Ill iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 1 1 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE By the Same Author NEW POEMS ENGLISH POEMS PAINTED SHADOWS OCTOBER VAGABONDS TRAVELS IN ENGLAND ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL ORESTES PROSE FANCIES. First Series PROSE FANCIES. Second Series THE BOOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS RUDYARD KIPLING: A CRITICISM THE WORSHIPPER OF THE IMAGE ODES FROM THE DIVAN OF HAFIZ THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL LITTLE DINNERS WITH THE SPHINX THE RELIGION OF A LITERARY MAN RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS : A LITERARY LOG GEORGE MEREDITH: SOME CHARACTERISTICS SLEEPING BEAUTY AND OTHER PROSE FANCIES ATT I T UDES AND AVOWALS WITH SOME <£ <£ <£ <£ <# RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE New York : JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMX London: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD Copyright, 1910, by JOHN LANE COMPANY PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY, New Yohk TO GERTRUDE ATHERTON WITH HOMAGE FOR THE WRITER AND AFFECTION FOR THE FRIEND THE following papers have been published at various times in The ForinighUy Review, The Academy, The Forum, Harper s Magazine, Success, The Smart Set, Ainslee's, The Cosmopolitan, and The New York Times, to the several editors of which the writer desires to make his acknowledgments. The essay on George Meredith's Modern Love is reprinted from a private edition of that poem printed by Mr. Mitchell Kennerley. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Profession of Poet PAGE II II. Concerning Fairy-Tales .... 24 III. The Laurel of Gossip .... 38 IV. Clouds ....... 53 V. Concerning a Woman's Smile . • 63 VI. Citizens of Nature ..... • 7i VII. The Human Need of Coney Island. . 81 VIII. The Dream Children of Literature . 89 IX. Books as Doctors ..... . 108 X. On the Lovableness of Lords 121 XI. The World and the Lover • 131 XII. On Airships and the Soul of Man 146 XIII. The Word Business .... • 154 II I. Grant Allen 167 ir. Tennyson (1809- 1909) .... 212 hi. Four Notes on George Meredith: . 227 1. Modern Love ..... 227 11. The 185 1 Poems .... 234 hi. George Meredith's Poetry 2 45 iv. George Meredith: In Memoriam . . 261 [7] CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. Re-Reading Hawthorne . V. A Note on Maurice Hewlett . VI. A Note on Stephen Phillips . VII. A VlVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE VIII. Anatole France in English Dress IX. William Watson and His Poetry X. A Day at Home with Bjornson XI. Sydney Lanier: An English Appreciation PAGE 267 285 292 293 322 331 339 342 [3] Part I ATTITU D ES AND AVOWALS ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS i THE PROFESSION OF POET ANYONE who has ever received a cheque in payment for a poem must surely have L been struck by the incongruity of the transaction; and, again, if he made any note of the manner in which he spent that cheque, he must have been still further impressed by the fantastic nature of a calling which thus brings him to market with such merchandise for such payment. Mummy has indeed become merchandise and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. Literary history records with dramatic unction the pitiful sums paid by antiquity for its master- pieces. A paltry twenty pounds for " Paradise Lost"! We raise our hands in pious judgment upon a preposterous past. There is latent in our surprise the assumption that, say, a million dollars would have been about right. It does not occur to us to be surprised that Milton was paid anything at all — paid for his sidereal song in the copper ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS coinage of our mortality. And, so far as I know, no literary historian has attempted to trace what became of the money thus grudgingly and fantas- tically disbursed, though, indeed, I can imagine no more fascinating matter for speculative' inquiiy. How did Shakespeare spend the proceeds of "Ham- let " ? What did Keats do with the money he received for " Endymion," and what did he buy with the "Ode to a Grecian Urn"? Yes! What did the Vintner buy ? To settle a gas bill or pay something on account to a butcher seems a sorry destination for money earned by the aspiration of the soul or the tumult of the heart; but it is, of course, only the other half of the paradox of having been paid in money at all. Byron was, of course, right in refusing — at first — to accept money for his poetry, and telling Murray, so to say, to "keep the change." Murray was a publisher. Publishers are tradesmen, and it is proper for tradesmen to make money. That is why they are tradesmen. A poet is different. It is not his business to make money, but to make poetry — and to live as best he can. The world can neither give to him nor take away. All the real giving is on his side, and there is no question in his case of remuneration or reward. The world has nothing he values. If it choose, it can make offerings to him as to its gods, or bring to him tithes THE PROFESSION OF POET of corn and wine as to its priests, or it can crown him with symbolic laurels; but the rewards of the world are for the children of the world, and to the poet its honours are ridiculous. The world, of course, does its best when it confers a knighthood upon one of its poets, but such a proceeding is none the less absurd. It might as well array him in a Masonic apron, or hang the cross of the Legion of Honour around the neck of a nightingale. They understood this matter better in the old East. The poets of Shah and Sultan were rewarded with milk-white horses from the royal stables, mules laden with silks and precious stones, rose gardens and beautiful slaves ; and Hafiz records of one of his odes, So well I sang it, Heaven's Lord Tossed me from Heaven as reward The small change of the Pleiades. The surprise with which the poet receives his earthly cheque for his immaterial merchandise — can it be a real cheque, a cheque liable to be honoured this side the moon? — is of a piece with his whole relation to society, to the world in which he so strangely finds himself — a stranger. The poet is the real man in the moon, that came down too soon, and is always asking his way — to the moon. He is, so to speak, a phantom in fleshly garb, an inspired spectre, embodied for a while for mystic purposes of [i3] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS divine speech; and even to the gross sense of the world there is a suspicion of the supernatural about him, and about his life ever an air of romantic miracle. In fact, he is the romantic soul of man con- sciously embodied and articulate. He is and does "what some men dream of all their lives." What mankind at large sees but in a glass darkly he sees face to face. The opaque commonplaces of human experience are for him constantly diaphanous with the creative light that first made and is forever making all things. To him man, beneath all his fractional disguises and parochial activities, is all the time a mysterious spirit, a being of mysterious destiny, a ghostly creature of infinite portent, his life a witchcraft thing of magic joy and magic sorrow. Beneath the dusty surface of "days and things diurnal," he is aware of the flowing and weaving and singing and weeping of the radiant tragic forces of the sibylline universe. He is the visionary of the Vision. He is the dreamer, at one with the dream. The earth he treads is to him a star, vibrating with radiance. He feels the stellar light breaking from beneath his feet, through all its rocky crust ; he hears its planetary song, star to star, across the holy gulfs of space. He is lonely — and yet never alone, filled with awe — yet never afraid, an atom — and yet an immensity, homeless — and yet so strangely at home. For, tiptoe on the little [i4] THE PROFESSION OF POET hill of our mortal life, he has seen the white presences upon the peaks and heard the voices of the eternal gods. It is the fascination of the poet's life — and also its fascination for the sympathetic onlooker — that he thus consciously lives all his days this dual exist- ence, inhabitant of two worlds at once, free at once of the gates of ivory and horn. In the crowded avenue he is walking upon moonbeams; the gods beckon him at street corners; in the close packed car he talks with spirits, and in the roaring vortices of traffic he is deep in the heart of the ancient wood. From this duality of his nature, his life must often wear the aspect of paradox, for in his experience, in his personal history, he is seen to be at once so pas- sionately human and so impersonally detached from humanity. Everything that happens to him seems to happen in two ways at once — to him as an individ- ual, and to him, so to say, as a cosmic spectator. He lives his joys and sorrows with an ardour and emphasis perhaps keener than that of other men, and at the same time stands aloof from them, as mysterious and poignant phenomena thrilling with an infinite pathos and significance. When he loves, the face he loves is not merely a beautiful human face, but the embodied mystery of all beauty: Sometimes thou seemest not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are. [IS] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS Death to him is not merely his own personal loss, but the universal tragic enigma of existence. He is at once the most personal and the least personal of beings, and his actions and happenings are curiously magnified and diminished at the same moment and from the same cause — at once "big with eternity " and small by cosmic comparison. Hence in his life a strange ardour keeps company with a strange coldness, and with both goes ever a strange sadness — the sadness that sits mysteriously at the heart of all joy, the sadness of beautiful music, of lovely faces, the sadness of flowers and stars, the sadness of young laughter and running water. Of course, all reflective natures are thus touched with starlight, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," but with the majority such reflectiveness is only occasional, intermittent. For the most part they are, so to say, completely and comfortably embodied. They live in one world at a time, and for them human institutions have a concrete impor- tance and an opaque stability. Their lives are lived absolutely, not relatively. To all their transactions they bring a single-minded seriousness, entirely of this world. Their interests or ambitions are never thwarted or dismayed by the sneer or the sigh of the Infinite. The constitutions and conventions of society are to them serious matters, and banks and [16] THE PROFESSION OF POET churches and clubs and armies and navies seem to them as real as wild flowers. The poet, however, is only partially embodied. Hence, doubtless, the frequent discomfort of his lot. He would seem to have been only so far incarnated as is necessary for him to share, and, sharing, to inter- pret and transfigure, the common life of man. His bodily organisation seems still conscious of the spiritual processes of its making, and he would seem to wear it with a certain immortal carelessness, as being but one of his innumerable transformations; a spirit clothed for a time as from a magic wardrobe, in the raiment of humanity. Thus the poet's life on earth is naturally one of much bewilderment and misunderstanding to his fellow mortals, whom he so curiously resembles, and from whom he so mysteriously differs. Living the same life as others, he lives it in such a different way, throws the empha- sis so differently, gives it here and there such fantastic values, answers to such odd standards and observes such invisible laws. Out on this fellow who lives as he pleases in a respectable world — who blasphemes our gods, out- rages our moralities, mocks our decencies, and laughs at our honours ! And yet how strangely he under- stands our hearts! Little as we know him, how well he knows us! There is nothing we have felt or thought or done, but you will find it in his book; [i7 J ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS no joy, no sorrow, no hope or fear, but he has for it a song. Yes, the poet is the universal sympathiser, the friend of all the world. A Greek poet compared himself to a scrivener: Love songs I write for him and her, Now this, now that, as Love dictates; One birthday gift alone the Fates Gave me, to be Love's Scrivener. The image is a good one. Yes, the poet is a scrivener of life. He sits in the market place and writes to the dictation of Life. He writes our love letters, and he writes our letters of mourn- ing. In a sense, he even writes our business let- ters. He not only writes for us, but tells us what to say, for he often knows what we mean better than we know ourselves. Professor of a strange craft, he sits there watching the stream of life, listen- ing to its sad-glad murmur, at once carried along in it and yet seated aloof on its banks. A strange profession indeed, none stranger. The poet writes our letter for us, and we pay him his modest fee and go our ways. Sometimes, though not often, we give a passing thought to his way of life. What manner of man is he in his private hours? Probably he drinks and beats his wife! Or, perhaps, in secret he is an anarchist, or devoted to [18] THE PROFESSION OF POET base pleasures! You have heard it whispered that he is a murderer, takes drugs, and has very singular religious ideas . . . A strange character! But, any- way, he writes a beautiful hand, and has a wonderful way of saying things. A word here concerning that side of the poetic nature which is so sore a stumbling block to so many good souls. Doubtless, the poet is a messenger of the gods, but for one of divine origin he has an astonish- ing addiction to earthly pleasures. More than most he is susceptible to the orgiastic call of the senses and the gross delights of the flesh. This song thrillingly pure as of a bird at dawn was in all probability written in the gutter. The temple fre- quented by this priest of Apollo is too often the pothouse, and the company kept by this fine spirit is infrequently that of old maids and college pro- fessors. For, . . . half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, For the reed which grows nevermore again, As a reed with the reeds in the river. The reference to Pan helps, I think, to clear up matters. Pan is unmistakably the father of poets, and Pan, it is to be feared, is a god who is not always to be found in full evening dressand in perfect [19] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS taste. Like that nature which he personifies, he is apt to offend in the society of squeamish and dainty persons. He is often found lacking in " refinement," as understood in drawing-rooms and seminaries. His exquisite products are usually brought about by processes quite coarse and shocking to refined individuals. The birth of the violet, fairy child of the gross earth, can hardly be mentioned to ears polite, and good society silently ignores the roots of the rose. Fortunatus et Me deos qui novit agresles, Panaqite silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores, sings Virgil, but, blessed companions as the country gods may be, Pan and old Silvanus and the Nymph Sisters can hardly be called respectable. The fact, however, is that those aberrations of the poet winch perplex and offend a circumspect world come not of his depravity, but of his innocence; not of his lack of refinement, but of his possession of a refining power to which his critics are strangers. Into that lap that brings the rose Shall I with shuddering fall, cries George Meredith, in a phrase of profound spiritual insight; and the same reassuring alchemy which we thus see at work in Nature's bosom is one of the mysterious powers of the poet's heart. [20] THE PROFESSION OF POET To him there is literally nothing common and unclean, no such thing as "dead matter," no such thing as "gross earth," no such thing as "flesh without spirit"; and it is by this gift of passionate vitality, one with Nature's own, that white fire of living that is in him, that he is able to transmute even the death and dross of things into "something rich and strange," by the purity of his heart to see all things pure, by the sensitive temper of his clay to hear all things singing. That he is no saint, that he often treads a way- ward wanton path, like the rest of us, is but to say that he is a fellow sinner, a joint inheritor of the Fall; but, even at the worst, there is about his sinning a childlike irresponsibility, an essential innocence of wrong intent, that differentiate it from the grown- up sinning of more worldly natures. His sins are not sins of the bad heart or of the selfish spirit, but sins of that excess of sensibility, "too avid of earth's bliss," which, after all, is one of the conditions of his being a poet at all; sins against himself — poor wretch ! — rather than against others. Yes, "the cost and pain!" We may well sigh for that. The profession of a poet is a tragic one — as painful and tragic as motherhood. That " making a poet out of a man" is a mysteriously painful business Is there no other way? "No way but this," would seem to be Nature's answer. Yet where [21] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS is the mother that would renounce her motherhood? And where is the poet — though he be a Dante walking the circles of Hell or a Villon weaving ballades in the shadow of the gallows, be he starving in a garret, or the outcast of some imperious love, or the victim of some inexorable poison — where is the poet that would change his lot for any other? Always, with Virgil again, he exclaims: Me vero primum dukes ante omnia Musce, Quarum sacra jero ingenti percussus amore, Accipiant, coelique, vias et sidera monstrent Dejectus solis varios lunceque labores. . . . "Me indeed," is ever his cry, " first and before all things may the sweet muses, whose priest I am and whose great love hath smitten me, take to themselves and show me the pathways of the sky, the stars, and the diverse eclipses of the sun, and the moon's travails . . ." A tragic, but how lovely and pleasant a calling! His task to read the ways of heaven and the hearts of men, and to write down all he reads in fair-faced, sweet -voiced words that come to him singing strangely out of the air; words shaped like flowers and fragrant like honey, words like the rustle of woodlands or the rising of the moon, words swift as birds and rooted as the mountains, words stern as bronze and soft as tears. [22] THE PROFESSION OF POET Yes, "the cost and pain!" But if the poet have his sorrows, he has, too, his words — his beauti- ful words; and they seem to him worth all his sorrows. For as Landor has said, "Poets are in general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer dura- tion, to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian." Magic consolation. Who shall explain it ? And always, too, be he a Virgil crowned with Augustan laurel, or aVerlaine in the slums of Paris, or a Francis Thompson sleeping under London Bridge, he carries with him the knowledge of a sub- lime distinction, of a romantic destiny. Sin-stained and sorrowful, hungry and in mean raiment, yet is he high of heart and proud of glance, for is he not Nature's confidant ? Is he not a servant of the gods? [ 23 ] II CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES FAIRIES, it is well known, cannot cross run- ning water; but, happily, fairy tales can; and it is strange, even mysterious, how these frail shapes of stories, frail as moonbeams, have still been hardy enough to make their way from land to land, and take on the disguises of the peoples, gentle or rough, among which, like thistledown, they happen to have settled, — frail, yet indestructible. The arduously wrought masterpieces of many ancient poets have disappeared from the earth. There must have been very great poets in Babylon, but their names are no longer upon the lips of Time. The great poets of Egypt, even, are lost to us; and what is saved to us of Greece is little compared with what is lost. Yet these fairy tales, mere butterflies of immortality, have continued to flit from shore to shore, and from age to age, from great-grandfather to great-grandchild, as if Time were loath to lay a destroying finger upon such little tender things. Generally speaking, all the children in the world are told the same fairy tales, — little boys and girls in China and little boys and girls in Clapham; and 1^4] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES the tales come from everywhere, carried to and fro on the four winds. Some of them are very old, old as the Bible; and some of them, some that are most familiar, and seem, perhaps, older than any others, on that account, were made comparatively recently in France and Denmark. If it be denied that there is actually a fairyland in the world, always open to him or her with that key of fancy which unlocks the door, it is not to be disputed that there are iairy-iale lands, countries inhabited with peoples with a natural gift of dreaming and making up tales. Greece was such a country, with its gods and god- desses of the south, its nymphs, its dryads, and its satyrs. Scandinavia — in which, for our present pur- pose, one may include Germany, — was another such country, with its gods and goddesses of the north, its thundering sagas, its nixies and its gnomes, and its innumerable shapes of elf and sprite. Before either Greece or Scandinavia, was there not "The Arabian Nights," — with Aladdin and Sinbad and the Forty Thieves? The main population of Ireland, to this day, consists of fairies; and to France we owe Charles Perrault, who gave us Cinderella and Puss in Boots; Madame de Villeneuve, who gave us Beauty and the Beast; and Madame d'Aul- noy, who gave us The Yellow Dwarf. Perhaps England is the only country in the world that has contributed no fairy tale of any importance, with [25] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS the exception of the characteristic, tradesmanlike fable of Dick Whittington. Such apparently indig- enous fairy lore as England possesses it stole from Wales and Scotland. Even America, misrepresented, as it is, to be a business country, has found time to honour Santa Claus, and to give us — Joel Chanler Harris, — I mean, of course, "Brer Rabbit." Indeed, America, strange as it may sound, is a fairy-tale country. What is a fairy tale? Some one has defined a parable as an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. I think one might define a fairy tale as a heavenly story with an earthly meaning, for, the more you study fairy tales, the more you will find that they are, one and all, — in spite of their paraphernalia of impossibility, — fancies illustrating the hard facts of life. Maybe the reason of this is that they have grown out of the hard-wrought experience of the people nearest to the earth; namely, those who till it, who sow it, and reap it, — the people unprotected by wealth from the terrors — and the wonders — of the world. One would expect fairy tales to find a home, of all environments, in a democracy, — because they are the consolatory fancies of the downtrodden and the despairing, the dreams of the dust. As I have said, it is in the dust that we find these diamonds of that desperate dust that is man. [26] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES In fact, the value of fairy tales is just here: they are the dreams of "the common people." No rich man could make a fairy tale, — according to the best-known examples, — for the simple reason that he already possesses all that all the fairy tales can give him. A fairy tale is merely a paradox made of poverty and dreams. How do all fairy tales begin? Take any of the best-known. With a beauty in rags, or an adventurous barefooted boy, with nothing but his wits. How do all fairy tales end? The beauty once in rags becomes a queen upon a throne. The adventurous barefooted boy becomes a grand vizier. In short, fairy tales represent the dreams of the poor and the unhappy. Suppose, now, like Cinderella, you were the most beautiful member of the family, a mere child, whose very beauty made you a menace to two elderly ugly sisters, who, by the authority and opportunities of oppression, which are the sweets of age, hid you away in the kitchen. Your sisters, being ladies of wealth and distinction, and much older than you, arc invited to parties. You hear the carriage coming for them as you are washing the dishes in the base- ment; and you take a cracked piece of mirror from the scullery and look at yourself, and you say, — well, you say, "What's the matter with the world, when my two ugly sisters are driven off to the ball, [27] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS and I am left behind washing dirty dishes? O if only some one, some fairy prince, for instance, could see me as I am! " No sooner have you sighed than a coach all made of crystal, with white horses and gold-braided postilions, drives up to your scul- lery, and — you are happy ever after. Or suppose, now, that you were the third son of a poor miller, and your father, dying, left the mill to his first son, a horse to his second son, and to you, his third son, no more extensive property than a cat! How ruefully you would look at your little, apparently ineffective, un-negotiable asset! — and then suppose that your cat should turn into a genius and take your affairs into his hands and make you the Marquis de Carabas, and stop the king in his coach to do you honour, and give you the king's daughter for your wife, — how then? Well, of course, it would be a fairy tale! Let us suppose, again, that you were very rich, with palaces and every form of luxury, but, at the same time, your head happened to be that of a wild boar, tusked and terrible, in spite of your kind heart ! How you would dream of some good girl that would see below your uncouthness, see the gentle reality of your true self, — how you would dream of her, enchanted, as you were, into a shape so cruelly misrepresentative. Again, suppose a princess came and sat by a spring [28] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES in the forest, and, in the playfulness of her heart, tossed from hand to hand a ball of gold, and sud- denly the ball of gold fell into the spring! And suppose you were a frog at the bottom of the spring, — really a prince, but apparently a frog, — wouldn't you think it a good world again, if, taking the ball of gold in your mouth, you bubbled up to the surface and the princess, and, even after her breaking her promise to marry you, the fairy-tale king, her father, insisted on her keeping it, — in spite of your looking like a frog and being cold and clammy ? Once more, — if you chanced to be a bear right out in a cold winter night, with nothing to eat and no one to love you, wouldn't you dream of a warm little cottage in the wilderness, — in it a widow woman and two little girls, Snow-white, by name, and Rose-red, — and if, by chance, you found such a cottage and pushed your nose into the door, wouldn't you believe in fairy tales if the widow took you in and bade you come up to the fire and warm out the snow from your fur, and said to her little daughters: "Snow-white and Rose-red, come here; the bear is quite gentle; he will do you no harm"? Indeed, one may say, parenthetically, that one can imagine no happier lot than that of a bear in a fairy tale. Why, I wonder, is it that the bear, in actual life a rugged, uncompromising animal, should, for [*9] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS the most part, be represented in story as a friendly, kindhearted creature, with quite a touch of pathos about him, — a sort of great big lonely lost dog? With one or two exceptions, he so figures in fairy tales, from the white bear that carried the poor husbandman's daughter to the "Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon" to perhaps the most fascinating of all bears, " Kroof ," in Mr. Roberts's " The Heart of the Ancient Wood." The only bears that have a bad name in story are the three bears who almost ate up little Goldilocks in the middle of the wood, and even about them there is something engagingly human. Besides, it must not be for- gotten that their home had been invaded during their absence, their porridge eaten, and their beds slept in. Fairy tales being nothing if not moralistic, no doubt the meaning here is, to use the words of the prince who appeared to Beauty in her dreams, " Do not let yourselves be deceived by appearances." The bear, so to say, is the rough diamond of the fairy tale. He is gruff and unpolished, but he has the best of hearts. No other animal is treated half so well in fairy tales, although the fairy tale generally has a kindness for animals, particularly for those, like the bear, whose appearance of ferocity and uncouthness belies them, or those, like the frog, or the mouse, or the ant, whose ugliness or apparent insignificance subjects them to another form of misunderstanding. In all this [30] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES there may be seen a primitive naive recognition of the bond that unites all living things, the mysterious freemasonry of just being alive together in a strange world. If you help a frog out of his difficulties, the day will come when he will help you. Be kind to an ant in trouble, and, when the cruel queen has demanded that you count all the ears of corn by morning, all the ants in the world will come and count them for you. Be kind, the fairy tales seem to say, always be kind, — and in your extremity your kindness to the unfortunate, powerless things of the earth will be returned to you a hundredfold. Super- ficially tests of insight, the tests in fairy tales are always either tests of goodness or of courage. Whatever menaces you, whatever tempts you, be brave, be good, — and all will be well. The true insight is goodness. Equipped with goodness, there is nothing for you to fear, in spite of all the illusory terror of the world. Only be good, and, therefore, brave, and no wolf shall eat you, no ogre roast you in his oven, no wizard have power to enchant you, — except, perhaps, for a little while: just to give the fairy prince or princess an opportunity of breaking the spell. Be good and brave, and even your wicked stepmother or your ugly sister will get the worst of it in the end. In regard to what I have been saying of fairy- tale animals, it is to be noted that, perhaps, the only I 3'] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS animal for which the fairy tale has no kind feeling is the wolf. Actually, I suppose, the wolf is no more wicked than the bear, yet in all fairy tales — and particularly, of course, in "Little Red Riding- hood," he is always the symbol of the terror that devours. The wolf may be said to be, par excellence, the wicked animal of the fairy tale. Of course, there is the fox, too, but the fox is rather a symbol of cunning than of fear, and is only dangerous to geese. I said that fairy tales represent the dreams of the poor and the unhappy. To the poor they bring diamonds, to the enslaved worker they bring idleness. In short, they bring to us all The Shining Impossible, — they bring us the remodelled universe of which we have dreamed, the reconstructed destiny. They fulfil Omar Khayyam's wish: — Would I could shatter it to bits and then Remould it nearer to the heart's desire! In a fairy tale you have only to turn the ring of an old sorrow, or rub the extinguished lantern of an old dream, and all is back again, — palaces with shining windows, a thousand servants, and the loveliest princess in the world. You have only to be named Aladdin, and all these things shall be added unto you. In a fairy tale the most beautiful girl in the world l3*J CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES may die, and the brier rose cover up her castle with its climbing bramble, — but she is not really dead, — she will awake again in a hundred years! Even death is not death in fairy tales. It is only — resur- rection. For how many centuries the heart of man, leaning over the bier of the beloved, has dreamed: " If only she could awake ! Is there no power in this magic universe that can lay the finger of resurrection upon these closed eyes, this stopped heart, — lay the finger of speech upon these silent lips? " And, in answer to this sigh of the mortal heart, the mortal brain conceived an immortal fancy, and at the end of a hundred years Sleeping Beauty at last stirs and breathes and opens her everlasting eyes. The human heart ever longs for the impossible — for the joy that lasts "for ever after " ; for the loveli- ness that never fades; for the purse that is never exhausted; for the friend that is always true; for the device that will do away with all the inconveni- ences of time and space, and land you in Arabia the moment after you turn the screw in the wooden horse, or China, maybe, if, like Gautier, you should say: — She whom I love at present is in China, She dwells with her aged parents In a tower of white porcelain, By the yellow stream Where the cormorants are! 3 [33] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS The Shining Impossible! Obviously nothing else is so attractive as the impossible; and the power of the fairy tale over the human mind is that, whatever form of the impossible you may desire, — it gives it to you. It is only necessary for you to lack some- thing you particularly want, — in a fairy tale, — and an invisible servant will bring it to you, even though it should be no more important than roast duck. Indeed, bearing out what I have said, — that the fairy tale is the poetry of the poor, — it is relevant to note what a part a good dinner plays in a fairy tale. "I was anhungered, and ye gave me meat!" For instance, when Hansel and Gretel, lost in the wild wood, came at length upon the witch's house, "made of bread and roofed with cakes, the window being made of transparent sugar," what was their good fortune but an answer to their children's dream of hunger. If only the universe will give us something to eat ! That has been the cry of the poor man since the beginning. And the fairy tale answers his longing with banquets where, as in the story of "The Sleeping Beauty," "there was placed before everyone a magnificent cover with a case of massive gold, wherein were a spoon, a knife, and a fork, all of pure gold set with diamonds and rubies." Fairy tales are nothing if not nouveau riche. To eat! That alone is a fairy tale. To eat! To eat, — perchance to dream! [34] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES Eating, indeed, plays a most important part in fairy tales. Something good to eat. Cannibalism, if necessary! Perhaps there is no more terrifying characteristic feature of the fairy tale than the step- mother or the mother-in-law with ogreish tendencies. Take the case, for example, of Sleeping Beauty. The prince must needs go to the wars and leave his wife and two children in the keeping of his mother- in-law. No sooner has he gone than she bids the cook serve up little Morning for her dinner, and the cook, being gentle, like all poor people, — in fairy tales, — serves up a lamb stew instead, — and so on. In the story of "Hansel and Gretel" there is the same fear: the fear of little children that some one is lying in wait — to eat them up! "Hansel, put out your finger, that I may feel if you are getting fat," said the old witch; and "That'll be a dainty bite," she mumbled to herself, as she watched Gretel asleep in her bed. " What shall I do ? " cried the queen in "The Yellow Dwarf"; "I shall be eaten up!" O the fears, the frightful fears, the night- mares, of children, — the nightmares of a world still a child! The hopes, the fears, the wonders of the world, — not only the tears in mortal things, but the cruelty, — the terror! If you would realize the dread that en- circles the life of man, read any of the simplest fairy tales. Read "The Babes in the Wood," or [35] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS read "Bluebeard." The dread that, mysteriously, is planted deep in our souls; dread formless, some- times, and sometimes fearfully formed, — the terrible dread that comes of being alive! Yet, vivid as is this dread, no less vivid is the dream with which the fairy tale illumines the life of man. After all, it is a thing of hope, a parable of promise; even, one might say, it is the supernatural version of a super- natural world. For the world is a world — just because it is supernatural; and it goes on spinning its way among the other stars just because it is — a fairy tale. The wonder of the world! Perhaps that is the chief business of the fairy tale, — to remind us that the world is no mere dustheap, pullulating with worms, as some of the old-fashioned scientists tried to make us believe; but that, on the contrary, it is a rendezvous of radiant forces forever engaged in turning its dust into dreams, ever busy with the transmutation of matter into mind, and mind into spirit, — a world, too, so mysterious that anything can happen, or any dream come true. One might even set up, and maintain, the paradox that the fairy tale is the most scientific statement of human life; for, of all statements, it insists on the essential magic of living, — the mystery and wonder of being alive, the marvellous happiness, the wondrous sor- row, and the divine expectations. [36] CONCERNING FAIRY-TALES Those fairy tales that have taken the strongest hold upon the heart and the imagination of the world have been those that recognised the human need of supernatural aid and alleviation. The earth cannot get along all by itself. It is always in need of help from the stars. This is one of the many morals of the fairy tale, which thus gives expression to the holy hunger of the human heart. A precocious child asked me the other day for a list of the twelve best fairy tales. I have little faith in such lists of anything, but, for the sake of my child friend, I suggest this dozen: "Beauty and the Beast," "Cin- derella," "The Sleeping Beauty," "The Three Bears," "Jack, the Giant Killer," "Hop-o'-my- Thumb," "Sindbad, the Sailor," "The Forty Thieves," "Goody Two-shoes," "Aladdin," "Han- sel and Gretel," and "Little Red Riding-hood." [37] Ill THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP GOSSIP is the social reward of personality. Whether it be playful or poison-fanged, it it is a recognition, a tribute, one of the most gratifying forms of success. So long as one is gossiped about, it is immaterial what shape or colour the gossip takes. The ugly kind is perhaps to be preferred, as having more vitality, more motive power of circulation. And, of course, gossip has nothing to do with truth, good or bad. That is why it is — gossip. Gossip neither means that you are very great nor very beautiful, nor even very bad; all that it means is that you are very — interesting. You may be great and beautiful and bad all in one, yet never get gossiped about. Here is one of the mysteries of gossip — its choice of subject. Gossip is most capricious in this respect. The mere fact of being public or conspicuous will not necessarily expose you to its flattering selection. Time and again, we see conspicuous figures publicly stealing the horse without comment, whereas if some humble individ- ual, such as you or I, were to take a private peep f 38 ] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP over the hedge — how the tongues would go a-wag- ging. Some people can commit the most pains- taking violations of convention, be most conscien- tiously startling in all their ways, yet no one pays the least attention; whereas let little So-and-So, once in a virtuous winter, forsake the straight and narrow path, and the whclc town is ringing with the news. The reason is that there is "something about" little So-and-So that makes people fond of discussing him. Wherever mutual acquaintances are gathered together, you are sure to hear his name. His friends never forget to inquire about him from each other, and the latest news of him is always in demand. If one asks why, one can only fall back on that — something about him. What is that "something about them" which seems to make some men and women — from their very cradles — gossip chosen ? It is hard to say, but probably the secret lies in their possession of some magnetic vitality which gives their actions a signifi- cance beyond — precisely the same actions of others. They seem, somehow, more real than others, they awake in us a dramatic expectancy, and all they do takes on a dramatic value. In fact, they are, in one way or another, personalities, and their experiences become socially symbolic. If these experiences fall short of what is expected of their personalities, it is the business of gossip to invent experiences more [39] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS in keeping. And thus arises that personal legend — that legend of oneself! — a legend which is founded not on what we have actually been and done, but on the dramatic suggestiveness of our personalities — what we look as if we ought to have been and ought to have done. The disparity between this legend and the actual truth about ourselves will, of course, affect us accord- ing to our temperaments. If nature has made us sensitive to calumny, the legend may well give us more pain than pleasure, and the laurel of gossip become a veritable crown of thorns; but those whom nature has mysteriously chosen for gossip are, as a rule, protectively constituted, not only to withstand it, but to enjoy it. Such take an impersonal delight in the methods of the invisible artist so industriously engaged in building their legend, and his ingenious mendacities awake their admiration and curiosity rather than their anger. They are being so evi- dently used as so much artistic material in his hands that the right of private protest hardly seems to belong to them. They are already being used as writers of historical novels use historical figures for their fictions, adapting and distorting their characters and their actions according to their artistic necessities. After all, they are only being treated during their lives as such figures, say, as Napoleon and Byron and Lady Hamilton are treated [40] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP after their deaths, material which the humblest writer is free to magnify or maltreat as he has a mind to. Gossip having chosen them for her own, they no longer belong merely to themselves, and hence- forward the actual truth about them as known to themselves and their intimates is neither here nor there. The muse of gossip has taken them and their story in hand, and, if they are sensible, they will wear the laurel she has bestowed with becoming vanity. Think how dreary it would be — not to be gossiped about. And that happens to quite num- bers of people, who lead soured and disappointed lives in consequence, and absurdly take it out on the more fortunate, by, of all things, gossiping about them — thus paradoxically adding to the very laurels they envy. It is the thought of these depressed contributory people that need be the only discomfort in the wearing of this laurel, which they and the like of them have woven for our chosen brows. The processes of gossip, like the processes of many other beautiful products, hardly bear looking into. Gossip resembles fame, of which indeed it is a form, in the insignificance of the individual units which swell together into such a brilliant grand total of glory. What a lovely thing to a king, or a hero, or an orator is the rapt, adoring multitude, hanging, dog-like, upon their every look and word, so long [4i] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS as it remains one compact, impersonal mob of immor- tality — but stop to think of the constituent parts, the thousand littlenesses that, by mere accumulation, have resulted in this beaming bigness, and glory wears for a moment a distasteful and indeed ridicu- lous aspect. There is perhaps in all that vast multitude not one person whose praise is individually of value, but a thousand such nothings make the something we call — fame. So with gossip. It is, indeed, distasteful to think how this beautiful laurel that rustles and whispers so bravely about our ears came to be, to think of the countless small and dirty hands that wove incessantly mean lie on lie, the repulsive maggot-like activity of the myriad infinitesimal lives, the social infusoria, that, although their very existence was invisible and inaudible to us, busied themselves with our magnetic names. Happily we are seldom brought into conscious contact with the repulsive makers of gossip them- selves. Their work, like that of many other noisome industries, is done in secret, and, as we eat pate de foie gras, without our minds being haunted by the diseased geese from whom it came, so we enjoy the gossip about us without a thought of the similar animals that have produced it. That art, we know, is the greatest which conceals itself, and the art of gossip goes even further— it [42] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP conceals the artist. That he should be concealed is indeed a necessity of an art, which is not only dis- tasteful in its processes, but apt even to be dangerous in its practice. It is not everyone that appreciates the masterpieces of this art in the proper spirit. Like many inartistic critics, some allow moral and personal considerations to deflect their judgment, and this most significant of social tributes, instead of gratifying them as it should do, fills them with righteous indignation. Here the microscopic small- ness of the artist is his salvation. On whom shall this indignation be vented? The victim, as he, of course, erroneously regards himself, looks around, but in vain. More than likely the artist he burns to castigate is at his elbow, but he is so small that he escapes notice, and so all that beautiful anger wastes its sweetness on the desert air, and disturbs no one but the angry one himself. Yet there are occasions, one admits, when the artist seems to have gone a little too far, and when one cries out, "O this is too much!" occasions when to gain his effects he seems to have passed the bounds of artistic privilege, by inventions so bewildcr- ingly base that even a name inured to outrage may confess itself momentarily stung with the sense of human meanness. Yet even here, after the first shock is over, indignation subsides into astonishment and curiosity; astonishment at the impudent audacity [43] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS of the thing, and curiosity as to what manner of people are these social criminals who thus make it their strange business to lie about others. How strange it must be to be so interested in other people, and people, as a rule, quite unaware of our existence ! Occasionally some indisputable member of this criminal class is pointed out to us — surely by no possible stretch of the imagination can we conceive ourselves caring to gossip about them! Their pri- vate lives may be the colours of the rainbow, they may be positively lurid with proven infamy, yet is it no concern of ours. They simply don't interest us. How strange, is it not, that we should so absorb- ingly interest them. But who shall dictate to an artist his choice of material ? — and it must never be lost sight of, how- ever distasteful or eccentric his methods, that the gossip is first and last an artist, and, like all artists, seldom understood by the world at large. Only by keeping firm hold on this truth can we hope to gain any light on the psychology of this strange being. It is for this reason that the stories he puts into circulation about his subjects are usually dis- creditable in their nature. He seldom has any good about them to tell. Seldom — one might say never — does he take us into a corner to tell us in mysterious confidence that So-and-So is devoted to his wife, or that So-and-So' s private life is notorious — for [44] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP its virtues. And why not ? It is not that he means any harm — it would be a great injustice to suggest that — but that, as an artist, he has realised that bad stories are more effective than good. People simply won't listen to good about other people. It bores them. Somehow or other it fails to catch the eye. It is next to impossible to create an interesting scandal out of the virtues of one's subject. A good life lived in secret will remain a secret for all the efforts of well-meaning gossip to give it publicity. Deplore it or explain it as we will, black is more interesting than white, and humanity demands scandals of its great ones. Those who know the truth have told us again and again that the devil is not so black as he is painted, but no one believes them. No one wishes to believe them. In fact, nothing is more disillusioning to popular sentiment than the occasional discovery of the distressing goodness of famous naughty people. They were not so naughty after all, and interest in them imme- diately declines. What is the reason of this popular preference for naughtiness rather than saintliness in its heroes? Perhaps Hafiz put his finger on it, when, hurling defiance at the scandal-mongers of Shiraz, he wrote: Talk to me not about the Book of Sin, For, friend, to tell the truth, That is the book I would be written in — [45] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS It is so full of youth. And, mark me, friend, when on the Judgment Day The black book and the white Are angel-opened there in Allah's sight, For all to read what's writ — Just watch how lonely the white book will be! But the black book, wherein is writ my name — My name, my shame, my fame — With busy readers all besieged you'll see, Yea! almost thumbed away, So interesting it! It is so full of youth ! Yes! distressing as it may be to moralists, the world at large would seem to associate a saving virtue of romantic vitality with what it significantly speaks of as the "generous errors" of the laurelled sinner, and, whatever its formal professions of faith, is at heart one with Aucassin, when he made his famous reply to those who threatened him with hell-fire if he persisted in his love for the Saracen Nicolete, she whose feet were so white that the daisies seemed black beside them. "Paradise!" he laughs, "in paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars and the [46] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst, and of cold, and of little ease. These be they that go into paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into hell would I fain go; for into hell fare the goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great wars, and stout men-at-arms, and all men noble. With these would I lie fly go. And thither pass the sweet ladies and courteous that have two lovers, or three, and their lords also thereto. Thither go the gold, and the silver, and cloth of vair, and cloth of gris, and harpers, and makers, and the princes of this world. With these I would gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete, my sweetest lady." Strange that centuries of Christian piety have failed to make an interesting heaven, and it is to be feared that the saints who have most successfully touched the imaginations of humanity are those who, like Saint Augustine, had first to their credit an entertaining record as sinners. Humanity would seem particularly to demand such credentials of its artists, its poets, painters, musicians, and actors. Even a popular preacher is none the worse off for a soupgon of whispered frivolity. The world will forgive its artists anything but propriety. Stupid people occasionally rise up [47] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS mistakenly to whitewash the memories of the erring great. They write books to prove that Burns was a woman-hater, Poe a teetotaller, and Byron a much- mis-represented family man. Fortunately for the poets in question, these iconoclastic efforts have been in vain, and the original legends remain in all their pristine satanic hues. The gaiety of nations is not to be mocked in this way. If such misguided enthusiasts would, instead, make for us a discovery of some new Highland Mary hitherto overlooked by Burns's biographers, or tell us all about the mysteri- ous drug that inspired "The Raven," or prove beyond a disappointing doubt that the wicked English milord did really maintain a seraglio at Venice, then we should be all ears of gratitude. But to rob a poet of his bad name! that is indeed a dull and doubtful service. No ambitious artist who knows his business fears gossip. Quite the contrary. What he does fear is that he may escape it, that it may pass him indiffer- ently by. Here is a true story. Once upon a time there was a certain great por- trait-painter of whom terrible stories were told. He was a very picturesque, romantic-looking man, and his love affairs were said to be as the sands upon the seashore. Mysterious wickedness beyond the imagination of man was attributed to him. His hidden life — O well! don't let us speak of it. [48] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP Respectable houses, one was told in a whisper, were hermetically sealed to him. Yet one noticed that one met him everywhere. Daughters were hidden away in cupboards at his approach, young men were warned against his influence, and really he was not to be spoken of. Yet everywhere, and all the time, no one talked of anyone else; and every beautiful woman, whose husband was rich enough, had him to paint her portrait. Well, one night he and a friend were sitting together over their coffee in his studio, silently smoking their cigarettes. Suddenly the friend broke the silence. "Forgive me," he said, "but there is a question I have long wished to ask you." " Go ahead," answered the painter. "Well," continued the friend, "you seem to be always at work, or at parties. I want to know when on earth you find time to lead the awful life everyone speaks of." The artist looked up with a scared expression, but he tried to smile. "Don't say you have discovered my secret," he said nervously. "Secret! I should hardly call it a secret, old man," replied his friend. "Even you yourself must have heard something of the gossip." "0 1 see! " rejoined the artist, evidently re- lieved. 