Vanishing RoadsAnd Other Essays

By

Richard Le Gallienne

1915

 TO

 ROBERT HOBART DAVIS

DEAR BOB: It is quite a long time now since you and I first caughtsight of each other and became fellow wayfarers on this Vanishing Roadof the world. O quite a lot of years now, Bob! Yet I control my tendencyto shiver at their number from the fact that we have travelled them, always within hailing distance of each other, I with the comfortableknowledge that near by I had so good a comrade, so true a friend. 

For this once, by your leave, we won't "can" the sentiment, --to use anidiom in which you are the master-artist on this continent, --but I, atleast, will luxuriate in retrospect, as I write your name by way ofdedication to this volume of essays, for some of which your quick-firingmind is somewhat more than editorially responsible. You were one of thefirst to make me welcome to a country of which, even as a boy, I usedprophetically to dream as my "promised land, " little knowing that it wasindeed to be my home, the home of my spirit, as well as the finalresting-place of my household gods; and, having you so early for myfriend, is it to be wondered at if I soon came to regard the Americanhumourist as the noblest work of God?

There is yet, I trust, much left of the Vanishing Road for us to traveltogether; and I hope that, when the time comes for us both to vanishover the horizon line, we may exit still within hail of each other, --sothat we may have a reasonable chance of hitting the trail together onthe next route, whatever it is going to be. 

Always yours, RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 

Rowayton, December 25, 1914. 

For their discernment in giving the following essays their firstopportunity with the reader the writer desires to thank the editors of_The North American Review_, _Harper's Magazine_, _The Century_, _TheSmart Set_, _Munsey's_, _The Out-Door World_, and _The Forum_. 

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. --VANISHING ROADS II. --WOMAN AS A SUPERNATURAL BEING III. --THE LACK OF IMAGINATION AMONG MILLIONAIRES IV. --THE PASSING OF MRS. GRUNDY V. --MODERN AIDS TO ROMANCE VI. --THE LAST CALL VII. --THE PERSECUTIONS OF BEAUTY VIII. --THE MANY FACES--THE ONE DREAM IX. --THE SNOWS OF YESTER-YEAR X. --THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOSSIP XI. --THE PASSING AWAY OF THE EDITOR XII. --THE SPIRIT OF THE OPEN XIII. --AN OLD AMERICAN TOW-PATH XIV. --A MODERN SAINT FRANCIS XV. --THE LITTLE GHOST IN THE GARDEN XVI. --THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE XVII. --LONDON--CHANGING AND UNCHANGING XVIII. --THE HAUNTED RESTAURANT XIX. --THE NEW PYRAMUS AND THISBE XX. --TWO WONDERFUL OLD LADIES XXI. --A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION XXII. --ON RE-READING WALTER PATER XXIII. --THE MYSTERY OF "FIONA MACLEOD" XXIV. --FORBES-ROBERTSON: AN APPRECIATION XXV. --A MEMORY OF FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL XXVI. --IMPERISHABLE FICTION XXVII. --THE MAN BEHIND THE PEN XXVIII. --BULLS IN CHINA-SHOPS XXIX. --THE BIBLE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Vanishing Roads

I

VANISHING ROADS

Though actually the work of man's hands--or, more properly speaking, thework of his travelling feet, --roads have long since come to seem so mucha part of Nature that we have grown to think of them as a feature of thelandscape no less natural than rocks and trees. Nature has adopted themamong her own works, and the road that mounts the hill to meet thesky-line, or winds away into mystery through the woodland, seems to beveritably her own highway leading us to the stars, luring us to hersecret places. And just as her rocks and trees, we know not how or why, have come to have for us a strange spiritual suggestiveness, so thevanishing road has gained a meaning for us beyond its use as the avenueof mortal wayfaring, the link of communication between village andvillage and city and city; and some roads indeed seem so lonely, and sobeautiful in their loneliness, that one feels they were meant to betravelled only by the soul. All roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirsalso is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which no travellerknows the name, some city, they all seem to hint, even more eternal. 

Never more than when we tread some far-spreading solitude and mark theroad stretching on and on into infinite space, or the eye loses it insome wistful curve behind the fateful foliage of lofty storm-stirredtrees, or as it merely loiters in sunny indolence through leafy copsesand ferny hollows, whatever its mood or its whim, by moonlight or atmorning; never more than thus, eagerly afoot or idly contemplative, arewe impressed by that something that Nature seems to have to tell us, that something of solemn, lovely import behind her visible face. If wecould follow that vanishing road to its far mysterious end! Should wefind that meaning there? Should we know why it stops at no meremarket-town, nor comes to an end at any seaport? Should we come at lastto the radiant door, and know at last the purpose of all our travel?Meanwhile the road beckons us on and on, and we walk we know not why orwhither. 

Vanishing roads do actually stir such thoughts, not merely by way ofsimilitude, but just in the same way that everything in Nature similarlystirs thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; as moonlit waters stirthem, or the rising of the sun. As I have said, they have come to seema part of natural phenomena, and, as such, may prove as suggestive astarting-point as any other for those speculations which Nature is allthe time provoking in us as to why she affects us thus and thus. Thesemighty hills of multitudinous rock, piled confusedly against the sky--somuch granite and iron and copper and crystal, says one. But to the soul, strangely something besides, so much more. These rolling shapes ofcloud, so fantastically massed and moulded, moving in rhythmic changelike painted music in the heaven, radiant with ineffable glories ormonstrous with inconceivable doom. This sea of silver, "hushed andhalcyon, " or this sea of wrath and ravin, wild as Judgment Day. So muchvapour and sunshine and wind and water, says one. 

Yet to the soul how much more!

And why? Answer me that if you can. There, truly, we set our feet on thevanishing road. 

Whatever reality, much or little, the personifications of GreekNature-worship had for the ancient world, there is no doubt that for acertain modern temperament, more frequently met with every day, thosepersonifications are becoming increasingly significant, and one mightalmost say veritably alive. Forgotten poets may, in the first instance, have been responsible for the particular forms they took, their namesand stories, yet even so they but clothed with legend presences of woodand water, of earth and sea and sky, which man dimly felt to have areal existence; and these presences, forgotten or banished for a whilein prosaic periods, or under Puritanic repression, are once more beingfelt as spiritual realities by a world coming more and more to evoke itsdivinities by individual meditation on, and responsiveness to, themysterious so-called natural influences by which it feels itselfsurrounded. Thus the first religion of the world seems likely to be itslast. In other words, the modern tendency, with spiritually sensitivefolk, is for us to go direct to the fountain-head of all theologies, Nature herself, and, prostrating ourselves before her mystery, strive tointerpret it according to our individual "intimations, " listening, attent, for ourselves to her oracles, and making, to use the phrase ofone of the profoundest of modern Nature-seers, our own "reading ofearth. " Such was Wordsworth's initiative, and, as some one has said, "weare all Wordsworthians today. " That pagan creed, in which Wordsworthpassionately wished himself suckled, is not "outworn. " He himself, inhis own austere way, has, more than any one man, verified it for us, sothat indeed we do once more nowadays

 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. 

Nor have the dryads and the fauns been frighted away for good. All overthe world they are trooping back to the woods, and whoso has eyes maycatch sight, any summer day, of "the breast of the nymph in the brake. "Imagery, of course; but imagery that is coming to have a profoundermeaning, and a still greater expressive value, than it ever had forGreece and Rome. All myths that are something more than fancies gainrather than lose in value with time, by reason of the accretions ofhuman experience. The mysteries of Eleusis would mean more for a modernman than for an ancient Greek, and in our modern groves of Dodona thevoice of the god has meanings for us stranger than ever reached hisears. Maybe the meanings have a purport less definite, but they have atleast the suggestiveness of a nobler mystery. But surely the Greeks wereright, and we do but follow them as we listen to the murmur of the windin the lofty oaks, convinced as they of the near presence of the divine. 

 The word by seers or sibyls told In groves of oak or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. 

Nor was it a vain thing to watch the flight of birds across the sky, andaugur this or that of their strange ways. We too still watch them in alike mood, and, though we do not interpret them with a like exactitude, we are very sure that they mean something important to our souls, asthey speed along their vanishing roads. 

This modern feeling of ours is quite different from the outworn"pathetic fallacy, " which was a purely sentimental attitude. We have, ofcourse, long since ceased to think of Nature as the sympathetic mirrorof our moods, or to imagine that she has any concern with the temporalaffairs of man. We no longer seek to appease her in her terrible moodswith prayer and sacrifice. We know that she is not thinking of us, butwe do know that for all her moods there is in us an answering thrill ofcorrespondence, which is not merely fanciful or imaginative, but of thevery essence of our beings. It is not that we are reading our thoughtsinto her. Rather we feel that we are receiving her thoughts intoourselves, and that, in certain receptive hours, we are, by some avenuesimpler and profounder than reason, made aware of certitudes we cannotformulate, but which nevertheless siderealize into a faith beyond thereach of common doubt--a faith, indeed, unelaborate, a faith, one mightsay, of one tenet: belief in the spiritual sublimity of all Nature, and, therefore, of our own being as a part thereof. 

In such hours we feel too, with a singular lucidity of conviction, thatthose forces which thus give us that mystical assurance are all the timemoulding us accordingly as we give up ourselves to their influence, andthat we are literally and not fancifully what winds and waters make us;that the poetry, for instance, of Wordsworth was literally firstsomewhere in the universe, and thence transmitted to him by processes noless natural than those which produced his bodily frame, gave him formand feature, and coloured his eyes and hair. 

It is not man that has "poetized" the world, it is the world that hasmade a poet out of man, by infinite processes of evolution, precisely inthe same way that it has shaped a rose and filled it with perfume, orshaped a nightingale and filled it with song. One has often heard itsaid that man has endowed Nature with his own feelings, that the pathosor grandeur of the evening sky, for instance, are the illusions of hishumanizing fancy, and have no real existence. The exact contrary isprobably the truth--that man has no feelings of his own that were notNature's first, and that all that stirs in him at such spectacles is buta translation into his own being of cosmic emotions which he shares invarying degrees with all created things. Into man's strange heart Naturehas distilled her essences, as elsewhere she has distilled them incolour and perfume. He is, so to say, one of the nerve-centres of cosmicexperience. In the process of the suns he has become a veritablemicrocosm of the universe. It was not man that placed that tenderness inthe evening sky. It has been the evening skies of millions of years thathave at length placed tenderness in the heart of man. It has passed intohim as that "beauty born of murmuring sound" passed into the face ofWordsworth's maiden. 

Perhaps we too seldom reflect how much the life of Nature is one withthe life of man, how unimportant or indeed merely seeming, thedifference between them. Who can set a seed in the ground, and watch itput up a green shoot, and blossom and fructify and wither and pass, without reflecting, not as imagery but as fact, that he has come intoexistence, run his course, and is going out of existence again, byprecisely the same process? With so serious a correspondence betweentheir vital experience, the fact of one being a tree and the other a manseems of comparatively small importance. The life process has but useddifferent material for its expression. And as man and Nature are so likein such primal conditions, is it not to be supposed that they are aliketoo in other and subtler ways, and that, at all events, as it thusclearly appears that man is as much a natural growth as an apple-tree, alike dependent on sun and rain, may not, or rather must not, thethoughts that come to him strangely out of earth and sky, the sap-likestirrings of his spirit, the sudden inner music that streams through himbefore the beauty of the world, be no less authentically the working ofNature within him than his more obviously physical processes, and, say, a belief in God be as inevitable a blossom of the human tree asapple-blossom of the apple?

If this oracular office of Nature be indeed a truth, our contemplationof her beauty and marvel is seen to be a method of illumination, and hervaried spectacle actually a sacred book in picture-writing, a revelationthrough the eye of the soul of the stupendous purport of the universe. The sun and the moon are the torches by which we study its splendidpages, turning diurnally for our perusal, and in star and flower alikedwells the lore which we cannot formulate into thought, but can onlycome indescribably to know by loving the pictures. "The meaning of allthings that are" is there, if we can only find it. It flames in thesunset, or flits by us in the twilight moth, thunders or moans orwhispers in the sea, unveils its bosom in the moonrise, affirms itselfin mountain-range and rooted oak, sings to itself in solitary places, dreams in still waters, nods and beckons amid sunny foliage, and laughsits great green laugh in the wide sincerity of the grass. 

As the pictures in this strange and lovely book are infinite, soendlessly varied are the ways in which they impress us. In our highestmoments they seem to be definitely, almost consciously, sacerdotal, asthough the symbolic acts of a solemn cosmic ritual, in which theuniverse is revealed visibly at worship. Were man to make a practice ofrising at dawn and contemplating in silence and alone the rising of thesun, he would need no other religion. The rest of the day would behallowed for him by that morning memory and his actions would partake ofthe largeness and chastity of that lustral hour. Moonlight, again, seemsto be the very holiness of Nature, welling out ecstatically fromfountains of ineffable purity and blessedness. Of some moonlight nightswe feel that if we did what our spirits prompt us, we should pass themon our knees, as in some chapel of the Grail. To attempt to realize inthought the rapture and purification of such a vigil is to wonder thatwe so seldom pay heed to such inner promptings. So much we lose of thebest kind of joy by spiritual inertia, or plain physical sloth; and someday it will be too late to get up and see the sunrise, or to follow thewhite feet of the moon as she treads her vanishing road of silver acrossthe sea. This involuntary conscience that reproaches us with such laxityin our Nature-worship witnesses how instinctive that worship is, and howmuch we unconsciously depend on Nature for our impulses and our moods. 

Another definitely religious operation of Nature within us is expressedin that immense gratitude which throws open the gates of the spirit aswe contemplate some example of her loveliness or grandeur. Who thathas stood by some still lake and watched a stretch of water-liliesopening in the dawn but has sent out somewhere into space a profoundthankfulness to "whatever gods there be" that he has been allowed togaze on so fair a sight. Whatever the struggle or sorrow of our lives, we feel in such moments our great good fortune at having been born intoa world that contains such marvels. It is sufficient success in life, whatever our minor failures, to have beheld such beauty; and mankind atlarge witnesses to this feeling by the value it everywhere attaches toscenes in Nature exceptionally noble or exquisite. Though the Americantraveller does not so express it, his sentiment toward such naturalspectacles as the Grand Cañon or Niagara Falls is that of an intensereverence. Such places are veritable holy places, and man's heartinstinctively acknowledges them as sacred. His repugnance to anyviolation of them by materialistic interests is precisely the samefeeling as the horror with which Christendom regarded the Turkishviolation of the Holy Sepulchre. And this feeling will increase ratherthan decrease in proportion as religion is recognized as having itsshrines and oracles not only in Jerusalem, or in St. Peter's, butwherever Nature has erected her altars on the hills or wafted herincense through the woodlands. 

After all, are not all religions but the theological symbolization ofnatural phenomena; and the sacraments, the festivals, and fasts of allthe churches have their counterparts in the mysterious processes andmanifestations of Nature? and is the contemplation of the resurrectionof Adonis or Thammuz more edifying to the soul than to meditate thestrange return of the spring which their legends but ecclesiasticallycelebrate? He who has watched and waited at the white grave of winter, and hears at last the first faint singing among the boughs, or the firststrange "peeping" of frogs in the marshes; or watches the ghost-likereturn of insects, stealing, still half asleep, from one knows notwhere--the first butterfly suddenly fluttering helplessly on thewindow-pane, or the first mud-wasp crawling out into the sun in a dazed, bewildered way; or comes upon the violet in the woods, shining at thedoor of its wintry sepulchre: he who meditates these marvels, and allthe magic processional of the months, as they march with pomp and pathosalong their vanishing roads, will come to the end of the year with alofty, illuminated sense of having assisted at a solemn religiousservice, and a realization that, in no mere fancy of the poets, but invery deed, "day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night shewethknowledge. "

Apart from this generally religious influence of Nature, she seems attimes in certain of her aspects and moods specifically to illustrate orexternalize states of the human soul. Sometimes in still, moonlitnights, standing, as it were, on the brink of the universe, we seem tobe like one standing on the edge of a pool, who, gazing in, sees his ownsoul gazing back at him. Tiny creatures though we be, the whole solemnand majestic spectacle seems to be an extension of our own reverie, andwe to enfold it all in some strange way within our own infinitesimalconsciousness. So a self-conscious dewdrop might feel that it enfoldedthe morning sky, and such probably is the meaning of the Buddhist seerwhen he declares that "the universe grows I. "

Such are some of the more august impressions made upon us by thepictures in the cosmic picture-book; but there are also times andplaces when Nature seems to wear a look less mystic than dramatic in itssuggestiveness, as though she were a stage-setting for some portentoushuman happening past or to come--the fall of kings or the tragic clashof empires. As Whitman says, "Here a great personal deed has room. " Somelandscapes seem to prophesy, some to commemorate. In some places notmarked by monuments, or otherwise definitely connected with history, wehave a curious haunted sense of prodigious far-off events once enactedin this quiet grassy solitude--prehistoric battles or terriblesacrifices. About others hangs a fateful atmosphere of impendingdisaster, as though weighted with a gathering doom. Sometimes we seemconscious of sinister presences, as though veritably in the abode ofevil spirits. The place seems somehow not quite friendly to humanity, not quite good to linger in, lest its genius should cast its perilousshadow over the heart. On the other hand, some places breathe anineffable sense of blessedness, of unearthly promise. We feel as thoughsome hushed and happy secret were about to be whispered to us out of theair, some wonderful piece of good fortune on the edge of happening. Somehand seems to beckon us, some voice to call, to mysterious paradises ofinconceivable green freshness and supernaturally beautiful flowers, fairy fastnesses of fragrance and hidden castles of the dew. In suchhours the Well at the World's End seems no mere poet's dream. It awaitsus yonder in the forest glade, amid the brooding solitudes of silentfern, and the gate of the Earthly Paradise is surely there in yondervale hidden among the violet hills. 

Various as are these impressions, it is strange and worth thinking onthat the dominant suggestion of Nature through all her changes, whetherher mood be stormy or sunny, melancholy or jubilant, is one of presageand promise. She seems to be ever holding out to us an immortalinvitation to follow and endure, to endure and to enjoy. She seems tosay that what she brings us is but an earnest of what she holds for usout there along the vanishing road. There is nothing, indeed, she willnot promise us, and no promise, we feel, she cannot keep. Even in hertragic and bodeful seasons, in her elegiac autumns and stern winters, there is an energy of sorrow and sacrifice that elevates and inspires, and in the darkest hours hints at immortal mornings. She may terrify, but she never deadens, the soul. In earthquake and eclipse she seems tobe less busy with destruction than with renewed creation. She is butwrecking the old, that

 . .. There shall be Beautiful things made new, for the surprise Of the sky-children. 

As I have thus mused along with the reader, a reader I hope not tooimaginary, the manner in which the phrase with which I began hasrecurred to my pen has been no mere accident, nor yet has it been amere literary device. It seemed to wait for one at every turn of one'stheme, inevitably presenting itself. For wherever in Nature we set ourfoot, she seems to be endlessly the centre of vanishing roads, radiatingin every direction into space and time. Nature is forever arriving andforever departing, forever approaching, forever vanishing; but in hervanishings there seems to be ever the waving of a hand, in all herpartings a promise of meetings farther along the road. She would seem tosay not so much _Ave atque vale_, as _Vale atque ave_. In all thisrhythmic drift of things, this perpetual flux of atoms flowing on and oninto Infinity, we feel less the sense of loss than of a musicalprogression of which we too are notes. 

We are all treading the vanishing road of a song in the air, thevanishing road of the spring flowers and the winter snows, the vanishingroads of the winds and the streams, the vanishing road of beloved faces. But in this great company of vanishing things there is a reassuringcomradeship. We feel that we are units in a vast ever-moving army, thevanguard of which is in Eternity. The road still stretches ahead of us. For a little while yet we shall experience all the zest and bustle ofmarching feet. The swift-running seasons, like couriers bound for thefront, shall still find us on the road, and shower on us in passingtheir blossoms and their snows. For a while the murmur of the runningstream of Time shall be our fellow-wayfarer--till, at last, up thereagainst the sky-line, we too turn and wave our hands, and know forourselves where the road wends as it goes to meet the stars. And otherswill stand as we today and watch us reach the top of the ridge anddisappear, and wonder how it seemed to us to turn that radiant cornerand vanish with the rest along the vanishing road. 

II

WOMAN AS A SUPERNATURAL BEING

The boy's first hushed enchantment, blent with a sort of religious awe, as in his earliest love affair he awakens to the delicious mystery wecall woman, a being half fairy and half flower, made out of moonlightand water lilies, of elfin music and thrilling fragrance, of divinewhiteness and softness and rustle as of dewy rose gardens, a being ofunearthly eyes and terribly sweet marvel of hair; such, too, throughlife, and through the ages, however confused or overlaid by use andwont, is man's perpetual attitude of astonishment before the apparitionwoman. 

Though she may work at his side, the comrade of his sublunaryoccupations, he never, deep down, thinks of her as quite real. Thoughhis wife, she remains an apparition, a being of another element, anUndine. She is never quite credible, never quite loses that first nimbusof the supernatural. 

This is true not merely for poets; it is true for all men, though, ofcourse, all men may not be conscious of its truth, or realize the truthin just this way. Poets, being endowed with exceptional sensitiveness offeeling and expression, say the wonderful thing in the wonderful way, bring to it words more nearly adequate than others can bring; but it isan error to suppose that any beauty of expression can exaggerate, canindeed more than suggest, the beauty of its truth. Woman is all thatpoets have said of her, and all that poets can never say:

 Always incredible hath seemed the rose, And inconceivable the nightingale--

and the poet's adoration of her is but the articulate voice of man'slove since the beginning, a love which is as mysterious as she herselfis a mystery. 

However some may try to analyse man's love for woman, to explain it, orexplain it away, belittle it, nay, even resent and befoul it, it remainsan unaccountable phenomenon, a "mystery we make darker with a name. "Biology, cynically pointing at certain of its processes, makes themiracle rather more miraculous than otherwise. Musical instruments areno explanation of music. "Is it not strange that sheep's guts shouldhale souls out of men's bodies?" says Benedick, in _Much Ado AboutNothing_, commenting on Balthazar's music. But they do, for all that, though no one considers sheep's gut the explanation. To cry "sex" and totalk of nature's mad preoccupation with the species throws no light onthe matter, and robs it of no whit of its magic. The rainbow remains arainbow, for all the sciences. And woman, with or without the suffrage, stenographer or princess, is of the rainbow. She is beauty made fleshand dwelling amongst us, and whatever the meaning and message of beautymay be, such is the meaning of woman on the earth--her meaning, at allevents, for men. That is, she is the embodiment, more than any othercreature, of that divine something, whatever it may be, behind matter, that spiritual element out of which all proceeds, and which mysteriouslygives its solemn, lovely and tragic significance to our mortal day. 

If you tell some women this of themselves, they will smile at you. Menare such children. They are so simple. Dear innocents, how easily theyare fooled! A little make-up, a touch of rouge, a dash of henna--and youare an angel. Some women seem really to think this; for, naturally, theyknow nothing of their own mystery, and imagine that it resides in a fewfeminine tricks, the superficial cleverness with which some of them knowhow to make the most of the strange something about them which theyunderstand even less than men understand it. 

Other women indeed resent man's religious attitude toward them assentimental, old-fashioned. They prefer to be regarded merely asfellow-men. To show consciousness of their sex is to risk offence, andto busy one's eyes with their magnificent hair, instead of themagnificent brains beneath it, is to insult them. Yet when, in that oldcourt of law, Phryne bared her bosom as her complete case for thedefence, she proved herself a greater lawyer than will ever be made bylaw examinations and bachelor's degrees; and even when women becomejudges of the Supreme Court, a development easily within sight, theywill still retain the greater importance of being merely women. Yes, andone can easily imagine some future woman President of the United States, for all the acknowledged brilliancy of her administration, beingesteemed even more for her superb figure. 

It is no use. Woman, if she would, "cannot shake off the god. " She mustmake up her mind, whatever other distinctions she may achieve, to herinalienable distinction of being woman; nothing she can do will changeman's eternal attitude toward her, as a being made to be worshipped andto be loved, a being of beauty and mystery, as strange and as lovely asthe moon, the goddess and the mother of lunatics. What a wonderfuldestiny is hers! In addition to being the first of human beings, allthat a man can be, to be so much else as well; to be, so to say, thepresident of a railroad and yet a priestess of nature's mysteries; astenographer at so many dollars a week and yet a nymph of the forestpools--woman, "and yet a spirit still. " Not without meaning has mythendowed woman with the power of metamorphosis, to change at will likethe maidens in the legend into wild white swans, or like Syrinx, fleeingfrom the too ardent pursuit of Pan, into a flowering reed, or likeLamia, into a jewelled serpent--

 Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons. 

Modern conditions are still more favourable than antique story for theexhibition of this protean quality of woman, providing her withopportunities of still more startling contrasts of transformation. Willit not be a wonderful sight in that near future to watch that womanjudge of the Supreme Court, in the midst of some learned tangle ofinter-state argument, turn aside for a moment, in response to aplaintive cry, and, unfastening her bodice, give the little clamourerthe silver solace it demands! What a hush will fall upon the assembledcourt! To think of such a genius for jurisprudence, such a legal brain, working in harmony--with such a bosom! So august a pillar of the law, yet so divine a mother. 

As it is, how piquant the contrast between woman inside and outside heroffice hours! As you take her out to dinner, and watch her there seatedbefore you, a perfumed radiance, a dewy dazzling vision, an evening starswathed in gauzy convolutions of silk and lace--can it be the samecreature who an hour or two ago sat primly with notebook and pencil atyour desk side, and took down your specification for fireproofing thatnew steel-constructed building on Broadway? You, except for your eveningclothes, are not changed; but she--well, your clients couldn't possiblyrecognize her. As with Browning's lover, you are on the other side ofthe moon, "side unseen" of office boy or of subway throng; you are inthe presence of those "silent silver lights and darks undreamed of" bythe gross members of your board of directors. By day--but ah! at eveningunder the electric lights, to the delicate strains of the palm-shadedorchestra! Man is incapable of these exquisite transformations. By day agruff and hurried machine--at evening, at best, a rapt and laconic pokerplayer. A change with no suggestion of the miraculous. 

Do not let us for a moment imagine that because man is ceasing to removehis hat at her entrance into crowded elevators, or because he hustlesher or allows her to hang by the straps in crowded cars, that he istending to forget this supernaturalism of woman. Such change in hismanners merely means his respect for her disguise, her disguise as abusiness woman. By day she desires to be regarded as just that, and sheresents as untimely the recognition of her sex, her mystery, and hermarvel during business hours. Man's apparent impoliteness, therefore, isactually a delicate modern form of chivalry. But of course his realfeelings are only respectfully masked, and, let her be in any danger orreal discomfort, or let any language be uttered unseemly for her ears, and we know what promptly happens. Barring such accidents, man tacitlyunderstands that her incognito is to be respected--till the charmingmoment comes when she chooses to put it aside and take at his hands herimmemorial tribute. 

So, you see, she is able to go about the rough ways, taking part even inthe rough work of the world, literally bearing what the fairy tales calla charmed life. And this, of course, gives her no small advantage in thehuman conflict. So protected, she is enabled, when need arises, to takethe offensive, with a minimum of danger. Consider her recent campaignfor suffrage, for example. Does any one suppose that, had she beenanything but woman, a sacrosanct being, immune from clubs and bullets, that she would have been allowed to carry matters with such highvictorious hand as in England--and more power to her!--she has of latebeen doing. Let men attempt such tactics, and their shrift isuncomplimentarily short. It may be said that woman enjoys this immunitywith children and curates, but, even so, it may be held that theselatter participate in a less degree in that divine nature with whichwoman is so completely armoured. 

 How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

exclaims Shakespeare. 

But there is indeed the mystery, for, though its "action is no strongerthan a flower, " the power wielded by beauty in this world, and thereforeby woman as its most dynamic embodiment, is as undeniable as it isirresistible. "Terrible as an army with banners" was no mere figure oflovesick speech. It is as plain a truth as the properties of radium, and belongs to the same order of marvel. Such scientific discoveries areparticularly welcome as demonstrating the power of the finer, ascontrasted with the more brutally obvious, manifestations of force; forthey thus illustrate the probable nature of those spiritual forces whoseoperations we can plainly see, without being able to account for them. Afoolish phrase has it that "a woman's strength is in her helplessness. ""Helplessness" is a curious term to use for a mysteriously concentratedor super-refined form of strength. "Whose action is no stronger than aflower. " But is the action of a flower any less strong because it is notthe action of a fist? As a motive force a flower may be, and indeed hastime and again been, stronger than a thousand fists. And what then shallwe say of the action of that flower of flowers that is woman--thatflower that not only once or twice in history has

 . .. Launched a thousand ships And burned the topless towers of Ilium. 

Woman's helplessness, forsooth! On the contrary, woman is the bestequipped fighting machine that ever went to battle. And she is this, notfrom any sufferance on the part of man, not from any consideration onhis part toward her "weakness, " but merely because he cannot helphimself, because nature has so made her. 

No simple reasoning will account for her influence over man. It is notan influence he allows. It is an influence he cannot resist, and it isan influence which he cannot explain, though he may make believe to doso. That "protection, " for example, which he extends to her from thecommon physical perils with which he is more muscularly constituted tocope--why is it extended? Merely out of pity to a weaker being thanhimself? Does other weakness always command his pity? We know that itdoes not. No, this "protection" is but a part of an instinctivereverence, for which he can give no reason, the same kind of reverencewhich he has always given to divine beings, to any manifestation orvessel of the mysteriously sacred something in human life. He respectsand protects woman from the same instinct which makes him shrink fromprofaning an altar or robbing a church, or sends him on his knees beforeany apparition supposedly divine. Priests and women are often classedtogether, but not because the priests are regarded as effeminately"helpless"; rather because both are recognized as ministers of sacredmysteries, both belong to the spiritual sphere, and have commerce withthe occult holiness of things. Also be it remarked that this"protection" is chiefly needed against the brutality and bestiality ofman's own heart, which woman and religion alike rather hold insubjection by their mysterious influence than have to thank for anyfavours of self-control. Man "protects" woman because he first worshipsher, because, if she has for him not always the beauty of holiness, sheat least always suggests the holiness of beauty. 

Now when has man ever suggested holiness to the most adoring woman? I donot refer to the professional holiness of saints and ecclesiastics, butto that sense of hallowed strangeness, of mystic purity, of spiritualexquisiteness, which breathes from a beautiful woman and makes the touchof her hand a religious ecstasy, and her very garments a thrillingmystery. How impossible it is to imagine a woman writing the _VitaNuova_, or a girl feeling toward a boy such feelings of awe and worshipas set the boy Dante a-tremble at his first sight of the girl Beatrice. 

 At that moment [he writes], I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulse of my body shook therewith; and in trembling it said these words: "_Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi_. (Here is a deity stronger than I, who, coming, shall rule over me. )"

And, loverlike, he records of "this youngest of the angels" that "herdress on that day was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodlycrimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited with her verytender age. " Ah! that "little frock, " that sacred little frock we firstsaw her in! Don't we all know it? And the little handkerchief, scentedlike the breath of heaven, we begged as a sacred relic! And--

 Long after you are dead I will kiss the shoes of your feet. .. . 

Yes! anything she has worn or touched; for, as a modern writer has said:

 Everything a woman wears or touches immediately incarnates something of herself. A handkerchief, a glove, a flower--with a breath she endows them with immortal souls. 

Waller with his girdle, Donne with "that subtle wreath of hair about hisarm, " the mediaeval knight riding at tourney with his lady's sleeve athis helm, and all relic-worshipping lovers through the ages bear witnessto that divine supernaturalism of woman. To touch the hem of that littlefrock, to kiss the mere imprint of those little feet, is to be purifiedand exalted. But when did man affect woman in that way? I am tolerablywell read in the poetry of woman's emotions, but I recall no parallelexpressions of feeling. No passionate apostrophes of his golf stockingscome to my mind, nor wistful recollections of the trousers he wore onthat never-to-be-forgotten afternoon. The immaculate collar that spannedhis muscular throat finds no Waller to sing it:

 A narrow compass--and yet there Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair, and probably the smartest negligée shirt that ever sported with thesummer winds on a clothes-line has never caused the smallest flutter infeminine bosoms. The very suggestion is, of course, absurd--whereas withwomen, in very deed, it is as with the temple in Keats's lines:

 . .. Even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple's self. 

Properly understood, therefore, the cult of the skirt-dancer has areligious significance, and man's preoccupation with petticoats is butthe popular recognition of the divinity of woman. All that she is anddoes and wears has a ritualistic character, and she herself commands ourreverence because we feel her to be the vessel of sacred mysteries, theearthly representative of unearthly powers, with which she enjoys anintimacy of communication denied to man. It is not a reasonable feeling, or one to be reasoned about; and that is why we very properly exemptwoman from the necessity of being reasonable. She is not, we say, areasonable being, and in so saying we pay her a profound compliment. Forshe transcends reason, and on that very account is mysteriously wise, the wisest of created things--mother-wise. When we say "mother-wit, " wemean something deeper than we realize--for what in the universe is wiserthan a mother, fed as she is through the strange channels of her beingwith that lore of the infinite which seems to enter her body by means oforgans subtler than the brain?

A certain famous novelist meant well when recently he celebrated womanas "the mother of the male, " but such celebration, while ludicrouslymasculine in its egotistic limitation, would have fallen short even ifhe had stopped to mention that she was the mother of the female, too;for not merely in the fact that she is the mother of the race residesthe essential mystery of her motherhood. We do not value woman merely, if one may be permitted the expression, as a brood mare, an economicfactor controlling the census returns. Her gift of motherhood isstranger than that, and includes spiritual affinities and significancesnot entirely represented by visible babes. Her motherhood is mysteriousbecause it seems to be one with the universal motherhood of nature, onewith the motherhood that guards and warms to life the eggs in the nestand the seeds in the hollows of the hills, the motherhood of the wholestrange vital process, wherever and howsoever it moves and dreams andbreaks into song and flower. And, as nature is something more than amother, so is woman. She is a vision, an outward and visible sign of aninward and spiritual grace and goodness at the heart of life; and herbeauty is the sacred seal which the gods have set upon her in token ofher supernatural meaning and mission; for all beauty is the message ofthe immortal to mortality. Always when man has been in doubt concerninghis gods, or in despair amid the darkness of his destiny, his heart hasbeen revived by some beatific vision;

 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. 

Woman is our permanent Beatific Vision in the darkness of the world. 

III

THE LACK OF IMAGINATION AMONG MILLIONAIRES

Considering the truly magical power of money, it must often have struckthe meditative mind--particularly that class of meditative mind whosewealth consists chiefly in meditation--to what thoroughly commonplaceuses the modern millionaire applies the power that is his: in brief, with what little originality, with what a pitiful lack of imagination, he spends his money. One seldom hears of his doing a novel or strikingthing with it. 

On the contrary, he buys precisely the same things as hisfellow-millionaires, the same stereotyped possessions--houses in FifthAvenue and Newport, racehorses, automobiles, boxes at the opera, diamonds and dancing girls; and whether, as the phrase is, he makes gooduse of his wealth, or squanders it on his pleasures, the so-called goodor bad uses are alike drearily devoid of individuality. Philanthropistor profligate, the modern millionaire is one and the same in his lack ofinitiative. Saint or sinner, he is one or the other in the same tameimitative way. 

The rich men of the past, the splendid spendthrifts of antiquity, seemusually to have combined a gift of fancy with their wealth, often evensomething like poetry; and their extravagances, however extreme, hadusually a saving grace of personal whim to recommend them to lovers ofthe picturesque. Sardanapalus and Heliogabalus may have been whateverelse you please, but they were assuredly not commonplace; and the meremention of their names vibrates with mankind's perennial gratitude forsplendour and colossal display, however perverse, and even absurd. Theprinces of the Italian Renaissance were, of course, notable examples ofthe rich man as fantast, probably because they had the good sense toseek the skilled advice of poets and painters as to how best to make anartistic display of their possessions. Alas, no millionaire today asks apoet's or painter's assistance in spending his money; yet, were themodern millionaire to do so, the world might once more be delighted withsuch spectacles as Leonardo devised for the entertainments at the VillaMedici--those fanciful banquets, where, instead of a mere vulgar displayof Medici money--"a hundred dollars a plate, " so to say--whimsical witand beauty entered into the creation of the very dishes. Leicester'sfamous welcoming of Elizabeth to Kenilworth was perhaps the lastspectacular "revel" of its kind to strike the imagination; though wemust not fail to remember with gratitude the magnificent Beckford, withhis glorious "rich man's folly" of Fonthill Abbey, a lordly pleasurehouse which naturally sprang from the same Aladdin-like fancy whichproduced "Vathek. "

I but mention one or two such typical examples at random to illustratethe difference between past and present. At present the rich man'spaucity of originality is so painful that we even welcome a certainmillionaire's _penchant_ for collecting fleas--he, it is rumoured, having paid as much as a thousand dollars for specimens of aparticularly rare species. It is a passion perhaps hard to understand, but, at least, as we say, it is "different. " Mr. Carnegie's morecomprehensible hobby for building libraries shows also no littleoriginality in a man of a class which is not as a rule devoted toliterature. Another millionaire I recently read of, who refused to paythe smallest account till it had run for five years, and would thengladly pay it, with compound interest at five per cent. , has somethingrefreshing about him; while still another rich eccentric, who has livedon his yacht anchored near the English coast for some fifteen years orso in order to avoid payment of his American taxes, and who occasionallyamuses himself by having gold pieces heated white hot and thrown intothe sea for diving boys to pick them up, shows a quaint ingenuity whichdeserves our gratitude. Another modern example of how to spend, orwaste, one's money picturesquely was provided by the late Marquis ofAnglesey, a young lord generally regarded as crazy by an ungratefulEngland. Perhaps it was a little crazy in him to spend so much money inthe comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramaticcompany through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playingbut minor rôles; but lovers of Gautier's _Le Capitaine Fracasse_ willsee in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate a beloved dreaminto a reality--though his creditors probably did not take that view. Neither, one can surmise, did those gentlemen sufficiently appreciatehis passion for amassing amazing waistcoats, of which some seven hundredwere found in his wardrobe at his lamented death; or strange andbeautiful walking sticks, a like prodigious collection of which wereamong the fantastic assets which represented his originally largepersonal fortune on the winding up of his earthly affairs. Among theseunimaginative creditors were, doubtless, many jewellers who found ithard to sympathize with his lordship's genial after-dinner habit, particularly when in the society of fair women, of plunging his handinto his trousers pocket and bringing it forth again brimming over withuncut precious stones of many colours, at the same time begging hiscompanion to take her choice of the moonlit rainbowed things. TheMarquis of Anglesey died at the early age of twenty-nine, much lamented, as I have hinted--by his creditors, but no less sincerely lamented, too, by those for whom his flamboyant personality and bizarre whims added tothat gaiety of nations sadly in need today of such figures. A friend ofmine owns two of the wonderful waistcoats. Sometimes he wears one as welunch together, and on such occasions we always drink in silence to thememory of his fantastic lordship. 

These examples of rich men of our own time who have known how to spendtheir money with whim and fancy and flourish are but exceptions to myargument, lights shining, so to say, in a great darkness. As a generalrule, it is the poor or comparatively poor man, the man lacking the verynecessary material of the art, who is an artist of this kind. It is theman with but little money who more often provides examples of thedelightful way of spending it. I trust that Mr. Richard Harding Daviswill not resent my recalling a charming feat of his in this connection. Of course Mr. Davis is by no means a poor man, as all we who admire hiswritings are glad to know. Still, successful writer as he is, he is notyet, I presume, on a Carnegie or Rockefeller rating; and, at the timewhich I am about to recall, while already famous and comparativelyprosperous, he had not attained that security of position which ishappily his today. Well, I suppose it was some twelve or fifteen yearsago--and of course I am only recalling a story well known to all theworld--that, chancing to be in London, and wishing to send a surprisemessage to a lady in Chicago who afterward became his wife, he conceivedthe idea of sending it by messenger boy from Charing Cross to MichiganAvenue; and so the little lad, in the well-known uniform of hurry, spedacross the sea, as casually as though he were on an errand from CharingCross to Chancery Lane, raced across nearly half the continent, ascasually as though he were on an errand from Wall Street to Park Row, and finding the proper number in Michigan Avenue, placed the fartravelled letter in the lady's hand, no doubt casually asking for areceipt. This I consider one of the most romantic compliments ever paidby a lover to his lady. What millionaire ever had a fancy like that?

Or what millionaire ever had a fancy like this? There was living in NewYork some ten years ago a charming actor, not unknown to the public andmuch loved by his friends for, among his other qualities, his quaintwhims. Good actor as he was, like many other good actors he was usuallyout of an engagement, and he was invariably poor. It was always hispoorest moment that he would choose for the indulgence of an odd, andsurely kindly, eccentricity. He would half starve himself, go withoutdrinks, forswear tobacco, deny himself car fares, till at last he hadsaved up five dollars. This by no means easy feat accomplished, he wouldhave his five-dollar bill changed into five hundred pennies, filling hispockets with which, he would sally forth from his lodging, and, seekingneighbourhoods in which children most abound, he would scatter hisarduously accumulated largess among the scrambling boys and girls, literally happy as a king to watch the glee on the young faces at themiraculous windfall. We often wondered that he was not arrested forcreating a riot in the public streets, a disturber of the publictraffic. Had some millionaire passed by on one of those ecstaticoccasions, there is no question but that he would have been promptlyremoved to Bellevue as a dangerous lunatic. 

Or what millionaire ever had a fancy like this? Passing alongForty-second Street one afternoon, I came upon a little crowd, andjoining it I found that it was grouped in amused curiosity, and with acertain kindness, round an old hatless Irishman, who was leaning againsta shop front, weeping bitterly, and, of course, grotesquely. The old manwas very evidently drunk, but there was something in his weeping deeplypitiful for all that. He was drunk, for certain; but no less certainlyhe was very unhappy--unhappy over some mysterious something that one ortwo kindly questioners tried in vain to discover. As we all stoodhelplessly looking on and wondering, a tall, brisk young man, of thelean, rapid, few-worded American type, pushed in among us, took a swiftlook at the old man, thrust a dollar bill into his hand, said "Forgetit"--no more--and was gone like a flash on his way. The old man fumbledthe note in a daze, but what chiefly interested me was the amazed lookon the faces of the little crowd. It was almost as if somethingsupernatural had happened. All eyes turned quickly to catch sight ofthat strange young man; but he was already far off striding swiftly upthe street. I have often regretted that I checked my impulse to catch upwith him--for it seemed to me, too, that I had never seen a strangerthing. Pity or whim or whatever it was, did ever a millionaire do thelike with a dollar, create such a sensation or have so much fun with sosmall a sum? No; millionaires never have fancies like that. 

Another poor man's fancy is that of a friend of mine, a very poor younglawyer, whose custom it is to walk uptown from his office at evening, studying the faces of the passers-by. He is too poor to afford dollarbills. He must work his miracles with twenty-five-cent pieces, or evensmaller coins; but it is with this art of spending money as with anyother art: the greatness of the artist is shown by his command over aneconomy of material; and the amount of human happiness to be evoked bythe dispensation of a quarter into the carefully selected hand, at theartistically chosen moment, almost passes belief. Suppose, for example, you were a sandwich man on a bleak winter day, an old weary man, withhope so long since faded out of your heart that you would hardly knowwhat the word meant if you chanced to read it in print. Thought, too, isdead within you, and feeling even so numbed that you hardly suffer anymore. Practically you are a man who ought to be in your coffin--at peacein Potter's field--who, by the mere mechanic habit of existence, mournfully parades the public streets, holding up a banner with somestrange device, the scoff of the pitiless wayfarer--as like as notsupporting against an empty stomach the savoury advertisement of somenewly opened restaurant. Suppose you were that man, and suddenly throughthe thick hopelessness, muffling you around as with a spiritualdeafness, there should penetrate a kind voice saying: "Try and keep upyour heart, friend; there are better days ahead"; and with the voice ahand slipping into yours a coin, and with both a kind smile, a cheery"Good-bye, " and a tall, broad-shouldered figure, striding with long, soto say, kindly legs up the street--gone almost before you knew he wasthere. I think it would hardly matter to you whether the coin were aquarter or a dime; but what would matter would be your amazement thatthere still was any kindness left on the earth; and perhaps you mightalmost be tempted to believe in God again. And then--well, what would itmatter to any one what you did with your miraculous coin? This is myfriend's favourite way of spending his money. To the extent of his poormeans he has constituted himself the Haroun Al Raschid of the sandwichmen. 

After all, I suppose that most of us, if put into the possession ofgreat wealth, would find our greatest satisfaction in the spending of itmuch after the fashion of my poor lawyer friend--that is, in theartistic distribution of human happiness. I do not, of course, for amoment include in that phrase those soulless systems of philanthropy bywhich a solid block of money on the one side is applied to the relief ofa solid block of human misery on the other, useful and much to beappreciated as such mechanical charity of course is. It is not, indeed, the pious use of money that is my theme, but rather how to get the mostfun, the most personal and original fun, out of it. 

The mention of the great caliph suggests a rôle which is open to anyrich man to play, the rôle of the Haroun Al Raschid of New York. What awonderful part to play! Instead of loitering away one's evenings at theclub, to doff one's magnificence and lose oneself in the great nightlymultitude of the great city, wandering hither and thither, watching andlistening, and, with one's cheque-book for a wand, play the magician ofhuman destinies--bringing unhoped-for justice to the oppressed, succouras out of heaven to the outcast, and swift retribution, as of suddenlightning, to the oppressor. To play Providence in some tragic crisis ofhuman lives; at the moment when all seemed lost to step out of thedarkness and set all right with a touch of that magic wand. To walk bythe side of lost and lonely men, an unexpected friend; to scribble aword on a card and say, "Present this tomorrow morning at such a numberBroadway and see what will happen, " and then to disappear once againinto the darkness. To talk with sad, wandering girls, and arrange thatwonderful new hats and other forms of feminine hope shall fall out ofthe sky into their lonely rooms on the morrow. To be the friend of wearyworkmen and all that toil by night while the world is asleep in softbeds. To come upon the hobo as he lies asleep on the park bench and slipa purse into his tattered coat, and perhaps be somewhere by to see himwake up in the dawn, and watch the strange antics of his joy--allunsuspected as its cause. To go up to the poor push-cart man, as he isbeing hurried from street corner to street corner by the police, andsay: "Would you like to go back to Italy? Here is a steamer ticket. Aboat sails for Genoa tomorrow. And here is a thousand dollars. It willbuy you a vineyard in Sicily. Go home and bid the signora get ready. "And then to disappear once more, like Harlequin, to flash your wand insome other corner of the human multitude. Oh, there would be fun forone's money, something worth while having money for!

I offer this suggestion to any rich man who may care to take it up, freeof charge. It is a fascinating opportunity, and its rewards would beincalculable. At the end of the year how wise one would be in the humanstory--how filled to overflowing his heart with the thought of the joyhe would thus have brought to so many lives--all, too, in pure fun, himself having had such a good time all the while!

IV

THE PASSING OF MRS. GRUNDY

"Death of Mrs. Grundy!" Imagine opening one's newspaper some morning andfinding in sensational headlines that welcome news. One recalls thebeautiful old legend of the death of Pan, and how--false report thoughit happily was--there once ran echoing through the world a longheartbroken sigh, and a mysterious voice was heard wailing three timesfrom land to land, "Great Pan is dead!" Similarly, on that happy morningI have imagined, one can imagine, too, another sigh passing from land toland, the sigh of a vast relief, of a great thankfulness for the liftingof an ineffable burden, as though the earth stretched its limbs and drewgreat draughts of a new freedom. How wildly the birds would sing thatmorning! And I believe that even the church bells would ring ofthemselves!

Such definite news is not mine to proclaim, but if it cannot beannounced with certitude that Mrs. Grundy is no more, it may, at allevents, be affirmed without hesitation that she is on her deathbed, andthat surely, if slowly, she is breathing her last. Yes, that poisonousbreath, which has so long pervaded like numbing miasma the free air ofthe world, will soon be out of her foolish, hypocritical old body; andthough it may still linger on here and there in provincial backwoods andsuburban fastnesses, from the great air centres of civilization it willhave passed away forever. 

The origin of Mrs. Grundy is shrouded in mystery. In fact, though onethus speaks of her as so potent a personification, she has of coursenever had any real existence. For that very reason she has been so hardto kill. Nothing is so long-lived as a chimera, nothing so difficult tolay as a ghost. From her first appearance, or rather mention, inliterature, Mrs. Grundy has been a mere hearsay, a bugaboo beinginvented to frighten society, as "black men" and other goblins have beenwickedly invented by nurses to frighten children. In the old play itselfwhere we first find her mentioned by name, she herself never comes onthe stage. She is only referred to in frightened whispers. "_What willMrs. Grundy say?_" is the nervous catchword of one of the characters, much in the same way as Mrs. Gamp was wont to defer to the censoriousstandards of her invisible friend "Mrs. Harris. " In the case of the lastnamed chimera, it will be recalled that the awful moment came when Mrs. Gamp's boon companion, Batsey Prig, was sacrilegious enough to declareher belief that no such person as "Mrs. Harris" was, or ever had been, in existence. So the awful atheistic moment has come for Mrs. Grundy, too, and an oppressed world at last takes courage to say that no suchbeing as Mrs. Grundy has ever really existed, or that, even if she has, she shall exist no more. _What will Mrs. Grundy say?_ Who caresnowadays--and so long as nobody cares, the good lady is as dead as needbe. 

Mrs. Grundy, of course, is man's embodied fear of his neighbour, thecreation of timid souls who are afraid of being themselves, and who, instead of living their lives after their own fashion and desires, choose to live them in hypocritical discomfort according to thestandards of others, standards which in their turn may be heldinsincerely enough from fear of someone else, and so on without end--avicious circle of insincere living being thus created, in which no manis or does anything real, or as he himself would naturally prefer to beand to do. It is evident that such a state of mutual intimidation canexist only in small communities, economically interdependent, and amongpeople with narrow boundaries and no horizons. If you live in a village, for example, and are dependent on the good opinion of your neighboursfor your means of existence, your morals and your religious belief mustbe those of the village, or you are liable to starve. It is only therich man in a village who can do as he pleases. The only thing for thedependent individualist in a village to do is to go somewhere else, tosome place where a man may at the same time hold his job and hisopinions, a place too big to keep track of its units, too busy to askirrelevant questions, and so diverse in its constituents as to havegenerated tolerance and free operation for all. 

