " Raise the thought. " If you, from any motive or impulsion — ^rashness folly, courage, kindness, pity, goodness, knightliness, vanity, idiotcy — do something for another unit, or for any number of units, what is it but a bubble on the river, a transient and trifling transfer of some- thing, service or chattel or charge, from one to another, or others — a mere shifting of an iota, an atom of the common stock ! "Is it not the common duty? " Anyway, is it not supremely-elevating and automatically self-rewarding to the unit which acts, and as soothingly satisfactory to the unit which is the recipient of that action? " And is not Virtue an inestimable common asset? " We speak of pubhc conscience, national morality, bonds of humanity. " But PubUc and Nation and Humanity are com- posed of single units; and the quahties and posses- 234 In Defence of Ingratitude sions of each make up the grand total of all; and in that each has his inheritance and share — though he rarely gets his proportion. " This dazzhng reflection blinds me with illumina- tion and brings me up sharply, all standing, as yachtsmen say. " What if my so-called benefactor ministered to me, disguised in the charities and loves and darings which rightly belong to me, and which have, in some way, been mal-distributed to him! " I will not continue; the thought is too immense ; I stagger thereunder. "Now I understand what the psalmist meant when, speaking of other men, he remarked that he did not object to their anointing his head, but saw no reason why they should crack it with the oil- vessel. " I conclude. " Who dare deny that the liberty of a man's own heart and soul — compared with which all other hberty is but as a coarse sack is to a silken vest — is of unspeakably greater value than oceans of feehngs of tender-souled, or officious, or well-meaning, or self-indulgent, or impulsive, or fantasticaUy-natural people of altruistic proclivities? " The beneficiary — the Ignorer — strikes the true note when he rebels at the bondage, which the memory of the good that he reaped at the expense of the other individual, may bind him. " He refuses to barter his self-esteem for benefits which, precious at the time, dwindle and fade but yet fail to lapse into utter forgetf ulness ; and that 235 Echoes of Whistler is why he recognises that he owes it to his own innate nobihty and independence to assert them, and, as he holds them dear, so he means to hold them clear. " He will brook not even an unasserted tyranny; his birthright is his own, and it is not to be bought, or coerced or even spell-bound. " So he draws his hnes with sharpness and resolu- tion, and — ^with such dissemblings as may befit his habits, manners, social condition and expectations — relegates the wretched benefactoring person to his proper place in his mind and — disregard." A man, who had shown some impatience, remarked : " What should be done to the man who assumes that I have, or can by any possibility have, any superfluities; and to the man who, having a friend — a real friend, mind you ; that is to say a person whom he thinks that he knows well — ^puts that knowledge aside in the unchecked surging and fermentation of his sensations, and impoverishes or prejudices or pains himself in pursuing them to their illogical conclusion by helping him? Also I wanted — " " Refrain! " solemnly commanded an habitually- silent man in a deep voice. " My gorge rises at the subject. I refuse to troU mock libiamos to sham quaffings from gilt wooden beakers. Out on you, Ingrates, vipers, helots of helots! and be your low foreheads deservedly trodden under foot by mere low rascals and common dirty sharpers. Out! " " Now, that's very creditable," said, with a Scotch accent, the youngest of the party. 236 AN ELEGY I THOUGHT I had no love to give. No grief to leave behind; I somehow felt that I might live In a world of loveless mind. But I found I could not hve alone, Nor bear the weight of years: I fancied that I could thus atone — If I were sure of tears. But tears come not of their own will. And love is still a boy; A.nd the love I craved is lacking still, And my heart still sighs for joy. Yet love and I shall sometimes meet, And at least exchange a bow: For, though he and I are not so sweet. We are for ever so — So friendly and so confident That we shall not fall out — 237 Echoes of Whistler That I do not care a withered cent If love be seen about. And if I'm asked why is this so, I calmly can reply It is thus ever, and I show — That I am not — a fly. 238 RETROSPECT It is not that I mourn the loss Of friends, or tales would tell Of self-esteem, and other dross That I had prized so well: Nor that I shall not once more greet The face I did adore, Or kiss the hps I thought so sweet Or the hand I prest before. But it is because I never more Can walk with thee again, And talk of things as once of yore, Or others — ^p'r'aps as vain: It is because thou wert ever yet The brother of my heart. That I regret we ever met — But not that we did part. For still my soul thy name doth own, And asks with anxious tongue Where the bald mischief thou hast gone- But cares not for how long. For a vision of the night hath blown On rackets — lurid, steep; And ruby paintings of the town. And seclusions in the Keep; 239 Echoes of Whistler And still as doubloons buy the smile, And still as wine glows red, And still as vipers bite the file Whilst yet greenhorns are bled — Charmers and victims, lords and slaves, Their destinies shall dree; And fools still feed the drones and knaves- And knaves ne'er humble be. 240 ON THE ACCEPTANCE OF MY PICTURE BY THE NATIONAL GALLERY I HEAR that the Gallery has got A picture done by me, And that they have hung it high and clear For all to come and see. But I thought that they never would Condemn a man like me To sit outside the gate, and wait Like old Mordeca — i. Yet Time his strange changes Avorks, And quick surprises brings; And Haman is consigned to dust, Whilst Mordecai swings In honour, grace and favour high, And, if not in gold and red, His blue and silver's of array Best becomes his head. For now that he is dead and gone. And dreams no more of fame. His joy still tranquilly responds To the justice done his name. Q 241 Echoes of Whistler And blue is of the heavenly tint, And white's the silvery hue Of innocence and pardoning love, And of my thanks so true — To those who after mocking years, And hot winds of scorn and hate, Have seen at length I was not a crank. Nor quite a shallow pate; But, in my wayward, whimsy way, A lover of true art; And if I did not often shine 'Twas but I — and not my heart, 'Twas hand and eye that failed full oft To paint the inner scene — The " I " so full of human sells. And the eye, at times, of green. Be all my friends forgiven now — And, especially, the best, I would not wear a hero's brow Did I now say the rest Of this my parting song of praise, And culminating joy; I crave the pardon of my foes, And till then — ^AU ahoy ! 242 The Acceptance of my Picture For though conceit, caprice and other taints My real self seemed to mask, I always hoped and pray'd I'd get What my pride could never ask; A point of space, a hne of print. How ever little or obscure, In that temple of the immortal Great — That shrine so high and pure. And ev'n the hfe that now I hve Takes on a loveher glow, For all shadows' shades of bitterness Have truly vanished now. I thought I was so far from Earth — Fancied I'd left behind All association with its interests, And had an abstract mind. Yet still looks back the lingering soul, And still with dearest ache Feels for the touch of the unseen links That even death can't break. And far murmurings, as dreamt-of surfs On some dim coral shore. Still sound at times within the soul That thought to hear no more. 243 Echoes of Whistler And now I am most truly glad That I was unbereft Of Memory and human faith, And feel — that I'm not left. 244 THE MAN IN POSSESSION Who does not know that mildewed individual with the air, sometimes assumed, of once better days, with redolences which suggest that he often sleeps in his clothes which also serve to store trifles of pro- vision, for modest sustenance or gentle comfort, in the form of furtive bits of cheese and an all too faith- ful pipe — who is " left " with his warrant and in- ventory and note of judgment debt, costs and Sheriff's charges, moyennant payment? That Man in Possession, that squalid shadow of execution, and conspicuously unpicturesque arm of the Law — more personally offensive but otherwise superior to the jackals, wolves, foxes, and serpents who use him as their instrument of slow torture — is not the person of whom I am now writing. The Man in Possession of whom I am discoursing, and whom I call my Comrade, is my alUed self. Sub- consciousness; the under-man, the non-sleeper, the Vulcan amongst his active though often dark and silent forges, the Saturn who devours all — and digests nothing. Is he an alter ego — assuming that there is only one of him? Such a supposition is opposed to even the sHghtest knowledge or exjaerience. 