4 [49] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS "What do you mean?" "O nothing!" And then, evidently changing his mind, the artist turned again to his friend. "Listen," he said. "If I tell you a secret, which I feel rather inclined to confide, will you promise never, under any provocation, to divulge it?" The friend promised. "Well, then," the artist proceeded, "I am going to reveal to you a secret, the exposure of which would mean my utter ruin, a secret known only to three or four of my nearest friends, a secret on which my whole artistic success, and my very livelihood, depend " "It is safe with me," interpolated the friend. "I believe so, though it is one you will find it hard to keep. It is this — I am an impostor " "An impostor!" "Yes! the infamous rumours, the mysterious scandals, the terrible private life, all — all — an imposture, a cheat, a farce, a conspiracy " "I don't understand." "Simply this. There is not one word of truth in all the stories, and the whole fable is nothing more nor less than an advertising device hit upon a few years ago in a moment of despair, I might almost say of starvation " " Go on." "Well, I had painted for years without recog- [50] THE LAUREL OF GOSSIP nition, painted far better than I paint nowadays. But it all went for nothing. Outside a few acquaint- ances, I remained unknown and unappreciated. Then one day a cynical friend of mine came to me and said: 'What you need is to get talked about.' 'No doubt,' I answered, 'but how is it to be done?' My friend thought a moment. 'I have a plan,' he said, 'if only you will let me carry it out.' 'Any- thing,' I answered, for I was desperate. 'Will you give me permission to lie about you?' asked my friend. 'Lie about me! ' I asked in astonishment. 'Yes! lie broadcast — wonderful, lurid, picturesque lies, dissipation, affairs with women, drink, drugs, anything and everything. If you will, with your confounded romantic looks, I'll guarantee you fame and all the sitters you want within a year. ' " The artist paused. "Well?" prompted his listener. " As I say, I was desperate, ready for anything — so I consented, and " "And?" "My friend kept his word. He got two or three friends to help him, and the little band lied about me like Trojans, sowing broadcast the most diaboli- cal inventions, till, at last — well, the sitters came." "Is that all?" "Yes! that's all — only remember your promise, remember that the moment the truth is out, the [5i] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS moment the world suspects the milk-white innocence and dove-like domesticity of my actual life, the game is up and my day is done." This is a true story; and so it is, thanks to those humble little unrequited servants of genius we call gossips, that the majority of laurels are woven and won. 152] IV CLOUDS IN none of his works does that tremendous artist Nature reveal himself so magically as in the airy transformations and changing harmonies of the clouds. Mighty and mystical master, his art is here seen at its strangest and its simplest. How few and intangible his materials; how apparently simple his methods — vapour and currents of air and the old sun and moon; and yet what an impressive and mysterious beauty he creates from them, there on the canvas of the sky! Nowhere else is he seen so triumphantly as an artist of pure effect. Elsewhere we may meet with him as a melodramatist of the everlasting hills, a scene- painter of gorge and gloom and the white torrent; but in creating such effects he has employed materials so enduring as to be called everlasting. Nature will be his own Salvator Rosa millions of years after the name of Salvator Rosa has faded from the memory of the universe, because his Salvator Rosas are made of that veritable rock and lightning and ancient darkness which the Italian could only imitate with perishable paint-pot and canvas. But when Nature, so to speak, turns Titian and Turner, he [53l ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS is at a disadvantage in his materials, for the pig- ments of the clouds are volatile as a perfume, and fade even as the artist lays them on morning or evening sky. With the invisible artist of the clouds it is now or never for his effects, and the pictures he paints are gone even as he paints them, never to be seen again. Perhaps only one eye in all the world has seen them, some lonely figure lost in the twi- light- One eye alone in all Verona cared for the soft sky. His pictures must pass like a strain of music. Effect, pure effect; not effect caught and fossilised as in sculpture, or arrested awhile as in painting, but effect alive and changing every moment, effect musi- cal in its development — music, indeed, made visible in colour. All human art must pass away, but most of it has a certain spurious stability. If you are rich, you can buy a Titian for the woman you love, but you cannot buy her a sunrise. Even while you run to fetch her to look at it, it is gone. He will not even wait while she dons a morning wrapper, — this arrogant Whistler of the sky. Transitory as emotion, it has the same pathos as all poignant passing things, this art of the heavens, the same keen excitement. [54] CLOUDS Perhaps we should soon learn to tire of it if it were not so mobile. Even some masterpieces have hung too long upon the walls of time. It is this expressive movement of sensitive vapour, this unfore- seen touch of change here and there — a shining finger seen for a moment and then withdrawn, — this disposition and redisposition of masses, this slow womblike trouble of darkness and light, this sudden avenue of splendid swords, this calm over- ture of glory, these marching trumpets of light — this radiant issue of immortal fire: it is in such effects as this that the mysterious art of the sky o'ertops the arts of earth. Fading as it is fashioned, it has a power to move the heart and stir the senses, and, above all, to thrill and summon the soul, which surely no earthly arts can claim. With no formulae, no conventions, no traditional motives, classically to command us — absolutely without notation of any kind — it is yet able to say all that the human heart has ever felt or ever dreamed. There is no emotion of whatever kind that you cannot, one time or another, find expressed for you in the sky. If you are sad and lonely, and your heart almost breaking with the fine-drawn music of regret, look at yonder sky. You are not so sad and lonely as that. Why, you almost forget your own sorrow as you gaze on that exquisite sorrow. Would you have silence, would you dream of a [ 55 1 ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS 1^ ^— ^^— ■■ I - ■ ■! ■- II I !■ I ' ll* ■ I— ■ - .1 I 111 I ■ I peace made of mother-of-pearl and the evening star: there again is the sky! And would you be pure, and firm of faith, and free as the boundless air — look at the sky. On the other hand, did you ever see a face so wicked as is sometimes the face of the sky, so sinister with hushed menace, so livid with ambushed evil, so truculently brutal with thunder? There is nothing that you can dream of or dread that is not pictured in the sky, with a force and intensity such as elsewhere you must seek in dreams. Black continents of monsters jawed with fire; lagoons of shining ether; a star, safe and silent, like a candle burning by a sleeping child; floating islands rimmed with silver; bergs of saffron fire drifting in the solar sea; gardens and golden gates and towers of snow; armies with drums of darkness and terrible spears; a dove all alone in heaven; bosoms filled with roses; cataracts of moonshine falling from cloud to cloud; peacocks made of stars; gon- falons of flaming dew; and battlements thronged with unearthly faces. . . . There is, indeed, no such picture-book as this picture-book of the clouds; but it is not by such concrete shapes of fancy as these that the art of the sky seriously takes hold of us — these merely imitative, one might say punning, simulacra, acci- dental and unmeaning as faces seen in the fire; [56] CLOUDS it is rather by pictorial moods of expressiveness too fluid to be called symbolic, great abstract schemes of modulated radiance, that, like some of the greatest pictures, mean nothing but — Eternity; Eternity — or some other words hardly less simply profound: in its power, in fact, of expressing the trancelike dreams of the spirit, moods of the imagina- tion, and even states of the mind. Perhaps the strangest thing about this art of the sky is its power over the soul. With all its pomp and magnificence of colour, it is never sensual. Its glories and its revelries, though bright as a Persian carpet and Dionysiac as the feast of Belshazzar, seem somehow purged of earthly significance. Addressing the mere mortal eye with such prismatic eloquence, their true message seems somehow to our immortal part. The beauty of the earth too often demoralises, like the beauty of some sensual painter; but no one ever was demoralised by looking at the sky. Its pictures are like those of some Hebrew prophet, or those in the Book of Revelation. They have all the coloured magnificence of earth, yet they mean nothing but heaven. There is something mysteriously pure about this artist of the sky. But it is not merely the purity of the spirit to which he answers; it is perhaps especially the pro- digious perspective of its ambition that he makes [57] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS visible; for another strange thing about the sky is that it never daunts, but only corroborates, the soul. Of course there are now and again times when a solitary man lying on an empty moorland, and looking up into the sky, is momentarily impressed and overborne with his mortal insignifi- cance; but the impression is, as I said, momentary, speedily to be followed by an exultant sense of his immortal significance — his mastery over, his spiritual possession of, all that infinite stillness and power. The arch of the sky is not really greater than the arch of his brow, and there is a starry vastness within his small skull that binds stronger bands than those of Orion. It is only when a man looks at the earth that he is afraid. So soon as he looks at the sky, that irresistible serenity of spiritual power, which he has either learned from the sky or read into it, returns to him. He feels — nay, he knows — that this sky is but the provocative avenue of his destiny, the triumphal highway of his conquering soul, hung with rosy garlands of clouds. No argument for the immortality of the soul can compete with the rising of the moon. Man, it is to be feared, pays but little attention to doctors of divinity, but even a common sailor, as the phrase is, thinks something of his poor existence as he sights the Southern Cross. Yes, the worst and the best of us answer to, and, indeed, eagerly watch, the [58] CLOUDS sky. In a sense we are all astrologers, all augurs of the clouds, and in a sense astrologers are right; for the stars are the chart of the soul. A less transcendental observation of the clouds may yet be intrusted with a record of visible data hardly less mystical than the foregoing impressions. It must, for example, take note of the mysterious way in which Nature loves to repeat in the sky the patterns he has delighted to stamp upon this or that creature or aspect of the earth, or upon the moving curtain of the sea. Nature, like all great artists, loves to experiment with materials. He loves to try the old effect in the new medium. In summer he makes dim ferns, so delicate in shape that you can hardly believe that they have roots, except, maybe, in fairy-land ; then in winter he tries the same patterns on the window-pane. Nothing in nature, if it has happened to strike you, or if you care to give it a serious thought, is more mysterious than this decorative repetition — this duplication and reduplication of decorative pattern, now in one material and now in another. When Nature has taken a fancy to a pattern there is no work of his hands with which he will not impress it, however apparently incongruous the impression. He will as tenderly dapple the tiger as the lily or the deer, and crowd upon the wings of a butterfly all the glories of earth and heaven. How he loves [59] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS to emblazon some little frightened fish as though he were a fine gentleman in the sun, or hang a serpent with coloured rings as though he were the planet Saturn! How he lavishes his gold and his bronze upon the beetle, and in the dead of night decks the under wings of the sleepy moth with the lost purple of Tyre! And again how he delights to rainbow the roots of inaccessible hills with gardens of amaz- ing crystal! But nowhere is he more imitative than in the sky. There is not a colour-scheme of earth, not a pattern of flower or a tint or rhythm of the sea, that he will not match for you in those misty lawns and silks and aery muslins of his; and one wonders, as one watches his phantasmagoria, where lies the secret soul of colour and form in the universe, and what Nature means by this love of the same shape over and over again, and one might say the same metre. But we shall only know that when we can affirmatively answer those majestic questions put by the Eternal to the stricken Job; when we know where the light dwelleth, and as for darkness, where is the place thereof; when we have entered into the treasures of the snow, and seen the treasure of the hail, and discovered the hidden ordinances of heaven. Yes, there is nothing in nature more provocative of meditation than these painted phantoms of the sky, so transitory that the life of a flower is long [60] CLOUDS by comparison; and one other element of strangeness about them is that they are literally phantoms, and in a sense subjective appearances, the shape and colour of which are not merely determined by the physical materials of which they are composed, but by the distance from which they are seen. So it is with some pictures — Sargent's portraits, for example. Seen close, we have but an unmeaning motley of paint. The distance is literally a part of the enchant- ment. Literally, there is no picture close to; and so it is with the clouds. It is open to the moralist to say that so it is with life itself, more or less so with all our experience; for is not Life a species of Fata Morgana seen afar off in youth, a wonder- land of rainbows to which we hasten through the morning dew? But when at length in middle age we come to occupy these cloud-capped towers — alas! for the fairy colours and the glory forever passed away. And yet I don't know but that this is a superficial moral to draw from the clouds; indeed, I am more than a little sure that it is, and for myself prefer rather to put my trust in those mystical intimations of immortality with which, as I said before, they beckon the soul. Even in their very immateriality and transitorincss, their brief existence of pure effect, there is something that delights, and is, so to speak, cousinly to, the spirit; whose own life is a vapour, blown before the breath [61] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS of God, and for a little while coloured by the sun. They are but appearances, yet so are we and the whole world; passing embodiments of the Protean soul of things, all alike mysterious, all alike stirring in us the need of an interpreter, but none more, perhaps, than these shapes of air and shining dew. [62] CONCERNING A WOMAN'S SMILE ONCE in a youthful flight of epigram I wrote: "Beauty is the smile upon the face of Power." The English comic paper called Punch immediately corrected me. No, it said, rather your epigram should run: "Power is the smile upon the face of Beauty." Yes, indeed — and what a fearful power, irresistible and relentless, it is. "Who is she," cries the poet of Solomon's Song, "that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" Terrible as an army with banners! Yes, the most formidable battle-ship ever built is safety itself compared with a beautiful woman; and as one grows older and watches the human drama more and more as a spectator, taking less and less of a personal place in it, one is more and more impressed with the devastating part played by woman's beauty. Perhaps, on the whole, the most terrifying thing a man can meet is a beautiful woman. There should be a society for the protection of the unprotected [6 3 3 ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS male against beautiful women. So long as there is no beautiful woman in the story all goes well. Men do their work strenuously, and dwell peaceably together, but the moment the beautiful woman enters, there is the devil to pay. Strong men become as babies, fierce rivalries divide bosom friends, duties and principles are forgotten — all for this little "rainbow strangely painted on the air," this vain little pinch of sweet rose-coloured dust. Deep in his heart man has always cherished a bitter resent- ment against woman for the strange lunar control she has over him. When he looks at her, a mere flower, it seems quite absurd that so fragile and fleeting a thing should have such a power for good or ill upon this mass of bone and muscle, thew and sinew, upon this tower of purpose and creative energy. If there is a way to escape this witchcraft of woman, be sure that man would find it. To be beaten by this moonbeam, this frail flutter of butter- fly-wings, this mere strain of music! It is too preposterous — and how often has man, through the ages, girded himself and put on his whole armour of masculine complacency, and gone forth to defy this moonbeam. So strong, so determined to assert his supremacy and independence, — O so beautiful a front of impregnability! — to be shattered utterly, even comically abased, by a woman's smile. You [64] CONCERNING A WOMAN'S SMILE come up to her, so to say, armed to the teeth, with the most important clatter of hostile accoutrements. She looks up at you, and smiles — and it is all over. You are as vanquished as if a lyddite shell had suddenly interrupted your conversation. And this terrific artillery is the secret of a mere Dutch doll, a curious idol made out of lace and face-powder. Almost any fairly pretty woman has this power, and if so, think what dynamite there must have been in the smile of Helen of Troy, or of Cleopatra. "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burned the topless towers of Ilium?" cries Marlowe's Faustus, as he sees Helen in a vision. Yes! a woman's face moved all that might of men-at-arms, and set all those muscles straining at the oar. It seems incredibly unreasonable, but so it was, and so it is, and so — please God — it will ever be — so long as the fairy wand of the moon controls with a mere touch of silver the monstrous tonnage of the sea, so long as dreams are the shapers and builders of reality, and the visible merely a crude copy of the invisible. For a woman's smile holds such sway over us because it is really super- natural in its power. The influence of all beauty is supernatural, and the significance of woman, and the secret of her dominion over us, are that she is not really a human, but a supernatural, being. 5 [65] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS She is in mysterious traffic with that invisible world from which the visible world proceeds. She is a vessel of its secrets, and intuitively obeys and enforces its laws. There is no accounting for her except — miracle; and the power of her smile is one of the mysteries of the universe. Two red lips, and two brown eyes — that is all she has to do it with, yet what infinite variety she contrives to achieve with these simple materials. A man with sufficient opportunities of study — and nothing better to do — might well write a whole big book on the subject of a woman's smile, or rather woman's smiles — all the innumerable varieties and all the mobile meanings. I have had no such opportunities, and, besides, I have other mermaids to fry. But even a busy man cannot have failed to note, to come in contact with, so to say, certain typical smiles — for good or ill. Perhaps the smile most frequently seen on the face of woman is what one might call the Circe smile — the smile of the conscious enchantress, securely aware of her power. There is in it sometimes just a hint of humorous pity. The victim, man, is so simple, and — if I may be permitted the word — so "easy." The lazy enchant- ress — all enchantresses are lazy — looks at him with a kind of pitying wonder: Is it possible that this big strong thing can be quite such a fool as to be taken in by so old a trick of the eyes and mouth? [66] CONCERNING A WOMAN'S SMILE Can this really be Hercules, so supine, so humbly attendant on the distaff of Omphale? Really, a power so easily wielded seems hardly worth wielding ! However . . . and the woman smiles her Circe smile, and the poor grovelling maniac, once a man, immediately forgets home and country, forgets every promise and vow he ever made, and the strong work of his hands, forgets everything — if only Circe will smile again. This Circe smile represents woman's arrogant knowledge of her power over the senses and the idealism of man. She uses it with a care- lessness, and too often with a cynicism, which no doubt she would excuse by a reference to her general disadvantage in her eternal duel with her big tyrant — man. Poor little thing — she is so tiny and frail, and man is so big and strong! She has so few weapons wherewith to Tight this — imaginary — giant. What has she, after all, but her smile? Surely you will not deny her the use of that! All the same, this smile emanates from the instinc- tive wickedness of woman, rather than from her goodness. It is the smile that links woman with the Powers of Darkness, with the beautiful evil influences of nature — so beautiful, but O so evil! So evil, — but O so beautiful! It seems almost unfair for woman to use it, almost as if she defeated us with some fragrant narcotic, or stole our reason from us with a drug from the laboratories of Aphro- [67] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS dite. Yes! it is a cruel smile, the smile of Circe. I suppose that she has never forgiven Ulysses, and all men ever since have had to suffer for that incorrigible wanderer. There is another cruel smile one often sees now- adays on the face of woman — a smile at once as powerful as an automobile, and — as vulgar: the brutal smile of money. The men who make money, the marvellous millionaires, usually give little ex- ternal evidence of their financial omnipotence. If you want to see their money, you must look at the faces of their wives and daughters. Watch how they smile. Their fortunes are indeed their faces. The men who make money, obviously, know its power, but they use that power with comparative mercy; but the women for whose luxury they have made it have no such modesty. Their eyes are like police- men's clubs made of gold and inlaid with diamonds. With that brutal practicality which is one of the many paradoxes of the fairy called woman, they have realised the brute-force of money, and with woman's immemorial instinct to use any weapon to hand, they use it without mercy. When a man knows he can buy you body and soul, he is usually decent about it, but a woman . . . well! she stands haughtily on a race-track in the sun and looks like her — bank-account. There is another smile which belongs to the [68] CONCERNING A WOMAN'S SMILE wickedness of woman, — the Smile of Caste — the smile that tells everyone to what an old family you belong, and how immensely superior you are to your surroundings — though you should never raise a finger. That haughty and superior smile of caste, that, after all, seldom goes back very far — how silly, and how attractive it is ! You often see it in England and — Newport. But all the smiles on the faces of women are not evil smiles, not smiles of seduction, or of cruelty, or of arrogance. Good women smile too — and when they smile it is as though the heaven opened. It is only when a good woman smiles that one knows what a smile is. Have you seen mothers smile over their cradles, or nurses smile over some poor broken man in a hospital, or have you seen the smile on the face of some sister of mercy, lighting up, as with a holy candle, the darkness of a dreary city slum? Have you seen a mother giving suck to her child ? or seen a wife smile up into the face of her husband ? Have you seen her smile down on him when he has fallen asleep from weariness, and has thus become to her — as all men are to all women — just another child to take care of? These are the smiles for which — you can get no pictures. And no words. [69] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS Mothers and nurses don't sit, or stand, for their photographs. They smile in private. They don't expose their smile at race-tracks, or smile at a camera in the act of controlling an unmanageable automobile, or when they are showing how well they can drive two horses — instead of the customary one. They smile without a press-agent, or a photographer. They smile because they are good women, helping the helpless, and the smile on their faces is truly the joy of their unconscious goodness. To a true woman the whole world is her child, and she is its mother; and whether it takes the form of baby or husband, saint or sinner, or soldier limp- ing from the wars, she is always there with the smile that is the most attractive of all smiles — the smile of a good woman. [7o] VI CITIZENS OF NATURE THE city man delights to mock the country- man's simplicity in town, his "hayseed" ignorance of the bewildering mechanism of city life; but, when the city man goes up state the countryman has his revenge. When in town, maybe, the countryman had stood in astonishment before a "ticker," and the city man, to whom it was a somewhat familiar object, had smiled a superior smile. Never to have seen a " ticker," — think of that! But surely the countryman has the best of the laugh when the city man walks gingerly about his farmyard, with his eye on his city boots, and is filled with wonder at the laying of an egg. Never saw a hen lay an egg! Well, — . . . . And here's a fellow, too, who has to be told from what quarter the wind is blowing, who sees a cow milked for the first time, and asks, "What is that?" every few minutes. When you think of it, it is rather amazing how ignorant we who live in cities are of the forces and processes back of us, — back even of our breakfast, or our quick lunch. Our city mechan- ism would wither like an unwatered flower, without ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS the new milk, the fresh eggs, the fish out of the sea, the ducks in reedy ponds, the frogs that sing in the marshes sweetly as any birds, the bees in a million hives, and the cattle in a thousand stockyards. You who love scallops in the evening, you whose passion is for mushrooms on toast, and you who hardly give anyone else a chance with the olives, — have you ever seen pictures, as you sit in your gas- tronomic dreams, of the romantic natural processes that work each day, unseen and afar, to bring about all this music of digestion? Have you gone out with the catboats in a stiff breeze, and hauled your dredge, and sorted out your treasure from the uncanny debris of the sea? Have you stolen about the meadows in the half-light of morning and filled your basket with the earth-fragrant dots of dewy whiteness? Have you climbed the terraces of little crooked, sunburnt trees, with long floors of shining flowers making the staircase? Probably not, — and yet, if you had, how much more your scallops, your mushrooms, and your olives would mean to you! In fact, instead of being merely so many delicacies, these common objects of a dinner table would be like words in an index instantly referring you to the book of nature. To know how things have come about is by no means a neces- sity. Sometimes, indeed, it is as well for our enjoy- ment that we are ignorant of processes, and rest [72] CITIZENS OF NATURE content with the product: pate de foie gras, for example, or the hats or beautiful women. But I am not thinking of the cruel methods of man, but of the innocent processes of nature. I am thinking of how the wheat grows and is reaped and ground, and is finally Vienna rolls; of how the grape tendrils its way up tall poles and blossoms and hangs in purple clusters, and finally writes its name on a wine list; I am thinking of quiet places where crops are growing and apples are ripening, of pastures where herds are feeding, of sunny silences where the bees hum and the doves coo and the hen proudly cackles her great news; of all the golden sap of silence that wells beneath the noisy surface of the world. And when I said that the countryman had the best of the laugh, I meant that, of the two learnings, his was that most worth having. Who cares whether or not he knows his way about town? He knows something far better. He knows his way about the fields and woods; he knows the names of trees and the haunts of birds and the secret places of the flowers. He is learned in the winds and the rains and the changes of the moon, and he is a "close- bosom friend of the maturing sun." He stands near the springs of the river of life. We townsfolk are down among the wharves and the shipping. Yet we, too, in a pathetic, exiled fashion, are children [73] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS of nature. Our spirits rise and fall with the barom- eter. We make the weather as much our concern as if we had growing crops to think of, and as, speeding to our offices on the street cars of an April morning, we catch glimpses of the neighboring country at the shimmering ends of streets, our hearts rejoice to see that the foliage is turning green again, — as if it really concerned us poor prisoners of brick- and-mortar. Yes! the deep significance of our morning inquiries as to the weather probably strikes us but seldom. You would say that it matters little to men and women whose lives, from eight in the morning till six in the afternoon, are spent in twenty- story buildings, whether the sun shines or not, or whether it rains, snows, or hails. Under cover all the day, one might almost say all their lives, what, to them, are the vagaries of the elements? Yet so close is the bond that binds even her most estranged children to the Great Mother that even a chief accountant, though you buried him deep within the steel and concrete walls of burglar- proof safes, or sunk him nightly under water, guarded by clock-work combination locks that would defy their inventors to crack them, — even he, at certain times of the year, would hear the earth, his mother, calling him, and feel an ache in his heart for the green woods or the salt sea. I think no city man ever takes his poor little yearly holiday without [74] CITIZENS OF NATURE realising sadly how artificially the majority of his days are spent, and where his heart really lies. Almost pathetic is his happiness as he walks about a farm and watches, with a child's eagerness, all the ancient, ever-new processes of the earth, or baits his hook for flat-fish in exciting summer seas, or climbs the lonely hills and stands in astonishment that there is so much cleansing solitude in the world. Ah! here is the work he would fain be doing. Here is his real home. One of the healthiest signs of the times is the way in which the younger generation, and some of the older, are turning their thoughts to the country life. The ideal of cities, the money ideal, is on the wane. Young men everywhere are asking them- selves, "Is it worth while, when, with less money, we can be just as happy, nay! far happier, and do the work and live the life we really love? " We are all in revolt, literary men amongst the rest, — in revolt against brick and mortar and pen and ink. Says Marcus Aurelius, in one of his meditations: "In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present: ' I am rising to the work of a human being.'" But it is to be feared that this counsel has lost its force for most modern men and women; for how many of us can say, at rising, " I am rising to the work of a human being " ? On the contrary, if we are honest and not cowards, we [75] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS are compelled to say that we are rising too often to work entirely inhuman and unnatural, work artificial, wearisome, and unprofitable; work in which we take no pleasure, unless, indeed, we have become denaturalised by habit, and work which we do merely because we must, or think we must, if we are to go on living at all. Of course, we cannot all be farmers or fishermen, nor is rose-growing all roses. Even in the most simplified community, there must be some merchant- men to handle our produce, and bookkeepers to register our transactions and figure up our accounts. Still, there are many signs that mankind is deter- mined in the near future so to simplify the conditions and the processes of living as to reduce the dreary and disagreeable work of the world to a minimum. As machinery grows more and more human, men will be less called upon to be machines. This good time, which is surely, if slowly, coming, will come all the sooner the more individual men and women feel the call of the more simple, natural life, and realise that, the further away from nature we live, the more life costs, and the less satisfaction it brings. The reason we are happy working in a garden, and less happy working at a desk, is that one occupation is nearer to nature than another. Do you remember that charming story in Stevenson's "Inland Voyage," — how, landing one evening from [76] CITIZENS OF NATURE his canoe, he found himself at a boat club on the riverside, and listened to the enthusiastic boat- talk of the young Frenchmen just escaped from their offices and warehouses? In the daytime, they told him, they worked at trivial occupations, were lawyers, doctors, clerks, or what not, but in the evening, when they came down to the riverside and took to their boats, "Then," said they, "nous sommes serieux" : then the serious work of the day began. And, quite seriously speaking, there is a very real sense in which a man's holidays are the most important time of his year, — for in them only is he brought in touch with the vital elements of his nature, spiritual as well as physical. Detached the year round, absorbed in some more or less mechanical occupation, he runs the risk of forgetting his own nature, and of acquiescing in his own ban- ishment from the larger, cosmic world to which he belongs as much as any bird in the air or fish in the sea. In his holidays he comes back for a while to that power-house of being, the very existence of which he had almost forgotten in the city, lost, indeed, as one who snaps on and off his electric light, without giving a thought to the mysterious force that feeds it: so the city man draws his breath, eats his food, and generally lives his life, in isolated ignorance of what he is and whence he came. It is only when he has left the city behind and [77] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS united himself once more with that world of nature from which, for so much of each year, he is an exile, that he really comes to himself and a realisation of his proper significance in a universe so vast that the roar of the greatest city is lost like the murmur of a fly in its dread profundity. In town, maybe, he would boast himself a citizen of no mean city, an important unit in its earnest, ambitious life, but here, under the solemn stars, or amid "the sacred spaces of the sea," it is not only his own littleness that is borne in upon him, but a new greatness, a greatness he had all but forgotten, — a spiritual importance. Though here he is a unit so infinitesimally small, the scheme of which he rediscovers himself a part is so mysteriously magnificent that it dignifies its humblest unit, and even a blade of grass is a modest kinsman to the stars. In the great growing silences of nature, in the punctual rhythms of her times and seasons, in her giant energies, in her vast peace, in her immortal beauty, — O weary child of cities! there is for us for ever healing and a home. The Great Mother, I said, a few sentences back, and the expression is so much a common- place of poetical symbolism that we are apt to use it with hardly a thought of the reality behind it. Yet nature is actually the Great Mother, not merely in poetry, but just day by day, in the experience of us all; and the test of her motherhood is that in [78] CITIZENS OF NATURE times of happiness, times when the world goes well with us, we forget that we have such a mother: it is only when we are humiliated by sorrow or sin that, instinctively, we cry out to her, run to her, remembering that we have one friend who under- stands, and, if need be, will forgive it all. However complex our nature, however difficult the conditions of trial in which we find ourselves, there is no human friend that understands it all, no one that we dare venture to seek, no one whose voice we dare invoke with the same certainty of comprehension and consolation as that which sends us to the sea, or takes us to the hills. "I have no friend so generous as this sun That comes to meet me with his big, warm hands." If I need a confidant for my tears, it is no human friend I seek. I blend them with the rain. And more tranquillising than the hand of any human friend is the starlit hand of the silent night on the fevered pulses of the heart. How human and universal was the instinct of the heartbroken lover in Swinburne's "Triumph of Time," when he cried out, — "I will go back to the great, sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea ..." Why is it that the first instinct of the nerve-tired [79] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS child of the town — instinctive it would seem as the yearning of the swallow for the south, — is to throw himself into the arms of the sea, or to lay his aching and haunted head on some green shoulder of the hills? The reason is that Nature is indeed his mother, and that, though in moments of his con- fidence and his pride he may have forgotten his relationship, he, however old, however sophisticated, however important, even financially, he may be, is still her little, dependent child. [8o] VII THE HUMAN NEED OF CONEY ISLAND TO call Coney Island one of the wonders of the world is not for me. I think it has been already said. One of the wonders of the world! One! Why, surely, Coney is all the wonders of the world in one pyrotechnic master- piece of coruscating concentration. I write — or try to write — in this style on purpose — for am I not writing of Coney Island? — and it was not till I went down to Coney Island, on a brief duck- shooting expedition, that I realised why the word "pyrotechnic" had been invented. I had often fondled the word in dictionaries, or on those circus- posters which, to my mind, are the masterpieces of a certain kind of literary style, but I had never hoped to meet with anything equal to the word. One so seldom meets with anything equal to a word. A word like "pyrotechnic" is like the name of some beautiful woman whom we never expect to meet except in dreams. But at last I have met my beautiful lady-love Pyrotechnic — in Coney Island. Her sister, too — whose name is "Coruscating." 6 [81] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS Arm in arm with Pyrotechnic and Coruscating, you and I, if you have a mind, may see all the wonders of the world in this million-faceted false diamond known as Coney Island. All the wonders, I say, and I use the plural advis- edly; for, have you noticed how men and women flock to wonders — but how little they know, or care, of Wonder? That, of all things, most struck me in Coney Island — man's voracity for wonders, and his ignorance of Wonder. Mankind will not give a second look at the rising moon, but present it with some disagreeable mon- strosity, something that nature ought never to have allowed, something also essentially uninteresting, such as, say, the Human Pin-Cushion, the Balloon- Headed Baby, or the Six-Tailed Bull-Terrier, and there is no limit to its gaping astonishment. Forlorn horrors of abortion, animals tortured into talent, or feats of fantastic daring, these win the respect and thrill the exorbitant imagination of man. Nothing pleases him better than to see some skilled human being, with ghastly courage, risking a hor- rible death for the sake of his entertainment. Death, or at least the fear of it, as always, still holds a foremost place in popular amusements; though we are, I suppose, a little less cruel than they were in ancient Rome. But I must not write as though I felt superior to [82] NEED OF CONEY ISLAND Coney Island. Indeed not. The human appetite for fairs has been implanted in my bosom also, and Coney, of course, is just the village fair in excelsis, catering to the undying demand for green spectacles and gilded gingerbread and quaint absurdities of amusement ; generally speaking, man's desperate need of entertainment, and his pathetic incapac- ity for entertaining himself. Really, it is strange, when you think of it, that in a world with so many interesting things to do, so many, so to say, ready- made fascinations and marvels — that man should find it necessary to loop-the-loop for distraction, or ride wooden horses to the sound of savage music, or ascend a circle in the air in lighted carriages slung on a revolving wheel, or hurl himself with splashing laughter down chutes into the sea. When one might be reading Plato — ever so much more amus- ing. And yet so man has been made, and there come moments when it is necessary for him to shy sticks at a mark, in the hope of winning a cigar or a cocoanut, or divert himself with the antics of cynical mounte- banks, or look at animals in cages, menagerie marvels which are interesting chiefly from being caged, or gaze upon gymnasts and athletes performing feats of skill and strength which would be really astonish- ing if they were not the tricks of so old a trade, professional astonishments handed down, like the [83] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS craft of shoemaking, from immemorial time. There is nothing especially marvellous about snake-charm- ing. It is a business, like any other; and to swallow knives, or " eat -'em-alive," for a living is, no doubt, hard work, yet what modes of working for a living are not? Sword-swallowing is scarcely so arduous as bricklaying, and, though one is as essentially interesting as the other, the humble bricklayer draws but small audiences for his exhibitions of skill. But, as I said, man has been made with an appetite for eccentricities of diversion rather than the love of more normal pleasures. Personally, I am the last to blame him, and he who can look upon a merry-go-round without longing to ride the wooden horse once more before he dies, for all the maturity of his middle age, can hardly be a human being. I said that I went down to Coney on a duck- shooting expedition. I should, of course, have explained that it was a tin-duck-shooting expedi- tion, and, even when I say that, you will hardly understand if you have not fallen under the strange spell of that perpetual progression of tin ducks which invites the tin sportsman hard by the Dream- land gates of Coney Island. If you haven't shot at those tin ducks, or if you disdain to shoot at them, you may as well not visit Coney Island. The Congressional Library you might find congenial, or you might go on a pious pilgrimage to Grant's [84] NEED OF CONEY ISLAND Tomb, but I fear you will never understand Coney Island. Besides, Coney Island might misunder- stand you, and to be misunderstood in Coney Island is no laughing matter — for to misunderstand you is one of the many serious interests of that "happy isle set in the silver sea." Tin ducks remind me of tin-types. If you are not a friend of the Gipsy photographer, the Daguerre of the highways and byways, in the little tents pitched by the roadside, the only photographer that never calls himself an artist, but, nine times out of ten, gives you the best picture you ever had — again, don't go to Coney Island. My friend Pyrotechnic and I, being simple souls, bathing in all the pristine hallucinations of the place, sat together hand in hand with a heavenly expression under a very real electric light, and, a moment after, saw our faces fried over a little stove, another moment we were in gilt frames, another moment we were out again on the Broadway, with our eyes on Dreamland — but just as we were about to enter, a stout old crone of the American-Italian species beckoned us into her enchanted cave, and proposed to tell our fortunes. Again, if you are too superior to have your fortune told by some peasant woman who knows nothing about it, and knows that you know that she doesn't — don't go to Coney Island. The great charm of Coney is just there. It not [85] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS only knows itself a fake, but, so to speak, it makes so little bones about the matter. It knows that you know, and it expects you to pretend to be taken in, as it pretends to think that it is taking you in. And yet, one cannot be too sure; I wonder if, perhaps, Coney Island, like all similar institutions in all times and in all lands, does not regard the public as a big baby in need of a noisy, electric-lighted rattle. Or, on the other hand, do the magicians of "Dreamland" and "Luna Park" persuade them- selves that their domes and minarets of fairy fire are really anything more than, so to speak, share- holders lit by electric light, the capitalistic torches of modern Neroism? Do they really think that "Dreamland" is dreamland, or that any one but a lunatic would look for the moon in "Luna Park"? Yet, after all, whatever the mind and meaning of this strange congregation of showmen may be, whether they merely cater in cynical fashion to the paying needs of a contemptible uncomprehended multitude, or whether they gratify their own pyro- technic and coruscating tastes, this much is true: that Coney Island, more than any other showman in the world, has heard and answered man's cry for the Furies of Light and Noise. Whatever else the speculators back of Coney Island don't know, they understand the — Zulu. Coney Island is the Tom-Tom of America. Every nation has, and [86] NEED OF CONEY ISLAND needs — and loves — its Tom-Tom. It has its needs of orgiastic escape from respectability — that is, from the world of What-we-have-to-do into the world of What-we-would-like-to-do, from the world of duty that endureth for ever into the world of joy that is graciously permitted for a moment. Some escape by one way, and some by another — some by the ivory gate, and some by the gate of horn — or gold. The thing is to escape. It is of no use to criticise humanity. Like all creations, it — survives its critics. The only inter- esting thing is to try to understand it, or, at least, appreciate. Perhaps Coney Island is the most human thing that God ever made, or permitted the devil to make. Of course, the real reason of its existence in our day has nothing to do with its modern appliances, electric and otherwise. The real reason is that it is as old as the hills. Nothing younger than the hills is alive to-day. The flowers look younger — on account of their complexions — but perhaps they are even older than the hills. Coney Island is so alive with light and noise every night because it is so old-established an institution. Man needs Coney Island to-day, because he has always needed Coney Island. A scholar I knew once told me the name of Coney Island in Babylon; but he died recently, and I know no one else to ask. [87] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS I wish that I could remember the name, but never mind — of course, it was not the name of the place where the most fine and subtle and distinguished fugitives from humdrum Babylon made their refuge — and yet I am not so sure that it was not, for, after all, if a place like Coney Island is a Palace of Poor Pleasures for Poor Men, do we find the rich seeking pleasures so very different — or even the refined gen- tlemen who write books and paint pictures and criticise them? No, Coney Island exists, and will go on existing, because into all men, gentle and simple, poor and rich — including women — by some mysterious cory- bantic instinct in their blood, has been born a tragic need of coarse excitement, a craving to be taken in by some illusion however palpable. So, following the example of those old nations, whose place she has so vigorously taken, America has builded for herself a Palace of Illusion, and filled it with every species of talented attractive monster, every misbegotten fancy of the frenzied nerves, every fantastic marvel of the moonstruck brain — and she has called it Coney Island. Ironic name — a place lonely with rabbits, a spit of sandy beach so near to the simple life of the sea, and watched over by the summer night; strange Isle of Monsters, Preposterous Palace of Illusion, gigantic Parody of Pleasure — Coney Island. [88] VIII THE DREAM CHILDREN OF LITERATURE THERE is a corner of the world of dreams filled with the voices of little children, as a wood is filled with the singing of birds. It is peopled with those "nurslings of immortality," who, with a divine precocity, have, as we say, made names for themselves no less personal and ever- lasting than those of some of their elders, — chil- dren as typically "childish" as some great soldier is typically soldierly, or as Helen of Troy is typically womanly. There was no need for them to grow up to become immortal, for they live for ever just because they are always children, — chil- dren, as one might say, who have supremely succeeded — as children. Of all these it was Paul Dombey who, uncon- sciously enough, raised the banner of the child. Dickens is very near to Shakespeare in that moment of divination when the little frail and moonlit Paul is first taken to school and confronted with the magnificent Dr. Blimber, — Dr. Blimber, who means so well in his plush middle-class way. [89] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS ''Shall we make a man of you?" asked Dr. Blimber. Little Paul replied: "I would rather be a child." I would rather be a child! Without knowing it, how right little Dombey was! Who is there amongst us that does not pro- test against growing up, does not battle against maturity, and does not try his best to remain a child ? Who of us with any sense is anxious to grow up? Is it not always felt to be a special grace of nature when we say of anyone that he has kept the heart of a child ? This we say of Goldsmith, of Lamb, and of Stevenson, with the sense of paying them signal tribute, and the first law of most greatness is the law of the Kingdom of Heaven. To be made a man of by Dr. Blimber, or by those other disillusionising agencies of experience employed in licking our immortal beings into mortal shape, may be a very fine thing, — but happy is he who has succeeded in remaining a child, has kept his heart pure, has escaped the pride and the cynicism of knowledge, and can still turn eyes of uncon- taminated simplicity upon human life and all the wonder of the world. Dream children! When Lamb wrote that immortal fragment of his own pathos, he was thinking of two little children who might have been his, had he not through life [90] DREAM CHILDREN remained a bachelor, for his sister's sake. He cheered his lonely evening thought with the fancy of taking little Alice and John on his knees, and telling them, paternal fashion, about the time when he was a child, till suddenly, as the story neared its end, the soul of the first Alice looked out of the eyes of the little dream Alice so poignantly that the dream was broken, and, as the children faded away, he seemed to hear them saying: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been. ..." Perhaps others of us have personal dream children of this sort, — the little boy that never came to us, or the little girl that went too early away, while she was still a mere snowdrop in February; but it is not of such dream children I would write, but rather of those who belong to the whole world's dreamland, — that corner of the world of dreams where we may come upon a little girl in a red hood carrying dainties in her basket for an old grand- mother who lives in a lonely hut in the forest, the same forest where you may find two babes lying asleep under a coverlet of leaves which the kind robins are spreading over them, or meet with Little Boy Blue blowing his horn, or come just in time to save Little Silverlocks from the three bears: there [91] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS is no end to the famous people you may meet in this corner of the dream world, and so little is it necessary to grow up to become famous that one can seriously claim that there are no names better known than those one meets with there. Think of being as famous as Little Red Riding-hood! Napoleon himself is hardly as well known as Goody Two- shoes! Adelina Patti is hardly more famous than Mr. Riley's "Little Orphant Annie ! " Let us wander in this land awhile, and see if we can meet with any more of its famous inhabitants! Yes; here comes Kilmeny, a Scotch maiden, with a strange dream on her face. For seven long years she has been missing from her home in the glen, and her home-folks mourn her as dead. "Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been? Lang hae we sought baith holt and den; By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree, Yet you are halesome and fair to see. Where gat you that joup [mantle] o' the lily sheen, That bonnie snood of the birk sae green? And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen? Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?" Kilmeny has been to fairyland, and here in the twilight she is coming back home to tell them about it all. "Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face; [92] DREAM CHILDREN As still was her look and as still was her e'e, As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. For Kilmeny had been, she knew not where, And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare; Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew, Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew. But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung, And the airs of heaven played round her tongue, When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen, And a land where sin had never been; A land of love and a land of light, Withouten sun, or moon, or night; Where the river swelled, a living stream, And the light a pure celestial beam; The land of vision, it would seem, A still, an everlasting dream." But she will stay only a little while, and then wander back to fairyland. She was not of this world, after all. "It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain; She left this world of sorrow and pain, And returned to the land of thought again." * But here is a less eerie apparition, — a merry little fellow, without shoes or stockings, intent on dabbling up and down the stream. He calls him- * The story of Kilmeny is, of course, told by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, in the beautiful ballad from which these lines are quotations. [93] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS self "the barefoot boy," and, if you know your poets, you will stroke his curly head and say: — " Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy, — I was once a barefoot boy. . . ." But before you have finished he will have escaped into a treetop, and be whistling back to the wood robins. As he swings there, you will be reminded of a similar apparition of elfish childhood from another land and another time, — though yet, they say, still inhabiting ours. He carries a bow and arrows, and is even more scantily clad than our "barefoot boy." One of the most vivid descriptions I can find of him is this from an old Greek writer (Longus) who knew him well: — "As I entered my garden to-day, about noon, I espied a little boy under my pomegranates and myrtles, some of which he had gathered; and he was holding them in his hands. His complexion was white as milk, his hair a bright yellow, and he shone as if he had just been bathing. He was [94] DREAM CHILDREN naked and alone, and amused himself with pluck- ing the fruit with as much freedom as if it had been his own garden. ... I asked him to what neighbour he belonged, and what he meant by gathering what grew in another person's garden. He made no reply, but, approaching very near me, smiled sweetly in my face, and pelted me with myrtle berries, and (I know not how) so won upon me that my anger was appeased. I entreated him to come close to me, and assured him that I wished only to give him one kiss, for which he should ever after have liberty to gather as much fruit, and to pluck as many flowers as he pleased. Upon hearing me thus address him, he burst into a merry laugh, and replied : — " 'I am not the child I appear to be; but I am older than Saturn, ay, older than Time himself. I knew you well, Philetas, when you were in the flower of your youth, and when you tended your widely-scattered flock in yonder marsh. I was near you, when you sat beneath those beech trees, wooing your Amaryllis: I was close to the maiden, but you could not discern me. . . . With these words he sprang like the youngling of a nightingale among the myrtles, and, climbing from bough to bough, ascended through the foliage to the summit of the tree. I observed wings upon his shoulders, and between them a tiny bow and arrows; but in a moment I could see neither him nor them." This charming description is taken from "The Delectable History of Daphnis and Chloe," that exquisite idyl of boy and girl love which may be [95] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS called the Paul and Virginia of the ancient world; yet, if Daphnis and Chloe and Paul and Virginia are little more than children, they are, perhaps too near to the frontier of grown-up romance to be classed among "dream children." Our dream children are, for the most part, in that earlier period when the opposite sex is an uncongenial rather than a congenial mystery, — when the little girl is apt to regard the little boy as a disagreeable species of wild animal, and the little boy to wonder what little girls can possibly be good for. Of course, there are exceptions. Fred Vincy married little Mary Garth with a ring taken from an old umbrella stick, while they were still babies, and in actual life such infantine matrimony is not unusual; but, so far as I know, it has found no striking exponents in childhood romance. We must not forget, though, O 7 O ' that Dante and Beatrice were only nine when they first met, and, if their story belongs rather to history, it is history so transformed into poetry that Dante's well-known description of his first beholding Beatrice may well go among our "dream pictures," — ". . . when first the glorious lady of my mind was made manifest to mine eyes, even she who was called Beatrice by many who know not wherefore, she had already been in this life for so long as that, within her time, the starry heaven had moved toward the eastern quarter one of the twelve parts [96] DREAM CHILDREN of a degree; so that she appeared to me at the begin- ning of her ninth year almost, and I saw her almost at the end of my ninth year. Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited with her very tender age. At that moment, I say most truly, the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook therewith; and in trem- bling it said these words : ' Ecce deus jortior me, qui, veniens, dominabitur mihi. [Here is a deity stronger than I; who, coming, shall rule over me.]'" Yet, as a rule, the dream children of fame sel- dom go in couples, though now and again we do meet them holding each other's hands for com- pany in the mysterious wood of the world. Such a forlorn and fear-stricken pair, which the imag- inative pity of centuries has long immortalised, are, of course, "The princes in the tower," shapes of boyish helplessness in an evil world, which concentrate more dramatically than any others the piteous, lonely terror of children before the menace of the unknown evil of life. We have seen them in many pictures, stealing fearfully among the grim shadows of the wicked old stones, and has not Shakespeare shown them to us, in such a pity of innocent sleep that even their murderers turned poets as they slew them? — 7 I 97 1 ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS "Lo, thus," quoth Dighton, "lay those tender babes!" " Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girding one another Within their innocent alabaster arms: Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, Which in their summer beauty kissed each other. A book of prayers on their pillow lay Which once," quoth Forrest, "almost changed my mind . . ." While we are with Shakespeare, shall we not look again on the little Arthur, and his keeper, Hubert, another child shape lighting up like a lily the dungeons of those bloody times, — another boy prince with "his little kingdom of a forced grave?" But, before we return to the lonely children, let us not forget a happier picture of a famous two, that of St. Theresa and her little brother setting out — the saintly mites, — to seek for martyrdom among the Moors! However, as I said, the dream child is usually met alone, and the fact may be taken as symbolic of that pathetic isolation of childhood in a world of grown-up mysteries for which even the kindest mother somehow fails to give any adequate explana- tion. The child asks this question and that, receives an answer no less puzzling than the original mystery, and goes back again into his loneliness, to ponder it out for himself. Perhaps no other human being is so lonely as a thinking child. Surrounded, on every hand, with the cabalistic writing of the strange [98] DREAM CHILDREN world into which he has suddenly awakened, he asks himself, again and again, why he is here, how he came, and what it all means. Of course, no one can tell him, because no one knows any more about it than himself, — but the grown-ups don't say that. They say that he will understand it all when he grows up. They mean that he will have ceased to ask questions, found com- monplace solutions, or given up expecting an- swers, — as the shades of the prison house more and more darken around the eager little beam of inquiry. Even a Whittier must cease to be a barefoot boy, and even a Wordsworth, so sensitive to the mystic harmonies of existence, and so close a confidant of the soul of the world, has sadly to confess thus that dimming of the spiritual eye, that deadening of the spiritual ear, which comes with the passing of youth: — Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day. [99] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS Wordsworth was the first to give us the lonely child in literature, and to say over the names of such little heroines of his as Lucy Gray and Alice Fell is to call up pictures of childhood almost unbear- ably wistful with their penetrating sense of solitari- ness. Oft had I heard of Lucy Gray; And, when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see, at break of day, The solitary child. . . . How simple the lines are, but with what an intense loneliness they fill the heart! — what a poignant tenderness for the little figures so forlorn there in all that wilderness of heath and sky! — and, as the poem proceeds, surely the pathos of all children that have ever lost their way and never been seen again is concentrated in its broken-hearted close. How solitary, too, was that other Lucy whom Wordsworth has immortalised thus: — A maid whom there was none to praise, And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone, Half hidden from the eye; Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. The little maid in "We Are Seven" seemed unconscious of her solitude, so sure was she that [ioo] DREAM CHILDREN her brothers and sisters were still with her, though unseen ; yet what a loneliness is there in the verses, and what a pathos in the very faith with which, at sunset, she brings her little porringer into the churchyard, and eats her supper by the graves of her lost playfellows. Again, how the "Solitary Reaper" echoes with upland loneliness: — "Behold her, single in the field, Yon solitary Highland lass, Reaping and singing by herself! ..." In other poets, children are usually represented as romping and singing in happy bands at play; they are unindividualised groups of joyous creatures, like clumps of primroses, or flocks of birds; but with Wordsworth, for whom, as we know, " the child is father to the man," theirs is already the loneliness of the individual, with the added isolation of a little creature "moving about in worlds not realised." They have the look on their faces of small travellers who have come a long journey, and find themselves set down in a strange land, and their hearts are lonely for the brighter land they have left. They always seem to be looking for the hidden road home again. That is the meaning of that wistful look upon their faces, and who knows but that, when, as we say, they lose their way in the snow, they have really found their way home? [101] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS With Dickens, the archcreator of dream children, it is, again, as with Wordsworth, always the lonely child, and with what a love did his great heart go out to the little beings his imagination has made immortal! What an almost divine pity he has for the fears and bewilderments and hardships of their dependent little lives, so at the mercy of grim elders, and the sport of all manner of heartless bullying forces! Poor David Copperfield and that dreadful new father-in-law of his with the black whiskers, — how one's blood runs cold for him as Mr. Murdstone takes him into a room and sternly expounds to him, in ogreish words, the iron discipline to be expected for breaches of the law in that sepulchral household ! Children are not beaten, nowadays, I am told. If not, the change is largely due to Dickens, who has certainly done much to mitigate the former severe lot of the child, — in a regime where the father was little more to his children than the stern policeman and executioner of home, the dread Rhadamanthus in the best parlor, who must on no account be disturbed by childish laughter, and to offend whom was to invite swift and certain doom. How much has Dickens done to mitigate the lot of the schoolboy by his savage satire of Dotheboy's Hall, and the lot of all poor boys whatsoever by the pleading figure of Oliver Twist! There are [ I02 ] DREAM CHILDREN few strokes in literature so trenchant in their tragic laughter, so irresistibly comic in their shattering criticism of human nature, as that scene which has passed into the proverbs of the world, — the scene, of course, where poor little starved Oliver asks for more. The astonishment on the face of the cook is positively Olympian in its humour. A charity boy ask for more! Why, the very walls of the insti- tution rocked, and the earth quaked, at such a request, and the rumour of it passed like thunder from room to room, till even the board of directors, then in session, must have heard it. Great heavens! " Oliver Twist has asked for more." Again, the pity of the lot of frail and sick children foredoomed to death from their cradles, who else has ever made it touch the heart like Dickens, with Paul Dombey and Tiny Tim? There are no children in the world of dreams whose faces we know better than these: Paul, with his air of only paying life a rather weary little visit, having to go soon, and brave little Tim, who, for all his crutches and irons, would sing his tiny song, — a song, though, "about a lost child travelling in the snow," — and give his cheerful toast with the rest at the Christmas dinner. How like Dickens it was to put that " God bless us, every one ! " into the mouth of a little cripple that was soon to die. Yes; there are many little graves [103] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS in Dickens's volumes, and on no other graves in the world, perhaps, have so many tears been shed. So at length we come to Little Nell, — the queen of all the dream children. We meet her often in that world of dreams, from the moment when she first looks up at us in the street, a self-possessed, but "just a little frightened" wisp of a child, and begs us to tell her the way home to her grandfather's, to the moment when she lies silent and smiling among the winter berries and green leaves she had loved. "When I die," she had said, "put near me some- thing that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always." So there she lies among the berries and the green leaves. " You do well to speak softly," says her old grand- father. "We will not wake her. I should be glad to see her eyes again, and to see her smile. There is a smile upon her young face now, but it is fixed and changeless. I would have it come and go. That shall be in Heaven's good time. We will not wake her." Nell, too, belongs to the little lonely ones, — but surely her grave is not lonely. Another lonely child we shall often meet in our corner of the world of dreams is Maggie Tulliver, much communing with her earnest young soul "of God and nature and of human life," and carrying [104] DREAM CHILDREN in her hand an old thumbed copy of "The Imitation of Christ." No one else has understood so well as George Eliot the thoughtful religious child, and portrayed the spiritual agonies of the young with so intimate a knowledge; and, incidentally, one may add that no other writer has described with such painful reality and delightful humour the sufferings of such children from prosaic and grotesque relations. Another dream child, too, belongs to her, — the child that Silas Marner found on his hearthstone, one winter evening, whose shining curls he at first mistook for his stolen gold come back to him again; "but, instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls," the gold that was to soften, not harden, his heart. At the thought of bright babes that soften the hearts of strong men, there flashes on the eye across the centuries the very different picture in which Homer makes us behold great Hector, all dreadfully girt in his war-harness, taking his little son in his arms before going into battle, — little Astyanax, "like unto a beautiful star." But the child, "dis- mayed at his dear father's aspect, in dread at the bronze, and at the horsehair crest that he beheld nodding fiercely from the helmet's top," shrinks from him and cries for his nurse, and Hector and Andromache laugh together, and the father takes [105] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS off the dreadful headgear, so that the child is no longer afraid, and, tossing him in his arms, prays aloud to Zeus that old human prayer — so seldom answered, — that he may become a better man than his father! To somersault back again through time, we must not forget our little friend Alice, the type of all lonely children who "make up things" out of the wonderland of their fancy, and, being so lonely, make friends of the very furniture, and fairy tales even out of sofas, — like the boy in Stevenson's "child's garden." It would be ungrateful to for- get such still older friends as Sandford and Merton, Tom Brown, and the boy who has stood so long upon the burning deck. Then there are the naughty children like Budge and Toddy, the impish boys like Flibbertigibbet in " Kenilworth," and the gentle children who make goodness almost as fascinating as naughtiness, such as Timothy of the Quest, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. I said that the dream children seldom go in couples, but you may sometimes meet them in companies and groups. One eager company you may meet at the heels of a wizard piper playing the sweetest of strange tunes, — but here again is a lonely child, the Tiny Tim of mediaeval legend, the little lame boy who couldn't keep up with his companions, and came to the fairy hill just too late, only in time [106] DREAM CHILDREN to catch a glimpse of its shining inside and hear the great doors close on all the music . Then there is the rosy group of children that pulled at Charlotte's skirts while she was cutting bread, and made Werther think that she never before looked so charming as when surrounded by all this chubby clamour. There are, doubtless, other groups of children one might think of, but there is one group of all we can not forget, that sacred little group that years ago in Judea brought down so tender a blessing upon all children. Dream children! Yes! if we grown-ups are such stuff as dreams are made of, — what must the children be? [107] IX BOOKS AS DOCTORS THE medicinal properties of books have long been known to the learned, and they are a favourite topic of old philosophers and students. That quaint old specialist on melancholy, Robert Burton, in his famous "Anatomy of Melan- choly," extols reading as of all remedies the most efficacious. " 'Tis," says he, "the best nepenthe, surest cordial, sweetest alterative, presentest di- verter"; and he gathers together, in his quaint way, the testimonials of all manner of men, kings and saints and poets, telling us how Cardan calls a library "the physick of the soul," how Ferdinand and Alphonsus, kings of Aragon and Sicily, "were both cured by reading the history, one of Curtius, the other of Livy, when no prescribed physick " was of avail, and so on. The Scriptures he compares to "an apothecary's shop, wherein are remedies for all infirmities, purgatives, cordials, alteratives, corroboratives, lenitives"; this only being required, — "that the sick man take the potion which God hath already tempered." The medical efficacy of sacred writings, [10S] BOOKS AS DOCTORS whether or not we regard the belief as superstitious, has been practically believed in and acted upon in all times and among all peoples. A text suspended round the neck has seemed more than equal to a bottle of medicine, and it would not, perhaps, be fantastic to ascribe a large share in the vigorous health of our forefathers to their constant reading of the Bible. In our day there is a certain book which, perhaps more than any other in any time, illustrates humanity's deep faith in the curative properties of literature. It takes the place of doctors for thousands and tens of thousands of apparently intelligent people. Who of us suffering from some ail- ment has not among his acquaintances a gentle friend, who, hearing of his trouble, will confidently place in his hand a slim book in flexible morocco binding, saying, "Read this, and you will need no medicine." Such is the touching faith of, I suppose, millions of people in the gospel according to Mary Baker Eddy. But, evidently, it is no part of my business to throw discredit on that conviction. Rather is it my wish to extend the application of that principle to other — and, dare I say it? better, — literature. The fundamental tenet of Christian Science is, I understand, that all disease exists only in the mind, and Christian Science, therefore, quite appropriately, one might say necessarily, brings the cure in the form of a book. We have not waited, of course, I 109] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS for Christian Science to teach us the power of the mind over the body, though, in specialising that truth, it has given a motive of achievement to a useful principle. What shall minister to a mind diseased, if not the food and physic of the mind, — literature? For mental sickness, mental healing; and, if all sickness be mental, obviously the shortest way to a cure is through the mind. If gout, for example, is merely the physical expression of some mental disorder, it is surely better to attack it at its source in the mind, rather than at its remote extension in the great toe. The aim, therefore, of the literary doctor, in such a case, would be to dis- cover the initial trouble in the mind of the sufferer and apply to it the appropriate literary remedies. I am not aware that any doctor has as yet undertaken the systematic literary treatment of disease, but I am convinced, and, indeed, it is easy to see, that such treatment is not only feasible, but likely, with the advance of mental science, to take an important place among those methods for the alleviation of human suffering of which we can not have too many. When the science, for which I merely throw out a few suggestions, shall have become definitely organised, the library will take the place of the dispensary, and, instead of giving us pre- scriptions composed of nauseous drugs, the physician will write down the titles of delightful books, — books [no] BOOKS AS DOCTORS tonic or narcotic, stimulating or sedative, as our need may be. Thus, at the outset, illness will be robbed of half its misery, — the customary disagreeable processes of getting well. Instead of painful surgery, or evil-tasting doses of ugly-looking drugs, we shall be indulged with the energising essences, or the honeyed cordials, of great and charming books, and, when medicine time comes round, instead of tablespoon and phial, and "mixture as before," the dainty nurse will seat herself at one's bedside, volume in hand, with an eagerly anticipated "Now it is time for another chapter" ; or " I think it is time for your poetry, Mr. So and So"; and the doctor's visit, instead of being an ordeal, will be looked forward to as a pleasant exchange of literary con- fidences. That doctor, by the way, will, more often than at present, be a lady; for one incidental outcome of the establishment of literary medicine will be an increase in the number of lady doctors, the feminine mind being more receptive to literary influences than the masculine, and more ready to welcome literary originality and innovation, as we have seen in the case of Browning and Meredith and Ibsen, prophets whose first vogue was largely due to women. Much observation and experiment will necessarily have to be undertaken before literary therapeutics [in] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS can be established on any such firm basis as the more familiar methods of medical science, but it is not difficult to forecast the main lines upon which it will proceed, and it is easy for anyone to make simple experiments upon himself or his friends. I would certainly hesitate to do more than indicate a few possible principles for general application. Difficult ailments would of necessity need complex and experienced treatment, for the new literary medicine will be no slapdash quackery, pretending to cure all the complicated ills of man with one uniform bolus. By no means! On the contrary, it will be the most subtly adjusted treatment imagin- able, based on the most minute and painstaking study of the patient's mental and spiritual as well as physical condition. The broad principles underlying this course will be subject to as many variations and niceties of application as there are patients, and it is easy to see what delicate skill will be needed by one whose field of operation is the terribly sensitive nerve matter of the mind, rather than the coarser fibre of the body. Think of the risk, in a dangerous case, of prescribing the wrong author! Suppose, in that case of gout, for example, an inexperienced young literary doctor should prescribe for an irascible old colonel half -hourly doses of Keats or Shelley! Imagine the immediate rise in the patient's temper- [112] BOOKS AS DOCTORS ature and the perilously accelerated action of the heart! The doctor might count himself lucky if apoplexy did not supervene. Gout, in any case, would be a difficult disease to treat, chiefly from that irascibility which is, perhaps, its best-known symp- tom. From that point of view, light, amusing books would, of course, be advisable, or books dealing with hunting or any other form of sport. The novels of J. G. Whyte Melville and Captain Hawley Smart have often proved invaluable, in such cases. But here we come upon one of the difficulties of the new science; for too exclusive use of such books would be highly inadvisable, for the reason that while, indeed, they divert the patient from his troubles and keep him in good temper, they at the same time are filling his mind with pictures of that full-blooded jolly life from which his troubles have arisen, and are thus nourishing at its very centre the mental roots of his disease. What our gout patient really needs is literature that will break up rather than continue his mental habits, — literature that will de-materialise him, and clarify his blood with austere and spiritualising nutriment, — literature, in short, that will make him entirely forget his stomach and remember only his soul. But how to reconcile him to such a diet! Such nutriment is not easily disguised, and to administer such an ethereal tonic in the capsule of a sporting 8 [113] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS novel seems hardly feasible. Probably the best general treatment for such a case would be a course of Shakespeare, for in Shakespeare the combination of humanity with ideal poetry is so successful that the gouty colonel, while laughing at Falstaff, would, at the same time, without being uncomfortably conscious of it, be breathing in that crystalline air that blows about the peaks of the masterpieces. At the opposite pole from our gout patient one can imagine similar difficulties of treatment to arise. Here, say, we have a consumptive, anaemic patient, who is already ethereal enough and needs to be fed on the beef and brawn of literature. But for such literature the patient has no taste. On the contrary, he languishes for Maeterlinck and the poets of moonshine; whereas the food he needs for his all too sidereal brains is such earthly human writers as Fielding, Dickens, and Balzac. Here, again, Shakespeare may be recommended as the divine compromise. There is another great writer who, in all cases of doubtful treatment, may unfail- ingly be resorted to, — Alexandre Dumas, who comes nearest of all writers to being a literary cure-all. He is incomparably the most useful writer for all nervous diseases, but indeed there is no form of sickness to which he may not be applied. A set of Dumas is as indispensable in a sick-room as a nurse or pure air. In all cases likely to prove serious [ii4] BOOKS AS DOCTORS or long, the doctor should immediately send in a set of Dumas, whatever subsequent finesse of treat- ment may prove necessary. The reason is evident. One of the first necessities of the successful treat- ment of disease, and particularly so when the treat- ment is mental, is the distraction of the patient's mind from his complaint. Now, of all writers, Dumas has the power of thus taking us out of our- selves. So great, indeed, is his power, in this respect, that I can imagine painful operations being per- formed with no other anaesthetic than a chapter or two from the lives of D'Artagnan, or that equally fascinating hero, Bussy D'Amboise. Of all books ever written, "The Three Musketeers" and "Madame De Monsoreau" have most of this magic gift ; and a greater boon to suffering humanity than such enchanted oblivion cannot be named. No other such treasure of self-forgetfulness has ever been bestowed upon mankind as the novels of Alex- andre Dumas. And the happy thing, too, is that they are practically inexhaustible, for so gloriously voluminous are they that, by the time one has read them all through, he is sufficiently remote from his first reading to be able to start in and read them all over again. When Dumas was born insomnia lost its terrors; for, so long as one has a volume of his for company, he can easily face the most sleepless night without fear, and, when at last he falls asleep, [115] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS it is with the contented weariness of a mind healthily fatigued with exhilarating exercise. Dickens and Balzac run this author close, in this respect, but both need a greater mental effort than Dumas, whose dashing narrative seems to run sparkling into our minds, — almost, indeed quite, without our consciousness of reading. Nor must we forget Tolstoi, — in his earlier books, — among the great masters of forgetfulness. I have known a case of asthma of years' standing all but cured by " Peace and War," the long-drawn delight of the cure being nicely apportioned to the long-drawn distress of the disease. I have also found Victor Hugo useful in cases of asthma. Among moderns, Mark Twain may be mentioned as a universal specific, though, owing to a certain tendency in him to provoke fits of laughter, he is to be read with great caution in all pulmonary or bronchial complaints, as in such cases those fits of laughter are apt to provoke dan- gerous fits of coughing. But, generally speaking, humourous books are of all books the most useful in literary treatment. Laughter is the most spontaneous and health-giving of all our emotions, and the man who can make us laugh in a large, whole-hearted way is, perhaps, the most important benefactor of the race. In this respect no modern has equalled Dickens, and it must be confessed that the literary dispensary is more poorly furnished in books of [116] BOOKS AS DOCTORS laughter than in any other kind. Real big laughter seems a lost art in literature, at the moment. A new brand of "pills to purge melancholy" would be sure of a wide welcome. But here, as always, the individual patient must be carefully considered. There are some patients who resent with shrill irritation books that make it their evident business to amuse or otherwise enter- tain, — serious-minded patients who find humour childish and fiction frivolous, — who take their pleasures sadly and can only be diverted by books of solid purpose or useful information. As there is no lack of such books in every library, the physician will find it easy to prescribe, in such cases, but I may suggest for his guidance that he should by no means overlook the somewhat curious efficacy of sermons. For a numerous class of patients volumes of epigrammatic homilies provide a distracting excitement which no other form of literature can give; for such Dumas and Dickens are not to be mentioned with T. Dc Witt Talmage. One has always to remember that amusement and distraction are relative things. There are not a few people, and not the least human, to whom games of any sort are the dreariest of all serious things. The games seem so consciously and desperately set to divert us, that, for some people, a hard day's work at the office is vastly more amusing than a hand at [1x7] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS cards or a game of chess. Pleasure is an exceedingly personal matter, and other people's pleasures are among the deep mysteries of life; but thus much is sure, — there is no use in our offering them ours. One danger, therefore, which but slightly applies to other forms of therapeutics, the literary physician will need to be on his guard against, — the pre- scribing of a medicine because he happens to like it himself. He may have a private weakness for George Meredith or Walter Pater or Henry James, and be very much tempted to indulge himself by making a curative fad of such writers, as occasionally one finds an ordinary doctor making a habit of prescribing some fashionable drug under all possible and even impossible circumstances. No, the liter- ary physician must sink his own personal predilec- tions, and, if it seems likely that the patient will be benefited, say by doses of Marie Corelli, he must prescribe the distasteful mixture without flinching. One may note here, as a side issue of the practice of literary medicine, what a new and lucrative field it will open up for the writer, inaugurating quite a new demand for his books, and, incidentally, a vast new area of advertisement. Books, then, in addition to their circulation merely as literature, will enjoy, also, the broadcast publication of patent medicines, and be advertised accordingly. In the publishers' columns, the press notices of a certain book will [ "8] BOOKS AS DOCTORS contain not only the opinions of the literary critics, but the testimonials, also, of the highest medical authorities. The question asked of a new book then will be not merely how well it is written, but also for what complaint it is the latest remedy. Chronic invalids will scan the literary columns in hope of a new nostrum. Writers, too, who fall short somewhat of the high literary qualities may find consolation in this medical usefulness. Mr. So and So's style may with justice be described as atrocious, but then, — as a specific for lumbago and sciatica, he has no equal. "Try Mr. Smith's great liver novel! " — "Can't you sleep at night? — Read Mr. Piper's new poems: highly recommended by the faculty; at all drug stores! " — "The ingredi- ents of Mrs. Truelove's great rheumatism romance analysed by the Society of Analytical Chemists," and so on. Such are the advertisements we may expect to see, when the medical efficacy of literature has come to be recognised and the new school of literary therapeutics which I have foreshadowed is an accomplished fact. To return, for a final word, to the more serious side of the subject, — there will, at all events, be' one branch of the healing science in which literary therapeutics will surpass all others, — the art of alleviating what it cannot cure. For those sad ones who may never hope to be cured in this world the [119] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS ordinary doctor can be of little avail. His medicines can bring neither peace nor patience, nor has he the secret of any balm or nepenthe for such enduring affliction. But here the literary pharmacopoeia is rich, indeed, and the books of courage and consola- tion and good cheer are, perhaps, more numerous than any others, so invincible is the instinctive faith and hope in the heart of man; and, while the literary physician no more than any other can ward off that last initiatory sickness of our dissolution, he can at least do more than any other to sweeten its bitterness and to prepare the soul to meet the great physician, Death, with a firm heart and calm eyes. [120] X ON THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS An Englishman dearly loves a lord. — Old Proverb. PUBLIC opinion delights to exercise itself on few subjects more enthusiastically than on the marriages between European noble- men and American heiresses. Its superficial dis- approval of these matches is passionate, indeed almost hysterical, with interest — almost as hysterical as the mad rush of the female bourgeoisie to the spectacle of their bridals. Both parties to the contract — or "deal," as it is sometimes unkindly called — are condemned in turn. The nobleman is obviously marrying the heiress for her money; the heiress is obviously marrying the nobleman for his title. One is an "adventurer," the other is a snob. In these strictures it is never for a moment surmised that, in addition to the supposedly pur- chasable commodities on either side, the two young people may be genuinely in love as well; or that the lord, for his part, is a charming fellow and a true gentleman, whom even a woman not an heiress [121] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS might well love; and that the heiress, for her part, is so beautiful, and so truly a lady, that though she walked in rags instead of million dollar bills, any king upon his throne would gladly play the part of King Cophetua. Such considerations as these are entirely ignored by that impertinent censorship of public opinion. Also, no one ever takes the trouble to ask how these marriages turn out, whether or no they have satisfied "the high contracting" parties, and that something more than title or money has indeed changed hands; whether, indeed, this marriage made in Wall Street has not proved itself to have been made in heaven as well. My acquaintance with the society of the great world is far too limited for me to attempt an answer to the last speculation, though in my humble capac- ity as a democratic reader of the newspapers — with your true democrat's interest in the life of his supe- riors — I have not observed that these international marriages have failed — at all events, publicly. Of course, one never knows; but cases of acute matri- monial failure are apt to become public property in these days, particularly when the incompatibles are conspicuous by money or by birth. Indeed, if one may judge by the absence of cabled scandal, the lord has usually proved himself worth the money, and the American heiress worn the "title" with [ I22 ] THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS as true a distinction as any lady born into Burke or Debrett. But even let us suppose that in some cases the simple human happiness of married love has been missed, or even that it was never conceived on either side as part of the promised "consideration"; that both parties joined hands on their bargain with, as we say, their eyes open — who shall say that the bargain was a bad one, or that neither had the right to make it? It is not everyone that seeks merely an amorous happiness in marriage. It is only the very wise and simple that marry for home and children. There are other ways of being happy, and it may well be that a marriage may be entirely "happy" — that is, satisfactory alike to husband and wife — without love entering into it. Many beautiful women are born whose instincts are rather social than maternal, whose happiness lies in the gratification of social and personal ambition. To this end they may lack but one condition — the entree into those spheres where only such glory is to be won. They have beauty, they have manners — but their father is a pork-packer. His tastes — bless him! — are simple as his pursuits. He is the rough quarry out of which his daughter's beauty — and diamonds — were dug. Socially speak- ing, he has but one advantage, and the advantage is tremendous — at all events, for his daughter. He I 123] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS is self-made, it is true; but, then, he is made of money. There is nothing — good heart as he usually is! — that he will not buy to make his daughter happy. The daughter whispers, "A title." Now, to the eye of superficial democratic criticism, "a title" may seem a poor thing in exchange for a few million dollars— a mere Old World spangle that would be a poor exchange, in fact, for a five- cent piece. Of course, there are odds in titles. Some would be scarcely worth stealing. But, gen- erally speaking, a title is the most valuable of all natural gifts — for obviously it is a natural gift; and don't forget, by way of illustration, that "gifts" are always looked upon as the most valuable of human commodities. M. Paderewski was born with a "gift" — so was Mr. Kipling, so was Lord Rosebery. Lord Rosebery has other gifts, but his chief natural gift was "a title," for it was his title that set his other gifts upon a hill they might not have climbed of themselves. "A title! " exclaims some indignant democrat. "What value is there in that ? " Well, precisely the value attaching to a piece of money, the value set upon it by society — yes, one might almost say of humanity.. " Snobs and fools!" your indignant democrat may fume. Yes; but, then, however wrong humanity may be in its stand- ards, there is little use in denying that anything upon which it sets the stamp of value is — humanly [ I2 4] THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS speaking — valuable, and becomes a fact to be counted with, however reluctantly. Therefore, on the ground of general acceptance alone, "a title" is one of the most valuable of human assets. If you have a title, you need little else. Unless you are quite impossible, all other things will be added unto you. Merely, then, on its face value, a title is at least the equal, financially speaking, of a million-dollar bill, for precisely the same reason — because both title and dollar bill are symbols to which the world has agreed to attach an exceedingly high value. Mr. Bryan would call the value more or less fictitious in both cases, and Mr. Bryan's opinion is a valuable fact, too — with no little financial value, even yet. If only he can remould us nearer to his heart's desire, the value both of lords and of gold will considerably decrease. For the present, however, we live under an aristocratic gold standard, and to have been born with a title, as I said, is as good as having been born with a million-dollar bill in your mouth — "payable," of course, "in gold." But I must not be misunderstood as thinking that an American girl marries a lord merely from snob- bish superstition. On the contrary, I desire to vin- dicate her preference for European nobility on higher and more essential grounds. In fact, it is not so much the lord she loves as Europe — Europe, with its romance, its distinction, its art of living. She may [125] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS be, and I fancy usually is, decorously impatient of the family nonentities with whom her marriage necessitates insincere contact. Even marriage into the worst families necessitates that kind of for- bearance. She has no superstition about a dreary dowager, or some drunken cad of a high-born brother-in-law. Not all the dollars in the world can quite buy us immunity from the family bore. Yet think what else this so-called purchase of "a title" has brought her! She had, indeed, a wonder- ful home in Illinois. Its taste was perfect, its beauty was delicately magnificent. One might even say that for sheer intrinsic beauty and refinement it surpassed her new home in Buckinghamshire. But, then, it was only ten years old — and it was in Illinois. People who cannot for the life of them see why a great pianist is better worth listening to than a pianola will be at a loss to understand her taste — and her old father, perhaps, in particular. But, then, you see, while he has been at work in the stock- yards she has been worshipping in Rome, in Nurem- berg, in Stratford-on-Avon, in Bayreuth. She had learned there that there are two qualities in the world mysteriously valuable — Antiquity and Style; and that they go inseparably together. It is that fatal education her poor, rich father has worked so hard to provide that has made her love a lord — that is, made her love these old stones, these old [126] THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS oaks, and these galleries filled with dreamlike faces. Just walk with her into the old Italian garden, with its fragrance of antique flowers, its high-clipped hedges, its fish ponds of monastic carp, its pagan images here and there in unvisited shrubberies, the very bricks of the old walls like missals illumin- ated with the religion of time — and then remember those gardens that were indeed beautiful as skill and taste and money could make them far away in Illinois. There was only one presence you missed in that Illinois garden — the mysteriously beautiful presence of Time. For, even in Illinois, Time is a gardener no money can buy, a subtle yet simple architect, too deliberate in his lazy sententious skill to hurry himself for the highest wage. And the charm she finds in her old