Now, in spite of its bigness, the world was till quite recently littlemore than a village, curiously held in subjection by villagesuperstitions and village ethics, narrow conceptions of life andconduct; but the last twenty years have seen a remarkable enlargement ofthe human spirit, a reassertion of the natural rights of man as againstthe figments of prurient and emasculate conventions, to which there isno parallel since the Renaissance. Voices have been heard and truthstold, and multitudes have listened gladly that aforetime must takeshelter either in overawed silence or in utterance so private that theyexerted no influence; and the literature of the day alone, literature ofwide and greedy acceptance, is sufficient warrant for the obituaryannouncement which, if not yet, as I said, officially made, is alreadywriting in the hearts, and even in the actions, of society. Thepopularity of such writers as Meredith and Hardy, Ibsen and Nietzsche, Maeterlinck and Walt Whitman, constitutes a writing on the wall thesignificance of which cannot be gainsaid. The vogue alone of Mr. BernardShaw, apostle to the Philistines, is a portent sufficiently conclusive. To regard Mr. Shaw either as a great dramatist or an originalphilosopher is, of course, absurd. He, of all men, must surely be thelast to imagine such a vain thing about himself; but even should he beso self-deluded, his immense coarse usefulness to his day and generationremains, and the value of it can hardly be overestimated. What othershave said for years as in a glass darkly, with noble seriousness ofutterance, he proclaims again through his brazen megaphone, with all theimperturbable _aplomb_ of an impudent showman, having as littleself-respect as he has respect for his public; and, as a consequence, that vast herd of middle-class minds to whom finer spirits appeal invain hear for the first time truths as old as philosophy, and answer tothem with assenting instincts as old as humanity. Truth, like manyanother excellent commodity, needs a vulgar advertisement, if it isto become operative in the masses. Mr. Shaw is truth's vulgaradvertisement. He is a brilliant, carrying noise on behalf of freedom ofthought; and his special equipment for his peculiar revivalist missioncomes of his gift for revealing to the common mind not merely theuntruth of hypocrisy, but the laughableness of hypocrisy, first of all. He takes some popular convention, that of medicine or marriage or whatyou will, and shows you not merely how false it is but how ludicrouslyfalse. He purges the soul, not with the terror and pity of tragedy, butwith the irresistible laughter of rough-and-tumble farce. To thinkwrongly is, first of all, so absurd. He proves it by putting wrongthinking on the stage, where you see it for yourself in action, andlaugh immoderately. Perhaps you had never thought how droll wrongthinking or no thinking was before; and while you laugh with Shawat your side-splitting discovery, the serious message glides inunostentatiously--wrong thinking is not merely laughable; it is alsodangerous, and very uncomfortable. And so the showman has done his work, the advertiser has sold his goods, and there is so much more truth incirculation in unfamiliar areas of society. 

That word "society" naturally claims some attention at the hands of onewho would speak of Mrs. Grundy, particularly as she has owed her longexistence to a general misconception as to what constitutes "society, "and to a superstitious terror as to its powers over the individual. Society--using the word in its broad sense--has heretofore been regardedas a vague tremendous entity imposing a uniformity of opinion and actionon the individual, under penalty of a like vague tremendous disapprovalfor insubordination. Independent minds, however, have from time to time, and in ever increasing numbers, ventured to do their own will andpleasure in disregard of this vague tremendous disapproval, and have, strange to say, found no sign of the terrible consequences threatenedthem, with the result that they, and the onlookers, have come to theconclusion that this fear of society is just one more bugaboo oftimorous minds, with no power over the courageous spirit. From amultitude of such observations men and women have come more and more todraw the conclusion that the solidarity of society is nothing but amyth, and that so-called society is merely a loosely connected series ofindependent societies, formed by natural selection among their members, each with its own codes and satisfactions; and that a man not welcome inone society may readily find a home for himself in another, or indeed, if necessary, and if he be strong enough, rest content with his ownsociety of one. 

There was a time when a doubt as to the credibility of the book ofGenesis or a belief in the book of Darwin made the heretic a lonely man, but nowadays he is hardly likely to go without friends. Besides, men andwomen of strong personal character are not usually indiscriminatelygregarious. On the contrary, they are apt to welcome any disparitybetween them and their neighbours which tends to safeguard their leisureand protect them against the social inroads of irrelevant persons. Irecall the case of a famous novelist, who, himself jealous of his ownproper seclusion, permitted the amenities of his neighbours to pleasurehis wife who was more sociably inclined, and smilingly allowed himselfto be sacrificed once a week on the altar of a domestic "at home" day. It was amusing to see him in his drawing-room on Fridays, surrounded byevery possible form of human irrelevancy--men and women well enough intheir way, of course, but absolutely unrelated, if not antipathetic tohim and all he stood for--heroically doing his best to seem really "athome. " But there came a time when he published a book of decidedly"dangerous" tendencies, if not worse, and then it was a delight to seehow those various nobodies fled his contact as they would the plague. His drawing-room suddenly became a desert, and when you dropped in onFridays you found there--only the people he wanted. "Is not this, " hewould laughingly say, "a triumph of natural selection? See how simply, by one honest action, I have cut off the bores!"

To cut off the bores! Yes, that is the desperate attempt that any man orwoman who would live their own lives rather than the lives of others isconstantly engaged in making; and more and more all men and women arerealizing that there is only one society that really counts, the societyof people we want, rather than the people who want us or don't want usor whom we don't want. And nowadays the man or woman must beuncomfortable or undesirable, indeed, who cannot find all the society heor she can profitably or conveniently handle, be their opinions andactions never so anti-Grundy. Thus the one great fear that more than anyother has kept Mrs. Grundy alive, the fear of being alone in the world, cut off from such intercourse with our fellows as most of us feel theneed of at times, has been put an end to by the ever increasingsubdivision of "society" into friendly seclusions and self-dependentcommunities of men and women with like ways and points of view, howeverdisapproved in alien circles. What "shocks" one circle will seemperfectly natural in another; and one great truth should always be heldfirmly in mind--that the approval of one's neighbours has never yet paida man's bills. So long as he can go on paying those, and retain theregard of the only society he values--that of himself and a fewfriends--he can tell Mrs. Grundy to go--where she belongs. And thishappily is--almost--as true nowadays for woman as for man; which is themain consideration, for, it need hardly be said, that it has been on herown sex that the tyranny of Mrs. Grundy has weighed peculiarly hard. 

Had that tyranny been based on a genuine moral ideal, one would havesome respect for it, but, as the world has always known, it has beennothing of the sort. On the contrary, it has all along been an organizedhypocrisy which condoned all it professed to censure on condition thatit was done in unhealthy secrecy, behind the closed doors of a lying"respectability. " All manner of uncleanness had been sanctioned so longas it wore a mask of "propriety, " whereas essentially clean andwholesome expressions of human nature, undisguised manifestations of thejoy and romance of life, have been suppressed and confounded with theirbase counterfeits merely because they have sought the sunlight ofsincerity rather than the shade where evil does well to hide. Man'sproper delight in the senses, the natural joy of men and women in eachother, the love of beauty, naked and unashamed, the romantic emotions, and all that passionate vitality that dreams and builds and glorifiesthe human story: all this, forsooth, it has been deemed wrong even tospeak of, save in colourless euphemisms, and their various drama has hadto be carried on by evasion and subterfuge pitiably silly indeed in thisrobustly procreative world. Silly, but how preposterous, too, and nolonger to be endured. 

It was a gain indeed to drag these vital human interests into the arenaof undaunted discussion, but things are clearly seen to have alreadypassed beyond that stage. Discussion has already set free in the worldbraver and truer ideals, ideals no longer afraid of life, but, in thecourage of their joyousness, feasibly close to all its breathing facts. Men and women refuse any longer to allow their most vital instincts tobe branded with obloquy, and the fulness of their lives to be thwartedat the bidding of an impure and irrational fiction of propriety. Onevery hand we find the right to happiness asserted in deeds as well aswords. The essential purity of actions and relations to which a merelytechnical or superstitious irregularity attaches is being more and moreacknowledged, and the fanciful barriers to human happiness areeverywhere giving way before the daylight of common sense. Love andyouth and pleasure are asserting their sacred natural rights, rights aselemental as those forces of the universe by which the stars arepreserved from wrong, and the merely legal and ecclesiastical fictionswhich have so long overawed them are fleeing like phantoms at cockcrow. It is no longer sinful to be happy--even in one's own way; and theextravagances of passion, the ebullitions of youth, and the vagaries ofpleasure are no longer frowned down by a sour-visaged public opinion, but encouraged, or, if necessary, condoned, as the dramatic play ofnatural forces, and as welcome additions to the gaiety of nations. Thetrue sins against humanity are, on the other hand, being exposed andpilloried with a scientific eye for their essential qualities. 

 . .. The cold heart, and the murderous tongue, The wintry soul that hates to hear a song, The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye, And all the little poisoned ways of wrong. 

Man's virtues and vices are being subjected to a re-classification, inthe course of which they are entertainingly seen, in no few instances, to be changing places. The standards of punishment applied by Dante tohis inferno of lost souls is being, every year, more closelyapproximated; warm-blooded sins of instinct and impulse, as havingusually some "relish of salvation" in them, are being judged lightly, when they are accounted sins at all, and the cold-hearted sins ofessential selfishness, the sins of cruelty and calculation andcowardice, are being nailed up as the real crimes against God and man. The individual is being allowed more and more to be the judge of his ownactions, and all actions are being estimated more in regard to theirspecial relation and environment, as the relativity of right and wrong, that most just of modern conceptions, is becoming understood. The hiddensins of the pious and respectable are coming disastrously into thelight, and it no longer avails for a man to be a pillar of orthodoxy onSundays if he be a pillar of oppression all the rest of the week; whilethe negative virtues of abstinence from the common human pleasures gofor less than nothing in a world that no longer regards the theatre, therace course, and the card table, or even a beautiful woman, as under theespecial wrath of God. No, the Grundy "virtues" are fast disappearing, and piano legs are once more being worn in their natural nudity. Thegeneral trend is unmistakable and irresistible, and such apparentcontradictions of it as occasionally get into the newspapers are of nogeneral significance; as when, for example, some exquisitely refinedIrish police officer suppresses a play of genius, or blushingly coversup the nakedness of a beautiful statue, or comes out strong on thequestion of woman's bathing dress when some sensible girl has thecourage to go into the water with somewhat less than her entire walkingcostume; or, again, when some crank invokes the blue laws against Sundaygolf or tennis; or some spinster association puts itself on recordagainst woman's smoking: all these are merely provincial or parochialexceptions to the onward movement of morals and manners, mere spasmodictwitchings, so to say, of the poor old lady on her deathbed. We knowwell enough that she who would so sternly set her face against thefeminine cigarette would have no objection to one of her votariescarrying on an affair with another woman's husband--not the least in theworld, so long as she was careful to keep it out of the courts. And suchis a sample of her morality in all her dealings. Humanity will lose noreal sanctity or safeguard by her demise; only false shame and falsemorality will go--but true modesty, "the modesty of nature, " truepropriety, true religion--and incidentally true love and truemarriage--will all be immeasurably the gainers by the death of thishypocritical, nasty-minded old lady. 

V

MODERN AIDS TO ROMANCE

There have, of course, in all ages been those who made a business ofrunning down the times in which they lived--tiresome people for whomeverything had gone to the dogs--or was rapidly going--uncomfortablecritics who could never make themselves at home in their own century, and whose weary shibboleth was that of some legendary perfect past. 

In Rome this particular kind of bore went by the name of _laudatortemporis acti_; and, if we have no such concise Anglo-Saxon phrase forthe type, we still have the type no less ubiquitously with us. Thebugbear of such is "modern science, " or "modern thought, " a monsterwhich, we are frequently assured, is fast devouring all the beautifuland good in human life, a Moloch fed on the dreams and ideals and noblefaiths of man. Modernity! For such "modernity" has taken the place of"Anti-Christ. " These sad, nervous people have no eye for the beautifulpatterns and fantasies of change, none of that faith which rejoices towatch "the roaring loom of time" weaving ever new garments for theunchanging eternal gods. In new temples, strangely enough, they seeonly atheism, instead of the vitality of spiritual evolution; in newaffirmations they scent only dangerous denials. With the more gravemisgivings of these folk of little faith this is not the place to deal, though actually, if there were any ground for belief in a modern decayof religion, we might seriously begin to believe in the alleged decay ofromance. 

Yes, romance, we not infrequently hear, is dead. Modern science haskilled it. It is essentially a "thing of the past"--an affair presumablyof stage-coaches, powdered wigs, and lace ruffles. It cannot breathe inwhat is spoken of as "this materialistic age. "

The dullards who repeat these platitudes of the muddle-headed multitudeare surely the only people for whom they are true. It is they alone whoare the materialists, confusing as they do the spirit of romance withits worn-out garments of bygone fashions. Such people are so clearly outof court as not to be worth controverting, except for the opportunitythey give one of confidently making the joyous affirmation that, farfrom romance being dead in our day, there never was a more romantic agethan ours, and that never since the world began has it offered so manyopportunities, so many facilities for romance as at the present time. 

In fact, a very little thinking will show that of all those benefited by"the blessings of modern science, " it is the lovers of the communitywho as a body have most to be thankful for. Indeed, so true is this thatit might almost seem as though the modern laboratory has been runprimarily from romantic motives, to the end that the old reproach shouldbe removed and the course of true love run magically smooth. Valuable asthe telephone may be in business affairs, it is simply invaluable in theaffairs of love; and mechanicians the world over are absorbed in theproblem of aerial flight, whether they know it or not, chiefly toprovide Love with wings as swift as his desire. 

Distance may lend enchantment to those whom we prefer to appreciate fromafar, but nearness is the real enchantment to your true lover, anddistance is his natural enemy. Distance and the slow-footedness of Timeare his immemorial evils. Both of these modern science has all butannihilated. Consider for a moment the conditions under which love wascarried on in those old days which some people find so romantic. Thinkwhat a comparatively short distance meant then, with snail-pacedprecarious mails, and the only means of communication horses by land, and sailing ships by sea. How men and women had the courage to go onlong journeys at all away from each other in those days is hard torealize, knowing what an impenetrable curtain of silence and mysteryimmediately fell between them with the winding of the coach horn, or thelast wave of the plumed hat as it disappeared behind the last turningof the road--leaving those at home with nothing for company but theyearning horizon and the aching, uncommunicative hours. Days, weeks, months, even years, must go by in waiting for a word--and when at lastit came, brought on lumbering wheels or at best by some courier on hissteaming mud-splashed mount, precious as it was, it was already grownold and cold and perhaps long since untrue. 

Imagine perhaps being dependent for one's heart news on some chancesoldier limping back from the wars, or some pilgrim from the Holy Landwith scallop shell and staff!

Distance was indeed a form of death under such conditions--no wonder menmade their wills as they set out on a journey--and when actual physicaldeath did not intervene, how much of that slow death-in-life, thatfading of the memory and that numbing of the affections which absencetoo often brings, was even still more to be feared. The loved face mightindeed return, looking much the same as when it went away, but what ofthe heart that went a-journeying, too? What even of the hearts thatremained at home?

The chances of death and disaster not even modern science can forestall, though even these it has considerably lessened; but that other death ofthe heart, which comes of the slow starvation of silence and absence, itmay be held to have all but vanquished. Thanks to its weird magicians, you may be seas or continents away from her whom your soul loveth, yet"at her window bid good-morrow" as punctually as if you lived next door;or serenade her by electricity--at all hours of the night. If you sighin New York, she can hear you and sigh back in San Francisco; and soonher very face will be carried to you at any moment of the day along themagic wires. Nor will you need to wait for the postman, but be able toread her flowerlike words as they write themselves out on the luminousslate before you, at the very moment as she leans her fragrant bosomupon her electric desk three thousand miles away. If this isn'tromantic, one may well ask what is!

To take the telephone alone, surely the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe, with their primitive hole in the wall, was a tame affair compared withthe possibilities of this magic toy, by means of which you can talk withyour love not merely through a wall but through the Rocky Mountains. Youcan whisper sweet nothings to her across the sounding sea, and bid her"sleep well" over leagues of primeval forest, and through thestoniest-hearted city her soft voice will find its way. Even inmid-ocean the "wireless" will bring you news of her _mal-de-mer_. Andmore than that; should you wish to carry her voice with you from placeto place, science is once more at your service with another magictoy--the phonograph--by which indeed she can still go on speaking toyou, if you have the courage to listen, from beyond the grave. 

The telegraph, the telephone, the "wireless, " the phonograph, theelectric letter writer--such are the modern "conveniences" of romance;and, should an elopement be on foot, what are the fastest post-chaise orthe fleetest horses compared with a high-powered automobile? And whenthe airship really comes, what romance that has ever been will comparefor excitement with an elopement through the sky?

Apart from the practical conveniences of these various new devices, there is a poetic quality about the mere devices themselves which isfull of fascination and charm. Whether we call up our sweetheart or ourstockbroker, what a thing of enchantment the telephone is merely initself! Such devices turn the veriest prose of life into poetry; and, indeed, the more prosaic the uses to which we put them, the moremarvellous by contrast their marvel seems. Even our businesses arecarried on by agencies more mysterious and truly magical than anythingin the _Arabian Nights_, and all day long we are playing with mysteriousnatural laws and exquisite natural forces as, in a small way, when boyswe used to delight in our experiments with oxygen and hydrogen andLeyden jars. Science has thus brought an element of romantic "fun, " soto speak, even into our stores and our counting-houses. I wonder if"Central" realizes what a truly romantic employment is hers?

But, pressed into the high service of love, one sees at once what apoetic fitness there is in their employ, and how our much-abused modernscience has found at last for that fastidious god an appropriatelydignified and beautiful ministrant. Coarse and vulgar indeed seem theancient servitors and the uncouth machinery by which the divine businessof the god was carried on of old. Today, through the skill of science, the august lightning has become his messenger, and the hidden gnomes ofair and sea hasten to do his bidding. 

Modern science, then, so far from being an enemy of romance, is seen onevery hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift andirresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister toits lighter fancies. Be it whim or emergency, the modern laboratory isequally at the service of romance, equally ready to gratify mankind witha torpedo or a toy. 

Not only, however, has modern science thus put itself at the service ofromance, by supplying it with its various magic machinery ofcommunication, but modern thought--that much maligned bugbear oftimorous minds--has generated an atmosphere increasingly favourable toand sympathetic with the romantic expression of human nature in all itsforms. 

The world has unmistakably grown younger again during the last twentyyears, as though--which, indeed, is the fact--it had thrown off anaccumulation of mopishness, shaken itself free from imaginarymiddle-aged restrictions and preoccupations. All over the world there isa wind of youth blowing such as has not freshened the air of time sincethe days of Elizabeth. Once more the spring of a new Renaissance ofHuman Nature is upon us. It is the fashion to be young, and the age ofromance both for men and women has been indefinitely extended. No onegives up the game, or is expected to, till he is genuinely tired ofplaying it. Mopish conventions are less and less allowed to restrictthat free and joyous play of vitality dear to the modern heart, which isthe essence of all romance. More and more the world is growing to love alover, and one has only to read the newspapers to see how sympatheticare the times to any generous and adventurous display of the passions. 

This more humane temper is the result of many causes. The disintegrationof religious superstition, and the substitution in its stead ofspiritual ideals closer to the facts of life, is one of these. All thatwas good in Puritanism has been retained by the modern spirit, whileits narrowing and numbing features, its anti-human, self-mortifying, provincial side have passed or are passing in the regenerating sunlightof what one might call a spiritual paganism, which conceives of naturalforces and natural laws as inherently pure and mysteriously sacred. Thusthe way of a man with a maid is no longer a shamefaced affair, but itis more and more realized that in its romance and its multifariousrefinements of development are the "law and the prophets, " the "eternalmeanings" of natural religion and social spirituality. 

Then, too, the spread of democracy, resulting in the breaking down ofcaste barriers, is all to the good of romance. Swiftly and surely Guelphand Ghibelline and break-neck orchard walls are passing away. If Romeoand Juliet make a tragedy of it nowadays, they have only to blame theirown mismanagement, for the world is with them as it has never beenbefore, and all sensible fathers and mothers know it. 

Again, the freer intercourse between the sexes tends incalculably tosmooth that course of true love once so proverbially rough, but nowindeed in danger of being made too unexcitingly smooth. Yet if, as aresult, certain old combinations of romance are becoming obsolete, newones, no less picturesque, and even more vital in their drama, are beingevolved every day by the new conditions. Those very inroads being sorapidly and successfully made by woman into the immemorial business ofman, which are superficially regarded by some as dangerous to thetenderer sentiments between men and women, are, on the contrary, merelywidening the area of romance, and will eventually develop, as they canbe seen already developing, a new chivalry and a new poetry of the sexesno less deep and far more many-sided than the old. The robustercomradeship between the two already resulting from the more activesharing of common interests cannot but tend to a deeper and moreexhilarating union of man and woman, a completer, intenser marriageliterally of true minds as well as bodies than was possible in the oldrégime, when the masculine and feminine "spheres" were kept so jealouslydistinct and only allowed to touch at the elementary points ofrelationship. There has always been a thrill of adventure when eitherhas been admitted a little farther into the other's world than wascustomary. How thrilling, therefore, will it be when men and womenentirely share in each other's lives, without fictitious reserves andmysteries, and face the whole adventure of life squarely and completelytogether, all the more husband and wife for being comrades as well--asmany men and women of the new era are already joyously doing. 

And, merely on the surface, what a new romantic element woman hasintroduced into the daily drudgery of men's lives by her mere presencein their offices! She cannot always be beautiful, poor dear, and she isnot invariably gracious, it is true; yet, on the whole, how much theatmosphere of office life has gained in amenity by the coming of thestenographer, the typewriter, and the telephone girl, not to speak ofher frequent decorative value in a world that has hitherto beenuncompromisingly harsh and unadorned! Men may affect to ignore this, andcannot afford indeed to be too sensitive to these flowery presences thathave so considerably supplanted those misbegotten young miscreants knownas office-boys, a vanishing race of human terror; yet there she is, allthe same, in spite of her businesslike airs and her prosaic tasks, silently diffusing about her that eternal mystery which she can neverlose, be her occupations never so masculine. 

There she is with her subtly wreathed hair and her absurd little lacehandkerchiefs and her furtive powder puff and her bits of immemorialornaments and the soft sound of her skirts and all the rest of it. Nevermind how grimly and even brusquely you may be dictating to herspecifications for steel rails or the like, little wafts of perfumecannot help floating across to your rolltop desk, and you are a man andshe is a woman, for all that; and, instead of having her with you at fagends of your days, you have her with you all day long now--and yoursisters and your sweethearts are so much the nearer to you all day forher presence, and, whether you know it or not, you are so much the lessa brute because she is there. 

Where the loss to romance comes in in these admirable new arrangementsof modern commerce it is hard to see. Of course a new element of dangeris thus introduced into the routine of our daily lives, but when wasdanger an enemy to romance? The "bright face" of this particular"danger" who would be without? The beloved essayist from whom that lastphrase is, of course, adapted, declared, as we all know, that to marryis "to domesticate the recording angel. " One might say that the modernbusiness man has officialized the ministering angel--perhaps some otherforms of angel as well. 

In their work, then, as in their play, men and women are more and morecoming to share with each other as comrades, and really the fun of lifeseems in no wise diminished as a consequence. Rather the contrary, itwould seem, if one is to judge from the "Decameron" of the newspapers. Yet it is not very long ago that man looked askance at woman's wistfulplea to take part even in his play. He had the old boyish fear that shewould spoil the game. However, it didn't take him long to find out hismistake and to know woman for the true "sport" that she can be. And inthat discovery it was another invention of that wicked modern sciencethat was the chief, if humble seeming, factor, no less than thateclipsed but inexpressibly useful instrument (of flirtation) in thehands of a kind providence, the bicycle. 

The service of the bicycle to the "emancipation of woman" movements hasperhaps never been acknowledged by the philosopher; but a little thoughtwill make evident how far-reaching that service has been. When that nearday arrives on which woman shall call herself absolutely "free, " shouldshe feel inclined to celebrate her freedom by some monument of hergratitude, let the monument be neither to man nor woman, however valiantin the fight, but simply let it take the form of an enthroned andlaurelled bicycle--for the moment woman mounted that apparently innocentmachine, it carried her on the high-road to freedom. On that she couldgo not only where she pleased, but--what is even more to the point--withwhom she pleased. The free companionship of man and woman had begun. Then and forever ended the old system of courtship, which seems solaughable and even incredible today. One was no longer expected to paycourt to one's beloved, sitting stiffly on straight-backed chairs in achill drawing-room in the non-conducting, or non-conducive, presence ofstill chillier maiden aunts. The doom of the _duenna_ was sounded; thechill drawing-room was exchanged for "the open road" and the whisperingwoodland; and soon it is to come about that a man shall propose to hiswife high up in the blue heavens, in an airship softly swaying at anchorin the wake of the evening star. 

VI

THE LAST CALL

I don't know whether or not the cry "Last call for the dining-car"affects others as it affects me, but for me it always has a stern, fateful sound, suggestive of momentous opportunity fast slipping away, opportunity that can never come again; and, on the occasions when I havedisregarded it, I have been haunted with a sense of the neglected"might-have-been. "

Not, indeed, that the formless regret has been connected with anyillusions as to the mysterious quality of the dinner that I have thusforegone. I have been well enough aware that the only actual opportunitythus evaded has been most probably that of an unusually bad dinner, exorbitantly paid for. The dinner itself has had nothing to do with myfeeling, which, indeed, has come of a suggestiveness in the cry beyondthe occasion, a sense conveyed by the words, in combination with theswift speeding along of the train, of the inexorable swift passage andgliding away of all things. Ah! so soon it will be the last call--for somany pleasant things--that we would fain arrest and enjoy a littlelonger in a world that with tragic velocity is flowing away from us, each moment, "like the waters of the torrent. " O yes, all too soon itwill be the "last call" in dead earnest--the last call for the joy oflife and the glory of the world. The grass is already withering, theflower already fading; and that bird of time, with so short a way toflutter, is relentlessly on the wing. 

Now some natures hear this call from the beginning of their lives. Eventheir opulent spendthrift youth is "made the more mindful that the sweetdays die, " by every strain of music, by every gathered flower. All theirjoy is haunted, like the poetry of William Morris, with the wistfulburden of mortality. Even the summer woodlands, with all their pomp andriot of exuberant green and gold, are anything but safe from this lowsweet singing, and in the white arms of beauty, pressed desperatelyclose as if to imprison the divine fugitive moment, the song seems tocome nearest. Who has not held some loved face in his hands, and gazedinto it with an almost agonizing effort to realize its reality, to makeeternally sure of it, somehow to wrest possession of it and thetransfiguring moment for ever, all the time pierced with the melancholyknowledge that tomorrow all will be as if this had never been, and lifeonce more its dull disenchanted self?

 Too soon shall morning take the stars away, And all the world be up and open-eyed, This magic night be turned to common day-- Under the willows on the riverside. 

Youth, however, can afford to enjoy even its melancholy; for theultimate fact of which that melancholy is a prophecy is a long way off. If one enchanted moment runs to an end, it may be reasonably sure for along time yet of many more enchanted moments to come. It has as yet onlytaken a bite or two into the wonderful cake. And, though its poets maywarn it that "youth's a stuff does not endure, " it doesn't seriouslybelieve it. Others may have come to an end of their cake, but its cakeis going to last for ever. Alas, for the day when it is borne in upon uswith a tragic suddenness, like a miser who awakens to find that he hasbeen robbed of his hoard, that unaccountably the best part of the cakehas been eaten, that perhaps indeed only a few desperate crumbs remain. A bleak laughter blends now with that once luxurious melancholy. Thereis a song at our window, terribly like the mockery of Mephistopheles. Our blood runs cold. We listen in sudden fear. It is life singing outits last call. 

The time of this call, the occasion and the manner of it, mercifullyvary with individuals. Some fortunate ones, indeed, never hear it tillthey lie on their deathbeds. Such have either been gifted with such agenerous-sized cake of youth that it has lasted all their lives, orthey have possessed a great art in the eating of it. Though I may addhere that a cautious husbanding of your cake is no good way. That wayyou are liable to find it grown mouldy on your hands. No, oddly enough, it is often seen that those who all their lives have eaten their cakemost eagerly have quite a little of it left at the end. There are nohard and fast rules for the eating of your cake. One can only find outby eating it; and, as I have said, it may be your luck to disprove theproverb and both eat your cake and have it. 

For a dreary majority, however, the cake does come to an end, and forthem henceforth, as Stevenson grimly put it, the road lies long andstraight and dusty to the grave. For them that last call is apt to comeusually before sunset--and the great American question arises: What arethey going to do about it? That, of course, every one must decide forhimself, according to his inclinations and his opportunities. But a fewgeneral considerations may be of comfort and even of greater value. 

There is one thing of importance to know about this last call, that weare apt to imagine we hear it before we actually do, from a nervoussense that it is about time for it to sound. Our hair perhaps is growinggrey, and our years beginning to accumulate. We hypnotize ourselves withour chronology, and say with Emerson:

 It is time to grow old, To take in sail. 

Well and good, if it is and we feel like it; but may be it isn't, and wedon't. Youth is largely a habit. So is romance. And, unless we allowourselves to be influenced by musty conventions and superstitions, bothhabits may be prolonged far beyond the moping limits of custom, and neednever be abandoned unless we become sincerely and unregretfully tired ofthem. I can well conceive of an old age like that of Sophocles, asreported by Plato, who likened the fading of the passions with theadvance of age to "being set free from service to a band of madmen. "

When a man feels so, all is well and comfortable with him. He hasretired of his own free will from the banquet of life, having had hisfill, and is content. Our image of the last call does not apply to him, but rather to those who, with appetites still keen, are sternly warnedthat for them, willy-nilly, the banquet must soon end, and the prisonfare of prosaic middle age be henceforth their portion. No more ortolansand transporting vintages for them. Nothing but Scotch oatmeal andoccasional sarsaparilla to the end of the chapter. No wonder that some, hearing this dread sentence, go half crazy in a frenzied effort toclutch at what remains, run amok, so to say, in their despairingdetermination to have, if need be, a last "good time" and die. Theirefforts are apt to be either distasteful or pathetically comic, and theworld is apt to be cynically contemptuous of the "romantic" outbursts ofaging people. For myself, I always feel for them a deep and tendersympathy. I know that they have heard that last fearful call to thedining-car of life--and, poor souls, they have probably found it closed. Their mistake has been in waiting so long for the call. From variouscauses, they have mismanaged their lives. They have probably lived in anumbing fear of their neighbours, who have told them that it is badmanners to eat one's cake in public, and wicked to eat it in private;and any one who is fool enough to allow his neighbours to live his lifefor him instead of living it himself deserves what he gets, or ratherdoesn't get. 

A wholesome oblivion of one's neighbours is the beginning of wisdom. Neighbours, at the best, are an impertinent encroachment on one'sprivacy, and, at the worst, an unnatural hindrance to our development. Generally speaking, it is the man or woman who has lived with least fearof his neighbours, who is least likely to hear that last call. Nothingin retrospect is so barren as a life lived in accordance with thehypocrisies of society. For those who have never lived, and are now fainto begin living when it is too late, that last call comes indeed with aghastly irony. But for those who have fearlessly lived their lives, asthey came along, with Catullus singing their _vivamus atque amemus_, andpractising it, too; for those, if indeed the last call must come, theywill be able to support it by the thought that, often as in the pastlife has called to them, it has never called to them in vain. We are aptsometimes to belittle our memories, but actually they are worth a gooddeal; and should the time come when we have little to look forward to, it will be no small comfort to have something to look back on. And itwon't be the days when we _didn't_ that we shall recall with a sense ofpossession, but the days and nights when we most emphatically _did_. Thank God, we did for once hold that face in our hands in the woodland!Thank God, we did get divinely drunk that wild night of nights in thecity!

 Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? But these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breast of the nymphs in the brake. 

It is the fine excesses of life that make it worth living. The stalks ofthe days are endurable only because they occasionally break into flower. It is our sins of omission alone that we come in the end to regret. Thetemptations we resisted in our youth make themselves rods to scourge ourmiddle age. I regret the paradoxical form these platitudes haveunconsciously taken, for that they are the simplest truth any honestdying man would tell you. And that phrase recalls a beautiful poem by"E. Nesbit" which has haunted me all my life, a poem I shall beg leaveto quote here, because, though it is to be found in that poet's volume, it is not, I believe, as well known as it deserves to be by those whoneed its lesson. I quote it, too, from memory, so I trust that thelength of time I have remembered it may be set to my credit against anyverbal mistakes I make. 

 "If, on some balmy summer night, You rowed across the moon path white, And saw the shining sea grow fair With silver scales and golden hair, What would you do?"

 "I would be wise And shut my ears and shut my eyes, Lest I should leap into the tide And clasp the seamaid as I died. "

 "But if you thus were strong to flee From sweet spells woven of moon and sea, Are you quite sure that you would reach, Without one backward look, the beach?"

 "I might look back, my dear, and then Row straight into the snare again, Or, if I safely got away-- Regret it to my dying day. "

He who liveth his life shall live it. It is a grave error to giveourselves grudgingly to our experiences. Only in a whole-heartedsurrender of ourselves to the heaven-sent moment do we receive back allit has to give us, and by the active receptivity of our natures attracttoward us other such moments, as it were, out of the sky. An ever-readyromantic attitude toward life is the best preservative against the_ennui_ of the years. Adventures, as the proverb says, are to theadventurous, and, as the old song goes:

 He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all. 

And the spirit of the times is happily growing more clement toward agreater fulness and variety of life. The world is growing kinder towardthe fun and foolishness of existence, and the energetic pursuit of joyis no longer frowned down by anaemic and hypocritical philosophies. Theold gods of energy and joy are coming to their own again, and the livesof strong men and fair women are no longer ruled over by a hierarchy ofcurates and maiden aunts; in fact, the maiden aunt has begun to find outher mistake, and is out for her share of the fun and the foolishnesswith the rest. Negative morality is fast becoming discredited, and manyan old "Thou shalt not" is coming to seem as absurd as the famous BlueLaws of Connecticut. "Self-development, not self-sacrifice, "--afavourite dictum of Grant Allen's, --is growing more and more to be theformula of the modern world; and, if a certain amount of self-sacrificeis of necessity included in a healthy self-development, the proportionis being reduced to a rational limit. One form of self-sacrifice, at allevents, is no longer demanded of us--the wholesale sacrifice of our ownopinions. The possibility that there may be two opinions or a dozen or ahundred on one matter, and that they may be all different, yet each oneof them right in its proper application, has dawned forcibly on theworld, with the conception of the relativity of experience and themodification of conditions. Nowadays we recognize that there are as many"rights" and as many "wrongs" as there are individuals; and to be happyin our own way, instead of somebody else's, is one of the first laws ofnature, health, and virtue. Many an ancient restriction on personalvitality is going the way of the old sumptuary laws. We have all of usamusing memories of those severe old housekeepers who for no inclemencyof the weather would allow a fire in the grate before the first ofOctober, and who regarded a fire before that date as a positive breachof the moral law. Such old wives are a type of certain old-fashionedmoralists whose icy clutch on our warm-blooded humanity we no longersuffer. Nowadays we light our fires as we have a mind to, and if weprefer to keep them going all the year round, it is no one's businessbut our own. Happy is the man who, when the end comes, can say withLandor:

 I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks and I am ready to depart. 

Such a one will have little need to fear that last call of which I havebeen writing. In Kipling's phrase, he has taken his fun where he foundit, and his barns are well stocked with the various harvests of theyears. Not his the wild regret for having "safely got away. " Rather helaughs to remember how often he was taken captive by the enchantments ofthe world, how whenever there was any piece of wildness afoot he wasalways found in the thick of it. When the bacchantes were out on MountCithaeron, and the mad _Evoe! Evoe!_ rang through the moonstruck woods, be sure he was up and away, with ardent hands clutched in the flyingtresses. Ah! the vine leaves and the tiger skins and the ivory bodies, the clash of the cymbals and the dithyramb shrilling up to the stars!"If I forget thee, O golden Aphrodite!" He is no hypocrite, no weary"king ecclesiast, " shaking his head over the orgies of sap and song inwhich he can no longer share. He frankly acknowledges that then came inthe sweet o' the year, and he is still as young as the youngest byvirtue of having drunk deep of the only elixir, the Dionysiac cup oflife. 

At the same time, while he may not ungratefully rejoice with Sophoclesat being "set free from service to a band of madmen, " that ripening ofhis nature which comes most fruitfully of a generous exercise ofits powers will have instinctively taught him that secret of thetransmutation of the passions which is one of the most precious rewardsof experience. It is quite possible for a lifelong passion for fairwomen to become insensibly and unregretfully transmuted into a passionfor first editions, and you may become quite sincerely content that ayounger fellow catch the flying maiden, if only you can catch yonflitting butterfly for your collection. And, strangest of all, yourgrand passion for your own remarkable self may suffer a miraculoustransformation into a warm appreciation for other people. It is truethat you may smile a little sadly to find them even more interestingthan yourself. But such passing sadness has the relish of salvation init. Self is a weary throne, and the abdication of the ego is to be freeof one of the burdens rather than the pleasures of existence. 

But, to conclude, it is all too possible that you who read this may haveno such assets of a wilful well spent life to draw on as he whom I havepictured. It may be that you have starved your emotions and fled youropportunities, or you may simply have had bad luck. The golden momentsseldom came your way. The wilderness of life has seldom blossomed with arose. "The breast of the nymph in the brake" and "the chimes atmidnight" were not for you. And there is a menacing murmur of autumn inthe air. The days are shortening, and the twilight comes early, with achilly breath. The crickets have stopped singing, and the garden is sadwith elegiac blooms. The chrysanthemum is growing on the grave of therose. Perhaps already it is too late--too late for life and joy. Youmust take to first editions and entomology and other people's interestsin good earnest. But no! Suddenly on the wind there comes a cry--a soundof cymbals and flutes and dancing feet. It is life's last call. You haveone chance left. There is still Indian summer. It is better thannothing. Hurry and join the music, ere it be too late. For this is thelast call!

 When time lets slip a little perfect hour, Take it, for it will not come again. 

VII

THE PERSECUTIONS OF BEAUTY

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back towith retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and eachreligion has its own book of martyrs. The religion of beauty is noexception. Far from it. For most other religions, however they may havediffered among themselves, have agreed in fearing beauty, and even inGreece there were stern sanctuaries and ascetic academes where the whitebosom of Phryne would have pleaded in vain. Christianity has not beenbeauty's only enemy, by any means; though, when the Book of Martyrs ofBeauty comes to be written, it will, doubtless, be the Christianpersecutions of beauty that will bulk largest in the record--for theBeauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty have been warring creedsfrom the beginning. 

At the present moment, there is reason to fear, or to rejoice--accordingto one's individual leanings--that the Religion of Beauty is gainingupon its ancient rival; for perhaps never since the Renaissance hasthere been such a widespread impulse to assert Beauty and Joy as theideals of human life. As evidence one has but to turn one's eyes on theyouth of both sexes, as they rainbow the city thoroughfares with theirlaughing, heartless faces, evident children of beauty and joy, "pagan"to the core of them, however ostensibly Christian their homes and theircountry. In our time, at all events, Beauty has never walked the streetswith so frank a radiance, so confident an air of security, and in hereyes and in her carriage, as in her subtly shaped and subtly scentedgarments, so conspicuous a challenge to the musty, outworn, proprietiesto frown upon her all they please. From the humblest shop-girl to thegreatest lady, there is apparent an intention to be beautiful, sweetmaid, and let who will be hum-drum, at whatever cost, by whatever means. This, of course, at all periods, has been woman's chief thought, buttill recently, in our times, she has more or less affected a certainsecrecy in her intention. She has hinted rather than fully expressed it, as though fearing a certain flagrancy in too public an exhibition of herenchantments. It has hardly seemed proper to her heretofore to be asbeautiful in the public gaze as in the sanctuary of her boudoir. Butnow, bless you, she has no such misgivings, and the flower-like effectupon the city streets is as dazzling as if, some fine morning inConstantinople, all the ladies of the various harems should suddenlyappear abroad without their yashmaks, setting fire to the hearts andturning the heads of the unaccustomed male. Or, to make comparisonnearer home, it is almost as startling as if the ladies of the variousmusical comedies in town should suddenly be let loose upon our senses inbroad daylight, in all the adorable sorceries of "make-up" anddiaphanous draperies. I swear that it can be no more thrilling topenetrate into that mysterious paradise "behind the scenes, " than towalk up Fifth Avenue one of these summer afternoons, in the present yearof grace, --humming to one's self that wistful old song, which goessomething like this:

 The girls that never can be mine! In every lane and street I hear the rustle of their gowns, The whisper of their feet; The sweetness of their passing by, Their glances strong as wine, Provoke the unpossessive sigh-- Ah! girls that never can be mine. 

So audacious has Beauty become in these latter days, so proudly shewalks abroad, making so superb an appeal to the desire of the eye, thighed like Artemis, and bosomed like Aphrodite, or at whiles a fairycreature of ivory and gossamer and fragrance, with a look in her eyes ofsecret gardens; and so much is the wide world at her feet, and one withher in the vanity of her fairness--that I sometimes fear an impending_dies irae_, when the dormant spirit of Puritanism will reassert itself, and some stern priests thunder from the pulpit of worldly vanities andthe wrath to come. Indeed, I can well imagine in the near future somemodern Savonarola presiding over a new Bonfire of Vanities in MadisonSquare, on which, to the droning of Moody and Sankey's hymns, shall becast all the fascinating Parisian creations, the puffs and rats, thepowder and the rouge, the darling stockings, and all such concomitantbewitcheries that today make Manhattan a veritable Isle of Circe, all togo up in savage sectarian flame, before the eyes of melancholy youngmen, and filling all the city with the perfume of beauty's holocaust. Atstreet corners too will stand great books in which weeping maidens willsign their names, swearing before high heaven, to wear nothing butgingham and bed-ticking for the dreary remainder of their lives. Such aday may well come, as it has often come before, and certainly will, ifwomen persist in being so deliberately beautiful as they are at present. 

It is curious how, from time immemorial, man seems to have associatedthe idea of evil with beauty, shrunk from it with a sort of ghostlyfear, while, at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnoticattraction. Strangely enough, beauty has been regarded as the mostdangerous enemy of the soul, and the powers of darkness that aresupposed to lie in wait for that frail and fluttering psyche, soprecious and apparently so perishable, are usually represented as takingshapes of beguiling loveliness--lamias, loreleis, wood nymphs, andwitches with blue flowers for their eyes. Lurking in its most innocentforms, the grim ascetic has affected to find a leaven of concupiscence, and whenever any reformation is afoot, it is always beauty that is madethe first victim, whether it take the form of a statue, a stained-glasswindow, or a hair-ribbon. "Homeliness is next to Godliness, " though notofficially stated as an article of the Christian creed, has been one ofthe most active of all Christian tenets. It has always been easier farfor a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a gloriouslybeautiful woman. Presumably such a one might be in danger of corruptingthe saints, somewhat unaccustomed to such apparitions. 

In this Christian fear and hatred of beauty the democratic origin of theChristian religion is suggestively illustrated, for beauty, whereverfound, is always mysteriously aristocratic, and thus instinctivelyexcites the fear and jealousy of the common people. When, in the thirdcentury, Christian mobs set about their vandalistic work of destroyingthe "Pagan" temples, tearing down the beautiful calm gods and goddessesfrom their pedestals, and breaking their exquisite marble limbs withbrutish mallets, it was not, we may be sure, of the danger to theirprecious souls they were thinking, but of their patrician masters whohad worshipped these fair images, and paid great sums to famoussculptors for such adornment of their sanctuaries. Perhaps it was humanenough, for to those mobs beauty had long been associated withoppression. Yet how painful to picture those golden marbles, in alltheir immortal fairness, confronted with the hideousness of thosefanatic ill-smelling multitudes. Wonderful religionists, forsooth, thatthus break with foolish hands and trample with swinish hoofs the sacredvessels of divine dreams. Who would not

 rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, -- So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. 

One can imagine the priest of such a violated sanctuary stealing back inthe quiet moonlight, when all the mob fury had passed away, seeking amidall the wrack of fallen columns, and shattered carvings, for any poorfragments of god or goddess at whose tranquil fair-ordered altar he hadministered so long; and gathering such as he might find, --maybe a mightyhand, still the hand of a god, albeit in overthrow, or some marble curlsof the sculptured ambrosial locks, or maybe the bruised breast of thegoddess, white as a water-lily in the moon. Then, seeking out somesecret corner of the sacred grove, how reverently he would bury theprecious fragments away from profane eyes, and go forth homeless into amysterious changing world, from which glory and loveliness were thussurely passing away. Other priests, as we know, more fortunate than he, had forewarnings of such impending sacrilege, and were able toanticipate the mob, and bury their beautiful images in safe and secretplaces, there to await, after the lapse of twelve centuries, theglorious resurrection of the Renaissance. A resurrection, however, by nomeans free from danger, even in that resplendent dawn of intelligence;for Christianity was still the enemy of beauty, save in the Vatican, andthe ignorant priest of the remote village where the spade of the peasanthad revealed the sleeping marble was certain to declare the beautifulimage an evil spirit, and have it broken up forthwith and ground formortar, unless some influential scholar, or powerful lord touched with"the new learning, " chanced to be on hand to save it from destruction. Yes! even at that time when beauty was being victoriously born again, the mad fear of her raged with such panic in certain minds that, whenSavonarola lit his great bonfire so subtle a servant of beauty asBotticelli, fallen into a sort of religious dotage, cast his ownpaintings into the flames--to the lugubrious rejoicings of thesanctimonious Piagnoni--as Savonarola's followers were called;predecessors of those still gloomier zealots who, two centuries later, were to turn England into a sort of whitewashed prison, with crop-headedpsalm-singing religious maniacs for gaolers. When Charles the First

 bow'd his comely head Down, as upon a bed, at Whitehall, Beauty also laid her head upon the block at his side. Ugliness, parading as piety, took her place, and once more the breakingof images began, the banishment of music, the excommunication of grace, and gentle manners, and personal adornments. Gaiety became penal, and ahappy heart or a beautiful smile was of the devil, --something likehanging matters--but happy hearts and beautiful smiles must have beenrare things in England during the Puritan Commonwealth. Such as wereleft had taken refuge in France, where men might worship God and Beautyin the same church, and where it was not necessary, as at Oxford, tobury your stained-glass windows out of the reach of the mob--those

 Storied windows richly dight Casting a dim religious light, which even the Puritan Milton could thus celebrate. Doubtless, thatEnglish Puritan persecution was the severest that Beauty has been calledupon to endure. She still suffers from it, need one say, to this day, particularly in New England, where if the sculptured images of goddessand nymph are not exactly broken to pieces by the populace, it is fromno goodwill towards them, but rather from an ingrained reverence forany form of property, even though it be nude, and where, at all events, they are under the strict surveillance of a highly proper andrespectable police, those distinguished guardians of American morals. 

It is worth while to try and get at the reason for this wide-spread, deep-rooted, fear of beauty: for some reason there must surely be. Suchinstinctive feelings, on so broad a scale, are not accidental. And sosoon as one begins to analyse the attitude of religion towards beauty, the reason is not far to seek. 

All religions are made up of a spiritual element and a moral element, the moral element being the temporary, practical, so to say, workingside of religion, concerned with this present world, and the limitationsand necessities of the various societies that compose it. The spiritualelement, the really important part of religion, has no concern with Timeand Space, temporary mundane laws, or conduct. It concerns itself onlywith the eternal properties of things. Its business is the contemplationand worship of the mystery of life, "the mystery we make darker with aname. "

Now, great popular religions, designed as they are for the disciplineand control of the great brute masses of humanity, are almost entirelyoccupied with morality, and what passes in them for spirituality ismerely mythology, an element of picturesque supernaturalism calculatedto enforce the morality with the multitude. Christianity is such areligion. It is mostly a matter of conduct here and now upon the earth. Its mystic side does not properly belong to it, and is foreign to, notto speak of its being practically ignored by, the average "Christian. "It is a religion designed to work hand in hand with a given state ofsociety, making for the preservation of such laws and manners andcustoms as are best fitted to make that society a success here and now, a worldly success in the best sense of the term. Mohammedanism is asimilar religion calculated for the needs of a different society. Whatever the words or intentions of the founders of such religions, their kingdoms are essentially of this world. They are not mystic, orspiritual, or in anyway concerned with infinite and eternal things. Their business is the moral policing of humanity. Morality, as of courseits name implies, is a mere matter of custom, and therefore varies withthe variations of races and climates. It has nothing to do withspirituality, and, in fact, the best morals are often the leastspiritual, and _vice versa_. It will be understood then that any forcewhich is apt to disturb this moral, or more exactly speaking social, order will meet at once with the opposition of organized "religions" socalled, and the more spiritual it is, the greater will be theopposition, for it will thus be the more dangerous. 

Now one begins to see why Beauty is necessarily the bugbear, more orless, of all religions, or, as I prefer to regard them, "organizedmoralities"; for Beauty is neither moral nor immoral, being as she is apurely spiritual force, with no relations to man's little schemes ofbeing good and making money and being knighted and so forth. For thosewho have eyes to see, she is the supreme spiritual vision vouchsafed tous upon the earth--and, as that, she is necessarily the supreme dangerto that materialistic use and wont by which alone a materialisticsociety remains possible. For this reason our young men andmaidens--particularly our young men--must be guarded against her, forher beauty sets us adream, prevents our doing our day's work, makes usforget the soulless occupations in which we wither away our lives. Theman who loves beauty will never be mayor of his city, or even sit on theBoard of Aldermen. Nor is he likely to own a railroad, or be a captainof industry. Nor will he marry, for her money, a woman he does not love. The face of beauty makes all such achievements seem small and absurd. Such so-called successes seem to him the dreariest forms of failure. Inshort, Beauty has made him divinely discontented with the limited humanworld about him, divinely incapable of taking it seriously, or heedingits standards or conditions. No wonder society should look upon Beautyas dangerous, for she is constantly upsetting its equilibrium andplaying havoc with its smooth schemes and smug conventions. She outragesthe "proprieties" with "the innocence of nature, " and disintegrates"select" and "exclusive" circles with the wand of Romance. For earthlypossessions or rewards she has no heed. For her they are meaninglessthings, mere idle dust and withered leaves. Her only real estate is inthe moon, and the one article of her simple creed--"Love is enough. "

 Love is enough: though the world be a-waning And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills beheld shadows, and the sea a dark wonder And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter; The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover. 

Those who have looked into her eyes see limitless horizons undreamed ofby those who know her not, horizons summoning the soul to radiantadventures beyond the bounds of Space and Time. The world is so farright in regarding beauty with a sort of superstitious dread, as apresence almost uncanny among our mere mortal concerns, a daemonicthing, --which is what the world has meant when it has, not unnaturally, confused it with the spirits of evil; for surely it is a supernaturalstranger in our midst, a fairy element, and, like the lorelei and thelamia, it does beckon its votaries to enchanted realms away and afarfrom "all the uses of the world. " Therefore, to them also it brings thethrill of a different and nobler fear--the thrill of the mortal inpresence of the immortal. A strange feeling of destiny seems to comeover us as we first look into the beautiful face we were born to love. It seems veritably an apparition from another and lovelier world, towhich it summons us to go with it. That is what we mean when we say thatLove and Death are one; for Death, to the thought of Love, is but one ofthe gates to that other world, a gate to which we instinctively feelLove has the key. That surely is the meaning of the old fairy-stories ofmen who have come upon the white woman in the woodland, and followedher, never to be seen again of their fellows, or of those who, likeHylas, have met the water-nymph by the lilied spring, and sunk with herdown into the crystal deeps. The strange earth on which we live is justsuch a place of enchantment, neither more nor less, and some of us havemet that fair face, with a strange suddenness of joy and fear, andfollowed and followed it on till it vanished beyond the limits of theworld. But our failure was that we did not follow that last whitebeckoning of the hand--

 And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side. 

VIII

THE MANY FACES--THE ONE DREAM

Among the many advantages of being very young is one's absolutecertainty that there is only one type of beautiful girl in the world. That type we make a religion. We are its pugnacious champions, and theidea of our falling in love with any other is too preposterous even fordiscussion. If our tastes happen to be for blondness, brunettes simplydo not exist for us; and if we affect the slim and willowy in figure, our contempt for the plump and rounded is too sincere for expression. Usually the type we choose is one whose beauty is somewhat esoteric toother eyes. We are well aware that photographs do it no justice, andthat the man in the street--who, strangely enough, we conceive as havingno eye for beauty--can see nothing in it. Thank Heaven, she is not thetype that any common eye can see. Heads are not turned in her wake asshe passes along. Her beauty is not "obvious. " On the contrary, it is ofthat rare and exquisite quality which only a few favoured ones canapprehend--like the beauty of a Whistler or a Corot, and we have beenchosen to be its high-priest and evangelist. It is our secret, thisbeautiful face that we love, and we wonder how any one can be found tolove the other faces. We even pity them, those rosy, rounded faces, withtheir bright unmysterious eyes and straight noses and dimpled chins. Howfortunate for them that the secret of the beauty we love has been hiddenfrom their lovers. Sheer Bouguereau! Neither more nor less. 

In fact, the beauty we affect is aggressively spiritual, and in so faras beauty is demonstrably physical we dismiss it with disdain. Ourideal, indeed, might be said to consist in a beauty which is beautifulin spite of the body rather than by means of it; a beauty defiantlyclothed, so to say, in the dowdiest of fleshly garments--radiantlyindependent of such carnal conditions as features or complexion. Ourideal of figure might be said to be negative rather than positive, andthat "little sister" mentioned in Solomon's Song would bring us nodisappointment. 

We are often heard to say that beauty consists chiefly, if not entirely, in expression, that it is a transfiguration from within rather than agracious condition of the surface, that the shape of a nose is nomatter, and that a beautifully rounded chin or a fine throat has nothingto do with it--indeed, is rather in the way than otherwise. We pointto the fact--which is true enough--that the most famous beautiesof antiquity were plain women--plain, that is, according to theconventional standards. 

We also maintain--again with perfect truth--that mystery is more thanhalf of beauty, the element of strangeness that stirs the senses throughthe imagination. These and other perfectly true truths about beauty wediscover through our devotion to the one face that we love--and weshould hardly have discovered them had we begun with the merelycherry-ripe. It is with faces much as it is with books. There is no wayof attaining a vital catholic taste in literature so good as to begin bymastering some difficult beautiful classic, by devoting ourselves in theardent receptive period of youth to one or two masterpieces which willserve as touchstones for us in all our subsequent reading. Some booksengage all our faculties for their appreciation, and through the keenattentiveness we are compelled to give them we make personal discoveryof those principles and qualities of all fine literature which otherwisewe might never have apprehended, or in which, at all events, we shouldhave been less securely grounded. 

So with faces: it is through the absorbed worship, the jealous study, ofone face that we best learn to see the beauty in all the otherfaces--though the mere thought that our apprehension of its beauty couldever lead us to so infidel a conclusion would seem heresy indeed duringthe period of our dedication. The subtler the type, the more caviare itis to the general, the more we learn from it. We become in a sensediscoverers, original thinkers, of beauty, taking nothing on authority, but making trial and investigation always for ourselves. Such beautybrings us nearer than the more explicit types to that mysteriousthreshold over which beauty steps down to earth and dwells among us;that well-spring of its wonder; the point where first its shiningessence pours its radiance into the earthly vessel. 

The perfect physical type hides no little of its own miracle through itssheer perfection, as in the case of those masterpieces which, as we say, conceal their art. It is often through the face externally less perfect, faces, so to say, in process of becoming beautiful, that we get glimpsesof the interior light in its divine operation. We seem to look into thevery alembic of beauty, and see all the precious elements in the act ofcombination. No wonder we should deem these faces the most beautiful ofall, for through them we see, not beauty made flesh, but beauty while itis still spirit. In our eager fanaticism, indeed, we cannot conceivethat there can be beauty in any other types as well. Yet, because wechance to have fallen under the spell of Botticelli, shall there be nomore Titian? Our taste is for a beauty of dim silver and faded stars, awistful twilight beauty made of sorrow and dreams, a beauty always halfin the shadow, a white flower in the moonlight. We cannot conceive howbeauty, for others, can be a thing of the hot sun, a thing of purple andorange and the hot sun, a thing of firm outlines, superbly concrete, marmoreal, sumptuous, magnificently animal. 

The beauty we love is very silent. It smiles softly to itself, but neverspeaks. How should we understand a beauty that is vociferously gay, abeauty of dash and dance, a beauty of swift and brilliant ways, victoriously alive?

Perhaps it were well for us that we should never understand, well for usthat we should preserve our singleness of taste through life. Somecontrive to do this, and never as long as they live are unfaithful tothe angel-blue eyes of their boyish love. Moralists have perhaps notrealized how much continence is due to a narrowness of aesthetic taste. Obviously the man who sees beauty only in blue eyes is securer fromtemptation than the man who can see beauty in brown or green eyes aswell; and how perilous is his state for whom danger lurks in allbeautiful eyes, irrespective of shape, size, or colour! And, alas! it isto this state of eclecticism that most of us are led step by step by theMephistopheles of experience. 

As great politicians in their maturity are usually found in the exactopposite party to that which they espoused in their youth, so men wholoved blondness in boyhood are almost certain to be found at the feet ofthe raven-haired in their middle age, and _vice versa_. The change isbut a part of that general change which overtakes us with the years, substituting in us a catholic appreciation of the world as it is foridealist notions of the world as we see it, or desire it to be. It is apart of that gradual abdication of the ego which comes of the slowrealization that other people are quite as interesting as ourselves--infact, a little more so, --and their tastes and ways of looking at thingsmay be worth pondering, after all. But, O when we have arrived at thisstage, what a bewildering world of seductive new impressions spreads forus its multitudinous snares! No longer mere individuals, we have notmerely an individual's temptations to guard against, but the temptationsof all the world. Instead of being able to see only that one type ofbeauty which first appealed to us, our eyes have become so instructedthat we now see the beauty of all the other types as well; and we nolonger scorn as Philistine the taste of the man in the street for thebeauty that is robustly vital and flamboyantly contoured. Once we calledit obvious. Now we say it is "barbaric, " and call attention to itsperfection of type. 

The remembrance of our former injustice to it may even awaken a certaintenderness towards it in our hearts, and soon we find ourselves makinglove to it, partly from a vague desire to make reparation to a slightedtype, and partly from the experimental pleasure of loving a beauty theattraction of which it was once impossible for us to imagine. So we feelwhen the charm of some old master, hitherto unsympathetic, is suddenlyrevealed to us. Ah! it was this they saw. How blind they must havethought us!

Brown eyes that I love, will you forgive me that I once looked into blueeyes as I am looking now into yours? Hair black as Erebus, will youforgive these hands that once loved to bathe in a brook of rippled gold?Ah! they did not know. It was in ignorance they sinned. They did notknow. 

O my beautiful cypress, stately queen of the garden of the world, forgive me that once I gave to the little shrub-like women the worshipthat is rightly yours!

Lady, whose loveliness is like white velvet, a vineyard heavy withgolden grapes, abundant as an orchard of apple blossoms, forgive thatonce I loved the shadow women, the sad wreathing mists of beauty, thesilvery uncorseted phantoms of womanhood. It was in ignorance I sinned. I did not know. 

Ah! That Mephistopheles of experience! How he has led us from one fairface to another, teaching us, one by one, the beauty of all. No longerlonely sectarians of beauty, pale prophets of one lovely face, there isnow no type whose secret is hidden from us. The world has become agarden of beautiful faces. The flowers are different, but they are allbeautiful. How is it possible for us, now that we know the charm of eachone, to be indifferent to any, or to set the beauty of one above theother? We have learned the beauty of the orchid, but surely we have notunlearned the rose; and would you say that orchid or rose is morebeautiful than the lily? Surely not. They are differently beautiful, that is all. 

Are blue eyes more beautiful than brown? I thought so once, but now Isee that they are differently beautiful, that is all. Nor is gold hairmore beautiful than black any more, or black than gold. They aredifferently beautiful, that is all. Nor is thy white skin, O Saxon lady, more beautiful than hers of tropic bronze. 

Come sad, or come with laughter, beautiful faces; come like stars indreams, or come vivid as fruit upon the bough; come softly like a timidfawn, or terrible as an army with banners; come silent, come singing . .. You are all beautiful, and none is fairer than another--only differentlyfair. 

And yet . .. And yet . .. Experience is indeed Mephistopheles in this: Wemust pay him for all this wisdom. Is it the old price? Is it our souls?I wonder. 

This at least is true: that, while indeed he has opened our eyes to allthis beauty that was hidden to us, shown us beauty, indeed, where wecould see but evil before, we miss something from our delight in thesefaces. We can appreciate more beauty, but do we appreciate any quite asmuch as in those old days when we were such passionate monotheists ofthe beautiful? Alas! We are priests no more, are we even lovers? But weare wonderful connoisseurs. 

It is our souls. 

IX

THE SNOWS OF YESTER-YEAR

_Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?_ As I transcribe once more thatancient sigh, perhaps the most real sigh in all literature, it is highmid-summer, and the woodland surrounding the little cabin in which I amwriting lies in a trance of green and gold, hot and fragrant and dizzywith the whirring of cicadas, under the might of the July sun. Bees buzzin and out through my door, and sometimes a butterfly flits in, fluttersa while about my bookshelves, and presently is gone again, in search ofsweets more to his taste than those of the muses, though Catullus isthere, with

 Songs sweeter than wild honey dripping down, Which once in Rome to Lesbia he sang. 

As I am caught by the dream-drowsy spell of the hot murmuring afternoon, and my eyes rest on the thick vines clustering over the rocks, and thelush grasses and innumerable underbrush, so spendthrift in theircrowding luxuriance, I try to imagine the ground as it was but fourmonths ago still in the grasp of winter, when the tiniest blade ofgrass, or smallest speck of creeping green leaf, seemed like a miracle, and it was impossible to realize that under the broad snowdrifts amillion seeds, like hidden treasure, were waiting to reveal theirpainted jewels to the April winds. Snow was plentiful then, to be had bythe ton--but now, the thought suddenly strikes me, and brings home withnew illuminating force Villon's old refrain, that though I sought thewoodland from end to end, ransacked its most secret places, not onevestige of that snow, so lately here in such plenty, would it bepossible to find. Though you were to offer me a million dollars for asmuch as would fill the cup of a wild rose, say even a hundred million, Ishould have to see all that money pass me by. I can think of hardlyanything that it couldn't buy--but such a simple thing as last year'ssnow!

Could there be a more poignant symbol of irreclaimable vanished thingsthan that so happily hit on by the old ballade-maker:

 Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, Where they are gone, nor yet this year, Save with thus much for an overword-- But where are the snows of yester-year?

Villon, as we know, has a melancholy fondness for asking these sad, hopeless questions of snow and wind. He muses not only of the drift offair faces, but of the passing of mighty princes and all the arrogantpride and pomp of the earth--"pursuivants, trumpeters, heralds, hey!""Ah! where is the doughty Charlemagne?" They, even as the humblest, "thewind has carried them all away. " They have vanished utterly as the snow, gone--who knows where?--on the wind. "'Dead and gone'--a sorry burden ofthe Ballad of Life, " as Thomas Lowell Beddoes has it in his _Death'sJest Book_. "Dead and gone!" as Andrew Lang re-echoes in a sweetlymournful ballade:

 Through the mad world's scene We are drifting on, To this tune, I ween, "They are dead and gone!"

"Nought so sweet as melancholy, " sings an old poet, and, while themelancholy of the exercise is undoubted, there is at the same time anundeniable charm attaching to those moods of imaginative retrospect inwhich we summon up shapes and happenings of the vanished past, a tragiccharm indeed similar to that we experience in mournful music or elegiacpoetry. 

For, it is impossible to turn our eyes on any point of the starlit vistaof human history, without being overwhelmed with a heart-breaking senseof the immense treasure of radiant human lives that has gone to itsmaking, the innumerable dramatic careers now shrunk to a mere mention, the divinely passionate destinies, once all wild dream and dancingblood, now nought but a name huddled with a thousand such in some dustyindex, seldom turned to even by the scholar, and as unknown to the worldat large as the moss-grown name on some sunken headstone in a countrychurchyard. What an appallingly exuberant and spendthrift universe itseems, pouring out its multitudinous generations of men and women withthe same wasteful hand as it has filled this woodland with millions ofexquisite lives, marvellously devised, patterned with inexhaustiblefancy, mysteriously furnished with subtle organs after their needs, crowned with fairy blossoms, and ripening with magic seeds, --such a vasttreasure of fragrant sunlit leafage, all produced with such elaboratecare, and long travail, and all so soon to vanish utterly away!

Along with this crushing sense of cosmic prodigality, and somewhatlighting up its melancholy, comes the inspiring realization of thesplendid spectacle of human achievement, the bewildering array of allthe glorious lives that have been lived, of all the glorious happenings, under the sun. Ah! what men this world has seen, and--what women! Whatdivine actors have trod this old stage, and in what tremendous dramashave they taken part! And how strange it is, reading some great dramaticcareer, of Caesar, say, or Luther, or Napoleon, or Byron, to realizethat there was a time when they were not, then a time when they werebeginning to be strange new names in men's ears, then all the romanticexcitement of their developing destinies, and the thunder and lightningof the great resounding moments of their lives--moments made out ofreal, actual, prosaic time, just as our own moments are made, yet onceso splendidly shining on the top of the world, as though to stay thereforever, moments so glorious that it would seem that Time must havepaused to watch and prolong them, jealous that they should ever pass andgive place to lesser moments!

Think too of those other fateful moments of history, moments notconfined to a few godlike individuals, but participated in by wholenations, such moments as that of the great Armada, the FrenchRevolution, or the Declaration of American Independence. How strangelyit comes upon one that these past happenings were once only just takingplace, just as at the moment of my writing other things are takingplace, and clocks were ticking and water flowing, just as they are doingnow! How wonderful, it seems to us, to have been alive then, as we arealive now, to have shared in those vast national enthusiasms, "in thosegreat deeds to have had some little part"; and is it not a sort of pooranti-climax for a world that has gone through such noble excitement tohave sunk back to this level of every day! Alas! all those lava-likemoments of human exaltation--what are they now, but, so to say, thepumice-stone of history. They have passed as the summer flowers arepassing, they are gone with last year's snow. 

But the last year's snow of our personal lives--what a wistful businessit is, when we get thinking of that! To recall certain magic moments outof the past is to run a risk of making the happiest present seem like adesert; and for most men, I imagine, such retrospect is usually busiedwith some fair face, or perhaps--being men--with several fair faces, once so near and dear, and now so far. How poignantly and unprofitablyreal memory can make them--all but bring them back--how vividlyreconstruct immortal occasions of happiness that we said could not, mustnot, pass away; while all the time our hearts were aching with the sureknowledge that they were even then, as we wildly clutched at them, slipping from our grasp!

That summer afternoon, --do you too still remember it, Miranda?--when, under the whispering woodland, we ate our lunch together with suchprodigious appetite, and O! such happy laughter, yet never took our eyesfrom each other; and, when the meal was ended, how we wandered along thestream-side down the rocky glen, till we came to an enchanted pool amongthe boulders, all hushed with moss and ferns and overhanging boughs--doyou remember what happened then, Miranda? Ah! nymphs of the forestpools, it is no use asking me to forget. 

And, all the time, my heart was saying to my eyes:--"This fairy hour--soreal, so magical, now--some day will be in the far past; you will sitright away on the lonely outside of it, and recall it only with theanguish of beautiful vanished things. " And here I am today surelyenough, years away from it, solitary on its lonely outside!

I suppose that the river, this summer day, is making the same musicalong its rocky bed, and the leafy boughs are rustling over that hauntedpool just the same as when--but where are the laughing ripples--ah!Miranda--that broke with laughter over the divinely troubled water, andthe broken reflections, as of startled water-lilies, that rocked to andfro in a panic of dazzling alabaster?

They are with last year's snow. 

Meriel of the solemn eyes, with the heart and the laughter of a child, and soul like the starlit sky, where should one look for the snows ofyester-year if not in your bosom, fairy girl my eyes shall never seeagain. Wherever you are, lost to me somewhere among the winding paths ofthis strange wood of the world, do you ever, as the moonlight falls overthe sea, give a thought to that night when we sat together by a windowoverlooking the ocean, veiled in a haze of moonlit pearl, and, dimlyseen near shore, a boat was floating, like some mystic barge, as wesaid, in our happy childishness, waiting to take us to the _Land East ofthe Sun and West of the Moon_? Ah! how was it we lingered and lingeredtill the boat was no more there, and it was too late? Perhaps it wasthat we seemed to be already there, as you turned and placed your handin mine and said: "My life is in your hand. " And we both believed ittrue. Yes! wherever we went together in those days, we were always inthat enchanted land--whether we rode side by side through London streetsin a hansom--"a two-wheeled heaven" we called it--(for our dreamstretches as far back as that prehistoric day--How old one of us seemsto be growing! You, dear face, can never grow old)--or sat and laughedat clowns in London music halls, or wandered in Surrey lanes, or gazedat each other, as if our hearts would break for joy, over the snow-whitenapery of some country inn, and maybe quoted Omar to each other, as wedrank his red wine to the immortality of our love. Perhaps we wereright, after all. Perhaps it could never die, and Time and Distance areperhaps merely illusions, and you and I have never been apart. Who knowsbut that you are looking over my shoulder as I write, though you seem sofar away, lost in that starlit silence that you loved. Ah! Meriel, is itwell with you, this summer day? A sigh seems to pass through the sunlitgrasses. They are waving and whispering as I have seen them waving andwhispering over graves. 

Such moments as these I have recalled all men have had in their lives, moments when life seemed to have come to miraculous flower, attainedthat perfect fulfilment of its promise which else we find only indreams. Beyond doubt there is something in the flawless blessedness ofsuch moments that links our mortality with super-terrestrial states ofbeing. We do, in very deed, gaze through invisible doors into the etherof eternal existences, and, for the brief hour, live as they, drinkingdeep of that music of the infinite which is the divine food of theenfranchised soul. Thence comes our exaltation, and our wild longing tohold the moment for ever; for, while it is with us, we have literallyescaped from the everyday earth, and have found the way into some otherdimension of being, and its passing means our sad return to theprison-house of Time, the place of meetings and partings, of distanceand death. 

Part of the pang of recalling such moments is a remorseful sense thatperhaps we might have held them fast, after all. If only we might bringthem back, surely we would find some way to dwell in them for ever. Theycame upon us so suddenly out of heaven, like some dazzling bird, and wewere so bewildered with the wonder of their coming that we stretched outour hands to seize them, only when they were already spreading theirwings for flight. But O if the divine bird would but visit us again!What golden nets we would spread for him! What a golden cage of worshipwe would make ready! Our eyes would never leave his strange plumage, norwould we miss one note of his strange song. But alas! now that we aregrown wise and watchful, that "moment eternal" comes to us no more. Perhaps too that sad wisdom which has come to us with the years wouldleast of all avail us, should such moments by some magic chance suddenlyreturn. For it is one of the dangers of the retrospective habit that itincapacitates us for the realization of the present hour. Much dwellingon last year's snow will make us forget the summer flowers. Dreaming offair faces that are gone, we will look with unseeing eyes into the fairfaces that companion us still. To the Spring we say: "What of all yourblossom, and all your singing! Autumn is already at your heels, like ashadow; and Winter waits for you like a marble tomb. " To the hope thatstill may beckon we say: "Well, what though you be fulfilled, you willpass, like the rest. I shall see you come. We shall dwell together for awhile, and then you will go; and all will be as it was before, all as ifyou had never come at all. " For the retrospective mood, of necessity, begets the anticipatory; we see everything finished before it is begun, and welcome and valediction blend together on our lips. "That which hathbeen is now; and that which is to be hath already been. "

 In every kiss sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last--

that is the shadow that haunts every joy, and sicklies o'er every actionof him whom life has thus taught to look before and after. 

Youth is not like that, and therein, for older eyes, lies its tragicpathos. Superficial--or, if you prefer it, more normal--observers aremade happy by the spectacle of eager and confident young lives, allabloom and adream, turning towards the future with plumed impatientfeet. But for some of us there is nothing quite so sad as young joy. Theplaying of children is perhaps the most unbearably sad thing in theworld. Who can look on young lovers, without tears in their eyes? Withwhat innocent faith they are taking in all the radiant lies of life! Butperhaps a young mother with her new-born babe on her breast is the mosttragical of all pictures of unsuspecting joy, for none of all thetrusting sons and daughters of men is destined in the end to findherself so tragically, one might say cynically, fooled. 

Cynically, I said; for indeed sometimes, as one ponders the lavishheartless use life seems to make of all its divinely preciousmaterial--were it but the flowers in one meadow, or the butterflies of asingle summer day--it does seem as though a cruel cynicism inheredsomewhere in the scheme of things, delighting to destroy anddisillusionize, to create loveliness in order to scatter it to thewinds, and inspire joy in order to mock it with desolation. Sometimes itseems as though the mysterious spirit of life was hardly worthy of thevessels it has called into being, hardly treats them fairly, uses themwith an ignoble disdain. For, how generously we give ourselves up tolife, how innocently we put our trust in it, do its bidding with suchfine ardours, striving after beauty and goodness, fain to be heroic andclean of heart--yet "what hath man of all his labours, and of thevexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun. " Yea, dust, and fallen rose-leaves, and last year's snow. 

And yet and yet, for all this drift and dishonoured decay of things, that retrospective mood of ours will sometimes take another turn, and, so rare and precious in the memory seem the treasure that it has lost, and yet in imagination still holds, that it will not resign itself tomortal thoughts of such manifest immortalities. The snows ofyester-year! Who knows if, after all, they have so utterly vanished asthey seem. Who can say but that there may be somewhere in the universesecret treasuries where all that has ever been precious is preciousstill, safely garnered and guarded for us against some wonderful momentwhich shall gather up for us in one transfiguring apocalypse all thewonderful moments that have but preceded us into eternity. Perhaps, asnothing is lost in the world, so-called, of matter, nothing is lost tooin the world of love and dream. 

 O vanished loveliness of flowers and faces, Treasure of hair, and great immortal eyes, Are there for these no safe and secret places? And is it true that beauty never dies? Soldiers and saints, haughty and lovely names, Women who set the whole wide world in flames, Poets who sang their passion to the skies, And lovers wild and wise: Fought they and prayed for some poor flitting gleam Was all they loved and worshipped but a dream? Is Love a lie and fame indeed a breath? And is there no sure thing in life--but death?

Ah! perhaps we shall find all such lost and lovely things when we comeat length to the Land of Last Year's Snow. 

X

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOSSIP

According to the old Scandinavian fable of the cosmos, the whole worldis encircled in the coils of a vast serpent. The ancient name for it wasthe Midgard serpent, and doubtless, for the old myth-maker, it hadanother significance. Today, however, the symbol may still hold good ofa certain terrible and hideous reality. 

Still, as of old, the world is encircled in the coils of a vast serpent;and the name of the serpent is Gossip. Wherever man is, there may youhear its sibilant whisper, and its foul spawn squirm and sting andpoison in nests of hidden noisomeness, myriad as the spores ofcorruption in a putrefying carcass, varying in size from somehydra-headed infamy endangering whole nations and even races with itsdeadly breath, to the microscopic wrigglers that multiply, a million aminute, in the covered cesspools of private life. 

Printed history is so infested with this vermin, in the form of secretmemoirs, back-stairs diarists, and boudoir eavesdroppers, that it isalmost impossible to feel sure of the actual fact of any historywhatsoever. The fame of great personages may be literally compared tothe heroic figures in the well-known group of the Laocoön, battling invain with the strangling coils of the sea-serpent of Poseidon. Wescarcely know what to believe of the dead; and for the living, is it nottrue, as Tennyson puts it, that "each man walks with his head in a cloudof poisonous flies"?

What is this evil leaven that seems to have been mixed in with man'sclay at the very beginning, making one almost ready to believe in theold Manichean heresy of a principle of evil operating through nature, everywhere doing battle with the good? Even from the courts of heaven, as we learn from the Book of Job, the gossip was not excluded; and howeternally true to the methods of the gossip in all ages was Satan's wayof going to work in that immortal allegory! Let us recall the familiarscene with a quoted verse or two:

 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan [otherwise, the Adversary] came also among them. 

 And the Lord said unto Satan, "Whence comest thou?" Then Satan answered the Lord, and said: "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. "

 And the Lord said unto Satan: "Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?"

 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, "Doth Job fear God for nought?"

Here we have in a nutshell the whole _modus operandi_ of the gossip inall ages, and as he may be observed at any hour of the day or night, slimily engaged in his cowardly business. "Going to and fro in theearth, walking up and down in it, " everywhere peering and listening, smiling and shrugging, here and there dropping a hint, sowing a seed, leering an innuendo; seldom saying, only implying; leaving everywheretrails of slime, yet trails too vague and broken to track him by, securein his very cowardice. 

"Doth Job fear God for nought?" He only asks, observe. Affirms nothing. Only innocently wonders. Sows a doubt, that's all--and leaves it towork. 

The victim may possibly be set right in the end, as was Job; butmeanwhile he has lost his flocks and his herds, his sons and hisdaughters, and suffered no little inconvenience from a loathsome plagueof boils. Actually--life not being, like the Book of Job, anallegory--he very seldom is set right, but must bear his losses and hisboils with what philosophy he can master till the end of the chapter. 

The race to which Job belonged presents perhaps the most conspicuousexample of a whole people burdened throughout its history with aheritage of malignant gossip. In the town of Lincoln, in England, thereexists to this day, as one of its show places, the famous "Jew's House, "associated with the gruesome legend of "the boy of Lincoln"--a child, it was whispered, sacrificed by the Jews at one of their pastoralfeasts. Such a wild belief in child-sacrifice by the Jews was widespreadin the Middle Ages, and is largely responsible, I understand, even atthe present day, for the Jewish massacres in Russia. 

Think of the wild liar who first put that fearful thought into the mindof Europe! Think of the holocausts of human lives, and all the attendantagony of which his diabolical invention has been the cause! Whatcriminal in history compares in infamy with that unknown--gossip?

A similar madness of superstition, responsible for a like cruelsacrifice of innocent lives, was the terrible belief in witchcraft. Having its origin in ignorance and fear, it was chiefly the creation ofhearsay carried from lip to lip, beginning with the deliberate inventionof lying tongues, delighting in evil for its own sake, or takingadvantage of a ready weapon to pay off scores of personal enmity. At anytime to a period as near to our own day as the early eighteenth century, nothing was easier than to rid oneself of an enemy by starting a whispergoing that he or she held secret commerce with evil spirits, was areader of magical books, and could at will cast spells of disease anddeath upon the neighbours or their cattle. 

You had but to be recluse in your habits and eccentric in yourappearance, with perhaps a little more wisdom in your head and yourconversation than your fellows, to be at the mercy of the first fool orknave who could gather a mob at his heels, and hale you to the nearesthorse-pond. Statement and proof were one, and how ready, and indeedeager, human nature was to believe the wildest nonsense told by witlessfool or unscrupulous liar, the records of such manias as the famousSalem trials appallingly evidence. Men high in the state, as well ashelpless old women in their dotage, disfigured with "witch-moles" orincriminating beards on their withered faces, were equally vulnerable tothis most fearful of weapons ever placed by ignorance in the hands ofthe malignant gossip. 

In such epidemics of tragic gossip we see plainly that, whateverindividuals are originally responsible, society at large is all tooculpably _particeps criminis_ in this phenomenon under consideration. Ifthe prosperity of a jest be in the ears that hear it, the like iscertainly true of any piece of gossip. Whoever it may be that sows theevil seed of slander, the human soil is all too evilly ready to receiveit, to give it nurture, and to reproduce it in crops persistent as thewild carrot and flamboyant as the wild mustard. 

There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, thatgives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousyof goodness and greatness and things of good report. 

Races and nations are thus ever ready to believe the worst of oneanother. In all times it has been in this field of inter-racial andinternational prejudice that the gossip has found the widest scope forhis gleeful activity, sowing broadcast dissensions and misunderstandingswhich have persisted for centuries. They are the fruitful cause of wars, insuperable barriers to progress, fabulous growths which theenlightenment of the world painfully labours to weed out, but willperhaps never entirely eradicate. 

Race-hatred is undoubtedly nine-tenths the heritage of ancient gossip. Think of the generations of ill-feeling that kept England and France, though divided but by a narrow strait, "natural enemies" andmisunderstood monsters to each other. In a less degree, the friendshipof England and America has been retarded by international gossips onboth sides. And as for races and nations more widely separated bydistance or customs, no lies have been bad enough for them to believeabout one another. 

It is only of late years that Europe has come to regard the peoples ofthe Orient as human beings at all. And all this misunderstanding haslargely been the work of gossip acting upon ignorance. 

It is easy to see how in the days of difficult communication, beforenations were able to get about in really representative numbers to makemutual acquaintance, they were completely at the mercy of a fewirresponsible travellers, who said or wrote what they pleased, and hadno compunction about lying in the interests of entertainment. Theproverbial "gaiety of nations" has always, in a great degree, consistedin each nation believing that it was superior to all others, and thatthe natives of other countries were invariably hopelessly dirty andimmoral, to say the least. Such reports the traveller was expected tobring home with him, and such he seldom failed to bring. 

Even at the present time, when intercourse is so cosmopolitan, and someapproach to a sense of human brotherhood has been arrived at, the oldmisconceptions die hard. Nations need still to be constantly on theirguard in believing all that the telegraph or the wireless is willing totell them about other countries. Electricity, many as are its advantagesfor cosmopolitan _rapprochements_, is not invariably employed in theinterests of truth, and newspaper correspondents, if not watched, areliable to be an even more dangerous form of international gossip thanthe more leisurely fabulist of ancient time. 

When we come to consider the operation of gossip in the lives ofindividuals, the disposition of human nature to relish discreditingrumour is pitifully conspicuous. We know _Hamlet's_ opinion on thematter:

 Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. 

And again:

 Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, Thou shalt not escape calumny. 

This, it is to be feared, is merely the sad truth, for mankind, while itadmires both greatness and goodness, would seem to resent the one andonly half believe in the other. At all events, nothing is more to itstaste than the rumour that detracts from the great or sullies the good;and so long as the rumour be entertaining, it has little concern for itstruth. 

Froude, in writing of Caesar, has this to say admirably to our purpose:

 In ages which we call heroic, the saint works miracles, the warrior performs exploits beyond the strength of natural man. In ages less visionary, which are given to ease and enjoyment, the tendency is to bring a great man down to the common level, and to discover or invent faults which shall show that he is or was but a little man after all. Our vanity is soothed by evidence that those who have eclipsed us in the race of life are no better than ourselves, or in some respects worse than ourselves; and if to these general impulses be added political or personal animosity, accusations of depravity are circulated as surely about such men, and are credited as readily as under other influences are the marvellous achievements of a Cid or a St. Francis. 

 The absurdity of a calumny may be as evident as the absurdity of a miracle; the ground for belief may be no more than a lightness of mind, and a less pardonable wish that it may be true. But the idle tale floats in society, and by and by is written down in books and passes into the region of established realities. 

The proportion of such idle tales seriously printed as history cannever, of course, be computed. Sometimes one is tempted to think thathistory is mainly "whole cloth. " Certainly the lives of such men asCaesar are largely made up of what one might term illustrative fictionsrather than actual facts. The story of Caesar and Cleopatra is probablysuch an "illustrative fiction, " representing something that might verywell have happened to Caesar, whether it did so or not. At all events, it does his fame no great harm, unlike another calumny, which, as itdoes not seem "illustrative"--that is, not in keeping with his generalcharacter--we are at liberty to reject. Both alike, however, werethe product of the gossip, the embodied littleness of human natureendeavouring then, as always, to minimize and discredit the strong man, who, whatever his actual faults, at least strenuously shoulders for hisfellows the hard work of the world. 

The great have usually been strong enough to smile contempt on theirtraducers--Caesar's answer to an infamous epigram of the poet Catulluswas to ask him to dinner--but even so, at what extra cost, what "expenseof spirit in a waste of shame, " have their achievements been bought, because of these curs that bark forever at the heels of fame!

And not always have they thus prevailed against the pack. Too often hasthe sorry spectacle been seen of greatness and goodness going downbefore the poisonous tongues and the licking jaws. Even Caesar himselfhad to fall at last, his strong soul perhaps not sorry to escape throughhis dagger-wounds from so pitiably small a world; and the poison in thedeath-cup of Socrates was not so much the juice of the hemlock as thevenom of the gossips of Athens. 

In later times, no service to his country, no greatness of character, can save the noble Raleigh from the tongues determined to bring him tothe block; and, when the haughty head of Marie Antoinette must bow atlast upon the scaffold, the true guillotine was the guillotine ofgossip. It was such lying tales as that of the diamond necklace that hadbrought her there. All Queen Elizabeth's popularity could not save herfrom the ribaldry of scandal, nor Shakespeare's genius protect his namefrom the foulest of stains. 

In our own time, the mere mention of the name of Dreyfus suffices toremind us of the terrible nets woven by this dark spinner. Within thelast year or two, have we not seen the loved king of a great nationdriven to seek protection from the spectre of innuendo in the courts oflaw? But gossip laughs at such tribunals. It knows that where once ithas affixed its foul stain, the mark remains forever, indelible as thatimaginary stain which not all the multitudinous seas could wash from thelittle hand of Lady Macbeth. The more the stain is washed, the morepersistently it reappears, like Rizzio's blood, as they say, in HolyroodPalace. To deny a rumour is but to spread it. An action for libel, however it may be decided, has at least the one inevitable result ofperpetuating it. 

Take the historical case of the Man with the Iron Mask. Out of puredeviltry, it would appear, Voltaire started the story, as mere a fictionas one of his written romances, that the mysterious prisoner was no lessthan a half-brother of Louis XIV; and Dumas, seeing the dramaticpossibilities of the legend, picturesquely elaborates it in _Le Vicomtede Bragelonne_. Never, probably, was so impudent an invention, andsurely never one so successful; for it is in vain that historians exposeit over and over again. Learned editors have proved with no shadow of adoubt that the real man of the mask was an obscure Italian politicaladventurer; but though scholars may be convinced, the world will havenothing of your Count Matthioli, and will probably go on believingVoltaire's story to the end of time. 

"At least there must have been something in it" is always the last wordon such debatable matters; and the curious thing is that, whenever adoubt of the truth is expressed, it is never the victim, but always thescandal, to which the benefit of the doubt is extended. Whatever theproven fact, the world always prefers to hold fast by the disreputabledoubt. 

All that is necessary is to find the dog a bad name. The world will seethat he never loses it. In this regard the oft-reiterated confidence ofthe dead in the justice of posterity is one of the most pathetic ofillusions. "Posterity will see me righted, " cries some poor victim ofhuman wrong, as he goes down into the darkness; but of all appeals, theappeal to posterity is the most hopeless. 

What posterity relishes is rather new scandals about its immortals thantiresome belated justifications. It prefers its villains to grow blackerwith time, and welcomes proof of fallibility and frailty in its immortalexemplars. For rehabilitation it has neither time nor inclination, and it pursues certain luckless reputations beyond the grave with amysterious malignity. 

Such a reputation is that of Edgar Allan Poe. One would have thoughtthat posterity would be eager to make up to his shade for the criminalanimus of Rufus Griswold, his first biographer. On the contrary, itprefers to perpetuate the lying portrait; and no consideration of thebequests of Poe's genius, or of his tragic struggles with adverseconditions, no editorial advocacy, or documentary evidence in hisfavour, has persuaded posterity to reverse the unduly harsh judgment ofhis fatuous contemporaries. 

Fortunately, it all matters nothing to Poe now. It is only to us that itmatters. 

Saddening, surely, it is, to say the least, to realize that the humanityof which we are a part is tainted with so subtle a disease of lying, andso depraved an appetite for lies. Under such conditions, it issurprising that greatness and goodness are ever found willing to servehumanity at all, and that any but scoundrels can be found to dare therisks of the high places of the world. For this social disease of gossipresembles that distemper which, at the present moment, threatens thechestnut forests of America. It first attacks the noblest trees. Likeit, too, it would seem to baffle all remedies, and like it, it wouldseem to be the work of indestructible microscopic worms. 

It is this vermicular insignificance of the gossip that makes hisdetection so difficult, and gives him his security. A great reputationmay feel itself worm-eaten, and may suddenly go down with a crash, butit will look around in vain for the social vermin that have broughtabout its fall. It is the cowardice of gossip that its victims haveseldom an opportunity of coming face to face with their destroyers; forthe gossip is as small as he is ubiquitous--

 Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid. 

In all societies, there are men and women who are vaguely known asgossips; but they are seldom caught red-handed. For one thing, they donot often speak at first hand. They profess only to repeat somethingthat they have heard--something, they are careful to add, which isprobably quite untrue, and which they themselves do not believe for amoment. 

Then the fact stated or hinted is probably no concern of ours. It is notfor us to sift its truth, or to bring it to the attention of theindividual it tarnishes. Obviously, society would become altogetherimpossible if each one of us were to constitute ourselves a sort ofsocial police to arraign every accuser before the accused. We shouldthus, it is to be feared, only make things worse, and involuntarily playthe gossip's own game. The best we can do is as far as possible tobanish the tattle from our minds, and, at all events, to keep our ownmouths shut. 

Even so, however, some harm will have been done. We shall never be quitesure but that the rumour was true, and when we next meet the personconcerned, it will probably in some degree colour our attitude towardhim. 

And with others, less high-minded than ourselves, the gossip will havehad greater success. Not, of course, meaning any harm, they will inquireof someone else if what So-and-so hinted of So-and-so can possibly betrue. And so it will go on _ad infinitum_. The formula is simple, and itis only a matter of arithmetical progression for a private lie, oncestarted on its journey, to become a public scandal, with a reputationgone, and no one visibly responsible. 

Of course, not all gossip is purposely harmful in its intention. Thedeliberate, creative gossip is probably rare. In fact, gossip usuallyrepresents the need of a bored world to be entertained at any price, therestless _ennui_ that must be forever talking or listening to fill thevacuity of its existence, to supply its lack of really vital interests. This demand naturally creates a supply of idle talkers, whose socialexistence depends on their ability to provide the entertainment desired;and nothing would seem to be so well-pleasing to the idle human ear asthe whisper that discredits, or the story that ridicules, thedistinction it envies, and the goodness it cannot understand. 

The mystery of gossip is bound up with the mysterious human need oftalking. Talk we must, though we say nothing, or talk evil from sheerlack of subject-matter. When we know why man talks so much, apparentlyfor the mere sake of talking, we shall probably be nearer to knowing whyhe prefers to speak and hear evil rather than good of his fellows. 

Possibly the gossip would be just as ready to speak well of his victims, to circulate stories to their credit rather than the reverse, but forthe melancholy fact that he would thus be left without an audience. Forthe world has no anxiety to hear good of its neighbour, and there is nopiquancy in the disclosure of hidden virtues. 

'Tis true, 'tis pity; pity 'tis, 'tis true; and the only poorconsolation to be got out of it is that the victims of gossip may, ifthey feel so inclined, feel flattered rather than angered by itsattentions; for, at all events, it argues their possession of giftsand qualities transcending the common. At least it presupposesindividuality; and, all things considered, it may be held as true thatthose most gossiped about are usually those who can best afford to paythis tax levied by society on any form of distinction. 

After all, the great and good man has his greatness and goodness tosupport him, though the world should unite in depreciating him. Theartist has his genius, the beautiful woman has her beauty. 'Tis inourselves that we are thus and thus; and if fame must have gossip forits seamy side, there are some satisfactions that cannot be stolen away, and some laurels that defy the worm. 

XI

THE PASSING AWAY OF THE EDITOR

The word "editor" as applied to the conductors of magazines andnewspapers is rapidly becoming a mere courtesy title; for the powers andfunctions formerly exercised by editors, properly so called, are beingmore and more usurped by the capitalist proprietor. There are not a fewmagazines where the "editor" has hardly more say in the acceptance of amanuscript than the contributor who sends it in. Few are the editorsleft who uphold the magisterial dignity and awe with which the name ofeditor was wont to be invested. These survive owing chiefly to theprestige of long service, and even they are not always free from theencroachments of the new method. The proprietor still feels the irksomenecessity of treating their editorial policies with respect, thoughsecretly chafing for the moment when they shall give place to moremanageable, modern tools. 

The "new" editor, in fact, is little more than a clerk doing the biddingof his proprietor, and the proprietor's idea of editing is slavishly totruckle to the public taste--or rather to his crude conception of thepublic taste. The only real editors of today are the capitalist and thepublic. The nominal editor is merely an office-boy of larger growth, andslightly larger salary. 

Innocent souls still, of course, imagine him clothed with divine powers, and letters of introduction to him are still sought after by thesuperstitious beginner. Alas! the chances are that the better he thinksof your MS. The less likely is it to be accepted by--the proprietor; forMr. Snooks, the proprietor, has decided tastes of his own, and apeculiar distaste for anything remotely savouring of the "literary. " Hisbroad editorial axiom is that a popular magazine should be everythingand anything but--"literature. " For any signs of the literary taint hekeeps open a stern and ever-watchful eye, and the "editor" or "editorialassistant"--to make a distinction without a difference--whom he shouldsuspect of literary leanings has but a short shrift. Mr. Snooks isseldom much of a reader himself. His activities have been exclusivelyfinancial, and he has drifted into the magazine business as he mighthave drifted into pork or theatres--from purely financial reasons. Hisliterary needs are bounded on the north by a detective story, and on thesouth by a scientific article. The old masters of literature are as muchfoolishness to him as the old masters of painting. In short, he is justa common, ignorant man with money invested in a magazine; and who shallblame him if he goes on the principle that he who pays the piper callsthe tune. When he starts in he not infrequently begins by entrustinghis magazine to some young man with real editorial ability and ambitionto make a really good thing. This young man gathers about him a group ofkindred spirits, and the result is that after the publication of thesecond number Mr. Snooks decides to edit the magazine himself, with theaid of a secretary and a few typewriters. His bright young men hadn'tunderstood "what the public wants" at all. They were too high-toned, too"literary. " What the public wants is short stories and pictures ofactresses; and the short stories, like the actresses, must be no betterthan they should be. Even short stories when they are masterpieces arenot "what the public wants. " So the bright young men go into outerdarkness, sadly looking for new jobs, and with its third number_Snooks's Monthly_ has fallen into line with the indistinguishable ruckof monthly magazines, only indeed distinguishable one from the other bythe euphonious names of their proprietors. 

Now, a proprietor's right to have his property managed according to hisown ideas needs no emphasizing. The sad thing is that such proprietorsshould get hold of such property. It all comes, of course, of themodern vulgarization of wealth. Time was when even mere wealth wasaristocratic, and its possession, more or less implied in its possessorsthe possession, too, of refinement and culture. The rich men of the pastknew enough to encourage and support the finer arts of life, and wereinterested in maintaining high standards of public taste and feeling. Thus they were capable of sparing some of their wealth for investment inobjects which brought them a finer kind of reward than the financial. Among other things, they understood and respected the dignity ofliterature, and would not have expected an editor to run a literaryventure in the interests of the illiterate. The further degradation ofthe public taste was not then the avowed object of popular magazines. Indeed--strange as it sounds nowadays--it was rather the education thanthe degradation of the public taste at which the editor aimed, and inthat aim he found the support of intelligent proprietors. 

Today, however, all this is changed. Wealth has become democratic, andit is only here and there, in its traditional possessors, that itretains its traditional aristocracy of taste. As the commonest man canbe a multi-millionaire, so the commonest man can own a magazine, andhave it edited in the commonest fashion for the common good. 

As a result, the editor's occupation, in the true sense, will soon begone. There is, need one say, no lack today of men with real editorialindividuality--but editorial individuality is the last thing thecapitalist proprietors want. It is just that they are determined tostamp out. Therefore, your real editor must either swallow his pride andsubmit to ignorant dictation, or make way for the little band ofautomatic sorters of manuscript, which, as nine tailors make a man, nowadays constitute a sort of composite editor under the direction ofthe proprietor. 

With the elimination of editorial individuality necessarily followselimination of individuality in the magazine. More and more, every day, magazines are conforming to the same monotonous type; so that, exceptfor name and cover, it is impossible to tell one magazine from another. Happily one or two--_rari nantes in gurgito vasto_--survive amid thedemocratic welter; and all who have at heart not only the interests ofliterature, but the true interests of the public taste, will pray thatthey will have the courage to maintain their distinction, unseduced bythe moneyed voice of the mob--a distinction to which, after all, theyhave owed, and will continue to owe, their success. The names of thesemagazines will readily occur to the reader, and, as they occur, hecannot but reflect that it was just editorial individuality and a highstandard of policy that made them what they are, and what, it isardently to be hoped, they will still continue to be. Plutus and Demosare the worst possible editors for a magazine; and in the end, even, itis the best magazine that always makes the most money. 

XII

THE SPIRIT OF THE OPEN

I often think, as I sit here in my green office in the woodland--toooften diverted from some serious literary business with the moon or themorning stars, or a red squirrel who is the familiar spirit of mywood-pile, or having my thoughts carried out to sea by the river whichruns so freshly and so truantly, with so strong a current of temptation, a hundred yards away from my window--I often think that the strongnecessity that compelled me to do my work, to ply my pen and inkpot outhere in the leafy, blue-eyed wilderness, instead of doing it bytypewriter in some forty-two-storey building in the city, is one ofthose encouraging signs of the times which links one with the greatbrotherhood of men and women that have heard the call of the great godPan, as he sits by the river--

 Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

And I go on thinking to this effect: that this impulse that has come toso many of us, and has, incidentally, wrought such a harmony in ourlives, is something more than duck-shooting, trout-fishing, butterfly-collecting, or a sentimental passion for sunsets, but isindeed something not so very far removed from religion, romanticreligion. At all events, it is something that makes us happy, and keepsus straight. That combination of results can only come by thesatisfaction of the undeniable religious instinct in all of us: aninstinct that seeks goodness, but seeks happiness too. Now, there arecreeds by which you can be good without being happy; and creeds by whichyou can be happy without being good. But, perhaps, there is only onecreed by which you can be both at once--the creed of the growing grass, and the blue sky and the running river, the creed of the dog-wood andthe skunk-cabbage, the creed of the red-wing and the blue heron--thecreed of the great god Pan. 

Pan, being one of the oldest of the gods, might well, in an age eagerfor novelty, expect to be the latest fashion; but the revival of hisworship is something far more than a mere vogue. It was rumoured, as, ofcourse, we all know, early in the Christian era, that he was dead. Thepilot Thomas, ran the legend, as told by Plutarch, sailing near Pascos, with a boatful of merchants, heard in the twilight a mighty voicecalling from the land, bidding him proclaim to all the world that Panwas dead. "Pan is dead!"--three times ran the strange shuddering crythrough the darkness, as though the very earth itself wailed the passingof the god. 

But Pan, of course, could only die with the earth itself, and so long asthe lichen and the moss keep quietly at their work on the grey boulder, and the lightning zigzags down through the hemlocks, and the arrowheadguards its waxen blossom in the streams; so long as the earth shakeswith the thunder of hoofs, or pours out its heart in the song of theveery-thrush, or bares its bosom in the wild rose, so long will there belittle chapels to Pan in the woodland--chapels on the lintels of whichyou shall read, as Virgil wrote: _Happy is he who knows the rural gods, Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs_. 

It is strange to see how in every country, but more particularly inAmerica and in England, the modern man is finding his religion as it wasfound by those first worshippers of the beautiful mystery of the visibleuniverse, those who first caught glimpses of

 Nymphs in the coppice, Naiads in the fountain, Gods on the craggy height and roaring sea. 

First thoughts are proverbially the best; at all events, they are thebravest. And man's first thoughts of the world and the strangelyromantic life he is suddenly called up, out of nothingness, to live, unconsulted, uninstructed, left to feel his way in the blindingradiance up into which he has been mysteriously thrust; those firstthoughts of his are nowadays being corroborated in every direction bythe last thoughts of the latest thinker. Mr. Jack London, one ofNature's own writers, one of those writers too, through whom the Futurespeaks, has given a name to this stirring of the human soul--"The Callof the Wild. " Following his lead, others have written of "The Lure, " ofthis and that in nature, and all mean the same thing: that the salvationof man is to be found on, and by means of, the green earth out of whichhe was born, and that, as there is no ill of his body which may not behealed by the magic juices of herb and flower, or the stern potency ofminerals, so there is no sickness of his soul that may not be cured bythe sound of the sea, the rustle of leaves, or the songs of birds. 

Thirty or forty years ago the soul of the world was very sick. It hadlost religion in a night of misunderstood "materialism, " so-called. Butsince then that mere "matter" which seemed to eclipse the soul has grownstrangely radiant to deep-seeing eyes, and, whereas then one had todoubt everything, dupes of superficial disillusionment, now there is noold dream that has not the look of coming true, no hope too wild andstrange and beautiful to be confidently entertained. Even, if you wishto believe in fairies, science will hardly say you nay. Those dryads andfauns, which Keats saw "frightened away" by the prosaic times in whichit was his misfortune to be alive and unrecognized, are trooping back inevery American woodland, and the god whose name I have invoked hasbecome more than ever

 the leaven That spreading in this dull and clodded earth Gives it a touch ethereal. 

His worship is all the more sincere because it is not self-conscious. If you were to tell the trout-fisher, or the duck-shooter, or thecamper-out, that he is a worshipper of Pan, he would look at you in akindly bewilderment. He would seem a little anxious about you, but itwould be only a verbal misunderstanding. It would not take him long torealize that you were only putting in terms of a creed the intuitive andinarticulate faith of his heart. Perhaps the most convincing sign ofthis new-old faith in nature is the unconsciousness of the believer. Hehas no idea that he is believing or having faith in anything. He issimply loving the green earth and the blue sea, and the ways of birdsand fish and animals; but he is so happy in his innocent, ignorant joythat he seems almost to shine with his happiness. There is, literally, alight about him--that light which edges with brightness all sincereaction. The trout, or the wild duck, or the sea bass is only an innocentexcuse to be alone with the Infinite. To be alone. To be afar. Men sailprecarious craft in perilous waters for no reason they could tellof. They may think that trawling, or dredging, or whaling is theexplanation: the real reason is the mystery we call the Sea. 

Ostensibly, of course, the angler is a man who goes out to catch fish;yet there is a great difference between an angler and a fishmonger. Though the angler catches no fish, though his creel be empty as hereturns home at evening, there is a curious happiness and peace abouthim which a mere fishmonger would be at a loss to explain. Fish, as Isaid, were merely an excuse; and, as he vainly waited for fish, withoutknowing it, he was learning the rhythm of the stream, and the silence offerns was entering into his soul, and the calm and patience of meadowswere dreamily becoming a part of him. Suddenly, too, in the silence, maybe he caught sight of a strange, hairy, masterful presence, sittingby the stream, whittling reeds, and blowing his breath into them hereand there, and finally binding them together with rushes, till he hadmade out of the empty reeds and rushes an instrument that sangeverything that can be sung and told you everything that can be told. 

 The sun on the hill forgot to die. And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river. 

Do you really think that the huntsman hunts only the deer? He, himself, doubtless thinks that the trophy of the antlers was all he went outinto the woods to win. But there came a day to him when he missed thedeer, and caught a glimpse instead of the divine huntress, Diana, high-buskined, short-kirtled, speeding with her hounds through thelonely woodland, and his thoughts ran no more on venison for that day. 

The same truth is true of all men who go out into the green, blue-eyedwilderness, whether they go there in pursuit of game or butterflies. They find something stranger and better than what they went out to seek, and, if they come home disappointed in the day's bag or catch, there isyet something in their eyes, and across their brows, a light of peace, an enchanted calm, which tells those who understand that they, at allevents, have seen the great god Pan, and heard the music he can make outof the pipy hemlocks or the lonely pines. 

XIII

AN OLD AMERICAN TOW-PATH

The charm of an old canal is one which every one seems to feel. Men whocare nothing about ruined castles or Gothic cathedrals light up withromantic enthusiasm if you tell them of some old disused or seldom-usedcanal, grass-grown and tree-shaded, along which, hardly oftener thanonce a week, a leisurely barge--towed by an equally leisurely mule, withits fellow there on deck taking his rest, preparatory to his nexteight-mile "shift"--sleepily dreams its way, presumably on some errandand to some destination, yet indeed hinting of no purpose or objectother than its loitering passage through a summer afternoon. I have evenheard millionaires express envy of the life lived by the little familyhanging out its washing and smoking its pipe and cultivating itsfloating garden of nasturtiums and geraniums, with children playing anda house-dog to keep guard, all in that toy house of a dozen or so feet, whose foundations are played about by fishes, and whose sides arebrushed by whispering reeds. But the charm of an old canal is perhapsyet more its own when even so tranquil a happening as the passage of abarge is no longer looked for, and the quiet water is called upon for nomore arduous usefulness than the reflection of the willows or theferrying across of summer clouds. Nature herself seems to wield a newpeculiar spell in such association--old quarries, the rusting tramwayschoked with fern; forgotten mines with the wild vine twining tenderlyabout the old iron of dismantled pit-tackle, grown as green as itselfwith the summer rains; roads once dusty with haste over which only themoss and the trailing arbutus now leisurely travel. Wherever Nature isthus seen to be taking to herself, making her own, what man has firstmade and grown tired of, she is twice an enchantress, strangelycombining in one charm the magic of a wistful, all but forgotten, pastwith her own sibyl-line mystery. 

The symbol of that combined charm is that poppy of oblivion of which SirThomas Browne so movingly wrote: but, though along that old canal ofwhich I am thinking and by which I walked a summer day, no poppies weregrowing, the freshest grass, the bluest flowers, the new-born rustlingleafage of the innumerable trees, all alike seemed to whisper offorgetfulness, to be brooding, even thus in the very heyday of the madyoung year, over time past. And this eloquently retrospective air ofNature made me realize, with something of the sense of discovery, howmuch of what we call antiquity is really a trick of Nature. She is asclever at the manufacture of antiques as some expert of "old masters. "A little moss here and there, a network of ivy, a judicious use of fernsand grass, a careless display of weeds and wild flowers, and in twentyyears Nature can make a modern building look as if it dated from theNorman Conquest. I came upon this reflection because, actually, my canalis not very old, though from the way it impressed me, and from themanner in which I have introduced it, the reader might well imagine itas old as Venice and no younger than Holland, and may find it as hard tobelieve as I did that its age is but some eighty years, and that it hasits romantic being between Newark Bay and Phillipsburg, on the DelawareRiver. 

One has always to be careful not to give too much importance to one'sown associative fancies in regard to the names of places. To me, forinstance, "Perth Amboy" has always had a romantic sound, and I believethat a certain majesty in the collocation of the two noble words wouldsurvive that visit to the place itself which I have been told is allthat is necessary for disillusionment. On the other hand, for reasonsless explainable, Hackensack, Paterson, Newark, and even Passaic arenames that had touched me with no such romantic thrill. Wrongfully, nodoubt, I had associated them with absurdity, anarchy, and railroads. Never having visited them, it was perhaps not surprising that I shouldnot have associated them with such loveliness and luxury of Nature as Inow unforgettably recall; and I cannot help feeling that in the case ofplaces thus unfortunately named, Nature might well bring an action fordamages, robbed as she thus undoubtedly is of a flock of worshippers. 

At all events, I believe that my surprise and even incredulity will beunderstood when an artist friend of mine told me that by taking the FortLee ferry, and trolleying from the Palisades through Hackensack toPaterson, I might find--a dream canal. It was as though he had said thatI had but to cross over to Hoboken to find the Well at the World's End. But it was true, for all that--quite fairy-tale true. It was one ofthose surprises of peace, deep, ancient peace, in America, of whichthere are many, and of which more needs to be told. I can conceive of nomore suggestive and piquant contrast than that of the old canal glidingthrough water-lilies and spreading pastures, in the bosom of hillsclothed with trees that scatter the sunshine or gather the darkness, thehaunt of every bird that sings or flashes strange plumage and is gone, gliding past flowering rushes and blue dragon-flies, not

 Flowing down to Camelot, as one might well believe, but between Newark and Phillipsburg, touchingPaterson midway with its dreaming hand. 

Following my friend's directions, we had met at Paterson, and, desirousof finding our green pasture and still waters with the least possibledelay, we took a trolley running in the Newark direction, and werepresently dropped at a quaint, quiet little village called Little Falls, the last we were to see of the modern work-a-day world for severalmiles. A hundred yards or so beyond, and it is as though you had enteredsome secret green door into a pastoral dream-land. Great trees, likerustling walls of verdure, enclose an apparently endless roadway ofgleaming water, a narrow strip of tow-path keeping it company, buttressed in from the surrounding fields with thickets of every speciesof bush and luxurious undergrowth, and starred with every summer flower. 

Presently, by the side of the path, one comes to an object which seemsromantically in keeping with the general character of the scene--a longblock of stone, lying among the grasses and the wild geraniums, onwhich, as one nears it, one descries carved scroll-work and quaint, deep-cut lettering. Is it the tomb of dead lovers, the memorial of somegreat deed, or an altar to the _genius loci_? The willows whisper aboutit, and the great elms and maples sway and murmur no less impressivelythan if the inscription were in Latin of two thousand years ago. Nor isit in me to regret that the stone and its inscription, instead ofcelebrating the rural Pan, commemorate the men to whom I owe this laneof dreaming water and all its marginal green solitude: to wit--the"MORRIS CANAL AND BANKING CO. , A. D. 1829, " represented by itspresident, its cashier, its canal commissioner, and a score of othernames of directors, engineers, and builders. Peace, therefore, to thesouls of those dead directors, who, having only in mind their bankingand engineering project, yet unconsciously wrought, nearly a centuryago, so poetic a thing, and may their rest be lulled by such leafymurmurs and swaying of tendrilled shadows as all the day through stirand sway along the old canal!

A few yards beyond this monumental stone, there comes a great opening inthe sky, a sense of depth and height and spacious freshness in the air, such as we feel on approaching the gorge of a great river; and in factthe canal has arrived at the Passaic and is about to be carried acrossit in a sort of long, wooden trough, supported by a noble bridge thatmight well pass for a genuine antique, owing to that collaborating handof Nature which has filled the interstices of its massive masonry withfern, and so loosened it here and there that some of the canal escapesin long, ribbon-like cascades into the rocky bed of the river below. Anaqueduct has always seemed to me, though it would be hard to say why, amost romantic thing. The idea of carrying running water across a bridgein this way--water which it is so hard to think of as imprisoned orcontrolled, and which, too, however shallow, one always associates withmysterious depth--the idea of thus carrying it across a valley high upin the air, so that one may look underneath it, underneath the bed inwhich it runs, and think of the fishes and the water-weeds and thewaterbugs all being carried across with it, too--this, I confess, hasalways seemed to me engagingly marvellous. And I like, too, to thinkthat the canal, whose daily business is to be a "common carrier" ofothers, thus occasionally tastes the luxury of being carried itself; assometimes one sees on a freight car a new buggy, or automobile, orsometimes a locomotive, being luxuriously ridden along--as though outfor a holiday--instead of riding others. 

And talking of freight-cars, it came to me with a sense of illuminationhow different the word "Passaic" looks printed in white letters on thegrey sides of grim produce-vans in begrimed procession, from the way itlooks as it writes its name in wonderful white waterfalls, or murmurs itthrough corridors of that strange pillared and cake-shaped rock, amidthe golden pomp of a perfect summer day. For a short distance thePassaic and the canal run side by side, but presently they part company, and mile after mile the canal seems to have the world to itself, once ina great while finding human companionship in a shingled cottage halfhidden among willows, a sleepy brick-field run on principles as ancientas itself, shy little girls picking flowers on its banks, or saucy boysdisporting themselves in the old swimming-hole; and

 Sometimes an angler comes and drops his hook Within its hidden depths, and 'gainst a tree Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book, Forgetting soon his pride of fishery; And dreams or falls asleep, While curious fishes peep About his nibbled bait or scornfully Dart off and rise and leap. 

Once a year, indeed, every one goes a-fishing along the old canal--men, women, boys, and girls. That is in spring, when the canal is emptied forrepairs, the patching up of leaks, and so forth. Then the fish lieglittering in the shallow pools, as good as caught, and happy childrengo home with strings of sunfish, --"pumpkin-seeds" they callthem, --cat-fish, and the like picturesque unprofitable spoils, whilegraver fisher-folk take count of pickerel and bream. This merry festivalwas over and gone, and the canal was all brimming with the lustralrenewal of its waters, its depths flashing now and again with thepassage of wary survivors of that spring _battue_. 

It is essential to the appreciation of an old canal that one should notexpect it to provide excitement, that it be understood between it andits fellow-pilgrim that there is very little to say and nothing torecord. Along the old tow-path you must be content with a few simple, elemental, mysterious things. To enter into its spirit you must besomewhat of a monastic turn of mind, and have spiritual affiliations, above all, with La Trappe. For the presiding muse of an old canal isSilence; yet, as at La Trappe, a silence far indeed from being a dumbsilence, but a silence that contains all speech. My friend and I spokehardly at all as we walked along, easily obedient to the spirit of thehour and the place. For there were so few of those little gossipyaccidents and occurrences by the way that make those interruptions wecall conversation, and such overwhelming golden-handed presences ofsunlit woodlands, flashing water-meadows, shining, singing air, anddistant purple hills--all the blowing, rippling, leafy glory and mightylaughter of a summer day--that we were glad enough to let the birds dosuch talking as Nature deemed necessary; and I seem never to have heardor seen so many birds, of so many varieties, as haunt that old canal. 

As we chose our momentary camping-place under a buttonwood-tree, fromout an exuberant swamp of yellow water-lilies and the rearingsword-blades of the coming cat-tail, a swamp blackbird, on his glossyblack orange-tipped wings, flung us defiance with his long, keen, full, saucy note; and as we sat down under our buttonwood and spread upon thesward our pastoral meal, the veery-thrush--sadder and stranger than anynightingale--played for us, unseen, on an instrument like those oldwater-organs played on by the flow and ebb of the tide, a flute ofsilver in which some strange magician has somewhere hidden tears. Iwondered, as he sang, if the veery was the thrush that, to WaltWhitman's fancy, "in the swamp in secluded recesses" mourned the deathof Lincoln:

 Solitary the thrush, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings to himself a song. 

But when the veery had flown with his heart-break to some distant copse, two song-sparrows came to persuade us with their blithe melody that lifewas worth living, after all; and cheerful little domestic birds, likethe jenny-wren and the chipping-sparrow, pecked about and put in betweenwhiles their little chit-chat across the boughs, while the bobolinkcalled to us like a comrade, and the phoebe-bird gave us a series ofimitations, and the scarlet tanager and the wild canary put in a vividappearance, to show what can be done with colour, though they have nosong. 

Yet, while one was grateful for such long, green silence as we foundalong that old canal, one could not help feeling how hard it would beto put into words an experience so infinite and yet so undramatic. Birdsand birds, and trees and trees, and the long, silent water! Prose hasseldom been adequate for such moments. So, as my friend and I took upour walk again, I sang him this little song of the Silence of the Way:

 Silence, whose drowsy eyelids are soft leaves, And whose half-sleeping eyes are the blue flowers, On whose still breast the water-lily heaves, And all her speech the whisper of the showers. 

 Made of all things that in the water sway, The quiet reed kissing the arrowhead, The willows murmuring, all a summer day, "Silence"--sweet word, and ne'er so softly said

 As here along this path of brooding peace, Where all things dream, and nothing else is done But all such gentle businesses as these Of leaves and rippling wind, and setting sun

 Turning the stream to a long lane of gold, Where the young moon shall walk with feet of pearl, And, framed in sleeping lilies, fold on fold. Gaze at herself like any mortal girl. 

But, after all, trees are perhaps the best expression of silence, massedas they are with the merest hint of movement, and breathing the merestsuggestion of a sigh; and seldom have I seen such abundance and varietyof trees as along our old canal--cedars and hemlocks and hickorydominating green slopes of rocky pasture, with here and there a clump ofsilver birches bent over with the strain of last year's snow; and allalong, near by the water, beech and basswood, blue-gum and pin-oak, ash, and even chestnut flourishing still, in defiance of blight. Nor have Iever seen such sheets of water-lilies as starred the swampy thickets, inwhich elder and hazels and every conceivable bush and shrub and giantgrass and cane make wildernesses pathless indeed save to the mink andthe water-snake, and the imagination that would fain explore theirglimmering recesses. 

No, nothing except birds and trees, water-lilies and such likehappenings, ever happens along the old canal; and our nearest to a humanevent was our meeting with a lonely, melancholy man, sitting near amoss-grown water-wheel, smoking a corn-cob pipe, and gazing wistfullyacross at the Ramapo Hills, over which great sunlit clouds werebillowing and casting slow-moving shadows. Stopping, we passed him thetime of day and inquired when the next barge was due. For answer he tooka long draw at his corn-cob, and, taking his eyes for a moment from thelandscape, said in a far-away manner that it might be due any time now, as the spring had come and gone, and implying, with a sort of sad humourin his eyes, that spring makes all things possible, brings all thingsback, even an old slow-moving barge along the old canal. 

"What do they carry on the canal?" I asked the melancholy man, theromantic green hush and the gleaming water not irrelevantly flashing onmy fancy that far-away immortal picture of the lily-maid of Astolat onher strange journey, with a letter in her hand for Lancelot. 

"Coal, " was his answer; and, again drawing at his corn-cob, he added, with a sad and understanding smile, "once in a great while. " Like mostmelancholy men, he seemed to have brains, in his way, and to have noparticular work on hand, except, like ourselves, to dream. 

"Suppose, " said I, "that a barge should come along, and need to be drawnup this 'plane'--would the old machinery work?" and I pointed to sixhundred feet of sloping grass, down which a tramway stretches and acable runs on little wheels--technically known, it appeared, as a"plane. "

Then the honour of the ancient company for which he had once workedseemed to stir his blood, and he awakened to something like enthusiasmas he explained the antique, picturesque device by which it is stillreally possible for a barge to climb six hundred feet of grass andfern--drawn up in a long "cradle, " instead of being raised by locks inthe customary way. 

Then he took us into the old building where, in the mossed and drippingdarkness, we could discern the great water-wheels that work thisfascinating piece of ancient engineering; and added that there wouldprobably be a barge coming along in three or four days, if we shouldhappen to be in the neighbourhood. He might have added that the oldcanal is one of the few places where "time and tide" wait for any oneand everybody--but alas! on this occasion we could not wait for them. 

Our walk was nearing its end when we came upon a pathetic reminder that, though the old canal is so far from being a stormy sea, there have beenwrecks even in those quiet waters. In a backwater whispered over bywillows and sung over by birds, a sort of water-side graveyard, elevenold barges were ingloriously rotting, unwept and unhonoured. The hulksof old men-of-war, forgotten as they may seem, have still their annualdays of bunting and the salutes of cannon; but to these old servitors ofpeace come no such memorial recognitions. 

"Unwept and unhonoured, may be, " said I to my friend, "but they shallnot go all unsung, though humble be the rhyme"; so here is the rhyme Iaffixed to an old nail on the mouldering side of the _Janita C. Williams_:

 You who have done your work and asked no praise, Mouldering in these unhonoured waterways, Carrying but simple peace and quiet fire, Doing a small day's work for a small hire-- You need not praise, nor guns, nor flags unfurled, Nor all such cloudy glories of the world; The laurel of a simple duty done Is the best laurel underneath the sun, Yet would two strangers passing by this spot Whisper, "Old boat--you are not all forgot!"

XIV

A MODERN SAINT FRANCIS

We were neither of us fox-hunting ourselves, but chanced both to be outon our morning walk and to be crossing a breezy Surrey common at thesame moment, when the huntsmen and huntresses of the Slumberfold Huntwere blithely congregating for a day's run. A meet is always anattractive sight, and we had both come to a halt within a yard or two ofeach other, and stood watching the gallant company of fine ladies andgentlemen on their beautiful, impatient mounts, keeping up a prancingconversation, till the exciting moment should arrive when the cry wouldgo up that the fox had been started, and the whole field would sweepaway, a cataract of hounds, red-coats, riding habits, and dog-carts. 

The moment came. The fox had been found in a spinney running down toWithy Brook, and his race for life had begun. With a happy shout, thehunt was up and off in a twinkling, and the stranger and I were leftalone on the broad common. 

I had scanned him furtively as he stood near me; a tall, slightly buildman of about fifty, with perfectly white hair, and strangely gentleblue eyes. There was a curious, sad distinction over him, and he hadwatched the scene with a smile of blended humour and pity. 

Turning to me, as we were left alone, and speaking almost as though tohimself: "It is a strange sight, " he said with a sigh. "I wonder if itseems as strange to you? Think of all those grown-up, so-calledcivilized people being so ferociously intent on chasing one poor littleanimal for its life--and feeling, when at last the huntsman holds up hispoor brush, with absurd pride (if indeed the fox is not too sly forthem), that they have really done something clever, in that with so manyhorses and dogs and so much noise, they have actually contrived to catchand kill one fox!"

"It is strange!" I said, for I had been thinking just that very thing. 

"Of course, they always tell you, " he continued, as we took the roadtogether, "that the fox really enjoys being hunted, and that he feelshis occupation gone if there are no hounds to track him, and finally totear him to pieces. What wonderful stories human nature will tell itselfin its own justification! Can one imagine any created thing _enjoying_being pursued for its life, with all that loud terror of men and horsesand savage dogs at its heels? No doubt--if we can imagine even a fox soself-conscious--it would take a certain pride in its own cunning andskill, if the whole thing were a game; but a race with death is toodeadly in earnest for a fox even to relish his own stratagems. Happilyfor the fox, it is probable that he does not feel so much for himself assome of us feel for him; but any one who knows the wild things knows toowhat terror they are capable of feeling, and how the fear of death isalways with them. No! you may be sure that a fox prefers a cosyhen-roost to the finest run with the hounds ever made. "

"But even if he should enjoy being hunted, " I added, "the even strangerthing to me is that civilized men and women should enjoy hunting him. "

"Isn't it strange?" answered my companion eagerly, his face lighting upat finding a sympathizer. "When will people realize that there is somuch more fun in studying wild things than in killing them!. .. "

He stopped suddenly in his walk, to gather a small weed which hadcaught his quick eye by the roadside, and which he examined for amoment through a little pocket microscope which I noticed, hanginglike an eyeglass round his neck, and which I learned afterward quiteaffectionately to associate with him. Then, as we walked on, heremarked:

"But, of course, we are yet very imperfectly civilized. Humanity is alesson learned very slowly by the human race. Yet we are learning it bydegrees, yes! we are learning it, " and he threw out his long stride moreemphatically--the stride of one accustomed to long daily tramps on thehills. 

"Strange, that principle of cruelty in the universe!" he resumed, aftera pause in which he had walked on in silence. "Very strange. To me it isthe most mysterious of all things--though, I suppose, after all, it isno more mysterious than pity. When, I wonder, did pity begin? Who wasthe first human being to pity another? How strange he must have seemedto the others, how incomprehensible and ridiculous--not to saydangerous! There can be little doubt that he was promptly dispatchedwith stone axes as an enemy of a respectable murderous society. "

"I expect, " said I "that our friends the fox-hunters would take asimilar view of our remarks on their sport. "

"No doubt--and perhaps turn their hounds on us! A man hunt! 'Give me thehunting of man!' as a brutal young poet we know of recently sang. "

"How different was the spirit of Emerson's old verse, " I said:

 "Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?. .. O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!"

"That is one of my mottoes!" cried my companion with evident pleasure. "Let us go and quote it to our fox-hunters!"

"I wonder how the fox is getting on, " I said. 

"If he is any sort of fox, he is safe enough as yet, we may be sure. They are wonderful creatures. It is not surprising that mankind hasalways looked upon Reynard as almost a human being--if not more--forthere is something quite uncanny in his instincts, and the cool, calculating way in which he uses them. He is come and gone like a ghost. One moment you were sure you saw him clearly close by and the next he isgone--who knows where? He can run almost as swiftly as light, and assoftly as a shadow; and in his wildest dash, what a sure judgment he hasfor the lie of the ground, how unerringly--and at a moment when amistake is death--he selects his cover! How learned, too, he is inhis knowledge of the countryside! There is not a dry ditch, or awater-course, or an old drain, or a hole in a bank for miles around thatis not mysteriously set down in the map he carries in his graceful, clever head; and one need hardly say that all the suitable hiding-placesin and around farm-yards are equally well known to him. Then withal heis so brave. How splendidly, when wearied out, and hopelessly trackeddown, with the game quite up, he will turn on his pursuers, and die withhis teeth fast in his enemy's throat!"

"I believe you are a fox-hunter in disguise, " I laughed. 

"Well, I have hunted as a boy, " he said, "and I know something of whatthose red-coated gentlemen are feeling. But soon I got more interestedin studying nature than killing it, and when I became a naturalist Iceased to be a hunter. You get to love the things so that it seems likekilling little children. They come so close to you, are so beautiful andso clever; and sometimes there seems such a curious pathos about them. How any one can kill a deer with that woman's look in its eyes, I don'tknow. I should always expect the deer to change into a fairy princess, and die in my arms with the red blood running from her white breast. Andpigeons, too, with their soft sunny coo all the summer afternoon, or thesudden lapping of sleepy wings round the chimneys--how can any one trapor shoot them with blood-curdling rapidity, and not expect to seeghosts!"

"Of course, there is this difference about the fox, " I said, "that it isreally in a sense born to be hunted. For not only is it a fierce hunteritself, but it would not be allowed to exist at all, so to say, unlessit consented to being hunted. Like a gladiator it accepts a comfortableliving for a certain time, on condition of its providing at last aspirited exhibition of dying. In other words, it is preserved entirelyfor the purpose of being hunted. It must accept life on that conditionor be extirpated as destructive vermin by the plundered farmer. Life issweet, after all, and to be a kind of protected highwayman of thepoultry-yard, for a few sweet toothsome years, taking one's chances ofbeing surely brought to book at last, may perhaps seem worth while. "

"Yes! but how does your image of the protected gladiator reflect onthose who protect him? There, of course, is the point. The gladiator, asyou say, is willing to take his chances in exchange for fat living andidleness, as long as he lives. You may even say that his profession isgood for him, develops fine qualities of mind even as well as body--butwhat of the people who crowd with blood-thirsty eagerness to watch thosequalities exhibited in so tragic a fashion for their amusement? Do theygain any of his qualities of skill and courage, and strength andfearlessness in the face of death? No, they are merely brutalized bycruel excitement--and while they applaud his skill and admire hiscourage, they long most to watch him die. So--is it not?--with ourfriend the fox. The huntsman invariably compliments him on his spiritand his cunning, but what he wants is--the brush. He wants theexcitement of hunting the living thing to its death; and, let huntsmensay what they will about the exhilaration of the horse exercise acrosscountry as being the main thing, they know better--and, if it be true, why don't they take it without the fox?"

"They do in America, as, of course, you know. There a man walks acrosscountry trailing a stick, at the end of which is a piece of clothimpregnated with some pungent scent which hounds love and mistake forthe real thing. "

"Hard on the poor hounds!" smiled my friend. "Even worse than a redherring. You could hardly blame the dogs if they mistook the man forActaeon and tore him to pieces. "

"And I suspect that the huntsmen are no better satisfied. "

"Yet, as we were saying, if the secret spring of their sport is not thecruel delight of pursuing a living thing to its death, that Americanplan should serve all the purposes, and give all the satisfaction forwhich they claim to follow the hounds: the keen pleasure of a gallopacross country, the excitement of its danger, the pluck and pride oftaking a bad fence, and equally, too, the pleasure of watching thehounds cleverly at work with their mysterious gift of scent. All thesame, I suspect there are few sportsmen who would not vote it a tamesubstitute. Without something being killed, the zest, the 'snap, ' isgone. It is as depressing as a sham fight. "

"Yes, that mysterious shedding of blood! what a part it has played inhuman history! Even religion countenances it, and war glorifies it. Menare never in higher spirits than when they are going to kill, or bekilled themselves, or see something else killed. Tennyson's 'ape andtiger' die very hard in the tamest of us. "

"Alas, indeed they do!" said my friend with a sigh. "But I do believethat they are dying none the less. Just of late there has been areaction in favour of brute force, and people like you and me have beenridiculed as old-fashioned sentimentalists. But reaction is one of thelaws of advance. Human progress always takes a step backwards after ithas taken two forward. And so it must be here too. In the end, it is thehighest type among men and nations that count, and the highest typesamong both today are those which show most humanity, shrink most fromthe infliction of pain. When one thinks of the horrible cruelties thatwere the legal punishment of criminals, even within the last two hundredyears, and not merely brutal criminals, but also political offenders orso-called heretics--how every one thought it the natural and properthing to break a man on the wheel for a difference of opinion, ortorture him with hideous ingenuity into a better frame of mind, andhow the pettiest larcenies were punished by death; it seems as if weof today, even the least sensitive of us, cannot belong to the samerace--and it is impossible to deny that the heart of the world has grownsofter and that pity is becoming more and more a natural instinct inhuman nature. I believe that some day it will have thrust out crueltyaltogether, and that the voluntary infliction of pain upon another willbe unknown. The idea of any one killing for pleasure will seem toopreposterous to be believed, and soldiers and fox-hunters andpigeon-shooters will be spoken of as nowadays we speak of cannibals. But, of course, I am a dreamer, " he concluded, his face shining with hisgentle dream, as though he had been a veritable saint of the calendar. 

"Yes, a dream, " he added presently, "and yet--" In that "and yet"there was a world of invincible faith that made it impossible not toshare his dream, even see it building before one's eyes--such is themagnetic power of a passionate personal conviction. 

"Of course, " he went on again, "we all know that 'nature is one withrapine, a harm no preacher can heal. ' But because the fox runs off withthe goose, or the hawk swoops down on the chicken, and 'yon whole littlewood is a world of plunder and prey'--is that any reason why we shouldbe content to plunder and prey too? And after all, the cruelty of Natureis only one-sided. There is lots of pity in Nature too. These strangelittle wild lives around us are not entirely bent on killing and eatingeach other. They know the tenderness of motherhood, the sweetness ofbuilding a home together, and I believe there is far more comradeshipand mutual help amongst them than we know of. Yes, even in wild Naturethere is a principle of love working no less than a principle of hate. Nature is not all-devouring and destroying. She is loving and buildingtoo. Nature is more constructive than destructive, and she is ever atwork evolving and evolving a higher dream. Surely it is not for man, towhom, so far as we know, Nature has entrusted the working out of herfinest impulses, and whom she has endowed with all the fairy apparatusof the soul; it is not for him, whose eyes--of all her children--Naturehas opened, the one child she has taken into her confidence and to whomshe has whispered her secret hopes and purposes; surely it is not forman voluntarily to deny his higher lot, and, because the wolf and hehave come from the same great mother, say: 'I am no better than thewolf. Why should I not live the life of a wolf--and kill and devour likemy brother?' Surely it is not for the cruel things in Nature to teachman cruelty--rather, if it were possible, " and the saint smiled at hisfancy, "would it be the mission of man to teach them kindness: rathershould he preach pity to the hawk and peace between the panther and thebear. It is not the bad lessons of Nature, but the good, that are meantfor man--though, as you must have noticed, man seldom appeals to theprecedents of Nature except to excuse that in him which is Nature at herworst. When we say, 'it is only natural, ' we almost invariably refer tothat in Nature of which Nature herself has entrusted the refinement orthe elimination to man. It is Nature's bad we copy, not Nature's good;and always we forget that we ourselves are a part of Nature--Nature'svicegerent, so to say, upon the earth--"

As we talked, we had been approaching a house built high among theheather, with windows looking over all the surrounding country. Presently, the saint stopped in front of it. 

"This is my house, " he said. "Won't you come in and see me sometime?--and, by the way, I am going to talk to some of the villagechildren about the wild things, bird's nesting, and so forth, up at theschoolhouse on Thursday. I wish you'd come and help me. One's only hopeis with the children. The grown-up are too far gone. Mind you come. "

So we parted, and, as I walked across the hill homeward, haunted by thatgentle face, I thought of Melampus, that old philosopher who loved thewild things so and had made such friends with them, that they had taughthim their language and told him all their secrets:

 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, bridled, 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. 

As I dipped into the little thick-set wood that surrounds my house, something stood for a second in one of the openings, then was gone likea shadow. I was glad to think how full of bracken and hollows, andmysterious holes and corners of mossed and lichened safety was our oldwood--for the shadow was a fox. I like to think it was the very fox wehad been talking about come to find shelter with me--and, if he stole ameal out of our hen-roost, I gave it him before he asked it, with allthe will in the world. I hope he chose a good fat hen, and not one ofyour tough old capons that sometimes come to table. 

XV

THE LITTLE GHOST IN THE GARDEN

I don't know in what corner of the garden his busy little life now takesits everlasting rest. None of us had the courage to stand by, thatsummer morning, when Morris, our old negro man, buried him, and we feltsympathetic for Morris that the sad job should fall upon him, for Morrisloved him just as we did. Perhaps if we had loved him less, moresentimentally than deeply, we should have indulged in some sort ofappropriate ceremonial, and marked his grave with a little stone. But, as I have said, his grave, like that of the great prophet, is a secretto this day. None of us has ever asked Morris about it, and his griefhas been as reticent as our own. I wondered the other night, as I walkedthe garden in a veiled moonlight, whether it was near the lotus-tanks hewas lying--for I remembered how he would stand there, almost by thehour, watching the goldfish that we had engaged to protect us againstmosquitoes, moving mysteriously under the shadows of the great flatleaves. In his short life he grew to understand much of this strangeworld, but he never got used to those goldfish; and often I have seenhim, after a long wistful contemplation of them, turn away with a sortof half-frightened, puzzled bark, as though to say that he gave it up. Or, does he lie, I wonder, somewhere among the long grass of thesalt-marsh, that borders our garden, and in perigee tides widens outinto a lake. There indeed would be his appropriate country, for therewas the happy hunting-ground through which in life he was never tired ofroaming, in the inextinguishable hope of mink, and with the occasionalcertainty of a water-rat. 

He had come to us almost as mysteriously as he went away; a fox-terrierpuppy wandered out of the Infinite to the neighbourhood of our ice-box, one November morning, and now wandered back again. Technically, he wasjust graduating out of puppyhood, though, like the most charming humanbeings, he never really grew up, and remained, in behaviour andimagination, a puppy to the end. He was a dog of good breed and goodmanners, evidently with gentlemanly antecedents canine and human. Therewere those more learned in canine aristocracy than ourselves who saidthat his large leaf-like, but very becoming, ears meant a bar sinistersomewhere in his pedigree, but to our eyes those only made himbetter-looking; and, for the rest of him, he was race--race nervous, sensitive, refined, and courageous--from the point of his all-searchingnose to the end of his stub of a tail, which the conventional dockinghad seemed but to make the more expressive. We had already one dog inthe family when he arrived, and two Maltese cats. With the cats he wasnever able to make friends, in spite of persistent well-intentionedefforts. It was evident to us that his advances were all made in thespirit of play, and from a desire of comradeship, the two crowning needsof his blithe sociable spirit. But the cats received them in an attitudeof invincible distrust, of which his poor nose frequently bore the sorrysignature. Yet they had become friendly enough with the other dog, anelderly setter, by name Teddy, whose calm, lordly, slow-moving ways weredue to a combination of natural dignity, vast experience of life, andsome rheumatism. As Teddy would sit philosophizing by the hearth of anevening, immovable and plunged in memories, yet alert on the instant toa footfall a quarter of a mile away, they would rub their sinuoussmoke-grey bodies to and fro beneath his jaws, just as though he were apiece of furniture; and he would take as little notice of them as thoughhe were the leg of the piano; though sometimes he would wag his tailgently to and fro, or rap it softly on the floor, as though appreciatingthe delicate attention. 

 * * * * *

Of Teddy's reception of the newcomer we had at first some slightmisgiving, for, amiable as we have just seen him with his Maltesecompanions, and indeed as he is generally by nature, his is theamiability that comes of conscious power, and is his, so to say, byright of conquest; for of all neighbouring dogs he is the acknowledgedking. The reverse of quarrelsome, the peace of his declining years hasbeen won by much historical fighting, and his reputation among the dogsof his acquaintance is such that it is seldom necessary for him toassert his position. It is only some hapless stranger ignorant of hisstanding that will occasionally provoke him to a display of thosefighting qualities he grows more and more reluctant to employ. Even withsuch he is comparatively merciful; stern, but never brutal. Usually allthat is necessary is for him to look at them steadfastly for a fewmoments in a peculiar way. This seems to convince them that, after all, discretion is the better part, and slowly and sadly they turn around ina curious cowed way, and walk off, apparently too scared to run, withTeddy, like Fate, grimly at their heels, steadily "pointing" them offthe premises. We were a little anxious, therefore, as to how Teddy wouldtake our little terrier, with his fussy, youthful self-importance, andeternal restless poking into other folks' affairs. But Teddy, as wemight have told ourselves, had had a long and varied experience ofterriers, and had nothing to learn from us. Yet I have no doubt that, with his instinctive courtesy, he divined the wishes of the family inregard to the newcomer, and was, therefore, predisposed in his favour. This, however, did not save the evidently much overawed youngster from astern and searching examination, the most trying part of which seemedto be that long, silent, hypnotizing contemplation of him, which isTeddy's way of asserting his dignity. The little dog visibly trembledbeneath the great one's gaze, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, andhis eyes wandering helplessly from side to side; and he seemed to besaying, in his dog way: "O yes! I know you are a very great andimportant personage--and I am only a poor little puppy of no importance. Only please let me go on living--and you will see how well I willbehave. " Teddy seemed to be satisfied that some such recognition andsubmission had been tendered him; so presently he wagged his tail, thathad up till then been rigid as a ramrod, and not only the littleterrier, but all of us, breathed again. Yet it was some time beforeTeddy would admit him into anything like what one might call intimacy, and premature attempts at gamesome familiarity were checked by thegathering thunder of a lazy growl that unmistakably bade the youngsterkeep his place. But real friendship eventually grew between them, on Teddy's side a sort of big-brother affectionate tutelage andguardianship, and on Puppy's--for, though we tried many, we never foundany other satisfactory name for him but "Puppy"--a reverent admirationand watchful worshipping imitation. No great man was ever more anxiouslycopied by some slavish flatterer than that old sleepy carelessly-greatsetter by that eager, ambitious little terrier. The occasions when tobark and when not to bark, for example. One could actually see Puppystudying the old dog's face on doubtful occasions of the kind. Boilingover, as he visibly was, with the desire to bark his soul out, yet hecould be seen unmistakably restraining himself, till Teddy, after somepreliminary soliloquizing in deep undertones, had made up his mind thatthe suspicious shuffling-by of probably some inoffensive Italian workmandemanded investigation, and lumberingly risen to his feet and made forthe door. Then, like a bunch of firecrackers, Puppy was at the heels, all officious assistance, and the two would disappear like an old and ayoung thunderbolt into the resounding distance. 

 * * * * *

Teddy's friendship had seemed to be definitely won on an occasion whichbrought home to one the quaint resemblance between the codes and ways ofdogs and those of schoolboys. When the winter came on, a rather severeone, it soon became evident that the little short-haired fellow sufferedconsiderably from the cold. Out on walks, he was visibly shivering, though he made no fuss about it. So one of the angels in the houseknitted for him a sort of woollen sweater buttoned down his neck andunder his belly, and trimmed it with some white fur that gave it anexceedingly smart appearance. Teddy did not happen to be there when itwas first tried on, and, for the moment, Puppy had to be content withour admiration, and his own vast sense of importance. Certainly, a moreself-satisfied terrier never was than he who presently sped out, to airhis new finery before an astonished neighbourhood. But alas! you shouldhave seen him a few minutes afterwards. We had had the curiosity tostroll out to see how he had got on, and presently, in a bit of rockywoodland near by, we came upon a curious scene. In the midst of a clumpof red cedars, three great dogs, our Teddy, a wicked old blackretriever, and a bustling be-wigged and be-furred collie, stood in acircle round Puppy, seated on his haunches, trembling with fear, tonguelolling and eyes wandering, for all the world as though they wereholding a court-martial, or, at all events, a hazing-party. The offenceevidently lay with that dandified new sweater. One and another of thedogs smelt at it, then tugged at it in evident disgust; and, as eachtime Puppy made a move to get away, all girt him round with gutturalthunder of disapproval, as much as to say: "Do you call that a thing fora manly dog to go around in? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, youmiserable dandy. "

We couldn't help reflecting that it was all very well for those greatcomfortable long-haired dogs to talk, naturally protected as they werefrom the cold. Yet that evidently cut no figure with them, and they wenton sniffing and tugging and growling, till we thought our poor Puppy'seyes and tongue would drop out with fear. Yet, all the time, theyseemed to be enjoying his plight, seemed to be smiling grimly together, wicked old experienced brutes as they were. 

Presently the idea of the thing seemed to occur to Puppy, or out of hisextremity a new soul was born within him, for suddenly an infinitedisgust of his new foppery seemed to take possession of him too, and, regaining his courage, he turned savagely upon it, ripping it this wayand that, and struggling with might and main to rid himself of theaccursed thing. Presently he stood free, and barks of approval at oncewent up from his judges. He had come through his ordeal, and was oncemore a dog among dogs. Great was the rejoicing among his friends, andthe occasion having been duly celebrated by joint destruction andcontumely of the offending garment, Teddy and he returned home, friendsfor life. 

 * * * * *

It is to be feared that that friendship, deep and tender as it grew tobe on both sides, perhaps particularly on Teddy's, was the indirectcause of Puppy's death. I have referred to Teddy's bark, and how he isnot wont to waste it on trivial occasions, or without due thought. Onthe other hand, he is proud of it, and loves to practice it--just forits own sake, particularly on early mornings, when, however fine a barkit is, most of our neighbours would rather continue sleeping than wakeup to listen to it. There is no doubt at all, for those who understandhim, that it is a purely artistic bark. He means no harm to any one byit. When the milkman, his private enemy, comes at seven, the bark isquite different. This barking of Teddy's seems to be literally atnothing. Around five o'clock on summer mornings, he plants himself on aknob of rock overlooking the salt marsh and barks, possibly in honour ofthe rising sun, but with no other perceptible purpose. So have I heardmen rise in the dawn to practice the cornet--but they were men, so theyran no risk of their lives. Teddy's practicing, however, has now beencarried on for several years in the teeth of no little peril; and, hadit not been for much human influence employed on his behalf, he wouldlong since have antedated his little friend in Paradise. When thatlittle friend, however, came to assist and emulate him in those morningrecitals, adding to his bark an occasional--I am convinced purelyplayful--bite, I am inclined to think that a sentiment grew in theneighbourhood that one dog at a time was enough. At all events, Teddystill barks at dawn as of old, but our little Puppy barks no more. 

Before the final quietus came to him, there were several occasions onwhich the Black dog, called Death, had almost caught him in his jaws. One there was in especial. He had, I believe, no hatred for any livingthing save Italian workmen and automobiles. I have seen an Italianworkman throw his pick-axe at him, and then take to his heels ingrotesque flight. But the pick-axe missed him, as did many anotherclumsily hurled missile. 

 * * * * *

An automobile, however, on one occasion, came nearer its mark. Likeevery other dog that ever barked, particularly terriers, Puppy delightedto harass the feet of fast trotting horses, mockingly running ahead ofthem, barking with affected savagery, and by a miracle evading theiron-coming hoofs--which to him, tiny thing as he was, must have seemedlike trip-hammers pounding down from the sky. But horses understand suchgaiety in terriers. They understand that it is only their foolish fun. Automobiles are different. They have no souls. They see nothing engagingin having their tires snapped at, as they whirl swiftly by; and, oneday, after Puppy had flung himself in a fine fury at the tires of one ofthese soulless things, he gave a sharp yelp--"not cowardly!"--and lay amoment on the roadside. But only a moment; then he went limping off onhis three sound legs, and hid himself away from all sympathy, in someunknown spot. It was in vain we called and sought him, and only aftertwo days was he discovered, in the remotest corner of a great rockycellar, determined apparently to die alone in an almost inaccessibleprivacy of wood and coal. Yet, when at last we persuaded him that lifewas still sweet and carried him upstairs into the great living-room, andthe beautiful grandmother, who knows the sorrows of animals almost asthe old Roman seer knew the languages of beasts and birds, had takenhim in charge and made a cosy nest of comforters for him by the fire, and tempted his languid appetite--to which the very thought of boneswas, of course, an offence--with warm, savory-smelling soup; then, hewho had certainly been no coward--for his thigh was a cruel lump of painwhich no human being would have kept so patiently to himself--becamesuddenly, like many human invalids, a perfect glutton of self-pity; andwhen we smoothed and patted him and told him how sorry we were, it waslaughable, and almost uncanny, how he suddenly set up a sort of moaningtalk to us, as much as to say that he certainly had had a pretty badtime, was really something of a hero, and deserved all the sympathy wewould give him. So far as one can be sure about anything so mysteriousas animals, I am sure that from then on he luxuriated in his littlehospital by the fireside, and played upon the feelings of his beautifulnurse, and of his various solicitous visitors, with all the histrionicskill of the spoiled and petted convalescent. Suddenly, however, oneday, he forgot his part. He heard some inspiring barking going onnearby--and, in a flash, his comforters were thrust aside, and he wasoff and away to join the fun. Then, of course, we knew that he was wellagain; though he still went briskly about his various business on threelegs for several days. 

His manner was quite different, however, the afternoon he had soevidently come home to die. There was no pose about the little forlornfigure, which, after a mysterious absence of two days, suddenlyappeared, as we were taking tea on the veranda, already the very ghostof himself. Wearily he sought the cave of the beautiful grandmother'sskirts, where, whenever he had had a scolding, he was wont always totake refuge--barking, fiercely, as from an inaccessible fortress, at hisenemies. 

 * * * * *

But, this afternoon, there was evidently no bark in him, poor littlefellow; everything about him said that he had just managed to crawl hometo die. His brisk white coat seemed dank with cold dews, and there wassomething shadowy about him and strangely quiet. His eyes, always soalert, were strangely heavy and indifferent, yet questioning and somehowaccusing. He seemed to be asking us why a little dog should suffer so, and what was going to happen to him, and what did it all mean. Alas! Wecould not tell him; and none of us dare say to each other that ourlittle comrade in the mystery of life was going to die. But a silencefell over us all, and the beautiful grandmother took him into her care, and so well did her great and wise heart nurse him through the nightthat next morning it almost seemed as though we had been wrong; for aflash of his old spirit was in him again, and, though his little legsshook under him, it was plain that he wanted to try and be up at hisday's work on the veranda, warning off the passer-by, or in the gardencarrying on his eternal investigations, or farther afield in thecouncils and expeditions of his fellows. So we let him have his way, andfor a while he seemed happier and stronger for the sunshine, and the oldfamiliar scents and sounds. But the one little tired husky bark he gaveat his old enemy, the Italian workman, passing by, would have brokenyour heart; and the effort he made with a bone, as he visited thewell-remembered neighbourhood of the ice-box for the last time, waspiteous beyond telling. Those sharp, strong teeth that once could biteand grind through anything could do nothing with it now. To lick itsadly with tired lips, in a sort of hopeless way, was all that was left;and there was really a look in his face as though he accepted thismortal defeat, as he lay down, evidently exhausted with his exertions, on a bank nearby. But once more his spirit seemed to revive, and hescrambled to his legs again and wearily crawled to the back of thehouse, where the beautiful grandmother loves to sit and look over theglittering salt-marsh in the summer afternoons. 

 * * * * *

Of course, he knew that she was there. She had been his best friend inthis strange world. His last effort was naturally to be near her again. Almost he reached that kind cave of her skirts. Only another yard or twoand he had been there. But the energy that had seemed irrepressible andeverlasting had come to its end, and the little body had to give in atlast, and lie down wearily once more with no life left but the love inits fading eyes. 

There are some, I suppose, who may wonder how one can write about thedeath of a mere dog like this; and cannot understand how the death of alittle terrier can make the world seem a lonelier place. But there areothers, I know, who will scarce need telling, men and women with littleghosts of their own haunting their moonlit gardens; strange, appealing, faithful companions, kind little friendly beings that journeyed withthem awhile the pilgrimage of the soul. 

I often wonder if Teddy misses his little busy playfellow and discipleas we do; if, perhaps, as he barks over the marsh of a morning, he issending him a message. He goes about the place with nonchalant greatnessas of old, and the Maltese cats still rub their sinuous smoke-greybodies to and fro beneath his jaws at evening. There is no sign ofsorrow upon him. But he is old and very wise, and keeps strangeknowledge to himself. So, who can say?

XVI

THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

For the genuine lover of nature, as distinct from the connoisseur ofdainty or spectacular "scenery, " nature has always and everywhere somecharm or satisfaction. He will find it no less--some say more--in winterthan in summer, and I have little doubt that the great Alkali Desert isnot entirely without its enthusiasts. The nature among which we spentour childhood is apt to have a lasting hold on us, in defiance ofshowier competition, and I suppose there is no land with soul so deadthat it does not boast itself the fairest under heaven. 

I am writing this surrounded by a natural scene which I would notexchange for the Swiss lakes, yet I presume it is undeniable thatSwitzerland has a more universal reputation for natural beauty thanConnecticut. It is, as we say, one of the show places of the earth. SoNiagara Falls, the Grand Cañon, the Rockies, and California generallylord it over America. Italy has such a reputation for beauty that it isalmost unfair to expect her to live up to it. I once ventured to saythat the Alps must be greasy with being climbed, and it says much forsuch stock pieces in nature's repertoire, that, in spite of all the wearand tear of sentimental travellers, the mock-admiration of generations, the batteries of amateur cameras, the Riviera, the English lakes, theWelsh mountains, the Highlands of Scotland, and other tourist-troddenclassics of the picturesque, still remain haunts of beauty and joysforever. God's masterpieces do not easily wear out. 

Every country does something supremely well, and England may be said tohave a patent for a certain kind of scenery which Americans are thefirst to admire. English scenery has no more passionate pilgrim than thetraveller from the United States, as the visitors' books of its variousshow-places voluminously attest. Perhaps it is not difficult, when onehas lived in both countries, to understand why. 

While America, apart from its impressive natural splendours, is richalso in idyllic and pastoral landscape, it has, as yet, but little"countryside. " I say, as yet, because "the countryside, " I think I amright in feeling, is not entirely a thing of nature's making, butrather a collaboration resulting from nature and man living so long inpartnership together. In England, with which the word is peculiarly, ifnot exclusively, associated, God is not entirely to be credited withmaking the country. Man has for generations also done his share. 

It is perhaps not without significance that the word "countryside"was not to be found in Webster's dictionary, till a recent edition. Originally, doubtless, it was used with reference to those ruraldistricts in the vicinity of a town; as one might say the country sideof the town. Not wild or solitary nature was meant, but naturehumanized, made companionable by the presence and occupations of man; anature which had made the winding highway, the farm, and the pasture, even the hamlet, with its church tower and its ancient inn, one withherself. 

The American, speeding up to London from his landing either at Liverpoolor Southampton, always exclaims on the gardenlike aspect, the deep, richgreenness of the landscape. It is not so much the specific evidences ofcultivation, though those, of course, are plentifully present, but ageneral air of ripeness and order. Even the land not visible undercultivation suggests immemorial care and fertility. We feel that thisland has been fought over and ploughed over, nibbled over by sheep, sownand reaped, planted and drained, walked over, hunted over, and very muchbeloved, for centuries. It is not fanciful to see in it a land towhich its people have been stubbornly and tenderly devoted--still"Shakespeare's England, " still his favoured "isle set in the silversea. "

As seen from the railway-carriage window, one is struck, too, by thecomparative tidiness of the English landscape. There are few loose ends, and the outskirts of villages are not those distressing dump-heapswhich they too often are in America. Yet there is no excessive air oftrimness. The order and grooming seem a part of nature's processes. There is, too, a casual charm about the villages themselves, thegraceful, accidental grouping of houses and gardens, which suggestsgrowth rather than premeditation. The general harmony does not preclude, but rather comes of, the greatest variety of individual character. 

Herein the English village strikingly differs from the typical NewEngland village, where the charm comes of a prim uniformity, andindividuality is made to give place to a general parking of lawns andshade-trees in rectangular blocks and avenues. A New England villagesuggests some large institution disposed in separate uniform buildings, placed on one level carpet of green, each with a definite number oftrees, and the very sunlight portioned out into gleaming allotments. The effect gained is for me one of great charm--the charm of a vivid, exquisitely ordered, green silence, with a touch of monastic, orQuakerish, decorum. I would not have it otherwise, and I speak of itonly to suggest by contrast the different, desultory charm of an oldEnglish village, where beauty has not been so much planned, as has just"occurred. "

Of course, this is the natural result of the long occupation of theland. Each century in succession has had a hand in shaping thecountryside to its present aspect, and English history is literally aliving visible part of English scenery. Here the thirteenth century hasleft a church, here the fourteenth a castle, here the sixteenth, withits suppression of the monasteries, a ruined abbey. Here is an inn whereChaucer's pilgrims stopped on the way to Canterbury. Here, in a fieldcovered over by a cow-shed, is a piece of tessellated pavement which wasonce the floor of an old country house occupied by one of Caesar'sgenerals. 

Those strange grassy mounds breaking the soft sky-line of the rollingSouth Downs are the tombs of Saxon chieftains, that rubble of stones atthe top of yonder hill was once a British camp, and those curious ridgesterracing yonder green slope mark the trenches of some prehistoricbattlefield. All these in the process of time have become part andparcel of the English countryside, as necessary to its "English"character as its trees and its wild flowers. 

How much, too, the English countryside owes for its beauty to the manyold manor-houses, gabled and moated, with their quaint, mossy-walledgardens and great forestlike parks. Whatever we may think of the Englishterritorial system as economics, its service to English scenery has beenincalculable. Without English traditionalism we should hardly have hadthe English countryside. 

The conservation of great estates, entailing a certain conservatism inthe treatment of farm lands from generation to generation, and theupholding, too, of game-preserves, however obnoxious to the landreformer, have been all to the good of the nature-lover. We owe nolittle of the beauty of the English woodland to the English pheasant;and with the coming of land nationalization we may expect to seeconsiderable changes in the English countryside. Meanwhile, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the feudalistic character of English landlordism, the Englishman enjoys a right of walking over his native land of whichno capitalist can rob him. Hence results another charming feature of theEnglish countryside--the footpaths you see everywhere winding over hilland dale, through field and coppice. The ancient rights of these aresafeguarded to the people forever by statute no wealth can defy; and, let any _nouveau riche_ of a landlord try to close one of them, andhe has to reckon with one of the pluckiest and most persistentorganizations of English John Hampdens, the society that makes theprotection of these traditional pathways its particular care. So therich man cannot lock up his trees and his woodland glades all forhimself, but is compelled to share them to the extent of allowing thepoorest pedestrian to walk through them--which is about all the rich mancan do with them himself. 

These footpaths, in conjunction with English lanes, have made the charmof walking tours in England proverbial. Certain counties particularlypride themselves on their lands. Surrey and Devonshire are the greatrivals in this respect. We say "Surrey lanes" or "Devonshire lanes, "as we speak of "Italian skies" or "Southern hospitality. " Othercounties--Warwickshire, for example--doubtless have lanes no lesslovely, but Surrey and Devonshire have, so to say, got the decision;and, if an American traveller wants to see a typical English lane, hegoes to Surrey or Devonshire, just as, if he wants a typical Englishpork-pie, he sends to Melton Mowbray. 

And the English lane has come honestly by its reputation. You may bedisappointed in Venice, but you will be hard to please if you are notcaught by the spell of an English lane. Of course, you must not expectto feel that spell if you tear through it in a motor-car. It was madefor the loiterer, as its whimsical twists and turns plainly show. If youare in a hurry, you had better keep to the king's highway, stretchingswift and white on the king's business. The English lane was made forthe leisurely meandering of cows to and from pasture, for the dreamysnail-pace of time-forgetting lovers, for children gathering primrosesor wild strawberries, or for the knap-sacked wayfarer to whom time andspace are no objects, whose destination is anywhere and nowhere, whoseonly clocks are the rising sun and the evening star, and to whom the waymeans more than the goal. 

I should not have spoken of it as "made, " for, when it is mostcharacteristic, an English lane has no suggestion of ever having beenman-made like other roads. It seems as much a natural feature as thewoods or meadows through which it passes; and sometimes, as in Surrey, when it runs between high banks, tunnelling its way under green boughs, it seems more like an old river-bed than a road, whose sides nature hastapestried with ferns and flowers. Of all roads in the world it is thedreamer's road, luring on the wayfarer with perpetual romantic promiseand surprise, winding on and on, one can well believe, into the veryheart of fairy-land. Everything beautiful seems to be waiting for ussomewhere in the turnings of an English lane. 

Had I sat down to write of the English countryside two years ago, Ishould have done so with a certain amount of cautious skepticism. Ishould have said to myself: "You have not visited England for over tenyears. Are you quite sure that your impressions of its natural beautiesare not the rose-coloured exaggerations of memory? Are not time anddistance lending their proverbial enchantment?" In fact, as I set sailto revisit England, the spring before last, it was in some such mood ofanticipatory disillusion. 

After all, I had said to myself, is not the English countryside the workof the English poets--the English spring, the English wild flowers, theEnglish lark, the English nightingale, and so forth? That longing ofBrowning expressed in the lines, O to be in England Now that April's there!

was, after all, the cry of a homesick versifier, thinking "HomeThoughts, from Abroad"; and are Herrick and Wordsworth quite to betrusted on the subject of daffodils?

Well, I am glad to have to own that my revisiting my native landresulted in an agreeable disappointment. With a critical American eye, jealously on my guard against sentimental superstition, I surveyed theEnglish landscape and examined its various vaunted beauties andfascinations, as though making their acquaintance for the first time. No, my youthful raptures had not been at fault, and the poets were oncemore justified. The poets are seldom far wrong. If they see anything, itis usually there. If we cannot see it, too, it is the fault of our eyes. 

Take the English hawthorn, for instance. As its fragrance is wafted toyou from the bushes where it hangs like the fairest of white linen, youwill hardly, I think, quarrel with its praises. Yet, though it is, if Iam not mistaken, of rare occurrence in America, it is not absolutelynecessary to go to England for the hawthorn. Any one who cares to goa-Maying along the banks of the Hudson, in the neighbourhood ofPeekskill, will find it there. But for the primrose and the cowslip youmust cross the sea; and, if you come upon such a wood as I strayed into, my last visit, you will count it worth the trip. It was literallycarpeted with clumps of primroses and violets (violets that smell, too)so thickly massed together in the mossy turf that there was scarcelyroom to tread. There are no words rich or abundant enough to suggest thesense of innocent luxury brought one by such a natural Persian carpet ofsoft gold and dewy purple, at once so gorgeous and yet so gentle. In allthis lavish loveliness of English wild flowers there is, indeed, apeculiar tenderness. The innocence of children seems to be in them, andthe tenderness of lovers. 

 A lover would not tread A cowslip on the head--

How appropriately such lines come to mind as one carefully picks one'sway down a green hillside yellow with cowslips, and breathing perhapsthe most delicate of all flowery fragrances. Yet again, as we pass intoanother stretch of woodland, another profusion and another fragranceawait us, the winey perfume and the spectral blue sheen of the wildhyacinth. As one comes upon stretches of these hyacinths in the woods, they seem at first glance like pools of blue water or fallen pieces ofthe sky. Here, for once, the poets are left behind, and, of them all, Shakespeare and Milton alone have come near to suggesting theloveliness, at once so spiritual and so warmly and sweetly of the earth, that belongs to English wild flowers. I know not if Sheffield steelstill keeps its position among the eternal verities, but in an age whenso many of one's cherished beliefs are threatened with the scrap-heap, I count it of no small importance to be able to retain one's faith inthe English lark and English wild flowers. 

But the English countryside is not all greenness and softness, blossomylanes, moated granges, and idyllic villages. It by no means alwayssuggests the gardener, the farmer, or the gamekeeper. It is rich, too, in wildness and solitude, in melancholy fens and lonely moorlands. Tothe American accustomed to the vast areas of his own enormous continent, it would come as a surprise to realize that a land far smaller than manyof his States can in certain places give one so profound a sense of thewilderness. Yet I doubt if a man could feel lonelier anywhere in theworld than on a Yorkshire moor or on Salisbury Plain. 

After all, we are apt to forget that, even on the largest continent, wecan see only a limited portion of the earth at once. When one is in themiddle of Lake Erie we are as much out of sight of land, as impressed bythe illusion of boundless water, as if we were in the middle of thePacific Ocean. So, on Salisbury Plain, with nothing but rolling billowsof close-cropped turf, springy and noiseless to the tread, as far as theeye can see, one feels as alone with the universe as in the middle ofsome Asian desert. In addition to the actual loneliness of the scene, and a silence broken only by the occasional tinkle of sheep-bells, as aflock moves like a fleecy cloud across the grass, is an imaginativeloneliness induced by the overwhelming sense of boundless unrecordedtime, the "dim-grey-grown ages, " of which the mysterious boulders ofStonehenge are the voiceless witnesses. To experience this feeling tothe full one should come upon an old Roman road in the twilight, grass-grown, choked with underbrush, but still running straight andclearly defined as when it shook to the tread of Roman legions. It iseery to follow one of these haunted roads, filled with the far-offthoughts and fancies it naturally evokes, and then suddenly to come outagain into the world of today, as it joins the highway once more, andthe lights of a wayside inn welcome us back to humanity, with perhaps atouring car standing at the door. 

One need hardly say that the English wayside inn is as much a feature ofthe English countryside as the English hawthorn. Its praises have beenthe theme of essayists and poets for generations, and at its best thereis a cosiness and cheer about it which warm the heart, as its quaintnessand savour of past days keep alive the sense of romantic travel. Therethe spirit of ancient hospitality still survives, and, though themotor-car has replaced the stage-coach, that is, after all, but adetail, and the old, low-ceilinged rooms, the bay windows with theirleaded panes, the tap-room with its shining vessels, the great kitchen, the solid English fare, the brass candlesticks at bedtime, and thelavendered sheets, still preserve the atmosphere of a novel by Fieldingor an essay by Addison. 

There still, as in Shakespeare's day, one can take one's ease at one'sinn, as perhaps in the hostelries of no other land. It is the frequencyand excellence of these English inns that make it charmingly possible tosee England, as it is best seen, on foot or on a bicycle. It is not acountry of isolated wonders, with long stretches of mere road between. Every mile counts for something. But, if the luxury of walking it withstick and knapsack is denied us, and we must needs see it by motor-car, we cannot fail to make one observation, that of the surprising varietyof natural scenery packed in so small a space. Between Land's End andthe Tweed the eye and the imagination have encountered every form of thepicturesque. In an area some three hundred and fifty miles long by threehundred broad are contained the ruggedness of Cornwall, the idyllicsoftness of Devon, the dreamy solitudes of the South Downs, with theirbillowy, chalky contours, the agricultural fertility of Kent andMiddlesex, the romantic woodlands and hilly pastures of Surrey, themelancholy fens of Lincolnshire, the broad, bosky levels of themidlands, the sudden wildness of Wales, with her mountains and glens, Yorkshire, with its grim, heather-clad moors, Westmoreland, with itsfells and Wordsworthian "Lakes"; every note in the gamut of naturalbeauty has been struck, from honeysuckle prettiness to savage grandeur. 

Yet, although all these contrasts are included in the English scene, itis not of solitude or grandeur that we think when we speak of theEnglish countryside. They are the exceptions to the rule of a gentler, more humanized natural beauty, in which the village church and theivy-clad ruin play their part. Perhaps some such formula as this wouldrepresent the typical scene that springs to the mind's eye with thephrase "the English countryside": a village green, with some geesestringing out across it. A straggle of quaint thatched cottages, rosesclimbing about the windows, and in front little, carefully kept gardens, with hollyhocks standing in rows, stocks and sweet-williams and suchold-fashioned flowers. At one end of the village, rising out of a clumpof yews, the mouldering church-tower, with mossy gravestones on one sideand a trim rectory on the other. At the other end of the village agabled inn, with a great stable-yard, busy with horses and waggons. Above the village, the slopes of gently rising pastures, intersectedwith footpaths and shadowed with woodlands. A little way out of thevillage, an old mill with a lilied mill-pond, a great, drippingwater-wheel, and the murmur of the escaping stream. And winding oninto the green, sun-steeped distance, the blossom-hung English lanes. 

XVII

LONDON--CHANGING AND UNCHANGING

I find it an unexpectedly strange experience to be in London againafter ten years in New York. I had no idea it could be so strange. Ofcourse, there are men to whom one great city is as another--commercialtravellers, impresarios, globe-trotting millionaires. Being none ofthese, I am not as much at home in St. Petersburg as in Buda-Pesth, inBerlin as in Paris, and, while once I might have envied such plasticcosmopolitanism, I am realizing, this last day or two in London, that, were such an accomplishment mine, it had been impossible for me to feelas deeply as I do my brief reincarnation into a city and a country withwhich I was once so intimate, and which now seems so romanticallystrange, while remaining so poignantly familiar. The man who is at homeeverywhere has nowhere any home. My home was once this London--thisEngland--in which I am writing; but nothing so much as being in Londonagain could make me realize that my home now is New York, and how longand how instinctively, without knowing it, I have been an American. Itis not indeed that I love New York and America more than I love Londonand England. In fact, London has never seemed so wonderful to me in thepast as she has seemed during these days of my wistful momentary returnto her strange great heart. But this very freshness of her marvel to onewho once deemed that he knew her so well proves but the completeness ofmy spiritual acclimatization into another land. I seem to be seeing herface, hearing her voice, for the first time; while, all the while, myheart is full with unforgotten memories, and my eyes have scarce thehardihood to gaze with the decorum befitting the public streets on manya landmark of vanished hours. To find London almost as new and strangeto me as New York once seemed when I first sighted her soaring morningtowers, and yet to know her for an enchanted Ghost-Land; to be able tofind my way through her streets--in spite of the new Kingsway andAldwych!--with closed eyes, and yet to see her, it almost seems, for thefirst time: surely it is a curious, almost uncanny, experience. 

Do I find London changed?--I am asked. I have been so busy inrediscovering what I had half-forgotten, in finding engaging noveltiesin things anciently familiar, that the question is one which I feelhardly competent to answer. For instance, I had all but forgotten thatthere was so noble a thing in the world as an old-fashioned Englishpork-pie. Yesterday I saw one in a window, with a thrill of recognition, that made a friend with whom I was walking think for a moment that Ihad seen a ghost. He knows nothing of the human heart who cannot realizehow tremulous with ancient heart-break may seem an old-fashioned Englishpork-pie--after ten years in America. 

And, again, how curiously novel and charming seemed the soft andcourteous English voices--with or without aitches--all about one inthe streets and in the shops--I had almost said the "stores. " I amenamoured of the American accent, these many years, and--the calumny ofsuperficial observation to the contrary--I will maintain, so far as myown experience goes, that there is as much courtesy broadcast in Americaas in any land; more, I am inclined to think than in France. Yet, forall that, that something or other in the English voice which I had heardlong since and lost awhile smote me with a peculiar pleasure, and, though I like the comradely American "Cap" or "Professor, " and am hopingsoon to hear it again--yet the novelty of being addressed once more as"Sir" has had, I must own, a certain antiquarian charm. 

Wandering in a quaint by-street near my hotel, and reading the names andsigns on one or two of the neat old-world "places of business, " I cameon the word "sweep. " I believe it was on a brass-plate. For a moment, Iwondered what it meant; and then I realized, with a great gratitude, that London had not changed so much, after all, since the days ofCharles Lamb. As I emerged into a broader thoroughfare, my ears weresmitten with the sound of minstrelsy. It is true that the tune waschanged. It was unmistakably rag-time. Yet, there was the oldpiano-organ, and in a broad circle of spectators, suspended awhile fromtheir various wayfaring, a young man in tennis flannels was performing aspirited Apache dance with a quite comely short-skirted young woman, whorightly enough felt that she had no need to be ashamed of her legs. Across the extemporized stage, every now and then, taxicabs tootedcautiously, longing in their hearts to stay; and once a motorcoal-waggon, like a sort of amateur freight-train, thundered across; butnot even these could break the spell that held that ring of enchantedloiterers, from which presently the pennies fell like rain--the eternalspell--still operating, I was glad to see, under the protection of theonly human police in the world--of the strolling player in London town. Just before the players turned to seek fresh squares and alleys new, Inoticed on the edge of the crowd what seemed, in the gathering twilight, to be a group of uplifted spears. Spears or halberds, were they? It wasa little company of the ancient brotherhood of lamp-lighters, seduced, like the rest of us, from the strict pursuance of duty by the vagabondmusic. 

To me this thought is full of reassurance, whatever be the murmurs ofchange: London has still her sweeps, her strolling minstrels, and herlamp-lighters. 

Of course, I missed at once the old busses, yet there are far morehorses left than I had dared to hope, and the hansom is far fromextinct. In fact, there seems to be some promise of its renaissance, andeven yet, in the words of the ancient bard, despite the competition oftaxis--

 Like dragon-flies, The hansoms hover With jewelled eyes, To catch the lover. 

Further, --the quietude of the Temple remains undisturbed, the lawns ofGray's Inn are green as of old, the Elizabethanism of Staple Inn isunchanged, about the cornices of the British Museum the pigeons stillflutter and coo, and the old clocks chime sweetly as of old from theirmysterious stations aloft somewhere in the morning and the evening sky. 

Changes, of course, there are. It is easier to telephone in London todaythan it was ten years ago--almost as easy as in some little provincialtown in Connecticut. Various minor human conveniences have beenimproved. The electric lighting is better. Some of the elevators--Imean the "lifts"--almost remind one of New York. The problem of "rapidtransit" has been simplified. All which things, however, have nothing todo with national characteristics, but are now the common property of thecivilized, or rather, I should say, the commercialized, world, and areprobably to be found no less in full swing in Timbuctoo. No one--save, maybe, the citizens of some small imitative nation--confounds thesethings with change, or calls them "progress. " The soul of a great oldnation adopts all such contrivances as in the past it has adopted newweapons, or new modes of conveyance. Only a Hottentot or a Cook'sTourist can consider such superficial developments as evidences of"change. "

There are, of course, some new theatres--though I have heard of no newgreat actor or actress. The old "favourites" still seem to dominate theplay-bills, as they did ten years ago. There is Mr. Hammerstein's OperaHouse in the Kingsway. I looked upon it with pathos. Yet, surely, it isa monument not so much of changing London as of that London which seesno necessity of change. 

In regard to the great new roadways, Kingsway, Aldwych, and thebroadening of the Strand, I have been grateful for the temper whichseems to have presided over their making--a temper combining thenecessary readjustment of past and present, with a spirit of sensitiveconservation for those buildings which more and more England willrealize as having a lasting value for her spirit. 

So far as I have observed, London has been guilty of no such vandalismas is responsible for the new Boulevard Raspail in Paris, and similarheartless destructiveness, in a city which belongs less to France thanto the human soul. Such cities as London and Paris are among the eternalspiritual possessions of mankind. If only those temporarily in charge ofthem could be forced somehow to remember that, when their brief mayoral, or otherwise official, lives are past, there will be found those whowill need to look upon what they have destroyed, and who will curse themin their graves. 

Putting aside such merely superficial "changes" as new streets, newtheatres, and new conveniences, there does seem to me one change of afar higher importance for which I have no direct evidence, and which Ican only hint at, even to myself, as "something in the air. " It is, ofcourse, nothing new either to London or to England. It is rather thereawakening of an old temper to which England's history has so often andso momentously given expression. I seem to find it in a new alertness inthe way men and women walk and talk in the streets, a braced-upexpectancy and readiness for some approaching development in England'sdestiny, a new quickening of that old indomitable spirit that has facednot merely external dangers, but grappled with and resolved her owninternal problems. London seems to me like a city that has heard a voicecrying "Arise, thou that sleepest!" and is answering to the cry withgirt loins and sloth-purged heart and blithe readiness for some newunknown summons of a future that can but develop the glory of her past. 

England seems to be no more sleepily resting on her laurels, as she wassome twenty years ago. Nor does she seem, on the other hand, to show theleast anxiety that she could ever lose them. She is merely realizingthat the time is at hand when she is to win others--that one more ofthose many re-births of England, so to speak, out of her own womb, approaches, and that once more she is about to prove herself eternallyyoung. 

New countries are apt to speak of old countries as though they aredying, merely because they have lived so long. Yet there is a longevitywhich is one of the surest evidences of youth. Such I seem to feel oncemore is England's--as from my window I watch the same old English Mayweather: the falling rain and the rich gloom, within which moves always, shouldering the darkest hour, an oceanic radiance, a deathless principleof celestial fire. 

LONDON, May, 1913. 

XVIII

THE HAUNTED RESTAURANT

Were one to tell the proprietors of the very prosperous and flamboyantrestaurant of which I am thinking that it is haunted--yea, that ghostssit at its well appointed tables, and lost voices laugh and wail andsing low to themselves through its halls--they would probably take onefor a lunatic--a servant of the moon. 

Certainly, to all appearance, few places would seem less to suggest theword "haunted" than that restaurant, as one comes upon it, in one of thebusiest of London thoroughfares, spreading as it does for blocks around, like a conflagration, the festive glare of its electrically emblazonedfaçade. Yet no ruined mansion, with the moon shining in through itsshattered roof, the owl nesting in its banqueting hall, and the snakegliding through its bed chambers, was ever more peopled with phantomsthan this radiant palace of prandial gaiety, apparently filled with thefestive murmur of happy diners, the jocund strains of its vigorousorchestra, the subdued clash of knives and forks and delicate dishes, the rustle of women's gowns and the fairy music of women's voices. Forme its portico, flaming like a vortex of dizzy engulfing light, uponwhich, as upon a swift current, gay men and women, alighting from motorand hansom, are swept inward to glittering tables of snow-white napery, fair with flowers--for me the mouth of the grave is not less dread, and the walls of a sepulchre are not so painted with dead facesor so inscribed with elegiac memories. I could spend a night inPère-la-Chaise, and still be less aware of the presence of the deadthan I was a short time ago, when, greatly daring, I crossed with ashudder that once so familiar threshold. 

It was twelve years since I had been in London, so I felt no little of aghost myself, and I knew too well that it would be vain to look for theold faces. Yes, gone was the huge good-natured commissionaire, who sooften in the past, on my arrival in company with some human flower, hadflung open the apron of our cab with such reverential alacrity, and onour departure had so gently tucked in the petals of her skirts, smilingthe while a respectfully knowing benediction on the prospectivecontinuance of our evening's adventure. Another stood in his place, andwatched my lonely arrival with careless indifference. Glancing throughthe window of the treasurer's office to the right of the hall, I couldsee that an unfamiliar figure sat at the desk, where in the past so manya cheque had been cashed for me with eager _bonhomie_. Now I reflectedthat considerable identification would be necessary for that oncelight-hearted transaction. It is true that I was welcomed with courtesyby a bowing majordomo, but alas, my welcome was that of a stranger; andwhen I mounted the ornate, marble-walled staircase leading to thegallery where I had always preferred to sit, I realized that my hat andcane must pass into alien keeping, and that no waiter's face would lightup as he saw me threading my way to the sacred table, withdrawn in anook of the balcony, where one could see and hear all, participate inthe general human stir and atmosphere, and yet remain apart. 

Ah! no; for the friendly Cockney that once greeted me with an enfoldingpaternal kindness was substituted broken English of a less companionableaccent. A polite young Greek it was who stood waiting respectfully formy order, knowing nothing of all it meant for me--_me_--to be seated atthat table again--whereas, had he been one of half a dozen of thewaiters of yester-year, he would have known almost as much as I of the"secret memoirs" of that historic table. 

In ordering my meal I made no attempt at sentiment, for my mood went fardeeper than sentiment. Indeed, though, every second of the time, I wasliving so vividly, so cruelly, in the past, I made one heartbrokenacknowledgment of the present by beginning with the anachronism of adry Martini cocktail, which, twelve years previous, was unknown andunattainable in that haunted gallery. That cocktail was a sort ofdesperate epitaph. It meant that I was alone--alone with my ghosts. Yetit had a certain resurrecting influence, and as I sat there proceedingdreamily with my meal, one face and another would flash before me, andmemory after memory re-enact itself in the theatre of my fancy. Somuch in my actual surroundings brought back the past with an achingdistinctness--particularly the entrance of two charming young people, making rainbows all about them, as, ushered by a smiling waiter, who wasevidently no stranger to their felicity, they seated themselves at aneighbouring table with a happy sigh, and neglected the menu for amoment or two while they gazed, rapt and lost, into each other's eyes. How well I knew it all; how easily I could have taken the young man'splace, and played the part for which this evening he was so fortunatelycast! As I looked at them, I instinctively summoned to my side theradiant shade of Aurea, for indeed she had seemed made of gold--gold andwater lilies. And, as of old, when I had called to her, she came swiftlywith a luxurious rustle of fragrant skirts, like the sound of the westwind among the summer trees, or the swish and sway of the foam about thefeet of Aphrodite. There she sat facing me once more, "a feastingpresence made of light"--her hair like a golden wheat sheaf, hereyes like blue flowers amid the wheat, and her bosom, by no meansparsimoniously concealed, literally suggesting that the loveliness ofall the water lilies in the world was amassed there within her corsetas in some precious casket. Ours was not one of the great tragic loves, but I know I shall think of Aurea's bosom on my death-bed. At her comingI had ordered champagne--we always drank champagne together, because, aswe said, it matched so well with her hair--champagne of a no longerfashionable brand. The waiter seemed a little surprised to hear it askedfor, but it had been the only _chic_ brand in 19--. 

"Look at those two yonder, " I said presently, after we had drunk toeach other, smiling long into each other's eyes over the brims of ourglasses. "You and I were once as they. It is their first wonderfuldinner together. Watch them--the poor darlings; it is enough to breakone's heart. "

"Do you remember ours?" asked Aurea quite needlessly. 

"I wonder what else I was thinking of--dear idiot!" said I, with tenderelegance, as in the old days. 

As I said before, Aurea and I had not been tragic in our love. It wasmore a matter of life--than death; warm, pagan, light-hearted life. Ourswas perhaps that most satisfactory of relationships between men andwomen, which contrives to enjoy the happiness, the fun, even theecstasy, of loving, while evading its heartache. It was, I suppose, whatone would call a healthy physical enchantment, with lots of tendernessand kindness in it, but no possibility of hurt to each other. There wasnothing Aurea would not have done for me, or I for Aurea, except--marryeach other; and, as a matter of fact, there were certain difficulties onboth sides in the way of our doing that, difficulties, however, which Iam sure neither of us regretted. 

Yes, Aurea and I understood thoroughly what was going on in those younghearts, as we watched them, our eyes starry with remembrance. Who betterthan we should know that hush and wonder, that sense of enchantedintimacy, which belongs of all moments perhaps in the progress of apassion to that moment when two standing tiptoe on the brink of goldensurrender, sit down to their first ambrosial meal together--deliciousadventure!--with all the world to watch them, if it choose, and yetaloof in a magic loneliness, as of youthful divinities wrapped in aroseate cloud! Hours of divine expectancy, at once promise andfulfilment. Happy were it for you, lovers, could you thus sit forever, nor pass beyond this moment, touched by some immortalizing wand as thoselovers on the Grecian Urn:

 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

"See, " said Aurea presently, "they are getting ready to go. The waiterhas brought the bill, and is looking away, suddenly lost in profoundmeditation. Let us see how he pays the bill. I am sure she is anxious. "

"Your old test!" said I. "Do you remember?"

"Yes! And it's one that never fails, " said Aurea with decision. "When awoman goes out to dinner with a man for the first time, he little knowshow much is going to depend on his way of paying the bill. If, as withsome men one meets, he studies it through a microscope and adds itup with anxious brow--meanwhile quite evidently forgetting yourpresence--how your heart sinks, sinks and hardens--but you are glad allthe same, and next day you congratulate yourself on your narrow escape!"

"Was I like that?" said I. 

"Did we escape?" asked Aurea. Then she added, touching my arm as with atouch of honeyed fire: "O I'm so glad! He did it delightfully--quite _enprince_. Just the right nonchalance--and perhaps, poor dear, he's aspoor--"

"As we often were, " I added. 

And then through the corners of our eyes we saw the young lovers risefrom the table, and the man enfold his treasure in her opera cloak, O soreverently, O so tenderly, as though he were wrapping up some holyflower. And O those deep eyes she gave him, half turning her head as hedid so!

"That look, " whispered Aurea, quoting Tennyson, "'had been a clingingkiss but for the street. '"

Then suddenly they were gone, caught up like Enoch, into heaven--somelittle heaven, maybe, like one that Aurea and I remember, high up underthe ancient London roofs. 

But, with their going, alas, Aurea had vanished too, and I was leftalone with my Greek waiter, who was asking me what cheese I wouldprefer. 

With the coming of coffee and cognac, I lit my cigar and settled down todeliberate reverie, as an opium smoker gives himself up to his dream. Isavoured the bitter-sweetness of my memories; I took a strange pleasurein stimulating the ache of my heart with vividly recalled pictures ofinnumerable dead hours. I systematically passed from table to table allaround that spacious peristyle. There was scarcely one at which Ihad not sat with some vanished companion in those years of ardent, irresponsible living which could never come again. Not always a womanhad been the companion whose form I thus conjured out of the past, toooften out of the grave; for the noble friendship of youth haunted thosetables as well, with its generous starry-eyed enthusiasms and passionateloyalties. Poets of whom but their songs remain, themselves by tragicpathways descended into the hollow land, had read their verses to methere, still glittering with the dawn dew of their creation, as we sattogether over the wine and talked of the only matters then--and perhapseven yet--worth talking of: love and literature. Of these but one canstill be met in London streets, but all now wear crowns of varyingbrightness--

 Where the oldest bard is as the young, And the pipe is ever dropping honey, And the lyre's strings are ever strung. 

Dear boon fellows of life as well as literature, how often have we risenfrom those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flyingpetticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglowwith the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far thanthe city lamps--passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we go onsuch quests no more--"another race hath been and other palms are won. "

No, not always women--but naturally women nearly always, for it was thetime of rosebuds, and we were wisely gathering them while we might--

 Through the many to the one-- O so many! Kissing all and missing none, Loving any. 

Every man who has lived a life worthy the name of living has his ownprivate dream of fair women, the memory of whom is as a provision laidup against the lean years that must come at last, however long they maybe postponed by some special grace of the gods, which is, it is good toremember, granted to some--the years when one has reluctantly toaccept that the lovely game is almost, if not quite at an end, and towatch the bloom and abundance of fragrant young creatures pass us, unregarding, by. And, indeed, it may happen that a man who has won whatis for him the fairest of all fair faces, and has it still by his side, may enter sometimes, without disloyalty, that secret gallery of thoseother fair faces that were his before hers, in whom they are all summedup and surpassed, had dawned upon his life. We shall hardly be loyal tothe present if we are coldly disloyal to the past. In the lover'scalendar, while there is but one Madonna, there must still be minorsaints, to whom it is meet, at certain times and seasons, to offerretrospective candles--saints that, after the manner of many saints, were once such charming sinners for our sakes, that utter forgetfulnessof them were an impious boorishness surely unacceptable to the mostjealous of Madonnas. Public worship of them is not, of course, desirable, but occasional private celebrations are surely more thanpermissible--such celebrations as that "night of memory and tears" whichLandor consecrated to Rose Aylmer, or that song which Thackerayconsecrated to certain loves of the long ago--

 Gillian's dead, God rest her bier, How I loved her twenty years syne! Marian's married, but I sit here, Alone and merry at forty year, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. 

So I, seated in my haunted restaurant, brought the burnt offerings ofseveral cigars, and poured out various libations to my own privateGillians and Marians, and in fancy sat and looked into Angelica's eyesat this table, and caressed Myrtle's opaled hand at that, and readSylvia a poem I had just written for her at still another. "Whose namesare five sweet symphonies, " wrote Rossetti. Yes, symphonies, indeed, inthe ears of memory are the names of the lightest loves that flitteredbutterfly-like across our path in the golden summer of our lives, each name calling up its human counterpart, with her own endearingpersonality distinguishing her from all other girls, her way ofsmiling, her way of talking, her way of being serious, all the littleoriginalities on which she prided herself, her so solemnly helddifferentia of tastes and manners--all, in a word, that made you realizethat you were dining with Corinna and not with Chloe. What a service ofcontrast each--all unwittingly, need one say--did the other, just in thesame fashion as contrasting colours accentuate the special quality oneof the other. To have dined last night with Amaryllis, with her Titianred hair and green eyes, her tropic languor and honey-drowsy ways, was to feel all the keener zest in the presence of Callithoe onthe following evening, with her delicate soul-lit face, and eagerresponsiveness of look and gesture--_blonde cendré_, and _faussemaigre_--a being one of the hot noon, the other a creature of thestarlight. But I disclaim the sultanesque savour of thus writing ofthese dear bearers of symphonic names. To talk of them as flowers andfruit, as colour and perfume, as ivory and velvet, is to seem to forgetthe best of them, and the best part of loving them and being lovedagain; for that consisted in their comradeship, their enchantedcomradeship, the sense of shared adventure, the snatching of a fearfuljoy together. For a little while we had escaped from the drab andsongless world, and, cost what it might, we were determined to takepossession, for a while at least, of that paradise which sprang intoexistence at the moment when "male and female created He them. " Suchdivine foolishness, let discretion warn, or morality frown, or societyplay the censorious hypocrite, "were wisdom in the scorn ofconsequence. "

"Ah, then, " says every man to himself of such hours, as I said to myselfin my haunted restaurant--"ah, then came in the sweet o' the year. "

But lovely and pleasant as were the memories over which I thus satmusing, there was one face immeasurably beyond all others that I hadcome there hoping and yet fearing to meet again, hers of whom for yearsthat seem past counting all the awe and wonder and loveliness of theworld have seemed but the metaphor. Endless years ago she and I had satat this table where I was now sitting and had risen from it withbreaking hearts, never to see each other's face, hear each other's voiceagain. Voluntarily, for another's sake, we were breaking our hearts, renouncing each other, putting from us all the rapture and religionof our loving, dying then and there that another might live--vainsacrifice! Once and again, long silences apart, a word or two would wingits way across lands and seas and tell us both that we were stillunder the same sky and were still what nature had made us from thebeginning--each other's. But long since that veil of darkness unpiercedof my star has fallen between us, and no longer do I hear the rustle ofher gown in the autumn woods, nor do the spring winds carry me thesweetness of her faithful thoughts any more. So I dreamed maybe that, after the manner of phantoms, we might meet again on the spot where wehad both died--but alas, though the wraiths of lighter loving came gailyto my call, she of the starlit silence and the tragic eyes came not, though I sat long awaiting her--sat on till the tables began to bedeserted, and the interregnum between dinner and after-theatre supperhad arrived. No, I began to understand that she could no longer cometo me: we must both wait till I could go to her. 

And with this thought in my mind, I set about preparing to take my leave, but at that moment I was startled--almost superstitiously--startled bya touch on my shoulder. I was not to leave those once familiar hallswithout one recognition, after all. It was our old waiter of allthose years ago, who, with an almost paternal gladness, was tellingme how good it was to see me again, and, with consolatory mendacity, was assuring me that I had hardly changed a bit. God bless him--hewill never know what good it did me to have his honest recognition. The whole world was not yet quite dead and buried, after all, norwas I quite such an unremembered ghost as I had seemed. Dear old JimLewis! So some of the old guard were still on deck, after all! And, I was thinking as I looked at him: "He, too, has looked upon herface. He it was who poured out our wine, that last time together. "Then I had a whim. My waiter had been used to them in the old days. 

"Jim, " I said, "I want you to give this half-sovereign to the bandmasterand ask him to play Chopin's _Funeral March_. There are not many peoplein the place, so perhaps he won't mind. Tell him it's for an old friendof yours, and in memory of all the happy dinners he had here long ago. "

So to the strains of that death music, which so strangely blends thepiercing pathos of lost things with a springlike sense of resurrection, a spheral melody of immortal promise, I passed once more through theradiant portals of my necropolitan restaurant into the resoundingthoroughfares of still living and still loving humanity. 

XIX

THE NEW PYRAMUS AND THISBE

There never was a shallower or more short-sighted criticism than thatwhich has held that science is the enemy of romance. Ruskin, withall the April showers of his rhetoric, discredited himself as anauthoritative thinker when he screamed his old-maidish diatribes againstthat pioneer of modern romantic communication, the railroad. Just assurely his idol Turner proved himself a romantic painter, not by hisrainbows, or his Italian sunsets, but by that picture of _Storm, Rain, and Speed_--an old-fashioned express fighting its way through wind, rain, and of course rainbows--in the English National Gallery. 

With all his love of that light that never was on sea or land, Turnerwas yet able to see the romance of that new thing of iron and steam soaffrighting to other men of his generation. A lover of light in all itsswift prismatic changes, he was naturally a lover of speed. He realizedthat speed was one of the two most romantic things in the world. Theother is immobility. At present the two extremes of romantic expressionare the Sphinx and--the automobile. Unless you can realize that anautomobile is more romantic than a stage-coach, you know nothingabout romance. Soon the automobile will have its nose put out by theair-ship, and we shall not need to be long-lived to see the day whenwe shall hear old-timers lamenting the good old easy-going past ofthe seventy-miles-an-hour automobile--just as we have heard ourgrand-fathers talk of postilions and the Bath "flyer. "

Romance is made of two opposites: Change, and That Which Changeth Not. In spite of foolish sentimentalism, who needs be told that love is oneof those forces of the universe that is the same yesterday, today, andforever--the same today as when Dido broke her heart, as when Leanderswam the Hellespont? Gravitation is not more inherent in the cosmicscheme, nor fire nor water more unchangeable in their qualities. 

But Love, contrary to the old notion that he is unpractical, is abusiness-like god, and is ever on the lookout for the latest modernappliances that can in anyway serve his purposes. True love is far frombeing old-fashioned. On the contrary, true love is always up-to-date. True love has its telephone, its phonograph, its automobile, and soon itwill have its air-ship. In the telephone alone what a debt love owes toits supposed enemy, modern science! One wonders how lovers in the olddays managed to live at all without the telephone. 

We often hear how our modern appliances wear upon our nerves. But thinkhow the lack of modern appliances must have worn upon the nerves of ourforefathers, and particularly our foremothers! Think what distance meantin the Middle Ages, when the news of a battle took days to travel, though carried by the swiftest horses. Horses! Think again of news beingcarried by--horses! And once more think, with a prayer of gratitude totwo magicians named Edison and Bell, and with a due sense of your beingthe spoiled and petted offspring of the painful ages, that should yourlove be in Omaha this night and you in New York City, you can saygood-night to her through the wall of your apartment, and hear her sighback her good-night to you across two thousand miles of the Americanflag. Or should your love be on the sea, you can interrupt herflirtations all the way across with your persistent wirelessconversation. Contrast your luxurious communicativeness with the case ofthe lovers of old-time. Say that you have just married a young woman, and you are happy together in your castle in the heart of the forest. Suddenly the courier of war is at your gates, and you must up and armand away with your men to the distant danger. You must follow the Crossinto the savage Kingdom of the Crescent. The husband must become thecrusader, and the Lord Christ alone knows when he shall look on thechild's face of his wife again. Through goblin-haunted wildernesses hemust go, through unmapped no-man's lands, and vacuum solitudes of theworld's end, and peril and pestilence meet in every form, the face ofhis foe the friendliest thing in all his mysterious travel. Not apay-station as yet in all the wide world, and fully five hundred yearsto the nearest telegraph office!

And think of the young wife meanwhile, alone with her maids and hertapestry in the dank isolation of her lonely, listening castle. Not aleaf falls in the wood, but she hears it. Not a footstep snaps thesilence, but her eyes are at the sleepless slit of light which is herwindow in the armoured stone of her fortified bridal tower. The onlynews of her husband she can hope for in a full year or more will bethe pleasing lies of some flattering minstrel, or broken soldier, orimaginative pilgrim. On such rumours she must feed her famishingheart--and all the time her husband's bones may be whitening unepitaphedoutside the walls of Ascalon or Joppa. 

There is an old Danish ballad which quaintly tells the tale of such oldlong-distance days, with that blending of humour and pathos that forevergoes to the heart of man. A certain Danish lord had but yesterday takenunto himself a young wife, and on the morrow of his marriage there cameto him the summons to war. Then, as now, there was no arguing with thetrumpets of martial duty. The soldier's trumpet heeds not the soldier'stears. The war was far away and likely to be long. Months, even years, might go by before that Danish lord would look on the face of his brideagain. So much might happen meanwhile! A little boy, or a little girl, might be born to the castle, and the father, fighting far away, knownothing of the beautiful news. And there was no telephone in the castle, and it was five hundred years to the nearest telegraph office. 

So the husband and wife agreed upon a facetious signal of their own. Thecastle stood upon a ridge of hills which could be seen fifty miles away, and on the ridge the bride promised to build a church. If the child thatwas to be born proved to be a boy, the church would be builded with atower; if a girl, with a steeple. So the husband went his way, and threeyears passed, and at length he returned with his pennons and hismen-at-arms to his own country. Scanning the horizon line, he hurriedimpatiently toward the heliographic ridge. And lo! when at last it camein sight against the rising sun, there was a new church builded statelythere--with two towers. 

So it was with the most important of all news in the Middle Ages; andyet today, as I said, you in New York City have only to knock good-nighton your wall, to be heard by your true love in Omaha, and hear her knockback three times the length of France; Pyramus and Thisbe--with thisdifference: that the wall is no longer a barrier, but a sensitivemessenger. It has become, indeed, in the words of Demetrius in _AMidsummer Night's Dream_, the wittiest of partitions, and the modernPyramus may apostrophize it in grateful earnest:

 "Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall . .. Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this!"

So at least I always feel toward the wall of my apartment every time Icall up her whom my soul loveth that dwelleth far away in Massachusetts. She being a Capulet and I a Montague, it would go hard with us forcommunication, were it not for this long-distance wall; and any onewho knows anything of love knows that the primal need of lovers iscommunication. Lovers have so deep a distrust of each other's love thatthey need to be assured of it from hour to hour. To the philosopher itmay well seem strange that this certitude should thus be in need ofprogressive corroboration. But so it is, and the pampered modern lovermay well wonder how his great-grandfather and great-grandmothersupported the days, or even kept their love alive, on such faminerations as a letter once a month. A letter once a month! They must havehad enormous faith in each other, those lovers of old-time, or they musthave suffered as we can hardly bear to think of--we, who write to eachother twice a day, telegraph three times, telephone six, and transmit aphonographic record of our sighs to each other night and morn. Thetelephone has made a toy of distance and made of absence, in many cases, a sufficient presence. It is almost worth while to be apart on occasionjust for the sake of bringing each other so magically near. It is theArabian Nights come true. As in them, you have only to say a word, andthe jinn of the electric fire is waiting for your commands. The wordhas changed. Once it was "Abracadabra. " Now it is "Central. " But themiracle is just the same. 

One might almost venture upon the generalization that most tragedieshave come about from lack of a telephone. Of course, there areexceptions, but as a rule tragedies happen through delays incommunication. 

If there had been a telephone in Mantua, Romeo would never have boughtpoison of the apothecary. Instead, he would have asked leave to use hislong-distance telephone. Calling up Verona, he would first cautiouslydisguise his voice. If, as usual, the old nurse answered, all well; butif a bearded voice set all the wires a-trembling, he would, of course, hastily ring off, and abuse "Central" for giving him the wrong number. And "Central" would understand. Then Romeo would wait an hour or twotill he was sure that Lord Capulet had gone to the Council, and ring upagain. This time he would probably get the nurse and confide to her hisnumber in Mantua. Next morning Juliet and her nurse had only to drop inat the nearest drug store, and confide to Romeo the whole plot whichBalthazar so sadly bungled. All that was needed was a telephone, andRomeo would have understood that Juliet was only feigning death for thesake of life with him. 

But, as in the case of our Danish knight, there was not a pay-stationas yet in all the wide world, and it was fully five hundred yearsto the nearest telegraph office. Another point in this tragedy isworth considering by the modern mind: that not only would the finalcatastrophe have been averted by the telephone, but that those beautifulspeeches to and from Juliet's balcony, made at such desperate risk toboth lovers, had the telephone only been in existence, could havebeen made in complete security from the seclusion of their distantapartments. 

Seriously speaking, there are few love tragedies, few serious historiccrises of any kind, that might not have been averted by the telephone. Strange indeed, when one considers a little, is that fallacy ofsentimentalism which calls science the enemy of love. 

Far from being its enemy, science is easily seen to be its most romanticservant; for all its strenuous and delicate learning it brings to thefeet of love for a plaything. Not only will it carry the voice of loveacross space and time, but it will even bring it back to you frometernity. It will not only carry to your ears the voices of the living, but it will also keep safe for you the sweeter voices of the dead. Infact, it would almost seem as though science had made all itsdiscoveries for the sake of love. 

XX

TWO WONDERFUL OLD LADIES

It is a pity that our language has no other word to indicate that onehas lived seventy, eighty, or ninety years, than the word "old"; for theword "old" carries with it implications of "senility" and decrepitude, which many merely chronologically "old" people very properly resent. Theword "young, " similarly, needs the assistance of another word, for weall know individuals of thirty and forty, sometimes even only twenty, whom it is as absurd to call "young" as it is to call those others ofseventy, eighty, or ninety, "old. "

"Youth" is too large and rich a word to serve the limited purpose ofnumbering the years of undeveloped boys and girls. It should standrather for the vital principle in men and women, ever expanding, andrebuilding, and refreshing the human organism, partly a physical, butperhaps in a greater degree a spiritual energy. 

I am not writing this out of any compliment to two wonderful "old"ladies of whom I am particularly thinking. They would consider me adunce were they to suspect me of any such commonplace intent. No! I amnot going to call them "eighty years young, " or employ any of thosebanal euphemisms with which would-be "tactful" but really club-footedsentimentalists insult the intelligence of the so-called "old. " Ofcourse, I know that they are both eighty or thereabouts, and they knowvery well that I know. We make no secret of it. Why should we? Actuallythough the number of my years falls short of eighty, I feel so mucholder than either of them, that it never occurs to me to think of themas "old, " and often as I contemplate their really glowing energeticyouth, I grow melancholy for myself, and wonder what has become of myown. 

They were schoolgirls together. Luccia married Irene's brother--for theyallow me the privilege of calling them by their Christian names--andthey have been friends all their lives. Sometimes I see them together, though oftener apart, for Luccia and her white-haired poet husband--no"older" than herself, --are neighbours of mine in the country, and Irenelives for the most part in New York--as much in love with its giantdevelopments as though she did not also cherish memories of that quaint, almost vanished, New York of her girlhood days; for she is nothing ifnot progressive. 

But I will tell about Luccia first, and the first thing it is natural tospeak of--so every one else finds too--is her beauty. They say that shewas beautiful when she was young (I am compelled sometimes, underprotest, to use the words "young" and "old" thus chronologically) and, of course, she must have been. I have, however, seen some of her earlyportraits, before her hair was its present beautiful colour, and I mustconfess that the Luccia of an earlier day does not compare with theLuccia of today. I don't think I should have fallen in love with herthen, whereas now it is impossible to take one's eyes off her. She seemsto have grown more flower-like with the years, and while her lovelyindestructible profile has gathered distinction, and a lifelong habit ofthinking beautiful thoughts, and contemplating beautiful things, hasdrawn honeyed lines as in silver point about her eyes and mouth, thewild-roses of her cheeks still go on blooming--like wild-roses inmoonlight. And over all glow her great clear witty eyes, the eyes of a_grand dame_ who has still remained a girl. Her humour, no doubt, hasmuch to do with her youth, and I have seen strangers no littlesurprised, even disconcerted, at finding so keen a humour in one sobeautiful; for beauty and humour are seldom found together in soirresistible a combination. Is it to be wondered at that often on summerdays when I feel the need of a companion, I go in search of Luccia, andtake tea with her on the veranda? Sometimes I will find her in thegarden seated in front of her easel, making one of her delicatewater-colour sketches--for she was once a student in Paris and hasromantic Latin-quarter memories. Or I will find her with her magnifyingglass, trying to classify some weed she has come upon in the garden, for she is a learned botanist; and sometimes we will turn over the pagesof books in which she hoards the pressed flowers gathered by her and herhusband in Italy and Switzerland up till but a year or two ago, memorials of a life together that has been that flawless romance whichlove sometimes grants to his faithful servants. 

At other times we will talk politics, and I wish you could hear theadvanced views of this "old" lady of eighty. Indeed, generally speaking, I find that nowadays the only real progressives are the "old" people. Itseems to be the fashion with the "young" to be reactionary. Luccia, however, has been a radical and a rebel since her girlhood, and, yearsbefore the word "feminist" was invented, was fighting the battle ofthe freedom of woman. And what a splendid Democrat she is, and howthoroughly she understands and fearlessly faces the problems anddevelopments of the moment! She is of the stuff the old Chartist womenand the women of the French Revolution were made of, and in her heartthe old faith in Liberty and the people burns as brightly as though shewere some young Russian student ready to give her life for the cause. When the revolution comes to America, stern masculine authority will beneeded to keep her--her friend Irene too--from the barricades. 

"Stern masculine authority"! As I write that phrase, how plainly I canhear her mocking laughter; for she is never more delightful than whenpouring out her raillery on the magisterial pretensions of man. To hearher talk! The idea of a mere man daring to assume any authority ordirection over a woman! Yet we who know her smile and whisper toourselves that, for all her witty tirades, she is perhaps of all womenthe most feminine, and really the most "obedient" of wives--a rebel inall else save to the mild tyranny of the poet she has loved, honoured, and yes! obeyed, all these wonderful years. 

Perhaps in nothing is the reality of her youthfulness so expressive asin her adorable gaiety. Like a clear fresh spring, it is ever brimmingup from the heart into her mischief-loving eyes. By her side merelytechnically young people seem heavy and serious. And nothing amuses hermore than gravely to mystify, or even bewilderingly shock, some properacquaintance, or some respectable strangers, with her carefully designedmock improprieties of speech or action. To look at the loveliest ofgrand-mothers, it is naturally somewhat perplexing to the uninitiatedvisitor to hear her talk, with her rarely distinguished manner, offrivolous matters with which they assume she has long since done. 

A short while ago, when I was taking tea with her, she had for visitor astaid old-maidish lady, little more than half her age, whom she hadknown as a girl, but had not seen for some years. In the course ofconversation, she turned to her guest, with her grand air:

"Have you done much dancing this season?" she asked. 

"O indeed no, " answered the other unsuspiciously, "my dancing days areover. "

"At your age!" commented Luccia with surprise. "Nonsense! You must letme teach you to dance the tango. I have enjoyed it immensely thiswinter. "

"Really?" gasped the other in astonishment, with that intonation in thevoice naturally so gratifying to the "old" suggesting that the persontalking with them really regards them as dead and buried. 

"Of course, why not?" asks Luccia with perfect seriousness. "I dance itwith my grandsons. My husband doesn't care to dance it. He prefers thepolka. "

Not knowing what to think, the poor old maid--actually "old" comparedwith Luccia--looked from her to the beautiful venerable figure of herpolka-dancing husband seemingly meditating over his pipe, a littlewithdrawn from them on the veranda, but inwardly shaken with mirth atthe darling nonsense of her who is still the same madcap girl he firstfell in love with so many years ago. 

When the guest had departed, with a puzzled, questioning look stilllingering on her face, Luccia turned to me, her eyes bright pools ofmerriment:

"It was quite true, wasn't it? Come, let us try it. "

And, nimble as a girl, she was on her feet, and we executed quite apassable tango up and down the veranda, to the accompaniment of herhusband's--"Luccia! Luccia! what a wild thing you are!"

A certain reputation for "wildness, " a savour of innocent Bohemianism, has clung to Luccia, and Irene too, all through their lives, as a legacyfrom that far-off legendary time when, scarcely out of their girlhood, they were fellow art-students together in Paris. Belonging both toaristocratic, rather straitlaced New England families, I have oftenwondered how they contrived to accomplish that adventure in a day whensuch independent action on the part of two pretty young ladies was anadventure indeed. But it was the time when the first vigorous spring offeminine revolt was in the air. Rosa Bonheur, George Eliot, ElizabethCady Stanton, and other leaders were setting the pace for the advancedwomen, and George Sand was still a popular romancer. As a reminiscenceof George Sand, Luccia to this day pretends that she prefers to smokecigars to cigarettes, though, as a matter of fact, she has never smokedeither, and has, indeed, an ultra-feminine detestation of tobacco--evenin the form of her husband's pipe. She only says it, of course, forthe fun of seeming "naughty"; which recalls to my mind her shockingbehaviour one day when I went with her to call on some very primcousins in New York. It was a household of an excessively brown-stonerespectability, just the atmosphere to rouse the wickedness in Luccia. As we sat together in an upright conversation that sounded like therustling of dried leaves in a cemetery, why! Luccia, for all her eightyyears, seemed like a young wild-rose bush filling the tomb-like roomwith living light and fragrance. I could see the wickedness in hersurging for an outburst. She was well aware that those respectableconnections of hers had always looked upon her as a sort of "artistic"black sheep in the family. Presently her opportunity came. As our visitdragged mournfully towards its end, the butler entered, in pursuance ofthe early Victorian ritual on such occasions, bearing a tray on whichwas a decanter of sherry, some tiny wine-glasses, and some dry biscuitsof a truly early Victorian dryness. This ghostly hospitality was dulydispensed, and Luccia, who seldom drinks anything but tea, instead ofsipping her sherry with a lady-like aloofness, drained her glass with asudden devil-may-care abandon, and, to the evident amazement even of thefurniture, held it out to be refilled. Such pagan behaviour had neverdisgraced that scandalized drawing-room before. And when to her actionshe added words, the room absolutely refused to believe its ears. "Ifeel, " she said, with a deep-down mirth in her eyes which only I couldsuspect rather than see, "I feel today as if I should like to go on areal spree. Do you ever feel that way?"

A palpable shudder passed through the room. 

"Cousin Luccia!" cried out the three outraged mummies; the brother withactual sternness, and the sisters in plain fear. Had their eccentriccousin really gone out of her mind at last?

"Never feel that way?" she added, delighting in the havoc she wasmaking. "You should. It's a wonderful feeling. "

Then she drained her second glass, and to the evident relief of allthree, rose to go. How we laughed together, as we sped away in ourtaxicab. "It's as well to live up to one's reputation with such people, "she said, that dear, fantastic Luccia. 

_À propos_ that early Parisian adventure, Rosa Bonheur had been one ofLuccia's and Irene's great exemplars, and one might say, in oneparticular connection, --heroes. I refer to the great painter's adoptionof masculine costume. Why two unusually pretty young women should burnto discard the traditional flower-furniture of their sex, in exchangefor the uncouth envelopes of man, is hard to understand. But it wasthe day of Mrs. Bloomer, as well as Rosa Bonheur; and earnest young"intellectuals" among women had a notion, I fancy, that to shake offtheir silks and laces was, symbolically, at all events, to shake off thegeneral disabilities of their sex, and was somehow an assertion of amental equality with man. At all events, it was a form of defianceagainst their sex's immemorial tyrant, which seems to have appealed tothe imaginations of some young women of the period. Another woman'sweakness to be sternly discarded was that scriptural "glory" of herhair. That must be ruthlessly lopped. So it is easy to imagine thehorror of such relatives as I have hinted at when our two beautifuladventuresses returned from Paris, and appeared before their families ingreat Spanish cloaks, picturesque, coquettish enough you may be sure, veiling with some show of discretion those hideous compromises withtrousers invented and worn by the strong-minded Mrs. Bloomer, andwearing their hair after the manner of Florentine boys. To face one'sfamily, and to walk New York streets so garbed, must have needed realcourage in those days; yet the two friends did both, and even fora while accepted persecution for vagaries which for them had thedead-seriousness of youth. 

Passionate young propagandists as they were, they even preferred toabandon their homes for a while--rather than their bloomers--and, takinga studio together in New York, started out to earn their own living bythe teaching of art. Those were the days of the really brave women. 

But to return to the less abstract topic of the bloomers, I often teaseLuccia and Irene about them, seeking for further information as to whythey ever came to retrograde from a position so heroically taken, one ofsuch serious import to human progress, and to condescend once more todon the livery of feminine servitude, and appear, as they do today, indelicate draperies which the eye searches in vain for any hint ofsanguinary revolution. Luccia always looks shamefaced at the question. She still feels guilty, I can see, of a traitorous backsliding andoccasionally threatens to make up for it by a return to masculinecostume--looking the most exquisite piece of Dresden china as she saysit. I have seen that masculine tyrant of hers smiling knowingly tohimself on such occasions, and it has not been difficult to guess whyand when those historic bloomers disappeared into the limbo of lostcauses. There is little doubt that when Love came in by the door, thebloomers went out, so to speak, by the window. 

Irene seems to have held out longer, and, doubtless, scornful of hermore frivolous comrade's defection, steadfastly kept the faith awhileunsupported, walking the world in bloomered loneliness--till a likeevent overtook her. Such is the end of every maid's revolt! But Irene, to this day, retains more of her student seriousness than her moreworldly-minded friend. Her face is of the round cherubic type, and herlarge heavy-lidded eyes have a touch of demureness veiling humour noless deep than Luccia's, but more reflective, chuckling quietly toitself, though on occasion I know no one better to laugh with, evengiggle with, than Irene. But, whereas Luccia will talk gaily ofrevolution and even anarchy for the fun of it, and in the next breathtalk hats with real seriousness, Irene still remains the purposefulrevolutionary student she was as a girl; while Luccia contents herselfwith flashing generalizations, Irene seriously studies the latestdevelopments of thought and society, reads all the new books, sees allthe new plays and pictures, and has all the new movements of whateverkind--art, philosophy, and sociology--at her finger ends; and I may addthat her favourite writer is Anatole France. Whenever I need light onthe latest artistic or philosophic nonsense calling itself a movement(cubism, futurism, Bergsonism, syndicalism, or the like) I go to her, certain that she will know all about it. Nothing is too "modern" forthis wonderful "old" lady of seventy-nine; and, whenever I am in town, we always go together to the most "advanced" play in the newest of newtheatres. 

_À propos_ our theatre-going together, I must not forget a story abouther which goes back to that bloomer period. A little while ago, callingto take tea with her, I found her seated with a fine soldierlywhite-haired "old" man, and they were in such merry talk that I feltthat perhaps I was interrupting old memories. But they generously tookme into the circle of their reminiscence. They had been laughing as Icame in--"Shall I tell him, General?" she said, "what we were laughingabout?" Then she did. She and the General had been girl and boytogether, and as they came to eighteen and nineteen had beensemi-serious sweethearts. The embryo General--no doubt because of herpretty face--had taken all her student vagaries with lover-likeseriousness, and had, on one occasion, assisted in a notable enterprise. The bloomers had not been definitely donned at that time, but they wereon the way, glimmering ahead as a discussed ideal. Whether it was as apreliminary experiment, or only in consequence of a "dare, " I am notquite sure. I think it was a little of both, and that the General haddared Irene to go with him to the opera (in the gallery) dressed inboy's clothes. She accepted the challenge, borrowing a suit of clothesfrom her brother for the purpose. Her figure, according to the General'saccount, had looked anything but masculine, and her hair, tucked upunder her boy's hat as best she could, was a peculiar peril. How herheart had almost stopped beating as a policeman had turned upon theyouthful pair a suspicious scrutiny, how they had taken to their heelsat his glance, how she had crimsoned at the box-office, and hid her facebehind a fat man as they had scurried past the ticket-attendant, and howduring the whole performance a keen-faced woman had glanced at her witha knowing persistency that seemed to threaten her with imminent exposureand arrest, and how wonderful the whole thing had been--just to be inboy's clothes and go in them to the theatre with one's sweetheart. Oyouth! youth! youth!

As I looked at the General with his white hair, and Irene with herquaint little old lady's cap over her girlish face, and visualized formyself those two figures before me as they had appeared on the night ofthat escapade, I realized that the real romance of life is made bymemory, and that for these two old friends to be able thus to recalltogether across all those years that laughing freak of their young bloodwas still more romantic than the original escapade. But as I went onlooking at Irene, with the bloom of her immortal youth upon her, I grewjealous of the General's share in that historic night. Well, never mind, it is I who take her to the theatre nowadays--and, after all, I think Iprefer her to go dressed just as she is. 

XXI

A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION

Christmas already! However welcome its coming, Christmas always seems totake us by surprise. Is the year really so soon at the end of itsjourney? Why, it seems only yesterday that it needed a special effort ofremembrance to date our letters with the new "_anno domini_. " And haveyou noticed that one always does that reluctantly, with something almostof misgiving? The figures of the old year have a warm human look, butthose of the new wear a chill, unfamiliar, almost menacing expression. Nineteen hundred and--we know. It is nearly "all in. " It has done itsbest--and its worst. Between Christmas Day and New-Year it has hardlytime to change its character. Good or bad, as it may have been, we feelat home with it, and we are fain to keep the old almanac a little longeron the wall. But the last leaves are falling, the days are shortening. There is a smell of coming snow in the air, and for weeks past it hasalready been Christmas in the shops. 

Yes, however it strikes us, we are a year older. On the first of Januarylast we had twelve brand-new months of a brand-new year to spend, andnow the last of them is all but spent. We had a new spring to look outfor, like the coming of one's sweetheart, a new summer bounteous inprospect with inexhaustible wealth of royal sunshine, a new autumn, withruddy orchards and the glory of the tapestried woods; and now of thefour new seasons that were to be ours but one remains:

 And here is but December left and I, To wonder if the hawthorn bloomed in May, And if the wild rose with so fine a flush Mantled the cheek of June, and if the way The stream went singing foamed with meadow sweet, And if the throstle sang in yonder bush, And if the lark dizzied with song the sky. I watched and listened--yet so sweet, so fleet, The mad young year went by!

Strange, that feeling at the end of the year that somehow we have missedit, have failed to experience it all to the full, taken it toocarelessly, not dwelt sufficiently on its rich, expressive hours. Eachyear we feel the same, and however intent we may have been, however wehave watched and listened, sensitively eager to hold and exhaust eachpassing moment, when the year-end has come, we seem somehow to have beencheated after all. Who, at the beginning of each year, has not promisedhimself a stricter attentiveness to his experience? This year he will"load every rift with ore. "

 This year, I said, when first along the lane With tiny nipples of the tender green The winter-blackened hedge grew bright again, This year I watch and listen; I have seen So many springs steal profitless away, This year I garner every sound and sweet. And you, young year, make not such haste to bring Hawthorn and rose; nor jumble, indiscreet, Treasure on treasure of the precious spring; But bring all softly forth upon the air, Unhasting to be fair. .. 

Yet, for all our watchfulness, the year seems to have escaped us. Weknow that the birds sang, that the flowers bloomed, that the grass wasgreen, but it seems to us that we did not take our joy of them withsufficient keenness; our sweetheart came, but we did not look deepenough into her eyes. If only we live to see the wild rose again! Butmeanwhile here is the snow. 

Unless we are still numbered among those happy people for whomChristmas-trees are laden and lit, this annual prematurity of Christmascannot but make us a little meditative amid our mirth, and if, whileSanta Claus is dispensing his glittering treasures, our thoughts grow alittle wistful, they will not necessarily be mournful thoughts, or onthat account less seasonable in character; for Christmas is essentiallya retrospective feast, and we may, with fitness, with indeed a properpiety of unforgetfulness, bring even our sad memories, as it were tocheer themselves, within the glow of its festivity. Ghosts have alwaysbeen invited to Christmas parties, and whether they are seen or not, they always come; nor is any form of story so popular by the Christmasfire as the ghost-story--which, when one thinks of it, is rather odd, considering the mirthful character of the time. Yet, after all, what areour memories but ghost-stories? Ah! the beautiful ghosts that come tothe Christmas fire!

Christmas too is pre-eminently the Feast of the Absent, the Festival ofthe Far-Away, for the most prosperous ingathering of beloved faces aboutthe Christmas fire can but include a small number of those we would fainhave there; and have you ever realized that the absent are ghosts? Thatis, they live with us sheerly as spiritual presences, dependent upon ourfaithful remembrance for their embodiment. We may not, with our physicaleyes, see them once a year; we may not even have so seen them for twentyyears; it may be decreed that we shall never see them again; we seldom, perhaps never, write to each other; all we know of each other is that weare alive and love each other across space and time. Alive--but how?Scarce otherwise, surely, than the unforgotten dead are alive--alive inunforgetting love. 

It is rather strange, if you will give it a thought, how much of ourreal life is thus literally a ghost-story. Probably it happens with themajority of us that those who mean most to us, by the necessities ofexistence, must be far away, met but now and then in brief flashesof meeting that often seem to say so much less than absence; ourintercourse is an intercourse of the imagination--yet how real! Theybelong to the unseen in our lives, and have all its power over us. Theintercourse of a mother and a son--is it not often like that in a worldwhich sends its men on the four winds, to build and fight, while themother must stay in the old nest? Seldom at Christmas can a mothergather all her children beneath the wing of her smile. Her big boys areseven seas away, and even her girls have Christmas-trees of their own. But motherhood is in its very nature a ghostly, a spiritual, thing, andthe big boys and the old mother are not really divided. They meetunseen by the Christmas fire, as they meet all the year round in thatmysterious ether of the soul, where space and time are not. 

Yes, it is strange to think how small a proportion of our lives we spendwith those we love; even when we say that we spend all our time withthem. Husband and wife even--how much of the nearness of the closest ofhuman relations is, and must be, what Rossetti has called "partedpresence!" The man must go forth to his labour until the evening. Howfew of the twenty-four hours can these two beings who have given theirwhole lives to each other really give! Husband and wife even must becontent to be ghosts to each other for the greater part of each day. As Rossetti says in his poem, eyes, hands, voice, lips, can meet sostrangely seldom in the happiest marriage; only in the invisible home ofthe heart can the most fortunate husband and wife be always together:

 Your heart is never away, But ever with mine, forever, Forever without endeavour, Tomorrow, love, as today; Two blent hearts never astray, Two souls no power may sever, Together, O my love, forever!

When I said that the absent were ghosts, I don't think you quite likedthe saying. It gave you a little shiver. It seemed rather grimlyfantastic. But do you not begin to see what I meant? Begin to see thecomfort in the thought? begin to see the inner connection betweenChristmas and the ghost-story? Yes, the real lesson of Christmas is theever presence of the absent through love; the ghostly, that is to saythe spiritual, nature of all human intercourse. Our realities can existonly in and through our imaginations, and the most important part of ourlives is lived in a dream with dream-faces, the faces of the absent andthe dead--who, in the consolation of this thought, are alike broughtnear. 

I have a friend who is dead--but I say to myself that he is in NewZealand; for, if he were really in New Zealand, we should hardly seemless distant, or be in more frequent communication. We should say thatwe were both busy men, that the mails were infrequent, but that betweenus there was no need of words, that we both "understood. " That is what Isay now. It is just as appropriate. Perhaps he says it too. And--weshall meet by the Christmas fire. 

I have a friend who is alive. He is alive in England. We have not metfor twelve years. He never writes, and I never write. Perhaps we shallnever meet, never even write to each other, again. It is our way, theway of many a friendship, none the less real for its silence--friendshipby faith, one might say, rather than by correspondence. My dead friendis not more dumb, not more invisible. When these two friends meet meby the Christmas fire, will they not both alike be ghosts--both, in asense, dead, but both, in a truer sense, alive?

It is so that, without our thinking of it, our simple human feelings onefor another at Christmas-time corroborate the mystical message whichit is the church's meaning to convey by this festival of "peace andgood-will to men"--the power of the Invisible Love; from the mysticallove of God for His world, to the no less, mystical love of mother andchild, of lover and lover, of friend and friend. 

And, when you think of it, is not this festival founded upon what, without irreverence, we may call the Divine Ghost-Story of Christmas?Was there ever another ghost-story so strange, so full of marvels, astory with so thrilling a message from the unseen? Taken just as astory, is there anything in the _Arabian Nights_ so marvellous as thisghost-story of Christmas? The world was all marble and blood and bronze, against a pitiless sky of pitiless gods. The world was Rome. No ruleever stood builded so impregnably from earth to stars--a merciless wallof power. Strength never planted upon the earth so stern a foot. Neverwas tyranny so invincibly bastioned to the cowed and conquered eye. 

And against all this marble and blood and bronze, what frail fantasticattack is this? What quaint expedition from fairy-land that comes soinsignificantly against these battlements on which the Roman helmetscatch the setting sun?

A Star in the Sky. Some Shepherds from Judea. Three Wise Men from theEast. Some Frankincense and Myrrh. A Mother and Child. 

Yes, a fairy-tale procession--but these are to conquer Rome, and thatchild at his mother's breast has but to speak three words, for all thatmarble and bronze to melt away: "Love One Another. "

It may well have seemed an almost ludicrous weapon--three gentle words. So one might attack a fortress with a flower. But Rome fell before them, for all that, and cruel as the world still is, so cruel a world cannever be again. The history of Christianity from Christ to Tolstoiis the history of a ghost-story; and as Rome fell before the men itmartyred, so Russia has been compelled at last to open its prison doorsby the passive imperative of the three gentle words. Stone and iron areterribly strong to the eye and even to the arm of man, but they are asvapour before the breath of the soul. Many enthroned and magisterialauthorities seem so much more important and powerful than the simplehuman heart, but let the trial of strength come, and we see the might ofthe delicate invisible energy that wells up out of the infinite mysteryto support the dreams of man. 

Christmas is the friendly human announcement of this ghostly truth; itsholly and boar's-head are but a rough-and-tumble emblazonment of thatmystic gospel of--The Three Words; the Gospel of the Unseen Love. 

And how well has the church chosen this particular season of the yearfor this most subtly spiritual of all its festivals, so subtle becauseits ghostly message is so ruddily disguised in human mirth, and thus themore unconsciously operative in human hearts!

Winter, itself so ghostly a thing, so spiritual in its beauty, wasindeed the season to catch our ears with this ghost-story of theInvisible and Invincible Love. The other seasons are full of sensuouscharm and seductiveness. With endless variety of form and colour andfragrance, they weave "a flowery band to bind us to the earth. " They arerunning over with the pride of sap, the luxury of green leaves, and theintoxicating fulness of life. The summer earth is like some voluptuousenchantress, all ardour and perfume, and soft dazzle of moted sunshine. But the beauty of winter seems a spiritual, almost a supernatural, thing, austere and forbidding at first, but on a nearer approach foundto be rich in exquisite exhilaration, in rare and lofty discoveries andsatisfactions of the soul. Winter naturally has found less favour withthe poets than the other seasons. Praise of it has usually a strainedair, as though the poet were making the best of a barren theme, like aportrait-painter reluctantly flattering some unattractive sitter. Butone poet has seen and seized the mysterious beauty of winter withunforced sympathy--Coventry Patmore, whose "Odes, " in particular, containing as they do some of the most rarely spiritual meditation inEnglish poetry, are all too little known. In one of these he has thesebeautiful lines, which I quote, I hope correctly, from memory:

 I, singularly moved To love the lovely that are not beloved, Of all the seasons, most love winter, and to trace The sense of the Trophonian pallor of her face. It is not death, but plenitude of peace; And this dim cloud which doth the earth enfold Hath less the characters of dark and cold Than light and warmth asleep, And intermittent breathing still doth keep With the infant harvest heaving soft below Its eider coverlet of snow. 

The beauty of winter is like the beauty of certain austere classics ofliterature and art, and as with them, also, it demands a certain almostmoral strenuousness of application before it reveals itself. Theloftiest masterpieces have something aloof and cheerless about them atour first approach, something of the cold breath of those starry spacesinto which they soar, and to which they uplift our spirits. When wefirst open Dante or Milton, we miss the flowers and the birds and thehuman glow of the more sensuous and earth-dwelling poets. But afterawhile, after our first rather bleak introduction to them, we grow awarethat these apparently undecorated and unmusical masterpieces are radiantand resounding with a beauty and a music which "eye hath not seen norear heard. " For flowers we are given stars, for the song of birds themusic of the spheres, and for that human glow a spiritual ecstasy. 

Similarly with winter. It has indeed a strange beauty peculiar toitself, but it is a beauty we must be at some pains to enjoy. The beautyof the other seasons comes to us, offers itself to us, without effort. To study the beauty of summer, it is enough to lie under green boughswith half-closed eyes, and listen to the running stream and the murmurof a million wings. But winter's is no such idle lesson. In summer wecan hardly stay indoors, but in winter we can hardly be persuaded togo out. We must gird ourselves to overcome that first disinclination, else we shall know nothing of winter but its churlish wind and itsice-in-the-pail. But, the effort made, and once out of doors on asunlit winter's morning, how soon are we finding out the mistake wewere making, coddling ourselves in the steam-heat! Indoors, indeed, the prospect had its Christmas-card picturesqueness; snow-clad roofs, snow-laden boughs, silhouetted tracery of leafless trees; but we saidthat it was a soulless spectacular display, the beauty of death, andthe abhorred coldness thereof. We have hardly walked a hundred yards, however, before impressions very different are crowding upon us, among which the impression of cold is forgotten, or only retained aspleasantly heightening the rest. 

Far from the world's being dead, as it had seemed indoors, we arepresently, in some strange indefinable way, made intensely conscious ofa curious overwhelming sense of life in the air, as though the crystalatmosphere was, so to say, ecstatically charged with the invisibleenergy of spiritual forces. In the enchanted stillness of the snow, weseem to hear the very breathing of the spirit of life. The cessation ofall the myriad little sounds that rise so merrily and so musically fromthe summer surface of the earth seems to allow us to hear the solemnbeat of the very heart of earth itself. We seem very near to the sacredmystery of being, nearer than at any other season of the year, for inother seasons we are distracted by its pleasurable phenomena, but inwinter we seem close to the very mystery itself; for the world seems tohave put on robes of pure spirit and ascended into a diviner ether. 

The very phenomena of winter have a spiritual air which those of summerlack, a phantom-like strangeness. How mysterious this ice, how ghostlythis snow, and all the beautiful fantastic shapes taken by both; thedream-like foliage, and feathers and furs of the snow, the Gothicdiablerie of icicled eaves, all the fairy fancies of the frost, thefretted crystal shapes that hang the brook-side with rarer than Venetianglass, the strange flowers that stealthily overlay the windows, evenwhile we watch in vain for the unseen hand! No flowers of summer seem sostrange as these, make us feel so weirdly conscious of the mystery oflife. As the ghostly artist covers the pane, is it not as though aspirit passed?

As we walk on through the shining morning, we ourselves seem to growrarefied as the air. Our senses seem to grow finer, purged to a keenersensitiveness. Our eyes and ears seem to become spiritual rather thanphysical organs, and an exquisite elation, as though we were walking onshining air, or winging through celestial space, fills all our being. The material earth and our material selves seem to grow joyouslytransparent, and while we are conscious of our earthly shoe-leatherringing out on the iron-bound highway, we seem, nevertheless, to bespirits moving without effort, in a world of spirit. Seldom, if ever, in summer are we thus made conscious of, so to say, our own ghosts, thus lifted up out of our material selves with a happy sense ofdisembodiment. 

There would, indeed, seem to be some relation between temperature andthe soul, and something literally purifying about cold. Certain it isthat we return from our winter's walk with something sacred in ourhearts and something shining in our faces, which we seldom, if ever, bring back with us in summer. Without understanding the process, we seemto have been brought nearer to the invisible mystery, and a solemn peaceof happy insight seems for a little while at least to possess our souls. Our white walk in the snow-bright air has in some way quickened thehalf-torpid immortal within us, revived awhile our sluggish sense of ourspiritual significance and destiny, made us once more, if only for alittle, attractively mysterious to ourselves. Yes! there is what onemight call a certain monastic discipline about winter which impels theleast spiritual minded to meditation on his mortal lot and its immortalmeanings; and thus, as I said, the Church has done wisely to choosewinter for its most Christian festival. The heart of man, thus preparedby the very elements, is the more open to the message of the miraculouslove, and the more ready to translate it into terms of human goodness. And thus, I hope, the ghostly significance of mince-pie is made clear. 

But enough of ghostly, grown-up thoughts. Let us end with a song forthe children:

 O the big red sun, And the wide white world, And the nursery window Mother-of-pearled;

 And the houses all In hoods of snow, And the mince-pies, And the mistletoe;

 And Christmas pudding, And berries red, And stockings hung At the foot of the bed;

 And carol-singers, And nothing but play-- O baby, this is Christmas Day!

XXII

ON RE-READING WALTER PATER

It is with no small satisfaction, and with a sense of reassurance ofwhich one may, in moods of misgiving, have felt the need duringtwo decades of the Literature of Noise, that one sees a writer sopre-eminently a master of the Literature of Meditation coming, for allthe captains and the shouting, so surely into his own. The acceptanceof Walter Pater is not merely widening all the time, but it is moreand more becoming an acceptance such as he himself would have mostvalued, an acceptance in accordance with the full significance of hiswork rather than a one-sided appreciation of some of its Corinthiancharacteristics. The Doric qualities of his work are becoming recognizedalso, and he is being read, as he has always been read by his truedisciples--so not inappropriately to name those who have come under hisgraver spell--not merely as a _prosateur_ of purple patches, or asophist of honeyed counsels tragically easy to misapply, but as anartist of the interpretative imagination of rare insight and magic, awriter of deep humanity as well as aesthetic beauty, and the teacher ofa way of life at once ennobling and exquisite. It is no longer possibleto parody him--after the fashion of Mr. Mallock's brilliancy in _The NewRepublic_--as a writer of "all manner and no matter, " nor is it possibleany longer to confuse his philosophy with those gospels of unrestrainedlibertinism which have taken in vain the name of Epicurus. His highlywrought, sensitively coloured, and musically expressive style is seen tobe what it is because of its truth to a matter profound and delicate andintensely meditated, and such faults as it has come rather of too muchmatter than too little; while his teaching, far from being that ofa facile "Epicureanism, " is seen, properly understood, to involvesomething like the austerity of a fastidious Puritanism, and to resultin a jealous asceticism of the senses rather than in their indulgence. "Slight as was the burden of positive moral obligation with which he hadentered Rome, " he writes of Marius, as on his first evening in Rome themurmur comes to him of "the lively, reckless call to 'play, ' from thesons and daughters of foolishness, " "it was to no wasteful and vagrantaffections, such as these, that his Epicureanism had committed him. "Such warnings against misunderstanding Pater is careful to place, at, soto say, all the cross-roads in his books, so scrupulously concerned ishe lest any reader should take the wrong turning. Few writers, indeed, manifest so constant a consideration for, and, in minor matters, such a sensitive courtesy toward, their readers, while in mattersof conscience Pater seems to feel for them an actual pastoralresponsibility. His well-known withdrawal of the "Conclusion" to _TheRenaissance_ from its second edition, from a fear that "it mightpossibly mislead some of those young men into whose hands it mightfall, " is but one of many examples of his solicitude; and surely such ashave gone astray after such painstaking guidance have but their ownnatures to blame. As he justly says, again of Marius, "in the receptionof metaphysical _formula_, all depends, as regards their actual andulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of humannature into which they fall--the company they find already presentthere, on their admission into the house of thought. "

That Pater's philosophy could ever have been misunderstood is not to beentertained with patience by any one who has read him with even ordinaryattention; that it may have been misapplied, in spite of all his care, is, of course, possible; but if a writer is to be called to account forall the misapplications, or distortions, of his philosophy, writing mayas well come to an end. Yet, inconceivable as it may sound, a criticvery properly held in popular esteem recently gave it as his opinionthat the teaching of Walter Pater was responsible for the tragic careerof the author of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. Certainly that remarkableman was an "epicurean"--but one, to quote Meredith, "whom Epicurus wouldhave scourged out of his garden"; and the statement made by the criticin question that _The Renaissance_ is the book referred to in _ThePicture of Dorian Gray_ as having had a sinister influence over its herois so easily disposed of by a reference to that romance itself that itis hard to understand its ever having been made. Here is the passagedescribing the demoralizing book in question:

 His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. .. . It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed. 

 It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of _argot_ and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of _Décandents. _ There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as evil in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and the creeping shadows. .. . 

 For years Dorian Gray could not free himself from the memory of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it. He procured from Paris no less than five large paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control. 

The book thus characterized is obviously by a French writer--I havegood reason for thinking that it was _À Rebours_ by Huysmans--and howany responsible reader can have imagined that Walter Pater's _TheRenaissance_ answers to this description passes all understanding. Acritic guilty of so patent a misstatement must either never have read_The Picture of Dorian Gray_, or never have read _The Renaissance_. Onthe other hand, if on other more reliable evidence it can be found thatOscar Wilde was one of those "young men" misled by Pater's book, forwhose spiritual safety Pater, as we have seen, was so solicitous, onecan only remind oneself again of the phrase quoted above in regard to"that soil of human nature" into which a writer casts his seed. If thatwhich was sown a lily comes up a toadstool, there is evidently somethingwrong with the soil. 

Let us briefly recall what this apparently so "dangerous" philosophyof Pater's is, and we cannot do better than examine it in its mostconcentrated and famous utterance, this oft-quoted passage from thatonce-suppressed "Conclusion" to _The Renaissance_:

 Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated dramatic life. How may we see in them all that there is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. .. . While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. With this sense of the splendor of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. .. . Well! we are all _condamnés_, as Victor Hugo says; we are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve--_les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis_: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this world, " in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion--that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake. 

Now, if it be true that the application, or rather the misapplication, of this philosophy led Oscar Wilde to Reading Gaol, it is none theless true that another application of it led Marius to something likeChristian martyrdom, and Walter Pater himself along an ever loftier andserener path of spiritual vision. 

Nothing short of wilful misconstruction can make of the counsel thusoffered, with so priestly a concern that the writer's exact meaning bebrought home to his reader, other than an inspiration toward a nobleemployment of that mysterious opportunity we call life. For those of us, perhaps more than a few, who have no assurance of the leisure of aneternity for idleness or experiment, this expansion and elevation of thedoctrine of the moment, carrying a merely sensual and trivial moral inthe Horatian maxim of _carpe diem_, is one thrillingly charged withexhilaration and sounding a solemn and yet seductive challenge to us tomake the most indeed, but also to make the best, of our little day. Tomake the most, and to make the best of life! Those who misinterpret ormisapply Pater forget his constant insistence on the second half of thatprecept. We are to get "as many pulsations as possible into the giventime, " but we are to be very careful that our use of those pulsationsshall be the finest. Whether or not it is "simply for those moments'sake, " our attempt must be to give "_the highest quality_, " remember, tothose "moments as they pass. " And who can fail to remark the fastidiouscare with which Pater selects various typical interests which he deemsmost worthy of dignifying the moment? The senses are, indeed, of naturalright, to have their part; but those interests on which the accent ofPater's pleading most persuasively falls are not so much the "strangedyes, strange colours, and curious odours, " but rather "the face ofone's friend, " ending his subtly musical sentence with a characteristicshock of simplicity, almost incongruity--or "some mood of passion orinsight or intellectual excitement, " or "any contribution to knowledgethat seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment. "There is surely a great gulf fixed between this lofty preoccupation withgreat human emotions and high spiritual and intellectual excitements, and a vulgar gospel of "eat, drink, for tomorrow we die, " whether or notboth counsels start out from a realization of "the awful brevity" of ourmortal day. That realization may prompt certain natures to unbridledsensuality. Doomed to perish as the beasts, they choose, it would seemwith no marked reluctance, to live the life of the beast, a lifeapparently not without its satisfactions. But it is as stupid as it isinfamous to pretend that such natures as these find any warrant fortheir tragic libertinism in Walter Pater. They may, indeed, have foundaesthetic pleasure in the reading of his prose, but the truth of whichthat prose is but the beautiful garment has passed them by. For suchit can hardly be claimed that they have translated into action theaspiration of this tenderly religious passage:

 Given the hardest terms, supposing our days are indeed but a shadow, even so we may well adorn and beautify, in scrupulous self-respect, our souls and whatever our souls touch upon--these wonderful bodies, these material dwelling-places through which the shadows pass together for a while, the very raiment we wear, our very pastimes, and the intercourse of society. 

Here in this passage from _Marius_ we find, to use Pater's own wordsonce more, "the spectacle of one of the happiest temperaments coming, so to speak, to an understanding with the most depressing of theories. "That theory, of course, was the doctrine of the perpetual flux of thingsas taught by Aristippus of Cyrene, making a man of the world's practicalapplication of the old Heraclitean formula, his influence depending onthis, "that in him an abstract doctrine, originally somewhat acrid, hadfallen upon a rich and genial nature well fitted to transform it into atheory of practice of considerable stimulative power toward a fairlife. " Such, too, was Pater's nature, and such his practical usefulnessas what one might call a philosophical artist. Meredith, Emerson, Browning, and even Carlyle were artists so far related to him and eachother in that each of them wrought a certain optimism, or, at allevents, a courageous and even blithe working theory of life and conduct, out of the unrelenting facts of existence unflinchingly faced, ratherthan ecclesiastically smoothed over--the facts of death and pain andstruggle, and even the cruel mystery that surrounds with darkness andterror our mortal lot. Each one of them deliberately faced the worst, and with each, after his own nature, the worst returned to laughter. Theforce of all these men was in their artistic or poetic embodiment ofphilosophical conceptions, but, had they not been artists and poets, their philosophical conceptions would have made but little way. And itis time to recall, what critics preoccupied with his "message" leaveunduly in the background, that Pater was an artist of remarkable powerand fascination, a maker of beautiful things, which, whatever theirphilosophical content, have for our spirits the refreshment andedification which all beauty mysteriously brings us, merely because itis beauty. _Marius the Epicurean_ is a great and wonderful book, notmerely on account of its teaching, but because it is simply one of themost _beautiful_ books, perhaps the most beautiful book, written inEnglish. It is beautiful in many ways. It is beautiful, first of all, inthe uniquely personal quality of its prose, prose which is at onceaustere and sensuous, simple at once and elaborate, scientifically exactand yet mystically suggestive, cool and hushed as sanctuary marble, sweet-smelling as sanctuary incense; prose that has at once thequalities of painting and of music, rich in firmly visualized pictures, yet moving to subtle, half-submerged rhythms, and expressive with everydelicate accent and cadence; prose highly wrought, and yet singularlysurprising one at times with, so to say, sudden innocencies, artless andinstinctive beneath all its sedulous art. It is no longer necessary, asI hinted above, to fight the battle of this prose. Whether it appeal toone not, no critic worth attention any longer disparages it as mereornate and perfumed verbiage, the elaborate mannerism of a writer hidingthe poverty of his thought beneath a pretentious raiment of decoratedexpression. It is understood to be the organic utterance of one with avision of the world all his own striving through words, as he best can, to make that vision visible to others as nearly as possible as hehimself sees it. Pater himself has expounded his theory and practice ofprose, doubtless with a side-thought of self-justification, in variousplaces up and down his writings, notably in his pregnant essay on"Style, " and perhaps even more persuasively in the chapter called"Euphuism" in _Marius_. In this last he thus goes to the root of thematter:

 That preoccupation of the _dilettante_ with what might seem mere details of form, after all, did but serve the purpose of bringing to the surface, sincerely and in their integrity, certain strong personal intuitions, a certain vision or apprehension of things as really being, with important results, thus, rather than thus--intuitions which the artistic or literary faculty was called upon to follow, with the exactness of wax or clay, clothing the model within. 

This striving to express the truth that is in him has resulted in abeauty of prose which for individual quality must be ranked with theprose of such masters as De Quincey and Lamb, and, to make a notirrelevant comparison, above the very fine prose of his contemporaryStevenson, by virtue of its greater personal sincerity. 

There is neither space here, nor need, to illustrate this opinion byquotation, though it may not be amiss, the musical and decorativequalities of Pater's prose having been so generally dwelt upon, toremind the reader of the magical simplicities by which it is no lessfrequently characterized. Some of his quietest, simplest phrases have awonderful evocative power: "the long reign of these quiet Antonines, "for example; "the thunder which had sounded all day among the hills";"far into the night, when heavy rain-drops had driven the last lingerershome"; "Flavian was no more. The little marble chest with its dust andtears lay cold among the faded flowers. " What could be simpler thanthese brief sentences, yet how peculiarly suggestive they are;what immediate pictures they make! And this magical simplicity isparticularly successful in his descriptive passages, notably of naturaleffects, effects caught with an instinctively selected touch or two, an expressive detail, a grey or coloured word. How lightly sketched, and yet how clearly realized in the imagination, is the ancestralcountry-house of Marius's boyhood, "White-Nights, " "that exquisitefragment of a once large and sumptuous villa"--"Two centuries of theplay of the sea-wind were in the velvet of the mosses which lay alongits inaccessible ledges and angles. " Take again this picture:

 The cottagers still lingered at their doors for a few minutes as the shadows grew larger, and went to rest early; though there was still a glow along the road through the shorn corn-fields, and the birds were still awake about the crumbling grey heights of an old temple. 

And again this picture of a wayside inn:

 The room in which he sat down to supper, unlike the ordinary Roman inns at that day, was trim and sweet. The firelight danced cheerfully upon the polished three-wicked _lucernae_ burning cleanly with the best oil, upon the whitewashed walls, and the bunches of scarlet carnations set in glass goblets. The white wine of the place put before him, of the true colour and flavour of the grape, and with a ring of delicate foam as it mounted in the cup, had a reviving edge or freshness he had found in no other wine. 

Those who judge of Pater's writing by a few purple passages such as thefamous rhapsody on the _Mona Lisa_, conceiving it as always thus heavywith narcotic perfume, know but one side of him, and miss his giftfor conveying freshness, his constant happiness in light and air andparticularly running water, "green fields--or children's faces. " Hislovely chapter on the temple of Aesculapius seems to be made entirelyof morning light, bubbling springs, and pure mountain air; and thereligious influence of these lustral elements is his constant theme. For him they have a natural sacramental value, and it is throughthem and such other influences that Pater seeks for his hero thesanctification of the senses and the evolution of the spirit. In hispreoccupation with them, and all things lovely to the eye and to theintelligence, it is that the secret lies of the singular purity ofatmosphere which pervades his _Marius_, an atmosphere which might betermed the soul-beauty of the book, as distinct from its, so to say, body-beauty as beautiful prose. 

Considering _Marius_ as a story, a work of imagination, one finds thesame evocative method used in the telling of it, and in the portrayalof character, as Pater employs in its descriptive passages. Owingto certain violent, cinematographic methods of story-telling andcharacter-drawing to which we have become accustomed, it is too oftenassumed that stories cannot be told or characters drawn in any otherway. Actually, of course, as many an old masterpiece admonishes us, there is no one canon in this matter, but, on the contrary, no limit tothe variety of method and manner a creative artist is at liberty toemploy in his imaginative treatment of human life. All one asks is thatthe work should live, the characters and scenes appear real to us, andthe story be told. And Pater's _Marius_ entirely satisfies this demandfor those to whom such a pilgrimage of the soul will alone appeal. It isa real story, no mere German scholar's attempt to animate the dry bonesof his erudition; and the personages and the scenes do actually livefor us, as by some delicate magic of hint and suggestion; and, though atfirst they may seem shadowy, they have a curious way of persisting, and, as it were, growing more and more alive in our memories. The figure ofMarcus Aurelius, for example, though so delicately sketched, is amasterpiece of historical portraiture, as the pictures of Roman life, done with so little, seem to me far more convincing than the likeover-elaborated pictures of antiquity, so choked with learned detail, of Flaubert and of Gautier. Swinburne's famous praise of Gautier's_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ applies with far greater fitness to Pater'smasterpiece; for, if ever a book deserved to be described as

 The golden book of spirit and sense, The holy writ of beauty, it is _Marius the Epicurean_. 

It has been natural to dwell so long on this "golden book, " becausePater's various gifts are concentrated in it, to make what is, ofcourse, his masterpiece; though some one or other of these gifts is tobe found employed with greater mastery in other of his writings, notablythat delicate dramatic gift of embodying in a symbolic story certainsubtle states of mind and refinements of temperament which reaches itsperfection in _Imaginary Portraits_, to which the later "Apollo inPicardy" and "Hippolytus Veiled" properly belong. It is only necessaryto recall the exquisitely austere "Sebastian Van Storck" and thestrangely contrasting Dionysiac "Denys L'Auxerrois" to justify one'sclaim for Pater as a creative artist of a rare kind, with a singular andfascinating power of incarnating a philosophic formula, a formula noless dry than Spinoza's, or a mood of the human spirit, in living, breathing types and persuasive tragic fables. This genius for creativeinterpretation is the soul and significance of all his criticism. Itgives their value to the studies of _The Renaissance_, but perhaps itsfinest flower is to be found in the later _Greek Studies_. To Flavian, Pater had said in _Marius_, "old mythology seemed as full of untried, unexpressed motives and interest as human life itself, " and with whatmarvellous skill and evocative application of learning, he himself laterdeveloped sundry of those "untried, unexpressed motives, " as in hisstudies of the myths of Dionysus--"The spirit of fire and dew, alive andleaping in a thousand vines"--and Demeter and Persephone--"the peculiarcreation of country people of a high impressibility, dreaming over theirwork in spring or autumn, half consciously touched by a sense of itssacredness, and a sort of mystery about it"--no reader of Pater needs tobe told. This same creative interpretation gives a like value to hisstudies of Plato; and so by virtue of this gift, active throughout theten volumes which constitute his collected work, Pater proved himselfto be of the company of the great humanists. 

Along with all the other constituents of his work, its sacerdotalism, its subtle reverie, its sensuous colour and perfume, its marmorealausterity, its honeyed music, its frequent preoccupation with thehaunted recesses of thought, there go an endearing homeliness andsimplicity, a deep human tenderness, a gentle friendliness, a somethingchildlike. He has written of her, "the presence that rose thus sostrangely beside the waters, " to whom all experience had been "but asthe sound of lyres and flutes, " and he has written of "The Child in theHouse. " Among all "the strange dyes, strange colours, and curiousodours, and work of the artist's hands, " one never misses "the face ofone's friend"; and, in all its wanderings, the soul never strays farfrom the white temples of the gods and the sound of running water. 

It is by virtue of this combination of humanity, edification, andaesthetic delight that Walter Pater is unique among the great teachersand artists of our time. 

XXIII

THE MYSTERY OF "FIONA MACLEOD" [1]

 [1]_William Sharp (Fiona Macleod)_. A Memoir, compiled by his wife, Elizabeth A. Sharp. (Duffield & Co. ) _The Writings of Fiona Macleod_. Uniform edition. Arranged by Mrs. William Sharp. (Duffield & Co. )

In the fascinating memoir of her husband, which Mrs. William Sharp haswritten with so much dignity and tact, and general biographic skill, shedwells with particular fondness of recollection on the two years oftheir life at Phenice Croft, a charming cottage they had taken in thesummer of 1892 at Rudgwick in Sussex, seven miles from Horsham, thebirthplace of Shelley. Still fresh in my memory is a delightful visit Ipaid them there, and I was soon afterwards to recall with specialsignificance a conversation I had with Mrs. Sharp, as four of us walkedout one evening after dinner in a somewhat melancholy twilight, theglow-worms here and there trimming their ghostly lamps by the wayside, and the nightjar churring its hoarse lovesong somewhere in thethickening dusk. 

"Will, " Mrs. Sharp confided to me, was soon to have a surprise for hisfriends in a fuller and truer expression of himself than his work hadso far attained, but the nature of that expression Mrs. Sharp did notconfide--more than to hint that there were powers and qualities in herhusband's make-up that had hitherto lain dormant, or had, at all events, been but little drawn upon. 

Mrs. Sharp was thus vaguely hinting at the future "Fiona Macleod, "for it was at Rudgwick, we learn, that that so long mysteriousliterary entity sprang into imaginative being with _Pharais_. _Pharais_was published in 1894, and I remember that early copies of it camesimultaneously to myself and Grant Allen, with whom I was then staying, and how we were both somewhat _intrigué_ by a certain air of mysterywhich seemed to attach to the little volume. We were both intimatefriends of William Sharp, but I was better acquainted with Sharp'searlier poetry than Grant Allen, and it was my detection in _Pharais_of one or two subtly observed natural images, the use of which hadpreviously struck me in one of his _Romantic Ballads and Poems ofPhantasy_, that brought to my mind in a flash of understanding thatRudgwick conversation with Mrs. Sharp, and thus made me doubly certainthat "Fiona Macleod" and William Sharp were one, if not the same. Conceiving no reason for secrecy, and only too happy to find that myfriend had fulfilled his wife's prophecy by such fuller and finerexpression of himself, I stated my belief as to its authorship in areview I wrote for the London _Star_. My review brought me an urgenttelegram from Sharp, begging me, for God's sake, to shut my mouth--orwords to that effect. Needless to say, I did my best to atone forhaving thus put my foot in it, by a subsequent severe silence tillnow unbroken; though I was often hard driven by curious inquirers topreserve the secret which my friend afterwards confided to me. 

When I say "confided to me, " I must add that in the many confidencesWilliam Sharp made to me on the matter, I was always aware of a reserveof fanciful mystification, and I am by no means sure, even now, that I, or any of us--with the possible exception of Mrs. Sharp--know the wholetruth about "Fiona Macleod. " Indeed it is clear from Mrs. Sharp'sinteresting revelations of her husband's temperament that "the wholetruth" could hardly be known even to William Sharp himself; for, veryevidently in "Fiona Macleod" we have to deal not merely with a literarymystification, but with a psychological mystery. Here it is pertinent toquote the message written to be delivered to certain of his friendsafter his death: "This will reach you, " he says, "after my death. Youwill think I have wholly deceived you about Fiona Macleod. But, in anintimate sense this is not so, though (and inevitably) in certaindetails I have misled you. Only, it is a mystery. I cannot explain. Perhaps you will intuitively understand or may come to understand. 'Therest is silence. ' Farewell. WILLIAM SHARP. "

"It is only right, however, to add that I, and I only, was theauthor--in the literal and literary sense--of all written under thename of 'Fiona Macleod. '"

"Only, it is a mystery. I cannot explain. " Does "I cannot explain" mean"I must not explain, " or merely just what it says? I am inclined tothink it means both; but, if so, the "must not" would refer to thepurely personal mystification on which, of course, none would desire tointrude, and the "cannot" would refer to that psychological mysterywhich we are at liberty to investigate. 

William Sharp's explanation to myself--as I believe to others of hisfriends--was to the same tenor as this posthumous statement. He and heonly had actually _written_ the "Fiona Macleod" fantasies and poems, but--yes! there was a real "Fiona Macleod" as well. She was a beautifulcousin of his, living much in solitude and dreams, and seldom visitingcities. Between her and him there was a singular spiritual kinship, which by some inexplicable process, so to say, of psychic collaboration, had resulted in the writings to which he had given her name. They werehers as well as his, his as well as hers. Several times he even went sofar as to say that Miss Macleod was contemplating a visit to London, butthat her visit was to be kept a profound secret, and that he intendedintroducing her to three of his friends and no more--George Meredith, W. B. Yeats, and myself. Probably he made the same mock-confidence toother friends, as a part of his general scheme of mystification. On oneoccasion, when I was sitting with him in his study, he pointed to theframed portrait of a beautiful woman which stood on top of a revolvingbook-case, and said "That is Fiona!" I affected belief, but, rightly orwrongly, it was my strong impression that the portrait thus labelled wasthat of a well-known Irish lady prominently identified with Home Rulepolitics, and I smiled to myself at the audacious white lie. Mrs. Sharp, whose remembrance of her husband goes back to "a merry, mischievouslittle boy in his eighth year, with light-brown curly hair, blue-greyeyes, and a laughing face, and dressed in a tweed kilt, " tells us thatthis "love not only of mystery for its own sake, but of mystificationalso, " was a marked characteristic of his nature--a characteristicdeveloped even in childhood by the necessity he always felt of hidingaway from his companions that visionary side of his life which wasalmost painfully vivid with him, and the sacredness of which in lateyears he felt compelled to screen under his pseudonym. 

That William Sharp's affirmation of an actual living and breathing"Fiona Macleod" was, however, virtually true is confided by thissignificant and illuminating passage in Mrs. Sharp's biography. Mrs. Sharp is speaking of a sojourn together in Rome during the spring of1891, in which her husband had experienced an unusual exaltation andexuberance of vital and creative energy. 

 There, at last [she says], he had found the desired incentive towards a true expression of himself, in the stimulus and sympathetic understanding of the friend to whom he dedicated the first of the books published under his pseudonym. This friendship began in Rome and lasted throughout the remainder of his life. And though this new phase of his work was at no time the result of collaboration, as certain of his critics have suggested, he was deeply conscious of his indebtedness to this friend, for--as he stated to me in a letter of instructions, written before he went to America in 1896, concerning his wishes in the event of his death--he realized that it was "to her I owe my development as 'Fiona Macleod, ' though in a sense of course that began long before I knew her, and indeed while I was still a child, " and that, as he believed, "without her there would have been no 'Fiona Macleod. '" Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of life; because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and put him "in touch with ancestral memories" of his race. So, for a time, he stilled the critical, intellectual mood of William Sharp, to give play to the development of this new-found expression of subtle emotions, towards which he had been moving with all the ardour of his nature. 

From this statement of Mrs. Sharp one naturally turns to the dedicationof _Pharais_ to which she refers, finding a dedicatory letterto "E. W. R. " dealing for the most part with "Celtic" matters, butcontaining these more personal passages:

 Dear friend [the letter begins], while you gratify me by your pleasure in this inscription, you modestly deprecate the dedication to you of this study of alien life--of that unfamiliar island-life so alien in all ways from the life of cities, and, let me add, from that of the great mass of the nation to which, in the communal sense, we both belong. But in the Domhan-Tòir of friendship there are resting-places where all barriers of race, training, and circumstances fall away in dust. At one of these places we met, a long while ago, and found that we loved the same things, and in the same way. 

The letter ends with this: "There is another Pàras (Paradise) than thatseen of Alastair of Innisròn--the Tir-Nan-Oigh of friendship. Therein weboth have seen beautiful visions and dreamed dreams. Take, then, out ofmy heart, this book of vision and dream. "

"Fiona Macleod, " then, would appear to be the collective name given toa sort of collaborative Three-in-One mysteriously working together: aninspiring Muse with the initials E. W. R. ; that psychical "other self"of whose existence and struggle for expression William Sharp had beenconscious all his life; and William Sharp, general _littérateur_, asknown to his friends and reading public. "Fiona Macleod" would seem tohave always existed as a sort of spiritual prisoner within that comelyand magnetic earthly tenement of clay known as William Sharp, butwhom William Sharp had been powerless to free in words, till, atthe wand-like touch of E. W. R. --the creative stimulus of a profoundimaginative friendship--a new power of expression had been given tohim--a power of expression strangely missing from William Sharp'sprevious acknowledged writings. 

To speak faithfully, it was the comparative mediocrity, and occasionaleven positive badness, of the work done over his own name that formedone of the stumbling-blocks to the acceptance of the theory that WilliamSharp _could_ be "Fiona Macleod. " Of course, his work had been that ofan accomplished widely-read man of letters, his life of Heine beingperhaps his most notable achievement in prose; and his verse had notbeen without intermittent flashes and felicities, suggestive ofsmouldering poetic fires, particularly in his _Sospiri di Roma_; but, for the most part, it had lacked any personal force or savour, and wasentirely devoid of that magnetism with which William Sharp, the man, wasso generously endowed. In fact, its disappointing inadequacy was asecret source of distress to the innumerable friends who loved himwith a deep attachment, to which the many letters making one of thedelightful features of Mrs. Sharp's biography bear witness. In himselfWilliam Sharp was so prodigiously a personality, so conquering in theromantic flamboyance of his sun-like vitality, so overflowing with thecharm of a finely sensitive, richly nurtured temperament, so essentiallya poet in all he felt and did and said, that it was impossible patientlyto accept his writings as any fair expression of himself. He was, as wesay, so much more than his books--so immeasurably and delightfullymore--that, compared with himself, his books practically amounted tonothing; and one was inclined to say of him in one's heart, as one doessometimes say of such imperfectly articulate artistic natures: "Whata pity he troubles to write at all! Why not be satisfied with beingWilliam Sharp? Why spoil 'William Sharp' by this inadequate andmisleading translation?"

The curious thing, too, was that the work he did over his own name, after "Fiona Macleod" had escaped into the freedom of her own beautifulindividual utterance, showed no improvement in quality, no marks ofhaving sprung from the same mental womb where it had lain side by sidewith so fair a sister. But, of course, one can readily understand thatsuch work would naturally lack spontaneity of impulse, having to bedone, more or less, against the grain, from reasons of expediency: solong as "Fiona Macleod" must remain a secret, William Sharp must producesomething to show for himself, in order to go on protecting that secret, which would, also, be all the better kept by William Sharp continuing inhis original mediocrity. Of this dual activity, Mrs. Sharp thus writeswith much insight:

 From then till the end of his life [she says] there was a continual play of the two forces in him, or of the two sides of his nature: of the intellectually observant, reasoning mind--the actor, and of the intuitively observant, spiritual mind--the dreamer, which differentiated more and more one from the other, and required different conditions, different environment, different stimuli, until he seemed to be two personalities in one. It was a development which, as it proceeded, produced a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources, and at one time between 1897-8 threatened him with a complete nervous collapse. And there was for a time distinct opposition between those two natures which made it extremely difficult for him to adjust his life, for the two conditions were equally imperative in their demands upon him. 

 His preference, naturally, was for the intimate creative work which he knew grew out of his inner self; though the exigencies of life, his dependence on his pen for his livelihood, and, moreover, the keen active interest "William Sharp" took in all the movements of the day, literary and political, at home and abroad, required of him a great amount of applied study and work. 

The strain must indeed have been enormous, and one cannot but feel thatmuch of it was a needless, even trivial "expense of spirit, " and regretthat, when "Fiona Macleod" had so manifestly come into her own, WilliamSharp should have continued to keep up the mystification, entailing asit did such an elaborate machinery of concealment, not the least taxingof which must have been the necessity of keeping up "Fiona Macleod's"correspondence as well as his own. Better, so to say, to have thrownWilliam Sharp overboard, and to have reserved the energies of atemperament almost abnormally active, but physically delusive andprecarious, for the finer productiveness of "Fiona Macleod. " But WilliamSharp deemed otherwise. He was wont to say, "Should the secret be foundout, Fiona dies, " and in a letter to Mrs. Thomas A. Janvier--she and herhusband being among the earliest confidants of his secret--he makes thisinteresting statement: "I can write out of my heart in a way I couldnot do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were thewoman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulousanonymity. .. . This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this _cosmicecstasy_ and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of thecommon world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life thatI could not bring myself to expression by my outer self, insistent andtyrannical as that need is. .. . My truest self, the self who is belowall other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams, _must_ find expression, yet I cannotsave in this hidden way. .. . "

Later he wrote: "Sometimes I am tempted to believe I am half a woman, and so far saved as I am by the hazard of chance from what a woman canbe made to suffer if one let the light of the common day illuminate theavenues and vistas of her heart. .. . "

At one time, I thought that William Sharp's assumption of a femininepseudonym was a quite legitimate device to steal a march on his critics, and to win from them, thus disguised, that recognition which he musthave been aware he had failed to win in his own person. Indeed, it isdoubtful whether, if he had published the "Fiona Macleod" writings underhis own name, they would have received fair critical treatment. I amvery sure that they would not; for there is quite a considerable amountof so-called "criticism" which is really foregone conclusion based onpersonal prejudice, or biassed preconception, and the refusal to admit(employing a homely image) that an old dog does occasionally learn newtricks. Many well-known writers have resorted to this device, sometimeswith considerable success. Since reading Mrs. Sharp's biography, however, I conclude that this motive had but little, if any, influenceon William Sharp, and that his statement to Mrs. Janvier must be takenas virtually sincere. 

A certain histrionism, which was one of his charms, and is perhapsinseparable from imaginative temperaments, doubtless had its share inhis consciousness of that "dual nature" of which we hear so much, and which it is difficult sometimes to take with Sharp's "Celtic"seriousness. Take, for example, this letter to his wife, when, havingleft London, precipitately, in response to the call of the Isles, hewrote: "The following morning we (for a kinswoman was with me) stood onthe Greenock pier waiting for the Hebridean steamer, and before longwere landed on an island, almost the nearest we could reach, that Iloved so well. " Mrs. Sharp dutifully comments: "The 'we' who stood onthe pier at Greenock is himself in his dual capacity; his 'kinswoman' ishis other self. " Later he writes, on his arrival in the Isle of Arran:"There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that twopeople are here: so intimate and yet so far off. For it is with me asthough Fiona were asleep in another room. I catch myself listeningfor her step sometimes, for the sudden opening of a door. It isunawaredly that she whispers to me. I am eager to see what she willdo--particularly in _The Mountain Lovers_. It seems passing strangeto be here with her alone at last. .. . " I confess that this strikesme disagreeably. It is one thing to be conscious of a "dualpersonality"--after all, consciousness of dual personality is by nomeans uncommon, and it is a commonplace that, spiritually, men of geniusare largely feminine--but it is another to dramatize one's consciousnessin this rather childish fashion. There seems more than a suspicion ofpose in such writing: though one cannot but feel that William Sharp wasright in thinking that the real "Fiona Macleod" was asleep at themoment. At the same time, William Sharp seems unmistakably to have beenendowed with what I suppose one has to call "psychic" powers--though theword has been "soiled with all ignoble use"--and to be the possessorin a considerable degree of that mysterious "sight" or sixth senseattributed to men and women of Gaelic blood. Mrs. Sharp tells a curiousstory of his mood immediately preceding that flight to the Isles ofwhich I have been writing. He had been haunted the night before by thesound of the sea. It seemed to him that he heard it splashing in thenight against the walls of his London dwelling. So real it had seemedthat he had risen from his bed and looked out of the window, and even inthe following afternoon, in his study, he could still hear the wavesdashing against the house. "A telegram had come for him that morning, "writes Mrs. Sharp, "and I took it to his study. I could get no answer. I knocked, louder, then louder, --at last he opened the door with acuriously dazed look in his face. I explained. He answered: 'Ah, Icould not hear you for the sound of the waves!'"

His last spoken words have an eerie suggestiveness in this connection. Writing of his death on the 12th of December, 1905, Mrs. Sharp says:"About three o'clock, with his devoted friend Alec Hood by his side, hesuddenly leant forward with shining eyes and exclaimed in a tone ofjoyous recognition, 'Oh, the beautiful "Green Life, " again!' and thenext moment sank back in my arms with the contented sigh, 'Ah, all iswell!'"

"The green life" was a phrase often on Sharp's lips, and stood for himfor that mysterious life of elemental things to which he was almostuncannily sensitive, and into which he seemed able strangely to mergehimself, of which too his writings as "Fiona Macleod" prove him to havehad "invisible keys. " It is this, so to say, conscious pantheism, this kinship with the secret forces and subtle moods of nature, thisresponsiveness to her mystic spiritual "intimations, " that give to thosewritings their peculiar significance and value. In the external lore ofnature William Sharp was exceptionally learned. Probably no writer inEnglish, with the exceptions of George Meredith and Grant Allen, was hisequal here, and his knowledge had been gained, as such knowledge canonly be gained, in that receptive period of an adventurous boyhood ofwhich he has thus written: "From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up everyloch, fjord, and inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arranand Colonsay to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns ofGalloway to the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associatedmyself with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers, gypsies, wandering pipers, and other musicians. " For two months he had"taken the heather" with, and had been "star-brother" and "sun-brother"to, a tribe of gypsies, and in later years he had wandered variously inmany lands, absorbing the wonder and the beauty of the world. Wellmight he write to Mrs. Janvier: "I have had a very varied, and, to use amuch abused word, a very romantic life in its internal as well as in itsexternal aspects. " Few men have drunk so deep of the cup of life, andfrom such pure sky-reflecting springs, and if it be true, in the wordsof his friend Walter Pater, that "to burn ever with this hard gem-likeflame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life, " then indeed thelife of William Sharp was a nobly joyous success. 

And to those who loved him it is a great happiness to know that he wasable to crown this ecstasy of living with that victory of expression forwhich his soul had so long travailed, and to leave behind him not only alovely monument of star-lit words, but a spiritual legacy of perennialrefreshment, a fragrant treasure-house of recaptured dreams, andhallowed secrets of the winds of time: for such are _The Writings of"Fiona Macleod"_. 

XXIV

FORBES-ROBERTSON: AN APPRECIATION

The voluntary abdication of power in its zenith has always fascinatedand "intrigued" the imagination of mankind. We are so accustomed tokings and other gifted persons holding on to their sceptres with adesperate tenacity, even through those waning years when younger men, beholding their present feebleness, wonder whether their previous mightwas not a fancy of their fathers, whether, in fact, they were everreally kings or gifted persons at all. In so many cases we have to relyon a legend of past accomplishment to preserve our reverence. Therefore, when a Sulla or a Charles V. Or a Mary Anderson, leave their thrones atthe moment when their sway over us is most assured and brilliant, wewonder--wonder at a phenomenon rare in humanity, and suggestive ofromantic reserves of power which seal not only our allegiance to them, but that of posterity. The mystery which resides in all greatness, inall charm, is not violated by the cynical explanations of decay. Theyremain fortunate as those whom the gods loved, wearing the aureoles ofimmortal promise. 

Few artists have been wise in this respect; poets, for example, veryseldom. Thus we find the works of most of them encumbered with thedébris of their senility. Coventry Patmore was a rare example of a poetwho laid down his pen deliberately, not merely as an artist in words, but as an artist in life, having, as he said in the memorable preface tothe collected edition of his poems, completed that work which in hisyouth he had set before him. His readers, therefore, are not saddened byany pathetic gleanings from a once-rich harvest-field, or the carefullypicked-up shakings of November boughs. 

Forbes-Robertson is one of those artists who has chosen to bid farewellto his art while he is still indisputably its master. One or two otherdistinguished actors before him have thus chosen, and a greater numberhave bade us, those professional "farewells" that remind one of thatdream of De Quincey in which he heard reverberated "Everlastingfarewells! and again and yet again reverberated--everlasting farewells!"In Forbes-Robertson's case, however, apart from our courteous taking theword of his management, we know that the news is sadly true. There isa curious personal honour and sincerity breathing through all hisimpersonations that make us feel, so to say, that not only would we takethe ghost's word for a thousand pounds, but that between him and his artis such an austere compact that he would be incapable of humiliating itby any mere advertising devices; and beyond that, those who have seenhim play this time (1914) in New York must have been aware that in thevery texture of all his performances was woven like a sigh the word"farewell. " His very art, as I shall have later to emphasize, is an artof farewell; but, apart from that general quality, it seemed to me, though, indeed, it may have been mere sympathetic fancy, that in theselast New York performances, as in the performances last spring inLondon, I heard a personal valedictory note. Forbes-Robertson seemed tobe saying good-by at once to his audience and to his art. 

In doing this, along with the inevitable sadness that must accompanysuch a step, one cannot but think there will be a certain privatewhimsical satisfaction for him in being able to go about the world inafter years with his great gift still his, hidden away, but still his touse at any moment, and to know not only that he has been, but still is, as it were, in secret, the supreme Hamlet of his time. Somethinglike that, one may imagine, must be the private fun of abdication. Forbes-Robertson, as he himself has told us, lays down one art only totake up another to which he has long been devoted, and of his earlyaffiliation to which the figure of Love Kissing Beatrice in Rossetti's"Dante's Dream" bears illustrious and significant witness. As, onerecalls that he was the model for that figure one realizes that eventhen he was the young lord Hamlet, born to be _par excellence_ the actorof sorrow and renunciation. 

It is not my province to write here of Forbes-Robertson from the pointof view of the reminiscent playgoer or of the technical critic ofacting. Others, obviously, are far better qualified to undertake thoseoffices for his fame. I would merely offer him the tribute of one towhom for many years his acting has been something more than acting, asusually understood, something to class with great poetry, and all thespiritual exaltation which "great poetry" implies. From first to last, however associated with that whimsical comedy of which, too, he isappropriately a master, he has struck for me that note of almostheartbreaking spiritual intensity which, under all its superficialmaterialism and cynicism, is the key-note of the modern world. 

When I say "first, " I am thinking of the first time I saw him, on thefirst night of _The Profligate_ by Pinero, in its day one of the playsthat blazed the trail for that social, or, rather, I should say, sociological, drama since become even more deadly in earnest, thoughperhaps less deadly in skill. Incidentally, I remember that Miss OlgaNethersole, then quite unknown, made a striking impression of evil, though playing only a small part. It was Forbes-Robertson, however, forme, and I think for all the playgoing London of the time, that gave theplay its chief value by making us startlingly aware, through thepoignancy of his personality, of what one might call the voice of themodern conscience. To associate that thrillingly beautiful and profoundvoice of his with anything that sounds so prosaic as a "modernconscience" may seem unkind, but actually our modern conscience isanything but prosaic, and combines within it something at once poeticand prophetic, of which that something ghostly in Forbes-Robertson'sacting is peculiarly expressive. That quality of other-worldliness whichat once scared and fascinated the lodgers in _The Passing of the ThirdFloor Back_ is present in all Forbes-Robertson's acting. It was thatwhich strangely stirred us, that first night of _The Profligate_. Wemeet it again with the blind Dick Heldar in _The Light That Failed_, andof course we meet it supremely in _Hamlet_. In fact, it is that qualitywhich, chief among others, makes Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet the classicalHamlet of his time. 

Forbes-Robertson has of course played innumerable parts. Years before_The Profligate_, he had won distinction as the colleague of Irving andMary Anderson. He may be said to have played everything under the sun. His merely theatric experience has thus enriched and equipped histemperament with a superb technique. It would probably be impossible forhim to play any part badly, and of the various successes he has made, towhich his present repertoire bears insufficient witness, others, as Ihave said, can point out the excellences. My concern here is with hisart in its fullest and finest expression, in its essence; and thereforeit is unnecessary for me to dwell upon any other of his impersonationsthan that of Hamlet. When a man can play _Hamlet_ so supremely, it maybe taken for granted, I presume, that he can play _Mice and Men_, oreven that masterpiece of all masterpieces, _Caesar and Cleopatra_. Itrust that it is no disrespect to the distinguished authors of these twoplays to say that such plays in a great actor's repertoire representless his versatility than his responsibilities, that pot-boilingnecessity which hampers every art, and that of the actor, perhaps, mostof all. 

To my thinking, the chief interest of all Forbes-Robertson's other partsis that they have "fed" his Hamlet; and, indeed, many of his best partsmay be said to be studies for various sides of Hamlet, his fine _Romeo_, for example, which, unfortunately, he no longer plays. In _Hamlet_ allhis qualities converge, and in him the tradition of the stage that allan ambitious actor's experience is only to fit him to play Hamlet is foronce justified. But, of course, the chief reason of that success is thatnature meant Forbes-Robertson to play Hamlet. Temperament, personality, experience, and training have so worked together that he does not merelyplay, but _is_, Hamlet. Such, at all events, is the complete illusion heis able to produce. 

Of course, one has heard from them of old time that an actor'spersonality must have nothing to do with the part he is playing; that heonly is an actor who can most successfully play the exact opposite ofhimself. That is the academic theory of "character-acting, " and ofcourse the half-truth of it is obvious. It represents the wearinessinduced in audiences by handsome persons who merely, in the stagephrase, "bring their bodies on"; yet it would go hard with some of ourmost delightful comedians were it the whole truth about acting. As amatter of fact, of course, a great actor includes a multiplicity ofselves, so that he may play many parts, yet always be playing himself. Beyond himself no artist, whatever his art, has ever gone. 

What reduplication of personality is necessary for the man who playsHamlet need hardly be said, what wide range of humanity and variety ofaccomplishment; for, as Anatole France has finely said of Hamlet, "He isa man, he is man, he is the whole of man. "

Time was when _Hamlet_ was little more than an opportunity for somerobustious periwig-pated fellow, or it gave the semi-learned actor thechance to conceal his imaginative incapacity by a display of "newreadings. " For example, instead of saying:

 The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold, you diverted attention from your acting by an appeal to the literaryantiquarianism of your audience, and, out of one or other of thequartos, read the line:

 The air bites shrewdly; _is_ it very cold?

with the implication that there was a whole world of suggestion in thedifference. 

One has known actors, far from unillustrious, who staked their wholeperformance on some such learned triviality or some trifling novelty ofbusiness, when, for example, in Hamlet's scene with his mother, theprince comes to:

 Look here upon this picture, and on this. 

An actor who deserves better than he has yet received in the traditionof the acted _Hamlet_--I mean Wilson Barrett--used to make much oftaking a miniature of his father from his bosom to point the contrast. 

But all such things in the end are of no account. New readings, newbusiness, avail less and less. Nor does painstaking archaeology ofscenery or dresses any longer throw dust in our eyes. We are for theplay, the living soul of the play. Give us that, and your properties maybe no more elaborate than those of a _guignol_ in the Champs-Elysées. 

Forbes-Robertson's acting is so imaginative, creating the scene abouthim as he plays, that one almost resents any stage-settings for him atall, however learnedly accurate and beautifully painted. 

His soul seems to do so much for us that we almost wish it could beleft to do it all, and he act for us as they acted in Elizabeth's day, with only a curtain for scenery, and a placard at the side of the stagesaying, "This is Elsinore. "

One could hardly say more for one's sense of the reality ofForbes-Robertson's acting, as, naturally, one is not unaware thatdistressing experiments have been made to reproduce the Elizabethantheatre by actors who, on the other hand, were sadly in need of allthat scenery, archaeology, or orchestra could do for them. 

With a world overcrowded with treatises on the theme, from, and before, Gervinus, with the commentary of _Wilhelm Meister_ in our minds, not tospeak of the starlit text ever there for our reading, there is surely noneed to traverse the character of Hamlet. He has meant so much to ourfathers--though he can never have meant so much to them as he does to usof today--that he is, so to say, in our blood. He is strangely near toour hearts by sheer inheritance. And perhaps the most beautiful thingForbes-Robertson's Hamlet does for us is that it commands our love for agreat gentleman doing his gentlest and bravest and noblest with a sadsmile and a gay humour, in not merely a complicated, wicked, absurd, andtiresome, but, also, a ghostly world. 

When we think of Hamlet, we think of him as two who knew him very wellthought of him, --Ophelia and Horatio, --and as one who saw him only as hesat at last on his throne, dead, with the crown of Denmark on hisknees. 

Ophelia's

 Courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, The expectancy and rose of the fair state;

the "sweet prince" of Horatio's "good-night"--the soldier for whosepassage Fortinbras commanded

 The soldier's music and the rites of war. 

We think of him, too, as the haunted son of a dear father murdered, aphilosophic spectator of the grotesque brutality of life, suddenly by aghostly summons called on to take part in it; a prince, a philosopher, alover, a soldier, a sad humourist. 

Were one asked what aspects of Hamlet does Forbes-Robertson speciallyembody, I should say, in the first place, his princeliness, hisghostliness, then his cynical and occasionally madcap humour, as where, at the end of the play-scene, he capers behind the throne in a terribleboyish glee. No actor that I have seen expresses so well that scholarlyirony of the Renaissance permeating the whole play. His scene withRosencrantz and Guildenstern and the recorders is masterly: the silkensternness of it, the fine hauteur, the half-appeal as of lost idealsstill pleading with the vulgarity of life, the fierce humour of itsdisillusion, and behind, as always, the heartbreak--that side of whichcomes of the recognition of what it is to be a gentleman in such aworld. 

In this scene, too, as in others, Forbes-Robertson makes it clear thatthat final tribute of Fortinbras was fairly won. 

The soldier--if necessary, the fighter--is there as supple and strong asa Damascus blade. One is always aware of the "something dangerous, " forall his princely manners and scholarly ways. One is never left in doubtas to how this Hamlet will play the man. It is all too easy for him todraw his sword and make an end of the whole fantastic business. Becausethis philosophic swordsman holds the sword, let no one think that heknows not how to wield it. All this gentleness--have a care!--is that ofan unusually masculine restraint. 

In the scene with Ophelia, Forbes-Robertson's tenderness was almostterrible. It came from such a height of pity upon that littleuncomprehending flower!

"I never gave you aught, " as Forbes-Robertson said it, seemed to mean:"I gave you all--all that you could not understand. " "Yet are not youand I in the toils of that destiny there that moves the arras. _Is_ ityour father?"

Along with Forbes-Robertson's spiritual interpretation of Shakespearegoes pre-eminently, and doubtless as a contributive part of it, hisimaginative revitalization of the great old lines--lines worn like ahighway with the passage of the generations. As a friend of minegraphically phrased it, "How he revives for us the splendour of thetext!"

The splendour of the text! It is a good phrase, and how splendid thetext is we, of course, all know--know so well that we take it forgranted, and so fall into forgetfulness of its significance; forgettingwhat central fires of soul and intellect must have gone to the creationof such a world of transcendent words. 

Yet how living the lines still are, though the generations have almostquoted the life out of them, no man who has spoken them on the stage inour day, except Forbes-Robertson, has had the gift to show. 

It is more than elocution, masterly elocution as it is, more than thesuperbly modulated voice: the power comes of spiritual springs wellingup beneath the voice--springs fed from those infinite sources which "liebeyond the reaches of our souls. "

Merely to take the phrase I have just quoted, how few actors--or readersof Shakespeare, or members of any Shakespearian audience, for thatmatter--have any personal conception of what it means! They may make afine crescendo with it, but that is all. They have never stood, shrinking and appalled, yet drawn with a divine temptation, upon thebrink of that vastness along the margin of which, it is evident, thatHamlet often wandered. It is in vain they tell their audiences andHoratio:

 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

We are quite sure that they know nothing of what they are saying; andthat, as a matter of fact, there are few things for them in heaven orearth except the theatre they are playing in, their actors' club, and, generally, their genial mundane lives; and, of course, one rathercongratulates them on the simplicity of their lives, congratulates themon their ignorance of such haunted regions of the mind. Yet, all thesame, that simplicity seems to disqualify them from playing _Hamlet_. 

Few Shakespearian actors seem to remember what they areplaying--Shakespeare. One would think that to be held a worthyinterpreter of so great a dramatist, so mysterious a mind, and sogolden a poet, were enough distinction. Oscar Wilde, in a finesonnet, addressed Henry Irving as

 Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow, and we may be sure that Irving appreciated the honour thus paid him, hewho so wonderfully interpreted so many of Shakespeare's moods, so wellunderstood the irony of his intellect, even the breadth of his humanity, yet in _Hamlet_, at all events, so strangely missed his soul. 

Most of us have seen many Hamlets die. We have watched them squirmingthrough those scientific contortions of dissolution, to copy which theyhad very evidently walked the hospitals in a businesslike quest ofdeath-agonies, as certain histrionic connoisseurs of madness in Francelovingly haunt the Saltpétrière. As I look back, I wonder how wetolerated their wriggling absurdity. I suppose it was that the hand oftradition was still upon us, as upon them. And, let us not forget, thewords were there, the immortal words, and an atmosphere of tragic deathand immortality that only such words could create:

 Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in the harsh world draw thy breath in pain To hear my story . .. The rest is silence. .. . 

How different it is when Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet dies! All my life Iseem to have been asking my friends, those I loved best, those whovalued the dearest, the kindest, the greatest, and the strongest in ourstrange human life, to come with me and see Forbes-Robertson die in_Hamlet_. I asked them because, as that strange young dead king satupon his throne, there was something, whatever it meant--death, life, immortality, what you will--of a surpassing loveliness, somethingtransfiguring the poor passing moment of trivial, brutal murder into abeauty to which it was quite natural that that stern Northern warrior, with his winged helmet, should bend the knee. I would not exchangeanything I have ever read or seen for Forbes-Robertson as he sits thereso still and starlit upon the throne of Denmark. 

Forbes-Robertson is not merely a great Shakespearian actor; he is agreat spiritual actor. The one doubtless implies the other, though theimplication has not always appeared to be obvious. 

He is prophetic of what the stage will some day be, and what we can seeit here and there preparing to become. In all the welter of the dramaticconditions of the moment there emerges one fact, that of the growingimportance of the stage as a vehicle for what one may term generalculture. The stage, with its half-sister, the cinema, is strangely, by how long and circuitous a route, returning of course, with animmeasurably developed equipment, to its starting-point, endingcuriously where it began as the handmaid of the church. As with the oldmoralities or miracle-plays, it is becoming once more our teacher. Thelessons of truth and beauty, as those of plain gaiety and delight, arerelying more and more upon the actor for their expression, and less onthe accredited doctors of divinity or literature. Even the dancers aredoing much for our souls. Our duties as citizens are being taught us bywell-advertised plays, and if we wish to abolish Tammany or change ourpolice commissioner, we enforce our desire by the object-lesson of aplay. The great new plays may not yet be here, but the public once moreis going to the theatre, as it went long ago in Athens, to be delightedand amused, of course, but also to be instructed in national and civicaffairs, and, most important of all, to be purified by pity and terror. 

XXV

A MEMORY OF FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL

There are many signs that poetry is coming into its own again--evenhere in America, which, while actually one of the most romantic andsentimental of countries, fondly imagines itself the most prosaic. 

Kipling, to name but one instance, has, by his clarion-tonguedquickening of the British Empire, shown so convincingly what dynamicforce still belongs to the right kind of singing, and the poet ingeneral seems to be winning back some of that serious respect from hisfellow-citizens which, under a misapprehension of his effeminacy andgeneral uselessness, he had lost awhile. The poet is not so much a joketo the multitude as he was a few years ago, and the term "minor poet"seems to have fallen into desuetude. 

Still for all this, I doubt if it is in the Anglo-Saxon blood, nowadaysat all events, to make a national hero of a poet, one might say averitable king, such as Frédéric Mistral is today in Provence. In ourtime, Björnson in Norway was perhaps the only parallel figure, and heheld his position as actual "father of his people" for very much thesame reasons. At once a commanding and lovable personality, he and hiswork were absolutely identified with his country and his countrymen. Hewas simply Norway incarnate. 

So, today in Provence, it is with Frédéric Mistral. He is not only apoet of Provence. He is Provence incarnate, and, apart from the noblequality of his work, his position as the foremost representative of hiscompatriots is romantically unique. No other country today, pointing toits greatest man, would point out--a poet; whereas Mistral, were he notas unspoiled as he is laurelled, might, with literal truth, say:

 "_Provence--c'est moi!_"

We had hardly set foot in Provence this last spring, my wife and I, before we realized, with grateful wonder, that we had come to a countrythat has a poet for a king. 

On arriving at Marseilles almost the first word we heard was"Mistral"--not the bitter wind of the same name, but the name of thehoney-tongued "Master. " Our innkeeper--O the delightful innkeepers ofFrance!--on our consulting him as to our project of a walking tripthrough the Midi--as Frenchmen usually speak of Provence--said, for hisfirst aid to the traveller: "Then, of course, you will see our greatpoet, Mistral. " And he promptly produced a copy of _Mirèio_, which hebegged me to use till I had bought a copy for myself. 

"Ah! Mistral, " he cried, with Gallic enthusiasm, using the words I haveborrowed from his lips, "Mistral is the King of Provence!"

Marseilles had not always been so enthusiastic over Mistral and hisfellows. And Mistral, in his memoirs, gives an amusing account of aphilological battle fought over the letter "s" in a room behind one ofthe Marseilles bookshops between "the amateurs of trivialities, therhymers of the white beard, the jealous, the grumblers, " and the younginnovators of the "félibrige. "

But that was over fifty years ago, and the battle of those youngenthusiasts has long since been won. What that battle was and what anextraordinary victory came of it must needs be told for the significanceof Mistral in Provence to be properly understood. 

The story is one of the most romantic in the history of literature. Briefly, it is this:

The Provençal language, the "langue d'oc, " was, of course, once thecourtly and lettered language of Europe, the language of the greattroubadours, and through them the vehicle of the culture and refinementof the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. From it may be said to havesprung the beginnings of Italian literature. 

But, owing to various historical vicissitudes, the language of NorthernFrance, the "langue d'oil, " gradually took its place, and when Mistralwas born, in 1830, Provençal had long been regarded as little more thana _patois_. 

Now it was the young Mistral's dream, as a school-boy in the old conventschool of Saint Michael de Frigolet, at Avignon, to restore his nativetongue to its former high estate, to make it once more a literarylanguage, and it chanced that one of his masters, Joseph Roumanille, wassecretly cherishing the same dream. 

The master, looking over his pupil's shoulder one day, found that, instead of working at his prescribed task, he was busily engaged intranslating the Penitential Psalms into Provençal. Instead of punishinghim, the master gratefully hailed a kindred spirit, and presentlyconfided Provençal verses of his own making. From that moment, thoughthere was a dozen years' difference between their ages, Mistral andRoumanille began a friendship which was to last till Roumanille's death, a friendship of half a century. 

Soon their dream attracted other recruits, and presently seven friends, whose names are all famous now, and most of whom have statues in Arlesor in Avignon--Roumanille, Mistral, Aubanel, Mathieu, Giéra, Brunet, andTavan--after the manner of Ronsard's "Pléiade, " and Rossetti's"P. R. B. "--formed themselves into a brotherhood to carry on the greatwork of regeneration. 

They needed a name to call themselves by. They had all met together totalk things over in the old castle of Font-Ségugne, or, as Mistral morepicturesquely puts it: "It was written in heaven that one blossomingSunday, the twenty-first of May, 1854, in the full springtide of lifeand of the year, seven poets should come to meet together in the castleof Font-Ségugne. " Several suggestions were made for a name for thisbrotherhood, but presently Mistral announced that in an old folk-storyhe had collected at his birthplace, Maillane, he believed that he hadfound the word they were in search of. In this folk-story the boy Christis represented as discoursing in the temple with "the seven félibres ofthe Law. "

"Why, that is us!" exclaimed the enthusiastic young men as Mistralfinished, and there on the spot "félibre" was adopted as the password oftheir order, Mistral coining the word "félibrige" to represent the workthey aimed to do, and also their association. The name stuck, and hasnow for many years been the banner-word for the vigorous school ofProvençal literature and the allied arts of painting and sculpture whichhas responded with such eager vitality to Mistral's rallying cry. 

But, excellent as are the other poets which the school has produced--andone need only glance through a recent _Anthologie du Félibrige_ torealize what a wealth of true poetry the word "félibrige" now standsfor--there can be no question that its greatest asset still remainsMistral's own work, as it was his first great poem, _Mirèio_, whichfirst drew the eyes of literary Paris, more than inclined to becontemptuous, to the Provençal renaissance. 

Adolphe Dumas had been sent to Provence in the year 1856 by the Ministerof Public Instruction to collect the folk-songs of the people, andcalling on Mistral (then twenty-six), living quietly with his widowedmother at Maillane, he had found him at work on _Mirèio_. Mistral readsome passages to him, with the result that the generous Dumas returnedto Paris excitedly to proclaim the advent of a new poet. Presently, Mistral accepted his invitation to visit Paris, was introduced to thegreat Lamartine--who has left some charming pages descriptive of hisvisit, --read some of _Mirèio_ to him, and was hailed by him as "theHomer of Provence. "

The press, however, had its little fling at the new-comer. "The Mistralit appears, " said one pitiful punster, "has been incarnated in a poem. We shall soon see whether it is anything else but wind. " Such has beenthe invariable welcome of great men in a small world. 

But Mistral had no taste for Paris, either as a lion or a butt, and, after a few days' stay, we find him once more quietly at home atMaillane. Yet he had brought back with him one precious trophy--thepraise of Lamartine; and when, in the course of a year or two (1859), _Mirèio_ came to be published at Avignon, it bore, as it still bears, this heart-felt dedication to Lamartine:

"To thee I dedicate _Mirèio_; it is my heart and my soul; it is theflower of my years; it is a bunch of grapes from Crau with all itsleaves--a rustic's offering. "

With the publication of _Mirèio_ Mistral instantly "arrived, " instantlyfound himself on that throne which, as year has followed year, hasbecome more securely his own. Since then he has written much noblepoetry, all embodying and vitalizing the legendary lore of his nativeland, a land richer in momentous history, perhaps, than any othersection of Europe. But in addition to his poetry he has, single-handed, carried through the tremendous scholarly task of compiling a dictionaryof the Provençal language--a _Thesaurus of the Félibrige_, for whichwork the Institute awarded him a prize of ten thousand francs. 

In 1904, he was awarded the Nobel prize of 100, 000 francs, but such ishis devotion to his fellow-countrymen that he did not keep that prizefor himself, but used it to found the Musée Arlésien at Arles, a museumdesigned as a treasure house of anything and everything pertaining tothe history and life of Provence--antiquities, furniture, costumes, paintings, and so forth. 

It was in Arles in 1909, the fiftieth birthday of _Mirèio_, thatMistral, then seventy-nine years old, may be said to have reached thesummit of his romantic fame. A great festival was held in his honour, inwhich the most distinguished men of France took part. A dramatizedversion of his _Mirèio_ was played in the old Roman amphitheatre, and astriking statue of him was unveiled in the antique public square, thePlace du Forum, with the shade of Constantine looking on, one mightfeel, from his mouldering palace hard by. 

In Arles Mistral is a well-known, beloved figure, for it is his custom, every Saturday, to come there from Maillane, to cast his eye over theprogress of his museum, the pet scheme of his old age. One wonders howit must seem to pass that figure of himself, pedestaled high in the oldsquare. To few men is it given to pass by their own statues in thestreet. Sang a very different poet--

 They grind us to the dust with poverty, And build us statues when we come to die. 

But poor Villon had the misfortune to be a poet of the "langue d'oil, "and the Montfaucon gibbet was the only monument of which he stood indaily expectation. Could the lines of two poets offer a greatercontrast? Blessed indeed is he who serves the rural gods, Pan and OldSylvanus and the sister nymphs--as Virgil sang; and Virgilian indeed hasbeen the golden calm, and sunlit fortunes, as Virgilian, rather thanHomeric, is the gracious art, of the poet whom his first Parisianadmirer, Adolphe Dumas, called "the Homer of Provence"--as Virgilian, too, seemed the landscape through which at length, one April afternoon, we found ourselves on pilgrimage to the home of him whose name had beenon the lips of every innkeeper, shopkeeper, and peasant, all the wayfrom Marseilles to Tarascon. 

Yes! the same golden peace that lies like a charm across every pageof his greatest poem lay across that sun-steeped, fertile plain, with its walls of cypress trees, its lines of poplars, its delicate, tapestry-like designs of almond trees in blossom, on a sombre backgroundof formal olive orchards, its green meadows, lit up with singingwater-courses, or gleaming irrigation canals, starred here and therewith the awakening kingcup, or sweet with the returning violet--hereand there a farmhouse ("mas, " as they call them in Provence) snuglysheltered from the mistral by their screens of foliage--and far aloft inthe distance, floating like a silver dream, the snow-white shoulder ofMont Ventoux--the Fuji Yama of Provence. 

At last the old, time-worn village came in sight--it lies about tenmiles north-east of Tartarin's Tarascon--and we entered it, as wasproper, with the "Master's" words on our lips: "Maillane is beautiful, well-pleasing is Maillane; and it grows more and more beautiful everyday. Maillane is the honour of the countryside, and takes its name fromthe month of May. 

"Who would be in Paris or in Rome? Poor conscripts! There is nothing tocharm one there; but Maillane has its equal nowhere--and one wouldrather eat an apple in Maillane than a partridge in Paris. "

It was Sunday afternoon, and the streets were full of young people intheir Sunday finery, the girls wearing the pretty Arlésien caps. Atfirst sight of us, with our knapsacks, they were prepared to be amused, and saucy lads called out things in mock English; but when it wasunderstood that we were seeking the house of the "Master" we inspiredimmediate respect, and a dozen eager volunteers put themselves at ourservice and accompanied us in a body to where, at the eastern edge ofthe village, there stands an unpretentious square stone house of nogreat antiquity, surrounded by a garden and half hidden with trees. 

We stood silently looking at the house for a few minutes, trying torealize that there a great poet had gone on living and working, insingle-minded devotion to his art and his people, for full fiftyyears--there in that green, out-of-the-way corner of the world. Theidea of a life so rooted in contentment, so continuously happy in thelifelong prosecution of a task set to itself in boyhood, and soindependent of change, is one not readily grasped by the hurryingAmerican mind. 

Then we pushed open the iron gate and passed into the garden. A pavedwalk led up to the front door, but that had an unused look, and, gainingno response there, we walked through a shrubbery around the side of thehouse, and as we turned the corner came on what was evidently the realentrance, facing a sunny slope of garden where hyacinths and violetstold of the coming of spring. Here we were greeted by some half a dozenfriendly dogs, whose demonstrations brought to the door a neat little, keen-eyed peasant woman, with an expression in her face that suggestedthat she was the real watch dog, on behalf of her master, standingbetween him and an intrusive world. As a matter of fact, as we afterwardlearned, that is one of her many self-imposed offices, for, having beenin the Mistral household for many years, she has long since been as mucha family friend as a servant, and generally looks after the Master andMme. Mistral as if they were her children, nursing and "bossing" them byturns. "Elise"--I think her name is--is a "character" almost as wellknown in Provence as the Master himself. 

So she looked sharply at us, while I produced a letter to M. Mistralwhich had been given me by a humble associate of the "félibres, " adelightful _chansonnier_ we had met at Les Baux. With this she wentindoors, presently to return with a face of still cautious welcome, andinvited us in to a little square hall hung with photographs of variousdistinguished friends of the poet and two bronze medallions of himself, one representing him with his favourite dog. 

Then a door to the right opened, revealing a typical scholar's study, lined with books from ceiling to floor, books and papers on tables andchairs, and framed photographs again on the free wall space. The springsunshine poured in through long windows, and in this characteristicsetting stood a tall old man, astonishingly erect, his distinguishedhead, with its sparse white locks, its keen eyes, and strong yetdelicate aquiline features, pointed white beard and mustache, suggesting pictures of some military grand seigneur of old time. Hiscarriage had the same blending of soldier and nobleman, and the statelykindliness with which he bade us welcome belonged, alas! to another day. 

At his side stood a tall, handsome lady, with remarkable, dark, kindeyes, evidently many years his junior. This was Mme. Mistral, in her dayone of those "queens of beauty" whom the "félibres" elect every sevenyears at their floral fêtes. Mme. Mistral was no less gracious to usthan her husband, and joined in the talk that followed with muchanimation and charm. 

We had a little feared that M. Mistral, as he declines to write inanything but Provençal, might carry his artistic creed into hisconversation too. To our relief, however, he spoke in the most polishedFrench--for you may know French very well, but be quite unable tounderstand Provençal, either printed or spoken. This had sometimes madeour journeying difficult, as we inquired our way of peasants along theroad. 

It was natural to talk first to Mistral of literature. We inquiredwhether he read much English. He shook his head, smiling. No! outside ofone or two of the great classics, Shakespeare and Milton, for example, he had read little. Yes! he had read one American author--FenimoreCooper. _Le Feu-Follet_ had been a favourite book of his boyhood. Thiswe identified as _The Fire-Fly_. 

He seemed to wish to talk about America rather than literature, andseemed immensely interested in the fact that we were Americans, and heraised his eyes, with an expression of French wonderment, at the factof our walking our way through the country--as also at the length ofthe journey from America. Evidently it seemed to him a tremendousundertaking. 

"You Americans, " he said, "are a wonderful people. You think nothing ofgoing around the world. "

We were surprised to find that he took the keenest interest in Americanpolitics. 

"It must be a terribly difficult country to govern, " he said. And thenhe asked us eagerly for news of our "extraordinary President. " Wesuggested Mr. Wilson. 

"Oh, no! no!" he explained. "The extraordinary man who was Presidentbefore him. "

"Colonel Roosevelt?"

Yes, that was the man--a most remarkable man that! So Colonel Rooseveltmay be interested to hear that the poet-king of Provence is anenthusiastic Bull Mooser. 

Of course, we talked too of the "félibrige, " and it was beautiful to seehow M. Mistral's face softened at the mention of his friend JosephRoumanille, and with what generosity he attributed the origin of thegreat movement to his dead friend. 

"But you must by all means call on Mme. Roumanille, " said he, "when yougo to Avignon, and say that I sent you"--for Roumanille's widow stilllives, one of the most honoured muses of the "félibrige. "

When it was time for us to go on our way, nothing would satisfy M. AndMme. Mistral but that we drink a glass of a cordial which is made by"Elise" from Mistral's own recipe; and as we raised the tiny glasses ofthe innocent liqueur in our hands, Mistral drank "A l'Amérique!"

Then, taking a great slouch hat from a rack in the hall, and looking asthough it was his statue from Aries accompanying us, the stately old manled us out into the road, and pointed us the way to Avignon. 

On the 30th of this coming September that great old man--the memory ofwhose noble presence and beautiful courtesy will remain with usforever--will be eighty-three. 

February, 1913. 

XXVI

IMPERISHABLE FICTION

The longevity of trees is said to be in proportion to the slowness oftheir growth. It has to do no little as well with the depth and area oftheir roots and the richness of the soil in which they find themselves. When the sower went forth to sow, it will be remembered, that which soonsprang up as soon withered away. It was the seed that was content to"bring forth fruit with patience" that finally won out and survived theothers. 

These humble, old-fashioned illustrations occur to me as I apply myselfto the consideration of the question provoked by the lightningover-production of modern fiction and modern literature generally: thequestion of the flourishing longevity of the fiction of the past ascompared with the swift oblivion which seems almost invariably toover-take the much-advertised "masterpieces" of the present. 

I read somewhere a ballade asking--where are the "best sellers" ofyesteryear? The ballad-maker might well ask, and one might re-echo withVillon: "Mother of God, ah! where are they?" During the last twentyyears they have been as the sands on the seashore for multitude, yet Ithink one would be hard set to name a dozen of them whose titles evenare still on the lips of men--whereas several quieter books publishedduring that same period, unheralded by trumpet or fire-balloon, are seenserenely to be ascending to a sure place in the literary firmament. 

What can be the reason? Can the decay of these forgotten phenomena ofmodern fiction, so lavishly crowned with laurels manufactured in theoffices of their own publishers, have anything to do with the hecticrapidity of their growth, and may there be some truth in the suppositionthat the novels, and books generally, that live longest are those thattook the longest to write, or, at all events underwent the longestperiods of gestation?

Some fifteen years or so ago one of the most successful manufacturers ofbest sellers was Guy Boothby, whose _Dr. Nikola_ is perhaps stillremembered. Unhappily he did not live long to enjoy the fruits of hisindustrious dexterity. I bring his case to mind as typical of the modernmachine-made methods. 

I had read in a newspaper that he did his "writing" by phonograph, andchancing to meet him somewhere, asked him about it. His response was toinvite me to come down to his charming country house on the Thames andsee how he did it. Boothby was a fine, manly fellow, utterly without"side" or any illusions as to the quality of his work. He loved goodliterature too well--Walter Pater, incongruously enough, was one of hisidols--to dream that he could make it. Nor was the making of literatureby any means his first preoccupation, as he made clear, with winningfrankness, within a few moments of my arriving at his home. 

Taking me out into his grounds, he brought me to some extensive kennels, where he showed me with pride some fifty or so prize dogs; then he tookme to his stables, his face shining with pleasure in his thoroughbreds;and again he led the way to a vast hennery, populated with innumerableprize fowls. 

"These are the things I care about, " he said, "and I write the stuff forwhich it appears I have a certain knack only because it enables me tobuy them!"

Would that all writers of best sellers were as engagingly honest. No fewof them, however, write no better and affect the airs of genius into thebargain. 

Then Boothby took me into his "study, " the entire literary apparatus ofwhich consisted of three phonographs; and he explained that, when he haddictated a certain amount of a novel into one of them, he handed it overto his secretary in another room, who set it going and transcribed whathe had spoken into the machine; he, meanwhile, proceeding to fill upanother record. And he concluded airily by saying with a laugh that hehad a novel of 60, 000 words to deliver in ten days, and was just on thepoint of beginning it!

Boothby's method was, I believe, somewhat unusual in those days. Sincethen it has become something like the rule. Not so much as regardsthe phonograph, perhaps, but with respect to the breathless speed ofproduction. 

I am informed by an editor, associated with magazines that use no lessthan a million and a half words of fiction a month, that he has amonghis contributors more than one writer on whom he can rely to turn off anovel of 60, 000 words in six days, and that he can put his finger ontwenty novelists who think nothing of writing a novel of a hundredthousand words in anywhere from sixty to ninety days. He recalled to me, too, the case of a well-known novelist who has recently contracted tosupply a publisher with four novels in one year, each novel to run tonot less than a hundred thousand words. One thinks of the Scotsman withhis "Where's your Willie Shakespeare now?"

Even Balzac's titanic industry must hide its diminished head before suchappalling fecundity; and what would Horace have to say to such frog-likeverbal spawning, with his famous "labour of the file" and his counsel towriters "to take a subject equal to your powers, and consider long whatyour shoulders refuse, what they are able to bear. " It is to be fearedthat "the monument more enduring than brass" is not erected with suchrapidity. The only brass associated with the modern best seller is tobe found in the advertisements; and, indeed, all that both purveyor andconsumer seem to care about may well be summed up in the publisher'srecommendation quoted by Professor Phelps: "This book goes with a rushand ends with a smash. " Such, one might add, is the beginning and endingof all literary rockets. 

Now let us recall some fiction that has been in the world anywhere from, say, three hundred years to fifty years and is yet vigorously alive, and, in many instances, to be classed still with the best sellers. 

_Don Quixote_, for example, was published in 1605, but is still activelyselling. Why? May it perhaps be that it was some six years in thewriting, and that a great man, who was soldier as well as writer, charged it with the vitality of all his blood and tears and laughter, all the hard-won humanity of years of manful living, those five years asa slave in Algiers (actually beginning it in prison once more at LaMancha), and all the stern struggle of a storm-tossed life faced withheroic steadfastness and gaiety of heart?

Take another book which, if it is not read as much as it used to be, andstill deserves to be, is certainly far from being forgotten--_Gil Blas_. Published in 1715--that is, its first two parts--it has now twocenturies of popularity to its credit, and is still as racy withhumanity as ever; but, though Le Sage was a rapid and voluminous writer, over this one book which alone the world remembers it is significant tonote that he expended unusual time and pains. He was forty-seven yearsold when the first two parts were published. The third part was notpublished till 1724, and eleven years more were to elapse before theissue of the fourth and final part in 1735. 

A still older book that is still one of the world's best sellers, _ThePilgrim's Progress_, can hardly be conceived as being dashed off insixty or ninety days, and would hardly have endured so long had notBunyan put into it those twelve years of soul torment in Bedford gaol. _Robinson Crusoe_ still sells its annual thousands, whereas others ofits author's books no less skilfully written are practically forgotten, doubtless because Defoe, fifty-eight years old at its publication, hadconcentrated in it the ripe experience of a lifetime. Though a boy'sbook to us, he clearly intended it for an allegory of his own arduous, solitary life. 

"I, Robinson Crusoe, " we read, "do affirm that the story, thoughallegorical, is also historical, and that it is the beautifulrepresentation of a life of unexampled misfortune, and of a varietynot to be met with in this world. "

_The Vicar of Wakefield_, as we know, was no hurried piece of work. Indeed, Goldsmith went about it in so leisurely a fashion as to leave itneglected in a drawer of his desk, till Johnson rescued it, according tothe proverbial anecdote; and even then its publisher, Newbery, was inno hurry, for he kept it by him another two years before giving it tothe printer and to immortality. It was certainly one of those fruits"brought forth with patience" all round. 

_Tom Jones_ is another such slow-growing masterpiece. Written in thesad years immediately following the death of his dearly loved wife, Fielding, dedicating it to Lord Lyttelton, says: "I here present youwith the labours of some years of my life"; and it need scarcelybe added that the book, as in the case of all real masterpieces, represented not merely the time expended on it, but all the accumulatedexperience of Fielding's very human history. 

Yes! Whistler's famous answer to Ruskin's counsel holds good of allimperishable literature. Had he the assurance to ask two hundred guineasfor a picture that only took a day to paint? No, replied Whistler, heasked it for "the training of a lifetime"; and it is this training of alifetime, in addition to the actual time expended on composition, thatconstitutes the reserve force of all great works of fiction, and isentirely lacking in most modern novels, however superficially brilliantbe their workmanship. 

For this reason books like George Borrow's _Lavengro_ and _Romany Rye_, failures on their publication, grow greater rather than less with thepassage of time. Their writers, out of the sheer sincerity of theirnatures, furnished them, as by magic, with an inexhaustible provision oflife-giving "ichor. " To quote from Milton, "a good book is the preciouslife-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to alife beyond life. "

Of this immortality principle in literature Milton himself, it needhardly be said, is one of the great exemplars. He was but thirty-twowhen he first projected _Paradise Lost_, and through all the interveningyears of hazardous political industry he had kept the seed warm in hisheart, its fruit only to be brought forth with tragic patience in thoseseven years of blindness and imminent peril of the scaffold whichfollowed his fiftieth birthday. 

The case of poets is not irrelevant to our theme, for the conditions ofall great literature, whatever its nature, are the same. Therefore, we may recall Dante, whose _Divine Comedy_ was with him from histhirty-fifth year till the year of his death, the bitter-sweet companionof twenty years of exile. Goethe, again, finished at eighty the _Faust_he had conceived at twenty. 

Spenser was at work on his _Faerie Queene_, alongside his preoccupationwith state business, for nearly twenty years. Pope was twelve yearstranslating Homer, and I think there is little doubt that Gray's _Elegy_owes much of its staying power to the Horatian deliberation with whichGray polished and repolished it through eight years. 

If we are to believe Poe's _Philosophy of Composition_, and there is, Ithink, more truth in it than is generally allowed, the vitality of _TheRaven_, as that, too, of his genuinely imperishable fictions, is lessdue to inspiration than to the mathematical painstaking of theircomposition. 

But, perhaps, of all poets, the story of Virgil is most instructive foran age of "get-rich-quick" _littérateurs_. On his _Georgics_ alone heworked seven years, and, after working eleven years on the _Aeneid_, hewas still so dissatisfied with it that on his death-bed he besought hisfriends to burn it, and on their refusal, commanded his servants tobring the manuscript that he might burn it himself. But, fortunately, Augustus had heard portions of it, and the imperial veto overpowered thepoet's infanticidal desire. 

But, to return to the novelists, it may at first sight seem that thegreat writer who, with the Waverley Novels, inaugurated the modern eraof cyclonic booms and mammoth sales, was an exception to the classicformula of creation which we are endeavouring to make good. Stevenson, we have been told, used to despair as he thought of Scott's "immensefecundity of invention" and "careless, masterly ease. "

"I cannot compete with that, " he says--"what makes me sick is to thinkof Scott turning out _Guy Mannering_ in three weeks. "

Scott's speed is, indeed, one of the marvels of literary history, yetin his case, perhaps more than in that of any other novelist, it mustbe remembered that this speed had, in an unusual degree, that "trainingof a lifetime" to rely upon; as from his earliest boyhood all Scott'sfaculties had been consciously as well as unconsciously engaged inabsorbing and, by the aid of his astonishing memory, preserving thevast materials on which he was able thus carelessly to draw. 

Moreover, those who have read his manly autobiography know that thisspeed was by no means all "ease, " as witness the almost tragiccomposition of _The Bride of Lammermoor_. If ever a writer scorneddelights and lived laborious days, it was Walter Scott. At the same timethe condition of his fame in the present day bears out the general truthof my contention, for there is little doubt that he would be more widelyread than he is were it not for those too frequent _longueurs_ and inertpaddings which resulted from his too hurried workmanship. 

Jane Austen is another example of comparatively rapid creation, writingthree of her best-known novels, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Sense andSensibility_, and _Northanger Abbey_ between the ages of twenty-one andtwenty-three. Yet _Pride and Prejudice_, which practically survives theothers, took her ten months to complete, and all her writings, it hasagain to be said, had first been deeply and intimately "lived. "

Charlotte Brontë was a year in writing _Jane Eyre_, spurred on to neweffort by the recent rejection of _The Professor_; but to write such abook in a year cannot be called over-hasty production when one considershow much of _Jane Eyre_ was drawn from Charlotte Brontë's own life, andalso how she and her sisters had been experimenting with literature fromtheir earliest childhood. 

Thackeray considered an allowance of two years sufficient for thewriting of a good novel, but that seems little enough when one takesinto account the length of his best-known books, not to mention theperfection of their craftsmanship. Dickens, for all the prodigious bulkof his output, was rather a steady than a rapid writer. "He considered, "says Forster, "three of his not very large manuscript pages a good, andfour an excellent, day's work. "

_David Copperfield_ was about a year and nine months in the writing, having been begun in the opening of 1849 and completed in October, 1850. _Bleak House_ took a little longer, having been begun in November, 1851, and completed in August, 1853. _Hard Times_ was a hasty piece of work, written between the winter of 1853, and the summer of 1854, and itcannot be considered one of Dickens's notable successes. 

George Meredith wrote four of his greatest novels in seven years, _Richard Feverel_, _Evan Harrington_, _Sandra Belloni_, and _RhodaFleming_ being produced between 1859 and 1866. His poem, _Modern Love_, was also written during that period. 

George Eliot was a much-meditating, painstaking writer, though _AdamBede_ cost her little more than a year's work. Her novels, however, asa rule, did not come forth without prayer and fasting, and, in thecourse of their creation, she used often to suffer from "hopelessnessand melancholy. " _Romola_, to which she devoted long and studiouspreparation, she was often on the point of giving up, and in regard toit she gives expression to a literary ideal to which the gentleman withthe contract for four novels a year, referred to in the outset of thispaper, is probably a stranger. 

 It may turn out [she says], that I can't work freely and fully enough in the medium I have chosen, and in that case I must give it up; for I will never write anything to which my whole heart, mind, and conscience don't consent; so that I may feel it was something--however small--which wanted to be done in this world, and that I am just the organ for that small bit of work. 

Charles Kingsley who, if not a great novelist, has to his credit in_Westward Ho!_ one romance at least which, in the old phrase, "the worldwill not willingly let die, " was as conscientious in his work as he wasbrilliant. 

Says a friend who was with him while he was writing _Hypatia_:

"He took extraordinary pains to be accurate. We spent one whole day insearching the four folio volumes of Synesius for a fact he thought wasthere, and which was found there at last. "

The writer of perhaps the greatest historical novel in the Englishlanguage, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, was what one might call aglutton for thoroughness. Of himself Charles Reade has said: "I studiedthe great art of fiction closely for fifteen years before I presumedto write a line. I was a ripe critic before I became an artist. " Hiscommonplace books, on the entries in which and the indexing he wasaccustomed to spend one whole day out of each week, cataloguing thenotes of his multifarious reading and pasting in cuttings fromnewspapers likely to be useful in novel-building, completely filledone of the rooms in his house. In his will he left these open to theinspection of literary students who cared to study the methods whichhe had found so serviceable. 

To name one or two more English novelists: Thomas Hardy's novels wouldseem to have the slow growth of deep-rooted things. His greatest work, _The Return of the Native_, was on the stocks for four years, though ayear seems to have sufficed for _Far from the Madding Crowd_. 

The meticulous practice of Stevenson is proverbial, but this glimpse ofhis method is worth catching again. 

 The first draft of a story [records Mr. Charles D. Lanier], Stevenson wrote out roughly, or dictated to Lloyd Osbourne. When all the colours were in hand for the complete picture, he invariably penned it himself, with exceeding care. .. . If the first copy did not please him, he patiently made a second or a third draft. In his stern, self-imposed apprenticeship of phrase-making he had prepared himself for these workmanlike methods by the practice of rewriting his trial stories into dramas and then reworking them into stories again. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne brought the devoted, one might say, the devotional, spirit of the true artist to all his work, but _The Scarlet Letter_ waswritten at a good pace when once started, though, as usual, the germhad been in Hawthorne's mind for many years. The story of its beginningis one of the many touching anecdotes in that history of authorshipwhich Carlyle compared to the Newgate Calendar. Incidentally, too, itwitnesses that an author occasionally meets with a good wife. 

One wintry autumn day in Salem, Hawthorne returned home earlier thanusual from the custom-house. With pale lips, he said to his wife: "I amturned out of office. " To which she--God bless her!--cheerily replied:"Very well! now you can write your book!" and immediately set aboutlighting his study fire and generally making things comfortable for hiswork. 

The book was _The Scarlet Letter_, and was completed by the followingFebruary, Hawthorne, as his wife said, writing "immensely" on it dayafter day, nine hours a day. When finished, Hawthorne seems to have beendispirited about the story, and put it away in a drawer; but the goodJames T. Fields chanced soon to call on him, and asked him if he hadanything for him to publish. 

"Who, " asked Hawthorne gloomily, "would risk publishing a book from me, the most unpopular writer in America?"

"I would, " was Field's rejoinder, and after some further sparring, Hawthorne owned up. 

"As you have found me out, " said he, "take what I have written and tellme if it is good for anything"; and Fields went away with the manuscriptof what is, without any question, America's greatest novel. 

Turning to the great novelists of France, with one or two exceptions, they all bear out the theory of longevity in literature which I havebeen endeavouring to support. It must reluctantly be confessed that oneof the most fascinatingly vital of them all, Alexandre Dumas, is one ofthe exceptions, born improvisator as he was; yet immense research, itneeds hardly be said, went to the making of his enormous library ofromance--even though, it be allowed, that much of that work was done forhim by his "disciples. "

George Sand was another facile, all too facile, writer. Here is adescription of her method:

 To write novels was to her only a process of nature. She seated herself before her table at ten o'clock, with scarcely a plot and only the slightest acquaintance with her characters, and until five in the evening, while her hand guided a pen, the novel wrote itself. Next day, and the next, it was the same. By and by the novel had written itself in full and another was unfolding. 

Whether George Sand is still alive as a novelist, apart from her placeas an historic personality, I leave others to decide; but I am very surethat she would be read a great deal more than she is if she had not soconfidently left her novels--to write themselves. Different, indeed, wasthe method of Balzac, toiling year after year at his colossal task of_The Human Comedy_, sometimes working eighteen hours a day, and neverless than twelve, and that "in the midst of protested bills, businessannoyances, the most cruel financial straits, in utter solitude and lackof all consolation. " But then Balzac was sustained by one of those greatdreams, without whose aid no lasting literature is produced, the dream, "by infinite patience and courage, to compose for the France of thenineteenth century, that history of morals which the old civilizationsof Rome, Athens, Memphis, and India have left untold. "

To fulfil this he was able to live, for a long period, on a dailyexpenditure of "three sous for bread, two for milk, and three forfiring. " But doubtless it had been different if his dream had beenprize puppies, a garage full of motor-cars, or a translation into theFour Hundred. 

Victor Hugo, again, was one of the herculean artists, working, inEmerson's phrase, "in a sad sincerity, " with the patience of an ant andthe energy of a volcano. Of his _Les Misérables_--perhaps the greatestnovel ever written, as it is, I suppose, easily the longest--he said, "it takes me nearly as long to publish a book as to write one"; and hewas at work on _Les Misérables_, off and on, for nearly fifteen years. Of his writing _Notre Dame_ (that other colossus of fiction) this quaintpicture has been preserved. He had made vast historical preparations forit, but ever there seemed still more to make, till at length hispublisher grew impatient, and under his pressure Hugo at last made astart--after this fashion:

 He purchased a great grey woollen wrapper that covered him from head to foot, he locked up all his clothes lest he should be tempted to go out, and, carrying off his ink-bottle to his study, applied himself to his labour just as if he had been in prison. He never left the table except for food and sleep, and the sole recreation that he allowed himself was an hour's chat after dinner with M. Pierre Leroux, or any other friend who might drop in, and to whom he would occasionally read over his day's work. 

Daudet, whose _Tartarin_ bids fair to remain one of the world's types, like _Don Quixote_ or _Mr. Micawber_, for all his natural Provençalgift of improvisation and, indeed, from his self-recognized necessityof keeping it in check, was another strenuous artist. He wrote eachmanuscript three times over, he told his biographer, and would write itas many more if he could; and his son, in writing of him, has this truthto say of his, as of all living work:

 The fact is that labour does not begin at the moment when the artist takes his pen. It begins in sustained reflection and in the thought which accumulates images and sifts them, garners and winnows them out, and compels life to keep control over imagination, and imagination to expand and enlarge life. 

Zola is perhaps unduly depreciated nowadays, but certainly, if Carlyle's"infinite capacity for taking pains" as a recipe for genius ever was putto the test, it was by the author of the Rougon-Macquart series. Talkingof rewriting, Prosper Mérimée, best known for _Carmen_, is said to haverewritten his _Colomba_ no less than sixteen times; as our Anglo-SaxonKipling, it used to be told, wrote his short stories seven times over. 

But, of course, the classical example of the artist-fanatic in moderntimes was Gustave Flaubert. His agonies in quest of the _mot propre_, the one and only word, are proverbial, and are said literally to havebroken down his nerves. Mr. Huneker has told of him that "he wouldannotate three hundred volumes for a page of facts. .. . In twenty pageshe sometimes saved three or four from destruction, " and, in the courseof twenty-six years' polishing and pruning of _The Temptation of SaintAnthony_, he reduced his original manuscript of 540 pages down to 136, even reducing it still further after its first publication. 

On _Madame Bovary_ he worked six years, and in writing _Salâmmbo_, which, took him no less time, he studied the scenery on the spot andexhausted the resources of the Imperial Library in his search fordocumentary evidences. 

Flaubert may be said to have carried his passion for perfection to thepoint of mania, and it will be a question with some whether, with allhis pains, he can be called a great novelist, after all. But that he wasa great stylist and a master in the art of making terrible and beautifulbas-reliefs admits of no doubt. 

To be a great world-novelist you need an all-embracing humanity as well, such as we find in Tolstoy's _War and Peace_--but that great book, needone say, came of no slipshod speed of improvisation. On the contrary, Tolstoy corrected and recorrected it so often that his wife, who actedas his amanuensis, is said to have copied the whole enormous manuscriptno less than seven times!

Yes! though it be doubtless true, in Mr. Kipling's famous phrase, that

 There are nine and sixty ways Of inditing tribal lays, And every blessed one of them is right, I think that the whole nine and sixty of them include somewhere in theirmethod those sole preservative virtues of truth to life and passionateartistic integrity. The longest-lived books, whatever their nature, haveusually been the longest growing; and even those lasting things ofliterature that have seemed, as it were, to spring up in a night, havebeen long in secret preparation in a soil mysteriously enriched andrefined by the hid processes of time. 

XXVII

THE MAN BEHIND THE PEN

Bulwer's deservedly famous phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword, "beneath its surface application, if you think it over, has this furthersuggestion to make to the believer in literature--that, as the sword isof no value as a weapon apart from the man that wields it, so, and noless so, is it with the pen. A mere pen, a mere sword--of what use arethey, save as mural decorations, without a man behind them?

And that recalls a memory of mine, which, as both great men are nowdrinking wine in Valhalla out of the skulls of their critics, there canbe no harm in recalling. 

Some years ago I was on an unforgettable visit to Björnson, at hiscountry home of Aulestad, near Lillehammer. This is not the moment torelive that beautiful memory as a whole. All that is pertinent to mypresent purpose is a remark in regard to Ibsen that Björnson flashed outone day, shaking his great white mane with earnestness, his noble facealight with the spirit of battle. We had been talking of his possiblytoo successful attempt to sever Norway from Sweden, and Ibsen came insomehow incidentally. 

"Ibsen, " said he, "is not a man. He is only a pen. "

There is no necessity to discuss the justice of the dictum. Probably, ifever there was a man behind a pen, it was Ibsen; but Ibsen's manhoodconcentrated itself entirely behind his pen, whereas Björnson's employedother weapons also, such as his gift of oratory, and was generally moredramatically in evidence. Björnson and Ibsen, as we know, did not agreeon a number of things. Thus Björnson, like a human being, was unjust. But his phrase was a useful one, and I am using it. It was misapplied toIbsen; but, put in the form of a question, I know of no better singletest to apply to writers, dead or alive, than--

"Is this a man? Or is it only a pen?"

Said Walt Whitman, in his familiar "So Long" to _Leaves of Grass_:

 Camerado, this is no book; Who touches this touches a man. 

And, of course, Walt was right about his own book, whether you like theman behind _Leaves of Grass_ or not; but also that assertion of hismight be chalked as a sort of customs "O. K. " on all literary baggagewhatsoever that has passed free into immortality. There is positively nowriter that has withstood the searching examination of time, on whosebook that final stamp of literary reality may not be placed. On everyclassic, Time has scrawled ineffaceably:

 This is no book; Who touches this touches a man. 

I raise the question of reality in literature in no merely academicspirit. For those who not only love books, but care for literature as aliving thing, the question is a particularly live issue at the presenttime, when not only the quantity of writing is so enormous, but theaverage quality of it is so astonishingly good, when technique thatwould almost humble the masters, and would certainly dazzle them, is anaccomplishment all but commonplace. At any rate, it is so usual as tocreate no special surprise. If people write at all, it is taken forgranted, nowadays, that they write well. And the number of people at thepresent time writing not only well, but wonderfully well, is littleshort of appalling. 

In this, for those who ponder the phenomena of literature, there is lessmatter for congratulation than would seem likely at first sight. Thereis, indeed, no little bewilderment, and some disquietude. Confrontedwith short stories--and novels also, for that matter--told with a skillwhich makes the old masters of fiction look like clumsy amateurs;confronted, too, with a thousand poets--the number is scarcely anexaggeration--with accomplishments of metre and style that make somefamous singers seem like clodhoppers of the muse, one is obliged to askoneself:

"Are these brilliant writers really greater than those that wentbefore?"

If for some reason, felt at first rather than defined, we answer "no, "we are forced to the conclusion that, after all, literature must besomething more than a mere matter of writing. If so, we are constrainedto ask ourselves, what is it?

The men who deal with manuscripts--editors, publishers' readers, andpublishers, men not only expert witnesses in regard to the printedliterature of the day, but also curiously learned in the story of thebook unborn, the vast mass of writing that never arrives at print--areeven more impressed by what one might call the uncanny literarybrilliance of the time. They are also puzzled by the lack of a certainsomething missing in work which otherwise possesses every nameablequality of literary excellence. One of these, an editor with an eye assympathetic as it is keen, told me of an instance to the point, typicalof a hundred others. 

He had been unusually struck by a story sent in to him by an unknownwriter. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point ofview--plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had somuch that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. Hesent for the writer, and told him just what he thought. 

"But, " he ended, after praise such as an editor seldom risks, "there issomething the matter with it, after all. I wonder if you can tell mewhat it is. "

The writer was, for a writer so flattered, strangely modest. All hecould say, he answered, was that he had done his best. The editor, agreeing that he certainly seemed to have done that, was all the morecurious to find out how it was that a man who could do so well had notbeen able to add to his achievement the final "something" that wasmissing. 

"What puzzles me, " said the editor finally, "is that, with all therest, you were not able to add--humanity. Your story seems to havebeen written by a wonderful literary machine, instead of by a man. "

And, no doubt, the young story-writer went away sorrowful, in spite ofthe acceptance of his story--which, after all, was only lacking in thatquality which you will find lacking in all the writing of the day, savein that by one or two exceptional writers, who, by their isolation, themore forcibly point the moral. 

A wonderful literary machine! The editor's phrase very nearly hits offthe situation. As we have the linotype to set up the written words witha minimum of human agency, we really seem to be within measurabledistance of a similar automaton that will produce the literature to beset up without the intrusion of any flesh-and-blood author. In thisconnection I may perhaps be permitted to quote a sentence or two frommyself, written _à propos_ a certain chameleonesque writer whosedeservedly popular works are among the contemporary books that I mostvalue:

 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 from that of Guy de Maupassant they have chosen to suppress themselves, or rather, I should say, that, whereas De Maupassant strove to suppress, to eliminate, himself, their method is that of disguise. 

 In some respects they remind one of the hermit-crab, who 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. 

It is not that one is not grateful to writers of this type. Indeed oneis. They not only provide us with genuine entertainment, but, by theskill born of their fine culture, they make us re-taste of the oldmasters in their brilliant variations. One has no complaint againstthem. Far from it. Only one wonders why they trouble to attach their ownmerely personal names to their volumes, for, so far as those volumes areconcerned, there is no one to be found in them answering to the name ofthe ostensible author. 

Suppose, for example, that the author's name on the title-page is"Brown. " Well, so far as we can find out by reading, "Brown" might justas well be "Green. " In fact, there is no "Brown" discoverable--noindividual man behind the pen that wrote, not out of the fulness of theheart, or the originality of the brain, from any experience or knowledgeor temperament peculiar to "Brown, " but out of the fulness of what onemight call a creatively assimilated education, and by the aid of aspecial talent for the combination of literary influences. 

We have had a great deal of pleasure in the reading, we have admiredthis and that, we may even have been astonished, but I repeat--there isno "Brown. " In private life "Brown" may be a forceful and fascinatingpersonality, but, so far as literature is concerned, he is merely a"wonderful literary machine. " He has been able, by his remarkable skill, to conjure every other writer into his book--except himself. The name"Brown" on his title-page means nothing. He has not "made his name. "

The phrase "to make a name" has become so dulled with long usage that itis worth while to pause and consider what a reality it stands for. Whatit really means, of course, is that certain men and women, by thepersonal force or quality of their lives, have succeeded in chargingtheir names--names given them originally haphazard, as names are givento all of us--with a permanent significance as unmistakable as thatbelonging to the commonest noun. The name "Byron" has a meaning as clearand unmistakable as the word "mutton. " The words "dog" and "cat" have ameaning hardly more clearly defined than the name "Burns" or "Voltaire. "An oak-tree can no more be mistaken for a willow than Shakespeare can beconfused with Spenser. If we say "Coleridge, " there is no possibility ofany one thinking that perhaps we meant "Browning. "

The reason, of course, is that these names are as unmistakably "made"as a Krupp gun or a Sheffield razor. Sincere, intense life has passedinto them, life lived as the men who bore those names either chose, orwere forced, to live it; individual experience, stern or gentle, incombination with an individual gift of expression. 

All names that are really "made" are made in the same way. You may makea name as Napoleon made his, through war, or you may make it as Keatsmade his, by listening to the nightingale and worshipping the moon. Oryou may make it as Charles Lamb made his, merely by loving old folios, whist, and roast pig. All that is necessary--granted, of course, thegift of literary expression--is sincerity, an unshakable faithfulness toyourself. 

In really great writers--or, at all events, in those writings of theirsby which they immortally exist--there is not one insincere word. Theperishable parts of great writers will, without exception, be found tobe those writings which they attempted either in insincere moments, orat the instigation of some surface talent that had no real connectionwith their deep-down selves. 

All real writing has got to be lived before it is written--lived notonly once or twice, but lived over and over again. Mere reporting won'tdo in literature, nor the records of easy voyaging through perilousseas. Dante had to walk through hell before he could write of it, andmen today who would write either of hell or of heaven will never do itby a study of fashionable drawing-rooms, or prolonged sojourns in thecountry houses of the great. 

On the other hand, if you wish to write convincingly about what we call"society, " those lords and ladies, for example, who are just as real intheir strange way as coal-heavers and mechanics, it is of no use yourtrying, unless you were fortunate enough to be born among them, or havebeen unfortunately associated with them all your life. To write withreality about the most artificial condition necessitates an intimateacquaintance with it that, at its best, is tragic. Those who would writeabout the depths and the heights must have dared them, not merely asvisitors, but as awestricken inhabitants. Similarly, those who wouldwrite about the plain, the long, low levels of commonplace human life, must have dwelt in them, have possessed the dreary, unlaurelled courageof the good bourgeois, have known what it is to live out the day justfor the day's sake, with the blessed hope of a reasonably respectableand comfortable conclusion. 

Probably it seldom occurs to us to think what a tremendously rooted lifeis needed to make even one lasting lyric, though the strangeness of theprocess is but the same strangeness that accompanies the antecedentpreparation of a flower. 

 How many suns it takes To make one speedwell blue--

was no mere fancy of a poet. It is a fact of the long sifting andkneading to which time subjects the material of its perfect things. 

One could not get a better example of what I mean than Lovelace's song_To Lucasta, Going to the Wars_, without which no anthology of Englishverse could possibly be published. Why does generation after generationsay over and over, and hand on to its children:

 Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more. 

Is it merely because it is so well written, or because it embodies ahighly moral sentiment suitable to the education of young men? No, it isbecause the sword and the pen for once met together in the hand of aman, because a soldier and a lover and a poet met together in a song. One might almost say that Lovelace wrote his lyric first with his sword, and merely copied it out with his pen. At all events, he was first a manand incidentally a poet; and every real poet that ever sang, whether ornot he wielded the weapons of physical warfare, has been just the same. Otherwise he could not have been a poet. 

When one speaks of the man behind the pen, one does not necessarily meanthat the writer must be a man of dominant personality, suggestive inevery sentence of "the strenuous life, " and muscle, and "punch. "Literature might be described as the world in words, and as it takes allkinds of men to make a world, so with the world of literature. All weask is that we should be made aware of some kind of a man. Numerousother qualities besides "the punch" go to the making of livingliterature, though blood and brawn, not to say brutality, have of latehad it so much their own way in the fashionable literature of theday--written by muscular literary gentlemen who seem to write ratherwith their fists than their pens--that we are in danger of forgettingthe reassuring truth. 

J. M. Barrie long ago made a criticism on Rudyard Kipling which hasalways stayed by me as one of the most useful of critical touchstones. 

"Mr. Kipling, " said he, "has yet to learn that a man may know more oflife staying at home by his mother's knee than swaggering in bad companyover three continents. "

Nor is successful literature necessarily the record of the successfultemperament. Some writers, not a few, owe their significance to the factthat they have found humanly intimate expression for their own failure, or set down their weakness in such a way as to make themselves theconsoling companions of human frailty and disappointment through thegenerations. It is the paradox of such natures that they should expressthemselves in the very record of their frustration. Amiel may be takenas the type of such writers. In confiding to his _Journal_ his hopelessinability for expressing his high thought, he expressed what isinfinitely more valuable to us--himself. 

Nor, again, does it follow that the man who thus gets himselfindividualized in literature is the kind of man we care about or approveof. Often it is quite the contrary, and we may think that it had beenjust as well if some human types had not been able so forcibly toproject into literature their unworthy and undesirable selves. Yet thisis God's world, and nothing human must be foreign to the philosophicalstudent of it. 

All the "specimens" in a natural history museum are not things ofbeauty or joy. So it is in the world of books. François Villon cannotbe called an edifying specimen of the human family, yet he unmistakablybelongs there, and it was to that prince of scalawags that we owe notmerely that loveliest sigh in literature--"Where are the snows ofyester-year?"--but so striking a picture of the underworld of medievalParis that without it we should hardly be able to know the times asthey were. 

The same applies to Benvenuto Cellini--bully, assassin, insufferableegoist, and so forth, as well as artist. If he had not been sufficientlyin love with his own swashbuckler rascality to write his amazingautobiography, how dim to our imaginations, comparatively, would havebeen the world of the Italian Renaissance!

Again, in our own day, take Baudelaire, a personality even lessagreeable still--morbid, diseased, if you will, wasting, you may deem, immense poetic powers on revealing the beauty of those "flowers of evil"which had as well been left in their native shade. Yet, it is because hesaw them so vividly, cared to see little else, dwelt in his own strangecorner of the world with such an intensity of experience, that heis--Baudelaire. Like him or not, his name is "made. " A queer kind ofman, indeed, but not "only a pen. "

Certain writers have made a cult of "impersonality" in literature. Theywould do their utmost to keep themselves out of sight, to let theirsubject-matter tell its own tale. But such a feat is an impossibility. They might as well try to get out of their own skins. The mere effortat suppression ends in a form of revelation. Their mere choice ofthemes and manner of presentation, let them keep behind the scenes asassiduously as they may, will in the end stamp them. However much a manmay hide behind his pen, so that indeed his personality, compared withthat of more subjective writers, remains always somewhat enigmatic, yetwhen the pen is wielded by a man, whatever his reticence or his mask, weknow that a man is there--and that is all that concerns us. 

On the other hand, of course, there are companionable, sympatheticwriters whose whole stock-in-trade is themselves, their personal charm, their personal way of looking at things. Of these, Montaigne and CharlesLamb are among the great examples. It matters to us little or nothingwhat they are writing about; for their subjects, so far as they areconcerned, are only important in relation to themselves, as revealingto us by reflection two uncommonly "human" human beings, whom it isimpossible to mistake for any one else; just as we enjoy the society ofsome whimsical talker among our living friends, valuing him not so muchfor what he says, but for the way he says it, and because it is he, andno one else, that is talking. 

Again, there are other men whose names, in addition to their personalsuggestion, have an impersonal significance as marking new eras of humandevelopment, such as Erasmus or Rousseau or Darwin; men who embodiedthe time-spirit at crucial moments of world change, men who announcedrather than created, the heralds of epochs, men who first took the newroads along which the rest of mankind were presently to travel, men whofelt or saw something new for the first time, prophets of dawn while yettheir fellows slept. 

Sometimes a man will come to stand for a whole nation, like Robert Burnsor Cervantes; or a great, half-legendary age of the world, like Homer;or some permanent attitude of the human spirit, like Plato. 

No fixed star, great or small, in the firmament of literature evergot there without some vital reason, or merely by writing, howeverremarkable. The idea that literature is a mere matter of writing is seento be the hollowest of misconceptions the moment you run over any listof enduring names. Try any such that you can think of, and in every caseyou will find that the name stands for something more than a writer. Ofcourse, the man had to have his own peculiar genius for writing, but thepeculiarity was but the result of his individual being, his own specialway of living his life or viewing the world. 

Take Horace, for example. Does he live merely because of his uniquestyle, his masterly use of the Latin tongue? By means of that, ofcourse, but only secondarily. Primarily, he is as alive today as hewas when he sauntered through the streets of Rome, because he was soabsolutely the type of the well-bred man of the world in all countriesand times. He lived seriously in the social world as he found it, andfelt no idealistic craving to have it remoulded nearer to the heart'sdesire. He was satisfied with its pleasures, and at one with itsphilosophy. Thus he is as much at home in modern Paris or London orNew York as in ancient Rome, and his book is, therefore, foreverimmortal as the man of the world's Bible. 

Take a name so different as that of Shelley. We have but to speak itto define all it now stands for. Though no one should read a line ofShelley's any more, the dream he dreamed has passed into the verylife-blood of mankind. Wherever men strive for freedom, or seek toattune their lives to the strange spiritual music that breathes throughall things--music that none ever heard more clearly than he--there isShelley like the morning star to guide them and inspire. 

Think what Wordsworth means to the spiritual thought of the modernworld. In his own day he was one of the most lonely and laughed at ofpoets, moping among his lakes and mountains and shepherds. Yet, asMatthew Arnold said, "we are all Wordsworthians nowadays, " and thereligion of nature that he found there for himself in his solitude bidsfair to be the final religion of the modern world. 

It is the same with every other great name one can think of, be itBunyan or Heine, Schopenhauer or Izaak Walton. One has but to castone's eyes over one's shelves to realize, as we see the familiarnames, how literally the books that bear them are living men, merelytransmigrated from their fleshly forms into the printed word. Shakespeare and Milton, yes, even Pope; Johnson, Fielding, Sterne, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, Dumas, Balzac, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe--their very faces seem to look out at us from thebindings, such vividly human beings were they, with a vision of theworld, or a definition of character, so much their own and no oneelse's. One might almost call them patented human beings--patentees ofspiritual discoveries, or of aspects of humanity, whose patents cannever be infringed for all our cleverness. 

Said Tennyson, in bitter answer to criticism that began to depreciatehim because of the glibness of his imitators:

 All can grow the flower now, For all have got the seed. 

And certainly, as I have already said, the art of literary impersonationis carried to a pitch today that almost amounts to genius. Yet you haveonly to compare the real flower with the imitation, and you will soonunderstand the difference. 

Take Walter Scott. It is a commonplace to say how much better we do thehistorical novel nowadays than he did. At first sight, we may seem to;in certain particulars, no doubt we do; but read him again, read _RobRoy_ or _Quentin Durward_ again, and you will not be quite so sure. Youwill realize what an immortal difference there is, after all, betweenthe pen with a man behind it, and the most brilliant literary machine. 

Yes, "the mob of gentlemen that write with ease" is once more with us, but no real book was ever yet written with ease, and no book has eversurvived, or ever can, in which we do not feel the presence of thefighting, dreaming, or merely enjoying soul of a man. 

XXVIII

BULLS IN CHINA-SHOPS

There are some people of great value and importance in their ownspheres, who, on the strength of the distinction gained there, are aptto intrude on other spheres of which they have no knowledge, where infact they are irrelevant, and often indeed ridiculously out of place. This, however, does not prevent their trying to assert an authoritygained in their own sphere in those other spheres where they simply donot belong; and such is the power of a name that is won for any onething that the multitude, unaccustomed to make distinctions, acceptsthem as authorities on the hundred other things of which they knownothing. Thus, to take a crude example, the New York Police, which is, without doubt, learned in its own world, and well-adapted and equippedfor asserting its authority there, sometimes intrudes, with itswell-known _bonhomie_, into the worlds of drama and sculpture, and, because it is an acknowledged judge of crooks and grafters, presumesto be a judge and censor also of new plays and nude statues. 

Of course, the New York Police is absurd in such a character, absurd asa bull in a china-shop is absurd; yet, as in the case of the bull withthe china, it is capable of doing quite a lot of damage. 

I take the New York Police merely, as I said, as a crude example of, doubtless, well-meant, but entirely misplaced energy. Actually, however, it is scarcely more absurd than many similar, if more distinguished, bulls gaily crashing about on higher planes. 

Such are statesmen who, because they are Prime Ministers or Presidents, deem themselves authorities on everything within the four winds, doctorsof divinity, and general _arbitri elegantiarum_. 

Such a bull in a china-shop in regard to literature was the late Mr. Gladstone. It is no disrespect towards his great and estimable characterto say, that while, of course, he was technically a scholar--"greatHomeric scholar" was the accepted phrase for him--there were probablyfew men in England so devoid of the literary sense. Yet for an author toreceive a post-card of commendation from Mr. Gladstone meant at leastthe sale of an edition or two, and a certain permanency in publicappreciation. Her late Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria was Mr. Gladstone's only rival as the literary destiny of the time. To Mr. Gladstone we owe Mrs. Humphry Ward, to Her Majesty we owe Miss MarieCorelli. 

John Ruskin, much as we may admire him for his moral influence, andadmire, or not admire, him for his prose, was a bull in a china-shopwhen he made his famous criticism on Whistler, and thus inadvertantlyadded to the gaiety of nations by provoking that delightful trial, which, farcical as it seemed at the moment, not merely evoked fromWhistler himself some imperishable dicta on art and the relation ofcritics to art, but really did something towards the long-drawnawakening of that mysterious somnolence called the public consciousnesson the strange mission of beauty in this world, and, incidentally of thestatus of those "eccentric" ministers of it called artists. 

I do not mean to say that bulls in china-shops are without their uses. John Ruskin is a shining example to the contrary. 

One of his contemporaries, Thomas Carlyle, for all his genius, was onone important subject--that of poetry--as much of a bull in a china-shopas Ruskin was in art. Great friends as were he and Tennyson, the famousanecdote _à propos_ of Tennyson's publication of _The Idylls of theKing_--"all very fine, Alfred, but when are you going to do somework"--and many other such written deliverances suffice to show howabsolutely out of court a great tragic humorist and rhetorician maybe on an art practised by writers at least as valuable to Englishliterature as himself, say Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats. Carlyle was a great writer, but the names of these four gentlemen who, according to his standard, never did any "work" have a strangelypermanent look about them compared with that of the prophet-journalistof Chelsea and Ecclefechan. 

A similar "sage, " another of the great conversational brow-beaters ofEnglish literature, Samuel Johnson, though it was his chief business tobe a critic of poetry, was hardly more in court on the matter thanCarlyle. In fact, Dr. Johnson might with truth be described as the KingBull of all the Bulls of all the China-shops. There was no subject, however remote from his knowledge or experience on which he wouldhesitate to pronounce, and if necessary bludgeon forth, his opinion. But in his case, there is one important distinction to be made, adistinction that has made him immortal. 

He disported his huge bulk about the china-shop with such quaintness, with such engaging sturdiness of character, strangely displaying all thetime so unique a wisdom of that world that lies outside and encloses allchina-shops, so unparalleled a genius of common sense, oddly linkedwith that good old-time quality called "the fear of God, " that inhis case we felt that the china, after all, didn't matter, but thatDr. Samuel Johnson, "the great lexicographer, " supremely did. Hisopinions of Scotsmen or his opinions of poetry in themselves amount tolittle--though they are far from being without their shrewd insight--andmuch of the china--such as Milton's poetry--among which he gambolled, after the manner of Behemoth, chanced to be indestructible. Any chinahe broke was all to the ultimate good of the china-shop. Yet, if weaccept him so, is it not because he was such a wonderful bull in thechina-shop of the world?

There have been other such bulls but hardly another so great, and withhis name I will, for the moment at least, put personalities aside, andrefer to droves rather than to individual bulls. A familiar type ofthe bull in the china-shop is the modern clergyman, who, apparently, insecure in his status of saint-hood, dissatisfied with that spiritualsphere which so many confiding human beings have given into hiskeeping, will be forever pushing his way like an unwelcome, yet quiteunauthoritative, policeman, into that turmoil of human affairs--of whichpolitics is a sort of summary--where his opinion is not of the smallestvalue, though, perforce, it is received with a certain momentaryrespect--as though some beautiful old lady should stroll up to a batteryof artillery, engaged in some difficult and dangerous attack, and offerher advice as to the sighting and management of the guns. The modernclergyman's interference in the working out of the secular problemsof modern life has no such picturesque beauty--and it is even lesseffective. 

One would have thought that to have the care of men's souls would beenough. What a world of suggestiveness there was in the old phrase "acure of souls"! Men's souls need saving as much today as ever. Perhapsthey were never in greater danger. Therefore, as the proverbial placefor the cobbler is his last, so more than ever the place for theclergyman is his church, his pulpit, and those various spiritual officesfor which he is presumably "chosen. " His vows do not call upon himeither to be a politician or a matinée idol, nor is it his business tosow doubt where he is paid for preaching faith. If the Church is losingits influence, it is largely because of its inefficient interferencein secular affairs, and because of the small percentage of realspirituality amongst its clergy. 

But there is a worse intrusion than that of clergymen into secularaffairs. There is the intrusion of the cheap atheist, the smallmaterialistic thinker, into a sphere of which certainly no clergyman orpriest has any monopoly, that sphere of what we call the spiritual life, which, however undemonstrable by physical tests, has been real to somany men and women whose intellects can hardly be called negligible, from Plato to Newman. I have too much respect for their courageoussincerity, their nobility of character, as well as for the necessary, ifsuperficial, destructive work they did, when to do such work meant nolittle personal peril and obloquy to themselves, to class RobertIngersoll and Charles Bradlaugh with the small fry that resemble themmerely in their imitative negations; yet this is certainly true of bothof them that they were bulls in the china-shop to this extent--that theyconfounded real religion with the defective historical evidences of onereligion, and the mythologic assertions and incongruities of its sacredbook. They did splendid work in their iconoclastic criticism of "theletter" that "killeth, " but of "the spirit" that "giveth life" they seemto have had but little inkling. To make fun of Jonah and the whale, or"the Mistakes of Moses, " had no doubt a certain usefulness, but it wasno valid argument against the existence of God, nor did it explain awaythe mysterious religious sense in man--however, or wherever expressed. Neither Ingersoll nor Bradlaugh saw that the crudest Mumbo-Jumboidolatry of the savage does really stand for some point of rapportbetween the seen and the unseen, and that, so long as the mysterioussacredness of life is acknowledged and reverenced, it matters little bywhat symbols we acknowledge it and do it reverence. 

One may consider that the present age is an age of spiritual eclipse, though that is not the writer's opinion, and question with MatthewArnold:

 What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well? Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? What bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit like him. 

Yet the sight of one who sees is worth more than the blindness of ahundred that cannot see. Some people are born with spiritual antennaeand some without. There is much delicate wonder in the universe thatneeds special organizations for its apprehension. "One eye, " youremember, that of Browning's _Sordello_--

 one eye In all Verona cared for the soft sky. 

In these imponderable and invisible matters, many are in a like casewith Hamlet's mother, when she was unable to see the ghost of hisfather which he so plainly saw. "Yet all there is I see!" exclaimed thequeen--though she was quite wrong, as wrong as Mr. Ruskin when he couldsee nothing in that painting of Whistler's but a cocks-comb throwing apaint-pot at a canvas and calling it a picture!

Many people who have sharp enough eyes and ears for their own worlds areabsolutely blind and deaf when introduced into other worlds for whichnature has not equipped them. But this by no means prevents theirpronouncing authoritative opinions in those worlds, opinions whichwould be amazing if they were not so impertinent. Many literary peopleproclaim their indifference to and even contempt for music--as if theirannouncement meant anything more than their music deafness, theirunfortunate exclusion from a great art. Mark Twain used to advertise hispreference for the pianola over the piano--as if that proved anythingagainst the playing of Paderewski. Similarly, he acted the bull in thechina-shop in regard to Christian Science, which cannot be the acceptedcreed of millions of men and women of intelligence and social valuewithout deserving even in a critic the approach of some respect. 

But humorists are privileged persons. That, no doubt, accounts for theastonishing toleration of Bernard Shaw. Were it not that he is a_farceur_, born to write knock-about comedies--his plays, by the way, might be termed knock-about comedies of the middle-class mind--he wouldnever have got a hearing for his common-place blasphemies, and cheapintellectual antics. He is undeniably "funny, " so we cannot helplaughing, though we are often ashamed of ourselves for our laughter; forto him there is nothing sacred--except his press-notices, and--hisroyalties. 

His so-called "philosophy" has an air of dangerous novelty only to thoseinnocent middle-classes born but yesterday, to whom any form of thoughtis a novelty. Methusaleh himself was not older than Mr. Shaw's "originalideas. " In England, twenty years ago, we were long since weary of hisegotistic buffooneries. Of anything "fine" in literature or art he iscontemptuously ignorant, and from understanding of any of the finershades of human life, or of the meaning of such words as "honour, ""gentleman, " "beauty, " "religion, " he is by nature utterly shut out. Helaughs and sneers to make up for his deficiencies, like that PietroAretino who threw his perishable mud at Michael Angelo. So is it alwayswith the vulgarian out of his sphere. Once he dared to talk vulgarly ofGod to a great man who believed in God--Count Tolstoi. 

He had written to Tolstoi _à propos_ his insignificant little play _TheShowing up of Blanco Posnet_, and in the course of his letter had said:"Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any lessto make it a good joke instead of a bad one?" Tolstoi had hitherto beenfavourably inclined towards Shaw, owing to his friend and biographer Mr. Aylmer Maude; but this cheap-jack sacrilege was too much for the greatold man, who seemed to know God with almost Matthew Arnold's

 plainness as near As flashing as Moses felt, and he closed the correspondence with a rebuke which would have abashedany one but the man to whom it was sent. 

Tolstoi was like Walt Whitman--he "argued not concerning God. " It is apoint of view which people like Mr. Shaw can never understand; any morethan he or his like can comprehend that there are areas of human feelingover which for him and other such bulls in china-shops should be postedthe delicate Americanism--KEEP OUT. 

XXIX

THE BIBLE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Once, in my old book-hunting days, I picked up, on the Quai Voltaire, acopy of the _Proverbs of King Solomon_. Then it was more possible thantoday to make finds in that quaint open-air library which, still morethan any library housed within governmental or diplomaed walls, ishaunted by the spirit of those passionate, dream-led scholars thatmade the Renaissance, and crowded to those lectures filled with thatdangerous new charm which always belongs to the poetic presentation ofnew knowledge--those lectures, "musical as is Apollo's lute, " beinggiven up on the hill nearby, by a romantic young priest named Abelard. 

My copy of the Great King's Wisdom was of no particular bibliographicalvalue, but it was one of those thick-set, old-calf duodecimos "blackwith tarnished gold" which Austin Dobson has sung, books that, oneimagines, must have once made even the Latin Grammar attractive. Thetext was the Vulgate, a rivulet of Latin text surrounded by meadows ofmarginal comments of the Fathers translated into French, --the wholepresided over, for the edification of the young novice, to whom my copyevidently belonged, by a distinguished Monseigneur who, in French of thetime of Bossuet, told exactly how these young minds should understandthe wisdom of Solomon, told it with a magisterial style which suggestedthat Solomon lived long ago--and, yet, was one of the pillars of thechurch. But what particularly interested me about the book, however, asI turned over its yellow pages, was a tiny thing pressed between them, athing the Fathers and the Monseigneur would surely have regarded ascuriously alien to their wisdom, a thing once of a bright, but now of apaler yellow, and of a frailer texture than it had once been in itssunlit life--a flower, I thought at first, but, on looking closer, I sawit was, or had once been, a yellow butterfly. 

What young priest was it, I wondered, that had thus, with a breakingheart, crushed the joy of life between these pages! On what springmorning had this silent little messenger hovered a while over the highgarden-walls of St. Sulpice, flitting and fluttering, and at last dartedand alighted on the page of this old book, at that moment held in thehands of a young priest walking to and fro amid the tall whisperingtrees--delivering at last to him on the two small painted pages of itswings a message he must not read. .. . 

The temptation was severe, for spring was calling all over Paris, andthe words of another book of the Great King whose wisdom he held in hishand said to him in the Latin that came easily to all manner of men inthose days: _Lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; theflowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. .. . Arise, my love, myfair one, and come away. _

The little fluttering thing seemed to be saying that to him as it poisedon the page, and, as his eyes went into a dream, began to crawl softly, like a rope-walker, up one of his fingers, with a frail, half-frightenedhold, while, high up, over the walls of the garden the poplars werediscreetly swaying to the southern wind, and the lilac-bushes werecarelessly tossing this way and that their fragrance, as altar-boysswing their censers in the hushed chancel, --but ah! so different anincense. 

_The flowers appear on the earth_, he repeated to himself, beguiled fora moment, _the flowers appear on the earth; and the time of the singingof birds is come. .. . _

But, suddenly, for his help against that tiny yellow butterfly therecame to him other stern everlasting words:

_The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our Lordendureth forever. _

Then it was, if I imagine aright from my old book, that my young noviceof St. Sulpice crushed the joy of life, in the frail form of its littlemessenger, between the pages of the book he held in his hand just then, the book I held in my hand for a while a hundred and fifty years or soafter--the book I bought that morning on the Quai Voltaire--guardingthat little dead butterfly even more than the wisdom of Solomon. Iwonder if, as he crushed that butterfly, he said to himself--in wordsthat have grown commonplace since his time--the words of that strangeemperor Hadrian--_Animula, vagula, blandula_!

Perhaps I should not have remembered that book-hunting morning in OldParis on the Quai Voltaire, when I bought that beautiful old copy of the_Proverbs of Solomon_--with the butterfly so strangely crushed betweenits pages--had it not been for a circumstance that happened to me, theother day, in the subway, which seemed to me of the nature of a marvel. Many weary men and women were travelling--in an enforced, yet in someway humorously understanding, society--from Brooklyn Bridge to theBronx. I got in at Wall Street. The "crush-hour" was near, for it was4:25--still, as yet, there were time and space granted us to observeour neighbours. In the particular car in which I was sitting, therewas room still left to look about and admire the courage of yourfellow-passengers. Weary men going home--many of them having used themall day long--have little wish to use their eyes, so all the men in mycar sat silently and sadly, contemplating the future. As I looked atthem, it seemed to me that they were thinking over the day's work theyhad done, and the innumerable days' work they had still to do. No onesmiled. No one observed the other. An automatic courtesy gave a seathere and there, but no one gave any attention to any business but hisown thoughts and his own sad station. 

It was a car, if I remember aright, occupied almost entirely bymen-passengers, and, so far as I could see, there were no evidences thatmen knew women from men, or _vice versa_, yet, at last, there seemed todawn on four men sitting in a row that there was a wonderful creaturereading a book on the other side of the aisle--a lovely young woman, with all the fabled beauty of the sea-shell, and the rainbow, thatenchantment in her calm pearl-like face, and in the woven stillness ofher hair, that has in all times and countries made men throw up sailsand dare the unknown sea, and the unknown Fates. The beauty, too, thatnature had given her was clothed in the subdued enchantments of therarest art. All unconscious of the admiration surrounding her, she satin that subway car, like a lonely butterfly, strangely there in herincongruous surroundings, for a mysterious moment, --to vanish as swiftlyas she had come--and, as she stepped from the car, leaving it dark anddazzled--

 bright with her past presence yet--

I, who had fortunately, and fearfully, sat by her side was aware thatthe book she had been reading was lying forgotten on the seat. It wasmine by right of accident, --treasure-trove. So I picked it up, bravingthe glares of the four sad men facing me. 

Naturally, I had wondered what book it was; but its being bound intooled and jewelled morocco, evidently by one of the great bookbindersof Paris, made it unprofitable to hazard a guess. 

I leave to the imagination of lovers of books what book one wouldnaturally expect to find in hands so fair. Perhaps _Ronsard_--or someother poet from the Rose-Garden of old France. No! it was a charminglyprinted copy of The New Testament. 

The paradox of the discovery hushed me for a few moments, and then Ibegan to turn over the pages, several of which I noticed were dog earedafter the manner of beautiful women in all ages. A pencil here and therehad marked certain passages. _Come unto me_, ran one of the underlinedpassages, _all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest_, --andI thought how strange it was that she whose face was so calm and stillshould have needed to mark that. And another marked passage I noted--_Hewas in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Himnot_. Then I put down the book with a feeling of awe--such as the Biblehad never brought to me before, though I had been accustomed to it frommy boyhood, and I said to myself: "How very strange!" And I meant howstrange it was to find this wonderful old book in the hands of thiswonderful young beauty. 

It had seemed strange to find that butterfly in that old copy of the_Proverbs of King Solomon_, but how much stranger to find the NewTestament in the hands, or, so to speak, between the wings, of anAmerican butterfly. 

I found something written in the book at least as wonderful to me asthe sacred text. It was the name of the butterfly--a name almost asbeautiful as herself. So I was enabled to return her book to her. Thereis, of course, no need to mention a name as well-known for good works asgood looks. It will suffice to say that it was the name of the mostbeautiful actress in the world. 

There is a moral to this story. Morals--to stories--are once morecoming into fashion. The Bible, in my boyhood, came to us with no suchassociations as I have recalled. There were no butterflies between itspages, nor was it presented to us by fair or gracious hands. It was avery grim and minatory book, wielded, as it seemed to one's childishignorance, for the purpose which that young priest of St. Sulpice hadused the pages of his copy of the _Proverbs of King Solomon_, that ofcrushing out the joy of life. 

My first acquaintance with it as I remember, was in a Methodist chapelin Staffordshire, England, where three small boys, including myself, prisoned in an old-fashioned high-back pew, were endeavouring to relievethe apparently endless _ennui_ of the service by eating surreptitiousapples. Suddenly upon our three young heads descended what seemed like aheavy block of wood, wielded by an ancient deacon who did not approveof boys. We were, each of us, no more than eight years old, and the bookwhich had thus descended upon our heads was nothing more to us than avery weighty book--to be dodged if possible, for we were still in thathappy time of life when we hated all books. We knew nothing of itscontents--to us it was only a schoolmaster's cane, beating us intosilence and good behaviour. 

So the Bible has been for many generations of boys a book even moreterrible than Caesar's _Commentaries_ or the _Aeneid_ of Virgil--thedull thud of a mysterious cudgel upon the shoulders of youth which youbore as courageously as you could. 

So many of us grew up with what one might call a natural prejudiceagainst the Bible. 

Then some of us who cared for literature took it up casually and foundits poetic beauty. We read the _Book of Job_--which, by the way, Mr. Swinburne is said to have known by heart; and as we read it even thestars themselves seemed less wonderful than this description of theirmarvel and mystery:

_Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the hands ofOrion?_

_Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guideArcturus with his sons?_

Or we read in the 37th chapter of the _Book of Ezekiel_ of that weirdvalley that was full of bones--"_and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together bone to bone_, "surely one of the most wonderful visions of the imagination in allliterature. 

Or we read the marvellous denunciatory rhetoric of Jeremiah and Isaiah, or the music of the melodious heart-strings of King David; we read thesolemn adjuration of the "King Ecclesiast" to remember our Creator inthe days of our youth, with its haunting picture of old age: and theloveliness of _The Song of Songs_ passed into our lives forever. 

To this purely literary love of the Bible there has been added withinthe last few years a certain renewed regard for it as the profoundestbook of the soul, and for some minds not conventionally religious it hasregained even some of its old authority as a spiritual guide and stay. And I will confess for myself that sometimes, as I fall asleep atnight, I wonder if even Bernard Shaw has written anything to equal theTwenty-third Psalm. 

THE END