245 Echoes of Whistler To designate a phenomenon or thing is not to elucidate it ; nomenclature is not explanation. The word " sub-conscious " has been used very much as physiologists use the word " involuntary," in respect of various more or less important bodily processes — perhaps, the majority of them. It is far different from any such conception as of a mere cask of yeast into which things somehow drop, and in which things somehow are conserved, or changed, or sorted. Every sensation, when examined even hghtly, proves that the so-called sub-consciousness is not a merely passive receptacle, but an active and even aggressive agency. The Man in Possession has levied on all — without reservation or reserve; and for him nothing is too sacred, nothing too secret, nothing too shght. So rapacious, so zealous, so hold-all and hold-fast is he that he is, in a way, that which he has seized; he becomes identical with his bordereau; but, above and beyond it, he is ahve — benignly or mahgnly, as the case may be, or as the mood may impel him. Have I lived so long with him as not to know him, and all that I owe him — in either sense? I revel in a wild instant of liberty, and I mean to expose him, since I cannot otherwise pay him out — as the legal phrase goes. Yet I wish to be fair. I will not ignore that I have sometimes profited by his suggestions, reminders, premonitions — and even admonitions. But I have oftener suffered from them, or from my 246 The Man in Possession neglect of them. He evinces no objection to be dragged from his lair, or to hear me give my mind of him. He will probably take snap-shots of the one pro- ceeding, and verbatim notes of the other, for ulterior use. I know what that means. But I will speak. Let my cause aid my courage; and if my plenitude of mere words procure me no fresh hght, let it, at least, embitter my just acridities. For that grasping baihff, that too-absorbing col- lector, has grabbed Memory, itself — perhaps, the chiefest of the goods, chattels, and effects forcibly gathered in by him. What is there left? I am merely the Occupant. He is the keeper of the records — and of everything else; my entire theatre, so to speak — property stores, wardrobes, manuscript room, scene lofts; my cupboards with their awful contents; my safes with their secret dockets, the dear hidden graves, the battened-down tragedies, the odds-and-ends on the rubbish heaps, and all the trails and troubles and trifles and trials of my life — without an exception, he has them all — confused, but intact and unforgotten. It is a fearful thought that the Man in Possession should reign in this intimately related and yet seem- ingly independent realm — master of the fathomless repositories of all my experiences, ideas, dreams, feehngs, knowledge, desires, aspirations; stowed in various degrees of disorder, yet of ready, and even sudden, accessibility; and retained with astonishing tenacity, and cruel care, and relentless exactitude. 247 Echoes of Whistler But it were unfair to pass over the numberless, and mostly unregarded acts and servitudes of a minor but utilitarian kind, often crystallising into habits, and thus saving much time and energy by dispensing with the original thinkings, and especial or experi- mental efforts, which, but for such tacit mouldings and unobserved inclinings, would be necessary. Herein the Comrade acts beneficially. But the graver side dominates all. I ask myself whether I, the Occupier, am to be also charged with, and for, the moral sense, in this strange combination. I know that, conventionally, or apparently, I am — Myself. But, of course, I actually know better. Yet, " thou art not i^^se, for I am he." And there are walks and voices in the soul — at times — when the Comrade must creep into the deepest shadows of his darkest lodges; and perhaps, also, there is a spiritual memory as distinct from the metaphysical. And maybe, as we pass through our hves, leaving everything behind us, tiring and chilling and chang- ing out of things, Memory itseK — unsubservient, disobedient, inopportune, slothful, vital as it may be — may likewise so be dropped — whilst we move on. The Comrade mocks at me from his dens in the basement — (I, the Occupier, inhabit the front and back of the rez de chaussee and the enti'esol — but he needs no keys and stands on no ceremony) — where he sees, and sets, the wheels going round, throws 248 The Man in Possession over the levers, applies the brakes, or increases or reduces the velocities. Wliat! He do all this? He and not I : or, it may be, he and others. I do not know. So many matters and acts mingle, inter- sect, run parallel; there are such derisions, good counsels, useful reminders, sound judgments, re- morseless and virulent corrections, untimely aptnesses, orgies of incongruities, wild strains of irrelevances, details, garbage, ordure, parrot words and phrases, fragments of drunken choruses, guessings, vampings, manglings, reproachings, flatteries, insults, sus- picions, quotations, inexphcable glooms and depres- sions and fears, j anglings of all the strings and reeds and brasses to the outermost verges of endurance, and chords of sweetest harmonies — these, and a hundred more contradictory movements, acts and matters, in endless whirls — yet driving off and away if I rouse myself in reaHty and command desistance. But how rarely do I — or can I — do so ? He seems to say to me : " You admit that I spread before you, from my store-houses, visions of beauty and memories of love and dehght — your rose-gardens, your fair women, your glorious galleries, entrancing sceneries, bewitch- ing voices, vanished friends, golden hopes." Miser ! you dole out fragments — mostly in dreams. Miscreant! you hoard them to fashion into the " sorrows' crowns of sorrow " for my helpless temples. Do not I know you — on all your many sides? But, do I? 249 Echoes of Whistler Your sophistries, your wiles and guiles are on the surface, so to say ; and you can be grave and sombre, and, in your pious characters, minatory as Knox, specious as Renan, persuasive as Newman, pre- posterous as Mrs Eddy. And also are you a sardonic comedian, tempter, and censor, mentor and juggler; well of lovely and tender recollections or thoughts, and sink, regurgitat- ing all fouhiesses; shameless in your officiousness, electric in your nimbleness, indecent in your alacrities ; so active and so avid that you want to be, at once, stage manager, prompter, scene - shifter, call-boy, gasman, all the orchestra, and the entire Company. And now my blood is up ; be yours on your own head, for I will out with my opinion of you. I have yet to complete my testimonials of you — for I have not been on intimate terms of confidence and decep- tion with you for nothing. To your face— if you have one— I brand you as a capricious servant, an atrocious master, a dubious companion; a relentless steward, hideously honest and tricky; a lying logician, a lewd instigator, a fierce accuser; a suborner, an informer, a maker of shams, a stern denouncer ; tramp as well as squatter, burglar as well as baihff; pestiferously plausible, exhaustless in excusings, arguments, glosses and cut- ting jeers when the upper tenant, the Occupier, has yielded to you a self-deluding credence — or consent. What is the use of all this? Vituperation is not reasoning. True, but I may thus, perchance, obtain some 250 The Man in Possession slight glimpse of what the stripped soul is like when separated, if only for an instant, or by a shght de- flection, from the Man in Possession, I once heard a man ask, in a haK-dreamy way, when told that someone would speak to him — " Which of me? " [It happened that the waiting person was disembodied, but that did not matter.] But the question set me thinking. Shall I be, in the end, disassociated from him — standing as some noble tree in my own " prodigy of shade "? Or shall I be absorbed by him, and become as some intertwined thicket in a rank jungle? I put behind me the not unattractive advice to foil him by be- clouding my own faculties still further; for thus, it is hinted, I could be inspired to speak, possibly to sing, of things unknown — and so cause him to forget things known. For without Memory, his finest and most powerful instrument, medium and agency, he would be as helpless as Polyphemus, who, when his Cyclopean eye was destroyed, raged in his blind fury and agony, and filled the air with dreadful roarings as he desperately, but aimlessly, flung rocks about. These are solemn probabihties which each should think out for himseK ; but let no man recklessly deny demoniacal possession — now, perhaps, more populous than ever. Swine of the Gadarenes ! Ye were wise to act with such precipitate resolution to terminate the con- nection. Ye were fortunate to be able to do it so cheaply and definitely. 251 Echoes of Whistler I have hinted, and not flippantly, at a time when it may be said, in the double sense, " Memory is a thing of the past." The divine oblivions will, one far day, fall on the soul, separated and hberated from the interpenetra- tions of the lower humanity. Then and thus will it become worthy to enter on its real life; and that " is the first resurrection." 252 ON MYSELF He is a rash man who wilfully takes a naked light into a powder magazine; and he is still more rash if, knowing the inflammable and explosive nature of his surroundings, he deliberately sets his candle on the floor, and opens all the doors and windows. I am that rash person. I do not underrate the hazardous character of my adventure, nor do I cherish any illusions that some special dispensation of Providence is likely to inter- vene between my action and its inevitable con- sequences. But I break with that description of prudence that turns aside in the face of sure disaster; and I prefer rather to collect and examine the fragments of the ruin than to continue in its elementary sepulclire of stone, and hypocrisy, and cowardly seK-deception. I am a Spirit now. I was lately much more and much less — a Man. In that composite condition I never thought that a time would come when I would be in this solemn, and yet singular, state. For it is not enough to say that I am deprived of all means of feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, doing, going — in the manner in which I was habituated to perform these varied offices of the nether being; 253 Echoes of Whistler but it is also the case that in none of these functions or activities am I in the smallest degree denuded or curtailed. Nay, it is beyond all possibiHty of question that in every one of these, and in others of which I was heretofore unaware — or only so far aware as a fleet- ing thought, gone ere it could be seized, or a transient tremor with its vague and faint and indefinable suggestion of something which eluded almost as it dawned — I am immeasurably better supplied than ever imagination could have divined. I — the I of this moment — am to the I of my pre- death time as is the full-grown plant to the crude and potential seed. I do not mean this in the restricted though noble sense of moral causation or dealing, but rather as illustrating the essential and indescribably vast differences — common to bad as to good or relatively- neutral spirits — between Man as he is on Earth, and that self-same Man as he is in the Spirit world. Are we then, may it fairly be asked, cut off from all those pleasures, studies, companionships, service, love, mirth, duty, worship, variety, growth, and rising to higher and yet higher planes of existence, and use- fulness, enjoyment, knowledge? For it is so difficult to form the conception of any of these existing, or as being even possible, when all those means, facihties, instrumentahties and agencies, which form so large a part of our mortal state, are absent. But — apart from all the mechanism of nerve and 254 On Myself brain, and all the wondrous array of contrivances and adaptations, all the ways and avenues and the ministry of myriads of automatic vassals, faithful heralds, vigilant sentinels and zealous messengers which go to make up the sentient nature of man; and apart from mere physical organs of sensation and use, of active or of passive ordination — there is nothing that we do not possess in a thousandfold greater degree in capacity, and a ten thousand greater-fold in intensity — the mere corporeal or animal machinery, of course, excepted. To have been able to discard that is, itseK, a hbera- tion, a striking-off of fetters, a renewal, an enlarge- ment and an ennoblement of life. And I am here, knowing at last — for I did not reahse it at first — that I am what men call DEAD — and contented, ah ! so contented. Not that I am in anything but a preHminary or preparatory condition, with a gradually-broadening view of myself as I was, as I am, and as the Lord of all would have me to be — if I can only be rid of this proud, impatient, intolerant, arrogant, and ultra-vain mind and temper of mine. I sometimes think that I was one of the greatest fools on the face of the earth to lash out as I did like an ill-conditioned mule; and though I sometimes managed to amuse my friends, and to mock myself, I never had any real satisfaction, even in moments of apparent triumph; because I knew — who better? — that I was always acting and talking and gibing and laughing very much like an insufferable spoilt 255 Echoes of Whistler child, or an educated and humanised ourang- outang. I am glad that I have brought myseK to say this now for the first time since, like Bottom, I was translated — though on finer hnes than Shakespeare then meant. I feel happier that I have said it. It was working within me, it was fought down by me, it was argued at, scoffed at by me ; but now I have said it, and I humbly feel as if the having done so were the beginning — if only the first faint stirring — of a change for my moral improvement. May it hasten along ! For there is a crowd of Americans about me here — chiefly men and women whom I knew in New York and Paris — who vex my soul with their frivolity, loudness, and general low-mindedness, and crass ignorance. There are others as well ; but there are some whom I have got to know lately, and it is a keen delight, a solace, a betterment, and an education in that highest beauty — Goodness. I have used the word enjoyment, but it must not be understood in any limited sense, nor as if all Sj^irits — whatever their state, education, capacity — lived all the same hfe and were, like soldiers in barrack, subjected to the same modes of living and acting. " Eye hath not seen, nor hath ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive " the hfe in the Spirit World. " As noon rising on a noon," in Dante's words, is 256 On Myself but a trifling approach to the measurement of com- parison. For no dream of beauty that mortal ever dreamt, no chord or song that mortal ever heard whispered into his heart from unearthly founts of music, no scene, no figm'e, no harmony, no tendernesses, no sublimities, no magnificences, no sciences, no rap- tures, no peace, no love, no joys, no changes, varieties, expanses, freedoms, ubiquities, powers, pieties, pro- gresses, surprises, laughters, dances, processions, splendours — approach in essence — they scarcely seem to be akin even in name — the reaUty of life in the Upper World. IT is hfe — life; the real, the true, the glorious, the ever-young, the holy, the everlasting! And I, who am looking down, in fancy, upon the Me as I pranced or skipped or sHd or stamped below, I laugh — with, as it were, tears in my eyes — les larmes au coeur. What! Can that have been I — that pitiful, feebly-sarcastic coxcomb? And what a deeply- dyed fool he must have been to disguise himself so ! For, beneath all his affectations and vanities, and disdains, and shallow spites, and mocking mannerisms there was concealed, from all but the All-seeing Eye — and, for the most part, but not always, from even himself — a heart of a sensibility quick to the poig- nancy of pain, of a lovingness hke a child's, of a charity like a saint's, and of a high-mindedness Uke a prince's. Do I flatter myself because I set down what I know R 257 Echoes of Whistler now to have then been in the germ, in the first flicker- ings, in the premonitions and even cloudinesses — but still there; to hve and bear fruit, or to perish and, perishing, call for righteous retribution for gifts neglected, abused, contemned, killed? Nay, it is part of the Confession, It is also no small part of the Penance. Indeed, it is the most acute and piercing part of the Penance. Here remorse is mercifully toned down to an ex- quisite regret, and that regret, if grace be given, is purified as hnen is bleached in the sweet valleys — till the godly sorrow works to repentance, and the colours brighten as they deepen, and the radiant light and holy peace enwrap the soul. I have, I know, been discursive — some may say incoherent. Maybe. I have shown my heart, even myself, as I write. I am glad, and I feel as refreshed. I have no sermon to preach, no moral to inculcate, no lesson to declare, no warning to declaim. These I leave to worthier and abler — to those who may be thereunto appointed. Let who will say what he will. I have written solemn truth. 258 THE BIRTH OF A PICTURE It was on this wise. The artist had laid down his brush in sheer help- less weariness of hand and heart and eye, and looked blankly at the canvas before him on which he had roughly outlined some scene in a land which he had never visited. The studio was a poor room in a poor house in a very poor quarter in Paris. He looked hungry, and low-spirited as well, as if discouraged by his work; and his lowly solace, his pipe, lay cold beside his palette. In an adjoining room, or rather the space partitioned off by a rough screen of linen-covered wood, lay a woman and an infant in her arms, asleep. The artist stretched his arms to their widest and yawned long and leisurely — he had not slept for two nights because he must finish the work he was on before next morning. It was a matter of life or death to him, for his rent was in arrear and his purse was empty. Then, as his eyes again turned to his canvas, he set his teeth, and with an imprecation at his luck, and half a bitter laugh and half a suppressed sob, he almost fiercely dashed at his work once more. But, strong as was his resolution. Nature was stronger still, and he had not put on many strokes 259 Echoes of Whistler of his facile brush before his fingers relaxed their grip — they had feebly continued to move though the head had fallen and the heavy eyes had closed — and he was deeply asleep. The look of anxiety almost deepening to despair, and the strained ex- pression of indomitable will, and of fatigue and privation, faded off his broad brow and handsome features and were replaced by a glow of rapt and almost ecstatic pleasure and hope and confidence. He was dreaming of his work — not the hireling drudgery of other men's bidding in the way of copy- ing, or manufacturing, or helping others to reap both reputation and money whilst he starved and slaved ; but of Art such as he had seen in his youth- ful day-dreams, and in the visions of his happier life, before poverty and illness, and the treachery of friends, and the malice of enemies, had reduced him to his present pitiable condition of a hack, a copyist, a dealer's bondslave, a subject for his own contempt. He was dreaming; and as he dreamt a heavenly ray of light seemed to shine into his soul, for he smiled, and a dozen hard cruel years of his life melted from his face as he did so, and made him appear as a young man again. By slow gradations he seemed to pass from the first feelings of re-awakened inner life to what seemed like wonder and surprise brightened with joy, which in turn tempered to an aspect of determination and vigour. The fine face became almost stern in its firmness, its loftiness of purpose, its regained self-esteem; and 260 The Birth of a Picture jDale with a simple thankfulness, as if for a revelation accorded, a mission given, or some royal favour granted, or prison doors unlocked. He had not slept an hour, yet when he woke up, tranquilly as a child, a smile played on his lips and a light shone in his eyes and irradiated his face, which softened, though it did not weaken, the resolve which dwelt in its every line. Without haste, and without tardiness, he prepared another canvas and mounted it on the easel before him. He selected some brushes of a lighter kind than those which he had been using, scraped clean his palette and rubbed on some fresh colours of the latest makes, and seemed about to commence when a sound from his wife startled him. She stood beside him, with her great eyes full of astonishment. " Paul," she cried. " I — I — oh, my dear Paul, I've had a dream — such a dream — such a dream ! " " Tell me, sweet, what did you dream? " he asked tenderly, playfully, yet with a sudden access of surprise — a quick misgiving, a half -trembling pre- sentiment. It must be remembered that he was weak from over-work, and over-worry, and want of rest — and even of food. " Paul," she clutched him tightly, and her musical voice was almost hoarse in her emotion, " I have just dreamt — Oh, Paul, you must not laugh, you must not, you must not — ^you dare not — I forbid you — " 261 Echoes of Whistler " Calm thyself, my angel, my beautiful little wife, so patient, so sweet, so good, so loving. No, I will not laugh. Tiens, I shall not even smile. Does that content thee, pretty bird? " She was shaking all over as she crept into his big arms, and laid her hot cheek against his face. " Paul — a question. Oh, answer me truly before I tell thee. I will tell thee all. Oh, my poor noble httle friend, all — all. But first my question — " Her earnestness and excitement, which almost touched on hysteria or madness, frightened him, and he tried to calm her by stroking her silky brown tresses and kissing the fingers of the hand that quivered on his shoulder. " Answer — answer," she stepped back like a queen in tragedy. " Why, Paul, my adored, golden-hearted, heaven-gifted Paul, why have we been so undeservedly poor and wretched and unappreciated and deserted? In a word, look around you — look — no, never mind. Oh, answer, my friend, why is all this, and why has it come on us — on us who merit it so little? " He had many times asked liimseK the same thing. " I do not know, my angel. The fortune of war, you know — " She interrupted him impatiently. " No, not that, not that. It is ... " She raised herself to her short height, her face white, her eyes wet. "It is because you have never risen to the thought of God, or had the wish to do that which might present the spectacle of His Glory and Good- 262 The Birth of a Picture ness and Beauty before the eyes of men. You have embarked your talents, and your time and happiness, in depicting scenes of Hfe and of interiors, and vice and pleasure and vanity, for idle minds and worldly hearts and godless souls." " My angel, thou art not well . . . thou art agitat- ing thyself. ..." " Now," her mood changed, a rich colour mounted into her face, and her eyes sparkled and danced whilst her lips curled in a bewitching smile, and her voice was full of sweet ripphngs. " And now, and now I shall tell thee my dream — all of it, textually, exact to the end of the finger- nails. Listen then: ah, but listen well." Dehghted and relieved by the rapid change, yet not free from an undertone of apprehension as to fever or — ah, horror! — sanity, he petted her, smiled on her, and assured her that he was all ears; and he made a comical movement of his hands above his head. Whereupon she pulled them mischievously, then kissed them with great gravity, settled lierseK on a broken-seated chair opposite to him, and went on : " I dreamt, oh, my darling Paul, that thou wert in a lake, a pond, a deep black deep water which, though it remained black all the time, kept on continually throwing up waves and crests and lines and seamings of all sorts of colours — single, com- bined, mixed, blended — all most confusing yet marvellously retaining the sombre and pervading black aspect of the whole. And as thou didst 263 Echoes of Whistler strike about and splash in trying to save thyself from drowning, the water that so became dashed about landed on the banks, and became all sorts of noxious, hideous reptiles, and unutterably nasty, crawling things. " I was going to cry out, or throw myself in to help thee, my heart, or to die with thee, when — this is reaUy the dream, the beautiful, wonderful, blessed dream " — she clapped her hands and her voice rose and sang like a peal of silver bells — " when a voice suddenly said, quite close beside my ear : ' Stop, httle one; I know what has to be done ! ' I turned, and beside me stood a figure as of a spirit of Good, and he said to me : ' Call him, httle one : call him by the grandeur and passion and beauty of his Art, by the hoHness of love, by the innocence and tenderness of your child, by the love and mercy and power of God ! Counsel him to make one strong, straight stroke for safety; implore him, command him,' "I had sudden strength and decision; words, gestures came to me unbidden. " I did not hear myself speak or cry out to thee, but my voice seemed to return to me hke a thousand echoes. " I knew it was mine, and I, somehow, marvelled at the .tones even more than the words — entreaty, devotion, imperative command. " I do not remember — I do not think that I ever quite knew how it happened — but in an instant the scene had quite changed." 264 The Birth of a Picture He held up a finger, and said gravely : " Yes, my life, the scene had quite changed, and thou wert sitting on the grass, with wild flowers all around thee, the birds singing and the blessed sunlight quivering, laughing, playing and glancing through the leaves of the tree under which we sat." " We," she cried, surprised. " Or, rather, thou wert sitting, with my great shaggy sleeping head on thy lap, and thy tears — happy tears, my Claire — falHng on my upturned face. Is it not so? " She leapt at him, and then drew back in a sort of terrified astonishment. Then she seized him, and would have shaken him had force and weight been in anything like practicable proportion. " Paul, Paul, how knowest thou this? Tell me instantly — instantly — I insist — " " Was not the scene something like this? " He took up a crayon and his fingers dashed off, in a few swift bold, sure strokes and unerring curves, the outhne of the pretty picture he had described. She gazed at it with awestruck eyes, and her face grew pallid; she clasped her hands, and sunk to her knees. He turned quickly, and divined her half-formed thought and rising fear. He laughed. " No, my angel; it is not what thou fearest. All to the contrary. It is rather that which thou hopest for." 265 Echoes of Whistler He left his canvas, raised her and folded her in his arms. " For," he continued, his deep voice mellow in inflections which were caressing, and in notes which were grave, resolute, gentle, joyous, humble. " For as thy tears, ma bien-aimee, fell on my fore- head, I started and looked up into thy startled eyes. What they read there, or what thine read in mine, I know not. " But an awakening stirred within me — a dawn, a resurrection, a new birth. " Yes — ah ! how thy heart beats, my poor dove ! — I started ; I touched my forehead where the precious gems of thy tears had fallen, and then my eyes, my breast, and all my fingers; and I cried, even as I gathered thee to me, as I do now. . . . " ' Yes; thus shalt thou save and sanctify me, my sweet saint; thus thy pure holy tears shall give to head and heart, to eye and hand, new existence, new inspiration, new incentives; and to our lives happiness, joy, and the glory of the knowledge of God, and of the beauty and pathos and grandeur of Man and his World! ' Was it not so, my Claire? " She twisted herself out of his embrace and stood before him, pale and panting. " Oh, Paul, how knowest thou this? It was my dream — mine, I tell thee." She positively stamped her foot as if she had discovered a theft. " I did not tell thee unawares, and thou couldst not have overheard it. That were absurd, thou knowest — were it not? " 266 The Birth of a Picture She spoke doubtingly. He laughed. French people can laugh in the middle of most solemn and painful things and yet, somehow, not seem incongruous or untimely. " No, my child, it was veritably my dream." " But it was mine also — mine, mine I tell thee — and, ha! ha! proof the more and irrefragable — I not only dreamt it, but I dreamt that — " " I know that it was I who woke up and told thee that I had dreamt about thy tears falling on my face ; and that I, in my dream — so I told thee in thy dream — had touched with them my eyes and heart and hands, and hailed it as my new hfe, my genius, my inspiration, my mission. . . ." " Paul, kneel with me, kneel instantly, I beseech — I order thee. Stoop thy great head down beside mine, and place thy hands between mine. Ah, the monsters! So. Bend down — obey, and without observations, sir. Gros bete, don't breathe so hard into my ears, ha, ha! Art thou ready — with closed eyes, my beloved. Now." It was a dingy temple — it was a mean altar — it was almost a farcical ritual — as men judge these things. It was a hallowed corner of the sweetest heaven, an angel-attended cathedral, a blessed and twice- blessed shrine, a hallowed choir, and invocation and ascription; and the prayer was as the scent of the rose and the song of the lark or the laugh of a child. Monsieur Isidore Lazarus was one of the shre widest, 267 Echoes of Whistler hardest, kindliest men in Paris, with a bit of poetry and mysticism in strict concealment within him, and an air of cynical good-humour, which cloaked the ever-present inner discontent, which he could neither banish morally nor understand rationally. He was a wealthy coulissier, a collector of pictures, an owner of houses and horses, a patron of theatres and actors, whom he mostly detested and despised, and a hater of books, and of bookmen ; and of women. His life was thus more frivolous than his nature or his liking; and, but for indolence and irresolu- tion, he would have obeyed the prompting, and even the longing, to sell off all he had, give all the pro- ceeds to some hospital, except a few thousand francs, and start Hfe de novo in some strange spot, and taste something of its earnest struggle and purpose. Monsieur Lazarus had, some days before, bought a couple of Paul's pictures from a dealer — paying some fifteen hundred francs for what the artist had received under two hundred. For some reason — a whim, a caprice, an inex- plicable notion — he thought that he would like to see this Paul Aloulet whose name he, though not without a glass, read in the corner of his obviously- hasty productions. In Paris it is as easy to obtain another person's address — as it is to obliterate traces of one's own. " Monsieur Aloulet," said he, after a half -hour's easy, pleasant talk, " I shall not interrupt your work, which is admirable — admirable. I discerned talent in the — the things I bought of Dupontel. Ah ! you 268 The Birth of a Picture wince, my friend. I know the animal — yiHmjiorte — but I was not prepared for this. Come, one must breakfast — let us make a httle fete to-day — a couple of hours. What say you? " Paul smiled sadly and shook his head. He thought of Claire behind the screen, and sighed; of his stained and threadbare clothes; of his picture, and the waste of time. " Well, well," said Monsieur Lazarus, with in- vincible and almost inconvenient good-humour, " it shall be a fete day for me, for I am going to re- quest you to invite me to partake of your d4jeuner here — en famille.'^ There was a httle suppressed shriek behind the screen and Paul burst into a crashing peal of laughter. Monsieur Lazarus rose, dignified and indignant, but Paul had gone behind the screen, whence — after what seemed a little scufHe, an agonised, whispered remonstrance, and a renewed explosion of mirth — he emerged, bearing a small table in front of him. " And welcome, monsieur, welcome," he said as he set it down. " Our menu does not lack succinct- ness, and our table does not expostulate against the weight and variety of the repast which burdens it; but it is our best, monsieur: and, for the moment, it is our all." He laughed again, and almost broke into a sob. Claire heard it — it rang instantaneously in her heart — and she flew to his side. Monsieur Lazarus bowed to this sudden vision, this apparition of lovingness and loveliness as, with 269 Echoes of Whistler blazing eyes and crimson face, and head proudly raised, she stood beside her husband. " Sir," she said in her fine mezzo voice, " we are not proud, neither are we ashamed. Far from us it is to mock you, sir. Is it you, sir, who can mock us, or find this amusing? " M. Lazarus made one or two failures before he found his voice. "Mock you! Amusing! My dear child — ah! my heart could melt itseK from my eyes at this sight. And to think that I — I could throw about thousands — thousands — for nothing; not for scarce the semblance even of pleasure or satiety or excess, whilst you, poor children, were enduring like this! I feel remorseful — guilty, guilty. My God! That it should be even possible! " On the little table stood a half-filled bottle of the most ordinary wine, some bread, a few inches of speckled and adamantine sausage, a twopenny cream cheese, and a solitary apple. A diversion. An imperious knock at the door, and a red round vixenish woman stalked in unceremoniously. She was the concierge's wife, and she knew that the rent was overdue. " I told Monsieur le Huissier," said she, in a loud and disrespectful voice, without even taking the trouble of the usual salutations, " that he was giving himself the pain of mounting to this fifth floor for nothing, since all these miserable objects. . . ." She perceived M. Lazarus's severe eyes upon her 270 The Birth of a Picture — she had not noticed him before as he had, with natural dehcacy, effaced himself, as the French say, as well as he could. She bowed, and arrested her cruel tongue. " Give," said he to the huissier. " I will shew them to monsieur," said the official, retaining hold of the papers whilst producing them for examination, " but I must serve them legally." " Is this account just and correct? " asked he of Paul, who looked at it and nodded sadly. " Here — acquit this, in full, with the charges: and a crown for yourself. Now go, and take that devil of a woman with you." " Oh, sir," she began whimperingly, " my duty to Monsieur the Proprietor — and he is so exacting — " " Bring me the quittance, immediately. Go. Hold, there! " He followed her on to the little land- ing or stair-head, pulling the door behind him with- out closing it. The huissier, or sheriff's officer as we should say, had already gone ; and nobody could have imagined that the voluminous-skirted figure, whose width almost filled that of the stairway, could have de- scended it with such sylph-fike agihty. Paul and his wife looked at each other, too per- plexed to speak, and then at Monsieur Lazarus, who laughed and said : " A matter of business, mes enfants, a mere trifle of business. I have bought this newly-begun picture, of which I see a few prophetic strokes by way of aide-memoire; but they suffice, they suffice. Did 271 Echoes of Whistler I not name the price? Ah, what a memory I have! Thirty thousand francs. Your faces are not assent- ing, apparently. Well, then, say forty thousand. Don't be hard on a poor devil, who may win or lose an equal amount in any single transaction in the Place de la Bourse, or over the whiff of a cigarette, or the flutter of a pen." " But," Paul was the first to recover himself, for Claire was simply overwhelmed and dazed. " This is madness, a mockery, or ... a charity." " Monsieur Paul Aloulet, I beg you not to deceive yourself in my regard. I am too good a judge of genius, when I find it, to mistake it. I am too much a man of honour to allow you to insult me by the supposition that I could possibly insult you by an act of mere charity; and I am enough of a man of the world and of affairs to be able to draw my material advantages out of the operation which I have the privilege to propose to you." " But, sir," said Paul, whilst Claire, with distended and shortened breath, clung to him and seemed to struggle with an approaching intuition, " but, sir," feebly, bewildered — " I do not understand — " " Why," laughed Monsieur Lazarus, his eyes full of merriment and yet with a Httle twitching about the corners of his mouth, " how should you? How should a man who allows himself to be exploited by all around him — wolves, foxes, jackals and all the rest of the menagerie — understand? I will tell you; but it is a great, a very great secret, dear Madame Aloulet. I have already got some of your — ^pardon! 272 The Birth of a Picture — your pictures. That grey old rat Dupontel will sell me, or get for me — and cheaply, though with profit to himself — many more. Ah, you sigh; that means a great number of your pictures ; the quantity does not appal. In effect, it is well otherwise, for the profit will be all the greater." " The profit, monsieur? " incredulously asked Paul. " Certainly," composedly answered Monsieur Lazarus. " We will make a little calculation and satisfy even your too uncommercial mind. Thus: I give you fifty thousand francs for this picture — " " Ah, but, Monsieur Lazarus," Claire struck in musically, " you said forty thousand, not fifty, sir," shaking her finger at him, " You did, you did — did he not, Paul? " " Ah, my stupid head," said M. Lazarus with an almost contrite look, " for I do not doubt you, dear madame ; yet it was fifty thousand I meant. Good. Now," he went on briskly, and with a ratthng, busi- ness-like air, " given that I buy up twenty, fifty, a hundred — and then so much the better — of your pictures; see for yourselves the profit that must — ^ that inevitably must — accrue to me when once it is known that I — who am not considered a bad judge or a facile creature in such matters — have regarded myself as supremely fortunate in securing such a work as you have begun for the relatively insignifi- cant and certainly inadequate price of sixty thousand francs. And so anxious am I to secure it, and to clinch the bargain, that I exhaust my pocket by hand- ing you these four or five thousand francs on account, s 273 Echoes of Whistler for which I beg you to take the necessary trouble to give me a receipt in regular and exact form." Paul took the money — it was, in reahty, put into his hand, and stared — simply stared. Claire made up her mind. Radiant, convinced though scarcely understand- ing, laughing and crying at the same time, she raised herseK on her toes — for Monsieur Lazarus had not resumed his chair after handing Paul the banknotes — wound her pretty arm around his neck, and kissed him on both cheeks and on his lips. " Oh," she exclaimed, with an upward glance of her shining eyes, and a passionate interlocking of her fingers, " oh, you welcome, blessed messenger of the good God If only I could inspire you to — to bury them after you got them, or make Paul alter them — or destroy them — I would give my hfe — if it were not that it would grieve Paul and our infant. Would it, Paul? " Monsieur Lazarus smiled at this unconscious, irre- sistible touch of coquetry in the middle of all the deep devotion and tense lofty feeling. " Well, then, my dear child, promise me another kiss — and 3^ou shall have the — the sacred lot of them." " Oh," cried she, with rapture, " may the Holy Virgin reward you — I beg pardon. Oh, what did I say? A thousand pardons, Monsieur — " Both the visitor and Paul broke into a shattering laugh. " Nonsense, my dearest and most dehcate child." M. Lazarus had to be stern with himself in order to 274 The Birth of a Picture be able to speak at all. " I would not have you un- say it for a seat in the Senate. Quite the reverse. I accept the benediction — before witnesses even. I also declare that She has my profound esteem. And She was of my blood, and — of your sweetness and beauty, dear child. Hola! Suffer me to act as your majordomo for an instant. Enter! So." Madame la Concierge bustled in, all affabihty and smiles, as if she were the faithful family honne. She was followed by a Uttle procession of waiters and porters, and a folding-table, larger, she knew, than any in the Aloulet household; and in an incredibly short time an ample and varied meal was spread — a neat httle spirit-stove officiated on a shelf, whilst other viands, fruits, crockery, bottles and so forth occupied the smaller table and a corner. Monsieur Lazarus fairly hustled Claire and Paul into seats. He retained one grave waiter, who acted as if it was his daily experience to assist at improvised httle feasts in dingy ateliers on fifth floors, not counting the entresol, of back blocks in mean and malodorous streets. He turned not a hair, nor committed a sniff, nor twitched an eyelash. Monsieur Lazarus wrote a few words on the back of a card, gave it to one of the other men and dismissed him with the order not to return for several hours. Then he sat down and began to eat and drink with almost unmannered voracity; and, quickly inter- preting a thought in Claire's eyes, he, with a mere sign, evoked from the solemn waiter the sudden 275 Echoes of Whistler statement that he was truly desolated but he had to attend a wedding party in nine minutes from that moment and would Madame and Messieurs be so excessively amiable as to dispense with him, and for the further reason that everything was in readiness — even the coffee on the buffets ; thanks, a thousand thanks! and he had the honour to wish Madame and Messieurs good morning. He bowed as if to a jjrefefs party, and noiselessly gHded away. Never since Paris built streets on end and called them houses, or prior thereto, had there been, or could there well be, a happier breakfast-party — the child, a boy of two or so, being a conspicuous and highly-conversational member thereof. " In half an hour, my friends, the carriage will be here to take us to the Bois." Claire clapped her hands — then her face fell and reddened, and her eyes sought her husband's. He laughed out loudly. "Ah! Monsieur Lazarus," he exclaimed, "you are more than kind — but consider; my poor Claire has no clothes for a carriage, and I am like Joseph — arrayed in many colours — smears and spots and splashes in prismatic profusion. You must think of yourself, dear sir." " Yes, you are right. My pride is rebuked — it were too ostentatious — for me. But . . . " — his gaiety returned, " the carriage shall take your good and pretty little wife to the Louvre, or wherever she prefers to go; and you — avide, avare, Auvergnat as 276 The Birth of a Picture you are, skinflint, miser and hard-hearted tyrant — shall give her a thousand francs. And she shall take the boy, and any lady of her acquaintance to help her from being too much fatigued; because she need not return until the Magasin closes — ^the carriage shall wait for her. And if she leaves as much as one hundred sous unexpended, we will swear that every- thing that she has chosen is unbecoming. Then we shall all dine together in the evening — but not here." Claire kissed him, and kissed her husband, and almost smothered the child; and then she waved her shapely white arms and twirled her fingers as she sang and danced around the little room — and it was marvellous that she upset not a thing ; whilst Paul played on a dish-cover as a mandoline, and cleverly imitated some of its tones — the boy eating chocolates on the floor, and M. Lazarus laughing and snapping his fingers, and crying Hoiij) la ! from time to time — and from time to time wiping his eyes, " One word," said he, when the hubbub had, for sheer want of breath, subsided. " What I am about to say is most serious, momentous, vital. Not a word must be said about the picture — you know what I would indicate — and for this reason. It must not owe its success to an accident, a reclame, a sensa- tion ; for look you, my friends, I also have a reputa- tion to sustain. I am acknowledged to be somewhat of a connoisseur, though not so much as was my father; still, I have some repute in that relation. And you, Paul Aloulet, you have an immortality to achieve, and good service to render to humanity. 277 Echoes of Whistler You will do both ; but there shall be nothing to cloud your renown. Your picture shall go to the Salon in a pseudonym — I charge myself with all details — and you shall become famous on your merits alone. All that I shall do will be, indirectly, to secure for it respect and attention — but indirectly, and with clean hands and heart. Do you understand me, mes enjants ? " Paul pressed his hand, tried to speak, and ended by letting the tears that rolled down and ghstened on his brown moustache and beard tell what he wished to say, and could not. Claire promised also, but not effusively. She would have preferred to see Monsieur Lazarus — to whom nothing, of course, could be impossible — pro- ceed to the Salon with a military band and escort, and amid fanfares of trumpets and rolhngs of drums, order the old fools who govern Salons in general to instantly hang Paul's picture in the most public place in the building, and command everybody to admire it on the spot and without question. But then she was rather preoccupied with the list of purchases which she was mentally drawing up; and before long she and the child, and an elderly Enghsh gentlewoman who taught English and lived on the floor below — and for whom she had just then found an elderly pupil w^ho paid the fees for the full course in advance, and who would — at some future time, some future time — arrange about his lessons — were in the carriage on their gleeful way to the great shop. 278 The Birth of a Picture " My dear Monsieur Aloulet," said Monsieur Lazarus, rubbing his hands, " let us conspire and give Madame Aloulet a little surprise." "A little surprise! " exclaimed Paul. "A little surprise! Ah, this has been a day of such surprises that I fear that I am still dreaming, and that I shall wake to the hunger, the misery, the despair, the disgust — " " Hush, hush! that is past — effaced, obliterated, past. We have to look forward, not backward." " I used the word dream," said Paul, musingly. " Some day, sir, if you will listen to a strange his- tory, I will speak of a dream that Claire and I had only some hours ago. Compassionate and mysterious heavens! It seems weeks ago now — and yet it is so vivid. That outhne, there — " " Yes, yes — but no; tell me nothing more now. All in good time, all in good time. Your picture first, and next, and after, until its last touch. But we are conspirators — " " I am anything you wish, you princely Monsieur Lazarus," laughed Paul. " It is this. I have a little villa at Passy — a long garden, a view of the Seine, seclusion, and proximity to all that one wants to see or have. I have a roomy at'ilier, too — it had been a bilUard-room, arbour, summer-house, lumber-room, and, probably, other things also. Now, you are not to interrupt, nor con-- tradict, nor discuss, M. Aloulet ; you have not your charming wife to protect you, and I am fearless, undauntable, autocratic. You mark me? Ah! 279 Echoes of Whistler Well, then, it is yours — house and contents, all as they exist at this instant of time. No, no, not a gift certainly — that would be almost an outrage, and I am the most circumspect and sensitive of men in that respect. No, no. Voijons : lend me a sheet of paper and pen." He wrote for several minutes. " There! This is a contrat de vente — the whole — all comprised without specification of details — for thirty thousand francs; the Notary shall regular- ise the matter to-morrow. And you acknowledge this sum on account of the hundred thousand francs. ..." " What! Hundred thousand — Oh, Monsieur Lazarus, stop, stop — " " And pray, monsieur," asked Monsieur Lazarus, severely, but with a twinkle in his eye, " may I per- mit myself the temerity of inquiring your right and authority to limit my estimates of value, or to dictate to me on the commercial aspects of Art? " Then both men laughed long. " We shall drive down to the Louvre and I will tell my coachman to conduct them to Passy — bring- ing the Enghsh lady back here. And I shall order my majordomo to employ the necessary people and see everything here removed to Passy. She shall not find anything missing. She will doubtless be dehghted with all she finds — her own, too; but she will not feel really at home unless she have every stick and thread that is here, about her — woman-like — whatever she may choose to do with them later. Do T not know them — being a bachelor? Ah! " 280 The Birth of a Picture A hiatus of some months — that is, a hiatus for the reader; not for Paul, or Claire, or Monsieur Lazarus. The picture is in the Salon, and. it is, in the uni- versal opinion of artists, experts, critics, connoisseurs and tens of thousands of visitors of all nationahties, the artistic triumph of the season. A distinguished artist thus wrote of it to a hterary friend : " I look upon this painting as one of the greatest works of the present century in point of conception, composition and handiwork. It is a product of the highest genius, and the man who could think out such a subject must be a poet in heart of a supreme order. The man who could so group, dress, time and place his subject must have a fine mind, both hterary and dramatic. The man who could draw and paint it as this is painted is a master who need not bend his head to anyone since Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Holbein. " I will give you some Uttle apercu of the work. " The painter's idea seems to have been to depict the struggles of a young artist, and the growth with- in him of a purpose and an ideal, and even a mission, or, at all events, a sanction for his work. " He shows this by bringing before us a series of tableaux beginning with this hero in a state of supreme dejection and poverty and discouragement of almost every kind. " We see him fallen asleep at his toil — evidently a task-master's toil for mere bread — whilst his wife 281 Echoes of Whistler and child, wan and pinched, are sleeping not far away in a corner. " The candle is guttering, and the face of the tired, haggard man is a marvel of expression, and eloquent beyond words. " A dream comes to him as he snatches this brief involuntary slumber that fatigue wreaks from over- wrought Nature. In that dream he sees himself borne to a bower where, amidst roses and singing birds, and rustling leaves, with the sunlight between them, and the bleating of distant sheep and hum of contented bees unseen about him, he reposes bliss- fully on the lap of his beloved young wife, who, always passing fair, regards him with tender, loving wistfulness as he sleeps — their child chasing butter- flies the while in an adjacent copse. " He dreams as he thus reposes, and his dream is of fame and fortune, comfort, luxury, pleasure — the price of an Art which he sells merely as a pleasing commodity — indifferent whether it serve any good or other purpose so long as it serves his own immedi- ate personal purposes in a mercantile sense. " But — and how, the Artist could depict this so plainly, obviously, and naturally, it is quite impossible to explain — she, too, falls asleep as she watches, lulled by the drowsy sounds, lapped in the sweet peace, the perfumes, the soHtude, the meek content and simple happiness of this moment of her hard young hfe. " She sleeps and she, too, dreams. " But her dream is very different to his. She sees a spirit move among the pictures which he has dreamt 282 The Birth of a Picture that he had painted, and which had brought him wealth and repute; and that, ever as this spu'it moved amongst them, the pictures on which his eyes fell shrivelled up and crumbled as if into black in- cinderated balls. " Then, from these ruins she saw a sight that filled her with awe and terror. " All sorts of dreadful, ugly, noxious creatures crawled out of those black little balls of crumpled and, as it seemed, calcined matter, and twisted and squirmed about in the most sickening and frightful manner. " She felt that she must scream out, but she could not, nor could she gather strength to escape. She thought that she would die of horror. " Suddenly, the whole scene changed. She was sitting in a beautiful wood just as I have aheady de- scribed — and then she is aware that she has again fallen asleep, and again in another dream, listens to the spirit's message for her husband, and the nobler use that he is to make of his great Art. " As she thinks of the pains and penuries of their life, from which the brief cheap hohday of one glori- ous day is so divine a release; and of the former dream of genius misused and degraded to mere worldly and insignificant objects, however lucrative to the artist, she wakes, and tears well from her eyes and fall on the upturned manly and — ^you may per- ceive it, though his eyes are closed in sleep — in- tellectual and artistic face of her young husband, pillowed on her lap. 283 Echoes of Whistler " He starts as he feels her tears on his brow, for he also has dreamt, and his dream has been — that she has been dreaming all this about him. "No need then of recounting or explaining; neither really knows what has passed in the soul of the other; but he touches his wetted brow with his fingers and he passionately anoints his eyeUds, his breast, and his hands, with the sacred dew of those saint-like tears. From that moment he vows him- self and his powers to higher ideals and purposes than ever he had contemplated, save perhaps in the day-dreams of Youth. " Husband and wife at last come to understand these co-mingled, and apparently counter-marching and inter-reacting visions. They cannot, and do not attempt to explain : and soon they cease to speak of it — tacitly agreeing to lock the secret away as too holy a thing for common wear or touch. " But the effect is undying. He is painting a new picture — ' old things have passed away, all things have become new.' He is painting the awakening of the Artist to the Higher Purposes, by the tear of his pure-souled and heaven-inspired wife. " The picture is to set out the Revelation, the Mission, the Acceptance, and the Vow. " Here then is the real picture, and it is perfect — an idyll, a gem, a plain and simple tale for a child's mind, a deep thesis for the philosopher and moralist, a psalm, a sermon, a song, a lesson; and oh! a de- light to heart and eye, and sense, and outmost thought and inmost feeling. 284 The Birth of a Picture " You breathe the warm and fragrant air, you hear the breeze hghtly treading the tree-tops or singing along the tall grasses, you inhale the scent of rose and wild thyme, and feel the soft influences of the tran- quil scene steal into your heart, as you look, and look. " But it is when you, not without some effort, shake off some part of the feeling of participation in the delightful and almost Promethean scene — for you seem to be a partaker rather than a spectator — and regard the figures, and see, as it were, on a screen this man's soul rising to a new and greater life ; this woman's pure, loving and elevating spirit; this subtle inter-communion without words, and quick apprehension that anticipates the telling — that re- flects the intention, that learns in a vision what another dreams that she dreamt — that you stand awed and amazed at the power, the witchery, the inspiration, the mastering thought of genius dis- played on these few square yards of canvas. "It is not pleasure alone that you experience; it is also deep instruction. " It is not admiration only that fills you; it is also something akin to worship. " It is truly a great picture — a wonderful master- piece; and not a voice has been heard nor a word written but in the highest praise, and a devouring curiosity as to the identity of the gifted Artist. He is undoubtedly a Frenchman — so much is avowed — but under a nom de guerre. " I know that I cannot have conveyed anything but a most inadequate idea of this most remarkable paint- 285 Echoes of Whistler ing. You must — you really must — come and see it. "It is to be sincerely hoped that the Artist will disclose himseK. Genius hke his — of head and hand and eye — the poetic and also prophetic sentiment which seeks no remote or recondite or fanciful or mystic symbohsm, yet tells its parable with such incomparable simphcity, depth, truth, beauty and tenderness — must not be lost to the world which has acquired the right, it seems to me, to ask for more. " A piquancy is added to this immortal ' exhibit ' in the circumstance that it is not for sale. A friend of mine — an Academician — tells me that he knows for a fact that an offer of £10,000 (a quarter milhon of francs) was pohtely but most firmly decUned by the unknown Artist's agent — who himself avows his ignorance as to his principal's real name. " I repeat — ^you must come over and see this — the greatest painting of these latter many years." " I would not take a million francs for it," said Monsieur Lazarus, from his usual comfortable corner in the atelier at Passy. Claire, standing beside him, planted a fluttering little kiss on the top of his shining bald head. " Besides, you dear, ridiculous children, do you not see that, even as a commercial operation, that holo- caust of the seventy-eight burned pictures — good pictures, I grant you, but not fit to survive in even the remotest cousinship to his chej d'ceuvre — and those destined to follow it — that holocaust is no sacrifice, but 286 The Birth of a Picture rather an enhancement of value. I am many times the gainer, even in the most mundane sense. Not that I shall ever sell it — no, not even if I lack bread." " Dear friend and benefactor," said Paul, pressing his hand. " Besides," he continued, " even were I so needy or so sordid — Mignonne, another little cup — thanks : I could not dispose of it. It is yours — an heirloom — 'par acte de notaire. I have reserved to myself the pleasure of possession and the profit of contemplation during my hfe-time; and what more can I want? " Claire sat down on the stool on which rested the worst of his gouty feet, and leant her fair head against his knee. " Monsieur Lazarus " — she spoke slowly, reflec- tively, in soft and deepened tones — " I have often thought of a thing, but I have not had the courage to say it — not even to Paul." " Traitress! " laughed Paul in his roUing bass. " Tais-toi, gros bete,^^ said she, imperiously. Then she resumed, in her former earnest, musing, hesitat- ing way: " You must know that I am une orpheline de la guerre. I never knew my father. He was killed in battle. My dear mother died of grief and I — like so many others — Avas adopted by a most kind lady — Oh! — she surely is with the saints and angels now." "Amen! " said Paul, devoutly, laying aside his brush, and standing beside his wife, with folded arms and downcast eyes. " She v/as Paul's mother. . . ." 287 Echoes of Whistler " Ah, I see, I see, I see . . . '" said Monsieur Lazarus in a gentle voice. " And you — ^you, Monsieur Lazarus — have never been married. You told us so, you know, often — so I shall not usurp, nor make anyone jealous. Paul's father, too — but he was an officer — was killed; and so — and so I never could say ' Father.' " Monsieur Lazarus's hand played in the silky locks that strayed about his knee — and it trembled. " I never thought," she went on quickly and more bravely, suddenly rising, " that I should feel the want, the desire, the longing, the hunger to say it. But I do, I do — oh. I do now. Monsieur Lazarus: let me call you my father. Do not be angry — let me call you mon pere, and make me the happiest woman in France." She had become pale in her emotion. " Let you, my sweet child! Ah! and I — I thank the good God for having implanted in you the thought, and given me this great treasure. May He bless you! — as I do." She threw herself into his arms. Paul — his heart too full to speak — turned away. On a virgin canvas, on a further easel, there was a glorious but fugitive vision of another picture — as if it had been a mirror reflecting the lovely scene just enacted. " Yes," said Paul to himself, " that shall be my next subject." COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 290 876 2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. OCT 17 1952 MAY 2 2 1856 APR 3 L APR 2 9 1960 "* "0^2 7,97], >■ ■ ' rmL9-25m-8,'46(9852)444 THli i Jl -KAKY aNrVEUGlTY C' C \ JFORNIA LOS ANGFXES T )j 3 1158 003 5 4357