Buckingham- shire garden is symbolic of all that her marriage with "a title" brings her. Please remember, dear reader, that I am not in the least depreciating the value — indeed, in my poor opinion, the higher value — of that so-called " simple " happiness which neither riches nor titles can buy. I sincerely believe in love in a cottage — for some people, and those often the wisest and the best. I believe, too, in all simple unpurchasable happiness. Indeed, what else is there to believe in? Money, we have been truth- fully told, cannot buy the things best worth buying. It cannot buy, for instance, the goodness of women, [ 127] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS though it can nearly always buy their beauty. It cannot buy you beautiful children, it cannot buy you brains; but it can buy you a beautiful woman, a beautiful country house, a beautiful yacht, beauti- ful horses, and, perhaps best of all, a beautiful automobile. And, to return to our first thought, it can buy you antiquity and distinction. It can buy you an atmosphere to breathe in, aromatic with fragrance of immemorial refinement. It can buy you rooms to live in still exquisite with the breath of beautiful ladies of old time; rooms still echoing with the tread of strong men plotting the terrible beauty of history; rooms still lovely as starlight with the solitary aspirations of dead poets and scholars; and ancient oratories sweet as cinnamon with the prayers of a thousand years. A new country obviously cannot give you these things. If you should say that it can give you something far more important, surely I should not dispute the point — for values are so relative, and a dead language, so- called, has admonished us upon the futility of dis- putations on matters of taste. There are some by no means tasteless persons whom that air of antiquity affects like the heavy, noxious vapours of decay. To live in an old house or an old city is to them like living in a tomb perfumed with the spices of the embalmers. The beauty, say, of Venice is to them beauty, indeed; but it is the beauty of a marvellous [128] THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS sepulchre. They love to live in young cities, much as some love to live with young people, for the sense of vital freshness in the air, the brave adventurous winds blowing up out of the future — not those poisonous exhalations of the past. In New York and Chicago they seem to see the strong young cities of the future rising as to the trumpets of the dawn. About such cities of the new world a wind of spring is blowing. The sound of the hammers on the huge towers soaring in every street is like the singing of birds. The air is brisk and busy with youth, and jubilant with its martial strength. Here is no thought of death. Even the cemeteries are young, and the gravestones flash in the morning sun with newly gilded names. Yet — strange how different nature has made us! — for others this very impetus of rejuvenescence felt, as we have been saying, by some in the smell of mortar freshly laid, is only to be had in those old dead cities made of memories and sighs. In their very antiquity there is for them a veritable potency of youth. They have, I suppose, the historic sense, and are sensitive to the energising continuity of history. These old houses and cities do not so much speak to them of mortality as of immortality. These dusty names are not dusty for them; they still glitter with the youth of immortal achievement, and their stories are potent with the elixir of emula- « I I2 9] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS tion. For such, antiquity is not merely dreamy with meditation, but dynamic with ambition. But perhaps you are thinking that all this in regard to the marriage of American ladies with English lords is to consider too curiously. Seriously speaking, I think not. Of course, you may occa- sionally find an American girl of wealth who marries a lord from bourgeois motives; but anyone who would maintain that the American girl of the best type marries from sheer snobbery knows, I venture to say, little about her — and also forgets one impor- tant fact curiously forgotten by critics of these inter- national nuptials. The fact I refer to is that the American girl's "blood" is often just as "good" as, and occasionally better than, her titled husband's. It has often struck me as strange that the world should so seldom remember that America was settled by some of the very best blood from the Old World, and that the best American pedigrees go back as far as any in Europe, for the simple reason that their roots are there. Indeed, it has been that principle of aristocratic command in the blood that has prevailed to drill and order the mass of pestilen- tial chaos that has been, and to some extent still is, the raw material of modern America. With all due respect to it, America is still of necessity a factory, "a sounding labour house vast of being." It is still the untamed wilderness of industrialism, [ 130] THE LOVABLENESS OF LORDS which the strong men are engaged in subduing with the sweat of their brows. They are so hard at work with their axes, so to speak, that they have no time for the elegancies of ancestry. But their beautiful women have — and can you blame them if, amid the shriek of sawmills and the fume of the stockyards, a homesickness comes over them for those lands across the sea, the dream of which stirs in them, as the dream of Italy stirs in the Californian vine — a homesickness for a world more suited to beautiful women; no mere frontier world of progress, no mere world in the making, but a world all exquis- itely made, a world that has time to think of flowers — and is such an engine room as America the con- genial home for such a flower as the American girl ? Europe, on the other hand — well, it has time for flowers. It is by no means without its engine houses, but they are so well established that they go no little of themselves, and leave those in charge of them leisure to cultivate their gardens and to think a little of their souls — and a lot of their pleas- ures. A lord is a man whom nature has intrusted with the task of being a gentleman — that is, of being the noblest work of God. I do not, of course, say that it is necessary to be a lord to be a gentle- man — though surely no man can be a lord who is not a gentleman. Noblesse oblige. What I mean is that a lord is a man born with the necessity of I,i3i] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS being nothing else but a gentleman; a man who should, and, if only by sheer force of tradition, usually does, stand for the chivalrous virtues and finer arts of life. The cultivation of these needs leisure. Leisure is only to be bought by money. Money is only to be had in America. So it comes about that English lords marry American ladies. Personally, I believe that they would marry them, though they were penniless. I know that I would. But, then, alas ! I was not born a lord. [132] XI THE WORLD AND THE LOVER T^E whole world is proverbially said to love a lover. Like most proverbial statements, this one is exceedingly open to question. In fact, all the evidence seems flatly the other way. On what data, one wonders, did the old proverb- maker base his dictum? Surely not on the great love-stories. The world, with its appetite for vicarious excitement, likes well enough to watch the tragic spectacle of a great passion. Incapable of great feelings itself, it thrills to the drama of them in others. It even applauds their lawlessness, and canonises their audacity. All the same, it will not raise a ringer to help while the story is in the making; but, on the contrary, does everything in its power to persecute and impede. The moment Romeo and Juliet are safely dead in each other's arms, the world is voluble with its sympathy — but not till it is quite sure that its sympathy can be of no possible service to the lovers. While sympathy would be of some use, the world — which is the em- bodied cowardice and cant of humanity — stands firm with Montague and Capulet, seniors. If the lovers win, well and good. No one has ever denied ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS that the world loves success — though it has always consistently done its worst to prevent it. Yes, the world loves successful love, as it fawns on any- thing that has conquered it. It loves also pity that costs it nothing. But that it loves a lover, for love of love, is simply not true. If it were true, there would probably have been no love-stories, for the drama of love has mostly come of the conflict between the lovers and the world. They had to count the world well lost to win each other. It was so in the days of Tristan and Isolde, and so it still is in the days of Rudolph of Bavaria. What the world, however, does thoroughly appre- ciate is the exhibition of love in difficulties — love in the ribald searchlight of the divorce court, love shipwrecked, love running the gantlet of persecu- tion, love befooled and betrayed and despoiled of its dream. There is something well pleasing to the cynicism of the world in all this, for love in its very natu-e, in its contemptuous idealism, is a reproach, and therefore an offence, against the complacent materialism of the world; and, naturally, the world rejoices to see its lofty pretensions in the dust. For love has indeed a high-handed way with it, an aristocratic insolence of bearing toward the plebeianism of use-and-wont, and the world is ever on the watch to pay it out for its transcendental airs. As the course of true love never did run [i34] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER smooth, the world is assured of perennial enter- tainment. It would, indeed, seem to be in love's very nature to be always in difficulties; for, as Hafiz complains : . . . this strange love which seemed at first, alas! So simple and so innocent a thing, How difficult, how difficult it is! Poor love! It certainly has enough troubles of its own making to contend with, without the world besetting its path with external obstacles. It seems born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. There is always something the matter, and the love that might be perfect seldom gets its chance. Not only the world, but life itself seems to take a mysterious delight in making things as hard as possible for this gentle passion, that means so kindly and asks only to be left in peace. There would almost seem, for example, to be studied malignity of design, rather than mere accident, in the way life carefully arranges that lovers should always meet too late for happiness. With pure devilishness, Life would seem to say : " Here are two people absolutely made for each other. They have but to meet at the right moment, under favouring conditions, to be completely and enduringly happy. Therefore, I will hide them from each other, till such time as they have become hopelessly involved [i35] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS in the lives of others entirely unsuited for them, and then, when they are irrevocably pledged to a disastrous destiny, I will bring about their meeting, and watch the agonised drama that results." This is the formula from which life seldom deviates, and it never seems to weary of the sardonic tragi- comedy of two lovers thus trying to disentangle themselves from the web of circumstance. This syncopation, which prevails elsewhere and everywhere in the stories of lovers, seems the more designed because life, when it wishes, is seen to calculate its times and seasons with such precision, and bring about other meetings and matings with such inspired promptitude. Consider the exquisite punctuality of the heavenly bodies. The conjunc- tions of the planets are timed to the fraction of a second, and, after journeyings a century long, they come gliding in their appalling orbits straight to the sidereal rendezvous. And elsewhere in nature we see the same careful ordering of dependent corre- spondences. The bee is not abroad before the coming of the flowers, nor is the butterfly sent forth to meet the snow; neither is the tiniest nursling of the earth awakened into life, before nature has prepared for its appointed welcome. In all her other pairings nature is seen to be anxiously exact — only with man and woman, it would seem, is she so mysteriously perverse. [136] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER And this bitter wrong which Life thus docs to Love is one which even Life itself is powerless to right. Sometimes, with ironic kindness, Life will seem to offer Love a late opportunity of correcting that old mistake. Some years after their first hope- less meeting she will make the way apparently smooth for them; loose them, by change and chance, from those dividing bonds, and say, "Now, take each other." But alas! it is too late. They are no longer the same people. The years have had their way with them. They are to each other but sacred memories, ghosts of Might-have-been. No diver brings up love again, Dropped once, my beautiful Felise, In such cold seas. One perhaps hardly realises the important part played in these heart-tragedies by — the moment, the moment that can never come again. We are apt to assume that, so long as the two chief actors remain alive, it is in their power, under favouring circumstances, to take up their lives together at the point where they parted. But, so soon as they attempt to do this, it is borne tragically in upon them that there was a third actor equally important with themselves present at the time of their first fateful meeting and choosing of each other, an actor impos- sible to recall or to substitute. That actor was — ■ the moment. Or, to change the simile, the moment [i37] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS was like that perilously sensitive harmony of con- ditions which the old alchemists called the moment of projection, the moment when the elements in the crucible are tremulously eager to combine, when every influence has been adjusted with unerring calculation, when the planets are shining in that magical aspect for which the alchemist may watch in vain all the rest of his life, the tense moment before the diverse elements leap into union and turn to — gold. So it was, almost exactly, with our two lovers. Had the moment been allowed to have its way with them, they would have become one indivisible hap- piness, growing more perfectly in harmony with the passage of time, subject to the same influences and undergoing the same changes so subtly together as to appear unchanged. But the moment of union gone by, left separate in the world, two divided entities individually subject to different influences— though their love, say, of year 1900 may remain alive, they find, on meeting again in 1906, that that love is somehow not in harmony with their changed and developed selves. It needs, so to say, to be brought up to date, and they realise, with sad hearts, that that cannot be done. The two people who loved each other in 1900 have passed into dreamland. There they still love each other. But the two people who bear their names, and still [138] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER look like them in 1906, are not the same, and can never be the same again. It is just possible that their up-to-date embodiments may fall in love on their own account, on a 1906 basis, but I doubt if this has ever happened. No "gone is gone " Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell. Though, as we have remarked, the world, so strangely said to love a lover, does everything in its power to make the course of true love run as rough as possible, it is the severest critic of any attempt on the part of love to make it smooth. Let two unhappy people attempt to remould the "sorry scheme" of their matrimonial purgatory "nearer to the heart's desire," and the world is at once after them with its censorious hypocrisy. It was, more than likely, the world's fault to start with, but that makes no difference. The situation, too, is prob- ably one of delicate complexity, the rights and wrongs of it so equally divided and so inextricably tangled, and the whole dilemma so intimately per- sonal to the two involved, that it is impossible for a third person to get at the evidence, not to speak of passing judgment. The world, however, takes no account of such nice considerations, but, with ignorant impudence, presumes to decide and con- demn. As the world is too coarsely organised to [ 139] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS know anything about the finer manifestations of the mystery that is love, it is necessarily insensitive to any of its more refined difficulties. The divorce- court differences of those who love crudely it can understand, but the painful spiritual incompatibili- ties of finer natures are so much Greek to it. For the loves of butchers and book-makers it is a com- petent tribunal, but the love difficulties of more highly organised individuals are not to be solved by the meat -axe of the law. The pity of it is that the very fineness of such natures increases their suffering and further com- plicates complexity. For simple violent natures there are remedies equally simple and violent. Love, maybe, has turned to hate, according to the ancient melodramatic formula, and there the issue is simple, and the trouble soon disposed of. But, with the finer natures, love's difficulties are seldom so clean-cut as that. Two who have once loved may be aware that their love is dead, yet so much old kindness survives that they shrink from hurting each other, will indeed suffer keenly in secret rather than betray the lonely truth. One does not envy the nature that can coldly say to another in whom love is still alive: " My love is dead" ; and yet there will be many to argue that this executioner's way is best. To others it will seem too much like plain murder. Better surely to suffer the pains of hell [ J 4o] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER in silence than thus to smite with clenched fist the appealing face of love. Even though, sooner or later, the truth must out, surely it is the better way to mitigate its revelation all we can. In this matter, however, woman is permitted to be more summary than man; and the reason is, perhaps, not far to seek. Consider the airy way in which a woman will break off an engagement, with little more con- cern than if she were dismissing a servant. But a man must keep his, though he may have come to see with clear eyes that to do so means certain unhappiness on both sides. Has it not happened to many a man to drift into an engagement with some charming girl, who, he is obscurely conscious, in spite of his genuine affec- tion for her, is not somehow the wife he had been expecting some day to marry? He is dimly aware of a misgiving at the bottom of his heart that she is not the wife life has chosen for him. Life whispers him to " wait," giving him one of those warnings which at important moments Life often does give us through our instincts, but which too often we allow our reason to overrule. "Wait," Life keeps saying, "your woman of destiny is already on her way towards you. At any moment she may turn the corner of the street, and you may meet her face to face. Wait, O wait!" But he pays no heed to the warning, and, suddenly, when he is inexorably h4i] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS / pledged, perhaps but a short week before his marriage day — the dream-woman turns the corner of the street! And it is too late. Had the cases been reversed, his betrothed, with- out a moment's hesitation, would have dismissed him into outer darkness with half-a-sheet of note- paper, and left him to get over it as best he could. But he, being a man, must act a man's part, and, unknown to her, lay as a sacrifice upon the altar of their wedding the whole joy and meaning of his life. Or, if he conceives it his duty to tell her of his changed feeling, she will probably break down so piteously, with hints at suicide, that he feels himself an utter scoundrel; tenderness wells up in him, perilously like love, and the marriage takes place, after all. It may happen that such a marriage proves successful, but the probability is that, human nature, even with the best intentions, remaining human nature, it will sooner or later come to grief. In spite of faithful efforts to lay it, the ghost of that old dream will haunt the heart of the man, and will some day glide, visible to both, between the unhappy husband and wife. Nor will the appari- tion long remain invisible to the sharp eyes of the world. Then shall the man hear how thankless a thing it is that he has tried to do. If, in extenuation of [ M2] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER his failure to make happy the woman he did not love, it be urged that he has sacrificed the woman he did love and his own heart in the unsuccessful attempt, he will learn that he did a cruel wrong to his wife to marry her under such circumstances, that the manly thing for him to have done was to have broken his engagement! Probably some- one will quote: For each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter jest, Some with a flattering word; The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword. Yet, had he used the sword, who needs be told what would have been said of him then? He was placed in one of the cruellest dilemmas which a man can be called to face. Sacrificing his own joy, he has honestly done his best. But the world, which is incapable even of conceiving the sacrifice he made, regards only his failure in a noble struggle, and condemns him accordingly. Love's tragedies arc usually three-cornered, and no less often it is the woman, who, by the force of those circumstances which press so peculiarly hard on women, has drifted into a loveless marriage, to meet too late "the love which moves the sun and stars." No one needs be told how much sympathy [i43] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS she may expect from the world in her cruel situation; for the world, that likes nothing so well as to oppress the weak and to kill its wounded, is strangely pitiless to an unhappy woman who would fain be happy. For a woman that remoulding nearer to the heart's desire is a desperate step indeed. There is one important truth about love which love's critics never seem to take into account — the fact that love is an irresistible natural force, and that falling in love is not a matter of the volition. The coming of a great love is as unforeseen and as unescapable as the day of one's death. The world treats falling in love as though it were a wilful self- indulgence, whereas the victims of that "lord of terrible aspect" know too well how helpless they are in the throes of a passion that fell upon them with supernatural suddenness, like lightning out of a clear sky. There is always a strange terror mingled with the joy of love's coming, and those who know love best, rather than seek it, would often, like the hero of Tennyson's "Maud," flee from its cruel madness. For love seldom comes without bringing sorrow to someone: "Alas!" as an old dramatist says, "that nothing can win dear love but loss of dear love." One man must lose the face another wins; one woman's heart break that another's may be in heaven. And in this for all gentle hearts that [ i44] THE WORLD AND THE LOVER love there is great sorrow, and they would often willingly give up their own happiness rather than that another should suffer for their sake. But alas! it is of no avail. Tenderness we can command, but love is not in our power to feign; and, though pity be akin to love, who would accept it in exchange? It is such finer difficulties of love of which the world knows nothing, and, indeed, the love that the world does understand needs some other name. The whole world loves a lover! On the contrary, the world and love are natural enemies, and the kingdom of love is not here. ie I 145] XII ON AIRSHIPS AND THE SOUL OF MAN THE world is now confidently looking for- ward to the imminent era of the airship, with the eager impatience of a child for its new toy. The toy is almost ready. That it is coming there is now, obviously, no doubt at all. A few more experiments, a few more improvements, and it will be there on sale in the toy shop for any- body to buy, like the latest pattern of automobile. How wonderful it will be to fly ! No doubt it will be a very exciting, even an inspiring, and possibly an exquisite, experience. Such purely liquid speed will undoubtedly be a new form of ecstasy. It will come very near to disembodied motion — this jarless, subtle gliding through space, this silken rapidity of ethereal passage. Moreover, as an observation car of boundless prospects, the airship will provide the Cook's tourist of the sky with many novel gasps and thrills. But it is not my purpose here to dilate on what the airship will bring us — to my thinking, com- paratively little. That has long been in able and [146] ON AIRSHIPS AND THE SOUL enthusiastic hands; mine the solitary purpose vainly to point out and fruitlessly to lament what it must all too surely take away. Certain other philosophers have their apprehen- sions. They dread its military developments; they foresee its criminal adaptability. But, so far as I have seen, no one seems to have realised, or, at all events, minded, that the airship means not the gain, but the irretrievable loss of the sky — the trivial physical conquest, indeed, but the tragical spiritual loss! In the few years that remain before aviation is an accomplished commonplace of our lives, man is literally looking his last on the sky. All too soon it will be impossible, even for a rich man, to enjoy the peace which is mine this afternoon, as in the heart of an old wood I lie upon the fern and con- template the mystery of the boundless sky. Soon that flawless Infinite will be feverishly alive to ear and eye with all the temporal traffic of the world, all the turmoil and vulgarity of any other earthly thoroughfare. Solitude will be utterly and forever destroyed, and wearied town-tired folk, that had been wont to flee into the country to rest their eyes and feed their nerves on tranquil spaces, may as well remain in the city, and will least of all turn their eyes on the sky, which will then be as suggestive of peace as Broadway at noontide. I *47] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS There have been many outcries, from Ruskin on, against the vandalism of modern machinery. Such have seemed to me mainly sentimental, for the damage done to nature here and there by railway or power-house has been purely local or infinitesimal, by comparison with its boundless beauty. If here or there a railroad mars the landscape or a power house depletes a waterfall, the world is inexhaustibly supplied with landscapes and picturesque rivers. All such forms of mechanical speed are lost to sight and sound in the great tree-clad silence of the earth. Even the vulgarest automobile party, breaking the country stillness, makes but a momen- tary intrusion and is gone with a turn in the road. The ugliest line of freight cars is swallowed up in some umbrageous woodland. All such vehicular necessities — and nuisances — make but compara- tively insignificant currents and ripples upon the face of nature; but from the airship, it is easy to see, there will be no possibility of escape, no cessation of its visible intrusion everywhere and at all times on the tormented eyesight of man. It will strike the greatest blow to beauty, in the deepest as well as the surface meaning of the word, that has ever been struck on this planet. The persecutions of beauty have been many, in their nature, but they have been spasmodic, passing historic manifestations of vandalism or eclipses of [148] OX AIRSHIPS AND THE SOUL the human spirit; but here is a hostile new condition of things, organic in nature itself, literally as all- embracing as the sky, from which there is no escape. This is not a jeremiad merely in the interest of artists or poetical persons, yet it would be idle* to deny what a calamity the airship will be to the painter. No one will ever be able to paint again the solemn glory of the sunset or the enchanted loneli- ness of the morning sky. Athwart the delicate heavens will come a grimy train of Standard Oil freight ships, or some noisy supper party will go by, blowing horns and singing music-hall ditties. Indeed, pictures of the sky before the day of airships will become rare and curious things, to be looked on with wonder, and enterprising painters might do worse than lay in a stock of pictures against the evil day. They will surely be of great value in the course of a very few years. Of course, it is easy to see that the airship will have its own pictorial possibilities, too ; possibilities which no doubt will result in some delightfully bizarre art, as the barges and warehouses of the Thames turned to favour and to prettiness under the magic of Whistler; but such whimsical sectional art will hardly compensate us for the loss of the more central cosmic art of the sky, hardly console us for the loss of the silver mystery of the rising moon. No, night and day, the sky will be a sky no longer, [ M9] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS but one vast and vulgar sky sign, which, instead of calming, will reflect and immeasurably increase the fever and fret of humanity. All outdoor privacy will cease; for the most secluded woodland, the most untrodden wilderness, will be open to invasion at any moment. Gardens will lose half their charm. We shall have to roof them in. Noble parks will cease to be desirable possessions. Mountains will be the least solitary of all places — and in those days, indeed, no one will dream of going up into a mountain to pray. For all such meditative purposes man will have to descend into the bowels of the earth; and fan- tastic excavation — life a la Monte Cristo — will, no doubt, become the fashion for rich persons. Under- ground pleasure gardens, after the manner of the Arabian Nights, will be one of the refuges of per- secuted man. For we shall all be at the mercy of the vulgar hoodlumism of the world to an extent we can hardly conceive of now. At present we can escape from the vulgar impertinent or the moneyed roisterer, but then there will be no refuge — except indoors or underground. The spectacle of vulgar wealth in all its vociferous parade will be ever before us, and money will become literally the prince of the powers of the air. Whatever gains there may be to man in aviation — and the gains are obvious; I have already hinted at [150] ON AIRSHIPS AND THE SOUL them — they cannot, it seems to me, compensate him for the tragic, irretrievable, spiritual loss which will ensue from his achievement at last of the old disastrous ambition of Icarus. The airship will give us greater rapidity of trans- portation, greater facilities for diabolic warfare, and a new speed excitement for nerves that live on speed. Undeniably it will be a wonderful new exhilaration — for a short while — to a jaded, feverish world. But when the novelty has died down, and to circle round the Flatiron Building is no longer more exciting than spinning a top or rolling a hoop, I think that man, with a great and vain regret, will awaken to what he has lost by his wonderful new toy. All the old peace and prayer of the world will have gone. The air, once so pure and tranquil, will be filled with the sound of gongs, the flash of signals and undreamed-of forms of noise and colour. Man will have placed a cloud of gigantic gnats between him and the Infinite; and, howsoever high he may ascend in the swiftest airship, never will he find again the same sky that blessed him with its blue peace, its beautiful old dreams of better worlds and fantastic fairy isles and seas, and laid the con- soling hand of the Eternal upon his troubled human' heart. For him the moon no more shall rise among the quiet trees, and the morning star will be sur- [151] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS rounded by — excursionists. All such ancient inspir- ations and consolations of man will be gone. Where now will be the sweet influences of the Pleiades? And no more even may he lie down in the green pastures or walk beside the still waters. He will have lost both heaven and earth. He will, so to speak, have come astronomically nearer to the stars — as though he had been pushed up a little nearer, through a telescope — but astronomy is not the stars. He will have become acquainted with awful azure gulfs of space, millions of miles of nothing, with dizzy heights of boundless, but somewhat similar, ether; but he will have lost what I might call a certain old familiarity betwixt sky and earth, which makes the sun seem nearer and closer to us, as it opens the eyes of the flowers, and sets the birds singing, and fills the woodland with ascending spices, and tans us in long, happy, summer days, and then sets, with such mysterious promise of immortal glory to mortal hearts, behind the widowed world. The naked sun and the naked moon are tiresome heavenly bodies. They owe their real attraction for us to the earth, which clothes their beams in various raiment of morning mist and romantic cloud — the pomp and luxury and tenderness of clouds; the airy veils of rainbowed vapours. Or they must alternately hide and reveal and diffuse themselves through the secrecies of ancient trees. [152] ON AIRSHIPS AND THE SOUL Heaven, and even the heavens, arc largely a creation of earth. I am much afraid the airship is going to lose us both. But of course all this will sound old-fashioned to the pathetic speed fiends of the modern world, the nervous children of an overstrung and murder- ously driven civilisation, whose illusion is that to go fast is to go far. These, and such speed fiends of so-called modern progress, are losing and destroy- ing much for us of "the old perfections of the earth" — to quote a beautiful phrase of Lord De Tabley — and they are giving us nothing but the dust and ashes of excitement in exchange. They have already lost us the real Japan; some day they may even lose us the real England — homes of ancient beauty, ancient strength, and ancient distinction. Odd as it may sound, electricity is no substitute for religion and those beautiful old forms of piety that tend the altar and tend the sick and tend the flowers alike, with a sense that this strange old world is a very sacred place, and mys- teriously in the hands of God. Now these speed fiends of civilisation are about to rob us of the sky. They are about to commercial- ise, belligerise, and even vulgarise the sky. We can but hope that the eternal compensatory law of things will make some amends to the soul of man for this tragic loss. XIII THE WORD BUSINESS THERE are times when a man who sells words for his living, bringing words to market as other men bring the visible ponderable work of their hands, is inclined to quarrel with his business, and throw down his pen, with a sigh that he is not as other men are — soldier, sailor, or even a good honest tinker. Compared with the brawny muscular occupations of his fellows — such as lawyers and stock-brokers — his work takes on a certain humiliated air of unreality. Other men are dealing with things: his business is with the shadows of things — "a shadow handling all things as shadows." Properly speaking, he does not live at all. He is merely the scrivener of life, and he longs sometimes to turn his pen into a sword — or even a ploughshare. He seems to get a glimpse into the reason why the world, ungratefully enough, has always regarded players and minstrel folk with a certain contempt — as of the battle-axe for the lute. He too is merely an "entertainer" — sitting there arranging his little black tesserae upon the page. Perhaps, if his mood of discontent is very blue, he — [i54] THE WORD BUSINESS still the helpless victim of words, even in this moment of revolt against them — may improvise after some such fashion as this: Tragic the fate of the man who worships the image of things, Instead of doing some work — paints, or fiddles, or sings; I all my life have followed the bubble of beautiful sight : The bubble has burst, and my heart is black and bitter and — night. Stevenson, it will be remembered, once had a bad attack of these literary blues, and blasphemed his craft in a highly moral vein. Of course, it is all nonsense. The man who was born to write would never be happy doing any other work but his own. Still, the mood is real while it lasts, and at the back of it there is a certain truth which there is no denying —and it is the realisation of that truth which thus occasionally saddens the children of the pen. It is not strictly the unreality of his work that haunts the writer, but — the unreality of himself. Far from being unreal, it would not be difficult to prove that literature is about the realest thing in the world: real by the inexhaustible potency of its influence upon life, and real by the durable nature of its media. Is there anything more indestructible than a line of Shakespeare, more livingly lasting? [155] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS Compared with it — with all its stored elixir vitce — the pyramids are pointlessly, foolishly immortal. No, the book is real enough; it is the writer who is curiously, even tragically, unreal; and he is more unreal than any other artist, because the material of his art, the stuff his dreams are made of, is the absolute whole of life, thought as well as deed, the centre no less than the surface of existence — everything conceivable existing for the mind as well as for the eye, all emotions the most intimate, his own soul and the soul of every one else: there is nothing in human experience which is not to him material, nothing that remains personal, nothing left, so to say, for his real life. For illustration: However much in life a painter may be able to paint, there must always remain a vast realm of experience which is beyond the scope of his art, and which his brush cannot therefore dehumanise. Owing to the limitations of his art, there is much of life which he is unable to possess as a painter, a large residuum of human material left over from his art, his relation to which, therefore, is that of an average, a normal, human being. In short, his art admits of his being an average human being, a citizen, a father, as well as an artist. With the writer, however, this is not so; for in his case there is nothing of life left over for the man by the artist — because the art of the writer absorbs the absolute whole of life. Nothing [156] THE WORD BUSINESS can happen to the writer merely as a private individ- ual. His most personal joys and sorrows, his most intimate experience of every kind, is, consciously or unconsciously, material for his art. Nothing re- mains, as we say, for his own life. He has no life of his own. Everything that happens to him hap- pens not, so to say, for himself, but for his art — and from this devouring comprehensiveness of his art there is for him no escape. He dreams that he is a lover, — and indeed he experiences all the heights and depths of love's joy and sorrow, with an intensity of which real lovers seem hardly capable. Yet, when he comes out of the dream, he sees that he has not been a real lover, after all, but that he has been allowed to see and feel in a vision all the emotions of love merely in his capacity as an artist. His business with the reality is only so long as it is necessary for him to learn it for use in his art. He has come out of his love- dream with a handful of songs — which the real lovers will say over and over to each other with breaking hearts, but which he will forget. That was the purpose of the destiny that is over him. He did not fall in love for himself, though he him- self deemed it so — unconsciously he was but doing the bidding of his imperious muse. And so it is for him with the whole of life. We might again fitly compare his relation to life to that [i57] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS of a priest who comprehends all human joys and sorrows, with a great pity and tenderness in his heart, but has no personal share in them. When an event happens to real men and real women, they think of it singly and simply as it is, in itself — a serious fact, maybe, directly bearing on themselves. But the writer, however near and important it may be to him and his personal life, cannot see it simply and singly. He sees it rather in a universalised image of himself. If a child is born to him, it is not so much his child as — childhood; if one dear to him should die, it is not so much a loved one who is dead as — death, and all the pity of it. His apprehension of experience is not, of course, neces- sarily so impersonal while he is undergoing it — though his most instinctive moments are more or less tinged with consciousness, — but, when it is once gone by, he sees that its value for him has been less the human than the literary value — using the phrase in its fullest sense; that is, its value through words to the whole world of men and women. It is by virtue of this gift of artistic metempsychosis — often superficially misunderstood as insincerity — that the writer is able to be the mouthpiece of every variety of temperament and experience. It is because, properly speaking, he has no joys and sorrows of his own to limit him that he is able to express the joys and sorrows of the whole world. [158] THE WORD BUSINESS He is, of all men, the mime, the actor, par excellence, but with this painful difference, that whereas the actor — except perhaps in the in- tensest moments of the greatest actors — knows he is acting, the writer only occasionally suspects, and lives through his particular appointed experience, whatever at the moment it may be, with all the poignancy of reality, to find at the end that he has been tricked into all this heart-break, for — nothing but a song. This is what I meant when I spoke of a writer being saddened by the unreality of himself. Often, as he stands in front of the books he has made, he feels that it is they that are real and he a shadow. They are the product of which he is merely the process — the abandoned chrysalis of his Psyche. Like the humble mother of a great man, he sees that his significance was to give birth to these children — "these forms more real than flesh and blood." Whether he lives or dies, it is no matter. All that life needed of him is there upon the shelves. Other men are valued for themselves. They are — what they are, there visible and talking before you. But you talk to the writer of his books — as you talk to an old lady, not of herself, but of her beautiful sons and daughters. Even to the reader there is some- thing mythical about the writer. So soon as his [i59] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS name has become classically established, it is difficult to conceive of him as a real man. And, in fact, the reader is unconsciously right. A real man he is not, but, like Wordsworth's cuckoo, "a wandering voice"; and this he feels himself to be. Thus he goes about among his fellows, with a sense of being abstract and phantomlike, amid all their stable lives and concrete interests. There is nothing he does not understand of this strangely pathetic world — but there is nothing in it that he can call his own; nothing but the words he makes of it, nothing but a song. Ah ! but the song ! After all, it is a wonderful business — this of words, quite a fairy-tale way of earning one's bread. Verily, the lot of the writer brings him compensations for his "unreality." It may even be that some of the real men and women would change with him — the real men and women who do the grim and weary work of the world. Their lot is real indeed. Some of them might perhaps wish it a little less real and be not unwilling to face that sense of unreality haunting the man whose business is words. "What! " said Stevenson's landlady to him on one occasion, looking at a page of his manuscript — "what! they pay you for that!" Yes! when you come to think of it, it is a little surprising that in a world with so many real things to buy, they should [160] THE WORD BUSINESS pay you for words — "pay you for that!" One might reasonably fear the authenticity of a check that was given you for no more tangible value received than mere words: yet the bankers cash them just like any other checks — which to one hum- ble scrivener is one of the standing marvels of the literary life. Think of it! — they pay you for that! No doubt one's readers are occasionally no less surprised. Yes! though, seriously speaking, the career of letters is in many respects a tragic one, yet the writer may well exclaim, "What wondrous life is this I lead! " for, like Andrea del Sarto, in Browning's poem, he does what some men dream of all their lives. Whereas other men must to a large extent occupy themselves with the mere journalism of living, and, highly or lowly stationed, are for the most part mechanics engaged in running the physical machine, the feeding and clothing and scavenging of the world, slaves in mind, if not in body as well, to some gross or frivolous human need, the writer is all the time dealing with the great elemental forces, the motive passions, of life: the things of the spirit, the dreams of the heart, the aspiration, the romance, all the higher significances, of existence. With such beautiful material as that is his "busi- ness," his "day's work." As he comes down to his word-factory in the morning, it is, say, the love- it I161] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS affairs of Lancelot and Guinevere that claim his pressing attention. Or perhaps his arduous task for that day is to write on Irish fairies, or to turn some verses to a daffodil. The mere rough material of his art, so to say, is marble and flowers and precious stones; his business transactions are with the rising moon, and the ancient sea, the face of woman, and the soul of man. And when he comes to deal with all this thrilling material, what joy is his as he shapes it according to his will, as he watches it being mysteriously transformed beneath his pen into the strange symbol- ism of words, which, though but little markings on paper, and having none of the advantages of arts making direct appeal to the senses, such as painting and music, are yet possessed of a magic which combines and surpasses all the other arts in one — Strange craft of words, strange magic of the pen, Whereby the dead still talk with living men; Whereby a sentence, in its trivial scope, May centre all we love and all we hope; And in a couplet, like a rosebud furled, Lie all the wistful wonder of the world. Other folks, of course, have their poor pleasures, but for a man who loves words no joy the world can give equals for him the happiness of having achieved a line passage or a perfect line. When [162] THE WORD BUSINESS Thackeray struck his fist on the table, as the story goes, when he had finished the scene of Colonel Newcome's death, and exclaimed, "By God, this is genius," there was no empire he would have ac- cepted in exchange for that moment. We often hear that your true artist is never satisfied with his work, his ideal escapes him, the words seem poor and lifeless, etc., compared with the dream. Who- ever started that story knew very little about the literary temperament, or he would have known that — the words are the dream. The dream does not exist even as a dream, or only very imperfectly, till it is set down in words. Yes! the words are the dream. As everything the old king touched turned to gold, so with the writer everything he touches changes into words. Yet he is well content, for if all the world be shadows to him, and he himself to himself most shadowy of all, yet life has vouchsafed him one incomparable reality — the reality of words. Here, as in an imperishable essence, is the thrilling ichor of existence in exquisite distillation. That he should ever have deemed his life unreal was but a passing concession to the coarser standards of reality; for, indeed, his is the secret of a reality purged of its mortal parts, caught in its high expressive moments, and removed from the decaying touch of time; a reality sublimated and eternalised, a reality ascended [163] ATTITUDES AND AVOWALS into the finer life of words. After all, starlight is no less real than sunlight. The hot sunlight of fact is not the only reality. Indeed, to the writer life seems still more real, and how much finer, as he lives it — in the starlight of words. [164] Part II SOME RETROSPEC- TIVE REVIEWS [165] SOME RETROSPEC- TIVE REVIEWS i GRANT ALLEN GRANT ALLEN has died at a moment when we had most need of him, and at the saddest time for himself. Not un- prophetically did he sing: — "... our grave shall be on the side Of the Moabite mount." It is sadder even than that, for to die on the threshold of their promised land is the fate of every advanced dreamer and thinker. Grant Allen has died at a moment when the very vision of that promised land is obscured by every form of reactionary darkness. He lived to see, not indeed the fulfilment of the civilised ideals for which lifelong he did such valiant battle- —but the overwhelming triumph of precisely all the opponent ideals which he hated and dreaded [167] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS with his whole soul. A democrat, he lived to see democracy once more in the dust, and every form of tyranny and snobbery firmer than ever in their seats; a clear-seer and far-thinker, he lived to see every form of superstition re-enthroned, and England seriously dreaming once more of Rome; a citizen-of- the-world, he lived to see race-hatred revived with mediaeval fury, and narrow patriotism once more dividing nations; a man of peace, he lived to see civil freedom threatened by a militarism insolent and cruel as the world has ever known. Yes, surely it was a sad moment for Grant Allen to die. A few years before, the outlook had seemed so different, and of all those who were then eagerly lending a hand to the imminent socialistic, philosophic, artistic millennium, none was more effectively eager,, or more boyishly hopeful, than Grant Allen. I think it was the indignant reception given to The Woman who Did which first opened his eyes to the superficial nature of the imagined "advance" of thought and social ideals in England. We hadn't even gone so far as to give patient hearing to an honest, pure- purposed, though it might be mistaken, thinker. Stones were still regarded as the appropriate reward of the prophets — small stones, indeed, as Dr. Stock- mann said in An Enemy of the People. Minor stones for minor prophets, in a day of small things. When I last had any long talk with Grant Allen, [168] GRANT ALLEN I had come somewhat dolefully bewailing what we called "the slump in ideas," and I was surprised to find how little comfort he could give me. For once his optimism seemed to have failed him. For that moment he really seemed to have just "given it up"; but his despair characteristically vanished in an instant as, catching sight of a little Alpine flower, which, to his great joy, had been persuaded to grow in his hill-top garden, he gathered a blossom and began to discourse in his own fascinating way upon its "honey-guides" and all the wonder of its delicate mechanism. Straightway we had both clean for- gotten the Dreyfus case, absorbed together in a flower. In cosmos and micro-cosmos, in the won- ders of what went right in natural law, Grant Allen consoled himself for the marvels of what went wrong in human history. And on this particular occasion, I know I had caught him in an off moment, and the malaria with which for some months he had been depressed must be made allowance for in that momentary daunting of his spirit before the gigantic evils of the civilised world. Had I met him an hour or two later, I have no doubt I should have found him once more buoyantly confident of better things. He was too long-sighted, too tenacious of practical melioristic conceptions, to mistake a temporary reaction for permanent defeat. Yet the word "temporary" has not the same consolation for a [169] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS fighter of fifty as it has for some young combatant in his twenties, who can afford to wait out with a certain complaisance the disappointing ebb of the great wave on which he has set his hopes. 'Tem- porary" — yes! but what is the life of man upon the earth. The tide will, of course, turn. We are only engaged in making the inevitable step backward before we make two forward — but, what joy when we make those forward steps will they be to Grant Allen ? Had his life only been reasonably prolonged, as happily the life of our master-rebel, Mr. George Meredith, has been prolonged, he might have seen the sunlit crest of another mighty wave of freedom. Now he lies in the dark trough between. II Recently, Mr. Frederic Harrison, enumerating the chill accomplishments of the dead, gave more names to knowledge than I dare to remember. He was so many "— ists," the dead man we loved; but what would they all have mattered had he not been — Grant Allen. The world was always meanly critical of him. The little precious writers were eager to say that he was no writer, the scientists to pick holes in his science, the philosophers to smile at his Force and Energy. There was nothing he set himself to I 170] GRANT ALLEN do, but some small-souled thing of a critic would have his little sneer. Through all, however, he had the courage to go on being — Grant Allen. Others might be more this, or greater that. Science has its tiny grammarians, its old-maidish pedants, no less than literature; men who can no more see a generalisation than the eye of a fly can take in a mountain. Such flies, bred in the backyards of every science or art, buzzed all his life round the head of Grant Allen. For the most part he was too absorbed in the work he had to do, to notice them; and when occasionally they did sting him — he just forgot it. Of science I know no more than one foredoomed to the practice of literature cannot escape knowing in an age of science. Grant Allen smiled when he gave me long ago a copy of Force and Energy — as well he might. I read it hard, because he gave it to me, and there are one or two additional lines in my brow to this day to witness that I speak the truth. All that remains to me is a somewhat shaky idea of two very rudimentary definitions, the two school-boy definitions of energy. One I know is potential and the other is kinetic, but, for the life of me, I cannot say, at this distance of time, which is which! I'm afraid I console myself with a very shadowy respect for abstract thinking. I wouldn't part with my copy of Force and Energy for any [171] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS inducement; but that, I fear, is on account of a simple human verse Grant Allen wrote in it as he gave it to me. I knew he would think no less of me because I barely knew what the book was about. He was one of those rare men to whom one may safely tell the truth, the truth of one's ignorance. Know- ing more than most men who know much, knowledge was with him no superstition. He could respect an inspired ignorance when he met it! I need not parade the various forms of knowledge upon Grant Allen's acquirements in which I am singularly unqualified to give an opinion. How speak of him as a botanist when all I know of flowers — out of Shakespeare — I learnt by looking through that little pocket microscope, so well known to his friends, which he used constantly to twirl and twirl between his finger and thumb as he talked, and without which I really think he could not have talked at all. I have seen him stop in the middle of a sentence as he momentarily lost hold of it, and then once more go on flowingly as he had it twirling again — like the boy in Scott's class at school, whose memory seemed to be located in a certain button of his waistcoat, which he gripped confidently as his turn to answer questions came round. Scott, noting this, cut off the button; and, thus robbed of his mnemonic stay, the hapless leader of his class toppled and fell. Scott took his place, a place never regained; and [172] GRANT ALLEN Scott's life-long remorse at the incident is well known to readers of the autobiography. No one was ever cruel enough to rob Grant Allen of his mnemonic microscope, though I confess that my fingers often came near to it. Now, I wonder if his memory lived in that little optical toy, as the soul of the great chief in The Great Taboo lived in the mistletoe branch of the sacred tree. Will it pass to the next inheritor of the sad little microscope? If so, what an inheritance! For one of the many remarkable things about Grant Allen was the prodigious range and accuracy and instantaneous readiness of his memory. This was so proverbial amongst his friends that one of the dearest of them coined the phrase, "We must look it up in Grant " ; and in his whimsical way he once discussed the scheme of abandoning literature and setting up as a peripatetic encyclopedia, a modern Camerarius, a sort of general call-office of knowledge. But it was not so much the extent of his knowl- edge as his manner of imparting it which was one of the many personal gifts of a liberally gifted per- sonality. Dull slaves of knowledge, pedants whose one gift, after industry, is the power of making interesting things dull, naturally try to cheapen the power of making dull things interesting. They call it "popularising." Whenever a man with the gift of vivid, illustrative expression gets hold of some subject hitherto monopolised by specialists hooting [i73] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS to each other in dark technalities, and makes it clear and operative for the average intelligent human being, the process is belittled as "popularising." When anyone has written history in a readable form — as say Macaulay, Froude, and Green — they are said to "popularise" history. They are not dull enough to be trustworthy. Of course, the cry has been raised from the remotest time. Dante heard it in his day, when he dared to mould to a literary use a vernacular tongue. The first men who wrote serious scientific and philosophic treatises in any language but Latin— they heard it. The men who turned the Bible into English and German — didn't they hear it? O this dreadful "popularisation" of hidden knowledge, which only the bats and owls of university libraries were born to! To some such chorus Grant Allen "popularised" science. He made it clear, he made it simple, he made it interesting, he made it positively romantic; for he was more even than an apt exponent, he was no little of a poet, and those who see nothing in such books as his Evolutionist at Large, Colin Clouts Calendar, Vignettes from Nature, Moorland Idyls, but clear statement and luminous exposition, do scant justice, to a rare literary gift exercising itself not merely with expository skill, but also artistically, upon difficult new material. More than clearness of statement was needed. Some of the dullest of [174 3 GRANT ALLEN writers are as clear as they are dry. Grant Allen's individual clearness came of imagination, as his charm came of an illustrative fancy and a gay humanity applied to subjects usually immured from traffic with such frivolous qualities. Thus he not only made knowledge delightful to know, but delightful to read. In short, he gave us something like literary equivalents of his subjects. His essays were not always flowers and butterflies, but they often were, and certainly they were such flowers and butterflies as gladden but seldom the volcanic rocks of science. Mere clearness of statement — I said just now. I beg to withdraw the suspicion of depreciation in the phrase; for the aesthetic charm of a really masterly clearness of statement is one which qualifies for high literary honours. There was a time in all our lives when we used to say that Pope was no poet — because, I suppose, he is not all sensual adjectives. A friend who had realised before me the poetry of thought clearly and rhythmically expressed long ago cured me of that. So latterly with prose, the beautiful triumphs of the musical, decorative, school — De Quincey, Pater, Stevenson — have made us think of prose too much as though it were merely a Morris wall-paper. Let it be a Morris wall-paper by all means, but let it remain everything else it can efficiently be as well. Bacon's [i75 J SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Essays entirely depend for their endurance on their clearness of statement. Now, judged merely by a literary standard, valued merely as expression which is capable of taking hold of a complex, debatable subject, and treating it clearly, completely, and charmingly, though from an unfamiliar, even startling, stand- point, I would venture to make a high claim for some papers which Grant Allen probably thought comparatively little of, and anyone of which he most likely dashed off on his supernatural type- writer under the hour. I mean those explosive nutshells of what one might call prophetic thinking, first contributed to the Westminster Gazette and since collected into a volume under the title of Post- Prandial Philosophy. If any modern English writer has matched these little "journalistic" essays in swift thinking and swift statement, has packed so much mind in so small a capsule of printed matter, and has, at the same time, contrived to give so personal an accent of charm — or power of pro- ducing furious irritation (the result of charm applied to the wrong reader) — to his spare, hard-worked, undermanned, two thousand words — I think it can only be Grant Allen under still another of those pseudonyms in which he felt it only decent to drape the fruitfulness of his abounding muse. Grant Allen was one of those instructive writers [176] GRANT ALLEN who write best when they think least about it; when, so to speak, they forget they are writing. It was not natural lo him to work self-consciously, like prose writers such as Pater and Stevenson. He wrote best when he wrote as he talked, fired with interest for the thing he had to express, and con- cerned only to state it as clearly and adequately as possible. Curiously enough, in the modesty of his mind it never seemed to occur to him that this was his native way of being an artist in words. Such tilings as the Post-Prandial Philosophy he regarded as all in the day's work, and prided himself rather on those occasional experiments in the more conscious and more traditional "literary" methods, where there is no doubt he was least successful. I remember, during another talk I had with him not long before he died, we chanced to speak of a recent criticism of one of his books, highly apprecia- tive in the main, but including the remark that Mr. Allen wrote nowadays a little more hastily than formerly — though what wonder when one con- sidered his enormous productiveness, etc. Grant Allen, who seldom saw any criticisms of his writings, and refrained purposely from sub- scribing to any press-cutting agency, was pleased with the review — but he laughed good-humouredly at the statement that he wrote less carefully than formerly. "Why!" he said, "I take ten times the T2 [177] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS pains. Look here!" and he darted off to his study with one of his long, eager strides, and brought out a type-written manuscript. "Look here!" he said, " does this look like carelessness ? " The type- writing was like a moving ant-hill with minute innumerable corrections in his exquisite, small hand. Of course, I didn't say that I regretted these evidences of a growing self-consciousness in his writing, and that the old, swift, nail-on-the-head "carelessness" was best. There are, need one say, as many ideals of literary style as there are real writers. The style Grant Allen was born to, the style that was the man him- self and no other, belonged to a method of style which we are apt to regard as peculiarly modern, but which in reality is as old as any other — the style founded on talk, the colloquial style, so called, though the word "colloquial" has become too sug- gestive of a certain confidential unction in a writer to allow the phrase to be used with safety. It is a style which does not readily lend itself to quotation. Its metier is not the purple passage. I have been looking through Post-Prandial Philosophy to see if I can find a passage which may, without too much loss of blood, be severed from its life-giving context, in illustration of the spirited direct way of writing in which I conceive Grant Allen to have been at his best. Really, the illustration is inadequate, for these [i78] GRANT ALLEN little papers are, in their comparatively modest way, as complete and organic as sonnets. However, there is one, "About Abroad," which may endure the vivisection, and at the same time provide us with a characteristic example of Grant Allen's way of looking at things. "The place known as Abroad is not nearly so nice a country to live in as England. The people who inhabit Abroad are called Foreigners. They are in every way and at all times inferior to English- men. These Post-Prandials used once to be pro- vided with a sting in their tail, like the common scorpion. By way of change, I turn them out now with a sting in their head, like the common mosquito. Mosquitoes are much less dangerous than scorpions, but they're a deal more irritating. Not that I am sanguine enough to expect I shall irritate English- men. . . . To most Englishmen, the world divides itself naturally into two unequal and non-equivalent portions — x\broad and England. Of these two, Abroad is much the larger country; but England, though smaller, is vastly more important. Abroad is inhabited by Frenchmen and Germans, who speak their own foolish and chattering languages. Part of it is likewise pervaded by Chinamen, who wear pigtails; and the outlying districts belong to the poor heathen, chiefly interesting as a field of missionary enterprise, and a possible market for Manchester piece-goods. ... If you ask most people what has become of Tom, they will answer at once with the specific information, 'Oh, Tom [i79] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS has gone Abroad.' I have one stereotyped rejoinder to an answer like that — 'What part of Abroad, please?' That usually stumps them. Abroad is abroad; and like the gentleman who was asked in examination to 'name the minor prophets,' they decline to make invidious distinctions. It is nothing to them whether he is tea-planting in the Himalayas, or sheep-farming in Australia, or orange-growing in Florida, or ranching in Colorado. If he is not in England, why then he is elsewhere; and elsewhere is Abroad, and is indivisible. . . . People will tell you, 'Foreigners do this'; 'Foreigners do that'; 'Foreigners smoke so much'; 'Foreigners always take coffee for breakfast.' ' Indeed,' I love to answer, 'I've never observed it myself in Central Asia.' . . . Would it surprise you to learn that most people live in Asia? Would it surprise you to learn that most people are poor benighted heathen, and that, of the remainder, most people are Mahommedans, and that, of the Christians, who come next, most people are Roman Catholics, and that, of the other Christian sects, most people belong to the Greek Church, and that, last of all, we get Protestants, more particularly Anglicans, Wesleyans, Baptists? Have you ever really realised the startling fact that England is an island off the coast of Europe? that Europe is a peninsula at the end of Asia? that France, Germany, Italy, are the fringe of Russia? Have you ever really realised that the English- speaking race lives mostly in America? that the country is vastly more populous than London? that our class is the froth and scum of society? Think these things out, and try to measure them on [iSo] GRANT ALLEN the globe. And when you speak of Abroad, do please specify what part of it." This, I submit, is very good writing; and, like all good writing, very pleasant writing. Its interest for us does not end in the delivery of its message. It is a pleasure to read for its own sake — for the unmistakable sound of a man's voice behind it, one man's voice and no other's, the sense of nearness it brings across the page to a forcible, thinking, humorous, really human human being. It is not only clever, it is good writing, in the true sense of the word. You may see little in it to wonder at. I never said it was wonderful, or great. Writing, like men and women, need not be great to be good. But this I will hazard, that such "mere journalistic" writing, backed by a personality such as Grant Allen's, is more likely to engage the attention of that much-courted tribunal, posterity, than the sugar-candy euphuism, the imitation Stevenson, which passes for high art at the moment, and towards which Grant Allen, in the innocence of his heart, used sometimes, I know, to cast longing eyes. Of course, the passage I have quoted is only an illus- tration in little of a style which Grant Allen wielded no less successfully on a broader canvas and with a fuller brush. Probably the fullest, most masterly writing he ever achieved is contained in the numerous articles which he contributed to The Fortnightly [181] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Review. These articles will, no doubt, be collected some day. Those relating to anthropology and folk-lore have already been worked into his book on The Evolution of the Idea of God. Readers in England — of course, I mean "popular" readers — who are unfortunate enough to think somewhat in advance of their fellows, owe more than perhaps they remember to those stimulating germinal articles in which Grant Allen, earliest and most successfully, sowed the dragon's teeth which produced him such a plentiful crop of those armed men, the critics. And in one of those articles, particularly, one which necessarily subjected him to their blindest misunder- standing — I refer to "The New Hedonism" — he came nearest, I think, to fulfilling that wistfully held ideal of decorative prose to which I have made reference. What a tapestry can be made out of sheer knowledge this passage, I think, successfully illustrates: — " Not otherwise is it with the beauty that appeals to the eye. Every lovely object in organic nature owes its loveliness directly to sexual selection. The whole aesthetic sense in animals had this for its origin. Every spot on the feathery wings of butterflies was thus produced; every eye on the gorgeous, glancing plumage of the peacock. The bronze and golden beetles, the flashing blue of the dragon-fly, the brilliant colours of tropical moths, the lamp of the glow-worm, the gleaming light of the fire-fly in the [182] GRANT ALLEN thicket, spring from the same source. The infinite variety of crest and gorget among the iridescent humming-birds; the glow of the trogon, the barbets among the palm-blossoms; the exquisite plumage of the birds of paradise; the ball-and-socket orna- ment of the argus pheasant; the infinite hues of parrot and macaw; the strange bill of the gaudy toucan, and the crimson wattles of the turkey, still tell one story. The sim-birds deck themselves for their courtship in ruby and topaz, in chryso- prase and sapphire. Even the antlers of deer, the twisted horns of antelopes, and the graceful forms or dappled coats of so many other mammals have been developed in like manner by sexual selec- tion. The very fish in the sea show similar results of aesthetic preferences. The butterfly fins of the gurnard and the courting colours of the stickleback have but one explanation. . . . Even the basis of the dance, and, therefore, to a great extent of the lyric, poetic, and dramatic faculty, is closely bound up in like manner with the choice in pairing. The minuets of the blackcock, the aerial antics of the peewit, the meeting-places and ball-rooms of so many grouse and other game-birds, the strutting of the peacock, the display of the argus pheasant, the coquetting of butterflies, the strange courtship of spiders. . . ." A little more self-conscious art, a little less ethical enthusiasm, could have made a little more of the material; such material of strangely shaped and coloured words as "trogon," and "barbet," and "toucan" — but merely to bring together, in the [183] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS inspiration of argument rather than art, so many short clauses, each containing at least one purple or orange name, stimulating to the imagination either by strangeness or familiarity, was no small literary success. One more quotation I shall make, again illustra- tive of Grant Allen's occasional success in what I daresay he would have called "the higher style," a passage in which for once he dropped the irony which was his usual manner, and allowed the aspira- tion of his heart, the simple sincerity of his hope, to escape in a passage of eloquent pleading, through which blows the keen sweet air one of the purest of recent lives could only breathe. It is from the preface to his least fortunate book, his second "hill-top novel," The British Barbarians: — "I am writing in my study on a heatherclad hill- top. When I raise my eye from my sheet of foolscap it falls upon miles and miles of broad, open moor- land. My window looks out upon unsullied nature. Everything around is fresh, and pure, and whole- some. Through the open casement the scent of the pines blows in with the breeze from the neighbouring firwood. Keen airs sigh through the pine-needles. Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles of bracken. The song of a skylark drops from the sky like soft rain in summer; in the evening, a night-jar croons to us his monotonously passionate love-wail, from his perch on the gnarled boughs of the wind-swept larch that crowns the upland. But away below [184] GRANT ALLEN in the valley, as night draws on, a lurid glare reddens the north-eastern horizon. It marks the spot where the great wen of London heaves and festers. Up here on the freer hills the sharp air blows in upon us, limpid and clear from a thousand leagues of open ocean; down there in the crowded town it stagnates and ferments, polluted with the diseases and vices of centuries. . . . Far, far below, the theatre and the music-hall spread their garish gas- lamps. Let who will heed them. But here on the open hill-top we know fresher and more wholesome delights. Those feverish joys allure us not. O decadents of the town, we have seen your sham idyls, your tinsel Arcadias. We have tired of their stuffy atmosphere, their dazzling jets, their weary ways, their gaudy dresses; we shun the sunken cheeks, the lack-lustre eyes, the heart-sick souls of your painted goddesses. . . . Your halls are too stifling with carbonic acid gas; for us, we breathe oxygen. . . . How we smile, we who live here, when some dweller in the mists and smoke of the valley confounds our delicate atmosphere, redolent of honey, and echoing the manifold murmur of bees, with that stifling miasma of the gambling hell and the dancing saloon! Trust me, dear friend, the moorland air is far other than you fancy. You can wander up here along the purple ridges, hand locked in hand with those you love, without fear of harm to yourself or your comrade. No Bloom of Ninon here, but fresh cheeks like the peach- blossom where the sun has kissed it; no casual fruition of loveless, joyless harlots, but lifelong saturation of your own heart's desire in your own [185] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS heart's innocence. Ozone is better than all the champagne in the Strand or Piccadilly. If only you will believe it, it is purity, and life, and sympathy, and vigor. Its perfect freshness and perpetual fount of youth keep your age from withering. It crimsons the sunset, and lives in the afterglow. If these delights thy mind may move, leave, O, leave the meretricious town, and come to the airy peaks." Ill These quotations illustrate not merely Grant Allen's talent for literary expression, but they may stand, too, as illustrations of the kind of thought he best cared to express, and the temper in which he strove to express it. Grant Allen was one of those whom an inscrutable Providence creates English- men (I know, of course, technically he was Irish- French-Canadian) for the express purpose of their differing on every conceivable question with their fellow countrymen. This is one of the many ways in which England is seen to be in the peculiar care of the invisible powers. Perhaps the soil of no other nation is so richly fertilised with the martyred remains of its artists and thinkers. Grant Allen was one of those true patriots who do their country the great service of differing from it on every pos- sible occasion. Was there any subject on which [186] GRANT ALLEN Grant Allen agreed with England — or any subject on which England agreed with Grant Allen ? I suppose one might, with diligence, find one or two. Read, for example, those "Plain Words on the Woman Question," in Number 274 (October, 1889) of The Fortnightly Review, and you will find him ten years ago vigorously sounding that anti-Malthusian alarm which Zola has set to mighty drums in Fecondite, a book of which, one hears, England has a yet no need. Yet, let it by all means be allowed that Grant Allen was at variance with his country on most other questions. He was a Home-Ruler, a Socialist, an "Atheist" (so-called) and (in theory) a "Free-Lover" — everything but a housebreaker. I could think of nothing worse to say of him were I advocatus diaboli. O yes! there is some fear that he was a Little Englander. But there are differences which, like certain bombs, explode; and there are differences which fall softly in the grass of oblivion, and are forgotten. England now takes socialism and atheism (long since respectable as "agnosti- cism") quite calmly. The Home-Ruler and the Little Englander it keeps alive because political meetings must have something to play with. But — Free Love ! ! An evil and adulterous generation naturally takes that seriously. Grant Allen was at liberty to call London a "squalid village," or to plump down any of his delicious paradoxes, such [187] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS as: " We Celts henceforth will rule the roost in Brit- ain" ; he might protest against preserved partridges, or say what he pleased about "the aristocracy" ; but when it came to suggesting that a notoriously painful marriage law was capable of improvement — a marriage law which necessitates the expensive safety-valve of the divorce court — ah! then indeed Grant Allen sinned the sin for which there is no forgiveness between the North and the Irish Seas. Lord Rosebery recently described us with pathetic pathos as a little island floating lonely (and unpro- tected) in these Northern seas, or something simi- larly pretty; so, indeed, we float, very lonely, on such an important question as the comfortable (merely comfortable) relation of man and woman. In all that relates to that we are only less civilised than the unspeakably English Turk. We may indeed, as Mr. Meredith brilliantly said, have passed Seraglio Point, but certainly we have not rounded Cape Turk. Grant Allen felt this limitation on the part of his countrymen with the acuteness of a sincere and melioristic mind, as two much greater novelists, Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy, not to speak of any number of great poets, had felt it before him, and he determined to do what he could do to advance a saner ideal. Thus he wrote The Woman Who Did. [188] GRANT ALLEN Grant Allen regarded this as the most important book he ever wrote. Perhaps, after all, he was right. I didn't think so when I first read it; for it is quite certain that, technically speaking, it is far from being his best novel; nor, well and some- times beautifully written, is it the best, that is the most individually, written of his books. A book, however, may be a bad novel, it may be indifferently written; and yet it may be an important book. Robert Elsmere was, for England, an important book. Degeneration, for all its absurdities, was an important book. Neither book was " literature," nor science, nor anything that mattered artistically or anywise technically. Each book was merely a poster —a poster, a vivid advertising shock announcing new ideas; that is, not brand-new ideas, not ideas that had never been heard of before (for where shall we find those in historic times?), but ideas practically untried upon large areas of mankind, towards the trial of which the spirit of the age seemed blindly to be moving. Its very title declared The Woman Who Did to be a poster of rebellion; and as such it was a remarkably conspicuous success — for, as I said on its publication, the story was nought, the characters were puppets, a philosopher's puppets; yet, so momentous was the moral idea it advertised, so single-minded and pure-of-heart was the motive enthusiasm of the man who wrote it, that it sold as [189] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS though it had been some really interesting romance by Miss Marie Corelli or Mr. Hall Caine. I clo it, and certainly intend it, no disrespect, when I speak of it as the advertisement of an idea. There is nothing that ideas need so much as adver- tisement. Grant Allen always had this happy knack, by the sheer innocence of his almost childlike sincerity, of attracting, or shall I say, repelling, immediate attention for any cause he cared to espouse. His lightest phrase sounded a gong which summoned his fellow-countrymen to put out with all their might the fire he had just kindled. It mattered little what it was he talked of. He could not avoid making the poster phrase, the poster word. If you seriously want to save the world, you have first to make the world hear, and secondly to make the world throw stones. Grant Allen had a really enviable faculty of provoking the world to throw stones. He was like a great speaker. However unruly his audience, he had but to raise a finger of audacious phrase, and, whatever happened after- wards, he was heard. Take a long-since tranquil theme, such as the poetry of Mr. William Watson. James Ashcroft Noble knew it almost before it was born, he wrote of it, persuasively as he could write, in important journals, such as The Academy and The Spectator. At one time Mr. Hutton seemed to edit The Spectator for the very proper purpose of [ x 9°] GRANT ALLEN announcing the truly momentous presence in our midst of the author of "Wordsworth's Grave." The present writer was reciting it with inconsiderate proselytism quite ten years ago. Yet The National Review, in which it appeared, passed virtually unnoticed, save by the little band who looked out for it, knowing it was to appear. An unappreciated genius, Mr. Watson wandered unrecognised on the Yorkshire moors. Then Grant Allen took up his speaking trumpet, modestly enough, indeed, as he always did, and said: "Let there be William Watson," and there was William Watson. Small critics, who knew as little of the poet as they knew of his trumpeter, said, "What does Grant Allen know about poetry ? Grant Allen, the populariser of science, the self-confessed manufacturer of shoddy fiction." But Grant Allen had blown his trumpet, that "coarse" trumpet of his, and England — in- cluding Lord Rosebery — heard. Of course, Mr. Watson would have been no less a poet though Grant Allen had never spoken, just as Armenia had been Armenia though The Purple East had never been written; but it is, after all, a pleasant thing to be recognised as William Watson a little ahead of posterity's finding it out, and I am sure Mr. Watson remembers with gratitude that the noble, forcible, and fascinating personality of Grant Allen was once en- thusiastically his very effective poster. [ 191 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Similarly, in regard to The Woman Who Did: the ethical motive was, of course, familiar enough — old as Shelley, old as the hills. A year or two before its publication Mr. Meredith had published, in Lord Ormont and his Aminta, the sympathetic drama of similar revolt, but the Conservative Press which upholds the world — like the tortoise in the Buddhist cosmogony — had not fallen about his ears. Mr. Meredith's style is a coat of mail which protects the most innovating idea. But there was a deeper reason than that. England dreads the abstract; give it plain, common-sense, concrete adultery, and it will forgive and forget. But of abstract "adultery" — adultery from the highest ethical motives — it is suspicious. And, of course, in a sense it is right. To break a law is one thing, to set up that law- breaking as a new law is another. Of course, in Lord Ormont and his Aminta Mr. Meredith did that very thing. But then you can esoterically ex- hibit law-breaking art in the protective obscurity of, say, The Dudley Gallery, which would provoke a storm of comment if placarded, say, at the Strand entrance to Waterloo Bridge. So much depends on where the nude in truth is hung. Lord Ormont and his Aminta was merely one human exception — in spite of its author intending to make a new rule; The Woman Who Did announced an aggressive new rule. It possessed no humanity to excuse it. It sought [192] GRANT ALLEN no excuse. It was intended as a challenge, and its success was, that it was accepted as such. That it should be furiously attacked was a part of that success. Otherwise there had been no necessity to write it. In form a novel, in reality it belongs to our noble series of change-demanding pamphlets. As literature it has small value, as a brilliant noise on behalf of human progress it means a great deal. Perhaps it were as well to explain that, while in the abstract I agreed with Grant Allen's theory on this matter long before I knew Grant Allen — in fact just after I met Shelley — later experience of life has led me to doubt its practical, working efficiency. Indeed, I am venturous, superstitious, old-fashioned enough to wonder if, at all events for certain natures, there is not a more radical criticism to be made of those theories. Let us allow that there are happy natures constituted in the light of reason who can love according to the law which Grant Allen summarises in this neat quatrain: — "I hold that heart full poor that owns its boast To throb in tune with but one throbbing breast. Who numbers many friends loves friendship most; Who numbers many loves loves each love best." I, too, thought so once, but I have come to realise that what Grant Allen meant by love is not in the real sense — that is the absurd, the tragic, the comic, the mystic — sense, love at all. He really spoke of 13 I J 93 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS a sort of sexual comradeship. Love is something far more terrible. It has nothing whatever to do with reason, nothing to do with theories. It burns this way, it burns that. But the flame it sets alight is for one martyr, it is kindled by one torch. Indeed, as I ventured sometimes to tell him, there is something in human life, in human nature, which I think Grant Allen rather missed; something mystic, something divinely and devilishly irrational which he did not take into account in his melioristic dreams. Of course, it is the way of all moralists, and Grant Allen was a moralist, par excellence. Packed full of humanity himself, he never realised what one can only call the elaborate waywardness of human nature. He thought of humanity too much in the abstract. He thought of it as composed of human beings amenable to reason, ductible to ideals. Being himself a nature singularly adaptable to the influence of right thinking, he imagined that the rest of the world was like him. Of course he knew, but in his utopianism he hardly remembered suffi- ciently, that the influence of ideas on humanity is exceedingly slow and laborious and indeed super- ficial. To see the right was with him to do it. To see the wrong in his own nature was at least to struggle to set it right. His, in fact, was a nature singularly conformable to moral ideas. But average human nature is not. It sees the right, but its [ i94] GRANT ALLEN warm life-forces compel it to do the wrong. As Grant Allen once wittily said of a friend, humanity "longs to be a saint, but it loves to be a sinner." I think it was this in Grant Allen which closed his eyes to the beauty of London. The beauty of London, if one may say so, is the beauty of a richly- coloured meerschaum. It smells rankly of old romantic sin. With its freakish rings of rich brown, it is, side by side with a nice clean new meerschaum, a disgrace. Life has had its way with it, and it is coloured accordingly. Now, I think I do him no wrong when I say that Grant Allen rather loved the new meerschaum. I don't think he would have cared much to live, say, in an old historic house. At every turn it would have reminded him of wrong thinking, of crushing social wrong. He could never have slept in it. The "monopolist instincts" would have shrieked about his bed at night. He loved the beauty of new-made things, life washed clean in the dawn; and I am far from implying that he was anything but right in so doing. The beauty of antiquity was, I imagine, to his way of thinking — partly dirt and partly superstition: of course, I mean mere age, that is the humanisation which comes to anything through mere use. I am hardly writing for a reader who needs to be told of his appreciation, his exceptionally intuitive interpre- tation, of the definitely, demonstrably, beautiful [195] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS things of antiquity. His knowledge of and insight into the Italian painters of the Renaissance is well known, and I have had few more fascinating expe- riences than hearing him expound his original interpretation of the symbolism of, say, Botticelli's Primavera: a picture, indeed, sufficiently hackneyed to provide opportunity for a tour de force of original exposition. The fact remains that Grant Allen loved human ideals more than human realities — as, indeed, we all should do, but do not. This ideality accounts for the unreality — as fiction — of such books as The Woman Who Did; but, at the same time, it is nothing against their usefulness as brilliant and forcible social tracts. To write a really influential tract — well, what novel since that lovely tract of Tess of the D'Urbervilles is worth mentioning beside such an achievement ? IV I am thus insidiously led up to Grant Allen's novels without a purpose. Of these I propose to say little — for a good reason. On entering into friendship with Grant Allen it was obligatory to make one promise only: never, under whatsoever temptation, to read one of his " commercial " novels. I feel myself no little unworthy as I think that my [196] GRANT ALLEN poor human nature proved incapable of strictly fulfilling this condition. And, indeed, I must not forget Grant Allen made one exception: For Maimie's Sake. This was an earlier illustration of The Woman Who Did idea; and, though there is much that Grant Allen wrote that I prefer to it, I admit that in " Maimie " he outlined a type of original interest, and indeed created the only living woman in his books. For, indeed, in no study so much as that of woman would his passion for the abstract so absolutely unfit him to arrive at reality. Man may be imperfectly amenable to rule, but every woman is an exception. Woman, indeed, is human nature. I once meditated an appreciation of Grant Allen's "pot-boilers," which only accident prevented my carrying out; and I am afraid, unintentionally in- deed, that I hurt him by saying that his current " pot- boiler," Under Sealed Orders, was a much better novel than The Woman Who Did. Some day I may fulfil my old intention, and I think I should not find it difficult to prove that Grant Allen was a far better novelist than he had the smallest interest in being. As a teller of the short story he is admitted to have been a brilliant pioneer. It was an appropriate co- incidence that very shortly before his death he should have published a selection of twelve of the most im- portant of his tales, with a characteristic confession of h97] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS how he came to be a story-teller at all. Of course, he was a born story-teller; but, as all gifts are the revela- tion of accident, it was the accident of his having thrown a scientific idea into the form of a story that revealed Grant Allen's story -telling both to himself and to the world. His best stories always bore the mark of this accidental origin. They were always the illustration of some scientific or moral conceptions: from the famous The Reverend John Creedy to The Woman Who Did. But their success was that they lost nothing in narrative interest on that account. The Child of the Phalanstery, Ivan Greet' s Master- piece, are both, so to speak, allegorical in intention; but, all the same, they hold and move one just as if they were the simplest emotional stories, and not in the least the attractive envelope of an ethical pill. Besides, sheerly as story-telling, some of Grant Allen's stories qualify him as an inventor. The Reverend John Creedy, Mr. Chung, and many other such stories, justify his timid enough claim to be one of the earliest writers of " the romance of the clash of civilisations." He used sometimes to say that, misspent as his life had been, he was the maker of the phrase "gone Fantee." With touching humility, in the preface to that collection of Twelve Tales just referred to, he mentions with character- istic (let one say for him, absurd) deference "the Kiplings," the "Wellses": "I shall be amply con- [198] GRANT ALLEN tent if our masters permit me to pick up the crumbs that fall from the table of the Hardys, the Kiplings, the Merediths, and the Wellses." I have nothing to say to ''the Hardys" and "the Merediths," except to protest against a somewhat hasty use of the plural. But "the Kiplings" and "the Wellses"! Well, I kow-tow (as Grant Allen would say) to those brilliant writers with all my heart — but to be able to tell a tale better than Grant Allen, that is to go one better than one's tutor, does not prove one a more important person than Grant Allen. "No talent can be supremely effective," said that very clear-sighted observer, George Henry Lewes, " unless it act in close alliance with certain moral qualities." "Art" is only of su- preme importance when it is either the embodiment of that beauty which is the final unquestionable holiness, or when it is the voice of the universal absolutes of man. To be "diabolically clever" is not the same thing. To cinematograph the past, or to cinematograph the present, is nothing like so important as — to pray with all your heart for the future. Prayer is usually allowed to be exempt from minor aesthetic criticism. And this leads me to speak of a little volume which must certainly not go uncelebrated here, and which, in the whole enormous library of Grant Allen's writings, has a more important place than has yet f 199] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS been allowed to it, or than he himself would have claimed for it, the little volume of his poems quaintly entitled : The Lower Slopes, Reminiscences of Excur- sions round the Base of Helicon, undertaken for the most part in early manhood. If it contained no other poem than this striking "Prayer," it would have a sufficient raison d'etre: "A crowned Caprice is god of this world; On his stony breast are his white wings furled. No ear to listen, no eye to see, No heart to feel for a man hath he. "But his pitiless arm is swift to smite; And his mute lips utter one word of might, 'Mid the clash of gentler souls and rougher, 'Wrong must thou do, or wrong must suffer.' Then grant, O dumb, blind god, at least that we Rather the sufferers than the doers be." I was glad to see that Mr. Lang, in a beautiful, so to say, playfully elegiac, article a propos Grant Allen's death, referred to him as "a sad good Christian." I too had ventured to write that, like Shelley, he was all his life a Christian without know- ing it. Certainly his nature was filled with a pity which in the depth of his tenderness was distinctly "Christian." His favourite motto was "Self-devel- opment is greater than self-sacrifice" ; but, when one remembers the deliberate way in which he sacrificed all his literary and scientific dreams to the domestic [ 200] GRANT ALLEN ideal, and preached constantly in his stories that a man with a wife and children must be husband or father first and artist afterwards — one realises that, when his abstract theories were put to the human test, Grant Allen considered first the human need in the situation and last of all his theories. Moralist as he was, he was far indeed from being a doctrinaire. Recently, re-reading some of his old articles, I came upon a characteristic touch of his pity in a quaintly unexpected place: a review of Steven- son's Travels with a Donkey. Grant Allen was even then generously "discovering" other people. It is to be feared that the jesting thanks of one of his protegees too often came true: "Need I say that you have earned my blackest ingratitude?" "There is many a true word spoken in jest," was Grant Allen's quiet comment on the occasion. But, to return to Stevenson, after praising the book for its various now classical qualities, Grant Allen concludes thus: "Nevertheless, since one cannot wholly divorce one's self from the ethical feeling of one's age, I must confess that I should have liked Mr. Stevenson better if he had beaten his donkey less unmercifully, and, above all, if he had not used that wooden goad, with its eighth of an inch of pin. This is not the place to discuss the broad question of 'no morality in art': but most Englishmen will perhaps feel [201] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS pained rather than amused by the description of poor Modestine's many stripes, or of her foreleg 'no better than raw beef on the inside. ' " Grant Allen was unlike his younger contemporaries in being unable to enjoy cruelty. He could not enjoy cruelty in any form, not even in a book. " Why should a sob For the vaguest smart One moment throb Through the tiniest heart?" '.-V he indignantly exclaims in a poem in which, a propos a moth in a candle flame, he arraigns the devil of pain in the universe. Mr. Lang has spoken of Grant Allen as "a master of the ballade," and to illustrate how successfully he could wield the more stately measures of English verse, I may quote these two verses from his fine Arnoldian meditation, In Magdalen Tower: — " This very tree, whose life is our life's sister, We know not if the ichor in her veins Thrill with fierce joy when April dews have kissed her Or shrink in anguish from October rains. We search the mighty world above and under, Yet nowhere find the soul we fain would find, Speech in the hollow rumbling of the thunder, Words in the whispering wind. " We yearn for brotherhood with lake and mountain, Our conscious soul seeks conscious sympathy, [ 202 ] GRANT ALLEN Nymphs in the coppice, Naiads in the fountain, Gods on the craggy height and roaring sea. We find but soulless sequences of matter, Fact linked to fact by adamantine rods, Eternal bonds of former sense and latter, Dead laws for living gods." Grant Allen's, too, was the happy characterisation of FitzGerald's Omar as "This rose of Iran on an English stock." But I must quote no more from a little book which easily proves that Grant Allen, while he was, what is still more important, a poet in the larger sense, in temperament, in prose, was also a skilful and forcible poet in verse. In fact, he was, perhaps, the most variously gifted man of letters of his time. Sheerly as a literary workman, he can seldom have been equalled. His capacity for working under every disadvantage of circumstance was almost superhuman, as his obe- dient adaptability to the demands of the public or the publishers by whom he had to live, was as astonishing as it was tragic. When, to his surprise, as he tells in his preface to the Twelve Tales already referred to, Mr. Chatto asked him to write stories, he characteristically tells how: "Not a little sur- prised at this request, I sat down like an obedient [203] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS workman, and tried to write one at my employer's bidding." Similarly, on a larger scale, when Sir George Newnes offered a thousand pounds for a sensational novel, he produced What's Bred in the Bone with cynical cleverness. That a man of his calibre should have been compelled thus to prostitute gifts so impor- tant, however brave and laughing a face he put upon it, is one of the saddest things in recent literary history, as it is eloquent once more of the cruel indifference to the arduous conditions of literary creation in a country which, nevertheless, plumes itself particularly upon its noble literature. But that he was able to do it so brilliantly will, doubtless, be the feature of the case which will most fill the down-trodden literary mind with envy. In the mere mechanical — but how important — matter of "turning out" his "copy" he was quite amazing. Anyone who has stayed in his house will remember how his typewriter could be heard, as you crossed the hall, punctually beginning to click at nine every morning, and, if you eavesdropped, you would seldom note a pause in its rapid clicking. I don't think that Grant Allen can even once in his life have "stopped for a word." Interruptions made no difference. I have known him stop in the middle of a sentence at the sound of the luncheon gong, and then, having found on repairing to the [ 204] GRANT ALLEN dining-room that the gong was a little premature, go back to his typewriter, finish the sentence and begin another. Like all men who do much in this world, he had a genius for using up remnants of time. He had, too, an almost Gladstonian power of concentration. Whatever was going on, he could write if he had made up his mind to. I think that the only thing that ever worried him was a picture askew or a pot out of its place. He couldn't be happy till he had set that right. Other- wise, however, most things could happen without their interfering with the strong current of his thought bent on expressing itself. One reminiscence to the point I always recall when I think of him in this connection. Some five years ago I was domiciled in his house for many weeks. I was there because Grant Allen and his brave and beautiful wife had taken to heart a private sorrow of mine, with a personal sympathy such as few friends are capable of. There were days when I didn't feel quite equal to the journalism I had undertaken to do; and I remember that, on one of them, Grant Allen offered to write a brief review for me. If I remember rightly, the book was that which first revealed to us the charming personality of Miss Fiona Macleod — Pharais. It chanced, too, that on this particular day certain other friends were staying in the house, friends who were interested to [ 205 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS see Grant Allen use his typewriter. Some five of us gathered round him as he sat down to it. " Well," he said, "what shall I write? Oh, I might as well write that review"— and off he went, and in some- thing like ten minutes he had written five hundred bright pointed words, for which Miss Fiona Macleod must, I am sure, have been very grateful, and which she will no doubt admire all the more for this con- fession of their true authorship. Perhaps I may be allowed to add, as a journalist who has still to go on earning many loaves, that reviews signed by my name are not usually written by anyone more distinguished than myself. But I recalled this incident only to illustrate Grant Allen's capacity for working brilliantly under all circumstances. There were we five people bending over him, but he thought absolutely nothing about us. He was busy with "the Celtic movement," and something he wanted to say about it. We were hardly phan- tasmagoria. So I come to the man himself, to the personal loss. That loss needs an elegy for its expression. Nowadays we write our elegies in the form of hurried leading articles, and perhaps such a column of valedictory prose as Mr. Lang's column in the Daily News is a more real expression of loss than that artistic sorrow remembered in tranquillity which elaborates an In Memoriam. When the wreath is [206] GRANT ALLEN so magnificent, one is apt to forget our sorrow in our aesthetic self-gratulation over our wreath. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his funeral oration, laid stress, over and over again, as I was glad to note, on two elements of Grant Allen's character: his courage and his "militant sincerity." Yes, the courage hidden in that frail frame of his was almost pathetic; and he was certainly the sincerest man I have ever known. He possessed the simple truthfulness of genius, and perhaps one might say more particularly, of scientific genius. It is the business of the man of science to tell the truth; it is his raison d'etre. He is so concerned to "find out" that he never conceives that there can be any necessity to conceal. That is why he so often shocks his fellows — in the pure innocence of discovery. I don't think, as I have said elsewhere, that Grant Allen ever had an arriere pensee in his life. He never realised the necessity of the social lie, or any other form of dissimulation. Some of us more worldly-wise, and thus on a lower level than he, would sometimes protest, on his own behalf, against his extreme open-mindedness on such matters as the commercial disabilities of telling the truth. He was, of course, in the main a financial sucess, but there was a brief period after The Woman Who Did when publishers and editors fought shy of him; and during that period he would confide to any [207] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS afternoon caller, with perfect simplicity, and not the smallest sense of "martyrdom," that he stood idle in the market-place, because no one dared to hire him. I have heard him say frankly to a certain young writer, during an interchange of "shop": "Why I never received so much for a novel in my life! " Yet he was very well paid, as literary pay- ment goes. Any one who cares can share his printed confidences in this matter, and enjoy an excellent ex- ample of his style in his old Idler article on "My First Book," since reprinted, with other confessions, by Messrs. Chatto and Windus. It ends with this now-famous advice: "Don't take to literature if you've capital enough in hand to buy a good broom, and energy enough to annex a vacant crossing." Grant Allen was too great to tell lies, even white lies. He never realised the necessity. He could compromise to the extent of doing brilliantly the work he hated, but more he would not do. No necessity, no torture, would have persuaded him to deny, or suppress, the truth that was in him. He might write of something else, but whenever he was obliged to write of vital matters, whatever it cost him, he told the truth. Also, he was, I think, the most completely " eman- cipated" of any recent English mind expressing itself in literature. I never observed a trace of that succumbing to the inherited habits of thought [208] GRANT ALLEN and feeling which even the most "advanced" thinkers have developed towards the close of life. He was entirely devoid of any form of " superstition." His reason was, to the last, master of the house of life. Perhaps he saw a little too clearly; for, as his most famous protegee writes: — 'They see not clearliest Who see all things clear." "c- Perhaps Grant Allen too confidently set up Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer in the place of his lost Hebrew prophets. There is, as I said above, some- thing mystic in human life that he refused to consider. With the presumptuous flamboyance of youth I sometimes told him so. Yet, at the same time, no one had such an overwhelming cosmic sense of the wonder of the universe. Perhaps his wonder in presence of that appalling spectacle dwarfed his appreciation of the greater mystery of the soul of man. The brilliant organisation of the universe, perhaps, a little distracted him from the human miracle. I wish I could borrow his phonographic memory to record a spoken rhapsody of his of the wonder, not of the world, but of the worlds, gently directed at me, one evening, in answer to some absurd boyish criticism of his way of thought. I remember it only as music — as I remember most of his talk. 14 I 2 °9 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS And what an amazing talker he was! No pose- talk, but talk easily born of his knowledge and love of the subject that at the moment occupied him. No more brilliant generaliser can ever have lived. Present him with the most unexpected fact, or the most complex set of circumstances (as it might seem to you), and he had his theory in an instant, and was making it as clear, by the aid of his marvel- lously copious and exact vocabulary, as though he had drawn it on the air. And bright things by the score all the way! His gift of stating the most intricate matter impromptu in a few simple words, and of pouring out the most varied and profound learn- ing as though he were telling a fairy tale, can hardly have been equalled, and certainly can never have been surpassed. Well, we shall "look it up in Grant" no more. The swallows he loved to see flying in and out from the eaves of his beautiful house at Hindhead will come back, but he will come back no more. The nightjar, his favourite bird, will perch near the windows at twilight with its hoarse, sad, churring cry, but Grant Allen will hear it no more. All the goodness, the humour, the tenderness, the imagina- tion, the intellect, the brilliance, the love and laughter that were Grant Allen are now a little dust. At his funeral I had in my pocket his little volume of poems, and, as we turned away from the sad [210] GRANT ALLEN place where we had left him, two of his beautiful lines were murmuring in my mind: — " Perchance a little light will come with morning, Perchance I shall but sleep." Perchance ! October, 1899. [211] II TENNYSON (1809-1909) FEW poets have bequeathed to time a figure of themselves so dramatically satisfying as Alfred Tennyson. In his personality, in his history, as in his work, he was the impressive, romantic embodiment of "the sacred poet," the laurelled priest of the muses, the hieratic voice and interpreter of the mystic beauty of the world, and the immortal oracles of life. The dramatic sense of humanity very naturally demands of its divine ministers a certain nimbus and authority proper to their mysterious callings. They must in them- selves be symbols of the work they do. The great soldier must look like a great soldier, the great priest look like a great priest, the great poet wear the grand manner, the rapt, exalted, dream-wrought air of the great poet. Most great poets have fulfilled this popular condition, or, by the mythopoeic action of time, have come to fulfil it. But none has worn his laurel with a more august fitness, as of a man apart, a chosen messenger of the unseen gods, than Alfred Tennyson. While he lived we had a feeling that, so to say, a personal representative of [ 212] TENNYSON Apollo dwelt among us, an authentic vates, touched, as it were, with a certain supernatural distinction; and, we said to ourselves, with Mr. Lang, " The mas- ter's yonder in the isle "—with a haunted sense of the immortal made flesh and housed with us, a sense, too, of the security of divine interests in a material age. With his death that sense of security seemed to vanish, and it seemed, indeed, to us, as to Tenny- son himself on the death of Byron years before, that poetry, too, was dead. "Byron is dead," he had carved on a rock at Somersby that April day in 1824, "a day when the whole world seemed to be darkened for me." Years after, his son, visiting the old Lin- colnshire home, sought for the inscription, but in vain. One can imagine few inscriptions one would care more to have had preserved. "Byron is dead," carved the boy of fourteen, little dreaming of a day far off in the future years when, " to the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation," his own funeral would seem a bereavement no less final. "Carry the last great bard to his last bed," sang Mr. William Watson, as they brought Alfred Tennyson to his place of honoured rest, with Chaucer and Browning for his immortal neighbours. Who that was there will ever forget that morn- ing in Westminster Abbey, the ineffable, sweet solemnity of the beautiful death music, as, to the ethereal singing of his own "Silent Voices," the [ 2I 3] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS great coffin, wreathed with laurel from Virgil's tomb, was carried in by illustrious friends, friends whose names also were even then becoming legendary — Froude and Jowett and Lecky and Kelvin. At the dead man's side, beneath the laurels and the roses, lay, as we knew, the copy of "Cymbeline" on which his eyes had last rested in the moonlight a few nights before, and the whole beautiful rite was one of those perfect happenings which have a dream-like com- pleteness, the inner spiritual significance and the outer form combining in a harmony of proud pathos indescribably impressive. Here was the majesty of the poet's lot, as our boyish fancies have dreamed it, visibly attested. Here was noble Fame visibly embodied with a sacred eloquence that thrilled the heart. This it was to be a great poet, the voice of a nation's soul — The song that nerves a nation's heart Is in itself a deed. That early vision of his of the grandeur of the poet's destiny was here finally fulfilled— here one might see, veritably witnessed by a nation's mourn- ing, how "one poor poet's scroll" had in very deed shaken the world. Yes, it was a legendary morning, the beautiful legendary close to a legendary life. It was good to be there — an inspiring reminder to what fine issues our mortal lives ascend. [ 214] TENNYSON And the life thus closed had been, from its begin- ning, lived in the spirit of one chosen. No English poet, save Milton, has felt himself so "dedicated" as Alfred Tennyson. Always with him, as with his master, Virgil, it was, — the sweet Muses whom, be- fore all things, I serve! Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Muste, Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, Accipiant, coelique, vias et sidera monstrent, Defectus solis varios luna^que labores. . . . And it is beautiful, too, to remember how, from the first, his family and friends had accepted him, confirmed him in his high calling. Poetry was very much in the Tennyson family. His father and his brothers were all more or less poets — good poets, too, — but Alfred was the poet in whose fame they proudly sank their own individual ambitions. "I make a slave of you," said the old man to his son Hallam, as he asked some service of him on his death-bed; and, indeed, the poetic gift has seldom blossomed into an environment so hospitable to its nurture. Tennyson knew nothing of the stern apprenticeship which falls to most poets, and it may be that his super-sensitiveness to criticism, of which so many quaint stories are told, was due in some measure to the sheltered conditions of his muse. [215] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS George Meredith used to tell a story of his paying a visit to Tennyson at the height of his fame, he, Meredith, being a young man, with a very different road in front of him. After breakfast, they had gone out for a walk over the downs together, and Meredith had looked forward to some personal talk with his great companion. But, alas! the morning mail had brought some small criticism by some unimportant criticaster, and Tennyson could not forget his irritation. Withdrawn into his own gloom, he kept repeating to himself, rolling the words out in his deep, sonorous voice: "Apollodorus says I am not a great poet! " Meredith ventured to suggest that the opinion of "Apollodorus" was of no possible importance, anyhow; but it was in vain, and the deep voice still continued with its refrain: "Apollodorus says I am not a great poet" — for Tennyson seems to have resembled his hero Byron in this respect, that (Byron's own confession) "the praise of the greatest could not take from him the sting from the censure of the meanest." It was an uncomfortable weakness, and hard to understand in one who, since the publication of those precious two volumes in his thirty-fourth year, had been so securely seated, and amid such universal acclamation, in his own high place. Seldom, indeed, have a man's peers among his contemporaries so [3X6] TENNYSON generously made way for a new fame, so unanimously offered him the seat of honour — and such contem- poraries, too — for Tennyson grew, so to say, in a grove of giant oaks, with such men as Carlyle and Huxley and Tyndall and Dickens and Thackeray and FitzGerald for his fellows. Carlyle' s attitude toward him, one almost of affec- tion, is particularly significant, and one cannot do better on this day of reminiscence than recall Car- lyle' s vivid description of him — one of those masterly characterisations in which Carlyle has never been equalled. "Alfred," he says, "is one of the few British and foreign figures (a not increasing number, I think) who are and remain beautiful to me, a true human soul, or some authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul can say, 'Brother!' However, I doubt he will not come [to see me]; he often skips me in these brief visits to town; skips everybody, indeed; being a man solitary and sad, as certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom, carrying a bit of chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing into cosmos; ... I think he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest -looking men in the world. A great shock of rough, dusky hair; bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian looking; clothes cynically loose; free and easy, [217] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will grow to." And again: "A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is Alfred; dusty, smoky, free-and-easy; who swims, outwardly and inwardly, with great composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man." Nor do I know a better rapid impressionistic appreciation of Tennyson's poetry than this con- tained in a letter of Carlyle's to Tennyson on the publication of the 1842 two volumes: " Wherever this finds you, may it find you well, may it come as a friendly greeting to you. I have just been reading your poems; I have read certain of them over again, and mean to read them over and over till they become my poems; this fact, with the inferences that lie in it, is of such emphasis in me, I cannot keep it to myself, but must needs acquaint you, too, with it. If you knew what my relation has been to the thing called English 'Poetry' for many years back, you would think such fact almost surprising! Truly it is long since in any English book, poetry or prose, I have felt the pulse [218] TENNYSON of a real man's heart as I do in this same. A right valiant, true, fighting, victorious heart; strong as a lion's, yet gentle, loving, and full of music: what I call a genuine singer's heart! There are tones as of the nightingale; low murmurs as of wood doves at summer noon; everywhere a noble sound as of the free winds and leafy woods. The sunniest glow of Life dwells in that soul, chequered duly with dark streaks from night and Hades; every- where one feels as if all were filled with yellow glowing sunlight, some glorious, golden Vapour; from which form after form bodies itself; naturally, golden forms. In one word, there seems to be a note of 'The Eternal Melodies' in this man; for which let all other men be thankful and joyful! " Such praise of "the thing called English 'poetry' " from Carlyle was indeed an amazing portent, and how inevitably has the rough-barked philosopher, under whose volcanic crust ran such fiery streams of true poetic lava, seized and named the one per- vading individual quality of Tennyson's work — that golden quality, which is not merely the aurea jelicitas, but a veritable atmosphere of "glorious golden vapour," a golden ether naturally embody- ing itself in "golden forms." In a familiar passage of "In Memoriam" it will be remembered that the poet, facing "the secular abyss to come," gloomily moralises on the evan- escence of modern rhyme and the probable brief duration of his own "mortal lullabies of pain." [ 219] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Take wings of foresight; lighten thro' The secular abyss to come, And lo, thy deepest lays are dumb Before the mouldering of a yew; And if the matin songs, that woke The darkness of our planet, last, Thine own shall wither in the vast, Ere half the life-time of an oak. Ere these have clothed their branchy bowers With fifty Mays, thy songs are vain * * * Now that more than those "fifty Mays" are passed, it is interesting to ask how does the poet stand the test of his own time limit, what and how much does Tennyson mean to us to-day, fifty-nine years after "In Memoriam," fifty-four years after "Maud," and sixty-seven years after the two classical volumes of 1842 ? My own impression is that his fame is securer than ever, and his appeal — after a period of com- parative eclipse — if anything, more deeply grounded. There was a time, some twenty years ago, when it was the fashion to depreciate Tennyson as thin, shallow, and pretty-pretty; and probably young people still pass through that stage of development when they say that they have "gone beyond" Tennyson, that he has nothing for them, and so forth. Such [ 220] TENNYSON is a part of the history of every classic. Perfect utterance has a way after a while — owing partly to the universal currency its perfection naturally gains — of seeming superficial utterance. Young minds in particular are apt to find the profound in the obscure, and thought in the turmoil of mental fermentation rather than in the distilled crystal of finished thinking and absolute expression. Writers such as Browning and Meredith, therefore, through the very imperfection of their art, by reason of their cryptic and oracular manner of stammering or blurting out their half-realised thoughts, and their general torment of expression, gain credit for more prodigious births of mind, merely on the strength of their agonised parturition. Doubtless, it was the unearthly groanings of the sibyl that gave an impor- tance to her messages seldom to be found in the messages themselves. Because Michelangelo was wont suggestively to leave his creations attached to the nature from which they sprang by some por- tion of unchiseled rock, the modern sculptor often chooses to give us little else than the natural rock. Similarly, whenever a poet is able to transmute the crude materials of his philosophising into a lucent mysticism, minds unable to realise that there should be mystery in clearness mistake the profound azure of his thought for shallowness. [221] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Because Tennyson had achieved such a masterly way of saying things, some will have it that he has nothing to say. Then, again, his offense is that his thinking — what there is of it — is in the main hopeful thinking. There are those who call a man a thinker only so long as his thoughts are hopelessly black or hopelessly tangled. Faith is never credited with brains. It is only Despair that is called profound. Yet, as Meredith — no angler in the shallows — has finely said: "Who can really think and not think hopefully." Of course the truth is all the other way. It is despair and pessi- mism that are the shallow reasoners, and faith that is rooted in the mystic verities of existence, the divining, star-sustained mind that, realising the limitations of sight, believes though it cannot see, and trusts its spiritual instinct before its mortal logic. Again, Tennyson loses for some judgments by the very amplitude of his nature. He was, in a marked degree, "a full man," the more remarkably so when we consider his artistic sensibilities. Such artistic sensibility and such an all-enfolding scope of human interests have seldom gone together. One sings a flower, and one a face, and one Screens from the world a corner choice and small; Each toy its little laureate hath, but none Sings of the whole — as only he sang All. [ 222] TENNYSON To win certain critical suffrages a poet must not be too human; his interests must be narrow and perverse rather than central and sane. Tennyson, however, was a poet more on Goethe's plan, and into the alembic of his art cast every variety of culture and human experience. His poetic gift was nurtured on the sternest studies, particularly in modern science, the study of astronomy (as with his master, Virgil — "caelique vias et sidera mon- strent") having for him a special fascination. It was, doubtless, this strong solution of modern thought in his poetry that helped to win for it such serious attention from his contemporaries, then in the first spiritual throes brought about by the discoveries and speculations of evolutionary science. "Your poetry," said Jowett to him on one occasion, when Tennyson had been fighting shy of one of those strenuous philosophical encounters in which Jowett delighted, "has an element of philosophy more to be considered than any regular philosophy in England. It is almost too much impregnated with philosophy. Yet this to some minds will be its greatest charm." Evidently the robust translator of Plato had not reached the "gone beyond Tennyson" stage! With this philosophic stability went a universality of human sympathy, by which he identified himself with all the national interests and movements and happenings of his time; so that the dreamy singer [ 22 3] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS of "The Lotus Eaters" and "The Palace of Art" would be found on another page meditating geology and astronomy, "terrible muses," on another paint- ing some simple idyl of English country life, as in "Dora"; on another, singing the epic of the emanci- pation of women, and still on another celebrating the heroism of English soldiers at Balaclava. His many-sided talent — as distinct from his essential poetic genius and vision — seemed to delight in experiment, in reclaiming for the poetic domain as large as possible an area of human life and character, often considered as lying prosaically out- side its limits. Thus even he will write dialect studies of rustic types, such as "The Northern Farmer," and the poet of "Lucretius" perpetrate a popular sentimentality such as "The May Queen." From this determination that nothing human — or Victorian! — should be alien to his art, there is undoubtedly a middle-class, domestic smack to some of his work which has naturally provoked distaste in some of his critics, a quality that some- times even creeps into his loftier and more universal meditation. It was his distaste for this quality that prompted Mr. Swinburne to nickname "The Idylls of the King" as "Morte d' Albert, or Idylls of the Prince Consort," a delightfully cruel gibe, for which the poems, noble as for the most part they are, unhappily give a certain warrant. [224] TENNYSON Yet, was it not in these same " Idylls " that God made himself an awful rose of dawn. What an endless array of such nobly beautiful lines, such thrilling magic pictures, throng back upon one's memory as we pick up our old copy of Tennyson, and give thanks for that fortunate birth- day — August 6, 1809! I suspect that many share FitzGerald's prejudice in favour of the earlier poems, and undoubtedly the purest, most essential, poetry is contained in those 1842 two volumes of master- pieces. "Mariana," "The Lotus Eaters," "The Miller's Daughter," "Ulysses," "Oenone," "Will Water- proof," "The Lady of Shalott," "Morte d' Arthur," " Love and Duty." What a perfume in the mention these old titles bring with them, and yet surely it was Old Fitz's characteristic crotchet, rather than a serious criticism, that could forego "Maud" and "In Memoriam" and "The Princess." No man can be so devoted to Crabbe as FitzGerald was without severe limitations. No, there is no need to make distinction between Tennyson's work at one period or another. From beginning to end it presents an entirety of achievement, remarkable in its sustained high quality. One could hardly name another poet whose "collected works" are so free from dead spots and dull patches, so alive with various power and enchantment. What magic music, 15 [ 22 5] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS what golden atmosphere, what fairy vision, what living landscape, what spiritual passion, what noble ardours of sense and soul, what simple tears, what carved and gilded chambers of imagery, lie locked between these old covers. Only Keats may sur- pass him in beauty, only Coleridge in wizardry, and none but Shakespeare can match him at a simple, heart-broken song. No, I am afraid, like Jowett, I have not yet " gone beyond Tennyson." [226] Ill FOUR NOTES ON GEORGE MEREDITH I MODERN LOVE TERE is one of those poems especially dear to the lover of poetry, which, in addition to their intrinsic poetic appeal, bring him a romantic sense of esoteric possession. Such a poem once — but, alas! no longer — was FitzGerald's "Rubaiyat." Twenty years ago it was a hushed and perfumed secret of literature, a hidden honey- comb of Hymettus jealously shared among a for- tunate few. We made manuscript copies of it at midnight for some dear friend, or tried a quatrain on a promising new acquaintance, like a password. The first edition of "Modern Love" shared with the "Rubaiyat" a similar illicit devotion; but, whereas our FitzGerald shrine has long since been invaded by the Cook's tourist of literature, George Meredith's poem, in spite of much enthusiastic advertising, still remains inviolate, a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. The close-woven [227] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS thorn-hedge of its style has proved, and is likely to prove, too forbidding a barrier for the multi- tude, which casts a curious glance on the min- atory inscription over its gate, and passes on to some more accessible pleasaunce. It has been wittily said of George Meredith's poetry, that the poet presents you with admirable nuts, but has neglected to provide nut-crackers. This omission, no doubt, accounts for the fact that the man who loves to keep his poetry to himself and a few friends may still enjoy his "Modern Love," with no fear of picnic parties. This is not meat For little people or for fools. This famous warning against trespassers (found only in the first edition of 1862) has a naive, almost pathetic, look to-day; so accustomed have we become to a noble, nude, and antique treatment of the passion of love, and the tragic dilemmas of marriage in literature. Nowadays, we rather expect our poets to drag their nuptial couches into the street, than are shocked at the hymeneal exposure; and the novelist is no longer forbid to tell the secrets of his domestic prison-house. In 1862, however, public sentiment had several severe and salutary shocks ahead of it. Swinburne's " Poems and Bal- lads" had yet to come, also Rossetti's "The House [223] MODERN LOVE of Life." The whole " fleshly school " of poetry and painting was just beginning its work. Nor had Wagner acclimatised a Prince Consort England to "Laus Veneris." " Modern Love," therefore, would come to a scandalised 1862 with a factitious piquancy as being the earliest matrimonial torture-chamber thrown open to the public. One can imagine its gasp of bewildered prudery, as 1862 opened the rather dry, unpromising-looking volume, and fell upon the masterly first sonnet, in which at once the scene and the theme of the poem are flashed upon us by a few vivid strokes, as of lightning. How audacious even still is the art that fears not to paint so intimate a picture of a tragic human situation, that in other hands could only have been a vulgarly realistic " photographie d'alcove." But how the noble imagery, the elemental metaphoric method, lift it far above any such comparison! Like sculptured effigies they might be seen Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between; Each wishing for the sword that severs all. And now to-day, as I hinted, we are fortunate in being able to accept and enjoy the poem, undis- quieted by any novelty in its philosophy, or dis- tracted by any sense of its smacking of propaganda. Doubtless, it grew out of a cruel and complex matrimonial situation, and Meredith, doubtless, [229J SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS wrote out of the bitter anguish and bewilderment and irony of his heart; "bitter constraint and sad occasion dear" made this poem as they have made all the great and lovely things of art; but we no longer care what the particular matrimonial situa- tion was, how far it was autobiographical, nor indeed need we be curious to disentangle the some- what enigmatic drama of the poem. All that matters to us is the beauty that has flowered out of that stern soil of poignant circumstance; the pattern, the music, that a potent interpretative individuality was able to wring from the tragic travail of his soul. One of Meredith's favourite tests of the poetic nature was — how far it is able to take the rock and rubble, the pain and harshness and bitterness of things, and make them sing. No poet has had a firmer, deeper faith in, so to say, the philosophical significance and value of beauty as a product. His faith in life, in nature — "our only visible friend" — is founded mainly on nature's inexhaustible capac- ity for transmuting "ancient wrath and wreck" into ever new forms of vital joy and victorious being. His philosophy seems to have been — that so long as a situation, however "tragic," can be made to "sing," we need not despair of life. This is the teaching of all his writing, particularly of his austerely sweet nature poetry; and here in 'Modern Love,' thus early in his life and in the vigorous [230] MODERN LOVE young manhood of his powers, we find him applying it to perhaps the most agonising of human dilemmas. These two were rapid falcons in a snare, Condemn'd to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wander 'd once; clear as the dew on flowers: Then each applied to each that fatal knife, Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul When hot for certainties in this our life! Exactly what these "tragic hints" hint at may sometimes seem a little dark. Meredith is almost tiresomely sibylline, and somewhat overdoes the part of psychologic mystery-man. If only he would consent sometimes to be a little more clear, one feels that he would gain even in profundity. For, after all, one thing in life is very little more mysterious than another; and no ill-mated marriage, however complex, is so beyond the disentangling skill and suggestion of words that we need make Egyptian darkness of it — of the simple facts, I mean, that give rise to the psychologic situation which is the poem's reason for existence. "Rapid falcons in a snare . . ." — the imagery is picturesque, but with two such souls as we have tragic glimpses of in other moments and attitudes, are we to think of a mistaken marriage as a "snare" [ 2 3i] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS that could so tragically lime and entangle them? Strong souls have always made short work of such snares. So, it would hardly seem that "Modern Love " is really motived by that protest against the convention of marriage which is the theme of Meredith's later novels. The sorrow is deeper than that. It is the sorrow of a more ideal experi- ment, the sorrow of the almost impossibility of a perfect union between man and woman, with the best will in the world on both sides. "Modern" Love! In a way, the title jars, as being a little cheap, merely contemporary, journalistic. Yet, probably, Meredith meant it to stand for a sensitive evolution of the passion of love, which perhaps has only emerged with the keener mysteries of modern science; a love which lays stress on the physical sacrament, more and more for mysterious spiritual reasons. Pagan love laid stress on that, and pro- prietorial love is its outcome, the love of jealous ownership and murder; mediaeval love, on the other hand, laid stress on the purely spiritual relation, endeavouring to divorce the body and the soul of passion, and retain only the soul. Modern love, however, is jealous of the body because the so-called materialistic sciences have taught it that body and soul are mysteriously, and sacredly, one. I must be "faithful " to you, you must be faithful to me — ■ not on the constraint of any external contract, but [232] MODERN LOVE because of the chemical adherence and fidelity of the very particles of our flesh, harmoniously destined for magic union one with the other. O if that should fail and by some defect of nature go astray ! Then is our tragedy — then we write " Modern Love"; and, having dreamed greatly of a love that believes not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the immortality of matter, we Cannot be at peace In having Love upon a mortal lease. — cannot consent to ''eat our pot of honey on the grave." " Modern Love" is the tragedy, in terms of human love, of an idealism which Walter Pater has also symbolised in the story of "Sebastian Van Storck," the tragedy of a temperament haunted by the Infinite and the Perfect, and rendered melancholy by its "fastidious refusal to be or to do any limited thing"; a temperament which cannot accept the apparent conditions of Nature — Whose hands bear, here, a seed-bag; there, an urn, — and play the game of life and love on her terms of "seasons — not eternities." Our "human rose" is too mysteriously fair. Our human joy seems to carry with it too hallowed a sense of immortality. It is a noble spiritual agony, the last ordeal of that finely tempered clay that will not accept [ 2 33] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS the senses, except on the terms of the spirit; the last bitter cup, maybe, of initiation of the dreaming indomitable soul, still faithful to its mystic vision of permanent reality, unseduced by pleasure and undismayed even by the face of death. So, it seems to one, "Modern Love" interprets itself with grander, more cosmic, meanings, as it more surely ascends to its place among the austere fixed stars of English poetry, and as we bring to it hearts and minds less occupied with the mere bloom and song of things, and sadly set to hear more of the strange secret of that bloom and song. The vivid human tableaux, the painfully ironic pictures of the mere human dilemma, are as vivid as ever; the mortal story, so dramatically flashed in tragic hints, grips and agonises us as at our first reading; but the more we read the poem the more we value it for the iron song that sweeps through it, the austere music as of the wind among pines on a starry night, and for its noble beauty as of tragic bronze. II THE 185 1 POEMS If it be true, as Mark Pattison held, that an ap- preciation of Milton is the reward of a lifelong cul- ture, it is none the less true that the appreciation of Meredith is largely a fortunate accident of temper- [ 2 34] THE 1851 POEMS ament. The conservative, traditional, academic type of mind reads him, when it reads him at all, with im- patience, too much resenting his rebellious impres- sionism to appreciate and enjoy his virile creativeness, his riotous vitality. For such minds writing is still an art of statement, impassioned maybe, but still state- ment; with Meredith and writers affiliated to him, writing is an art of suggestion, using for its ends all available means and methods, pressing into its service arts "alien to the artist," and perhaps more and more employing the methods of music and painting. Meredith's writing is essentially modern, the prod- uct of an age that produced Wagner. Carlyle and Browning were, of course, the first exponents of the style, and Meredith learned much from both of them. All three stand together as the innovators of a form of expression, almost journalistic in its determination to flash the immediate effect, and Shakespearean in the audacity of its metaphoric method — a method designed to reveal and to embody the last intimacy of insight and sensation. Of course, all three are innovating artists, because they are first innovating thinkers, and their subject- matter no less than their manner is disturbing to minds that feel — and possibly with justice — that art is not concerned with new thinking, but with the ancient verities, and indeed loses its immortal beauty and infinite serenity when it gives ear to [235] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS those spiritual and intellectual "storms that rage outside its happy ground." Thought is said to be destructive of beauty, disastrous to fair faces; and there are those who would seem to feel that art is unnaturally employed in the expression of spiritual struggle, or sensual turmoil. Art, they would seem to say, should be static, not dynamic. Poetry for such is the expression of traditional themes in the traditional poetic manner — and they are by no means all wrong. For, as one grows older — and to grow older is proverbially to grow more conservative — one comes better to understand the academic distaste for writers of the Carlyle-Browning-Meredith school, and grows more to insist that writing shall be writing — not talking, however brilliant, not fantastic flashlighting of one's theme, no merely pyrotechnic hints of one's meaning, or musical adumbrations, or the presen- tation of a verbal palette, however chromatic and bizarre, for a picture. We crave "the little word big with eternity," the one inevitable metaphor, the word worthy of eternal marble, the image as immediate and universal as lightning or the cry of a child; not the innumerable tentative word, how- ever vivid and strange, nor the play of clustering imagery, however Protean or merely harlequinesque. And the more we demand this expressive finality and universality of literature, the more we realise that [236] THE 1 85 1 POEMS these three writers I have classed together are inspired prophetic journalists, moulders of the spiritual aspiration of their time, rather than endur- ing voices of the eternal meanings. It is exceedingly improbable that any one of them will be read, or even understood, a hundred years from now; for they write, so to speak, in the spiritual slang of the day. They have all worked, for the most part, in the perishable medium of contemporary utterance, and on, of course, a far higher plane, must suffer a similar disintegration to that which must inevitably overtake the clay masterpieces of Mr. Kipling. But the prophet must always, of necessity, be somewhat of a journalist, and the fact of his utterance being more adapted for its immediate purpose than for permanent inspiration, is not to say that the divine fire is not in him, or that he is not a chosen vessel of vast service to his day and generation. It is quite possible to be a great writer, without appeal- ing to posterity; and such writers as I am speaking of will probably reach posterity rather as spiritual influences in the blood of Time than as names upon his lips or living voices in his ears. So much in concession to the conservative, classic, point of view; yet happy is the man whose enjoy- ment of Paradise Lost does not preclude him from appreciation of Leaves of Grass, or whom Words- l 2 37] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS worth — with his somewhat anthropomorphic worship of nature — has not disqualified for understanding of Meredith's sterner "reading of earth." Whether or not there are ears to hear Meredith in the future will depend upon his style, upon the durability of his verbal method; it is to be hoped for the sake of our great-great-grandchildren that they may be able to decipher that " Meredithese," which, though difficult even to us, has a certain thrill of contemporary intimacy that enables us to guess at the spiritual meaning when the writing itself is somewhat verbally dark; for the spiritual and intellectual content of Meredith's writing is of that eternal importance which concerns men in all ages. Man will be as much in need of a practical faith in the invisible powers and the divine signifi- cance of the human struggle a thousand years hence as to-day; and, for that reason, it is to be hoped that Meredith's message may still survive, though it will surely need the aid of a glossary. Yet, as we still read Chaucer for pleasure, maybe men a thou- sand years hence will still painfully translate Mere- dith for the good of their souls. Man has many ways of attaining faith. The ways vary with his temperament. But the way most convincing to the modern, or present-day, mind is the way of the fact. Not faith founded on fiction, but faith founded on fact. Such faith it [238] THE 185 1 POEMS is that Meredith brings us. The strength of his philosophy lies in his facing all the facts, ugly and beautiful, stern and gentle. Perhaps it is a Mani- chean world — but Meredith never doubts that God has the best of it. The devil is merely a part of the process. In proof of this, what more do you need than — a rose! And O, green bounteous Earth! Bacchante Mother! Stern to those Who live not in thy heart of mirth; Death shall I shrink from, loving thee? Into the breast that gives the rose, Shall I with shuddering jail? A rose — or an automobile. Both would serve alike to Meredith as evidences of the divine energy, ever feeding with celestial fire this mysterious activity we call life. His novels are lit with this invincible faith in "the upper glories," in spite of their dealing so constantly with sophisticated social types and con- ditions; even through them Meredith was able to find "the developments and the eternal meanings." Meredith was a comedian, a social satirist, as well as a spiritual teacher and a poet. It is, indeed, because he was so much a man of this world that we pay such attentive heed to what he has to say about the next. He loves to take life in apparently its most artificial, most unreal, developments, to [ 2 39] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS demonstrate for us that, however sublunary or exiled from "the healthy breath of morn" it may seem, it is none the less fed by the great forces, and still a thing of magic and mysterious destiny. This radiant faith, diffused in his novels, is to be found concentrated — perhaps too much concen- trated—in Meredith's poetry. There are those who think that Meredith expressed himself most lastingly in his verse; and there are others who cannot read his verse at all. The positive side of an argument is usually that best worth listening to. When we find that a new and strange light, so inspiringly visible to us, is nothing but Egyptian darkness to others — we can but mercifully conclude that those others are blind. Meredith's verse, in its later developments particularly, is hard reading, strangely, perhaps wilfully, crabbed and cryptic; but it is no more so than Browning's, and the message it holds for us within its rough and prickly husk is better worth finding. His verse has a dis- tinction that Browning's seldom attained, and both poets are curiously alike in their alternation be- tween lyric simplicity and sibylline mystification. The two volumes of Meredith's verse, recently published by Messrs. Scribners, which are the occasion of these remarks,* bring together the two * Poems Written in Early Youth and Last Poems. By George Meredith. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910. [240] THE 1851 POEMS extremes of Meredith's poetic achievement, in a striking contrast of method, but an equally striking harmony of spiritual attitude. The Meredith of the Last Poems, and the Meredith of the Poems Written in Early Youth are one and the same, the septuagenarian and the boy of twenty-three, in their jubilant affirmation of the joyous significance of life; though of the two we cannot but feel that it is the boy who is the better poet. Take this fragment from the Last Poems: This love of nature that allures to take Irregularity for harmony, Of larger scope than our hard measures make, Cherish it as thy school for when on thee The ills of life descend. Here the old man is still of the same mind with the boy, but the boy said it better when he sang of Nature as "our only visible friend — " when he wrote in his remarkable poem " The Spirit of Earth in Autumn" — Great Mother Nature! teach me, like thee, To kiss the season and shun regrets. And am I more than the mother who bore, Mock me not with thy harmony! Teach me to blot regrets, Great Mother! me inspire With faith that forward sets But feeds the living fire. 16 I 241 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Faith that never frets For vagueness in the form. In life, O keep me warm! For what is human grief? And what do men desire? Teach me to feel myself the tree, And not the withered leaf. Fixed am I and await the dark to be. The beauty of "Love in the Valley" needs no further praise. It is one of the most perfect poems in the English tongue. There are some of us who would not exchange it for Keats. Also, in his early (185 1) poems Meredith sang with a simplicity curiously contrasted with his later manner. That young book is full of ballads and lyrics, ballads all swing and bloom, that would surprise those who have only read "The Egoist " or "Diana of the Cross ways." Take this ballad of "Beauty Rohtraut," for example: BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke) What is the name of King Ringang's daughter? Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut! And what does she do the livelong day, Since she dare not knit and spin alway? O hunting and fishing is ever her play! And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be! I'd hunt and fish right merrily! Be silent, heart! [242] THE 1851 POEMS And it chanced that, after this some time, Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, The boy in the Castle has gained access, And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress, To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess; And, O! that a king's son I might be! Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly. Hush! hush! my heart. Under a grey old oak they sat, Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut! She laughs: "Why look you so slyly at me? If you have heart enough, come, kiss me." Cried the breathless boy, " Kiss thee?" But he thinks, kind fortune has favored my youth; And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth. Down! down! mad heart. Then slowly and silently they rode home, — Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut! The boy was lost in his delight: "And, wert thou Empress this very night, I would not heed or feel the blight; Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd. Hush! hush! wild heart." Or this bitter song which includes in its singing somewhat of that later sorrow which probably made "Modern Love:" SONG Fair and false! No dawn will greet Thy waking beauty as of old; [ 2 43] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS The little flower beneath thy feet Is alien to thy smile so cold; The merry bird flown up to meet Young morning from his nest i' the wheat, Scatters his joy to wood and wold, But scorns the arrogance of gold. False and fair! I scarce know why, But standing in the lonely air, And underneath the blessed sky, I plead for thee in my despair; — For thee cut off, both heart and eye From living truth; thy spring quite dry; For thee, that heaven my thought may share, Forget — how false! and think — how fair! Yet even one's final thought of Modern Love, poignant and dramatic as its human tragedy is, is not of the individuals — it is: We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, And in the osier-isle we heard their noise. . . . that sonnet superbly praised by Swinburne as only he could praise. Meredith, remarkable and fascinating personality as, of course, he was, never seemed to have any individual history. If ever Nature, in the phrase of Matthew Arnold, took the pen and wrote, the hand was not Wordsworth's, the hand was George Meredith's. Wordsworth was a Puritan with a great literary gift, moralising upon Nature. Mere- dith was a pagan — in the best sense of the word, [244] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY understanding her, one of her children. He was as his own Melampus, who: With love exceeding a simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; The good physician Melampus, loving them all, Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. Wordsworth never wrote: Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star, and he never wrote anything more filled with magic of the Nature he loved. But comparisons are proverbial. Wordsworth loved Nature like a preacher. Meredith loved her like a man — or, perhaps, I should say, like the Great God Pan — of whom, I am inclined to think, he was an incarna- tion. There is the significance of his poetry. Ill GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY What George Meredith meant to young minds some twenty or thirty years ago can hardly, I sup- pose, be realised by the more sophisticated young minds of to-day — young minds that have been born [245] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS and grown up in a spiritual atmosphere largely of George Meredith's creation, and have been nour- ished on writers who, almost as much as his own books, are emanations of his Jovelike brain. There were, so to say, many secret societies of literature in those days — freemasonries of serious, enthusiastic youth, more or less affiliated. There was the secret society of Walt Whitman. Shall I ever forget the evening — of which, I confess, I have written before — when two such enthusiastic youths, on tramp through the English countryside, arrived at the drizzling end of the day at the welcome shelter of an inn, and entering a dreary and apparently de- serted coffee-room, found, to their intense astonish- ment, a copy of Leaves of Grass lying on a table! Who on earth could it belong to in that outlandish bucolic spot? As we vociferously gave vent to our delighted surprise, an arm-chair turned around from the fireside at the far end of the room, and a pleasant voice exclaimed, "So you know Whitman!" And then, of course, we sat up till the morning star, in rapt, transfiguring talk. Let us build three taber- nacles! Such meetings in those days meant life- long friendships, as doubtless they still mean to youth with other more recent enthusiasms. Then, of course, there was the secret society of FitzGerald, the secret society of Pater, the secret [246] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY society of Stevenson — of course we always said R. L. S. But perhaps the secret society that prided itself most on its mysterious aristocracy was the secret society of George Meredith. To belong to "that acute and honourable minority" that cherished "Richard Feverel" as the Bible of Young Love, and was able, so to speak, to read "The Egoist" in the original, was to feel one's self something like a Rosicrucian of literature. But this was to belong merely to the outer circle. As in all mysterious orders, there was, in the case of Meredith, an inner circle of illuminati, who looked somewhat patronisingly on those who only knew him by his novels. For them the last word of the Master was in his poetry, in " Modern Love," then in a rare first edition, and in the incomparably rarer " Poems" of 185 1. One might hope to possess the first, and then only, edition of "Modern Love," but one could only hope to catch sight of the "Poems" of 1851 in the library of some rich col- lector friend, who might, if he were particularly human, consent to let us take it home over night. One phase of our Meredith worship was indigna- tion that so great a master had so long suffered the neglect not only of the public but of the critics, though at the same time we were proud as peacocks to have him all to ourselves. Actually, as we shall [ 2 47] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS have further occasion to consider, Mr. Meredith had not been so neglected by the critics as in our young championship we supposed. He had been gener- ously recognised by such minds as George Eliot, Swinburne, James Thomson, Mark Pattison, long before we were born; but of that most of us were unaware; so we regarded with unutterable contempt a world that apparently knew him not — though, as I said, inwardly rejoicing that he was our own — a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. In the volume * entitled Poems Written in Early Youth, just published by Messrs. Scribner, the gate of that old enchanted garden is thrown open to the world, so that that mythical person who runs may read. The volume contains the whole of that precious 185 1 "Poems," all the poems from "Mod- ern Love" (first edition) except "Modern Love" itself, and "Scattered Poems" gathered from old magazines and newspapers. In publishing this vol- ume Messrs. Scribner do a notable service to lov- ers of poetry, for that 1851 volume — although Mr. Meredith in later years, with characteristic * Poems Written in Early Youth: Poems from Modern Love and Scattered Poems. By George Meredith. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. George Meredith: Some Early Appreciations. Selected by Maurice Buxton Forman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Last Poems. By George Meredith. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. [248] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY perversity, would not hear it mentioned — contains some of the loveliest poetry he ever wrote. To think that in that dingy, unpromising-looking vol- ume, "Love in the Valley," loveliest of modern love poems, saw the light for the first time ! Is there any wonder that the young enthusiasts of whom I have spoken regarded the little book as one of the most precious of all unattainable bibliophilistic things? And how much more there was in it thrilling with the same pure rapture of young love, a rapture which Meredith more than any other poet makes one feel is a part of nature's own creative rapture — one with the wild rose, one with the soaring lark, one with the tumult of passionate waters, one with the soft thunder of the west wind roaring through the spring woodland. Take, for example, this song of " Angelic Love ": Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips To meet its earthly mate; Heroic love that to its sphere's eclipse Can dare to join its fate With one beloved devoted human heart, And share with it the passion and the smart, The undying bliss Of its most fleeting kiss; The fading grace Of its most sweet embrace: — Angelic love, heroic love! Whose birth can only be above, [249] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Whose wandering must be on earth, Whose haven where it first had birth ! Love that can part with all but its own worth, And joy in every sacrifice That beautifies its Paradise And gently like a golden-fruited vine With earnest tenderness itself consign, And creeping up deliriously entwine ! Its dear delicious arms Round the beloved being ! With fair unfolded charms, All-trusting, and all-seeing — Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine ! While to the panting heart's dry yearning drouth Buds the rich dewy mouth — Tenderly uplifted, Like two rose leaves, drifted Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South ! Such love, such love is thine, Such heart is mine O thou of mortal visions most divine ! I think it would be hardly possible to find a love lyric in English which more rapturously embodies "the love where earth and heaven meet" in the mysterious embrace of soul and sense. In fact in the poetry of no other English poet do I find just this quality of the fusion of so-called earthly passion and spiritual love — a quality which is seen to be Meredith's most characteristic possession from the beginning to the end of his work. We will note [250] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY it still in his "last poems" as here in his first, and it makes the noble vitality of all his novels. It flowers in lovely profusion throughout this first book of his, and I would I had space to quote more of the songs scattered here and there among more ambitious poems of great beauty and power; poems on classical themes such as "Daphne," "The Rape of Aurora," and "The Shipwreck of Idomeneus"; poems in which the various myths are revitalised by the same spirit of passionate interpretation which Meredith applied to the whole of life, from star to beetle. However, I must find room for this tender song: I cannot lose thee for a day, But like a bird with restless wing My heart will find thee far away, And on thy bosom fall and sing. My nest is here, my rest is here; — And in the lull of wind and rain Fresh voices make a sweet refrain : "His rest is there, his nest is there." With thee the wind and sky are fair, But parted, both are strange and dark; And treacherous the quiet air That holds me singing like a lark, O shield my love, strong arm above! Till in the hush of wind and rain, Fresh voices make a rich refrain, "The arm above will shield thy love." One curious thing to note about these songs, [251] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS when one remembers the cryptic and crabbed style of Meredith's later poetry, is their singing quality, their gay, liquid rhythms. Who that only knows his later verse would have thought that Meredith once sang like this : Under boughs of breathing May, In the mild spring-time I lay, Lonely, for I had no love; And the sweet birds all sang for pity — Cuckoo, lark, and dove. To turn to the purely nature poems, this young volume contains the superb "South- West Wind in the Woodland," in which the manner, though some- what simpler, is almost identical with that of the "Songs and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth," written many years after. Here are the same, almost stern, virility of phrase, the same lightning pictures, — a whole world of natural observation compressed into a single line — or even word — the same dare-devil imagery. Who ever wrote of nature like this except Meredith : The great South-West drives o'er the earth And loosens all his roaring robes Behind him, over heath and moor. Now whirring like an eagle's wing Preparing for a wide blue flight; [ 252 ] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY Now flapping like a sail that tacks And chides the wet bewildered mast; Now screaming like an anguished thing Chased close by some down-breathing beak; Now wailing like a breathing heart, That will not wholly break, but hopes With hope that knows itself in vain; Now threatening like a storm-charged cloud; Now cooing like a woodland dove; Now up again in roar and wrath High soaring and wide sweeping; now With sudden fury dashing down Full force on the awaiting woods. In a fascinating series of "Pastorals" he sings of nature in her tenderer, more voluptuous moods — and was the voluptuousness, the intoxication, of a ramble through a summer day ever sung before or since like this ? Summer glows warm on the meadows; then come let us roam thro' them gaily, Heedless of heat and the hot-kissing sun, and the fear of dark freckles. Never one kiss will he give on a neck or a lily-white forehead, Chin, hand, or bosom uncovered, all panting, to take the chance coolness — But full sure the fiery pressure leaves seal of espousal. Heed him not; come, tho' he kiss till the soft little upper lip loses Half its pure whiteness, just speck'd where the curve of the rosy mouth reddens. [ 2 53] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Come, let him kiss, let him kiss, and his kisses shall make thee the sweeter. Thou art no nun, veiled and vowed; doomed to nourish a withering pallor ! City exotics beside thee would show like bleached linen at midday, Hung upon hedges of eglantine ! Thou in the freedom of nature, Full of her beauty and wisdom, gentleness, joyance, and kindness ! Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of noontide, Deep in the sweet summer meadows border'd by hillside and river; Lined with long trenches half hidden, where smell of white meadow-sweet, sweetest Blissfully hovers — O sweetest ! but pluck it not, even in the tenderest Grasp it will lose breath and wither; like many, not made for a posy. See, the sun slopes down to the meadows, where all the flowers are falling ! Falling unhymned, for the nightingale scarce ever charms the long twilight: Mute with the cares of the nest; only known by a "chuck, chuck," and dovelike Call of content; but the finch and the linnet and blackcap pipe loudly. Round on the western hillside warbles the rich-billed ouzel, And the shrill throstle is filling the tangled thickening copses; l 2 54] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY Singing o'er hyacinths hid and most honey 'd of flowers, white field-rose. Joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own beloved country; Revel all day, till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet "tirra-lirra," Trilling delightfully. See, on the river the slow-rippled surface Shining; the slow ripple broadens in circles; the bright surface smoothens. Now it is flat as the leaves of the yet unseen water-lily. There dart the lives of a day, ever-varying tactics fantastic. There, by the wet-mirrored osiers, the emerald wing of the kingfisher Flashes, the fish in his beak! There the dabchick dived, and the motion Lazily undulates all through the tall standing army of rushes. There is no need to draw attention to the marvel- lous particularity of observation of natural things shown in this passage. Grant Allen used to say that Meredith was the most learned naturalist in England, and that, whenever he was in doubt about some bird or flower, he would walk over and consult Meredith; for they were near neighbours. Now let us pause and think that these remarkable poems were printed, not written, when Meredith was but a lad of 23; and, of course, they must, therefore, have been written, many of them, long before. [255] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Such marvellous precocity of maturity is surely unmatched by the record of any other English poet — not forgetting Keats. How, one asks, was this marvellous boy received by his contemporaries? Owing to a happy inspiration of Mr. Maurice Buxton Forman, the answer is here to our hand, for in a volume entitled " George Meredith, Some Early Appreciations," Mr. Forman has collected together various contemporary notices of Meredith's books as they from time to time appeared. The volume includes two long, as we say, "important," notices of these 185 1 poems, one by William Michael Rossetti and the other by Charles Kingsley. Both treat the young poet with considerable, indeed surprising, seriousness — when one remembers that it was a young poet's first book — and both recognise, in varying degrees, his great gifts. Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes somewhat ponder- ously and patronisingly, after his wont, and makes an elaborate comparison between young Meredith and Keats. Kingsley also incidentally compares him with Keats. Strange nowadays to see Meredith described as a "Keatsian"! "The main quality of Mr. Meredith's poems," continues Mr. Rossetti, "is warmth — warmth of emotion, and, to a certain extent, of imagination, like the rich mantling blush on a beautiful face, or a breath glowing upon your cheek. That he is young [256] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY will be as unmistakably apparent to the reader as to ourself; on which score various shortcomings and crudities, not less than some excess of this attribute, claim indulgence." Mr. Rossetti concludes with this patronising pas- sage, which has a pathetically ridiculous look to-day: We do not expect ever quite to enrol Mr. Mere- dith among the demigods or heroes; and we hesitate, for the reason just given, to say that we count on greater things from him; but we shall not cease to look for his renewed appearance with hope, and to hail it with extreme pleasure, so long as he may continue to produce poems equal to the best in this first volume. How sad and chapfallen old criticism has a way of looking, and how pitiably silly; and it is in many such passages as this that Mr. Forman's book affords one much cruel entertainment. Charles Kingsley's criticism causes no such smile. Among his many noble qualities Kingsley enjoyed what Swinburne has called "the noble pleasure of praising"; and he was, at the same time, a critic of great insight. In his review of the young Meredith he shows himself a critic of no little foresight, too. It is interesting to note that his review, which was entitled "This Year's Song Crop," and appeared in Fraser's Magazine, December, 1851, included re- views, too, of Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Win- *7 1 257] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS dows" and Thomas Lovell Beddoes's collected poems. This, we understand [begins Kingsley], is Mr. George Meredith's first appearance in print; if it be so, there is very high promise in the unambitious little volume which he has sent forth as his first- fruits. It is something to have written already some of the most delicious little love poems which we have seen born in England in the last few years, reminding us by their richness and quaintness of tone of Herrick; yet with a depth of thought and feeling which Herrick never reached. Health and sweetness are two qualities which run through all these poems. They are often overloaded — often somewhat clumsy and ill-expressed — often wanting polish and finish; but they are all genuine, all melodiously conceived, if not always melodiously executed. Kingsley then proceeds to quote two songs, one of which I quoted above, "I Cannot Lose Thee for a Day." Continuing, he says: "In Mr. Meredith's Pastorals, too, there is a great deal of sweet, whole- some writing, more like real pastorals than those of any young poet whom we have had for many a year." So one sees that Meredith fared far better with his first volume than most youngsters. It would be most entertaining to follow Buxton Forman through his other "retrospective views"; [258] GEORGE MEREDITH'S POETRY to quote George Eliot's enthusiastic praise of "The Shaving of Shagpat," to tell what The London Times of the morning of October 14, 1859, had to say of "Richard Feverel," or The Saturday Review of "Evan Harrington," or The Morning Post of "Rhoda Fleming"; but we must forego these delights. The reader must buy the book for himself and take a curious object-lesson in the making of fame. Particularly would I draw his attention to the masculine reviews of James Thomson, the tragic poet of "The City of Dread- ful Night," one of the earliest and most militant Meredithians. And now I take in my hand the little sheaf of "Last Poems," the gleanings from so majestic a harvest. I said that we should find in these last poems the same indomitable rapture as in the first, and here it is, no whit chilled by the years; and here still is the old bloom, the old, stalwart, passionate trust in the strong, sweet earth, the old valiant faith in "the upper glories," and the old sure reliance that the two are one. You seek in vain here for the pathos or palsy of age. No, it was an old man wrote this, a very old man, this of "The Wild Rose": High climbs June's wild rose, Her bush all blooms in a swarm, And swift from the In id she blows, [ 2 59] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS In a day when the wooer is warm; Frank to receive and give, Her bosom is open to bee and sun; Pride she has none, Nor shame she knows; Happy to live. It was an old man who wrote this: Open horizons round, O mounting mind, to scenes unsung, Wherein shall walk a lustv Time; Our earth is young; Of measure without bound; Infinite are the heights to climb, The depths to sound. The three great spiritual poets of the Victorian era — Tennyson, Browning, and Meredith — all died very old men, and each of them died valiantly singing the song of victorious life — a thought to make a younger generation of pessimists ashamed of itself. Of the three the faith of Meredith is, for me, the most convincing, for it was drawn from no formal creed or philosophy, and it was softened by no suspicion of sentimental optimism. He drew it direct from nature's heart — nature, which he has finely called "our only visible friend." Here, in his last words to us, he emphasises the faith in which he lived his life, a faith that fills all his work with a divine energy and a shining courage: [260] IN MEMORIAM This love of nature, that allows to take Irregularity for harmony, Of larger scope than our hard measures make, Cherish it as thy school for when on thee The ills of life descend. It was an iron faith, but a true faith can be made of no other metal. IV GEORGE MEREDITH: IN MEMORIAM As I walked through the spring woods this morn- ing I saw the wild white cherry in blossom, and I said to myself, "The wild white cherry blooms again — and Meredith died yesterday." Readers of Meredith's poetry — all too few — will know what I meant, will remember that for him the wild white cherry was the symbol of spiritual resurrection, and will recall with what striking effect he used it in that cryptic but sternly bracing poem, "A Faith on Trial." In that poem he tells how, stricken to earth with a great grief that had seemed to take away all his faith in life and God and nature, he walked up through the spring woodland with aching heart, and there, suddenly, he came upon a wild white cherry which had fought its way through the rocks, and, in spite of every re- pressive force against it held up its banner of irre- pressible blossom. In this wild white cherry Mere- [261] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS dith saw a symbol of the indomitable endurance and immortal energy of the human spirit, a glimpse of the divine hope that, as well as tears, dwells in all mortal things. And he went down the hill again, with his heart comforted and his faith in life re- stored. Meredith's poems, of all his writings, were nearest to his heart, and the strange, though not en- tirely unaccountable, neglect of them was the only point where his lordly philosophic indifference to public opinion was liable to break down. Perhaps I may be permitted a personal remi- niscence in illustration of this. The incident seems amusing to me now, but then it seemed only filled with the blushes of embarrassment; for I was very young, and had gone with awe and adoration to spend a day or two, as it seemed to me, on Parnassus Hill, at Meredith's country home at Dorking, in Surrey. My visit had been one long dream of sitting at the feet of the master, whom above all I wor- shipped, a visit almost speechless on my part, but on his filled with that wonderful talk for which he was, of course, famous. He had taken me up to the little chalet, on the hillside above his house, where he did his writing, and had actually read to me, with his own voice, from his own manuscript, chapters from The Amazing Marriage, which he was then writing. Think of it! I can hardly think of it to-day without tears. When he had finished reading, [262] IN MEMORIAM I timidly asked him, for I was a great collector in those days, if he would give me a page of his manu- script, any manuscript. He assented with royal geniality. Of course his manuscripts meant nothing to him. And then we went down the hill to the house for luncheon, at which one or two other guests were present. My visit had come to an end, and my train left soon after luncheon, and all the time my mind was full of my promised manuscript and anxiety to secure it before I went. So, toward the end of the meal, I ventured to remind Mr. Meredith of his promise. But, O of all flat-footed, unfor- tunate speeches, this was the way I asked him: " Of course, Mr. Meredith," I said, " I don't ask for anything important. If I might only have a little poem — " Unhappy boy! The words were scarcely out of my mouth when Meredith turned on me with a look of Olympian scorn, which well became that grand manner at all times his, and poured upon my unlucky head a tirade of that fan- atstic sarcasm of which he was past master. I cannot reproduce it here, for it was aerily elaborate as his conversational manner was, but the text on which he mercilessly fantasticated was: "O, I see! You don't want anything important — nothing important — only one of my poems. Ah!" And then he began, utterly indifferent to my embar- rassment, wilfully cruel, and ignoring articles of [263] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS mine on his poetry which, that very day, he had praised — articles boyish enough, but filled at least with enthusiastic appreciation. The other guests were sorry for me, and begged for mercy. I tried to explain that I had meant that I did not expect the manuscript of "Richard Feverel" or "The Egoist " ; but it was all to no purpose. I never got my manuscript. Yet one cannot blame Meredith for being testy about the neglect of his poetry. That "Modern Love" should have remained in a forgotten first edition for over twenty years is one of the inscrutable mysteries of literary appreciation. Of course the reason that will be offered for its neglect, and for the neglect of Meredith's other poetry, is that the expression is often obscure and sibylline — which is true, but no more true than it is of Browning; and there is much of Meredith's poetry that is limpid clear. It would be hard to find another poem more filled with fragrant nature pictures and more haunting music than "Love in the Valley," which is simplicity itself. Nor is there in English any nature poetry with quite the same quality at once of wood magic and authentic earthiness — the sweet peaty smell of earth, berries, and bearded mosses and all the aromatic rough underbrush of things. And yet you may meet many a lover of poetry before you meet one who knows "The Woods of Wester- [264] IN MEMORIAM main" or the other "Songs and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth." The final significance of Meredith's writings, whether poetry or prose, is that he was a great poet- philosopher who believed in the spiritual nature of the material universe — by no means an optimist in the cheap sense; but a stern, joyous thinker whose faith held every possible doubt in solution, one who flinched at no fact, and one who feared no ghost. And this philosophy of his he expressed by means of a versatile apparatus of gifts which belonged to no other man of his time. He could express it through a divine love story such as "Richard Feverel," or through a sardonic comedy such as "The Egoist," or through a storv of stern action such as " Vittoria." For sheer wit, of course, there is no novelist in English that approaches him, and the debt of his younger contemporaries to him for inspiration, such contemporaries as Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, is beyond calculation. He was the secret sustaining energy behind most modern English thinking, and the greatest spiritual force of our time. As for Mr. Henry James, he may literally be said to have sprung, Minerva-like, from the brain of George Meredith. Swinburne, only a few days ago, and now Meredith ! All the great Victorians gone. It makes the world seem homeless, and, so to say, shabby — for, to [265] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS some of us at least, it was inspiring to feel that we were living in the same world with great men. There were giants, too, in our days. But almost every kind of giant has gone, and the world seems to grow smaller every minute. When Bjornson and Tolstoy go, there won't be a great man left in the world. Well, George Meredith, good-bye. I am going to walk up the hill again and look at the wild white cherry in bloom. Perhaps, too, I may catch a glimpse of Lucy and Richard by the river. [266] IV RE-READING HAWTHORNE IT will be a hundred years ago this fourth of July since Nathaniel Hawthorne was born at 27 Union Street, Salem, Massa- chusetts; and on May 18, 1864, he saw the sun set for the last time. Such a lapse of years between his day and ours fairly entitles us, perhaps, to regard ourselves as that "posterity" with whose judgment a writer's fame is supposed to rest. Forty years is the copyright life of a book, but, alas! the books are few indeed that do not expire before their copy- rights. The present is an appropriate moment to ask: how is it with Hawthorne? How do his books wear? What is his significance in literature? Most of us, I suppose, read his works when we were young, — too young, perhaps, to appreciate the fine- ness of his art, — but, now that we are not quite so young, how do his books bear reading again, and with what permanence of appeal do they sup- port his fame? To me, fresh from such re-read- ing, only one answer seems possible, the answer of gratitude for a classic. The re-affirmation of a classic in a changing world is no small matter to [267] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS those for whom literature is no insignificant part of life. When so much plays us false, after all it is something to know that our faith in The Scarlet Letter was not one of the many illusions. Yes! Hawthorne, it is good to find, is one of the realities, and likely to remain one of the permanent sources of human pleasure. Pleasure! Hawthorne came of a stock for which such a statement would seem more of an indictment than a credential. Human pleasure! What would the first American Hathorne, a younger son of a Wiltshire family, emigrating to Massachusetts in 1630, Major William Hathorne [it was Nathaniel who first slipped in the "w "], what would he, stern persecutor of Quakers, have said of a descend- ant so trivially distinguished? And his son John, even more grimly religious, and still gloomily remembered as a burner of witches, how sternly would he have disowned so frivolous an immor- tality! Yet, so cynical is Time, these two most con- spicuous figures in the Hawthorne pedigree would long since have been forgotten, had it not been for the fact that their blood appears to have supplied the most potent ingredient of that dark decoction which ran in the veins of their fanciful descendant. Indeed, the cases are few in which a genius so essentially mysterious can superficially be traced to his origin, or so plainly illustrates the theory [268] RE-READING HAWTHORNE of transmutation of ancestors. If the Hawthorne stock was ever to blossom out into literature, the books of Nathaniel Hawthorne were certainly its logical expression. It is strange to note how the shadows of these far-away ancestors could suddenly, after an interval of obscure sea captains, throw so picturesque a gloom over so distant a descendant. Yet the fate of Nathaniel's father, a sea captain, who died of yellow fever at Surinam, when Nathaniel was four years old, undoubtedly contributed to that shadow — if only indirectly through the grief of his mother, who shut herself away from society for thirty years, a retirement which naturally had its effect upon the solitary temperament of her son. Salem, too, was a sad, decaying old town, and thus the child grew up among hushed whispers and shadows. As a mere boy his melancholy early expressed itself in the invention of weird stories, which he always ended with the words, "And I'm never coming back again"; and his favourite line, before he could talk plainly, was "Stand back, my lord, and let the coffin pass." So, characteristically, the child was father to the man. Lowell has deftly described him as "a November nature with a name of May " ; and Hawthorne himself, almost painfully conscious of the gloomy cast of his genius, once exclaimed, "I wish God had given me the faculty of writing a sunshiny book." [269] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS Perhaps the involuntary nature of genius was never more significantly illustrated than in the case of this man, who, while himself living a simple and innocent life, himself gentle, and, save for that harmless meditative melancholy, entirely free from those dark ancestral attributes of which I have spoken, yet found his artistic faculty responsive only to the sinister and bizarre in human material. A gift has seldom seemed so detached from the personality of its possessor, so sheerly a function of independent operation; for a conscience could hardly be freer than Nathaniel Hawthorne's, yet his most successful stories are all concerned with the burden of sin and the shadow of doom. This was, of course, the bequest of ancestors grimly preoccupied with moral questions — questions which, in the case of their descendant, came to have a purely artistic value. One has only to read the exquisitely tran- quil preface to Mosses from an Old Manse to realise how distinct was the haunted dream-life of his books from the placid tenor of his actual days. In short, of all American writers, Hawthorne is the literary artist pure and simple, the greatest literary artist — not forgetting Poe — that America has produced. No doubt it is for this reason that Hawthorne was so long, as he himself says in the preface to Twice-told Tales, "the obscurest man of letters in America." As with his own I 2 7° \ RE-READING HAWTHORNE "Artist of the Beautiful," his gift was too fine to attract the general reader, till at length in The Scarlet Letter he compelled his attention by the dramatic use of a peculiarly American subject. Here one may recognise the fact that one of Haw- thorne's claims upon the appreciation of his country- men is that he is unquestionably an indigenous product, a genuine American writer. "Out of the soil of New England he sprang," says Henry James, in a brilliant study of him which would be perfect were it not for a certain tone of superiority, somewhat too English in its accent for one American writer to use toward a compatriot so much greater than himself; "in a crevice of that immitigable granite he sprouted and bloomed. Half of the interest that he possesses for an American reader with any turn for analysis must reside in his latent New England savour." This, I think, is to lay too much stress upon, as well as to exaggerate, the local flavour in Haw- thorne; but it is certain, nevertheless, that, while, like all other true artists, he belongs to the whole world, America has the right to say that no other country could have produced him. Most other American writers might just as well have been born in England. There is, for example, nothing peculiarly American about Washington Irving, or Longfellow. But Hawthorne is as subtly Ameri- [271] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS can in quality as, say, Thackeray is English. Both are masters of English style. Yet one is unmistak- ably American. Hawthorne's style, at its best, is one of the most perfect media employed by any writer using the English language. Dealing, as it usually does, with an immaterial subject-matter, with dream-like impressions, and fantastic products of the imagina- tion, it is concrete without being opaque, — lumi- nously concrete, one might say. No other writer that I know of has the power of making his fancies visible and tangible without impairing their delicate immateriality. If any writer can put the rainbow into words, and yet leave it a rainbow, surely that writer is Hawthorne. Most writers having to treat such material as the favourite material of Hawthorne would fall back upon the impressionistic method, and hint, rather than embody, — and I am not for a moment de- preciating the value of that method. At the same time, it cannot be denied that of the two methods it is the easier, — because to suggest is so much easier than to describe, and no little impressionism is simply clever evasion of visual responsibility. Hawthorne, however, is no such trickster. No matter how subtle or volatile is the matter to be ex- pressed, his imagination is so patiently observant, and his literary skill so answerable to his imagination, [272] RE-READING HAWTHORNE that he is able really to write so close to the spiritual fact as to leave nothing to be done by the reader — except to read. Often, as one reads him, and anticipates some approaching matter peculiarly fine and difficult, he wonders how the author can possibly put this into concrete words. Yet, again, it is not a little interesting, even surprising, to note how inaffectual is this delicately powerful artistic equipment when employed upon material which, so to say, has not been ancestrally prepared for its use. There are whole stretches of Hawthorne not merely flat and uninspired, but positively amateurish. In this respect he reminds one of Wordsworth, who, at one moment, is a master, and the next — an absurdity. The artist's dependence upon his material was for a while scouted by a certain school of critics, but every real artist gives it proof. One might almost say that a man's artistic material is no less born with him than his artistic gift. No amount of conscious study will take the place of that natal, and prenatal, relation to certain corners and aspects of the world to the appreciation and expression of which an artist is destined. Just as some painters seem born, like Millet, to paint the peasantry, and some, like Vandyke, to paint the portraits of kings, others, again, like Verestchagin, to paint war, or, like Turner, to paint the sky, just as surely was Haw- 18 [273] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS thorne predestined to write of New England witches, and New England cases of conscience, and to embody his psychological and moral fancies. I wish I had the space to make an analysis of his writings with this thought in mind, for such an analysis would provide a remarkable object-lesson in the psychology of the artist. As, however, it is part of my business here to say why Hawthorne is still read, and what of his is best worth reading, an attempt to fulfil this task will amount to very much the same thing. To this end let us run through the list of his books. They follow each other in this order: — "Twice-told Tales." "Mosses from an Old Manse." "The Scarlet Letter." "The House of the Seven Gables." "A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls." "The Blithedale Romance." "The Snow Image, and Other Twice-told Tales." "English Note-books." "Italian Note-books." "The Marble Faun." " Septimius Felton." — Unfinished. "The Dolliver Romance." — Unfinished. Now, of these, Twice-told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, and The Snow Image, and Other Twice-told Tales might as well, so to speak, have been bound in the same volume. They are all I 274] RE-READING HAWTHORNE made up of the same successes and the same failures. Almost always you will find that the successes grow in the shadow, and are concerned with the darker side of the spiritual drama, being fantasies and allegories of ambitious or troubled souls. Mingled with them are pleasant essays, and gracious moral- ities (perhaps a little childish) — such, say, as A Rill from the Town Pump, The Great Carbuncle, and The Seven Vagabonds; also, to my thinking, much over-rated legends of American history, such as Legends of the Province House. But these you read merely because the pen that wrote them was seldom capable of being continuously dull on any theme. Indeed, with the exception of three or four masterpieces, these three books must be re- garded either as experiments or repetitions. These masterpieces, in my opinion, are : — " Dr. Heidegger's Experiment." "Young Goodman Brown." " Rappaccini's Daughter." " Feathertop." " Roger Malvin's Burial." "The Artist of the Beautiful." Perhaps, from old association, one may add The Great Stone Face. As for The Snow Image, I must confess that it seems but a child- ish performance to-day, when the art of writing fancies for children has reached so scientific a [275] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS development. Possibly The Wonder Book still holds its place in the nursery, but here one would need the more competent opinion of a child. But the six masterpieces! If Hawthorne had written nothing else but these he would have triumphantly immortalised himself as an artist of the mysterious. Compare him with Poe in this respect, and note how mechanically inventive are the best of Poe's stories compared with the essential mystery of Hawthorne's imaginations. With all their detective brilliancy, there is no story of Poe's to be compared with Rappaccini's Daughter, or even Young Good- man Brown — an even more difficult, if less original, achievement. However, one must not forget one more master- piece of a different kind before we pass on to the big books, — that introduction to the Mosses from an Old Manse to which I have before made reference. Here is a familiar essay of which Lamb himself might have been proud — the finest creative essay, I venture to think, in American literature. The two really great books to which the small masterpieces led up are, of course, Tlie Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. You will often hear expressed what to me is a quite incomprehensible opinion — that The Marble Faun is Hawthorne's real master- [276] RE-READING HAWTHORNE piece. I have tried to read the book several times, and the result of each experiment has been the same — I have felt that it is the accidentally celebrated monument of what Hawthorne could not do. One might call it "Hawthorne's Folly," so conspicuous is its failure. Still it is a failure which corroborates Hawthorne's real success, and is, therefore, critically important. The reason of its popular acceptance is obvious enough. Hawthorne's fame was of slow growth. The world at large was only awakening to the fact of his existence when he resigned his post as American consul at Liverpool, and on his way home spent some months of holiday in Italy, — a country whose art, at all events, his notebooks dis- play him as temperamentally incapable of appre- ciating. In our day certain writers make a clever pretense of assimilating local colour. It matters little in what climate, or among what people, they set their scene. Being men of a strolling talent, as distinct from men of a rooted genius, they are able to give us a passable imitation of the real thing. Hawthorne was different. Few men of genius have been possessed of so little talent. He could no more be what he was not, or write what nature had not meant him to write, than the nightshade can impersonate the cowslip. He seemed con- genitally incapable of development and even of assimilation; and he himself, as you will find if [ 277] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS you read his letters and note-books, was the first to be aware of this limitation. Limitation! I am afraid I used the word a little carelessly, — for surely it is not limitation which roots an artist to his proper material, and denies him the cheap and flashy use of a tourist's observation. Hawthorne in Italy was the most simple-minded of American tourists, and that he should have dared to base and background an important book on so superficial an acquaintance with Italy only shows how innocent he was of his own powers. The "public," however, knowing and caring nothing for these things, chanced to get hold of his name about this time, and Italy being always a subject so vital and so fragrant that it hardly matters who makes use of it, it is easy to understand why even to-day the first word one hears about Hawthorne is — The Marble Faun ! Now my first word to a reader approaching Hawthorne is, — do not read The Marble Faun. Not only will it weary you, but it will also give you an unfair impression of a great master. When you have read the real Hawthorne, then, if you care, you may read The Marble Faun as a study in — what even genius cannot do. But the moment we turn to the really great books — to The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables — the sense of mastery is so [278] RE-READING HAWTHORNE immediate that one can hardly believe that here is the same hand that wrote The Marble Faun. How sure is the touch from the first word, how subtly pervasive the atmosphere, and how dramatic- ally visualised is the whole moral tragedy in either case, and not that merely, but also every physical detail, such as the pillory on which Hester stood that day with the sun beating on the bright letter blaz- ing upon her bosom, and on which Dimmesdale and she and little Pearl stood that night in the moonlight! Similarly, the old house of the seven gables is made so real to us, so impressively haunted with doom, that actually it itself, so to say, is felt to be the chief tragic presence in the story, and the lives lived in the gloom mere passing shadows of hardly more importance than the bats and owls roosting genera- tion after generation among its shingles. The lives come and go, but the old house stands like a Greek fate. And another surprise of this remarkable art is that, with its massive breadth and impressive (one might almost say oppressive) outlines, it is at the same time an art of innumerable fine touches, fine shades, and subtle secondary meanings. On the face of the picture there is the grim, living drama of human fate, so simple as almost to seem crude, but as one looks into the picture how alive it becomes with interior spiritual significance, how it gleams and whispers with mysterious hints and I 2 79] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS translunary fancies, some necromantic charm of "woven paces and of waving hands." Little Pearl, so real and yet so unrea', is a symbol of that elusive quality in Hawthorne's art which perhaps above all others makes him Hawthorne. If one had space to analyse the chapter of The Scarlet Letter devoted to Pearl, — Chapter VI., — ■ he would come as near to Hawthorne's secret as criticism is capable of reaching. Indeed, his half- realistic, half-allegoric, method is nowhere else so skilfully illustrated as in his treatment of this little elfish love-child of an irregular union. Perhaps one could not do better, by way of illustrating his method in a small compass, than quote a page from this chapter: — Pearl's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild- flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, or the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself — it would have been no longer Pearl! This outward mutability indicated and did not more than fairly express the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but — or else Hester's fears deceived her — it lacked reference and adapta- [280] RE-READING HAWTHORNE tion to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were, perhaps, beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester could only account for the child's character — and even then most vaguely and imperfectly — by recalling what she herself had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery luster, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognise her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later in the day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind. The thought, and, so to say, the sure-footed style of this passage are peculiarly characteristic of Hawthorne. Pearl's whole nature is airy meta- [281] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS physic matter, yet Hawthorne is able to embody her with absolute concreteness, without for a moment robbing her of her volatile mystery : such a certitude of vision had his imagination when working on its proper material, and so faultlessly responsive was his literary gift to his imaginative vision. I will not deny that his style sometimes seems to endow his fancies with a too ponderable visibility, as if a man should blow solid bubbles, or so picture the rainbow as to make it almost appear an arch of coloured marble. But to allow this is but to allow to Hawthorne, as to any other artist, the defect of his quality. Hawthorne's style, while uncom- monly "central" and free from affectation, was also, as his note-books show, the product of con- siderable practice in the use of words. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that the whole interest of his note-books lies in their being exercise books for his gift of expression. There is so much in them of unimportant observation, observation so impersonal, so lacking either in personal or general interest, that they are to be explained on no other ground than that of a man using his pen for mere exercise upon anything it came across, however trivial. This theory of the note-books, however, may be a little too euphemistic, too generously adapted to cover what really does seem to have been a [282] RE-READING HAWTHORNE certain poverty and narrowness in Hawthorne's intellectual interest, — a certain New England barren- ness of the soil. His was certainly not a rich mind, exuberantly creative. On the contrary, he made use of his inspiration to the uttermost farthing, and the manner in which his gift died before him, of premature decay, — as illustrated by his pathetic realisation of his inability to finish The Dolliver Romance or Septimius Fellon, — seems to point to a constitutional anaemia in his nature. When, after repeated attempts, The Dolliver Romance fell unfinished from his hands, he wrote thus to his publisher, Mr. Fields: ''I hardly know what to say to the public about this abortive romance, though I know pretty well what the case will be. I shall never finish it. Yet it is not quite pleasant for an author to announce himself, or to be announced as finally broken down as to his literary faculty. ... I cannot finish it unless a great change comes over me, and, if I make too great an effort to do so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and a scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my own making. . . ." The decay of his literary gift seemed to be curi- ously parallel with the almost incomprehensible fading away of his physical life. There seemed [283] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS nothing really the matter with him — only a sure sinking of the fires of life. It was as if, after using up the *ron of his New England blood in his master- pieces, the chill of it was all that was left in his veins. "Some island in the Gulf Stream" had been one of his suggestions, as the chill grew chillier. In warmer latitudes, perhaps, the fires of life would have revived — but he did not attempt to visit them. He went, instead, to the White Mountains, arriving at Plymouth on May 18th, and dying the following night. He lies at Concord, perhaps the chief of the many immortals whose memories make that little town what one might call the Westminster Abbey of America. [284] A NOTE ON MAURICE HEWLETT (A propos "The Stooping Lady") IN this new book Mr. Hewlett carries his strangely brilliant art of literary impersona- tion to the highest point of his achievement. A peculiar skill seems to have been developed among writers during the last twenty years — that of writing in the manner of some master, not merely with mimetic cleverness, but with genuine creative power. We have poets who write so like Wordsworth and Milton that one can hardly differentiate them from their masters; and yet — for this is my point — they are no mere imitators, but original poets, choosing, it would seem, some old mask of immortality through which to express themselves. In a different way than that of Guy de Maupassant they have chosen to suppress them- selves, or rather, I should say, that, whereas de Maupassant strove to suppress, to eliminate him- self, their method is that of disguise. In some respects they remind one of the hermit crab, who [285] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS annexes some beautiful ready-made house instead of making one for himself. But then they annex it so brilliantly, with such delightful consequences for the reader, that not only is there no ground for complaint, but the reader almost forgets that the house does not really belong to them, and that they are merely entertaining tenants on a short lease. Mr. Maurice Hewlett, in a long series of fascinat- ing books, has inhabited many styles. We are all familiar with his Malory-cum-Morris-cum-Meredith style. In The Forest Lovers it was mainly Mal- ory-cum-Morris, in Richard Yea-and-Nay it was Meredith-cum-Mediaevalism, a strange hybrid of style, indeed, through which to express so powerfully personal an imagination. Then, of course, we have the Italianate quattrocento style of Earthwork Out of Tuscany and Little Novels of Italy — more nearly personal in manner than any of his writings, with a hint of Meredith, however, always in the air. Now, in The Stooping Lady, we have Mr. Hewlett writing sheer Meredith, naked and unashamed — one might almost say rewriting Diana of the Crossways. And yet the book is his own, one of the most brilliant pieces of work done in our time, with a heroine I personally would not exchange for Diana. What pictures, what character drawing, what atmosphere, what a tense story, and, again, [286] A NOTE ON MAURICE HEWLETT what a heroine, and yet all done in another man's medium, all written in another man's words — no, hardly that, but certainly in another man's style. In anyone concerned with the manner as well as the matter of writing this odd characteristic or gift of Mr. Hewlett's must provoke no little interest. Why should a man with Mr. Hewlett's rare, even astonishing, endowment of personal gifts choose to write, not impersonally — for it is not that — but under, so to say, the aliases of so many other personalities? This protean quality makes Mr. Hewlett somewhat of a contemporary literary phenomenon, as it is surely a unique form of literary self-sacrifice. If the style is the man, one is obliged to ask in Mr. Hewlett's case — Whose style? I do not propose to retell a story which Mr. Hew- lett has told so well; but these opening sentences will at once state the "argument" and afford a good illustration of the Meredithism of Mr. Hewlett's manner : On the 21st of January, 1809, Miss Hermia Mary Chambre and her brother, Ensign Richard — as the Countess of Morfa's chariot brought them for the first time to Caryll House, St. James's, within those great gates, into that gravelled court where the statue of a late Earl stood and admonished London — on this day, and on the very threshold of this Sanctuary of the Constitution, Miss Chambre, I say, and her brother, a beautiful and healthy girl of twenty and [287] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS a fine young man of rather less, were witnesses to a disagreeable incident, a vulgar brawl and scuffle, calling for the interference of the police. Orphans, Irish by a deplorable father's side, and therefore in crying need of grace, this was the grace they got. Recalled within the pale of Family — that Family which their poor mother had forsworn • — they were to see Family put to the blush. A rout of satyrs, a boors' comedy, in which an incensed young giant of the lower classes was hero and two tipsy gentlemen the sport of his heroics; in which Jacob Jacobs, elderly, gold-laced guardian of the gates, was choragus; in which footmen in canary yellow and powder, a groom of the chambers, a butler hovering for the carriage, took their cues from him, and wailed, lifted their eyes to Heaven, wagged their polls, called for constables, as he guided them with agitated hands — what a welcome to Britain! Beyond them and around them — with a ring scrupulously kept for the "turn-up" — surged and thundered the mob, intent only on the play, with raucous cries directed solely to that, with eyes afire for the rules of the great game. "Time! Time!" "Let my lord get his wind — Now they're at it — a mill, a mill! — ding-dong! " "What, you'll rush it, my lord? By God, that's stopped him! " "Six to one on the butcher — I lay." "Keep the ring, gentlemen, please — fobbed him fairly — gone to grass! " It was indeed at this crowning moment, when one gentleman lay bleeding on his back, and the other, slighter gentleman, "spitfiring like a tomcat," it was afterward averred, struggled fruit- lessly to escape the enemy's grasp of his coat-collar [288] A NOTE ON MAURICE HEWLETT — that the family chariot of the Morfas loomed heavily at the far end of Cleveland Row and, advancing, displayed to the eyes of our young lady and her brother one of the sights of London — as they no doubt supposed it. Hardly seeing what, certainly, was not fit to be seen, no doubt for a second of time those startled eyes of hers gazed upon the havoc, and upon the flushed young Saxon, bareheaded and fair-headed, the hero of it — a notice- able young man performing noticeable feats with gentlemen. No doubt but that she, too, was by him gazed upon in her turn, and that that second of time seemed by seconds too long. These encounters of the eyes stay by one, though in this case there were sights to come. Within the gates lay another — a dead horse, weltering from the issue of a terrible wound; whereat indeed the bright-eyed Miss Chambre shrieked and clung to her brother, and he, after one sagacious look, said, " Staked, Hermy," and then, "Poor devil. So that was the meaning of it." And thus 1809, thus London, thus England and Caryll House arrayed themselves to greet two young Carylls (by the mother's side) very newly from Ireland. A mob at the Gates! A dead and man- gled horse within the Precincts! A tipsy gentleman scruffed by a butcher's man! The scene was sig- nificant. As the French would say — 1809! The story is told throughout in this manner — a delightful story, an enthralling heroine. No Mere- dithian device is forgotten. We have Pink Mor- 19 [ 289 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS daunt, with his anecdotes: "Pink Mordaunt he is in all the Memoirs." It was an age of diaries and diarists, as the first chapter of Diana of the Cross- ways reminds us. We have Mr. Meredith's in- evitable great newspaper man, an inky, undertakerly, obsequious person, editing his paper in the interests of the Government, and therefore flatteringly toler- ated in great houses; we have delightful Meredithian names, such as Lord Rodono, Mervyn Touchett, Gell-Gell, Lord Drillstone — Mr. Hewlett even ven- tures to lay hands on the name of "Carinthia" for one of his ladies; and we have in the Hon. Captain Ranald the inevitable Meredithian "Red- worth," the quiet man who waits till the heroine has got over — the hero. The hero, of course, is the young flaxen-haired Saxon, David Vernour, butcher — and, as it soon transpires, reform orator and politician. Captain Ranald and other reform gentlemen of the time are friends of his, and there is no doubt that he was a fine fellow, a "nature's gentleman," very liable to catch the eye and heart of a rebellious young noble lady, whose father had been an Irish soldier eloquently "Marseillaise," and whose mother, run- ning away from the same embattled, escutcheoned home in which her daughter was to repeat the history of revolt, had rejoiced to be called "citoyenne." For the days were the days of the Revolution, the [290] A NOTE ON MAURICE HEWLETT Rights of Man, the days of Tom Paine and William Cobbctt. Of the latter, by the way, Mr. Hewlett gives a smart but unnecessarily snobbish sketch. Mr. Hewlett is very evidently on the side of what his great old Dowager Lady Morfa called "Family"; but at the same time he manages his butcher with no little sympathy and amazing tact. Certainly one cannot conceive for a novelist a love theme re- quiring more delicate handling, and Mr. Hewlett's treatment of it from beginning to end is masterly. The closing scene at Charing Cross, where Vernour stands in the pillory for having made an incendiary speech at a reform meeting, and Lady Hermia, his betrothed, stands at his side face to face with a surging mob, is not only full of noble pathos, but is a denouement of the most skilful appropriateness; and the picture Mr. Hewlett draws of the whole scene, bringing before us, as it does, the England of that day in a few vivid strokes, is a masterpiece of the historic imagination. [291] VI A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS FOR those who value the permanent elements in literature the enthusiastic welcome given to Mr. Stephen Phillips's poems and dramas is a great and much needed consolation at the pres- ent time. There is still, it would appear, an audience for a literature which is not all blood and drums, the literature of humanity as opposed to the truculent journalistic literature of inhumanity so fashionable during the last five years — a literature of beauty and imagination, of high meditation, of pity, of dignity. Return, Alphsus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams . . . Mr. Phillips's success does not, indeed, provide the only sign of the return of a more clement literary regime. There are one or two poets, novelists, and essayists, whose continued appreciation by a consid- erable public during the dark period I have referred to shows that there are some still left among us who care to keep burning the lamps of humanistic art. But Mr. Phillips's success is the most significant, because of all of them he has done his work on the [292] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS most severe and classical lines, with least concession to the fashions of contemporary pleasing. To write tragedies, visions, and idyls in blank verse, and to draw grim pictures of the modern world in the heroic couplet seemed the last way to catch the fevered ear of the moment. But, of course, time is always bringing in its revenges, and the longer a form of art has been out of fashion, the sooner is it likely to come into fashion again. Still, the resus- citation of the poetic drama with so much welcome and eclat was a surprise we had hardly dared to hope for, at least in England, where the drama has for long been at so low a point of vitality and taste, in spite of all the efforts of certain dramatic critics to breathe into it the breath of a finer life, and in spite of imported examples of noble and beautiful work from the Continent. However, the public that paid so little heed to Ibsen and Maeterlinck and Hauptmann have, apparently, given a warm welcome to Mr. Stephen Phillips; and for the first time in many years an original play in blank verse has taken the town. Here, indeed, is cause for rejoicing! And not only has Mr. Phillips achieved this success on the stage, but, before Herod had been produced, he had already achieved the almost equally difficult success of selling his poetic play Paolo and Francesca in its book form hardly less rapidly than if it were a popular novel. [ 293 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS All which is matter not only for Mr. Phillips's private congratulation, but for public rejoicing. Seldom has an Anglo-Saxon public done itself so much credit, so spontaneously acclaimed the good thing when they found it — or rather when they were shown it. For here, too, those much-abused people, the critics, deserve no small share in this general congratulation. With the exception of Mr. Kip- ling, I remember no young poet of our time who has been received with such a consensus of acceptance and encouragement by the most authoritative critics. So unanimous was this that the old cry of "log- rolling" was, of course, raised. No one need pay heed to that cry, except where bad or mediocre work is manifestly being over-praised. When the really good thing has been found, the more voices that acclaim it the better, even though, indeed, there should be a conspiracy of praise. Why not? Conspiracies of blame are not unknown. So far as one can judge from his published poetry, Mr. Phillips's development has been as sudden as his fame, though of that, of course, mere dates of publi- cation give no reliable guidance. The work of his which had got into print previous to his little Christ in Hades booklet of 1896 gives but little, if any, indi- cation of the gift which was to burst out into sudden flame — and fame — with that particular issue of Mr. Elkin Mathews's dainty little Shilling Garland. A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS The year 1888 was a period when ballads and rondeaux were still popular, when little, sweet- smelling nosegays of verse, quaintly printed and "gotten up," were much in demand by the literary connoisseur; and, among these, a small volume enti- tled Primavcra, published at Oxford in that year by four friends, won quite a distinction for itself. The names of the friends were Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose, and Arthur S. Cripps. Looking through the volume to-day, there seems nothing especially remarkable about it, nothing of those thrilling preludes by which the poet, like the immortal gods, gives sign With hushing finger, how he means to load His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought. The breath of the volume is rather autumnal than vernal, but that is, of course, a mark of youthful verse; and it would be difficult to give anyone of the four friends pre-eminence over the others. The friends themselves, however, seem to have shown some indication of their view by placing Mr. Phillips in the forefront of the little volume, with a prelude which in its mood reminds one of how Keats prefaced his first poems with a sigh for "glory and loveliness" passed away for ever from the earth, just at the moment when loveliness [29S] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS was about to reawaken so divinely to his sing- ing. The reader will, no doubt, care to judge for himself of Mr. Phillips's youthful farewell to a Muse that was so soon, so to say, to throw herself into his arms. No Muse will I invoke: for she is fled! Lo! where she sits breathing, yet all but dead. She loved the heavens of old, she thought them fair; And dream'd of gods in Tempe's golden air. For her the wind had voice, the sea its cry; She deem'd heroic Greece could never die. Breathless was she, to think what nymphs might play In clear green depths, deep-shaded from the day; She thought the dim and inarticulate god Was beautiful, nor knew she man a sod; But hoped what seem'd might not be all untrue, And feared to look beyond the eternal blue. But now the heavens are bared of dreams divine. Still murmurs she, like Autumn, This is mine I How should she face the ghastly, jarring Truth, That questions all, and tramples without ruth? And still she clings to Ida of her dreams, And sobs, Ah, let the world be what it seems I Then the shy nymph shall softly come again; The world, once more, make music for her pain. For, sitting in the dim and ghostly night, She fain would stay the strong approach of light; While later bards cleave to her, and believe That in her sorrow she can still conceive ! Oh, let her dream; still lovely is her sigh; Oh, rouse her not, or she shall surely die. [296] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS Though there is nothing remarkable here, lovers of Mr. Phillips's mature poetry will note two points about the poem which, though one could not realise it in 1888, were prophetic of certain characteristics since well marked in his verse. One point is the employment of the heroic couplet, then, as still, the least-used measure of the day, and its employ- ment, too, with the curt rhyme endings, after the eighteenth-century manner, not as Marlowe used it, with run-over endings, technically called en- jambements, or as Mr. Swinburne has similarly used it with such splendour in Tristram of Lyonesse. So, nearly ten years later, Mr. Phillips was still to use it, though, of course, with incomparable increase of poetic power. The other point is the peculiar, indefinable poignancy of these two lines: For, sitting in the dim and ghostly night, She fain would stay the strong approach of light; hinting already at that sense of the spectral beauty of the world which is so marked in all Mr. Phillips's subsequent poetry. Mr. Phillips's three other contributions to Prima- vera also seem each prophetic now of a subse- quent fulfilment. Particularly so is the blank-verse dramatic vignette of "Orestes," with its austere [297] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS movement and its hints of dramatic vision. Here is the opening passage, which is all I have space for: Me in far lands did Justice call, cold queen Among the dead, who after heat and haste At length have leisure for her steadfast voice, That gathers peace from the great deeps of hell. She call'd me, saying: "I heard a cry by night! Go thou, and question not; within thy halls Thy will awaits fulfilment. Lo, the dead Cries out before me in the under-world. Seek not to justify thyself- in me Be strong, and I will show thee wise in time; For, though my face be dark, yet unto those Who truly follow me through storm or shine, For these the veil shall fall, and they shall see They walked with Wisdom, though they knew her not." So sped I home; and from the under-world Forever came a wind that fill'd my sails, Cold, like a spirit! and ever her still voice Spoke over shoreless seas and fathomless deeps, And in great calms, as from a colder world: Nor slack'd I sail by day, nor yet when night Fell on my running keel, and now would burn, With all her eyes, my errand into me. Of the two lyrics which complete Mr. Phillips's contributions to Primavera, one, "A Dream," he has retained and expanded to good purpose, under the title of "The Apparition," in his Poems. But this other, "To a Lost Love," I am tempted to quote entire, not because, indeed, I consider it [298] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS a perfect poem, though its beauty and tender- ness are apparent, but because of the contrast of its conventional lyrical method with the freer and more personal method of two or three later lyrics, which, in the general admiration for Mr. Phillips's blank verse, have, perhaps, been some- what overlooked. I cannot look upon thy grave, Though there the rose is sweet; Better to hear the long wave wash These wastes about my feet! Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live A spirit though afar, With a deep hush about thee, like The stillness round a star? Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere Thou art a thing apart, Losing in saner happiness This madness of the heart. And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel A passing breath, a pain; Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven Had oped and closed again. And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns, The solemn hymns, shall cease; A moment half remember me: Then turn away to peace. [ 2 99] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS But oh, for evermore thy look, Thy laugh, thy charm, thy tone, Thy sweet and wayward earthliness, Dear trivial things, are gone ! Therefore I look not on thy grave, Though there the rose is sweet; But rather hear the loud wave wash Those wastes about my feet. I am sorry to be unable to illustrate Mr. Phillips's development from his next, and first independent, appearance as a poet. This was in 1894, when he privately printed the now rare philosophical poem "Eremus." My copy of "Eremus" is in England, and I have been unable to procure a copy in America in time for this article. However, the poem, though containing fine passages of meditation and strokes of beauty, is interesting mainly as showing Mr. Phillips's growing seriousness in his art and his strenuous study of blank verse, to which, however, he was as yet unable to give his own later very individual stamp. That stamp, however, in all its mature individuality, was unmistakably upon his next volume, published only two years later, the little Christ in Hades booklet, to which I have already made reference. Only two years, I say; because the almost miraculous metamorphosis of Keats from a doggerel writer in ladies' albums to the [3°°] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS supreme poet of beauty is hardly more striking than the sudden leap into maturity made by Mr. Phillips in these two years. There could be no question of mere "promise" about Christ in Hades. In its thrilling beauty and its clairvoyant dramatic vision it impressed one immediately as an indisputable masterpiece. Mr. Phillips has done different things equally finely, but he has never surpassed it. It is too well known to-day for there to be any need to quote from it; but, recalling what I said above as to Mr. Phillips's lyrics, I should like to recall this dramatic lyric of singular insight and poignancy — a lyric which alone could leave no doubt as to Mr. Phillips being a born dramatist as well as poet : I in the greyness rose; I could not sleep for thinking of one dead. Then to the chest I went, Where lie the things of my beloved spread. Quietly these I took; A little glove, a sheet of music torn, Paintings, ill-done, perhaps; Then lifted up a dress that she had worn. And now I came to where Her letters are; they lie beneath the rest; And read them in the haze; She spoke of many things, was sore opprest. [301 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS But these things moved me not; Not when she spoke of being parted quite, Or being misunderstood, Or growing weary of the world's great fight. Not even when she wrote Of our dead child, and the handwriting swerved; Not even then I shook: Not even by such words was I unnerved. I thought, she is at peace; Whither the child is gone, she, too, has passed. And a much-needed rest Is fallen upon her, she is still at last. But when at length I took From under all those letters one small sheet, Folded and writ in haste; Why did my heart with sudden sharpness beat? Alas, it was not sad ! Her saddest words I had read calmly o'er. Alas, it had no pain! Her painful words, all these I knew before. A hurried, happy line ! A little jest, too slight for one so dead: This did I not endure: Then with a shuddering heart no more I read. Only a year later (1897) Mr. Phillips, in reprinting Christ in Hades and the poems accompanying it in [302] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS a new volume of Poems, published by Mr.' John Lane, was able to add to them several new poems of importance, three of them, at least, showing striking new developments in his poetic gift — developments remarkably diverse. On the one hand, we had "Marpessa," perhaps the most supremely beautiful treatment of a "classical" subject since Keats, and certainly the loveliest love-poem of our time; and, on the other, we had "The Woman with the Dead Soul" and "The Wife," tragic studies in modern realism, which, however, the noble pity pervading them entirely lifted above other realistic experiments of a similar kind in recent verse or prose. You have but to compare Mr. Henley's sonnets on London types with Mr. Phillips's London poems to see how this quality of humanity makes the younger man's work so much more valuable than the other's. Each alike has a great gift for vividly catching a likeness, in a line or two; but the one seems to etch in vitriol with a cruel delight in the sordidness and deformity of his subjects, and the other, though even more forcibly and more truly realistically, in tears. A greater contrast than "The Wife" and "Marpessa" could hardly be found in any young poet's work, and the contrast augurs well for the breadth of Mr. Phillips's powers — the variety of the subject-matter he is capable of handling. Mr. Phillips, almost [303] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS alone among our younger poets, seems to possess the capacity, to use a colloquial phrase, of "break- ing out into a fresh place." Two years later, again, he was to illustrate this capacity in his beautiful tragedy of Paolo and Francesca, and now he has made a further advance with Herod. That he has many more surprises of power in store for us who that has followed his work can doubt? I should not be surprised if his development took the direction of perfecting his lyric gift, or led him once more to the contemplation of the Inferno of London, which has long haunted his imagination. He him- self, in an essay published a year or two ago, de- clared his interest in the unseen spiritual world as a theme for poetic treatment, and the strangely visionary nature of his imagination would make any experiments of his in that direction matters of peculiar expectancy. Returning to that work of his which is at present interesting the public, some critics, I notice, while admirers of his poetry, have expressed surprise at his dramatic success. The surprise is that anyone can have read his poetry without feeling that its very essence is dramatic insight. Beautiful as his lines are, they are always muscular with reality. Christ in Hades was packed with the dramatic imagination from end to end. Its chief beauty was that of dramatic truth. Perhaps, as I have else- [304] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS where said, it is rather the truth than the beauty of his poetry that first arrests one, or should one say that most of the beauty of his poetry comes of its truth, which is another way of saying that it is very real poetry indeed? At all events, I remember to have read nothing of Mr. Phillips's that was not essentially dramatic. That he should succeed in formal drama is to me, therefore, a secondary con- sideration; but that he has succeeded there can be no question, particularly in Herod. Perhaps, on the whole, the last act of Herod is the finest thing he has done. The first two acts seem to me to carry dramatic brevity of expression almost to baldness, and dramatic construction almost to the point of a diagram in dramatic anatomy — a well- knit skeleton of a drama rather than a drama. For, while it is true that in most poetic dramas the characters speak too much, it may be urged that it is possible for them to speak too little. And it must always be remembered in criticising poetic drama — as, indeed, any form of drama — that it is a conven- tion — a convention that only within certain limits recognises so-called "realistic" action and speech, or even that bugbear of the young dramatist, " stage exigency." In the third act of Herod, however, the dramatic skeleton is unmistakably clothed in flesh and blood, uttering wonderful human speech. It would be 20 [ 305 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS difficult, I think, to find an act in any English poetic play since the Elizabethans in which at once the dramatic interest is so keen and so subtly developed, and the quality of the poetry so fine. The wonder- ful way in which the mad king's longing for his dead wife — whom he more than half believes dead, and dares not quite half believe alive — is made to grow from moment to moment, while his courtiers seek to distract him into his various ambitious plans for the good of his people, such as the building of the great Temple and the port at Caesarea, can only be illustrated by quotation. Herod. Pour out those pearls, And give me in my hand that bar of gold. I heard an angel crying from the Sun, For glory, for more glory on the earth; And here I'll build the wonder of the world. I have conceived a Temple that shall stand Up in such splendour that men bright from it Shall pass with a light glance the pyramids. I'll have— Re-enter Attendant. Ah! come you from the queen? Fear not. She is asleep? Gadias (to whom Attendant has whispered). She is fallen in a deep sleep. Herod. Ah, rouse her not. (To Attendant.) You did not touch her? No? [306] A NOTE ON STEPHEN PHILLIPS You did not speak o'er loud? She did not stir then? Attend. O king! she stirred not once. Herod. Such sleep is good. But there was still the moving of the breast? Attend. O king — Herod (hastily). Yes — yes — I understand — I — Priest. Sir, Each moment wasted from this huge emprise The Temple — Herod (to Attendant). Hither, quietly in my ear. I say — you saw — her bosom stirred? Attend. I saw — Herod. You saw! It is enough! (To Court.) Bear with me — Oh! I dreamed last night of a dome of beaten gold To be a counter-glory to the Sun. There shall the eagle blindly dash himself, There the first beam shall strike, and there the moon Shall aim all night her argent archery; And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars, The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon; Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell, And flashings upon faces without hope — And I will think in gold and dream in silver, Imagine in marble and in bronze conceive. Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands, Allure the living God out of the bliss, And all the streaming seraphim from heaven. (Herod looks at door and sits.) That bag of emeralds, give it to me — so: [ 307 ] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS And yonder sack of rubies; I will gaze On glittering things. (Sits listlessly, hands down.) Let one of you go forth And rouse the queen — not roughly be it done — But rouse her! I would have her waked from sleep. Even this lengthy quotation but poorly illustrates the masterly dramatic modulation of the scene and the exquisite tenderness of it. Of its sumptuous language, however, it gives a juster idea. It is no flattery of Mr. Phillips to say that Marlowe might have signed it with pride. Mr. Phillips has often been called " Miltonic." It is new to find him using Marlowe's drums and trumpets of barbaric pomp so grandly. But, as I have said, this is far from being his last surprise to us. Meanwhile, all true lovers of literature will salute him with gratitude and pride and wish him all the laurels his head can carry. [308] VII A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERA- TURE MR. ARTHUR SYMONS, writing very in- geniously of Coleridge, in this remark- able, almost uncanny book of criticism,* is very severe on Coleridge's weakness for disciples. "It may be," he says, "that we have had no more wonderful talker, and, no doubt, the talk had its reverential listeners, its disciples; but to cultivate or permit disciples is itself a kind of waste, a kind of weakness." Yet, if certain other masters had been stronger than Coleridge, and denied the disciple! Walter Pater, for example. In that case we should surely have lost these essays, lost, indeed, Mr. Symons altogether. For, if ever there was a disciple, carry- ing out the mandate of his master to the last minutia> of instruction, that disciple is Mr. Symons. The best criticism or appreciation of this brilliant book would be to reprint the famous preface to Pater's "The Renaissance"; but a sentence from it * The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, by Arthur Symons, loog. [309] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS will suffice to show with what devotion and skill Mr. Symons has applied the formula of his master: "The function of the aesthetic critic," writes Pater, " is to distinguish, analyse, and separate from its adjuncts the virtue by which a picture, a land- scape, a fair personality in life or in a book produces its special impression of beauty or pleasure, to indicate what the source of that impression is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end is reached when he has disengaged that virtue and noted it, as a chemist notes some natural element, for himself and others." Indeed, Mr. Symons has applied the formula of his master, as his master was incapable of applying it — ■ applied it with a narrow thoroughness which was impossible for Pater, with his richness of tempera- ment and his coloured humanity. Pater was a poet who fondly dreamed he was a critic ; Mr. Symons is a critic who fondly dreams he is a poet. Mr. Symons is to Pater what some disciples of Leonardo were to that great conscious-unconscious master. Just as such disciples of Leonardo learned only his "sci- ence," took to heart only his manifold experiments in anatomy and physics — missing, as they could not fail to miss, the incommunicable secret of his genius, to the subtle master himself also a secret — so Mr. Symons has detached from Pater his theory, a theory Pater never really applied, though he dreamed [310] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE all his life he was applying it, and fulfilled, as his master's richer nature precluded his fulfilling, his master's dream of a detached, inhuman, objective criticism — a cold-blooded chemical analysis of literature. Pater's chemist as critic was merely one of those one-sided similitudes which the creative mind, stri- ving for the moment to be critical, throws out with fanciful carelessness. Of all men, Pater knew the dry inadequacy of such a similitude to the complete and mysterious business of understanding and inter- preting organisms so fragrant with the breath of life, so beating with the human heart, so magically irradiated with the enchantment of the invisible powers, as are the masterpieces of any of the arts, not least the art we call literature. Pater, with his gentle humanity, even tender humour — under all the sacerdotalism of his style — thought of aesthetic criticism as a sort of aesthetic chemistry. His disciple, however, has gone farther. He is, among his many accomplishments, a chemist, of course; but, seeking for one word to describe the gift most apparent in this strange book, I would call Mr. Symons a vivisectionist. A remarkable vivisection- ist of literature. With what cold hands he takes up alike the living and the dead, the living and the dead poets born in England between the years 1722 and 1799, and [3»] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS marking faintly or forcibly "The Romantic Move- ment in English Poetry " ; with what cold eyes he reads their pages, and yet — to such success has the so-called scientific critical method evolved with Mr. Symons — with what unexpected justice of judgment does he weigh gifts and qualities alien to the bias of his mind or his own personal predilection; this man who never seems to have had a dream of his own — this man who never seems to have felt a kindly human emotion — how strange it is that he can with such even meticulous accuracy assess the dreams and the hearts of others. In that same essay ©n Coleridge Mr. Symons says of Lamb, that, "con- cerned only with individual things," he "looks straight at them, not through them, seeing them implacably." Again, quoting with patronising approval one of Rossetti's "invaluable notes on poetry," he reminds us that, for Rossetti, " the leading point about Coleridge's work is its human love." I place these two quotations together for the reason that Lamb's "seeing them implacably" — the "seeing" having reference to his "midnight folios" Elizabethans — included loving them. Lamb loved literature, loved it, loved his unfashionable Elizabethans, his Sir Thomas Browne, his " Anatomy of Melancholy," his Duchess of Newcastle, and, through his great love of them, has imposed his love [312] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE upon us who have followed him — very much as Pater has imposed his love of the "Mona Lisa" on a bewildered American public. Love! Rossetti, according to Mr. Symons's quo- tation, said that " the leading point about Cole- ridge's work is its human love." Commenting on this passage, and some words of Coleridge's own, Mr. Symons says: Yet Love, though it is the word which he uses of himself, is not really what he himself meant when using it, but rather an affectionate sympathy, in which there seems to have been but little clement of passion. Rossetti, let us again recall, said "human love." Mr. Symons evidently understands love only when it contains the "element of passion." "Love" for Mr. Symons would seem to mean only sexual love, as one discovers in his essay on Keats, the one self- revelation in an almost inhumanly impersonal book. The really great critic, such as Lamb, such as Cole- ridge, loves literature. His judicial "implacability," as I said before, includes a great love, a great grati- tude that literature exists at all — that there are great, and even little, books in the world to read and to love. He does not sit up as a pert, lightweight Rhadamanthus, with a shrill cockney accent, pro- nouncing a glib doom on this poet and on that. [3 l 3] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS So clever, so soulless, so without pity, so without love, and yet so strangely understanding, are these criticisms of Mr. Symons, that I am driven to a theo- logical explanation of them. They are of the Devil. Seriously, there are only two who know the world: God and the Devil. Both know it almost equally well; the only advantage that God has in his knowledge of the world is that he knows it — with love. That is what Coleridge meant in the "Ancient Mariner," what Blake meant, and what Mr. Symons — let us admit — has been doing his best to under- stand. Since Mr. Symons met Mr. W. B. Yeats — some of us remember the occasion — he has been trying to "believe in fairies," and there are many pages in this book of his which make one think that per- haps, after all, Mr. Yeats took him to some green hill in Connemara, at the rising of the moon, and that there, indeed, he saw that world which to the Celtic eyes of Mr. Yeats is the only visible world — and surely the only world worth seeing. His comment on "Kubla Khan" — wonderfully written — will illustrate, at the same time, how nearly Mr. Symons has approached that world of " fairie " and what gossamer-sensitive scales are his in which to weigh rainbows and moonbeams, and even human tears. [3i4] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE Here allow me to go back for a moment to Mr. Symons's essay on Keats to make this quotation, which shows, not only that a vivisectionist critic may be human, after all, but that Mr. Symons can, now and again, like his great master, lapse into passages of something like created prose: Have you ever thought of the frightful thing it is to shift one's centre? That is, what it is to love a woman. One's nature no longer radiates freely from its own centre. The centre itself is shifted, is put outside one's self. Up to then one may have been unhappy, one may have failed, many things may seem to have gone wrong. But at least there was this security — that one's enemies were all outside the gate. With the woman whom one loves one admits all one's enemies. Think: All one's happi- ness to depend upon the will of another, on that other's fragility, faith, mutability; on the way life comes to the heart, soul, conscience, nerves of some- one else, no longer the quite sufficient difficulties of a personal heart, soul, conscience, and nerves. It is to call in a passing stranger and to say: " Guard all my treasures while I sleep. For there is no certainty in the world, beyond the certainty that I am I, and that what is not I can never draw one breath for me, though I were dying for lack of it." But, penetrating and subtle as are Mr. Symons's criticisms of the great poets of the period under his consideration— Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron— the more piquant originality [3i5] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS of his book for me lies in his comments on the lesser writers. In these he displays at times a cruel scientific wit, in the mere exercise of his critical function, and at times also reveals unexpected condescensions of kindly human feeling, and an understanding of certain homely human needs in regard to poetry which are sometimes satisfied by poets who are not learned metricists, or sophisticated literary persons, such as Mr. Symons. It is delightful to watch how certain once sound- ing fames shrivel up to a few caustic lines at the touch of his pen — that once so formidable William Gifford, for example. I will quote Mr. Symons' s comment on Gifford entire as a good sample of his method: In the honest fragment of autobiography which prefaces his translation of Juvenal, Gifford tells us, perhaps needlessly, that he had no natural instinct for poetry. He comments on his " gloom and savage unsociability," and on his waste of exertion on " splenetic and vexatious tricks" ; and " The Baviad " and "The Moeviad" are hardly more than so much waste, the waste of a prose writer who takes up verse to chastise the writers of bad verse. Only from the actual evidence of the footnotes can we believe in the existence of "Laura's tinkling trash" and the varied and unending inaptitudes of Delia Crusca. The school existed, and Gifford killed it ; yet such small game leaves but mangled carrion behind; and verse and notes are now equally unreadable. [3i6] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE And how sincerely grateful one is to him for his castigation of Southey. Poor Southey! Little did he foresee, he who was so confident in the judg- ment of "posterity," that a twentieth-century critic would adjudge his wife the greater poet! Yet Mr. Symons, with the accuracy of some diabolical psychometric register, measures out the vital residuum from all the dross and dust of that once so pompous fame. In this cold, unfailing jus- tice is the singularity, and even charm, of this book. One turns to one poet after another, just to see what Mr. Symons has made of them, and always we meet the same cold, comprehending mind, incorrupt- ible as a spirit-level. You would expect Mr. Symons to appreciate Coleridge and Keats, but you would hardly expect to find him, not only appreciating, but writing his very best about Barham (of The Ingoldsby Legends) and Tom Hood. It is in these surprises of his book that he stretches the octave of his critical gift, and shows that he is a critic indeed. Anyone, if, as Charles Lamb said, he has "a mind to," can write well about Coleridge and Keats, but no one has ever written like this about Hood: "Eugene Aram" is a masterpiece of horror, and in it Hood perfects that style which has an emphasis far beyond epigram, because it comes straight from the heart, and carries with it an awful inwardness of [3i7] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS thought. . . . Since "The Ancient Mariner" there has been no such spiritual fear in our poetry, and the nightmare comes to us as if out of our own bed, the sensations translate themselves into our own nerves. The words reach us like a whisper from which it is impossible to escape. That imagination, which had hardly shown itself among the thick flocks of fancy in all the other poems, is here, naked, deadly, and beautiful. In " The Song of the Shirt " this drama passes into an indignant song, not less human, and coming with its splendid lyric quality to prove that a conviction, a moral lesson if you will, can turn red-hot and be forged into a poem. Here, too, is "modernity," but of a kind that can be contemporary with every age. Only one more human thing exists in the work of Hood, and that is one of the greatest English poems of its kind, "The Bridge of Sighs." . . . The fragility of the metre, its swiftness, as of running water, the piercing daintiness of the words, which state and denounce in a song, go to make a poem which is like music and like a cry, and means something terribly close and accusing. A stone is flung angrily and straight into the air, and may strike the canopy before it falls back on the earth. That saying of " Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world!" has passed through interpreters, and helped to make a rare corner of modern literature, and the pity of the whole thing is like that of a grea* line of Dante, not less universal. [3i8] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE Coleridge and Keats do not need even Mr. Symons to write about them, but in such writing as this on Hood a critic does real service, not only to the shade of a neglected man of genius, but to all lovers of poetry. Again and again in this book we come with a shock of grateful surprise upon a penetrating recognition of the merits of some half-forgotten writer — John O'Keeffe, Hookham Frere, Wil- liam Thorn, for examples among many others; and if a poet, however obscure, has a gift how- ever small, or even but one fine line, you may be sure that Mr. Symons will have discovered it. For his business, as he tells us in his preface, is entirely with the poet and his poetry, not with his environment or his historical significance. He uses the phrase "The Romantic Movement in English poetry" to cover these poets who illustrated, in however slight a degree, the awakening of English poetry from the long sleep of the eighteenth century — " The Renascence of Wonder," to quote the phrase of Mr. Watts-Dunton, to whom Mr. Symons dedi- cates his book characteristically — in Romany. But it will be best to allow Mr. Symons to explain his attempt and method for himself: It is [he says] each one of these poets whom I want to study, finding out, if I can, what he was in himself, what he made of himself in his work, [319] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS and by what means, impulses, and instincts. The poet, the poem — it is with these only that I am concerned. And, again for convenience, I have set limits to my plan. The year 1800 is taken as a sort of centre, or shall I say a barrier ? which shuts out every writer of verse who was born after that year, and lets through everyone who survived from the eigh- teenth into the nineteenth century. My plan allows me no choice between good or bad writers in verse; I give each his due consideration, his due space of a few lines or of many pages. And I have given each in chronological order, with the dates of his birth and death and of the first edition of his pub- lished volumes of verse. I have consulted no his- tories of literature, nor essays about it, except for the bare facts of a man's life or work, but I have tried to get at one thing only — the poet in his poetry, his poetry in the poet; it is the same thing. Mr. Symons, in applying this method, has pro- duced a book of criticism of real value and of great entertainment. There is no book quite like it in English criticism, though there may be other books of criticism of more lasting importance — from their possession of that humanising enthusiasm which seems to be the only gift Mr. Symons lacks. An almost painful culture is his, an even morbid cultivation of the aesthetic senses, and there is no need to say how arduously he has trained himself for his office of critic by eager and minute studies [3 2 °] A VIVISECTIONIST OF LITERATURE in all the arts. If only, as I said at the beginning, we could feel that he loved literature with a simpler joy in it, that he occasionally looked up to his poets with something of a natural delight and gratitude, rather than always looked down upon them as "specimens" to be classified and somewhat pat-on- isingly studied! If it were not for this taint of the superior person, marring all he writes, Mr. Symons might have been a great critic. 21 l3 21 ] VIII ANATOLE FRANCE IN ENGLISH DRESS YEARS ago Mr. Andrew Lang, whose own genius is much akin to that of M. Anatole France, writing of M. France, with a charming stroke of fancy worthy of his subject, said that there are some literary reputations that, like fairies, cannot cross running water — delicate Gallic fames, he meant, of course, that cannot cross the English Channel. At that time, if I remember rightly, M. Anatole France had written little beyond The Crime of Sylveslrj Bonnard, his famous story of Pontius Pilate, and the causeries on books and the stage then appearing week by week in Le Temps and republished since under the title of La Vie Litteraire. Mr. Lang, however, was wrong, for M. Anatole France's reputation has since then crossed much running water, including the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, that inspired transplanter of literary exotics, Lafcadio Hearn, had already translated The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, as only he could [3 22 ] ANATOLE FRANCE IN ENGLISH DRESS translate; and Oscar Wilde, in his famous essay on criticism, reprinted in his Intentions, had appropriated and developed M. France's theory of autobiographical criticism, as only Mr. Wilde could appropriate and develop. "Criticism," had said M. France, in a phrase which became immediately classical, " is the adven- tures of the critic's soul among masterpieces." The critic's subject, he had gone on to say, was merely an excuse for the critic talking about himself. "I propose," he said, "to speak of myself a pro pros Moliere, Shakespeare, Racine." M. France is, therefore, responsible for so over- whelming a deluge of autobiographical criticism that one welcomes such a return to the old impersonal method, as Mr. Symons's book on The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, of which I have writ- ten elsewhere. But he is responsible, too, for a more attractive, as well as more profound, development of the modern way of looking at the past. That little story con- cerning Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, to which I have referred, came like the lightning flash of a new historical method. As Pontius answered his learned philosophical friend, concerning the cir- cumstances of the trial and death of Jesus Christ, so some day, thirty years hence, Lord Kitchener, wheeled in a bath-chair somewhere on the Riviera, [3 2 3] SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS may answer some learned philosophical friend, interested in the comparative study of religions, concerning some "Mad Mullah" who made "holy war" during Lord Kitchener's administration of the Soudan. So fragile seemed this gift at first, so like a flower! But, as George Meredith has said: "Some flowers have roots deep as oaks "; and, year by year, as book has followed book, the world has realised that the mind of Anatole France has the dynamic quality of those terrible unseen forces, which seem to be more powerful as they are invisible, imponderable, and immaterial; such forces as the Anarchist Clair, on one of the last pages of M. France's profoundest and wittiest book, Penguin Island, refers to in this pregnant and prophetic statement: Now that we can procure radium in sufficient quantities, science possesses incomparable means of analysis; even at present we get glimpses, within what are called simple bodies, of extremely diversified, complex ones, and we discover energies in matter which seem to increase even by reason of its tenuity. Indeed, as one has read his books with unusual gratitude year by year, we have seemed to catch a glimpse of that mysterious intellectual alchemy which makes gold out of the dreariest ingredients, that thaumaturgic spiritual power which made Aaron's rod to blossom, and the dry bones in the [3 2 4] ANATOLE FRANCE IN ENGLISH DRESS valley to stand up and clothe themself in the appeal- ing guise of humanity, at the word of the prophet Ezekiel. Probably no such alchemist of learning, no such transmuter of dreary historical information, has ever written in any language. Place some withered old chronicle in his hands, or a dissertation on Greek accents, or some weary history of a forgotten people, and he will immediately change them into a fairy tale. Of all writers he has illustrated the truth of Mil- ton's lines: How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute. In this respect, need I say, he is almost alone among scholars; for, since Erasmus, whose "Col- loquies" must be very near to M. France's heart, no man has, so to say, got so much fun out of his learning or made the desert of encyclopedias to blossom like the rose. Strange, beautiful, fairylike, cynical, and almost spiritual writing! Almost spiritual! That "almost" expresses, I think, for some of us our disappoint- ment in M. France's work. No one has written more delicately about fairies, or rivers flowing amid flowering reeds. It is only when, as in his Jeanne (325 J SOME RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS