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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1434-h.zip b/1434-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ca6ef4 --- /dev/null +++ b/1434-h.zip diff --git a/1434-h/1434-h.htm b/1434-h/1434-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..965764e --- /dev/null +++ b/1434-h/1434-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6122 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Essays</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Essays, by Alice Meynell</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Essays, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Essays + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 15, 2005 [eBook #1434] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>Essays by Alice Meynell</h1> +<p>Contents:</p> +<p>WINDS AND WATERS</p> +<p>Ceres’ Runaway<br /> +Wells<br /> +Rain<br /> +The Tow Path<br /> +The Tethered Constellations<br /> +Rushes and Reeds</p> +<p>IN A BOOK ROOM</p> +<p>A Northern Fancy<br /> +Pathos<br /> +Anima Pellegrina!<br /> +A Point of Biography<br /> +The Honours of Mortality<br /> +Composure<br /> +The Little Language<br /> +A Counterchange<br /> +Harlequin Mercutio</p> +<p>COMMENTARIES</p> +<p>Laughter<br /> +The Rhythm of Life<br /> +Domus Angusta<br /> +Innocence and Experience<br /> +The Hours of Sleep<br /> +Solitude<br /> +Decivilized</p> +<p>WAYFARING</p> +<p>The Spirit of Place<br /> +Popular Burlesque<br /> +Have Patience, Little Saint<br /> +At Monastery Gates<br /> +The Sea Wall</p> +<p>ARTS</p> +<p>Tithonus<br /> +Symmetry and Incident<br /> +The Plaid<br /> +The Flower<br /> +Unstable Equilibrium<br /> +Victorian Caricature<br /> +The Point of Honour</p> +<p>“THE CHEARFUL LADIE OF THE LIGHT”</p> +<p>The Colour of Life<br /> +The Horizon<br /> +In July<br /> +Cloud<br /> +Shadows</p> +<p>WOMEN AND BOOKS</p> +<p>The Seventeenth Century<br /> +Mrs. Dingley<br /> +Prue<br /> +Mrs. Johnson<br /> +Madame Roland</p> +<p>“THE DARLING YOUNG”</p> +<p>Fellow Travellers with a Bird<br /> +The Child of Tumult<br /> +The Child of Subsiding Tumult<br /> +The Unready<br /> +That Pretty Person<br /> +Under the Early Stars<br /> +The Illusion of Historic Time</p> +<h2>CERES’ RUNAWAY</h2> +<p>One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture +of a Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop—at least while the +charming quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality +does not exist that would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth +of green in the high places of the city. It is true that there +have been the famous captures—those in the Colosseum, and in the +Baths of Caracalla; moreover a less conspicuous running to earth takes +place on the Appian Way, in some miles of the solitude of the Campagna, +where men are employed in weeding the roadside. They slowly uproot +the grass and lay it on the ancient stones—rows of little corpses—for +sweeping up, as at Upper Tooting; one wonders why. The governors +of the city will not succeed in making the Via Appia look busy, or its +stripped stones suggestive of a thriving commerce. Again, at the +cemetery within the now torn and shattered Aurelian wall by the Porta +San Paolo, they are often mowing of buttercups. “A light +of laughing flowers along the grass is spread,” says Shelley, +whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a couple of +active scythes are kept at work there summer and spring—not that +the grass is long, for it is much overtopped by the bee-orchis, but +because flowers are not to laugh within reach of the civic vigilance.</p> +<p>Yet, except that it is overtaken and put to death in these accessible +places, the wild summer growth of Rome has a prevailing success and +victory. It breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, lodges in +the sun, swings in the wind, takes wing to find the remotest ledges, +and blooms aloft. It makes light of the sixteenth century, of +the seventeenth, and of the eighteenth. As the historic ages grow +cold it banters them alike. The flagrant flourishing statue, the +haughty façade, the broken pediment (and Rome is chiefly the +city of the broken pediment) are the opportunities of this vagrant garden +in the air. One certain church, that is full of attitude, can +hardly be aware that a crimson snapdragon of great stature and many +stalks and blossoms is standing on its furthest summit tiptoe against +its sky. The cornice of another church in the fair middle of Rome +lifts out of the shadows of the streets a row of accidental marigolds. +Impartial to the antique, the mediaeval, the Renaissance early and late, +the newer modern, this wild summer finds its account in travertine and +tufa, reticulated work, brick, stucco and stone. “A bird +of the air carries the matter,” or the last sea-wind, sombre and +soft, or the latest tramontana, gold and blue, has lodged in a little +fertile dust the wild grass, wild wheat, wild oats!</p> +<p>If Venus had her runaway, after whom the Elizabethans raised hue +and cry, this is Ceres’. The municipal authorities, hot-foot, +cannot catch it. And, worse than all, if they pause, dismayed, +to mark the flight of the agile fugitive safe on the arc of a flying +buttress, or taking the place of the fallen mosaics and coloured tiles +of a twelfth-century tower, and in any case inaccessible, the grass +grows under their discomfited feet. It actually casts a flush +of green over their city <i>piazza</i>—the wide light-grey pavements +so vast that to keep them weeded would need an army of workers. +That army has not been employed; and grass grows in a small way, but +still beautifully, in the wide space around which the tramway circles. +Perhaps a hatred of its delightful presence is what chiefly prompts +the civic government in Rome to the effort to turn the <i>piazza</i> +into a square. The shrub is to take the place not so much of the +pavement as of the importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten—and +the weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun +takes its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality +in tears, to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the +“third” (which is in truth the fourth) Rome.</p> +<p>When I say grass I use the word widely. Italian grass is not +turf; it is full of things, and they are chiefly aromatic. No +richer scents throng each other, close and warm, than these from a little +hand-space of the grass one rests on, within the walls or on the plain, +or in the Sabine or the Alban hills. Moreover, under the name +I will take leave to include lettuce as it grows with a most welcome +surprise on certain ledges of the Vatican. That great and beautiful +palace is piled, at various angles, as it were house upon house, here +magnificent, here careless, but with nothing pretentious and nothing +furtive. And outside one lateral window on a ledge to the sun, +prospers this little garden of random salad. Buckingham Palace +has nothing whatever of the Vatican dignity, but one cannot well think +of little cheerful cabbages sunning themselves on any parapet it may +have round a corner.</p> +<p>Moreover, in Italy the vegetables—the table ones—have +a wildness, a suggestion of the grass, from lands at liberty for all +the tilling. Wildish peas, wilder asparagus—the field asparagus +which seems to have disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts +in his manifestations of frugality—and strawberries much less +than half-way from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale +and corpulent of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance +lost—these are all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. +The most cultivated of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet not +a garden, but something better, as her city is yet not a town but something +better, and her wilderness something better than a desert. In +all the three there is a trace of the little flying heels of the runaway.</p> +<h2>WELLS</h2> +<p>The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or unattractive +secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and perennial means +of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and +the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They +are covered, they are carried, they are hushed, from the spring to the +tap; and when their voices are released at last in the London scullery, +why, it can hardly be said that the song is eloquent of the natural +source of waters, whether earthly or heavenly. There is not one +of the circumstances of this capture of streams—the company, the +water-rate, and the rest—that is not a sign of the ill-luck of +modern devices in regard to style. For style implies a candour +and simplicity of means, an action, a gesture, as it were, in the doing +of small things; it is the ignorance of secret ways; whereas the finish +of modern life and its neatness seem to be secured by a system of little +shufflings and surprises.</p> +<p>Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such fittings; +they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern +arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the successes—which +are not to be denied—of their outer part; the happy little swagger +that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, being prepared +by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph and success +of the present art of raiment—“fit” itself—is +but the result of a masked and lurking labour and device.</p> +<p>The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of +the beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and slighter +actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the way. In +a word, the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is the dexterous +provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well-appointed, and +decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his hands; whereas +the artist craftsman of other times made a manifestation of his means. +The first hides the streams, under stress and pressure, in paltry pipes +which we all must make haste to call upon the earth to cover, and the +second lifted up the arches of the aqueduct.</p> +<p>The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way +to ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure way. +In all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed by hidden +means must needs, from the beginning, prepare the abolition of dignity. +This is easy to understand, but it is less easy to explain the ill-fortune +that presses upon the expert workman, in search of easy ways to live, +all the ill-favoured materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them +serviceable and effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter +them, turning the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the +daily world. It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other +hand, is it easy to explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler +devices which are, after all, only less expert ways of labour. +In those happy conditions, neither from the material, suggesting to +the workman, nor from the workman looking askance at his unhandsome +material, comes a first proposal to pour in cement and make fast the +underworld, out of sight. But fate spares not that suggestion +to the able and the unlucky at their task of making neat work of the +means, the distribution, the traffick of life.</p> +<p>The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the +means of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the sun, +with their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, no, they +are lapped in lead.</p> +<p>King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals.</p> +<p>Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The +hiding-place that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters +of wells are, at their deepest, in communication with the open sky. +No other mine is so visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible +there; and it is fine to think of the waters of this planet, shallow +and profound, all charged with shining suns, a multitude of waters multiplying +suns, and carrying that remote fire, as it were, within their unalterable +freshness. Not a pool without this visitant, or without passages +of stars. As for the wells of the Equator, you may think of them +in their last recesses as the daily bathing-places of light; a luminous +fancy is able so to scatter fitful figures of the sun, and to plunge +them in thousands within those deeps.</p> +<p>Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the +sun is shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken across +stones, and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that fall through +chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile figures of leaves. +To all these waters the agile air has perpetual access. Not so +can great towns be watered, it will be said with reason; and this is +precisely the ill-luck of great towns.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have +the grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every <i>campo</i> +has its circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the pavement, +its soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the water below, +and the cheerful work of the cable.</p> +<p>Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their +plain with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the watersheds +in the hills to the and city; and having the waters captive, they knew +how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in this Roman triumph. +They had the wit to boast thus of their brilliant prisoner.</p> +<p>None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a +more invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the +leap of the heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They +have remained in Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the +victory was longer than empire, and their thousands of loud voices have +never ceased to confess the conquest of the cold floods, separated long +ago, drawn one by one, alive, to the head and front of the world.</p> +<p>Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest +fact of Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains +or to the distance from the city without seeing the approach of those +perpetual waters—waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. +This, then, was the style of a master, who does not lapse from “incidental +greatness,” has no mean precision, out of sight, to prepare the +finish of his phrases, and does not think the means and the approaches +are to be plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, without haste, +and without misgiving are all great things to be done, and neither interruption +in the doing nor ruin after they are done finds anything in them to +betray. There was never any disgrace of means, and when the world +sees the work broken through there is no disgrace of discovery. +The labour of Michelangelo’s chisel, little more than begun, a +Roman structure long exposed in disarray—upon these the light +of day looks full, and the Roman and the Florentine have their unrefuted +praise.</p> +<h2>RAIN</h2> +<p>Not excepting the falling stars—for they are far less sudden—there +is nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the familiar +rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from +the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey +with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, +units, an innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement +of intricate points.</p> +<p>The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at +once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression +is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. +What we are apt to call our quick impression is rather our sensibly +tardy, unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly bewildered sense of things +that flash and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle +eyes of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. +These inexpert eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image +that puzzles them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, +and part slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, +whose moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference +of instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man’s +eyes, and causes the past, a moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon +the skies.</p> +<p>The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records +of our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant woodman’s +stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is repeated in the impressions +of our clinging sight. The round wheel dazzles it, and the stroke +of the bird’s wing shakes it off like a captivity evaded. +Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of these timid senses; and +their perception, outrun by the shower, shaken by the light, denied +by the shadow, eluded by the distance, makes the lingering picture that +is all our art. One of the most constant causes of all the mystery +and beauty of that art is surely not that we see by flashes, but that +nature flashes on our meditative eyes. There is no need for the +impressionist to make haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature +doubles upon him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility.</p> +<p>Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the ministration +of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that the husbandman +is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet unclaimed in the arms +of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that he binds the shower +withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the coming cloud. His +sense of property takes aim and reckons distance and speed, and even +as he shoots a little ahead of the equally uncertain ground-game, he +knows approximately how to hit the cloud of his possession. So +much is the rain bound to the earth that, unable to compel it, man has +yet found a way, by lying in wait, to put his price upon it. The +exhaustible cloud “outweeps its rain,” and only the inexhaustible +sun seems to repeat and to enforce his cumulative fires upon every span +of ground, innumerable. The rain is wasted upon the sea, but only +by a fantasy can the sun’s waste be made a reproach to the ocean, +the desert, or the sealed-up street. Rossetti’s “vain +virtues” are the virtues of the rain, falling unfruitfully.</p> +<p>Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, +as the end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its flight +warning away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing shadow. +It is a threat and a reconciliation; it removes mountains compared with +which the Alps are hillocks, and makes a childlike peace between opposed +heights and battlements of heaven.</p> +<h2>THE TOW PATH</h2> +<p>A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided +must have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird your +shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on the +even path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames—the side +of meadows.</p> +<p>The elastic resistance of the line is a “heart-animating strain,” +only too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of the +riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, are +swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green. The +line drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows +taut; it makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress +of your easy power.</p> +<p>The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the +joys of “feeling hearts” according to the erroneous sentiment +of a verse of Moore’s. The joys of sensitive hearts are +many; but the joys of sensitive hands are few. Here, however, +in the effectual act of towing, is the ample revenge of the unmuscular +upon the happy labourers with the oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all +other means of violence. Here, on the long tow-path, between warm, +embrowned meadows and opal waters, you need but to walk in your swinging +harness, and so take your friends up-stream.</p> +<p>You work merely as the mill-stream works—by simple movement. +At lock after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to +the wheel that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river have +the same mere force of progress.</p> +<p>There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is +the bright Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing +by so many curves of low shore on the level of the world.</p> +<p>Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as +the wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings the +lighted clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying +high for mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own weight. +You will not envy them for so brief a success. Did not Wordsworth +want a “little boat” for the air? Did not Byron call +him a blockhead therefor? Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of +towing.</p> +<p>All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. +Even the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than you, +walking your effectual walk with the line attached to your willing steps. +Your moderate strength of a mere everyday physical education gives you +the sufficient mastery of the tow-path.</p> +<p>If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give +it life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant +burden—the yielding check—than ever before. An unharnessed +walk must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty. +It is easier than towing? So is the drawing of water in a sieve +easier to the arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart.</p> +<p>To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the +wings of metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the spirit +and the line.</p> +<p>No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; +it depends upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any depressing +show of helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it apt to set you +at naught or charge you with a make-believe. It accompanies, it +almost anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just so much as to give +your briskness good reason, and to justify you if you should take to +still more nimble heels. All your haste, moreover, does but waken +a more brilliantly-sounding ripple.</p> +<p>The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems +to carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your figure, +enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes free. +No watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. What +little outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer smoothly +towed. Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your head high +and watch the birds, or listen to them. They fly in such lofty +air that they seem to turn blue in the blue sky. A flash of their +flight shows silver for a moment, but they are blue birds in that sunny +distance above, as mountains are blue, and horizons. The days +are so still that you do not merely hear the cawing of the rooks—you +overhear their hundred private croakings and creakings, the soliloquy +of the solitary places swept by wings.</p> +<p>As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at +an end. This year’s robins are in full voice; and the only +song that is not for love or nesting—the childish song of boy-birds, +the freshest and youngest note—is, by a happy paradox, that of +an autumnal voice.</p> +<p>Here is no hoot, nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist’s +wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding note. +Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, stealthy soles +of the barefooted in the south.</p> +<h2>THE TETHERED CONSTELLATIONS</h2> +<p>It is no small thing—no light discovery—to find a river +Andromeda and Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half +a summer night around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two—delicate +visitants of streams—we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight +of the eyes, so fine and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the +southern waves may show the light—not the image—of the evening +or the morning planet. But this, in a pool of the country Thames +at night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it is the startling image of +a whole large constellation burning in the flood.</p> +<p>These reflected heavens are different heavens. On a darker +and more vacant field than that of the real skies, the shape of the +Lyre or the Bear has an altogether new and noble solitude; and the waters +play a painter’s part in setting their splendid subject free. +Two movements shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright flashing +of constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark flashes of the +vague bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien +motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars +escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady +night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a +suddenness of gleaming life. You imagine that some unexampled +gale might make them seem to shine with such a movement in the veritable +sky; yet nothing but deep water, seeming still in its incessant flight +and rebound, could really show such altered stars. The flood lets +a constellation fly, as Juliet’s “wanton” with a tethered +bird, only to pluck it home again. At moments some rhythmic flux +of the water seems about to leave the darkly-set, widely-spaced Bear +absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, and refuse to imitate +the skies, and all the water is obscure; then one broken star returns, +then fragments of another, and a third and a fourth flit back to their +noble places, brilliantly vague, wonderfully visible, mobile, and unalterable. +There is nothing else at once so keen and so elusive.</p> +<p>The aspen poplar had been in captive flight all day, but with no +such vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft +night are reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen +by the large and vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the +Pleiades.</p> +<p>There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in +the river Thames—the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys +on all the winds up and down England and across it in the end of summer. +It is a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a-tiptoe wherever +the wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty points when it is +not flying. The streets of London are among its many highways, +for it is fragile enough to go far in all sorts of weather. But +it gets disabled if a rough gust tumbles it on the water so that its +finely-feathered feet are wet. On gentle breezes it is able to +cross dry-shod, walking the waters.</p> +<p>All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. +It is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers +thistle plants (or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) +to the tops of many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would +rather have to meet it in battalions than in these invincible units +astray. But if the farmer owes it a lawful grudge, there is many +a rigid riverside garden wherein it would be a great pleasure to sow +the thistles of the nearest pasture.</p> +<h2>RUSHES AND REEDS</h2> +<p>Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another +growth that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned +to winter than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east +wind, more than the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, +rushes, canes, and reeds were the appropriate lyre of the cold. +On them the nimble winds played their dry music. They were part +of the winter. It looked through them and spoke through them. +They were spears and javelins in array to the sound of the drums of +the north.</p> +<p>The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those +that stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let +the colour of his light look through—low-flying arrows and bright +bayonets of winter day.</p> +<p>The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. +They belong to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and +the river, beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes +perilous footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low +lands, the sign of streams. They grow tall between you and the +near horizon of flat lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the +sky; and near them grow flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow +lily.</p> +<p>Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness +of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction +of its points, its needles, and its resolute right lines.</p> +<p>Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need +the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, +and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. +Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along +a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver +of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides +turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field +of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers +of a poet who have a thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, +more strongly tethered, are swept into a single attitude, again and +again, at every renewal of the storm.</p> +<p>Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds +in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed +(except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has +in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, +rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not conspicuous; +but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a gipsy people, amongst +us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is rather a gross man, +believes these races of reeds are his. But if he is a man of sensibility, +depend upon it he has his interior doubts. His property, he says, +goes right down to the centre of the earth, in the shape of a wedge; +how high up it goes into the air it would be difficult to say, and obviously +the shape of the wedge must be continued in the direction of increase. +We may therefore proclaim his right to the clouds and their cargo. +It is true that as his ground game is apt to go upon his neighbour’s +land to be shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his showers elsewhere. +But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed country-house +sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But he who +tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly disturbed +by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes should happen +to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his—he +had the pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for a time. +But the bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very thorough +landowner, but a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would endure this +sort of thing no longer, and went out armed and had a long acre of sedges +scythed to death.</p> +<p>They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds +and upon margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of +a road. No wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses +and their primroses are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now +and then, though, one has a kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds +of trees—the Corot trees. Standing at a distance from the +more ornamental trees, from those of fuller foliage, and from all the +indeciduous shrubs and the conifers (manifest property, every one), +two or three translucent aspens, with which the very sun and the breath +of earth are entangled, have sometimes seemed to wear a certain look—an +extra-territorial look, let us call it. They are suspect. +One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them.</p> +<p>And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he +may not say so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon +margins, are in spirit almost as extra-territorial as the rushes. +In proof of this he very often cuts them down, out of the view, once +for all. The view is better, as a view, without them. Though +their roots are in his ground right enough, there is a something about +their heads—. But the reason he gives for wishing them away +is merely that they are “thin.” A man does not always +say everything.</p> +<h2>A NORTHERN FANCY</h2> +<p>“I remember,” said Dryden, writing to Dennis, “I +remember poor Nat Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made +a sober and witty answer to a bad poet who told him, ‘It was an +easy thing to write like a madman.’ ‘No,’ said +he, ‘’tis a very difficult thing to write like a madman, +but ’tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.’” +Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light +high note, in English poetry throughout two centuries at least, and +one English poet lately set that untethered lyric, the mad maid’s +song, flying again.</p> +<p>A revolt against the oppression of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth +centuries—the age of the re-discovery of death; against the crime +of tragedies; against the tyranny of Italian example that had made the +poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, inconstancy—may +have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this tune of innocence, +and this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. “I heard +a maid in Bedlam,” runs the old song. High and low the poets +tried for that note, and the singer was nearly always to be a maid and +crazed for love. Except for the temporary insanity so indifferently +worn by the soprano of the now deceased kind of Italian opera, and except +that a recent French story plays with the flitting figure of a village +girl robbed of her wits by woe (and this, too, is a Russian villager, +and the Southern author may have found his story on the spot, as he +seems to aver) I have not met elsewhere than in England this solitary +and detached poetry of the treble note astray.</p> +<p>At least, it is principally a northern fancy. Would the steadfast +Cordelia, if she had not died, have lifted the low voice to that high +note, so delicately untuned? She who would not be prodigal of +words might yet, indeed, have sung in the cage, and told old tales, +and laughed at gilded butterflies of the court of crimes, and lived +so long in the strange health of an emancipated brain as to wear out</p> +<blockquote><p>Packs and sects of great ones<br /> +That ebb and flow by the moon.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>She, if King Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry +and strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the maid called +Barbara.</p> +<p>It was surely the name of the maid who died singing, as Desdemona +remembers, that lingered in the ear of Wordsworth. Of all the +songs of the distracted, written in the sanity of high imagination, +there is nothing more passionate than that beginning “’Tis +said that some have died for love.” To one who has always +recognized the greatness of this poem and who possibly had known and +forgotten how much Ruskin prized it, it was a pleasure to find the judgement +afresh in <i>Modern</i> <i>Painters</i>, where this grave lyric is cited +for an example of great imagination. It is the mourning and restless +song of the lover (“the pretty Barbara died”) who has not +yet broken free from memory into the alien world of the insane.</p> +<p>Barbara’s lover dwelt in the scene of his love, as Dryden’s +Adam entreats the expelling angel that he might do, protesting that +he could endure to lose “the bliss, but not the place.” +(And although this dramatic “Paradise Lost” of Dryden’s +is hardly named by critics except to be scorned, this is assuredly a +fine and imaginative thought.) It is nevertheless as a wanderer +that the crazed creature visits the fancy of English poets with such +a wild recurrence. The Englishman of the far past, barred by climate, +bad roads, ill-lighted winters, and the intricate life and customs of +the little town, must have been generally a home-keeper. No adventure, +no setting forth, and small liberty, for him. But Tom-a-Bedlam, +the wild man in patches or in ribbons, with his wallet and his horn +for alms of food or drink, came and went as fitfully as the storm, free +to suffer all the cold—an unsheltered creature; and the chill +fancy of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey that +had no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made +the swinging song: “From the hag and the hungry goblin”? +If a poet, it was one who wrote like a madman and not like a fool.</p> +<p>Not a town, not a village, not a solitary cottage during the English +Middle Ages was unvisited by him who frightened the children; they had +a name for him as for the wild birds—Robin Redbreast, Dicky Swallow, +Philip Sparrow, Tom Tit, Tom-a-Bedlam. And after him came the +“Abram men,” who were sane parodies of the crazed, and went +to the fairs and wakes in motley. Evelyn says of a fop: “All +his body was dressed like a maypole, or a Tom-a-Bedlam’s cap.” +But after the Civil Wars they vanished, and no man knew how. In +time old men remembered them only to remember that they had not seen +any such companies or solitary wanderers of late years.</p> +<p>The mad maid of the poets is a vagrant too, when she is free, and +not singing within Bedlam early in the morning, “in the spring.” +Wordsworth, who dealt with the legendary fancy in his “Ruth,” +makes the crazed one a wanderer in the hills whom a traveller might +see by chance, rare as an Oread, and nearly as wild as Echo herself:-</p> +<blockquote><p>I too have passed her in the hills<br /> +Setting her little water-mills.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His heart misgives him to think of the rheumatism that must befall +in such a way of living; and his grave sense of civilization, <i>bourgeois</i> +in the humane and noble way that is his own, restores her after death +to the company of man, to the “holy bell,” which Shakespeare’s +Duke remembered in banishment, and to the congregation and their “Christian +psalm.”</p> +<p>The older poets were less responsible, less serious and more sad, +than Wordsworth, when they in turn were touched by the fancy of the +maid crazed by love. They left her to her light immortality; and +she might be drenched in dews; they would not desire to reconcile nor +bury her. She might have her hair torn by the bramble, but her +heart was light after trouble. “Many light hearts and wings”—she +had at least the bird’s heart, and the poet lent to her voice +the wings of his verses.</p> +<p>There is nothing in our poetry less modern than she. The vagrant +woman of later feeling was rather the sane creature of Ebenezer Elliott’s +fine lines in “The Excursion”—</p> +<blockquote><p>Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried!<br /> +Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Trouble did not “try” the Elizabethan wild one, it undid +her. She had no child, or if there had ever been a child of hers, +she had long forgotten how it died. She hailed the wayfarer, who +was more weary than she, with a song; she haunted the cheerful dawn; +her “good-morrow” rings from Herrick’s poem, fresh +as cock-crow. She knows that her love is dead, and her perplexity +has regard rather to the many kinds of flowers than to the old story +of his death; they distract her in the splendid meadows.</p> +<p>All the tragic world paused to hear that lightest of songs, as the +tragedy of Hamlet pauses for the fitful voice of Ophelia. Strange +was the charm of this perpetual alien, and unknown to us now. +The world has become once again as it was in the mad maid’s heyday, +less serious and more sad than Wordsworth; but it has not recovered, +and perhaps will never recover, that sweetness. Blake’s +was a more starry madness. Crabbe, writing of village sorrows, +thought himself bound to recur to the legend of the mad maid, but his +“crazed maiden” is sane enough, sorrowful but dull, and +sings of her own “burning brow,” as Herrick’s wild +one never sang; nor is there any smile in her story, though she talks +of flowers, or, rather, “the herbs I loved to rear”; and +perhaps she is the surest of all signs that the strange inspiration +of the past centuries was lost, vanished like Tom-a-Bedlam himself. +It had been wholly English, whereas the English eighteenth century was +not wholly English.</p> +<p>It is not to be imagined that any hard Southern mind could ever have +played in poetry with such a fancy; or that Petrarch, for example, could +so have foregone the manifestation of intelligence and intelligible +sentiment. And as to Dante, who put the two eternities into the +momentary balance of the human will, cold would be his disregard of +this northern dream of innocence. If the mad maid was an alien +upon earth, what were she in the Inferno? What word can express +her strangeness there, her vagrancy there? And with what eyes +would they see this dewy face glancing in at the windows of that City?</p> +<h2>PATHOS</h2> +<p>A fugitive writer wrote not long ago on the fugitive page of a magazine: +“For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is the most +real personage of the piece, and not without some hints of the pathos +that is worked out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and +Malvolio.” Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist +and the Weltschmerz or their yet later equivalents, compared with which +“le spleen” of the French Byronic age was gay, done so much +for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from +the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. +Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic +convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration +of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of little +use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is precisely +Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they +can make shift to see through that: but the Snug within, the human Snug. +And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in that latent form which is +the more appealing; and discouraging questions arise as to the end of +old Double; and Harpagon is the tragic figure of Monomania; and as to +Argan, ah, what havoc in “les entrailles de Monsieur” must +have been wrought by those prescriptions! <i>Et</i> <i>patati</i>, +<i>et</i> <i>patata</i>.</p> +<p>It may be only too true that the actual world is “with pathos +delicately edged.” For Malvolio living we should have had +living sympathies; so much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; +so unarmed a credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter +of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the weaver our pity might +be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource +condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. +But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the +privilege of literature to treat things singly, without the after-thoughts +of life, without the troublous completeness of the many-sided world? +Is not Shakespeare, for this reason, our refuge? Fortunately unreal +is his world when he will have it so; and there we may laugh with open +heart at a grotesque man: without misgiving, without remorse, without +reluctance. If great creating Nature has not assumed for herself +she has assuredly secured to the great creating poet the right of partiality, +of limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of taking one impression +and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and Nature are +complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with one another. +And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the corner, as it +were, of a thing presented by literary art in the flat—(the borrowing +of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; but let this pass, as +it is apt)—is but another sign of the general lack of a sense +of the separation between Nature and her sentient mirror in the mind. +In some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is as Nature herself, all-inclusive; +but in others—and chiefly in comedy—he is partial, he is +impressionary, he refuses to know what is not to his purpose, he is +light-heartedly capricious. And in that gay, wilful world it is +that he gives us—or used to give us, for even the word is obsolete—the +pleasure of <i>oubliance</i>.</p> +<p>Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have caught +him a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those like-minded +will assuredly also continue to show how much more completely human, +how much more sensitive, how much more responsible, is the art of the +critic than the world has ever dreamt till now. And, superior +in so much, they will still count their importunate sensibility as the +choicest of their gifts. And Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can +have no better subject for his admiration than the pathos of the time. +It is bred now of your mud by the operation of your sun. ’Tis +a strange serpent; and the tears of it are wet.</p> +<h2>ANIMA PELLEGRINA!</h2> +<p>Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger’s +fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its +own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other +tongues. Easily—shall I say cheaply?—spiritual, for +example, was the nation that devised the name <i>anima</i> <i>pellegrina</i>, +wherewith to crown a creature admired. “Pilgrim soul” +is a phrase for any language, but “pilgrim soul!” addressed, +singly and sweetly to one who cannot be over-praised, “pilgrim-soul!” +is a phrase of fondness, the high homage of a lover, of one watching, +of one who has no more need of common flatteries, but has admired and +gazed while the object of his praises visibly surpassed them—this +is the facile Italian ecstasy, and it rises into an Italian heaven.</p> +<p>It was by chance, and in an old play, that I came upon this impetuous, +sudden, and single sentence of admiration, as it were a sentence of +life passed upon one charged with inestimable deeds; and the modern +editor had thought it necessary to explain the exclamation by a note. +It was, he said, poetical.</p> +<p><i>Anima</i> <i>pellegrina</i> seems to be Italian of no later date +than Pergolese’s airs, and suits the time as the familiar phrase +of the more modern love-song suited the day of Bellini. But it +is only Italian, bygone Italian, and not a part of the sweet past of +any other European nation, but only of this.</p> +<p>To the same local boundaries and enclosed skies belongs the charm +of those buoyant words:-</p> +<blockquote><p>Felice chi vi mira,<br /> +Ma più felice chi per voi sospira!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And it is not only a charm of elastic sound or of grace; that would +be but a property of the turn of speech. It is rather the profounder +advantage whereby the rhymes are freighted with such feeling as the +very language keeps in store. In another tongue you may sing, +“happy who looks, happier who sighs”; but in what other +tongue shall the little meaning be so sufficient, and in what other +shall you get from so weak an antithesis the illusion of a lovely intellectual +epigram? Yet it is not worthy of an English reader to call it +an illusion; he should rather be glad to travel into the place of a +language where the phrase <i>is</i> intellectual, impassioned, and an +epigram; and should thankfully for the occasion translate himself, and +not the poetry.</p> +<p>I have been delighted to use a present current phrase whereof the +charm may still be unknown to Englishmen—“<i>piuttosto</i> +<i>bruttini</i>.” See what an all-Italian spirit is here, +and what contempt, not reluctant, but tolerant and familiar. You +may hear it said of pictures, or works of art of several kinds, and +you confess at once that not otherwise should they be condemned. +<i>Brutto</i>—ugly—is the word of justice, the word for +any language, everywhere translatable, a circular note, to be exchanged +internationally with a general meaning, wholesale, in the course of +the European concert. But <i>bruttino</i> is a soothing diminutive, +a diminutive that forbears to express contempt, a diminutive that implies +innocence, and is, moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging +in the rear—“rather than not.” “Rather +ugly than not, and ugly in a little way that we need say few words about—the +fewer the better;” nay, this paraphrase cannot achieve the homely +Italian quality whereby the printed and condemnatory criticism is made +a family affair that shall go no further. After the sound of it, +the European concert seems to be composed of brass instruments.</p> +<p>How unlike is the house of English language and the enclosure into +which a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything +here more essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) +than our particle “un”? Poor are those living languages +that have not our use of so rich a negative. The French equivalent +in adjectives reaches no further than the adjective itself—or +hardly; it does not attain the participle; so that no French or Italian +poet has the words “unloved”, “unforgiven.” +None such, therefore, has the opportunity of the gravest and the most +majestic of all ironies. In our English, the words that are denied +are still there—“loved,” “forgiven”: excluded +angels, who stand erect, attesting what is not done, what is undone, +what shall not be done.</p> +<p>No merely opposite words could have so much denial, or so much pain +of loss, or so much outer darkness, or so much barred beatitude in sight. +All-present, all-significant, all-remembering, all-foretelling is the +word, and it has a plenitude of knowledge.</p> +<p>We have many more conspicuous possessions that are, like this, proper +to character and thought, and by no means only an accident of untransferable +speech. And it is impossible for a reader, who is a lover of languages +for their spirit, to pass the words of untravelled excellence, proper +to their own garden enclosed, without recognition. Never may they +be disregarded or confounded with the universal stock. If I would +not so neglect <i>piuttosto</i> <i>bruttini</i>, how much less a word +dominating literature! And of such words of ascendancy and race +there is no great English author but has abundant possession. +No need to recall them. But even writers who are not great have, +here and there, proved their full consciousness of their birthright. +Thus does a man who was hardly an author, Haydon the painter, put out +his hand to take his rights. He has incomparable language when +he is at a certain page of his life; at that time he sate down to sketch +his child, dying in its babyhood, and the head he studied was, he says, +full of “power and grief.”</p> +<p>This is a phrase of different discovery from that which reveals a +local rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an intellectual +place—<i>Felice</i> <i>chi</i> <i>vi</i> <i>mira—</i>or +the art-critic’s phrase—<i>piuttosto</i> <i>bruttini—</i>of +easy, companionable, and equal contempt.</p> +<p>As for French, if it had no other sacred words—and it has many—who +would not treasure the language that has given us—no, not that +has given us, but that has kept for its own—<i>ensoleillè</i>? +Nowhere else is the sun served with such a word. It is not to +be said or written without a convincing sense of sunshine, and from +the very word come light and radiation. The unaccustomed north +could not have made it, nor the accustomed south, but only a nation +part-north and part-south; therefore neither England nor Italy can rival +it. But there needed also the senses of the French—those +senses of which they say far too much in every second-class book of +their enormous, their general second-class, but which they have matched +in their time with some inimitable words. Perhaps that matching +was done at the moment of the full literary consciousness of the senses, +somewhere about the famous 1830. For I do not think <i>ensoleillè</i> +to be a much older word—I make no assertion. Whatever its +origin, may it have no end! They cannot weary us with it; for +it seems as new as the sun, as remote as old Provence; village, hill-side, +vineyard, and chestnut wood shine in the splendour of the word, the +air is light, and white things passing blind the eyes—a woman’s +linen, white cattle, shining on the way from shadow to shadow. +A word of the sense of sight, and a summer word, in short, compared +with which the paraphrase is but a picture. For <i>ensoleillè</i> +I would claim the consent of all readers—that they shall all acknowledge +the spirit of that French. But perhaps it is a mere personal preference +that makes <i>le</i> <i>jour</i> <i>s’annonce</i> also sacred.</p> +<p>If the hymn, “Stabat Mater dolorosa,” was written in +Latin, this could be only that it might in time find its true language +and incomparable phrase at last—that it might await the day of +life in its proper German. I found it there (and knew at once +the authentic verse, and knew at once for what tongue it had been really +destined) in the pages of the prayer-book of an apple-woman at an Innsbruck +church, and in the accents of her voice.</p> +<h2>A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY</h2> +<p>There is hardly a writer now—of the third class probably not +one—who has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty +of Nature; not one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a +modern reference to the manifold death and destruction with which the +air, the branches, the mosses are said to be full.</p> +<p>But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice +of the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and +of the dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where +are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? +Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? +Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent +habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin’s +beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail’s shell; but these +little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for +apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism +which is too slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might +hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle +back at the bird.</p> +<p>But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey +and plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes +violently into other forms, flashes without pause into another flame; +but not all. Amid all the killing there must be much dying. +There are, for instance, few birds of prey left in our more accessible +counties now, and many thousands of birds must die uncaught by a hawk +and unpierced. But if their killing is done so modestly, so then +is their dying also. Short lives have all these wild things, but +there are innumerable flocks of them always alive; they must die, then, +in innumerable flocks. And yet they keep the millions of the dead +out of sight.</p> +<p>Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in +a cold winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine +was so complete, that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and +the earth conspired that February to make known all the secrets; everything +was published. Death was manifest. Editors, when a great +man dies, are not more resolute than was the frost of ’95.</p> +<p>The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised +and forced to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument +which the art and imagination of England combined to raise to his memory +at Oxford.</p> +<p>Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought wrong. +There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of a bird and +in exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a soldier—<i>passe</i> +<i>encore</i>. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. +And the death of the birds is so little characteristic of them that, +as has just been said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, +except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled +to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a +rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. +There is no tale of the game-bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, +but with strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the +trees, and see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been +by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing +like a butcher’s shop in the woods.</p> +<p>But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the +wild world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. +I have turned over scores of “Lives,” not to read them, +but to see whether now and again there might be a “Life” +which was not more emphatically a death. But there never is a +modern biography that has taken the hint of Nature. One and all, +these books have the disproportionate illness, the death out of all +scale.</p> +<p>Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been +rightly his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is +assumed to be news for the first comer. Which of us would suffer +the details of any physical suffering, over and done in our own lives, +to be displayed and described? This is not a confidence we have +a mind to make; and no one is authorised to ask for attention or pity +on our behalf. The story of pain ought not to be told of us, seeing +that by us it would assuredly not be told.</p> +<p>There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more exclusively, +and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and illusions of a +long delirium. When he is in common language not himself, amends +should be made for so bitter a paradox; he should be allowed such solitude +as is possible to the alienated spirit; he should be left to the “not +himself,” and spared the intrusion against which he can so ill +guard that he could hardly have even resented it.</p> +<p>The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door +of Rossetti’s house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. +His mortal illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather +affected objection is taken every now and then to the publication of +some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. +Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What +is not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his +death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told—told +briefly—it was certainly not for marble. Shelley’s +death had no significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It +was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost +of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant +fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill-named +biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is +a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last +chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. +They, of all survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look +upon a death with more composure. To those who loved the dead +closely, this is, for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, +for a year, disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night +by night. They have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some +labyrinth; they have to mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery +in such a mingling of distress and of always incredulous happiness as +is not known even to dreams save in that first year of separation. +But they are not biographers.</p> +<p>If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously +secret because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may +surprise everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. +The chase goes on everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual +chase seems to cause no perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. +Life is undefended, careless, nimble and noisy.</p> +<p>It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost ceased, +to paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually in +that British School of water-colour art, stippled, of which surrounding +nations, it was agreed, were envious. They must have killed their +bird to paint him, for he is not to be caught dead. A bird is +more easily caught alive than dead.</p> +<p>A poet, on the contrary, is easily—too easily—caught +dead. Minor artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but +a good sculptor and a University together modelled their Shelley on +his back, unessentially drowned; and everybody may read about the sick +mind of Dante Rossetti.</p> +<h2>THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY</h2> +<p>The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, +to devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated +papers—the enormous production of art in black and white—is +assuredly a confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working +for. Fifty years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; +these were the commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend +to the beauty of things of use that were destined to be broken and worn +out, and they looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad +pictures; so that what to do with their bad pictures in addition to +our own has become the problem of the nation and of the householder +alike. To-day men have began to learn that their sons will be +grateful to them for few bequests. Art consents at last to work +upon the tissue and the china that are doomed to the natural and necessary +end—destruction; and art shows a most dignified alacrity to do +her best, daily, for the “process,” and for oblivion.</p> +<p>Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap +costs the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the inevitable +that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in the singular +and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is done for so +short a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the acceptance +of death, inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. There is a +real circulation of blood-quick use, brief beauty, abolition, recreation. +The honour of the day is for ever the honour of that day. It goes +into the treasury of things that are honestly and—completely ended +and done with. And when can so happy a thing be said of a lifeless +oil-painting? Who of the wise would hesitate? To be honourable +for one day—one named and dated day, separate from all other days +of the ages—or to be for an unlimited time tedious?</p> +<h2>COMPOSURE</h2> +<p>Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure +do these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the +remoteness of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake +too cruelly. In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble +of the soul an aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared +death. Did his noble English control and postpone the terror? +Did it keep the fear at some courteous, deferent distance from the centre +of that human heart, in the very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? +Doubtless there is in language such an educative power. Speech +is a school. Every language is a persuasion, an induced habit, +an instrument which receives the note indeed but gives the tone. +Every language imposes a quality, teaches a temper, proposes a way, +bestows a tradition: this is the tone—the voice—of the instrument. +Every language, by counterchange, returns to the writer’s touch +or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his note. Much +has always been said, many things to the purpose have been thought, +of the power and the responsibility of the note. Of the legislation +and influence of the tone I have been led to think by comparing the +tranquillity of Johnson and the composure of Canning with the stimulated +and close emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers who have entered +as disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English.</p> +<p>For if every language be a school, more significantly and more educatively +is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that part. +Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is made +implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French author +is without these. They are of all the heritages of the English +writer the most important. He receives a language of dual derivation. +He may submit himself to either University, whither he will take his +impulse and his character, where he will leave their influence, and +whence he will accept their re-education. The Frenchman has certainly +a style to develop within definite limits; but he does not subject himself +to suggestions tending mainly hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents +of various race within one literature. Such a choice of subjection +is the singular opportunity of the Englishman. I do not mean to +ignore the necessary mingling. Happily that mingling has been +done once for all for us all. Nay, one of the most charming things +that a master of English can achieve is the repayment of the united +teaching by linking their results so exquisitely in his own practice, +that words of the two schools are made to meet each other with a surprise +and delight that shall prove them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter +companions, than the world knew they were. Nevertheless there +remains the liberty of choice as to which school of words shall have +the place of honour in the great and sensitive moments of an author’s +style: which school shall be used for conspicuousness, and which for +multitudinous service. And the choice being open, the perturbation +of the pulses and impulses of so many hearts quickened in thought and +feeling in this day suggests to me a deliberate return to the recollectedness +of the more tranquil language. “Doubtless there is a place +of peace.”</p> +<p>A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not +to charge some of the moralists of the eighteenth century with an indifference +into which they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes +educated them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost +incapable of coming within arm’s-length of a real or spiritual +emotion. There is no knowing to what distance the removal of the +“appropriate sentiment” from the central soul might have +attained but for the change and renewal in language, which came when +it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed eternity far from +the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the “pleasing +hope,” the “fond desire”; and the touch of war was +distant from him who conceived his “repulsed battalions” +and his “doubtful battle.” What came afterwards, when +simplicity and nearness were restored once more, was doubtless journeyman’s +work at times. Men were too eager to go into the workshop of language. +There were unreasonable raptures over the mere making of common words. +“A hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!” +they cried; and for the love of German the youngest daughter of Chrysale +herself might have consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It +seemed to be forgotten that a language with all its construction visible +is a language little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; +that its images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain +spiritualizing and subtilizing effect of alien derivations is a privilege +and an advantage incalculable—that to possess that half of the +language within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions +are at play is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue, without +the death.</p> +<p>But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master’s phrase. The most +beautiful and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare. +“Superfluous kings,” “A lass unparalleled,” +“Multitudinous seas”: we needed not to wait for the eighteenth +century or for the nineteenth or for the twentieth to learn the splendour +of such encounters, of such differences, of such nuptial unlikeness +and union. But it is well that we should learn them afresh. +And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic reaction +bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a reaction +is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell +the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and +the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement +expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse might +render us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with +a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning +for his son. But it should not be attempted without a distinct +intention of submission on the part of the writer. The couplet +transgressed against, trespassed upon, used loosely, is like a law outstripped, +defied—to the dignity neither of the rebel nor of the rule.</p> +<p>To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the +very closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. +Shall not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature, +assume the honour, the hesitation, the leisure, the reconciliation of +the Word?</p> +<h2>THE LITTLE LANGUAGE</h2> +<p>Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish +master of the magic of local things.</p> +<p>In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it nourishes; +inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom Goldoni and Gallina +and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois of the Veneto, use no +dialect at all.</p> +<p>Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with +so much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their almost +unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into the +homes of dialect, does but show us how the language staggers under such +a stress, how it breaks down, and resigns that office. One of +the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is +that old manageress of the narrow things of the house whose daughter +is dying insane. I have called the dialect a shelter. This +it is; but the poor lady does not cower within; her resigned head erect, +she is shut out from that homely refuge, suffering and inarticulate. +The two dramatists in their several centuries also recognized the inability +of the dialect. They laid none but light loads upon it. +They caused it to carry no more in their homely plays than it carries +in homely life. Their work leaves it what it was—the talk +of a people talking much about few things; a people like our own and +any other in their lack of literature, but local and all Italian in +their lack of silence.</p> +<p>Common speech is surely a greater part of life to such a people than +to one less pleased with chatter or more pleased with books. I +am writing of men, women, and children (and children are not forgotten, +since we share a patois with children on terms of more than common equality) +who possess, for all occasions of ceremony and opportunities of dignity, +a general, national, liberal, able, and illustrious tongue, charged +with all its history and all its achievements; for the speakers of dialect, +of a certain rank, speak Italian, too. But to tamper with their +dialect, or to take it from them, would be to leave them houseless and +exposed in their daily business. So much does their patois seem +to be their refuge from the heavy and multitudinous experiences of a +literary tongue, that the stopping of a fox’s earth might be taken +as the image of any act that should spoil or stop the talk of the associated +seclusion of their town, and leave them in the bleakness of a larger +patriotism.</p> +<p>The Venetian people, the Genoese, and the other speakers of languages +that might all have proved right “Italian” had not Dante, +Petrarch and Boccaccio written in Tuscan, can neither write nor be taught +hard things in their dialect, although they can live, whether easy lives +or hard, and evidently can die, therein. The hands and feet that +have served the villager and the citizen at homely tasks have all the +lowliness of his patois, to his mind; and when he must perforce yield +up their employment, we may believe that it is a simple thing to die +in so simple and so narrow a language, one so comfortable, neighbourly, +tolerant, and compassionate; so confidential; so incapable, ignorant, +unappalling, inapt to wing any wearied thought upon difficult flight +or to spur it upon hard travelling.</p> +<p>Not without words is mental pain, or even physical pain, to be undergone; +but the words that have done no more than order the things of the narrow +street are not words to put a fine edge or a piercing point to any human +pang. It may even well be that to die in dialect is easier than +to die in the eloquence of Manfred, though that declaimed language, +too, is doubtless a defence, if one of a different manner.</p> +<p>These writers in Venetian—they are named because in no other +Italian dialect has work so popular as Goldoni’s been done, nor +so excellent as Signor Fogazzaro’s—have left the unlettered +local language in which they loved to deal, to its proper limitations. +They have not given weighty things into its charge, nor made it heavily +responsible. They have added nothing to it; nay, by writing it +they might even be said to have made it duller, had it not been for +the reader and the actor. Insomuch as the intense expressiveness +of a dialect—of a small vocabulary in the mouth of a dramatic +people—lies in the various accent wherewith a southern citizen +knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to restore its +life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is forbidden +to search for the word, for there is none lurking for his choice; but +of tones, allusions, and of references and inferences of the voice, +the speaker of dialect is a master. No range of phrases can be +his, but he has the more or the less confidential inflection, until +at times the close communication of the narrow street becomes a very +conspiracy.</p> +<p>Let it be borne in mind that dialect properly so called is something +all unlike, for instance, the mere jargon of London streets. The +difference may be measured by the fact that Italian dialects have a +highly organized and orderly grammar. The Londoner cannot keep +the small and loose order of the grammar of good English; the Genoese +conjugates his patois verbs, with subjunctives and all things of that +handsome kind, lacked by the English of Universities.</p> +<p>The middle class—the <i>piccolo</i> <i>mondo—</i>that +shares Italian dialect with the poor are more strictly local in their +manners than either the opulent or the indigent of the same city. +They have moreover the busy intelligence (which is the intellect of +patois) at its keenest. Their speech keeps them a sequestered +place which is Italian, Italian beyond the ken of the traveller, and +beyond the reach of alteration. And—what is pretty to observe—the +speakers are well conscious of the characters of this intimate language. +An Italian countryman who has known no other climate will vaunt, in +fervent platitudes, his Italian sun; in like manner he is conscious +of the local character of his language, and tucks himself within it +at home, whatever Tuscan he may speak abroad. A properly spelt +letter, Swift said, would seem to expose him and Mrs Dingley and Stella +to the eyes of the world; but their little language, ill-written, was +“snug.”</p> +<p>Lovers have made a little language in all times; finding the nobler +language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? discard +noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in despair thus prattle +and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this departure from English +is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal lovers, no doubt, +would be so simple as to be grave. That is a tenable opinion. +Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have +exchanged language imitated from the children they doubtless never studied, +and perhaps never loved. Why so? They might have chosen +broken English of other sorts—that, for example, which was once +thought amusing in farce, as spoken by the Frenchman conceived by the +Englishman—a complication of humour fictitious enough, one might +think, to please anyone; or else a fragment of negro dialect; or the +style of telegrams; or the masterly adaptation of the simple savage’s +English devised by Mrs Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. +But none of these found favour. The choice has always been of +the language of children. Let us suppose that the flock of winged +Loves worshipping Venus in the Titian picture, and the noble child that +rides his lion erect with a background of Venetian gloomy dusk, may +be the inspirers of those prattlings. “See then thy selfe +likewise art lyttle made,” says Spenser’s Venus to her child.</p> +<p>Swift was the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised +it in Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her +clumsily back into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged +in her a childhood he had loved. He is “seepy.” +“Nite, dealest dea, nite dealest logue.” It is a real +good-night. It breathes tenderness from that moody and uneasy +bed of projects.</p> +<h2>A COUNTERCHANGE</h2> +<p>“Il s’est trompé de défunte.” +The writer of this phrase had his sense of that portly manner of French, +and his burlesque is fine; but—the paradox must be risked—because +he was French he was not able to possess all its grotesque mediocrity +to the full; that is reserved for the English reader. The words +are in the mouth of a widower who, approaching his wife’s tomb, +perceives there another “monsieur.” “Monsieur,” +again; the French reader is deprived of the value of this word, too, +in its place; it says little or nothing to him, whereas the Englishman, +who has no word of the precise bourgeois significance that it sometimes +bears, but who must use one of two English words of different allusion—man +or I gentleman—knows the exact value of its commonplace. +The serious Parisian, then, sees “un autre monsieur;” as +it proves anon, there had been a divorce in the history of the lady, +but the later widower is not yet aware of this, and explains to himself +the presence of “un monsieur” in his own place by that weighty +phrase, “Il s’est trompé de défunte.”</p> +<p>The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with national +character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking author who +was debarred by his own language from possessing the whole of his own +comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his English that an Englishman +does possess it. Your official, your professional Parisian has +a vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled mediocrity. When the novelist +perceives this he does not perceive it all, because some of the words +are the only words in use. Take an author at his serious moments, +when he is not at all occupied with the comedy of phrases, and he now +and then touches a word that has its burlesque by mere contrast with +English. “L’Histoire d’un Crime,” of Victor +Hugo, has so many of these touches as to be, by a kind of reflex action, +a very school of English. The whole incident of the omnibus in +that grave work has unconscious international comedy. The Deputies +seated in the interior of the omnibus had been, it will be remembered, +shut out of their Chamber by the perpetrator of the Coup d’Etat, +but each had his official scarf. Scarf—pish!—“l’écharpe!” +“Ceindre l’écharpe”—there is no real +English equivalent. Civic responsibility never was otherwise adequately +expressed. An indignant deputy passed his scarf through the window +of the omnibus, as an appeal to the public, “et l’agita.” +It is a pity that the French reader, having no simpler word, is not +in a position to understand the slight burlesque. Nay, the mere +word “public,” spoken with this peculiar French good faith, +has for us I know not what untransferable gravity.</p> +<p>There is, in short, a general international counterchange. +It is altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, +with its extremely “specialized” manner of industry, that +one people should make a phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. +And, in fact, there are certain French authors to whom should be secured +the use of the literary German whereof Germans, and German women in +particular, ought with all severity to be deprived. For Germans +often tell you of words in their own tongue that are untranslatable; +and accordingly they should not be translated, but given over in their +own conditions, unaltered, into safer hands. There would be a +clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a better order in the phrase; +the possessors of an alien word, with the thought it secures, would +find also their advantage.</p> +<p>So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English +ears. It is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate +householder, for example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the conservatory +“pour rétablir la circulation,” and the other who +describes himself “sous-chef de bureau dans l’enregistrement,” +and he who proposes to “faire hommage” of a doubtful turbot +to the neighbouring “employé de l’octroi”—these +and all their like speak commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own +country the perfection of their dulness. We only, who have the +alternative of plainer and fresher words, understand it. It is +not the least of the advantages of our own dual English that we become +sensible of the mockery of certain phrases that in France have lost +half their ridicule, uncontrasted.</p> +<p>Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation +in all Latin languages—rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, +either majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French +this proffers a frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of +an Englishman, no longer detects. A guard on a French railway, +who advised two travellers to take a certain train for fear they should +be obliged to “végéter” for a whole hour in +the waiting-room of such or such a station seemed to the less practised +tourist to be a fresh kind of unexpected humourist.</p> +<p>One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and subscriptions +in France has more than the intentional comedy of the farce-writer; +one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his visitors in the +country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to them: “Nous jouons +cinquante centimes—les bénéfices seront versés +intégralement à la souscription qui est ouverte à +la commune pour la construction de notre maison d’école.”</p> +<p>“Flétrir,” again. Nothing could be more +rhetorical than this perfectly common word of controversy. The +comic dramatist is well aware of the spent violence of this phrase, +with which every serious Frenchman will reply to opponents, especially +in public matters. But not even the comic dramatist is aware of +the last state of refuse commonplace that a word of this kind represents. +Refuse rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson’s “fossil +poetry,” would seem to be the right name for human language as +some of the processes of the several recent centuries have left it.</p> +<p>The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an Englishman. +They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as “Il s’est +trompé de défunte.” In the report of that +dull, incomparable sentence there is enough humour, and subtle enough, +for both the maker and the reader; for the author who perceives the +comedy as well as custom will permit, and for the reader who takes it +with the freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, +the current word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. +When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, +the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: “Il s’est +empêtré dans les futurs.” But for a reader +who has a full sense of the several languages that exist in English +at the service of the several ways of human life, there is, from the +mere terminology of official France, high or low—daily France—a +gratuitous and uncovenanted smile to be had. With this the wit +of the report of French literature has not little to do. Nor is +it in itself, perhaps, reasonably comic, but the slightest irony of +circumstance makes it so. A very little of the mockery of conditions +brings out all the latent absurdity of the “sixième et +septième arron-dissements,” in the twinkling of an eye. +So is it with the mere “domicile;” with the aid of but a +little of the burlesque of life, the suit at law to “réintégrer +le domicile conjugal” becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make +it. Even “à domicile” merely—the word +of every shopman—is, in the unconscious mouths of the speakers, +always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an Englishman hears +it; so is the advice of the police that you shall “circuler” +in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you shall not, in +the churches.</p> +<p>So are the serious and ordinary phrases, “maison nuptiale,” +“maison mortuaire,” and the still more serious “repos +dominical,” “oraison dominicale.” There is no +majesty in such words. The unsuspicious gravity with which they +are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at, the language offering +no relief of contrast; and what is much to the credit of the comic sensibility +of literature is the fact that, through this general unconsciousness, +the ridicule of a thousand authors of comedy perceives the fun, and +singles out the familiar thing, and compels that most elaborate dulness +to amuse us. <i>Us</i>, above all, by virtue of the custom of +counterchange here set forth.</p> +<p>Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the English +poets that so persist in France may not reveal something within the +English language—one would be somewhat loth to think so—reserved +to the French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, Edgar +Poe to the select? Then would some of the mysteries of French +reading of English be explained otherwise than by the plainer explanation +that has hitherto satisfied our haughty curiosity. The taste for +rhetoric seemed to account for Byron, and the desire of the rhetorician +to claim a taste for poetry seemed to account for Poe. But, after +all, <i>patatras</i>! Who can say?</p> +<h2>HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO</h2> +<p>The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell +with him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for +English drama. That manner of man—Arlecchino, or Harlequin—had +outlived his playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. +A little of Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father +of the Shrew, but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate +Tranio in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than +the smouldering of the old man. Arlecchino frolics in and out +of the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his +lightest, his brightest, his most vital shape.</p> +<p>Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the busybody, +the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, the mercurial +one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of Molière. +He is officious and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille and Ergaste +and Scapin; but he tends to be a lacquey, with a reference rather to +Antiquity and the Latin comedy than to the Middle Ages, as on the English +stage his mere memory survives differently to a later age in the person +of “Charles, his friend.” What convinces me that he +virtually died with Mercutio is chiefly this—that this comrade +of Romeo’s lives so keenly as to be fully capable of the death +that he takes at Tybalt’s sword-point; he lived indeed, he dies +indeed. Another thing that marks the close of a career of ages +is his loss of his long customary good luck. Who ever heard of +Arlecchino unfortunate before, at fault with his sword-play, overtaken +by tragedy? His time had surely come. The gay companion +was to bleed; Tybalt’s sword had made a way. ’Twas +not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but it served.</p> +<p>Some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the primitive +Italian play, because Harlequin, on that conventional little stage of +the past, has a hero’s place, whereas when he interferes in human +affairs he is only the auxiliary. He might be lover and bridegroom +on the primitive stage, in the comedy of these few and unaltered types; +but when Pantaloon, Clown, and Harlequin play with really human beings, +then Harlequin can be no more than a friend of the hero, the friend +of the bridegroom. The five figures of the old stage dance attendance; +they play around the business of those who have the dignity of mortality; +they, poor immortals—a clown who does not die, a pantaloon never +far from death, who yet does not die, a Columbine who never attains +Desdemona’s death of innocence or Juliet’s death of rectitude +and passion—flit in the backward places of the stage.</p> +<p>Ariel fulfils his office, and is not of one kind with those he serves. +Is there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? Something +of the subservient immortality, of the light indignity, proper to Pantaleone, +Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the Clown, hovers away from the +stage when Ariel is released from the trouble of human things.</p> +<p>Immortality, did I say? It was immortality until Mercutio fell. +And if some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has transformed +so many scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand children, since +Mercutio died, I must reply that our modern Harlequin is no more than +a <i>marionnette</i>; he has returned whence he came. A man may +play him, but he is—as he was first of all—a doll. +From doll-hood Arlecchino took life, and, so promoted, flitted through +a thousand comedies, only to be again what he first was; save that, +as once a doll played the man, so now a man plays the doll. It +is but a memory of Arlecchino that our children see, a poor statue or +image endowed with mobility rather than with life.</p> +<p>With Mercutio, vanished the light heart that had given to the serious +ages of the world an hour’s refuge from the unforgotten burden +of responsible conscience; the light heart assumed, borrowed, made dramatically +the spectator’s own. We are not serious now, and no heart +now is quite light, even for an hour.</p> +<h2>LAUGHTER</h2> +<p>Times have been, it is said, merrier than these; but it is certain +nevertheless that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not +for the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere +the joke “emerges”—as an “elegant” writer +might have it—emerges to catch the attention of the sense of humour; +and everywhere the sense of humour wanders, watches, and waits to honour +the appeal.</p> +<p>It loiters, vaguely but perpetually willing. It wears (let +the violent personification be pardoned) a hanging lip, and a wrinkle +in abeyance, and an eye in suspense. It is much at the service +of the vagrant encounterer, and may be accosted by any chance daughters +of the game. It stands in untoward places, or places that were +once inappropriate, and is early at some indefinite appointment, some +ubiquitous tryst, with the compliant jest.</p> +<p>All literature becomes a field of easy assignations; there is a constant +signalling, an endless recognition. Forms of approach are remitted. +And the joke and the sense of humour, with no surprise of meeting, or +no gaiety of strangeness, so customary has the promiscuity become, go +up and down the pages of the paper and the book. See, again, the +theatre. A somewhat easy sort of comic acting is by so much the +best thing upon our present stage that little else can claim—paradox +again apart—to be taken seriously.</p> +<p>There is, in a word, a determination, an increasing tendency away +from the Oriental estimate of laughter as a thing fitter for women, +fittest for children, and unfitted for the beard. Laughter is +everywhere and at every moment proclaimed to be the honourable occupation +of men, and in some degree distinctive of men, and no mean part of their +prerogative and privilege. The sense of humour is chiefly theirs, +and those who are not men are to be admitted to the jest upon their +explanation. They will not refuse explanation. And there +is little upon which a man will so value himself as upon that sense, +“in England, now.”</p> +<p>Meanwhile, it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like +rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit +when it is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we +must confess that we laugh oftenest because—being amused—we +intend to show that we are amused. We are right to make the sign, +but a smile would be as sure a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; +it would but be changing the convention; and the change would restore +laughter itself to its own place. We have fallen into the way +of using it to prove something—our sense of the goodness of the +jest, to wit; but laughter should not thus be used, it should go free. +It is not a demonstration, whether in logic, or—as the word demonstration +is now generally used—in emotion; and we do ill to charge it with +that office.</p> +<p>Something of the Oriental idea of dignity might not be amiss among +such a people as ourselves containing wide and numerous classes who +laugh without cause: audiences; crowds; a great many clergymen, who +perhaps first fell into the habit in the intention of proving that they +were not gloomy; but a vast number of laymen also who had not that excuse; +and many women who laugh in their uncertainty as to what is humorous +and what is not. This last is the most harmless of all kinds of +superfluous laughter. When it carries an apology, a confession +of natural and genial ignorance, and when a gentle creature laughs a +laugh of hazard and experiment, she is to be more than forgiven. +What she must not do is to laugh a laugh of instruction, and as it were +retrieve the jest that was never worth the taking.</p> +<p>There are, besides, a few women who do not disturb themselves as +to a sense of humour, but who laugh from a sense of happiness. +Childish is that trick, and sweet. For children, who always laugh +because they must, and never by way of proof or sign, laugh only half +their laughs out of their sense of humour; they laugh the rest under +a mere stimulation: because of abounding breath and blood; because some +one runs behind them, for example, and movement does so jog their spirits +that their legs fail them, for laughter, without a jest.</p> +<p>If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to +signal their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall keep +the laugh for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, and simply, +and not thrice at the same thing—once for foolish surprise, and +twice for tardy intelligence, and thrice to let it be known that they +are amused—then it may be time to persuade this laughing nation +not to laugh so loud as it is wont in public. The theatre audiences +of louder-speaking nations laugh lower than ours. The laugh that +is chiefly a signal of the laugher’s sense of the ridiculous is +necessarily loud; and it has the disadvantage of covering what we may +perhaps wish to hear from the actors. It is a public laugh, and +no ordinary citizen is called upon for a public laugh. He may +laugh in public, but let it be with private laughter there.</p> +<p>Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times +of dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour +in a place better guarded, as something worth a measure of seclusion. +It should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in adventurous places. +For the sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous +in the act of laughter. It has negative tasks of valid virtue; +for example, the standing and waiting within call of tragedy itself, +where, excluded, it may keep guard.</p> +<p>No reasonable man will aver that the Oriental manners are best. +This would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where the +wit “out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine,” and to +deny Ben Jonson’s “tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty +Plautus,” and the rest. Doubtless Greece determined the +custom for all our Occident; but none the less might the modern world +grow more sensible of the value of composure.</p> +<p>To none other of the several powers of our souls do we so give rein +as to this of humour, and none other do we indulge with so little fastidiousness. +It is as though there were honour in governing the other senses, and +honour in refusing to govern this. It is as though we were ashamed +of reason here, and shy of dignity, and suspicious of temperance, and +diffident of moderation, and too eager to thrust forward that which +loses nothing by seclusion.</p> +<h2>THE RHYTHM OF LIFE</h2> +<p>If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity +rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the +orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not +measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, +the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last +year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or +next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon +the tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter +and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer +intervals towards recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable +yesterday, and will be intolerable to-morrow; to-day it is easy to bear, +but the cause has not passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress +unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse +itself does not remain—it returns. Gaiety takes us by a +dear surprise. If we had made a course of notes of its visits, +we might have been on the watch, and would have had an expectation instead +of a discovery. No one makes such observations; in all the diaries +of students of the interior world, there have never come to light the +records of the Kepler of such cycles. But Thomas à Kempis +knew of the recurrences, if he did not measure them. In his cell +alone with the elements—“What wouldst thou more than these? +for out of these were all things made”—he learnt the stay +to be found in the depth of the hour of bitterness, and the remembrance +that restrains the soul at the coming of the moment of delight, giving +it a more conscious welcome, but presaging for it an inexorable flight. +And “rarely, rarely comest thou,” sighed Shelley, not to +Delight merely, but to the Spirit of Delight. Delight can be compelled +beforehand, called, and constrained to our service—Ariel can be +bound to a daily task; but such artificial violence throws life out +of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus compelled. <i>That</i> +flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or hyperbolically +curved, keeping no man knows what trysts with Time.</p> +<p>It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the “Imitation” +should both have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, +and to guess at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were +in close touch with the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate +human rules, no infractions of the liberty and law of the universal +movement, kept from them the knowledge of recurrences. <i>Eppur</i> +<i>si</i> <i>muove</i>. They knew that presence does not exist +without absence; they knew that what is just upon its flight of farewell +is already on its long path of return. They knew that what is +approaching to the very touch is hastening towards departure. +“O wind,” cried Shelley, in autumn,</p> +<blockquote><p>O wind,<br /> +If winter comes can spring be far behind?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt +with unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of +onset and retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live +in constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought +in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the +senses, is to live without either rest or full activity. The souls +of certain of the saints, being singularly simple and single, have been +in the most complete subjection to the law of periodicity. Ecstasy +and desolation visited them by seasons. They endured, during spaces +of vacant time, the interior loss of all for which they had sacrificed +the world. They rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness +alighting in their hearts. Like them are the poets whom, three +times or ten times in the course of a long life, the Muse has approached, +touched, and forsaken. And yet hardly like them; not always so +docile, nor so wholly prepared for the departure, the brevity, of the +golden and irrevocable hour. Few poets have fully recognized the +metrical absence of their muse. For full recognition is expressed +in one only way—silence.</p> +<p>It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship +the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes +are known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her depend the +tides; and she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that +recurrently irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than any other +companion of earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages +knew her by that name. Her metrical phases are the symbol of the +order of recurrence. Constancy in approach and in departure is +the reason of her inconstancies. Juliet will not receive a vow +spoken in invocation of the moon; but Juliet did not live to know that +love itself has tidal times—lapses and ebbs which are due to the +metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the lover vainly and +unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in the beloved. +For man—except those elect already named—is hardly aware +of periodicity. The individual man either never learns it fully, +or learns it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a matter +of cumulative experience upon which cumulative evidence is long lacking. +It is in the after-part of each life that the law is learnt so definitely +as to do away with the hope or fear of continuance. That young +sorrow comes so near to despair is a result of this young ignorance. +So is the early hope of great achievement. Life seems so long, +and its capacity so great, to one who knows nothing of all the intervals +it needs must hold—intervals between aspirations, between actions, +pauses as inevitable as the pauses of sleep. And life looks impossible +to the young unfortunate, unaware of the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. +It would be for their peace to learn that there is a tide in the affairs +of men, in a sense more subtle—if it is not too audacious to add +a meaning to Shakespeare—than the phrase was meant to contain. +Their joy is flying away from them on its way home; their life will +wax and wane; and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in +its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all +things—a sun’s revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity.</p> +<h2>DOMUS ANGUSTA</h2> +<p>The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for its +slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but their +complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, of the +human lot. A disproportion—all in favour of man—between +man and his destiny is one of the things to be taken for granted in +literature: so frequent and so easy is the utterance of the habitual +lamentation as to the trouble of a “vain capacity,” so well +explained has it ever been.</p> +<blockquote><p>Thou hast not half the power to do me harm<br /> +That I have to be hurt,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the +brave Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow +house. Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution +is there, little argument or definition, little explicitness. +And yet for every vain capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain +destinies, for every liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. +It is the trouble of the wide house we hear of, clamorous of its disappointments +and desires. The narrow house has no echoes; yet its pathetic +shortcoming might well move pity. On that strait stage is acted +a generous tragedy; to that inadequate soul is intrusted an enormous +sorrow; a tempest of movement makes its home within that slender nature; +and heroic happiness seeks that timorous heart.</p> +<p>We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its inarticulateness—not, +certainly, its fewness of words, but its inadequacy and imprecision +of speech. For, doubtless, right language enlarges the soul as +no other power or influence may do. Who, for instance, but trusts +more nobly for knowing the full word of his confidence? Who but +loves more penetratingly for possessing the ultimate syllable of his +tenderness? There is a “pledging of the word,” in +another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and promise. The +poet pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and finds therein a +peculiar sanction. And I suppose that even physical pain takes +on an edge when it not only enforces a pang but whispers a phrase. +Consciousness and the word are almost as closely united as thought and +the word. Almost—not quite; in spite of its inexpressive +speech, the narrow house is aware and sensitive beyond, as it were, +its poor power.</p> +<p>But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, +we know it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; +love is great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic +virtue; and to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, submissive +in the indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the vulgar, secret +in the familiar. It is destructive, because it not only closes +but contradicts life. Unlikely people die. The one certain +thing, it is also the one improbable. A dreadful paradox is perhaps +wrought upon a little nature that is incapable of death and yet is constrained +to die. That is a true destruction, and the thought of it is obscure.</p> +<p>Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal +pause. It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical +conclusion. Mrs. Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. +Considering her mental powers, by the way, an illogical conclusion for +her would be manifestly inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having +seen a life whole, sees it to an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. +More than Promethean was the audacity that, having kindled, quenched +that spark. But otherwise the grotesque man in literature is immortal, +and with something more significant than the immortality awarded to +him in the sayings of rhetoric; he is perdurable because he is not completed. +His humours are strangely matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, +he is not worthy to die; for there is something graver than to be immortal, +and that is to be mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman +in the world. I thank my fellow mortals for their wit, and also +for the kind of joke that the French so pleasantly call <i>une</i> <i>joyeuseté</i>; +these are to smile at. But the gay injustice of laughter is between +me and the man or woman in a book, in fiction, or on the stage in a +play.</p> +<p>That narrow house—there is sometimes a message from its living +windows. Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by +moments from eyes that are apt to express none but common things. +There are allusions unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief glances. +Far from me and from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks +in reply to pain of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive +and to hurt the foolish and the stolid—“wouldst thou do +such a deed for all the world?”</p> +<h2>INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE</h2> +<p>I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words +in union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable +union in the art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience +are for each poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but +to take the cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in +place of the virginal fruit of thought—whereas one would hardly +consent to take them for ordering even the most habitual of daily affairs—is +to forgo Innocence and Experience at once and together. Obviously, +Experience can be nothing except personal and separate; and Innocence +of a singularly solitary quality is his who does not dip his hands into +other men’s histories, and does not give to his own word the common +sanction of other men’s summaries and conclusions. Therefore +I bind Innocence and Experience in one, and take them as a sign of the +necessary and noble isolation of man from man—of his uniqueness. +But if I had a mind to forgo that manner of personal separateness, and +to use the things of others, I think I would rather appropriate their +future than their past. Let me put on their hopes, and the colours +of their confidence, if I must borrow. Not that I would burden +my prophetic soul with unjustified ambitions; but even this would be +more tolerable than to load my memory with an unjustifiable history.</p> +<p>And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love-poetry +consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no reluctance +in adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom they have not +even been introduced. Their verse is full of ready-made memories, +various, numerous, and cruel. No single life—supposing it +to be a liberal life concerned with something besides sex—could +quite suffice for so much experience, so much disillusion, so much <i>déception</i>. +To achieve that tone in its fullness it is necessary to take for one’s +own the <i>praeterita</i> (say) of Alfred de Musset and of the men who +helped him—not to live but—to have lived; it is necessary +to have lived much more than any man lives, and to make a common hoard +of erotic remembrances with all kinds of poets.</p> +<p>As the Franciscans wear each other’s old habits, and one friar +goes about darned because of another’s rending, so the poet of +a certain order grows cynical for the sake of many poets’ old +loves. Not otherwise will the resultant verse succeed in implying +so much—or rather so many, in the feminine plural. The man +of very sensitive individuality might hesitate at the adoption. +The Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness and to overcome +it. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather to make use +of one’s fellow men’s old shoes than put their old secrets +to use, and dress one’s art in a motley of past passions. +Moreover, to utilize the mental experience of many is inevitably to +use their verse and phrase. For the rest, all the traits of this +love-poetry are familiar enough. One of them is the absence of +the word of promise and pledge, the loss of the earliest and simplest +of the impulses of love: which is the vow. “Till death!” +“For ever!” are cries too simple and too natural to be commonplace, +and in their denial there is the least tolerable of banalities—that +of other men’s disillusions.</p> +<p>Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature +a delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of +assumption, of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose love-poetry +were thus true, and whose <i>pudeur</i> of personality thus simple and +inviolate. This is the private man, in other words the gentleman, +who will neither love nor remember in common.</p> +<h2>THE HOURS OF SLEEP</h2> +<p>There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None +the less are they his by some state within the mind, which answers rhythmically +and punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, without drowsiness, +without languor, and without gloom, the night mind of man is yet not +his day mind; he has night-powers of feeling which are at their highest +in dreams, but are night’s as well as sleep’s. The +powers of the mind in dreams, which are inexplicable, are not altogether +baffled because the mind is awake; it is the hour of their return as +it is the hour of a tide’s, and they do return.</p> +<p>In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to +hamper her influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the +nerves of the sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of +anger and love, contempt and terror to which not only can no event of +the real day persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not +even the capacity. This increase of capacity, which is the dream’s, +is punctual to the night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at +arm’s length.</p> +<p>The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and +their dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he +puts off his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the +other state, by day. “I shall be able to bear this when +I am grown up” is not oftener in a young child’s mind than +“I shall endure to think of it in the day-time.” By +this he confesses the double habit and double experience, not to be +interchanged, and communicating together only by memory and hope.</p> +<p>Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night +is to miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might +imagine the rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to +the time, and tempering the extremities of either state by messages +of remembrance and expectancy.</p> +<p>Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any delirium, +would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less would be the loss +of him who had not exercised his waking thought under the influence +of the hours claimed by dreams. And as to choosing between day +and night, or guessing whether the state of day or dark is the truer +and the more natural, he would be rash who should make too sure.</p> +<p>In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. +That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to +lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The +hours of sleep are too much altered when they are filled by lights and +crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, +as when the larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs +and sing daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature +is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray +as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid +so much noise and among so many people that you shall not be aware of +them; you may thus merely force and prolong the day. But to do +so is not to live well both lives; it is not to yield to the daily and +nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in the swing of change.</p> +<p>There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such +a cradle of alternate hours. “It cannot be,” says +Herbert, “that I am he on whom Thy tempests fell all night.”</p> +<p>It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, +has the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines +in English poetry—lines that cast sunrise shadows—are those +of Blake, written confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow +and dreams, and those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; +all is as dark as he can make it with the “bags of soot”; +but the boy’s dream of the green plain and the river is too bright +for day. So, indeed, is another brightness of Blake’s, which +is also, in his poem, a child’s dream, and was certainly conceived +by him in the hours of sleep, in which he woke to write the Songs of +Innocence:-</p> +<blockquote><p>O what land is the land of dreams?<br /> +What are its mountains, and what are its streams?<br /> +O father, I saw my mother there,<br /> +Among the lilies by waters fair.<br /> +Among the lambs clothéd in white,<br /> +She walk’d with her Thomas in sweet delight.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision.</p> +<p>Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. +In some landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, +and it was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and +dreams claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an illumination. +Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in summer so many +of the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He carries the +mood of man’s night out into the sunshine—Corot did so—and +lives the life of night, in all its genius, in the presence of a risen +sun. In the only time when the heart can dream of light, in the +night of visions, with the rhythmic power of night at its dark noon +in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of the actual sun.</p> +<p>He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. +To that life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other +kinds of beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the +extreme perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the +explanation of all the memories of dreams recalled by these visionary +paintings, done in earlier years than were those, better known, that +are the Corots of all the world. Every man who knows what it is +to dream of landscape meets with one of these works of Corot’s +first manner with a cry, not of welcome only, but of recognition. +Here is morning perceived by the spirit of the hours of sleep.</p> +<h2>SOLITUDE</h2> +<p>The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom civilization +has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom civilization +has given little but its reaction, its rebound, its chips, its refuse, +its shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to them solitude is a +right foregone or a luxury unattained; a right foregone, we may name +it, in the case of the nearly savage, and a luxury unattained in the +case of the nearly refined. These has the movement of the world +thronged together into some blind by-way.</p> +<p>Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, +and virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, unclaimed. +They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their kingdoms they +are ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have not guessed +that they own for every man a space inviolate, a place of unhidden liberty +and of no obscure enfranchisement. They do not claim even the +solitude of closed corners, the narrow privacy of the lock and key; +nor could they command so much. For the solitude that has a sky +and a horizon they know not how to wish.</p> +<p>It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the woods, +and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be measured +by miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are freshly and +freely the dominion of every man for the day of his possession. +There is loneliness for innumerable solitaries. As many days as +there are in all the ages, so many solitudes are there for men. +This is the open house of the earth; no one is refused. Nor is +the space shortened or the silence marred because, one by one, men in +multitudes have been alone there before. Solitude is separate +experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be numbered by days, but +by men themselves. Every man of the living and every man of the +dead might have had his “privacy of light.”</p> +<p>It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; +and a thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult +to get for a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude +be enclosed, it is still an open solitude, so there be “no cloister +for the eyes,” and a space of far country or a cloud in the sky +be privy to your hiding-place. But the best solitude does not +hide at all.</p> +<p>This the people who have drifted together into the streets live whole +lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation of +even the solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never +have a whole hour alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent +companionship, as people may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical choice, +familiar with one another and not intimate. They live under careless +observation and subject to a vagabond curiosity. Theirs is the +involuntary and perhaps the unconscious loss which is futile and barren.</p> +<p>One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or the +hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, visible, +without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication and practice +of action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or futile +loss, and they have a conviction, and they bestow the conviction, of +solitude deferred.</p> +<p>Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone +and inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in +many a drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. +The girl stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the +sun for the closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as +she looks, out of sight.</p> +<p>Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural solitude +of a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed and talked +about, handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, and there is +so much importunate service going forward, that a woman is hardly alone +long enough to become aware, in recollection, how her own blood moves +separately, beside her, with another rhythm and different pulses. +All is commonplace until the doors are closed upon the two. This +unique intimacy is a profound retreat, an absolute seclusion. +It is more than single solitude; it is a redoubled isolation more remote +than mountains, safer than valleys, deeper than forests, and further +than mid-sea.</p> +<p>That solitude partaken—the only partaken solitude in the world—is +the Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and +a betrayal of that confidence might well be held to be the least pardonable +of all crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep +shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside +the longer, as a child’s foot runs. But the favourite crime +of the sentimentalist is that of a woman against her child. Her +power, her intimacy, her opportunity, that should be her accusers, are +held to excuse her. She gains the most slovenly of indulgences +and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar grounds that her crime was +easy.</p> +<p>Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by +the way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from common +opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the situation. +He was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was his secret, +and the public was not privy to his artistic conscience. He does +violence to the obligations of which he is aware, and which the world +does not know very explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he +is lawless in a more literal sense, but only hopes the world will believe +that he has a whole code of his own making. It would, nevertheless, +be less unworthy to break obvious rules obviously in the obvious face +of the public, and to abide the common rebuke.</p> +<p>It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and +wide and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial of +the accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace +or so aside, is enough to lead thither.</p> +<p>A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very sincerely. +In order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep the published +promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover of long seclusion +or of a very life of loneliness. He should have gained the state +of solitariness which is a condition of life quite unlike any other. +The traveller who may have gone astray in countries where an almost +life-long solitude is possible knows how invincibly apart are the lonely +figures he has seen in desert places there. Their loneliness is +broken by his passage, it is true, but hardly so to them. They +look at him, but they are not aware that he looks at them. Nay, +they look at him as though they were invisible. Their un-self-consciousness +is absolute; it is in the wild degree. They are solitaries, body +and soul; even when they are curious, and turn to watch the passer-by, +they are essentially alone. Now, no one ever found that attitude +in a squire’s figure, or that look in any country gentleman’s +eyes. The squire is not a life-long solitary. He never bore +himself as though he were invisible. He never had the impersonal +ways of a herdsman in the remoter Apennines, with a blind, blank hut +in the rocks for his dwelling. Millet would not even have taken +him as a model for a solitary in the briefer and milder sylvan solitudes +of France. And yet nothing but a life-long, habitual, and wild +solitariness would be quite proportionate to a park of any magnitude.</p> +<p>If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, +so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. +It is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris expression. +It is the quickly caught, though not interested, look, the dull but +ready glance of those who do not know of their forfeited place apart; +who have neither the open secret nor the close; no reserve, no need +of refuge, no flight nor impulse of flight; no moods but what they may +brave out in the street, no hope of news from solitary counsels.</p> +<h2>DECIVILIZED</h2> +<p>The difficulty of dealing—in the course of any critical duty—with +decivilized man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity—sparing +him no doubt the word—he defends himself against the charge of +barbarism. Especially from new soil—remote, colonial—he +faces you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded +of his own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems +about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness +of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways +of a young society. He is there to explain himself, voluble, with +a glossary for his own artless slang. But his colonialism is only +provincialism very articulate. The new air does but make old decadences +seem more stale; the young soil does but set into fresh conditions the +ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse feeling of a race decivilizing. +He who played long this pattering part of youth, hastened to assure +you with so self-denying a face he did not wear war-paint and feathers, +that it became doubly difficult to communicate to him that you had suspected +him of nothing wilder than a second-hand (figurative) dress coat. +And when it was a question not of rebuke, but of praise, even the American +was ill-content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some +delicate successes in continuing something of the literature of England, +something of the art of France; he was more eager for the applause that +stimulated him to write poems in prose form and to paint panoramic landscape, +after brief training in academies of native inspiration. Even +now English voices are constantly calling upon America to begin—to +begin, for the world is expectant. Whereas there is no beginning +for her, but instead a fine and admirable continuity which only a constant +care can guide into sustained advance.</p> +<p>But decivilized man is not peculiar to new soil. The English +town, too, knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he +has a literature, an art, a music, all his own—derived from many +and various things of price. Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity +and cheapness, is impossible without a beautiful past. Its chief +characteristic—which is futility, not failure—could not +be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory reproduction, the quotidian +disgrace, of the utterances of Art, especially the utterance by words. +Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic quality, purity, simplicity, precision—all +these are among the antecedents of trash. It is after them; it +is also, alas, because of them. And nothing can be much sadder +that such a proof of what may possibly be the failure of derivation.</p> +<p>Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps +of time, we may, indeed choose backwards. We may give our thoughts +noble forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; +they shall be also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing +our inheritance, and not our inheritance only, but our heredity. +Our minds may trace upwards and follow their ways to the best well-heads +of the arts. The very habit of our thoughts may be persuaded one +way unawares by their antenatal history. Their companions must +be lovely, but need be no lovelier than their ancestors; and being so +fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may be intrusted to keep the +counsels of literature.</p> +<p>Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel +which of us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers +of subsequent depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace +the contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards +dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, +and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilized +have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction +as the precedent of their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, +feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was +suggested, was made easy, by some living sweetness once. Nor are +the decivilized to blame as having in their own persons possessed civilization +and marred it. They did not possess it; they were born into some +tendency to derogation, into an inclination for things mentally inexpensive. +And the tendency can hardly do other than continue.</p> +<p>Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and multiplying +world. Men need not be common merely because they are many; but +the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what dullness in +their future! To the eye that has reluctantly discovered this +truth—that the vulgarized are not <i>un</i>-civilized, and that +there is no growth for them—it does not look like a future at +all. More ballad-concerts, more quaint English, more robustious +barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, more colonial poetry, more +young nations with withered traditions. Yet it is before this +prospect that the provincial overseas lifts up his voice in a boast +or a promise common enough among the incapable young, but pardonable +only in senility. He promises the world a literature, an art, +that shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just +built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain +words were dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful +and pitiable as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them +when they are the promise of an impotent people? “I will +do such things: what they are yet I know not.”</p> +<h2>THE SPIRIT OF PLACE</h2> +<p>With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets +have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found +too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her +inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The +bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.</p> +<p>To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake +together a nightingale’s notes, or strike or drive them into haste, +nor can you make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your turn, +whereas wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere movement and +hustling. I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous +note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with +their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had +again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman.</p> +<p>The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, +and the chimes await their appointed time to fly—wild prisoners—by +twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives—one or +twelve taking wing—they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; +they are delivered from the close hands of this actual present. +Not in vain is the sudden upper door opened against the sky; they are +away, hours of the past.</p> +<p>Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most +surely after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of France +when one has arrived by night; they are no more to be forgotten than +the bells in “Parsifal.” They mingle with the sound +of feet in unknown streets, they are the voices of an unknown tower; +they are loud in their own language. The spirit of place, which +is to be seen in the shapes of the fields and the manner of the crops, +to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the breath of the earth, +overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of some black-smith, +calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks its local +tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and greatly +by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you know how +familiar, how childlike, how life-long it is in the ears of the people. +The bells are strange, and you know how homely they must be. Their +utterances are, as it were, the classics of a dialect.</p> +<p>Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its +subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen +once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, +its breath, its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, having been +perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of +remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place—not to be pursued, +for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without +variation—lurks in the by-ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, +an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and +eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial +boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white roads outside +have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give promise not of +its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular and unforeseen +goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be made. +Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay such a visit? +And if by good fortune it is a child who is the pilgrim, the spirit +of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for antiquity and the conceiver +of antiquity (who is only a child) know one another; nor is there a +more delicate perceiver of locality than a child. He is well used +to words and voices that he does not understand, and this is a condition +of his simplicity; and when those unknown words are bells, loud in the +night, they are to him as homely and as old as lullabies.</p> +<p>If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in +gay measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a wedding—bells +that would step to quite another and a less agile march with a better +grace—there are belfries that hold far sweeter companies. +If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a most curious +local immemorial music in many a campanile on the heights. Their +way is for the ringers to play a tune on the festivals, and the tunes +are not hymn tunes or popular melodies, but proper bell-tunes, made +for bells. Doubtless they were made in times better versed than +ours in the sub-divisions of the arts, and better able to understand +the strength that lies ready in the mere little submission to the means +of a little art, and to the limits—nay, the very embarrassments—of +those means. If it were but possible to give here a real bell-tune—which +cannot be, for those melodies are rather long—the reader would +understand how some village musician of the past used his narrow means +as a composer for the bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, +fancy, and what effect of liberty.</p> +<p>These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. +The belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, +the time when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, +needless to say, this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. +At that time they must have had foundries for bells of tender voices, +and pure, warm, light, and golden throats, precisely tuned. The +hounds of Theseus had not a more just scale, tuned in a peal, than a +North Italian belfry holds in leash. But it does not send them +out in a mere scale, it touches them in the order of the game of a charming +melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by man this is by far the +most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the great churches. +Giotto’s coloured tower in Florence, that carries the bells for +Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi’s silent dome, does not +ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, depth, and +dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly fills the country.</p> +<p>The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can +therefore hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no +other bells in earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly +set open to the cloud, on a <i>festa</i> morning, to let fly those soft-voiced +flocks, but the nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our local +tune is uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, secluded, +sequestered art of composing melodies for bells—charming division +of an art, having its own ends and means, and keeping its own wings +for unfolding by law—dwells in these solitary places. No +tunes in a town would get this hearing, or would be made clear to the +end of their frolic amid such a wide and lofty silence.</p> +<p>Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; +the custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the nervous +tourist complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact he is made +to hear an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous tourist +has not, perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of place does not +signal to him to go and find it among innumerable hills, where one by +one, one by one, the belfries stand and play their tunes. Variable +are those lonely melodies, having a differing gaiety for the festivals; +and a pitiful air is played for the burial of a villager.</p> +<p>As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten when +the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in thought +to earth’s untethered sounds. This is Milton’s curfew, +that sways across one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry—“the +wide-watered.”</p> +<h2>POPULAR BURLESQUE</h2> +<p>The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the +motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets +with the sound of processionals and of recessionals—a certain +popular version of “Lest we forget” their unvaried theme; +the more I hear the cries of derision raised by the makers of this likeness +of something unworshipful on the earth beneath, so much the more am +I convinced that the national humour is that of banter, and that no +other kind of mirth so gains as does this upon the public taste.</p> +<p>Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that +day is as the people will actually have it, with their own invention, +their own material, their own means, and their own spirit. They +owe nothing on this occasion to the promptings or the subscriptions +of the classes that are apt to take upon themselves the direction and +tutelage of the people in relation to any form of art. Here on +every fifth of November the people have their own way with their own +art; and their way is to offer the service of the image-maker, reversed +in hissing and irony, to some creature of their hands.</p> +<p>It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is capable +of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. To +make a mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or conceived +in the mind, being an industrious custom of children and childish people +which lapses in the age of much idle reading, the making of a material +image is the still more diligent and more sedulous act, whereby the +primitive man controls and caresses his own fancy. He may take +arms anon, disappointed, against his own work; but did he ever do that +work in malice from the outset?</p> +<p>From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person +of the guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen’s +idea of something admirable which he might carry in procession on some +other day, the carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would +hoot at a suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make +a good-looking doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image-making +art in the practice of our people, except only this art of rags and +contumely. Or, again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were that +of anger for a certain cause, the destruction would not be the work +of so thin an annual malice and of so heartless a rancour.</p> +<p>But the single motive is that popular irony which becomes daily—or +so it seems—more and more the holiday temper of the majority. +Mockery is the only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the +only intelligence. They make an image of some one in whom they +do not believe, to deride it. Say that the guy is the effigy of +an agitator in the cause of something to be desired; the street man +and boy have then two motives of mocking: they think the reform to be +not worth doing, and they are willing to suspect the reformer of some +kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this occasion is most characteristic +of all guys in London. The people, having him or her to deride, +do not even wait for the opportunity of their annual procession. +They anticipate time, and make an image when it is not November, and +sell it at the market of the kerb.</p> +<p>Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the citizens, +perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. +These, too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. +They are, indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all—this +it is that makes the <i>succès</i> <i>fou</i> (and here Paris +is of one mind with London) of the street; but short of such a triumph, +and when a meaning is discernible, it is an irony.</p> +<p>Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) +seems to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is +the strangest thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most +mocking in the exchange. If the burlesque of the maid’s +tongue is provocative, that of the man’s is derisive. Somewhat +of the order of things as they stood before they were inverted seems +to remain, nevertheless, as a memory; nay, to give the inversion a kind +of lagging interest. Irony is made more complete by the remembrance, +and by an implicit allusion to the state of courtship in other classes, +countries, or times. Such an allusion no doubt gives all its peculiar +twang to the burlesque of love.</p> +<p>With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their millions +undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who are their +mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure sense their suitors, +and in a strolling manner, with one knows not what ungainly motive of +reserve, even their admirers. Nor from their tongues only; for, +to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys the girl; and if he wears +her hat, it is ten to one that he has plucked it off with a humorous +disregard of her dreadful pins.</p> +<p>We have to believe that unmocked love has existence in the streets, +because of the proof that is published when a man shoots a woman who +has rejected him; and from this also do we learn to believe that a woman +of the burlesque classes is able to reject. But for that sign +we should find little or nothing intelligible in what we see or overhear +of the drama of love in popular life.</p> +<p>In its easy moments, in its leisure, at holiday time, it baffles +all tradition, and shows us the spirit of comedy clowning after a fashion +that is insular and not merely civic. You hear the same twang +in country places; and whether the English maid, having, like the antique, +thrown her apple at her shepherd, run into the thickets of Hampstead +Heath or among sylvan trees, it seems that the most humorous thing to +be done by the swain would be, in the opinion in vogue, to stroll another +way. Insular I have said, because I have not seen the like of +this fashion whether in America or elsewhere in Europe.</p> +<p>But the chief inversion of all, proved summarily by the annual inversion +of the worship of images on the fifth of November, is that of a sentence +of Wordsworth’s—“We live by admiration.”</p> +<h2>HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT</h2> +<p>Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of communication +with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the interior act most +gentle; there may be a tacit apology, and a profound misgiving unexpressed; +a reluctance not only to refuse but to be arbiter; a dislike of the +office; a regret, whether for the unequal distribution of social luck +or for a purse left at home, equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts +no word or sign, nothing whatever of intercourse. If a dog or +a cat accosts you, or a calf in a field comes close to you with a candid +infant face and breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind +of animal comes to you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, +you acknowledge it. But the beggar to whom you give nothing expects +no answer to a question, no recognition of his presence, not so much +as the turn of your eyelid in his direction, and never a word to excuse +you.</p> +<p>Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer +to the beggar’s remark than to leave a shop without “Good +morning.” When complaint is made of the modern social manner—that +it has no merit but what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain +from courtesy with more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely +requires—the habit of manner towards beggars is probably not so +much as thought of. To the simply human eye, however, the prevalent +manner towards beggars is a striking thing; it is significant of so +much.</p> +<p>Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the intelligible +act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity that marks +the caste answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, in Italy, +for example. An elderly Italian lady on her slow way from her +own ancient ancestral <i>palazzo</i> to the village, and accustomed +to meet, empty-handed, a certain number of beggars, answers them by +a retort which would be, literally translated, “Excuse me, dear; +I, too, am a poor devil,” and the last word she naturally puts +into the feminine.</p> +<p>Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect—a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal +terms as nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present +the phrase to English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. +The excellent woman who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, +and raises no smile. It is only in another climate, and amid other +manners, that one cannot recall it without a smile. To a mind +having a lively sense of contrast it is not a little pleasant to imagine +an elderly lady of corresponding station in England replying so to importunities +for alms; albeit we have nothing answering to the good fellowship of +a broad patois used currently by rich and poor, and yet slightly grotesque +in the case of all speakers—a dialect in which, for example, no +sermon is ever preached, and in which no book is ever printed, except +for fun; a dialect “familiar, but by no means vulgar.” +Besides, even if our Englishwoman could by any possibility bring herself +to say to a mendicant, “Excuse me, dear; I, too, am a poor devil,” +she would still not have the opportunity of putting the last word punctually +into the feminine, which does so complete the character of the sentence.</p> +<p>The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase +of excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And +everywhere in the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who +suddenly begins to beg from you when you least expected it, calls you +“my daughter,” you can hardly reply without kindness. +Where the tourist is thoroughly well known, doubtless the company of +beggars are used to savage manners in the rich; but about the byways +and remoter places there must still be some dismay at the anger, the +silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive haughtiness wherewith +the opportunity of alms-giving is received by travellers.</p> +<p>In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so emphatically +as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so manifestly put +themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant to see them +there; but silence or a storm of impersonal protest—a protest +that appeals vaguely less to the beggars than to some not impossible +police—does not seem the most appropriate manner of rebuking them. +We have, it may be, a scruple on the point of human dignity, compromised +by the entreaty and the thanks of the mendicant; but we have a strange +way of vindicating that dignity when we refuse to man, woman, or child +the recognition of a simply human word. Nay, our offence is much +the greater of the two. It is not merely a rough and contemptuous +intercourse, it is the refusal of intercourse—the last outrage. +How do we propose to redress those conditions of life that annoy us +when a brother whines, if we deny the presence, the voice, and the being +of this brother, and if, because fortune has refused him money, we refuse +him existence?</p> +<p>We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold +it in the indifference of the wise. “Have patience, little +saint,” is a phrase that might teach us the cheerful way to endure +our own unintelligible fortunes in the midst, say, of the population +of a hill-village among the most barren of the Maritime Alps, where +huts of stone stand among the stones of an unclothed earth, and there +is no sign of daily bread. The people, albeit unused to travellers, +yet know by instinct what to do, and beg without the delay of a moment +as soon as they see your unwonted figure. Let it be taken for +granted that you give all you can; some form of refusal becomes necessary +at last, and the gentlest—it is worth while to remember—is +the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the portent +of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of ungovernable +rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand +him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without +a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something +else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the violence of the +rich.</p> +<p>It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If +a beggar is still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer +and comfort us to see; he practises not merely the conventional seeming, +which is hardly intended to convince, but a more subtle and dramatic +kind of semblance, of no good influence upon the morals of the road. +He no longer trusts the world with a sight of his gaiety. He is +not a wholehearted mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty of unstable +balance whereby an unattached creature can go in a new direction with +a new wind. The merry beggar was the only adventurer free to yield +to the lighter touches of chance, the touches that a habit of resistance +has made imperceptible to the seated and stable social world.</p> +<p>The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, +by tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has +been stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, +led underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys +of the song of the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to +capture, have ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world’s +ears. But it seems that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy +beggar is still the subject of a Spanish song.</p> +<p>That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw’s or a robber’s, +it is not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling +note of a man who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill-fortune, +but takes it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand +of unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own choice of bonds, +but has not broken his own by force. It seems, therefore, the +song of an indomitable liberty of movement, light enough for the puffs +of a zephyr chance.</p> +<h2>AT MONASTERY GATES</h2> +<p>No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross +it, unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of the +monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see more than +beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her in guest-house +and garden.</p> +<p>The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin—the first +of the dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, +and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings +in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is +this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, +sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. +Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot +of its final crucifix you can see the sunrise touch the top of Monte +Rosa, while the encircled lake below is cool with the last of the night. +The same order of friars keep that sub-Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same +have set the Kreuzberg beyond Bonn with the same steep path by the same +fourteen chapels, facing the Seven Mountains and the Rhine.</p> +<p>Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green +over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing +of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and +languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed +with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the +lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the +upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius +and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered +about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very +poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in +the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having +dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all +thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly +would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over +all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of +the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, +or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine and +the bright grey of an English sky.</p> +<p>The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense—it +is modern; and the friars look young in another—they are like +their brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists +of yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, “quaint,” +or “old world.” No such weary adjectives are spoken +here, unless it be by the excursionists.</p> +<p>With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers +work upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous +bee-farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is +gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and +a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the +yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was +that under one of the obscure impulses of a dog’s heart—atoned +for by long and self-conscious remorse—he bit the poet; and tried, +says one of the friars, to make doggerel of him. The poet, too, +lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery ground, in a seclusion +which the tidings of the sequence of his editions hardly reaches. +There is no disturbing renown to be got among the cabins of the Flintshire +hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other valleys, his light +figure flits at nightfall, like a moth.</p> +<p>To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of intelligence +and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at them without +obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl that +you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place +with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome +to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth +pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian saint—the +friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and between the +cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries continually +since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her the +kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited +as to show the world that their life was aloof from its “idle +business.” By some such phrase, at least, the friar would +assuredly have attempted to include her in any spiritual honours ascribed +to him. Or one might have asked of her the condescension of forbearance. +“Only fancy,” said the Salvation Army girl, watching the +friar out of sight, “only fancy making such a fool of one’s +self!”</p> +<p>The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran’s +ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As +a pocket it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the +local white wine made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this +house by the West, is carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger +at the gates. The friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, +to make pancakes, and not only to make, but also to toss them. +Those who chanced to be in the room stood prudently aside, and the brother +tossed boldly. But that was the last that was seen of his handiwork. +Victor Hugo sings in <i>La</i> <i>Légende</i> <i>des</i> <i>Siècles</i> +of disappearance as the thing which no creature is able to achieve: +here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by quite an ordinary +and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was an end +of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the spectators. +It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to meditate and +drew his cowl about his head that the accident was explained.</p> +<p>Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who +get up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one +never grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It +is something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is +not merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler +point is that they can never acquire the habit of sacrificing sleep. +What art, what literature, or what life but would gain a secret security +by such a point of perpetual freshness and perpetual initiative? +It is not possible to get up at midnight without a will that is new +night by night. So should the writer’s work be done, and, +with an intention perpetually unique, the poet’s.</p> +<p>The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the “Angelus” +of the French fields, and the hour of night—<i>l’ora</i> +<i>di</i> <i>notte</i>—which rings with so melancholy a note from +the village belfries on the Adriatic littoral, when the latest light +is passing. It is the prayer for the dead: “Out of the depths +have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.”</p> +<p>The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to +the sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central +work of the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because +it is principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect +and strength of heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! +True, the friars are not doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as +a refuge from despair. These “bearded counsellors of God” +keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing, hold silence; whereas they +might be “operating”—beautiful word!—upon the +Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or +reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among +the involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof +is a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the +superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced +by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output—again +a beautiful word—of the age is lessened by this abstention. +None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once +again upon those monastery gates.</p> +<h2>THE SEA WALL</h2> +<p>A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish +association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright shadows +of grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves prick above +into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living in London, with +its too many windows and too few walls, the city which of all capitals +takes least visible hold upon the ground; or for the sake of some other +attraction or aversion, walls, blank and strong, reaching outward at +the base, are a satisfaction to the eyes teased by the inexpressive +peering of windows, by that weak lapse and shuffling which is the London +“area,” and by the helpless hollows of shop-fronts.</p> +<p>I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of wrought-iron. +A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line +among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But never more +majestic than in face of the wild sea, the wall, steadying its slanting +foot upon the rock, builds in the serried ilex-wood and builds out the +wave. The sea-wall is the wall at its best. And fine as +it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the weak littoral and +the imperilled levels of a northern beach.</p> +<p>That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that +passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters +with the winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, +the sky-line of sea is jagged. Never from any height does the +ocean-horizon show thus broken and battered at its very verge, but from +the flat coast and the narrow world you can see the wave as far as you +can see the water; and the stormy light of a clear horizon is seen to +be mobile and shifting with the buoyant hillocks and their restless +line.</p> +<p>Nowhere in Holland does there seem to be such a low sea-wall as secures +many a mile of gentle English coast to the east. The Dutch dyke +has not that aspect of a lowly parapet against a tide; it springs with +a look of haste and of height; and when you first run upstairs from +the encumbered Dutch fields to look at the sea, there is nothing in +the least like England; and even the Englishman of to-day is apt to +share something of the old perversity that was minded to cast derision +upon the Dutch in their encounters with the tides.</p> +<p>There has been some fault in the Dutch, making them subject to the +slight derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more romantic, +and, as it were, more slender. We English, once upon a time, did +especially flout the little nation then acting a history that proved +worth the writing. It may be no more than a brief perversity that +has set a number of our writers to cheer the memory of Charles II. +Perhaps, even, it is no more than another rehearsal of that untiring +success at the expense of the bourgeois. The bourgeois would be +more simple than, in fact, he is were he to stand up every time to be +shocked; but, perhaps, the image of his dismay is enough to reward the +fancy of those who practise the wanton art. And, when all is done, +who performs for any but an imaginary audience? Surely those companies +of spectators and of auditors are not the least of the makings of an +author. A few men and women he achieves within his books; but +others does he create without, and to those figures of all illusion +makes the appeal of his art. More candid is the author who has +no world, but turns that appeal inwards to his own heart. He has +at least a living hearer.</p> +<p>This is by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is +done, the dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch’s +was a dismal time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the +French King remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, +and the Dutch in the Medway—all this was disaster. None +the less, having the vanity of new clothes and a pretty figure, did +we—especially by the mouth of Andrew Marvell—deride our +victors, making sport of the Philistines with a proper national sense +of enjoyment of such physical disabilities, or such natural difficulties, +or such misfavour of fortune, as may beset the alien.</p> +<p>Especially were the denials of fortune matter for merriment. +They are so still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great +novelist found the smallness of some South German States to be the subject +of unsating banter. The German scenes at the end of “Vanity +Fair,” for example, may prove how much the ridicule of mere smallness, +fewness, poverty (and not even real poverty, privation, but the poverty +that shows in comparison with the gold of great States, and is properly +in proportion) rejoiced the sense of humour in a writer and moralist +who intended to teach mankind to be less worldly. In Andrew Marvell’s +day they were even more candid. The poverty of privation itself +was provocative of the sincere laughter of the inmost man, the true, +infrequent laughter of the heart. Marvell, the Puritan, laughed +that very laughter—at leanness, at hunger, cold, and solitude—in +the face of the world, and in the name of literature, in one memorable +satire. I speak of “Flecno, an English Priest in Rome,” +wherein nothing is spared—not the smallness of the lodging, nor +the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness of clothing, nor the fast.</p> +<blockquote><p>“This basso-rilievo of a man—”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>personal meagreness is the first joke and the last.</p> +<p>It is not to be wondered at that he should find in the smallness +of the country of Holland matter for a cordial jest. But, besides +the smallness, there was that accidental and natural disadvantage in +regard to the sea. In the Venetians, commerce with the sea, conflict +with the sea, a victory over the sea, and the ensuing peace—albeit +a less instant battle and a more languid victory—were confessed +to be noble; in the Dutch they were grotesque. “With mad +labour,” says Andrew Marvell, with the spirited consciousness +of the citizen of a country well above ground and free to watch the +labour at leisure, “with mad labour” did the Dutch “fish +the land to shore.”</p> +<blockquote><p>How did they rivet with gigantic piles,<br /> +Thorough the centre, their new-catched miles,<br /> +And to the stake a struggling country bound,<br /> +Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;<br /> +Building their watery Babel far more high<br /> +To reach the sea than those to scale the sky!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is done with a jolly wit, and in what admirable couplets!</p> +<blockquote><p>The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,<br /> +And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And it is even better sport that the astonished tritons and sea-nymphs +should find themselves provided with a capital <i>cabillau</i> of shoals +of pickled Dutchmen (heeren for herring, says Marvell); and it must +be allowed that he rhymes with the enjoyment of irony. There is +not a smile for us in “Flecno,” but it is more than possible +to smile over this “Character of Holland”; at the excluded +ocean returning to play at leap-frog over the steeples; at the rise +of government and authority in Holland, which belonged of right to the +man who could best invent a shovel or a pump, the country being so leaky:-</p> +<blockquote><p>Not who first sees the rising sun commands,<br /> +But who could first discern the rising lands.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We have lost something more than the delighted laughter of Marvell, +more than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light +in so burly a frame—we have lost with these the wild humour that +wore so well the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much +order, invention, malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality—in +a word, the Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot stand +firm within two lines, but must slip beyond and between the boundaries, +who tolerate the couplets of Keats and imitate them, should praise the +day of Charles II because of Marvell’s art, and not for love of +the sorry reign. We had plague, fire, and the Dutch in the Medway, +but we had the couplet; and there were also the measures of those more +poetic poets, hitherto called somewhat slightingly the Cavalier poets, +who matched the wit of the Puritan with a spirit simpler and less mocking.</p> +<p>It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some +remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. +It was a time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so +close, up in the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed to +be indeed admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The +gale came with an indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed +to break itself upon the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in +the voice of the sea there were pauses, but none in that of the urgent +gale with its hoo-hoo-hoo all night, that clamoured down the calling +of the waves. That lack of pauses was the strangest thing in the +tempest, because the increase of sound seemed to imply a lull before. +The lull was never perceptible, but the lift was always an alarm. +The onslaught was instant, where would it stop? What was the secret +extreme to which this hurry and force were tending? You asked +less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm than what was drawing +them. The attraction seemed the greater violence, the more irresistible, +and the more unknown. And there were moments when the end seemed +about to be attained.</p> +<p>The wind struck us hasty blows, and unawares we borrowed, to describe +it, words fit for the sharp strokes of material things; but the fierce +gale is soft. Along the short grass, trembling and cowering flat +on the scarped hill-side, against the staggering horse, against the +flint walls, one with the rock they grasp, the battery of the tempest +is a quick and enormous softness. What down, what sand, what deep +moss, what elastic wave could match the bed and cushion of the gale?</p> +<p>This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up together. +The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling whiteness of +foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such narrow +waters you do not see the distances, the wide levels of fleeting and +floating foam, that lie light between long wave and long wave on a Mediterranean +coast, regions of delicate and transitory brightness so far out that +all the waves, near and far, seem to be breaking at the same moment, +one beyond the other, and league beyond league, into foam. But +the Channel has its own strong, short curl that catches the rushing +shingle up with the freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, +white upon the white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls +and the light of a shining cloud.</p> +<h2>TITHONUS</h2> +<p>“It was resolved,” said the morning paper, “to +colour the borders of the panels and other spaces of Portland stone +with arabesques and other patterns, but that no paint should be used, +as paint would need renewing from time to time. The colours, therefore,”—and +here is the passage to be noted—“are all mixed with wax +liquefied with petroleum; and the wax surface sets as hard as marble. +. . The wax is left time to form an imperishable surface of ornament, +which would have to be cut out of the stone with a chisel if it was +desired to remove it.” Not, apparently, that a new surface +is formed which, by much violence and perseverance, could, years hence, +be chipped off again; but that the “ornament” is driven +in and incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is nothing +possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of +ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled.</p> +<p>Will this victory over our sons’ sons be the last resolute +tyranny prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat +of the future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one +of the strongest of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be +outgrown by the human race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, +let this success in the stencilling of St Paul’s teach us, to +our confusion. There is evidently a man—a group of men—happy +at this moment because it has been possible, by great ingenuity, to +force our posterity to have their cupola of St Paul’s with the +stone mouldings stencilled and “picked out” with niggling +colours, whether that undefended posterity like it or not. And +this is a survival of one of the obscure pleasures of man, attested +by history.</p> +<p>It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and +not to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, eternal +legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of this former +human wish. If Galileo’s Inquisitors put a check upon the +earth, which yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the Reformers’ +who arrested the moving man, and inhibited the moving God. The +sixteenth century and a certain part of the age immediately following +seem to be times when the desire had conspicuously become a passion. +Say the middle of the sixteenth century in Italy and the beginning of +the seventeenth in England—for in those days we were somewhat +in the rear. <i>There</i> is the obstinate, confident, unreluctant, +undoubting, and resolved seizure upon power. <i>Then</i> was Rome +rebuilt, re-faced, marked with a single sign and style. Then was +many a human hand stretched forth to grasp the fate of the unborn. +The fortunes and the thoughts of the day to come were to be as the day +then present would have them, if the dead hand—the living hand +that was then to die, and was to keep its hold in death—could +by any means make them fast.</p> +<p>Obviously, to build at all is to impose something upon an age that +may be more than willing to build for itself. The day may soon +come when no man will do even so much without some impulse of apology. +Posterity is not compelled to keep our pictures or our books in existence, +nor to read nor to look at them; but it is more or less obliged to have +a stone building in view for an age or two. We can hardly avoid +some of the forms of tyranny over the future, but few, few are the living +men who would consent to share in this horrible ingenuity at St Paul’s—this +petroleum and this wax.</p> +<p>In 1842 they were discussing the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, +and the efforts of all in council were directed upon the future. +How the frescoes then to be achieved by the artists of the day should +be made secure against all mischances—smoke, damp, “the +risk of bulging,” even accidents attending the washing of upper +floors—all was discussed in confidence with the public. +It was impossible for anyone who read the papers then to escape from +some at least of the responsibilities of technical knowledge. +From Genoa, from Rome, from Munich especially, all kinds of expert and +most deliberate schemes were gathered in order to defeat the natural +and not superfluous operation of efficient and effacing time.</p> +<p>The academic little capital of Bavaria had, at about the same date, +decorated a vast quantity of wall space of more than one order of architecture. +Art revived and was encouraged at that time and place with unparalleled +obstinacy. They had not the malice of the petroleum that does +violence to St Paul’s; but they had instead an indomitable patience. +Under the commands of the master Cornelius, they baffled time and all +his work—refused his pardons, his absolutions, his cancelling +indulgences—by a perseverance that nothing could discourage. +Who has not known somewhat indifferent painters mighty busy about their +colours and varnishes? Cornelius caused a pit to be dug for the +preparation of the lime, and in the case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime +remained there for eight years, with frequent stirrings. This +was in order that the whole fresco, when at last it was entrusted to +its bed, should be set there for immortality. Nor did the master +fail to thwart time by those mechanical means that should avert the +risk of bulging already mentioned. He neglected no detail. +He was provident, and he lay in wait for more than one of the laws of +nature, to frustrate them. Gravitation found him prepared, and +so did the less majestic but not vain dispensation of accidents. +Against bulging he had an underplot of tiles set on end; against possible +trickling from an upper floor he had asphalt; it was all part of the +human conspiracy. In effect, the dull pictures at Munich seem +to stand well. It would have been more just—so the present +age thinks of these preserved walls—if the day that admired them +had had them exclusively, and our day had been exempt. The painted +cathedrals of the Middle Ages have undergone the natural correction; +why not the Ludwig Kirche?</p> +<p>In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to +shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and art. +They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came from +Munich to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a heart +of confidence into the breast of the Commission. The situation, +he averred, need not be too damp for immortality, with due care. +What he had done in the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek might be done +with the best results in England, in defiance of the weather, of the +river, of the mere days, of the divine order of alteration, and, in +a word, of heaven and earth.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, there was that good servant of the law of change, lime +that had not been kept quite long enough, ready to fulfil its mission; +they would have none of it. They evaded it, studied its ways, +and put it to the rout. “Many failures that might have been +hastily attributed to damp were really owing to the use of lime in too +fresh a state. Of the experimental works painted at Munich, those +only have faded which are known to have been done without due attention +to the materials. <i>Thus</i>, <i>a</i> <i>figure</i> <i>of</i> +<i>Bavaria</i>, <i>painted</i> <i>by</i> <i>Kaulbach</i>, <i>which</i> +<i>has</i> <i>faded</i> <i>considerably</i>, <i>is</i> <i>known</i> +<i>to</i> <i>have</i> <i>been</i> <i>executed</i> <i>with</i> <i>lime</i> +<i>that</i> <i>was</i> <i>too</i> <i>fresh</i>.” One cannot +refrain from italics: the way was so easy; it was only to take a little +less of this important care about the lime, to have a better confidence, +to be more impatient and eager, and all had been well: <i>not</i> to +do—a virtue of omission.</p> +<p>This is not a matter of art-criticism. It is an ethical question +hitherto unstudied. The makers of laws have not always been obliged +to face it, inasmuch as their laws are made in part for the present, +and in part for that future whereof the present needs to be assured—that +is, the future is bound as a guaranty for present security of person +or property. Some such hold upon the time to come we are obliged +to claim, and to claim it for our own sakes—because of the reflex +effect upon our own affairs, and not for the pleasure of fettering the +time to come. Every maker of a will does at least this.</p> +<p>Were the men of the sixteenth century so moderate? Not they. +They found the present all too narrow for the imposition of their will. +It did not satisfy them to disinter and scatter the bones of the dead, +nor to efface the records of a past that offended them. It did +not satisfy them to bind the present to obedience by imperative menace +and instant compulsion. When they had burnt libraries and thrown +down monuments and pursued the rebels of the past into the other world, +and had seen to it that none living should evade them, then they outraged +the future.</p> +<p>Whatever misgivings may have visited those dominant minds as to the +effectual and final success of their measures—would their writ +run in time as well as place, and were the nameless populations indeed +their subjects?—whatever questions may have peered in upon those +rigid counsels and upon those busy vigils of the keepers of the world, +they silenced by legislation and yet more legislation. They wrote +in statute books; they would have written their will across the skies. +Their hearts would have burnt for lack of records more inveterate, and +of testimonials that mankind should lack courage to question, if in +truth they did ever doubt lest posterity might try their lock. +Perhaps they did never so much as foresee the race of the unnumbered +and emancipated for whom their prohibitions and penalties are no more +than documents of history.</p> +<p>If the tyrannous day of our fathers had but possessed the means of +these our more diffident times! They, who would have written their +present and actual will upon the skies, might certainly have written +it in petroleum and wax upon the stone. Fate did them wrong in +withholding from their hands this means of finality and violence. +Into our hands it has been given at a time when the student of the race +thought, perhaps, that we had been proved in the school of forbearance. +Something, indeed, we may have learnt therein, but not enough, as we +now find.</p> +<p>We have not yet the natural respect for the certain knowledge and +the probable wisdom of our successors. A certain reverend official +document, not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately recommended +to the veneration of the present times “those past ages with their +store of experience.” Doubtless, as the posterity of their +predecessors our predecessors had experience, but, as our ancestors, +none—none. Therefore, if they were a little reverend our +own posterity is right reverend. It is a flippant and novelty-loving +humour that so flatters the unproved past and refuses the deference +due to the burden of years which is ours, which—grown still graver—will +be our children’s.</p> +<h2>SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT</h2> +<p>The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of +the art of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the +art of accident, it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It +is of accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual +discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second French +Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how +lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson +was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. European +art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the unique. +But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic art) content +with her own conventions; she is local, provincial, alien, remote, incapable +of equal companionship with a world that has Greek art in its own history—Pericles +“to its father.”</p> +<p>Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched +by Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained +the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, +too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of +phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong +in a complete melody—of symmetry in its most delicate and lively +and least stationary form—balance; whereas the <i>leit</i>-<i>motif</i> +is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make +a familiar antithesis—the very commonplace of rival methods of +art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious forms. +The poets have sought “irregular” metres. Incident +hovers, in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern +of modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression +of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major emphasis; +and with this a quickness and buoyancy. The smile, the figure, +the drapery—not yet settled from the arranging touch of a hand, +and showing its mark—the restless and unstationary foot, and the +unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single breeze, all +these have a life that greatly transcends the life of Japanese art, +yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In passing, a charming +comparison may be made between such portraiture and the aspect of an +aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; whether still or in motion +the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have the alertness and expectancy +of flight in all their flocks of leaves, while the oaks and elms are +gathered in their station. All this is not Japanese, but from +such accident is Japanese art inspired, with its good luck of perceptiveness.</p> +<p>What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counterchange +for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction +between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives +may be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not +known as motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. +Repetition and counterchange, of course, have their place in Japanese +ornament, as in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular +an invention, but here, too, uniqueness and position are the principal +inspiration. And it is quite worth while, and much to the present +purpose, to call attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese +diaper patterns, which is <i>interruption</i>. Repetition there +must necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption +which is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. +The place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, +and the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese +design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, +you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though +a separate intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. +Such renewed consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness +in design has more peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of Japanese +lines, in their curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary to say +that a line, in all other schools of art, is long or short according +to its place and purpose; but only the Japanese designer so contrives +his patterns that the line is always short; and many repeating designs +are entirely composed of this various and variously-occurring brevity, +this prankish avoidance of the goal. Moreover, the Japanese evade +symmetry, in the unit of their repeating patterns, by another simple +device—that of numbers. They make a small difference in +the number of curves and of lines. A great difference would not +make the same effect of variety; it would look too much like a contrast. +For example, three rods on one side and six on another would be something +else than a mere variation, and variety would be lost by the use of +them. The Japanese decorator will vary three in this place by +two in that, and a sense of the defeat of symmetry is immediately produced. +With more violent means the idea of symmetry would have been neither +suggested nor refuted.</p> +<p>Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in +Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point of +symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. +There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most subtly, +made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value. A small +thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small thing is placed +at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese) equivalent. +In Italy (and perhaps in other countries) the scales commonly in use +are furnished with only a single weight that increases or diminishes +in value according as you slide it nearer or farther upon a horizontal +arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces when it is close to the +upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs from the farther end of +the horizontal rod. Distance plays some such part with the twig +or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese composition. Its +place is its significance and its value. Such an art of position +implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few things +and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or silences +in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or material, +of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of space—that +is, collocation—that makes the value of empty intervals. +The space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is +valuable because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, +is only another way of saying that position is the principle of this +apparently wilful art.</p> +<p>Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped +to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending +Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral +support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind +of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator’s +knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the spectator’s +simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. +Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written his signs so +freely had not the Japanese so freely drawn his own. Furthermore +still, the transitory and destructible material of Japanese art has +done as much as the multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery +of processes, to reconcile the European designer—the black and +white artist—to working for the day, the day of publication. +Japan lives much of its daily life by means of paper, painted; so does +Europe by means of paper, printed. But as we, unlike those Orientals, +are a destructive people, paper with us means short life, quick abolition, +transformation, re-appearance, a very circulation of life. This +is our present way of surviving ourselves—the new version of that +feat of life. Time was when to survive yourself meant to secure, +for a time indefinitely longer than the life of man, such dull form +as you had given to your work; to intrude upon posterity. To survive +yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into daily oblivion.</p> +<p>Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper +does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them +a different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned +old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory +material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. +What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to +a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of races that have +produced Cotman and Corot. Japanese landscape-drawing reduces +things seen to such fewness as must have made the art insuperably tedious +to any people less fresh-spirited and more inclined to take themselves +seriously than these Orientals. A preoccupied people would never +endure it. But a little closer attention from the Occidental student +might find for their evasive attitude towards landscape—it is +an attitude almost traitorously evasive—a more significant reason. +It is that the distances, the greatness, the winds and the waves of +the world, coloured plains, and the flight of a sky, are all certainly +alien to the perceptions of a people intent upon little deformities. +Does it seem harsh to define by that phrase the curious Japanese search +for accidents? Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, +even though they show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of +the form of a normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. +They are not in search of the perpetual slight novelty which was Aristotle’s +ideal of the language poetic (“a little wildly, or with the flower +of the mind,” says Emerson of the way of a poet’s speech)—and +such novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of the pinion, that keeps +verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are intent upon is perpetual +slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields has eyes less +for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the path, of +which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in fortunate +accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness he +will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. +The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and +not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby +this people conventionally signify wave or cloud. All these curls +have an attitude which is like that of a figure slightly malformed, +and not like that of a human body that is perfect, dominant, and if +bent, bent at no lowly or niggling labour. Why these curves should +be so charming it would be hard to say; they have an exquisite prankishness +of variety, the place where the upward or downward scrolls curl off +from the main wave is delicately unexpected every time, and—especially +in gold embroideries—is sensitively fit for the material, catching +and losing the light, while the lengths of waving line are such as the +long gold threads take by nature.</p> +<p>A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, +in no other art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. +The Japanese have generally evaded even the local beauty of their own +race for the sake of perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty +is remote from our sympathy and admiration; and it is quite possible +that we might miss it in pictorial presentation, and that the Japanese +artist may have intended human beauty where we do not recognise it. +But if it is not easy to recognise, it is certainly not difficult to +guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally aware that the separate +beauty of the race, and its separate dignity, even—to be very +generous—has been admired by the Japanese artist, and is represented +here and there occasionally, in the figure of warrior or mousmé. +But even with this exception the habit of Japanese figure-drawing is +evidently grotesque, derisive, and crooked. It is curious to observe +that the search for slight deformity is so constant as to make use, +for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective foreshortening. +With us it is to the youngest child only that there would appear to +be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would +seem to have his head “beneath his shoulders.” The +European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, but—unused +to the same effect “in the flat”—he thinks it prodigiously +humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. +The Japanese keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. +It amuses him, but not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that +the foreshortened figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, +seem distorted and dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more +derision in it than the simple child. The distortion is not without +a suggestion of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, +but not precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to +his hideous models. He makes free with them on equal terms. +He is familiar with them.</p> +<p>And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no +need to insist upon the ignoble character of those that are intentional +caricatures.</p> +<p>Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek decoration, +and would be glad to forget it, with the intention of learning that +art afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. But whatever +may be the phases of the arts, there is the abiding principle of symmetry +in the body of man, that goes erect, like an upright soul. Its +balance is equal. Exterior human symmetry is surely a curious +physiological fact where there is no symmetry interiorly. For +the centres of life and movement within the body are placed with Oriental +inequality. Man is Greek without and Japanese within. But +the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of the beauty and life that +cover it is accurately a principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, +all the life of human action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, +with infinite incidents—inequalities of work, war, and pastime, +inequalities of sleep—the symmetry of man. Only in death +and “at attention” is that symmetry complete in attitude. +Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the battle, and its rhythm is not +to be destroyed. All the more because this hand holds the goad +and that the harrow, this the shield and that the sword, because this +hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal heads of children, +is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are inflections thereof. +All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, and without symmetry +it would not be variation; it would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull +and broadcast as lawless art. The order of inflection that is +not infraction has been explained in a most authoritative sentence of +criticism of literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble +of some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: “Law, the +rectitude of humanity,” says Mr Coventry Patmore, “should +be the poet’s only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been +the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse’s +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the greatest +poets have been those the <i>modulus</i> of whose verse has been most +variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with feelings +and passions which are the inflections of moral law in their theme. +Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon +law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language +is a continual <i>slight</i> novelty. In the highest poetry, like +that of Milton, these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, +and moral, all chime together in praise of the truer order of life.”</p> +<p>And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual +proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry +is a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition +of human life.</p> +<p>The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle +or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has +an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides +the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the +symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. +And this seems to be the nobler and the more perdurable relation.</p> +<h2>THE PLAID</h2> +<p>It is disconcerting to hear of the plaid in India. Our dyes, +we know, they use in the silk mills of Bombay, with the deplorable result +that their old clothes are dull and unintentionally falsified with infelicitous +decay. The Hindus are a washing people; and the sun and water +that do but dim, soften, and warm the native vegetable dyes to the last, +do but burlesque the aniline. Magenta is bad enough when it is +itself; but the worst of magenta is that it spoils but poorly. +No bad modern forms and no bad modern colours spoil well. And +spoiling is an important process. It is a test—one of the +ironical tests that come too late with their proofs. London portico-houses +will make some such ruins as do chemical dyes, which undergo no use +but derides them, no accidents but caricature them. This is an +old enough grievance. But the plaid!</p> +<p>The plaid is the Scotchman’s contribution to the decorative +art of the world. Scotland has no other indigenous decoration. +In his most admirable lecture on “The Two Paths,” Ruskin +acknowledged, with a passing misgiving, that his Highlanders had little +art. And the misgiving was but passing, because he considered +how fatally wrong was the art of India—“it never represents +a natural fact. It forms its compositions out of meaningless fragments +of colour and flowings of line . . . It will not draw a man, but an +eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or +a zig-zag.” Because of this aversion from Nature the Hindu +and his art tended to evil, we read. But of the Scot we are told, +“You will find upon reflection that all the highest points of +the Scottish character are connected with impressions derived straight +from the natural scenery of their country.”</p> +<p>What, then, about the plaid? Where is the natural fact there? +If the Indian, by practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, +cuts himself off “from all possible sources of healthy knowledge +or natural delight,” to what did the good and healthy Highlander +condemn himself by practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may +be found in the vine, and a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in nature +is the plaid to be found? There is surely no curve or curl that +can be drawn by a designing hand but is a play upon some infinitely +various natural fact. The smoke of the cigarette, more sensitive +in motion than breath or blood, has its waves so multitudinously inflected +and reinflected, with such flights and such delays, it flows and bends +upon currents of so subtle influence and impulse as to include the most +active, impetuous, and lingering curls ever drawn by the finest Oriental +hand—and that is not a Hindu hand, nor any hand of Aryan race. +The Japanese has captured the curve of the section of a sea-wave—its +flow, relaxation, and fall; but this is a single movement, whereas the +line of cigarette-smoke in a still room fluctuates in twenty delicate +directions. No, it is impossible to accept the saying that the +poor spiral or scroll of a human design is anything but a participation +in the innumerable curves and curls of nature.</p> +<p>Now the plaid is not only “cut off” from natural sources, +as Ruskin says of Oriental design—the plaid is not only cut off +from nature, and cut off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured +off in inorganic quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional contradiction +of all natural or vital forms. And it is equally defiant of vital +tone and of vital colour. Everywhere in nature tone is gradual, +and between the fainting of a tone and the failing of a curve there +is a charming analogy. But the tartan insists that its tone shall +be invariable, and sharply defined by contrasts of dark and light. +As to colour, it has colours, not colour.</p> +<p>But that plaid should now go so far afield as to decorate the noble +garment of the Indies is ill news. True, Ruskin saw nothing but +cruelty and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an Indian +maxim in regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready sufferers: +“There,” says the <i>Mahabharata</i>, “where women +are treated with respect, the very gods are said to be filled with joy. +Women deserve to be honoured. Serve ye them. Bend your will +before them. By honouring women ye are sure to attain to the fruition +of all things.” And the rash teachers of our youth would +have persuaded us that this generous lesson was first learnt in Teutonic +forests!</p> +<p>Nothing but extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be +suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. Accordingly +the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil to the souls +of her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great-grandmother-in-law, +in gratitude for their giving her a good husband. And to go back +for a moment to Ruskin’s contrast of the two races, it was assuredly +under the stress of some too rash reasoning that he judged the lovely +art of the East as a ministrant to superstition, cruelty, and pleasure, +whether wrought upon the temple, the sword, or the girdle. The +innocent art of innocent Hindu women for centuries decked their most +modest heads, their dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving +breasts, and consecrated chambers.</p> +<h2>THE FLOWER</h2> +<p>There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed +by those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere witnesses, +in its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. +In the shape of the flower his own paltriness revisits him—his +triviality, his sloth, his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his +slatternly ostentation. These return to him and wreak upon him +their dull revenges. What the tyranny really had grown to can +be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where the most ordinary +things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, +so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous +commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that +a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, +cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared +to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, +which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed for those whom +Americans call summer-boarders, is beset with flowers. It blooms, +a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron garden. The floor flourishes +with blossoms adust, poorly conventionalized into a kind of order; the +table-cover is ablaze with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper +is set with bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses +and lilies in its very construction; over the muslin blinds an impotent +sprig is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, +in the plaster picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, +in the pediment of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, +in the finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the “grained” +door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale +inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the +grate but some blunt, black-leaded garland? The recital is wearisome, +but the retribution of the flower is precisely weariness. It is +the persecution of man, the haunting of his trivial visions, and the +oppression of his inconsiderable brain.</p> +<p>The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling—subjection +to the smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap +patterns is no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain +and transitory author by the phrase. In literature as in all else +man merits his subjection to trivialities by his economical greed. +A condition for using justly and gaily any decoration would seem to +be a measure of reluctance. Ornament—strange as the doctrine +sounds in a world decivilized—was in the beginning intended to +be something jocund; and jocundity was never to be achieved but by postponement, +deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows +in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something even more +severe than modertion: she has an innumerable singleness. Her +buttercup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not multiplicity, +and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of decoration. Who has +ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or who has ever gained the +granting of the most foolish of his wishes—the prayer for reiteration? +It is a curious slight to generous Fate that man should, like a child, +ask for one thing many times. Her answer every time is a resembling +but new and single gift; until the day when she shall make the one tremendous +difference among her gifts—and make it perhaps in secret—by +naming one of them the ultimate. What, for novelty, what, for +singleness, what, for separateness, can equal the last? Of many +thousand kisses the poor last—but even the kisses of your mouth +are all numbered.</p> +<h2>UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM</h2> +<p>It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress +of man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does +the form of man, should make a great part of that human scenery which +is at least as important as the scenery of geological structure, or +the scenery of architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which +the lovers of mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have +consented to ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, inasmuch +as it has the finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing +forms which, coming at the base of the human structure, show it to be +a thing of life by its unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure +is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine +ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing +life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. +We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense +legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. +All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man’s. +That of the young child, in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, +has neither movement nor supporting strength. In the case of the +woman’s figure it is the foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, +that gives the precious instability, the spring and balance that are +so organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, +the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all +garments the most stupid. Inexpressive of what they clothe as +no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they are neither implicitly +nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly possible to err by violence +in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent writer is praised +for “clothing his thought,” it is to modern raiment that +one’s agile fancy flies—fain of completing the metaphor!</p> +<p>The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other +than the mass of sooty colour—dark without depth—and the +multiplication of undignified forms that fill the streets, and demonstrate, +and meet, and listen to the speaker. For the undistinguished are +very important by their numbers. These are they who make the look +of the artificial world. They are man generalized; as units they +inevitably lack something of interest; all the more they have cumulative +effect. It would be well if we could persuade the average man +to take on a certain human dignity in the clothing of his average body. +Unfortunately he will be slow to be changed. And as to the poorer +part of the mass, so wretched are their national customs—and the +wretchedest of them all the wearing of other men’s old raiment—that +they must wait for reform until the reformed dress, which the reformers +have not yet put on, shall have turned second-hand.</p> +<h2>VICTORIAN CARICATURE</h2> +<p>There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, +of a certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century +and earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its aim +the vulgarizing of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas +Jerrold for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that humourist’s +serial, “Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures,” which were +presumably considered good comic reading in the “Punch” +of that time, and to make acquaintance with a certain ideal of the grotesque. +Obviously to make a serious comment on anything which others consider +or have considered humorous is to put oneself at a disadvantage. +He who sees the joke holds himself somewhat the superior of the man +who would see it, such as it is, if he thought it worth his eyesight. +The last-named has to bear the least tolerable of modern reproaches—that +he lacks humour; but he need not always care. Now to turn over +Douglas Jerrold’s monologues is to find that people in the mid-century +took their mirth principally from the life of the <i>arrière</i> +<i>boutique</i>. On that shabby stage was enacted the comedy of +literature. Therefore we must take something of the vulgarity +of Jerrold as a circumstance of the social ranks wherein he delighted. +But the essential vulgarity is that of the woman. There is in +some old “Punch” volume a drawing by Leech—whom one +is weary of hearing named the gentle, the refined—where the work +of the artist has vied with the spirit of the letterpress. Douglas +Jerrold treats of the woman’s jealousy, Leech of her stays. +They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And +page by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that +time there was, moreover, one great humourist, one whom I infinitely +admire; he, too, I am grieved to remember, bore his part willingly in +vulgarizing the woman; and the part that fell to him was the vulgarizing +of the act of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing man at the +law for evading her fatuous companionship, woman incoherent, woman abandoned +without restraint to violence and temper, woman feigning sensibility—in +none of these ignominies is woman so common and so foolish for Dickens +as she is in child-bearing.</p> +<p>I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens’s +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child +are humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him +she is moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous +is that her husband—himself wearisome enough to die of—is +weary of her, finds the time long, and tries to escape her. It +amuses him that she should furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, +to the annoyance of her husband, and that her husband should have no +desire to adorn her, and that her mother should be intolerable. +It pleases him that her baby, with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette +in its hat—a burlesque baby—should be a grotesque object +of her love, for that too makes subtly for her abasement. Charles +Keene, again—another contemporary, though he lived into a later +and different time. He saw little else than common forms of human +ignominy—indignities of civic physique, of stupid prosperity, +of dress, of bearing. He transmits these things in greater proportion +than he found them—whether for love of the humour of them, or +by a kind of inverted disgust that is as eager as delight—one +is not sure which is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities +is rendered with a completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain +sensitiveness of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get +convinced that real apprehension—real apprehensiveness—would +not have insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through +almost a whole career. There is one drawing in the “Punch” +of years ago, in which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible +to even the invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual +broadcloth, has gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and his +umbrella open, and the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when she +awakes, the wife asleep at his side in a night-cap. Every one +who knows Keene’s work can imagine how the huge well-fed figure +was drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across the back, and how the bourgeois +whiskers were indicated. This obscene drawing is matched by many +equally odious. Abject domesticity, ignominies of married life, +of middle-age, of money-making; the old common jape against the mother-in-law; +abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom with shambling side-long +legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, +“No, never was.” In all these things there is very +little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was in the figures of +his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness which in really fine work +could never be absent from a man’s thought of a child or from +his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the subject in hand, is absolutely +lacking in Keene’s designs; nevertheless, we acknowledge that +there is humour. It is also in some of his clerical figures when +they are not caricatures, and certainly in “Robert,” the +City waiter of “Punch.” But so irresistible is the +derision of the woman that all Charles Keene’s persistent sense +of vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace +gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for +prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for +the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she +vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the possession +of whom is her boast, what then is she?</p> +<p>This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts—the pleasure in this particular +form of human disgrace—has passed, leaving one trace only: the +habit by which some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, whereas +a silly man is not reproached through his sex. But the vulgarity +of which I have written here was distinctively English—the most +English thing that England had in days when she bragged of many another—and +it was not able to survive an increased commerce of manners and letters +with France. It was the chief immorality destroyed by the French +novel.</p> +<h2>THE POINT OF HONOUR</h2> +<p>Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. +In Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not +explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; +he made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own +candour, and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the +chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and +when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour. +Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced +the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply +asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not +take his word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants +the distinction of a share in his responsibility.</p> +<p>Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim +to be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter’s production +of his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, +his self-defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible mysteries +in art. “You can see for yourself,” the lesser man +seems to say to the world, “thus things are, and I render them +in such manner that your intelligence may be satisfied.” +This is an appeal to average experience—at the best the cumulative +experience; and with the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal without +derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: “Thus things are +in my pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so.” +We are not excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute +a certain authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of +that art of seeing pictorially which is the beginning and not far from +the end—not far short of the whole—of the art of painting. +So little indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist’s +impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his colleagues. +Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take praise from the praised: +he leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the work. He respects +my responsibility no less—though he respects it less explicitly—than +I do his. What he allows me would not be granted by a meaner master. +If he does not hold himself bound to prove his own truth, he returns +thanks for my trust. It is as though he used his countrymen’s +courteous hyperbole and called his house my own. In a sense of +the most noble hostship he does me the honours of his picture.</p> +<p>Because Impressionism with all its extreme—let us hope its +ultimate—derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. +Because there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. +To undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing +its obligations—or at least without confessing them up to the +point of honour—is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities +precisely where there are duties, and an advantage where there is a +bond. A very mob of men have taken Impressionism upon themselves, +in several forms and under a succession of names, in this our later +day. It is against all probabilities that more than a few among +these have within them the point of honour. In their galleries +we are beset with a dim distrust. And to distrust is more humiliating +than to be distrusted. How many of these landscape-painters, deliberately +rash, are painting the truth of their own impressions? An ethical +question as to loyalty is easily answered; truth and falsehood as to +fact are, happily for the intelligence of the common conscience, not +hard to divide. But when the <i>dubium</i> concerns not fact but +artistic truth, can the many be sure that their sensitiveness, their +candour, their scruple, their delicate equipoise of perceptions, the +vigilance of their apprehension, are enough? Now Impressionists +have told us things as to their impressions—as to the effect of +things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of that—which +should not be asserted except on the artistic point of honour. +The majority can tell ordinary truth, but should not trust themselves +for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgement, +but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last judgement, +which is the judgement within. There is too much reason to divine +that a certain number of those who aspire to differ from the greatest +of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of view +worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying. +And to be, <i>de</i> <i>parti</i> <i>pris</i>, an Impressionist without +these! O Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a +like reproach in her own things. An author, here and there, will +make as though he had a word worth hearing—nay, worth over-hearing—a +word that seeks to withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it +seems to dissemble is all too probably a platitude. But obviously, +literature is not—as is the craft and mystery of painting—so +at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded by unprovable honour. +For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined +salvation. If the artistic temperament—tedious word!—with +all its grotesque privileges, becomes yet more common than it is, there +will be yet less responsibility; for the point of honour is the simple +secret of the few.</p> +<h2>THE COLOUR OF LIFE</h2> +<p>Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. +But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, +or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed +the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. +Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act +of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not the +manifestation thereof. It is one of the things the value of which +is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. +The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the +covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and +the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.</p> +<p>So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life +is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is +that it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than +earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but +less lucid than the colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold +that is in all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost +elusive. Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; +but under the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of +the London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, +out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of June.</p> +<p>For months together London does not see the colour of life in any +mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, +and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and <i>chapeau</i> <i>melon</i> +of man, and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the +face is subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular +face of the Londoner has soon lost its gold, its white, and the delicacy +of its red and brown. We miss little beauty by the fact that it +is never seen freely in great numbers out-of-doors. You get it +in some quantity when all the heads of a great indoor meeting are turned +at once upon a speaker; but it is only in the open air, needless to +say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in the open air, “clothed +with the sun,” whether the sunshine be golden and direct, or dazzlingly +diffused in grey.</p> +<p>The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out +of all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer +north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke +of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours—all allied to +the hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has +chosen for its boys—and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and +delicate flush between the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. +Clothed now with the sun, he is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars +as he goes to bathe, and the reflection of an early moon is under his +feet.</p> +<p>So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. +They are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, +but only a little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora +Duse. The last and most finished action of her intellect, passion, +and knowledge is, as it were, the flicking away of some insignificant +thing mistaken for art by other actors, some little obstacle to the +way and liberty of Nature.</p> +<p>All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, +and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking +colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, +he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels +and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, +his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening +midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his world again.</p> +<p>It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where +Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the +happily easy way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to +grow in the streets—and no streets could ask for a more charming +finish than your green grass. The gasometer even must fall to +pieces unless it is renewed; but the grass renews itself. There +is nothing so remediable as the work of modern man—“a thought +which is also,” as Mr Pecksniff said, “very soothing.” +And by remediable I mean, of course, destructible. As the bathing +child shuffles off his garments—they are few, and one brace suffices +him—so the land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off +its yellow brick and purple slate, and all the things that collect about +railway stations. A single night almost clears the air of London.</p> +<p>But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery +of Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea-coast. +To have once seen it there should be enough to make a colourist. +O memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared +setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea +had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect—the +dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything +was very definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The +most luminous thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which +did not cease to be white because it was a little golden and a little +rosy in the sunshine. It was still the whitest thing imaginable. +And the next most luminous thing was the little child, also invested +with the sun and the colour of life.</p> +<p>In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that +the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See +the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. +On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. +Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you +consider how generously she was permitted political death. She +was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living +hours; but to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest +interests, social, national, international. The blood wherewith +she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard +in the tribune, was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins.</p> +<p>Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last +and the innermost—the privacy of death—was never allowed +to put obstacles in the way of public action for a public cause. +Women might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe +de Gouges, they claimed a “right to concur in the choice of representatives +for the formation of the laws”; but in her person, too, they were +liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to the Republic. +Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public +and complete amends.</p> +<h2>THE HORIZON</h2> +<p>To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter +than yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you +raise the horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. +It is like the scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his dramatic +Italian hands, bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does more +than bid them. He lifts them, he gathers them up, far and near, +with the upward gesture of both arms; he takes them to their feet with +the compulsion of his expressive force. Or it is as when a conductor +takes his players to successive heights of music. You summon the +sea, you bring the mountains, the distances unfold unlooked-for wings +and take an even flight. You are but a man lifting his weight +upon the upward road, but as you climb the circle of the world goes +up to face you.</p> +<p>Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen unfolds. +This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are on the wing, +and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and wait upon +your eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your eyelids, +but by the pilgrimage of your body. “Lift thine eyes to +the mountains.” It is then that other mountains lift themselves +to your human eyes.</p> +<p>It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another +that makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All +the landscape is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, +and its inner harbours literally come to light; the headlands repeat +themselves; little cups within the treeless hills open and show their +farms. In the sea are many regions. A breeze is at play +for a mile or two, and the surface is turned. There are roads +and curves in the blue and in the white. Not a step of your journey +up the height that has not its replies in the steady motion of land +and sea. Things rise together like a flock of many-feathered birds.</p> +<p>But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search +of. That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift +the horizon to the equality of your sight that you go high. You +give it a distance worthy of the skies. There is no distance, +except the distance in the sky, to be seen from the level earth; but +from the height is to be seen the distance of this world. The +line is sent back into the remoteness of light, the verge is removed +beyond verge, into a distance that is enormous and minute.</p> +<p>So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less +near than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here +on the edges of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world—we +know no other place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so small +and tender. The touches of her passing, as close as dreams, or +the utmost vanishing of the forest or the ocean in the white light between +the earth and the air; nothing else is quite so intimate and fine. +The extremities of a mountain view have just such tiny touches as the +closeness of closed eyes shuts in.</p> +<p>On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars +the simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface +it, by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky disappears +on that shining edge; there is not substance enough for colour. +The rim of the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, of the sea—let +it only be far enough—has the same absorption of colour; and even +the dark things drawn upon the bright edges of the sky are lucid, the +light is among them, and they are mingled with it. The horizon +has its own way of making bright the pencilled figures of forests, which +are black but luminous.</p> +<p>On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. +There you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds—not a thunder +sky—is not a wall but the underside of a floor. You see +the clouds that repeat each other grow smaller by distance; and you +find a new unity in the sky and earth that gather alike the great lines +of their designs to the same distant close. There is no longer +an alien sky, tossed up in unintelligible heights above a world that +is subject to intelligible perspective.</p> +<p>Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted +is the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; +not the spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from +the parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of soot; +but rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a beautiful +thing of the London smoke at times, and in some places of the sky; but +not there, not where the soft sharp distance ought to shine. To +be dull there is to put all relations and comparisons in the wrong, +and to make the sky lawless.</p> +<p>A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens +the line and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly +dims it, or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the sky. +The stormy horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high enough, +and you can raise the light from beyond the shower, and the shadow from +behind the ray. Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke disobeys +and defeats the summer of the eyes.</p> +<p>Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their sea. +A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they +cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never +in the solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope +and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman +seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, +when he was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. +The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast +he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a traveller through +the plains.</p> +<p>Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps +them so perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying +to flight with flight.</p> +<p>A close circlet of waves is the sailor’s famous offing. +His offing hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you +might think something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit +down in the centre of it.</p> +<p>As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so +steady, so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further +sea lies away, hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding +world, with its looks serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals +of many miles, its signs and communications of light, gathers down and +pauses. This flock of birds which is the mobile landscape wheels +and goes to earth. The Cardinal weighs down the audience with +his downward hands. Farewell to the most delicate horizon.</p> +<h2>IN JULY</h2> +<p>One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of +the green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of +maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand +in their differences of character and not of mere date. Almost +all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened +and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey +skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as +eleven o’clock looks after the dawn.</p> +<p>Gravity is the word—not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace +as at night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, +common freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and day. +In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise +than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher sensibility +for April and April evenings—a heartache for them, which in riper +years is gradually and irretrievably consoled.</p> +<p>But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find +daily things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has no +great delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness of +the summer that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere +day and of late summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have +long ceased to be sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot now +find anything in nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, lost +sight of the further awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer see so +much of the past in April twilight as they saw when they had no past; +but which look freshly at the dailiness of green summer, of early afternoon, +of every sky of any form that comes to pass, and of the darkened elms.</p> +<p>Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting +close, unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when +it looks alone to a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, +across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, +and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, +as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, +would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion +for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The eyes do gather +them, far and near, on a whole day’s journey. Not one is +unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and hill-sides +dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a poplar day of it. +Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for the poplars everywhere +reply to the glance. The woods may be all various, but the poplars +are separate.</p> +<p>All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with +them) shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. +It is easy to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance +pay them a flash of recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you +journey you are suddenly aware of them close by. Light and the +breezes are as quick as the eyes of a poplar-lover to find the willing +tree that dances to be seen.</p> +<p>No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for +oneself an oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and +many would be missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert +enough for a traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do +not sleep. From within some little grove of other trees a single +poplar makes a slight sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep +the wind. They are salient everywhere, and full of replies. +They are as fresh as streams.</p> +<p>It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. +And yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much mingled +with a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes to recognize +their unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and keep still, +the poplar and the aspen do not darken—or hardly—and the +deepest summer will not find a day in which they do not keep awake. +No waters are so vigilant, even where a lake is bare to the wind.</p> +<p>When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair “with +fingers cool as aspen leaves,” he knew the coolest thing in the +world. It is a coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which +the breeze takes on both sides—the greenish and the greyish. +The poplar green has no glows, no gold; it is an austere colour, as +little rich as the colour of willows, and less silvery than theirs. +The sun can hardly gild it; but he can shine between. Poplars +and aspens let the sun through with the wind. You may have the +sky sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the woods are +close.</p> +<p>Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher’s net ever took such glancing +fishes, nor did the net of a constellation’s shape ever enclose +more vibrating Pleiades.</p> +<h2>CLOUD</h2> +<p>During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not +to see the clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by +the rest of England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. +Not to see the clear sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But +not so in London. You may go for a week or two at a time, even +though you hold your head up as you walk, and even though you have windows +that really open, and yet you shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, +the fragment of a form.</p> +<p>Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled +glass towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They +are, therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other windows +were used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or even knew +so much as whether there were a sky.</p> +<p>But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world +knows. Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men +go in search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them. +It goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no +weariness, it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery—the +tourist’s—is a prisoner compared with this. The tourist’s +scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth’s maiden, with +earth’s diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. +And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. +The mere green flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; +for the greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring +and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the +shadows of a cloud.</p> +<p>The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or +fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, +the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that +their own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, +effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud.</p> +<p>The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. +It is the cloud that, holding the sun’s rays in a sheaf as a giant +holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme +edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and +makes the foreground shine.</p> +<p>Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain +slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the +view by the rough method of standing in front of it. But its greatest +things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence does it distribute +the sun.</p> +<p>Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more mysteries +than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. Thence +it writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or lets the +pencils of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and yet +making dark, it sheds deep colour upon the forest land of Sussex, so +that, seen from the hills, all the country is divided between grave +blue and graver sunlight.</p> +<p>And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the world. +Its own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to improve. +It is always great: above the street, above the suburbs, above the gas-works +and the stucco, above the faces of painted white houses—the painted +surfaces that have been devised as the only things able to vulgarise +light, as they catch it and reflect it grotesquely from their importunate +gloss. This is to be well seen on a sunny evening in Regent Street.</p> +<p>Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above +some little landscape of rather paltry interest—a conventional +river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, +and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as +the novelists always have it, with “autumn tints.” +High over these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, +what no man expected—an heroic sky. Few of the things that +were ever done upon earth are great enough to be done under such a heaven. +It was surely designed for other days. It is for an epic world. +Your eyes sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the distances +of earth to these, and what are the distances of the clear and cloudless +sky? The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the round +world dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are unmeasured—you +rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star itself is immeasurable.</p> +<p>But in the sky of “sunny Alps” of clouds the sight goes +farther, with conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. +Man would not have known distance veritably without the clouds. +There are mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of +the earth are pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are +not overpowering by disproportion, like some futile building fatuously +made too big for the human measure. The cloud in its majestic +place composes with a little Perugino tree. For you stand or stray +in the futile building, while the cloud is no mansion for man, and out +of reach of his limitations.</p> +<p>The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the +custody of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. +The cloud veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry ray, +suddenly bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a background. +Or when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals him, gentle beyond +hope. It makes peace, constantly, just before sunset.</p> +<p>It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. +There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are +bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and +brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This +is a frolic and haphazard sky.</p> +<p>All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed +about it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the +clouds in turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes +aloft are swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. +Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in +the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same finger. The +cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents +sudden with light.</p> +<p>All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this +scenery. It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part +of the winter, that the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And +for many and many a day no London eye can see the horizon, or the first +threat of the cloud like a man’s hand. There never was a +great painter who had not exquisite horizons, and if Corot and Crome +were right, the Londoner loses a great thing.</p> +<p>He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he loses +its shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and rosy +head piling into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the base and +the altitude. The perspective of a cloud is a great part of its +design—whether it lies so that you can look along the immense +horizontal distances of its floor, or whether it rears so upright a +pillar that you look up its mountain steeps in the sky as you look at +the rising heights of a mountain that stands, with you, on the earth.</p> +<p>The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not +merely the guardian of the sun’s rays and their director. +It is the sun’s treasurer; it holds the light that the world has +lost. We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, +which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining +cloud is one of the most majestic of all secondary lights. If +the reflecting moon is the bride, this is the friend of the bridegroom.</p> +<p>Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most beautiful +of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no name, and +no other cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such heights of blue +air. The shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, comes across +the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can +be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London +streets is that people take their rain there without knowing anything +of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. +The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no limits of form, and +no history whatever. It has not come from the clear edge of the +plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the hill to the north. +The rain, for this city, hardly comes or goes; it does but begin and +stop. No one looks after it on the path of its retreat.</p> +<h2>SHADOWS</h2> +<p>Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and unencumbered +with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple house is that +the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs of shadows. +The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought oftener to be offered +to the light and to yonder handful of long sedges and rushes in a vase. +Their slender grey design of shadows upon white walls is better than +a tedious, trivial, or anxious device from the shop.</p> +<p>The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into +line and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, +not to the mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. +It is single; it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and +will never be seen again, and that, untouched, varies with the journey +of the sun, shifts the interrelation of a score of delicate lines at +the mere passing of time, though all the room be motionless. Why +will design insist upon its importunate immortality? Wiser is +the drama, and wiser the dance, that do not pause upon an attitude. +But these walk with passion or pleasure, while the shadow walks with +the earth. It alters as the hours wheel.</p> +<p>Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it +is shed by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; +it betrays the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies—a sun that +takes the midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a sally-porte, +and is about to alight on an unused horizon. So does the grey +drawing, with which you have allowed the sun and your pot of rushes +to adorn your room, play the stealthy game of the year.</p> +<p>You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It +needs but four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most +buoyant jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a +symmetrical countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches close +with one another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and their +paler greys darkening. It is hard to believe that there are many +to prefer a “repeating pattern.”</p> +<p>It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration +the walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a +plaque or a picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To +dress a room once for all, and to give it no more heed, is to neglect +the units of the days.</p> +<p>Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of shadows +which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you see little +except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow—be +the day bright enough—compose the very air through which you see +the light. The trees show you a shadow for every leaf, and the +poplars are sprinkled upon the shining sky with little shadows that +look translucent. The liveliness of every shadow is that some +light is reflected into it; shade and shine have been entangled as though +by some wild wind through their million molecules.</p> +<p>The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the unclouded +sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to life, and +are themselves the life, the action, and the transparence of their day.</p> +<p>To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light +looks still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide +for so many hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are +extinguished. Him who lies alone there the outer world touches +less by this long sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. +Although there may be no tree to stand between his window and the south, +and although no noonday wind may blow a branch of roses across the blind, +shadows and their life will be carried across by a brilliant bird.</p> +<p>To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot +see its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does +but darken his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does +not see it pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows +him wings. What flash of light could be more bright for him than +such a flash of darkness?</p> +<p>It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. +If he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less—the bird’s +shadow was a message from the sun.</p> +<p>There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight +of the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. +This goes across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray +for a while in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer and +larger, runs, quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker on the +soft and dry grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird swoops +to a branch and clings.</p> +<p>In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, +about Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high birds +are the movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there are +no woods to make a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse of flocks +of pearl-white sea birds, or of the solitary creature driving on the +wind. Theirs is always a surprise of flight. The clouds +go one way, but the birds go all ways: in from the sea or out, across +the sands, inland to high northern fields, where the crops are late +by a month. They fly so high that though they have the shadow +of the sun under their wings, they have the light of the earth there +also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, and they fly between +lights.</p> +<p>Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, “swift +as dreams,” at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, +and ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They +subside by degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings and +cries until there comes the general shadow of night wherewith the little +shadows close, complete.</p> +<p>The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds +have traced wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their +shadows have fled all day faster than her streams, and have overtaken +all the movement of her wingless creatures. But now it is the +flight of the very earth that carries her clasped shadow from the sun.</p> +<h2>THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</h2> +<p>All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling +and election to the most wifely of all wifehoods—that of a soldier’s +wife—history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as +Colonel Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is something +more than his biographer—his historian. And she convinces +her reader that her Puritan principles kept abreast of her affections. +There is no self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; keeps her own +footing; wife of a soldier as she is, would not have armed him without +her own previous indignation against the enemy. She is a soldier +at his orders, but she had warily and freely chosen her captain.</p> +<p>Briefly, and with the dignity that the language of her day kept unmarred +for her use, she relates her own childhood and youth. She was +a child such as those serious times desired that a child should be; +that is, she was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, as might +be. Childhood, as an age of progress, was not to be delayed, as +an age of imperfection was to be improved, as an age of inability was +not to be exposed except when precocity distinguished it. It must +at any rate be shortened. Lucy Apsley, at four years old, read +English perfectly, and was “carried to sermons, and could remember +and repeat them exactly.” “At seven she had eight +tutors in several qualities.” She outstripped her brothers +in Latin, albeit they were at school and she had no teacher except her +father’s chaplain, who, poor gentleman, was “a pitiful dull +fellow.” She was not companionable. Her many friends +were indulged with “babies” (that is, dolls) and these she +pulled to pieces. She exhorted the maids, she owned, “much.” +But she also heard much of their love stories, and acquired a taste +for sonnets.</p> +<p>It was a sonnet, and indeed one of her own writing, that brought +about her acquaintance with Mr. Hutchinson. The sonnet was read +to him, and discussed amongst his friends, with guesses at the authorship; +for a young woman did not, in that world, write a sonnet without a feint +of hiding its origin. One gentleman believed a woman had made +it. Another said, if so, there were but two women capable of making +it; but he owned, later, that he said “two” out of civility +(very good civility of a kind that is not now practised) to a lady who +chanced to be present; but that he knew well there was but one; and +he named her. From her future husband Lucy Apsley received that +praise of exceptions wherewith women are now, and always will be, praised: +“Mr. Hutchinson,” she says, “fancying something of +rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary reach of a she-wit, could +scarcely believe it was a woman’s.”</p> +<p>He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured +conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young +friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer +jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise +in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the +envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover’s splendour. +His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his “fine, thick-set +head of hair” in long locks that were an offence to many of his +own sect, but, she says, “a great ornament to him.” +But for herself she has some dissimulated vanities. She was negligent +of dress, and when, after much waiting and many devices, her suitor +first saw her, she was “not ugly in a careless riding-habit.” +As for him, “in spite of all her indifference, she was surprised +(she writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw this +gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to beget +love in any one.” He married her as soon as she could leave +her chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that “the priest +and all that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God recompensed +his justice and constancy by restoring her.”</p> +<p>The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy +Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our own +time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of +gesture of language; this is where she praises her husband’s “handsome +management of love.” <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> +She thus prefaces her description of her honoured lord: “If my +treacherous memory have not lost the dearest treasure that ever I committed +to its trust—.” She boasts of her country in lofty +phrase: “God hath, as it were, enclosed a people here, out of +the waste common of the world.” And again of her husband: +“It will be as hard to say which was the predominant virtue in +him as which is so in its own nature.” “He had made +up his accounts with life and death, and fixed his purpose to entertain +both honourably.” “The heat of his youth a little +inclined him to the passion of anger, and the goodness of his nature +to those of love and grief; but reason was never dethroned by them, +but continued governor and moderator of his soul.”</p> +<p>She describes sweetly certain three damsels who had “conceived +a kindness” for her lord, their susceptibility, their willingness, +their “admirable tempting beauty,” and “such excellent +good-nature as would have thawed a rock of ice”; but she adds +no less beautifully, “It was not his time to love.” +In her widowhood she remembered that she had been commanded “not +to grieve at the common rate of women”; and this is the lovely +phrase of her grief: “As his shadow, she waited on him everywhere, +till he was taken to that region of light which admits of none, and +then she vanished into nothing.”</p> +<p>She has an invincible anger against the enemies of her husband and +of the cause. The fevers, “little less than plagues,” +that were common in that age carry them off exemplarily by families +at a time. An adversary is “the devil’s exquisite +solicitor.” All Royalists are of “the wicked faction.” +She suspected his warders of poisoning Colonel Hutchinson in the prison +wherein he died. The keeper had given him, under pretence of kindness, +a bottle of excellent wine, and the two gentlemen who drank of it died +within four months. A poison of strange operation! “We +must leave it to the great day, when all crimes, how secret soever, +will be made manifest, whether they added poison to all their other +iniquity, whereby they certainly murdered this guiltless servant of +God.” When he was near death, she adds, “a gentlewoman +of the Castle came up and asked him how he did. He told her, Incomparably +well, and full of faith.”</p> +<p>On the subject of politics, Mrs. Hutchinson writes, it must be owned, +platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with dignity. +Her power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the liberal and +public interests of her life, her good breeding, her education, her +exquisite diction, are such as may well make a reader ask how and why +the literature of England declined upon the vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, +foolishness, that became “feminine” in the estimation of +a later age; that is, in the character of women succeeding her, and +in the estimation of men succeeding her lord. The noble graces +of Lucy Hutchinson, I say, may well make us marvel at the downfall following—at +Goldsmith’s invention of the women of “The Vicar or Wakefield” +in one age, and at Thackeray’s invention of the women of “Esmond” +in another.</p> +<p>Mrs. Hutchinson has little leisure for much praise of the natural +beauty of sky and landscape, but now and then in her work there appears +an abiding sense of the pleasantness of the rural world—in her +day an implicit feeling rather than an explicit. “The happiness +of the soil and air contribute all things that are necessary to the +use or delight of man’s life.” “He had an opportunity +of conversing with her in those pleasant walks which, at the sweet season +of the spring, invited all the neighbouring inhabitants to seek their +joys.” And she describes a dream whereof the scene was in +the green fields of Southwark. What an England was hers! +And what an English! A memorable vintage of our literature and +speech was granted in her day; we owe much to those who—as she +did—gathered it in.</p> +<h2>MRS. DINGLEY</h2> +<p>We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a> +All we have to call her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties +her to Stella, with whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved “better +a thousand times than life, as hope saved.” MD, without +full stops, Swift writes it eight times in a line for the pleasure of +writing it. “MD sometimes means Stella alone,” says +one of many editors. “The letters were written nominally +to Stella and Mrs. Dingley,” says another, “but it does +not require to be said that it was really for Stella’s sake alone +that they were penned.” Not so. “MD” never +stands for Stella alone. And the editor does not yet live who +shall persuade one honest reader, against the word of Swift, that Swift +loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, and not, by a most delicate +exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that they make the “she” +and “her” of every letter. And this shall be a paper +of reparation to Mrs. Dingley.</p> +<p>No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. +In love “to divide is not to take away,” as Shelley says; +and Dingley’s half of the tender things said to MD is equal to +any whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella’s half. +But the sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. +He has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. +Sly sentimentalist—he finds her irksome. Through one of +his most modern representatives he has but lately called her a “chaperon.” +A chaperon!</p> +<p>MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she +has been pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in +this respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were “saucy +charming MD,” “saucy little, pretty, dear rogues,” +“little monkeys mine,” “little mischievous girls,” +“nautinautinautidear girls,” “brats,” “huzzies +both,” “impudence and saucy-face,” “saucy noses,” +“my dearest lives and delights,” “dear little young +women,” “good dallars, not crying dallars” (which +means “girls”), “ten thousand times dearest MD,” +and so forth in a hundred repetitions. They are, every now and +then, “poor MD,” but obviously not because of their own +complaining. Swift called them so because they were mortal; and +he, like all great souls, lived and loved, conscious every day of the +price, which is death.</p> +<p>The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with +his summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately +put them asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than +foolishly play havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the +most secluded thing in the world. “I am weary of friends, +and friendships are all monsters, except MD’s;” “I +ought to read these letters I write after I have done. But I hope +it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks,” +he adds, “when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not +alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks +like PMD.” Again: “I do not like women so much as +I did. MD, you must know, are not women.” “God +Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together.” +“I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may never be +asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives.” “Farewell, +dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one +happy day since he left you, as hope saved.”</p> +<p>With them—with her—he hid himself in the world, at Court, +at the bar of St. James’s coffee-house, whither he went on the +Irish mail-day, and was “in pain except he saw MD’s little +handwriting.” He hid with them in the long labours of these +exquisite letters every night and morning. If no letter came, +he comforted himself with thinking that “he had it yet to be happy +with.” And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold +and lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity—the distinction—of +this sweet romance. “Little, sequestered pleasure-house”—it +seemed as though “the many could not miss it,” but not even +the few have found it.</p> +<p>It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella +should be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift. +But day and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD’s little +letters; he waits upon “her” will: “I shall make a +sort of journal, and when it is full I will send it whether MD writes +or not; and so that will be pretty.” “Naughty girls +that will not write to a body!” “I wish you were whipped +for forgetting to send. Go, be far enough, negligent baggages.” +“You, Mistress Stella, shall write your share, and then comes +Dingley altogether, and then Stella a little crumb at the end; and then +conclude with something handsome and genteel, as ‘your most humble +cumdumble.’” But Scott and Macaulay and Thackeray +are all exceedingly sorry for Stella.</p> +<p>Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: +“Here is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I +must be writing every night; O Lord, O Lord!” “I must +go write idle things, and twittle twattle.” “These +saucy jades take up so much of my time with writing to them in the morning.” +Is it not a stealthy wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley that she should be +stripped of all these ornaments to her name and memory? When Swift +tells a woman in a letter that there he is “writing in bed, like +a tiger,” she should go gay in the eyes of all generations.</p> +<p>They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will +not let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. +Marry come up! Why did not the historians assign all the tender +passages (taken very seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the +jokes, then? That would have been no ill share for Dingley. +But no, forsooth, Dingley is allowed nothing.</p> +<p>There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from +her. For now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does +so he invariably drops those initials and writes “Stella” +or “Ppt” for the one, and “D” or “Dingley” +for the other. There is no exception to this anywhere. He +is anxious about Stella’s “little eyes,” and about +her health generally; whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he +thinks, will not catch the “new fever,” because she is not +well; “but why should D escape it, pray?” And Mrs. +Dingley is rebuked for her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. +“I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though +not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers.” Stella is often +reproved for her spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. +But she is a puzzle-headed woman, like another. “What do +you mean by my fourth letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella +say you had my fifth, goody Blunder?” “Now, Mistress +Dingley, are you not an impudent slut to except a letter next packet? +Unreasonable baggage! No, little Dingley, I am always in bed by +twelve, and I take great care of myself.” “You are +a pretending slut, indeed, with your ‘fourth’ and ‘fifth’ +in the margin, and your ‘journal’ and everything. +O Lord, never saw the like, we shall never have done.” “I +never saw such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, so everything.” +Swift is insistently grateful for their inquiries for his health. +He pauses seriously to thank them in the midst of his prattle. +Both women—MD—are rallied on their politics: “I have +a fancy that Ppt is a Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort +of trimmer.”</p> +<p>But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in +his lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her +in Ireland. “He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible +litter; but I say nothing; I am as tame as a clout.”</p> +<p>Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the ignominy, +in a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to Swift as an unclaimed +wife; so far so good. But two hundred years is long for her to +have gone stripped of so radiant a glory as is hers by right. +“Better, thanks to MD’s prayers,” wrote the immortal +man who loved her, in a private fragment of a journal, never meant for +Dingley’s eyes, nor for Ppt’s, nor for any human eyes; and +the rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all the credit of those +prayers, and all the thanks of that pious benediction.</p> +<h2>PRUE</h2> +<p>Through the long history of human relations, which is the history +of the life of our race, there sounds at intervals the clamour of a +single voice which has not the tone of oratory, but asks, answers, interrupts +itself, interrupts—what else? Whatever else it interrupts +is silence; there are pauses, but no answers. There is the jest +without the laugh, and again the laugh without the jest. And this +is because the letters written by Madame de Sévigné were +all saved, and not many written to her; because Swift burnt the letters +that were the dearest things in life to him, while “MD” +both made a treasury of his; and because Prue kept all the letters which +Steele wrote to her from their marriage-day onwards, and Steele kept +none of hers.</p> +<p>In Swift’s case the silence is full of echoes; that is to say, +his letters repeat the phrases of Stella’s and Dingley’s, +to play with them, flout them, and toss them back against the two silenced +voices. He never lets the word of these two women fall to the +ground; and when they have but blundered with it, and aimed it wide, +and sent it weakly, he will catch it, and play you twenty delicate and +expert juggling pranks with it as he sends it back into their innocent +faces. So we have something of MD’s letters in the “journal,” +and this in the only form in which we desire them, to tell the truth; +for when Swift gravely saves us some specimens of Stella’s wit, +after her death, as she spoke them, and not as he mimicked them, they +make a sorry show.</p> +<p>In many correspondences, where one voice remains and the other is +gone, the retort is enough for two. It is as when, the other day, +the half of a pretty quarrel between nurse and child came down from +an upper floor to the ears of a mother who decided that she need not +interfere. The voice of the undaunted child it was that was audible +alone, and it replied, “I’m not; <i>you</i> are”; +and anon, “I’ll tell <i>yours</i>.” Nothing +was really missing there.</p> +<p>But Steele’s letters to Prue, his wife, are no such simple +matter. The turn we shall give them depends upon the unheard tone +whereto they reply. And there is room for conjecture. It +has pleased the more modern of the many spirits of banter to supply +Prue’s eternal silence with the voice of a scold. It is +painful to me to complain of Thackeray; but see what a figure he makes +of Prue in “Esmond.” It is, says the nineteenth-century +humourist, in defence against the pursuit of a jealous, exacting, neglected, +or evaded wife that poor Dick Steele sends those little notes of excuse: +“Dearest Being on earth, pardon me if you do not see me till eleven +o’clock, having met a schoolfellow from India”; “My +dear, dear wife, I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, +being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give +you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful +and obedient husband”; “Dear Prue, I cannot come home to +dinner. I languish for your welfare”; “I stay here +in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with +him to that end”; and so forth. Once only does Steele really +afford the recent humourist the suggestion that is apparently always +so welcome. It is when he writes that he is invited to supper +to Mr. Boyle’s, and adds: “Dear Prue, do not send after +me, for I shall be ridiculous.” But even this is to be read +not ungracefully by a well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused +to the world. Her husband, by the way, had been already married; +and his greater age makes his constant deference all the more charming.</p> +<p>But with this one exception, Steele’s little notes, kept by +his wife while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter +and his, are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. +It is worth while to remember that Steele’s dinner, which it was +so often difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore +of mid-business. But that is a detail. What is desirable +is that a reasonable degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; +for it is no more than just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: +“How often has your tenderness removed pain from my aching head, +how often anguish from my afflicted heart. If there are such beings +as guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one +of them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form, than +my wife.”</p> +<p>True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; +and these carry to her his assurance that she is “the beautifullest +object in the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree +comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and society.” +“But indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant +fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that +you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, +and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that +you are mine.” The correction of the phrase is finely considerate.</p> +<p>Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a +reply, full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a little +flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence of +uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with what +simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her invitation, +and perform! She wanted a compliment, though they had been long +married then, and he immediately turned it. This was no dowdy +Prue.</p> +<p>Her request, by the way, which he repeats in obeying it, is one of +the few instances of the other side of the correspondence—one +of the few direct echoes of that one of the two voices which is silent.</p> +<p>The ceremony of the letters and the deferent method of address and +signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. +It is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and state +is supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of the husband +of farce, the “rogue.” One does not like the word. +Is it not clownish to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? +He did not pay, he was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, +he did many other things that tarnish honour, more or less, and things +for which he had to beg Prue’s special pardon; but yet he is not +a fit subject for the unhandsome incredulity which is proud to be always +at hand with an ironic commentary on such letters as his.</p> +<p>I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words. +He wrote to Prue at night when the burgundy had been too much for him, +and in the morning after. He announces that he is coming to her +“within a pint of wine.” One of his gayest letters—a +love-letter before the marriage, addressed to “dear lovely Mrs. +Scurlock”—confesses candidly that he had been pledging her +too well: “I have been in very good company, where your health, +under the character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk; +so that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more +than <i>I</i> <i>die</i> <i>for</i> <i>you</i>.”</p> +<p>Steele obviously drank burgundy wildly, as did his “good company”; +as did also the admirable Addison, who was so solitary in character +and so serene in temperament. But no one has, for this fault, +the right to put a railing accusation into the mouth of Prue. +Every woman has a right to her own silence, whether her silence be hers +of set purpose or by accident. And every creature has a right +to security from the banterings peculiar to the humourists of a succeeding +age. To every century its own ironies, to every century its own +vulgarities. In Steele’s time they had theirs. They +might have rallied Prue more coarsely, but it would have been with a +different rallying. Writers of the nineteenth century went about +to rob her of her grace.</p> +<p>She kept some four hundred of these little letters of her lord’s. +It was a loyal keeping. But what does Thackeray call it? +His word is “thrifty.” He says: “There are four +hundred letters of Dick Steele’s to his wife, which that thrifty +woman preserved accurately.”</p> +<p>“Thrifty” is a hard word to apply to her whom Steele +styled, in the year before her death, his “charming little insolent.” +She was ill in Wales, and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and “took +it to be a sin to go to sleep.” Thrifty they may call her, +and accurate if they will; but she lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele +called her “your Prueship.”</p> +<h2>MRS. JOHNSON</h2> +<p>This paper shall not be headed “Tetty.” What may +be a graceful enough freedom with the wives of other men shall be prohibited +in the case of Johnson’s, she with whose name no writer until +now has scrupled to take freedoms whereto all graces were lacking. +“Tetty” it should not be, if for no other reason, for this—that +the chance of writing “Tetty” as a title is a kind of facile +literary opportunity; it shall be denied. The Essay owes thus +much amends of deliberate care to Dr. Johnson’s wife. But, +indeed, the reason is graver. What wish would he have had but +that the language in the making whereof he took no ignoble part should +somewhere, at some time, treat his only friend with ordinary honour?</p> +<p>Men who would trust Dr. Johnson with their orthodoxy, with their +vocabulary, and with the most intimate vanity of their human wishes, +refuse, with every mark of insolence, to trust him in regard to his +wife. On that one point no reverence is paid to him, no deference, +no respect, not so much as the credit due to our common sanity. +Yet he is not reviled on account of his Thrale—nor, indeed, is +his Thrale now seriously reproached for her Piozzi. It is true +that Macaulay, preparing himself and his reader “in his well-known +way” (as a rustic of Mr. Hardy’s might have it) for the +recital of her second marriage, says that it would have been well if +she had been laid beside the kind and generous Thrale when, in the prime +of her life, he died. But Macaulay has not left us heirs to his +indignation. His well-known way was to exhaust those possibilities +of effect in which the commonplace is so rich. And he was permitted +to point his paragraphs as he would, not only by calling Mrs. Thrale’s +attachment to her second husband “a degrading passion,” +but by summoning a chorus of “all London” to the same purpose. +She fled, he tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen +and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown. Thus when Macaulay +chastises Mrs. Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is not inconsistent, +for he pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for her audacity in keeping +gaiety and grace in her mind and manners longer than Macaulay liked +to see such ornaments added to the charm of twice “married brows.”</p> +<p>It is not so with succeeding essayists. One of these minor +biographers is so gentle as to call the attachment of Mrs. Thrale and +Piozzi “a mutual affection.” He adds, “No one +who has had some experience of life will be inclined to condemn Mrs. +Thrale.” But there is no such courtesy, even from him, for +Mrs. Johnson. Neither to him nor to any other writer has it yet +occurred that if England loves her great Englishman’s memory, +she owes not only courtesy, but gratitude, to the only woman who loved +him while there was yet time.</p> +<p>Not a thought of that debt has stayed the alacrity with which a caricature +has been acclaimed as the only possible portrait of Mrs. Johnson. +Garrick’s school reminiscences would probably have made a much +more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his remembrances; +we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of envying those who heard +him. But honest laughter should not fall into that tone of common +antithesis which seems to say, “See what are the absurdities of +the great! Such is life! On this one point we, even we, +are wiser than Dr. Johnson—we know how grotesque was his wife. +We know something of the privacies of her toilet-table. We are +able to compare her figure with the figures we, unlike him in his youth, +have had the opportunity of admiring—the figures of the well-bred +and well-dressed.” It is a sorry success to be able to say +so much.</p> +<p>But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, +at twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over +himself which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, +a woman who had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite +of first sight. “That,” she said to her daughter, +“is the most sensible man I ever met.” He was penniless. +She had what was no mean portion for those times and those conditions; +and, granted that she was affected, and provincial, and short, and all +the rest with which she is charged, she was probably not without suitors; +nor do her defects or faults seem to have been those of an unadmired +or neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the aspect +of Johnson’s form and face, even in his twenties, and how little +he could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. +This one loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the +noblest of all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. +And English literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay’s—“She +accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses +of a suitor who might have been her son.”</p> +<p>Her readiness did her incalculable honour. But it is at last +worth remembering that Johnson had first done her incalculable honour. +No one has given to man or woman the right to judge as to the worthiness +of her who received it. The meanest man is generally allowed his +own counsel as to his own wife; one of the greatest of men has been +denied it. “The lover,” says Macaulay, “continued +to be under the illusions of the wedding day till the lady died.” +What is so graciously said is not enough. He was under those “illusions” +until he too died, when he had long passed her latest age, and was therefore +able to set right that balance of years which has so much irritated +the impertinent. Johnson passed from this life twelve years older +than she, and so for twelve years his constant eyes had to turn backwards +to dwell upon her. Time gave him a younger wife.</p> +<p>And here I will put into Mrs. Johnson’s mouth, that mouth to +which no one else has ever attributed any beautiful sayings, the words +of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore to the young husband she loved: “Older +than thou! Let me never see thou knowest it. Forget it! +I will remember it, to die before thy death.”</p> +<p>Macaulay, in his unerring effectiveness, uses Johnson’s short +sight for an added affront to Mrs. Johnson. The bridegroom was +too weak of eyesight “to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom.” +Nevertheless, he saw well enough, when he was old, to distinguish Mrs. +Thrale’s dresses. He reproved her for wearing a dark dress; +it was unsuitable, he said, for her size; a little creature should show +gay colours “like an insect.” We are not called upon +to admire his wife; why, then, our taste being thus uncompromised, do +we not suffer him to admire her? It is the most gratuitous kind +of intrusion. Moreover, the biographers are eager to permit that +touch of romance and grace in his relations to Mrs. Thrale, which they +officially deny in the case of Mrs. Johnson. But the difference +is all on the other side. He would not have bidden his wife dress +like an insect. Mrs. Thrale was to him “the first of womankind” +only because his wife was dead.</p> +<p>Beauclerc, we learn, was wont to cap Garrick’s mimicry of Johnson’s +love-making by repeating the words of Johnson himself in after-years—“It +was a love-match on both sides.” And obviously he was as +strange a lover as they said. Who doubted it? Was there +any other woman in England to give such a suitor the opportunity of +an eternal love? “A life radically wretched,” was +the life of this master of Letters; but she, who has received nothing +in return except ignominy from these unthankful Letters, had been alone +to make it otherwise. Well for him that he married so young as +to earn the ridicule of all the biographers in England; for by doing +so he, most happily, possessed his wife for nearly twenty years. +I have called her his only friend. So indeed she was, though he +had followers, disciples, rivals, competitors, and companions, many +degrees of admirers, a biographer, a patron, and a public. He +had also the houseful of sad old women who quarrelled under his beneficent +protection. But what friend had he? He was “solitary” +from the day she died.</p> +<p>Let us consider under what solemn conditions and in what immortal +phrase the word “solitary” stands. He wrote it, all +Englishmen know where. He wrote it in the hour of that melancholy +triumph when he had been at last set free from the dependence upon hope. +He hoped no more, and he needed not to hope. The “notice” +of Lord Chesterfield had been too long deferred; it was granted at last, +when it was a flattery which Johnson’s court of friends would +applaud. But not for their sake was it welcome. To no living +ear would he bring it and report it with delight.</p> +<p>He was indifferent, he was known. The sensitiveness to pleasure +was gone, and the sensitiveness to pain, slights, and neglect would +thenceforth be suffered to rest; no man in England would put that to +proof again. No man in England, did I say? But, indeed, +that is not so. No slight to him, to his person, or to his fame +could have had power to cause him pain more sensibly than the customary, +habitual, ready-made ridicule that has been cast by posterity upon her +whom he loved for twenty years, prayed for during thirty-two years more, +who satisfied one of the saddest human hearts, but to whom the world, +assiduous to admire him, hardly accords human dignity. He wrote +praises of her manners and of her person for her tomb. But her +epitaph, that does not name her, is in the greatest of English prose. +What was favour to him? “I am indifferent . . . I am known +. . . I am solitary, and cannot impart it.”</p> +<h2>MADAME ROLAND</h2> +<p>The articulate heroine has her reward of appreciation and her dues +of praise; it is her appropriate fortune to have it definitely measured, +and generally on equal terms. She takes pains to explain herself, +and is understood, and pitied, when need is, on the right occasions. +For instance, Madame Roland, a woman of merit, who knew her “merit’s +name and place,” addressed her memoirs, her studies in contemporary +history, her autobiography, her many speeches, and her last phrase at +the foot of the undaunting scaffold, to a great audience of her equals +(more or less) then living and to live in the ages then to come—her +equals and those she raises to her own level, as the heroic example +has authority to do.</p> +<p>Another woman—the Queen—suffered at that time, and suffered +without the command of language, the exactitude of phrase, the precision +of judgement, the proffer of prophecy, the explicit sense of Innocence +and Moderation oppressed in her person. These were Madame Roland’s; +but the other woman, without eloquence, without literature, and without +any judicial sense of history, addresses no mere congregation of readers. +Marie Antoinette’s unrecorded pangs pass into the treasuries of +the experience of the whole human family. All that are human have +some part there; genius itself may lean in contemplation over that abyss +of woe; the great poets themselves may look into its distances and solitudes. +Compassion here has no measure and no language. Madame Roland +speaks neither to genius nor to complete simplicity; Marie Antoinette +holds her peace in the presence of each, dumb in her presence.</p> +<p>Madame Roland had no dumbness of the spirit, as history, prompted +by her own musical voice, presents her to a world well prepared to do +her justice. Of that justice she had full expectation; justice +here, justice in the world—the world that even when universal +philosophy should reign would be inevitably the world of mediocrity; +justice that would come of enlightened views; justice that would be +the lesson learnt by the nations widely educated up to some point generally +accessible; justice well within earthly sight and competence. +This confidence was also her reward. For what justice did the +Queen look? Here it is the “abyss that appeals to the abyss.”</p> +<p>Twice only in the life of Madame Roland is there a lapse into silence, +and for the record of these two poor failures of that long, indomitable, +reasonable, temperate, explicit utterance which expressed her life and +mind we are debtors to her friends. She herself has not confessed +them. Nowhere else, whether in her candid history of herself, +or in her wise history of her country, or in her judicial history of +her contemporaries, whose spirit she discerned, whose powers she appraised, +whose errors she foresaw; hardly in her thought, and never in her word, +is a break to be perceived; she is not silent and she hardly stammers; +and when she tells us of her tears—the tears of youth only—her +record is voluble and all complete. For the dignity of her style, +of her force, and of her balanced character, Madame Roland would doubtless +have effaced the two imperfections which, to us who would be glad to +admire in silence her heroic figure, if that heroic figure would but +cease to talk, are finer and more noble than her well-placed language +and the high successes of her decision and her endurance. More +than this, the two failures of this unfailing woman are two little doors +opened suddenly into those wider spaces and into that dominion of solitude +which, after all, do doubtless exist even in the most garrulous soul. +By these two outlets Manon Roland also reaches the region of Marie Antoinette. +But they befell her at the close of her life, and they shall be named +at the end of this brief study.</p> +<p>Madame Roland may seem the more heroic to those whose suffrages she +seeks in all times and nations because of the fact that she manifestly +suppresses in her self-descriptions any signs of a natural gaiety. +Her memoirs give evidence of no such thing; it is only in her letters, +not intended for the world, that we are aware of the inadvertence of +moments. We may overhear a laugh at times, but not in those consciously +sprightly hours that she spent with her convent-school friend gathering +fruit and counting eggs at the farm. She pursued these country +tasks not without offering herself the cultivated congratulation of +one whom cities had failed to allure, and who bore in mind the examples +of Antiquity. She did not forget the death of Socrates. +Or, rather, she finds an occasion to reproach herself with having once +forgotten it, and with having omitted what another might have considered +the tedious recollection of the condemnation of Phocion. She never +wearied of these examples. But it is her inexhaustible freshness +in these things that has helped other writers of her time to weary us.</p> +<p>In her manner of telling her story there is an absence of all exaggeration, +which gives the reader a constant sense of security. That virtue +of style and thought was one she proposed to herself and attained with +exact consciousness of success. It would be almost enough (in +the perfection of her practice) to make a great writer; even a measure +of it goes far to make a fair one. Her moderation of statement +is never shaken; and if she now and then glances aside from her direct +narrative road to hazard a conjecture, the error she may make is on +the generous side of hope and faith. For instance, she is too +sure that her Friends (so she always calls the <i>Girondins</i>, using +no nicknames) are safe, whereas they were then all doomed; a young man +who had carried a harmless message for her—a mere notification +to her family of her arrest—receives her cheerful commendation +for his good feeling; from a note we learn that for this action he suffered +on the scaffold and that his father soon thereafter died of grief. +But Madame Roland never matched such a delirious event as this by any +delirium of her own imagination. The delirium was in things and +in the acts of men; her mind was never hurried from its sane self-possession, +when the facts raved.</p> +<p>It was only when she used the rhetoric ready to her hand that she +stooped to verbal violence; <i>et</i> <i>encore</i>! References +to the banishment of Aristides and the hemlock of Socrates had become +toy daggers and bending swords in the hands of her compatriots, and +she is hardly to be accused of violence in brandishing those weapons. +Sometimes, refuse rhetoric being all too ready, she takes it on her +pen, in honest haste, as though it were honest speech, and stands committed +to such a phrase as this: “The dregs of the nation placed such +a one at the helm of affairs.”</p> +<p>But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and +efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, +but without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity +is somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In +“Bleak House” there is an old lady who insisted that the +name “Mr. Turveydrop,” as it appeared polished on the door-plate +of the dancing master, was the name of the pretentious father and not +of the industrious son—albeit, needless to say, one name was common +to them. With equal severity I aver that when Madame Roland wrote +to her husband in the second person singular she was using the <i>tu</i> +of Rome and not the <i>tu</i> of Paris. French was indeed the +language; but had it been French in spirit she would (in spite of the +growing Republican fashion) have said <i>vous</i> to this “homme +éclairé, de moeurs pures, à qui l’on ne peut +reprocher que sa grande admiration pour les anciens aux dépens +des modernes qu’il méprise, et le faible de trop aimer +à parler de lui.” There was no French <i>tu</i> in +her relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, discreetly +rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports she wrote, and +whom she observed as he slowly began to think he himself had composed +them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, and discriminating +affection, and when she had been put to death, he, still at liberty, +fell upon his sword.</p> +<p>This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent +the exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take opium +in the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she chose +that those who oppressed her country should have their way with her +to the last. But, while still intending self-destruction, she +had written to her husband: “Forgive me, respectable man, for +disposing of a life that I had consecrated to thee.” In +quoting this I mean to make no too-easy effect with the word “respectable,” +grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our own present fashion of speech.</p> +<p>Madame Roland, I have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two spaces +of silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had heard her condemnation +to death. Passing out of the court she beckoned to her friends, +and signified to them her sentence “by a gesture.” +And again there was a pause, in the course of her last days, during +which her speeches had not been few, and had been spoken with her beautiful +voice unmarred; “she leant,” says Riouffe, “alone +against her window, and wept there three hours.”</p> +<h2>FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD</h2> +<p>To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed +of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the preoccupations. +You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, +do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not +the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenanted ways of +a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, after +failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your documents +are at fault. You are the fellow traveller of a bird. The +bird alights and escapes out of time to your footing.</p> +<p>No man’s fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl +of four years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the +sweet and unimaginable message: “I hope you enjoy yourself with +your loving dolls.” A boy, still younger, persuading his +mother to come down from the heights and play with him on the floor, +but sensible, perhaps, that there was a dignity to be observed none +the less, entreated her, “Mother, do be a lady frog.” +None ever said their good things before these indeliberate authors. +Even their own kind—children—have not preceded them. +No child in the past ever found the same replies as the girl of five +whose father made that appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, +perverse, and unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, +and had a mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +“Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work +to buy things for you.” “Do you work,” she asked, +“to buy the lovely puddin’s?” Yes, even for +these. The subject must have seemed to her to be worth pursuing. +“And do you work to buy the fat? I don’t like fat.”</p> +<p>The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was +to be soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been +drowned in the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her +that she should forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay +subject—her wishes. “Do you know,” she said, +without loss of time, “what I should like best in all the world? +A thundred dolls and a whistle!” Her mother was so overcome +by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer as to the dolls. +But the whistle seemed practicable. “It is for me to whistle +for cabs,” said the child, with a sudden moderation, “when +I go to parties.” Another morning she came down radiant. +“Did you hear a great noise in the miggle of the night? +That was me crying. I cried because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] +had swallowed a bead into his nose.”</p> +<p>The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is—no, +nothing feminine—in this adult world. “I’ve +got a lotter than you,” is the word of a very young egotist. +An older child says, “I’d better go, bettern’t I, +mother?” He calls a little space at the back of a London +house, “the backy-garden.” A little creature proffers +almost daily the reminder at luncheon—at tart-time: “Father, +I hope you will remember that I am the favourite of the crust.” +Moreover, if an author set himself to invent the naïf things that +children might do in their Christmas plays at home, he would hardly +light upon the device of the little <i>troupe</i> who, having no footlights, +arranged upon the floor a long row of candle-shades.</p> +<p>“It’s <i>jolly</i> dull without you, mother,” says +a little girl who—gentlest of the gentle—has a dramatic +sense of slang, of which she makes no secret. But she drops her +voice somewhat to disguise her feats of metathesis, about which she +has doubts and which are involuntary: the “stand-wash,” +the “sweeping-crosser,” the “sewing chamine.” +Genoese peasants have the same prank when they try to speak Italian.</p> +<p>Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they +should by any means have an impression of the country or the sea annually. +A London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows it with her +pointing finger, and names it “bird.” Her brother, +who wants to play with a bronze Japanese lobster, asks “Will you +please let me have that tiger?”</p> +<p>At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the +most touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you +to save him. How moving a word, and how freshly said! He +had heard of the “saving” of other things of interest—especially +chocolate creams taken for safe-keeping—and he asks, “Who +is going to save me to-day? Nurse is going out, will you save +me, mother?” The same little variant upon common use is +in another child’s courteous reply to a summons to help in the +arrangement of some flowers, “I am quite at your ease.”</p> +<p>A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, +was taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different standing +from her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a Saturday Reviewer. +As he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the town unknown to her, +she noted with interest the shops of the neighbourhood as she went, +for they might be those of the <i>fournisseurs</i> of her friend. +“That is his bread shop, and that is his book shop. And +that, mother,” she said finally, with even heightened sympathy, +pausing before a blooming <i>parterre</i> of confectionery hard by the +abode of her man of letters, “that, I suppose, is where he buys +his sugar pigs.”</p> +<p>In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is +intent upon a certain quest—the quest of a genuine collector. +We have all heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, +of collecting cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a +joy that costs her nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names +over all shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. +“I began three weeks ago next Monday, mother,” she says +with precision, “and I have got thirty-nine.” “Thirty-nine +what?” “Smiths.”</p> +<p>The mere gathering of children’s language would be much like +collecting together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, +single of their kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, +and that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors +who have reported them. They do not, for example, say “me +is”; their natural reply to “are you?” is “I +are.” One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have +nothing but the nominative pronoun. “Lift I up and let I +see it raining,” she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, +“Lift I up and let I see it not raining.”</p> +<p>An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered +for her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, +and with some resentment. At the same time it was evident that +she took no pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, +her friend. He had imagined the making of this child in the counsels +of Heaven, and the decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, +and of her hair—“a brown tress.” She had gravely +heard the words as “a brown dress,” and she silently bore +the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of Providence in the +mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised +ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for +snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. “That,” +she said, more or less after Sterne, “is a cotton-wool story.”</p> +<p>The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the +years of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current +word into use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to +save the interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly +detected, in children old enough to show their motives, a conviction +that a word of their own making is as good a communication as another, +and as intelligible. There is even a general implicit conviction +among them that the grown-up people, too, make words by the wayside +as occasion befalls. How otherwise should words be so numerous +that every day brings forward some hitherto unheard? The child +would be surprised to know how irritably poets are refused the faculty +and authority which he thinks to belong to the common world.</p> +<p>There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out +of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so +much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything +strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts +genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first +sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without +allowing himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, “summersets.” +This was simple and unexpected; so was the comment of a sister a very +little older. “Why does he call those flowers summersets?” +their mother said; and the girl, with a darkly brilliant look of humour +and penetration, answered, “because they are so big.” +There seemed to be no further question possible after an explanation +that was presented thus charged with meaning.</p> +<p>To a later phase of life, when a little girl’s vocabulary was, +somewhat at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases hazarded +to express a meaning well realized—a personal matter. Questioned +as to the eating of an uncertain number of buns just before lunch, the +child averred, “I took them just to appetize my hunger.” +As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an attractive +confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters had been frequenting +those little tables on their way from school. “I sometimes +go in there, mother,” she confessed; “but I generally speculate +outside.”</p> +<p>Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. +Dryden does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer passages. +But sometimes a child’s deliberate banter is quite intelligible +to elders. Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother +who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was inclined to +be satisfied with something of her own writing. The child has +a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. There was +no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at home, but +the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen:—“My dear +mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, if it +is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a unletterary +article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not +write any more such unconventionan trash.”</p> +<p>This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister, +and thought her forward for her age: “I wish people knew just +how old she is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They +can see she is pretty, but they can’t know she is such a onward +baby.”</p> +<p>Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children +who in time betray a little consciousness and a slight <i>méfiance</i> +as to where the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, +obscure. These children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking +in their talk, but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word +of which they do not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness +was barely enough to cause her to stop to choose between two words, +was wont to bring a cup of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who +had often feigned indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid +always called “the infusion.” “I’m afraid +it’s bosh again, mother,” said the child; and then, in a +half-whisper, “Is bosh right, or wash, mother?” She +was not told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. +The afternoon cup left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library +“bosh” thenceforward.</p> +<h2>THE CHILD OF TUMULT</h2> +<p>A poppy bud, packed into tight bundles by so hard and resolute a +hand that the petals of the flower never afterwards lose the creases, +is a type of the child. Nothing but the unfolding, which is as +yet in the non-existing future, can explain the manner of the close +folding of character. In both flower and child it looks much as +though the process had been the reverse of what it was—as though +a finished and open thing had been folded up into the bud—so plainly +and certainly is the future implied, and the intention of compressing +and folding-close made manifest.</p> +<p>With the other incidents of childish character, the crowd of impulses +called “naughtiness” is perfectly perceptible—it would +seem heartless to say how soon. The naughty child (who is often +an angel of tenderness and charm, affectionate beyond the capacity of +his fellows, and a very ascetic of penitence when the time comes) opens +early his brief campaigns and raises the standard of revolt as soon +as he is capable of the desperate joys of disobedience.</p> +<p>But even the naughty child is an individual, and must not be treated +in the mass. He is numerous indeed, but not general, and to describe +him you must take the unit, with all his incidents and his organic qualities +as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty child in the +reality of his life. He is but six years old, slender and masculine, +and not wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate dress. His +face is delicate and too often haggard with tears of penitence that +Justice herself would be glad to spare him. Some beauty he has, +and his mouth especially is so lovely as to seem not only angelic but +itself an angel. He has absolutely no self-control and his passions +find him without defence. They come upon him in the midst of his +usual brilliant gaiety and cut short the frolic comedy of his fine spirits.</p> +<p>Then for a wild hour he is the enemy of the laws. If you imprison +him, you may hear his resounding voice as he takes a running kick at +the door, shouting his justification in unconquerable rage. “I’m +good now!” is made as emphatic as a shot by the blow of his heel +upon the panel. But if the moment of forgiveness is deferred, +in the hope of a more promising repentance, it is only too likely that +he will betake himself to a hostile silence and use all the revenge +yet known to his imagination. “Darling mother, open the +door!” cries his touching voice at last; but if the answer should +be “I must leave you for a short time, for punishment,” +the storm suddenly thunders again. “There (crash!) I have +broken a plate, and I’m glad it is broken into such little pieces +that you can’t mend it. I’m going to break the ’lectric +light.” When things are at this pass there is one way, and +only one, to bring the child to an overwhelming change of mind; but +it is a way that would be cruel, used more than twice or thrice in his +whole career of tempest and defiance. This is to let him see that +his mother is troubled. “Oh, don’t cry! Oh, +don’t be sad!” he roars, unable still to deal with his own +passionate anger, which is still dealing with him. With his kicks +of rage he suddenly mingles a dance of apprehension lest his mother +should have tears in her eyes. Even while he is still explicitly +impenitent and defiant he tries to pull her round to the light that +he may see her face. It is but a moment before the other passion +of remorse comes to make havoc of the helpless child, and the first +passion of anger is quelled outright.</p> +<p>Only to a trivial eye is there nothing tragic in the sight of these +great passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a word, +the small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a little +nature, and the stage is too narrow for the action of a tragedy, the +disproportion has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed history of actual +life or sometimes a famous book; it is the manifest core of George Eliot’s +story of <i>Adam</i> <i>Bede</i>, where the suffering of Hetty is, as +it were, the eye of the storm. All is expressive around her, but +she is hardly articulate; the book is full of words—preachings, +speeches, daily talk, aphorisms, but a space of silence remains about +her in the midst of the story. And the disproportion of passion—the +inner disproportion—is at least as tragic as that disproportion +of fate and action; it is less intelligible, and leads into the intricacies +of nature which are more difficult than the turn of events.</p> +<p>It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow +limits of a child’s nature far oftener than in those of an adult +and finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there +is unequal force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling +of powers and energies that are hurrying to their development and pressing +for exercise and life. It is this helpless inequality—this +untimeliness—that makes the guileless comedy mingling with the +tragedies of a poor child’s day. He knows thus much—that +life is troubled around him and that the fates are strong. He +implicitly confesses “the strong hours” of antique song. +This same boy—the tempestuous child of passion and revolt—went +out with quiet cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was +put on, “Now, mother, you are going to have a little peace.” +This way of accepting his own conditions is shared by a sister, a very +little older, who, being of an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to +violence of every kind and tender to all without disquiet, observes +the boy’s brief frenzies as a citizen observes the climate. +She knows the signs quite well and can at any time give the explanation +of some particular outburst, but without any attempt to go in search +of further or more original causes. Still less is she moved by +the virtuous indignation that is the least charming of the ways of some +little girls. <i>Elle</i> <i>ne</i> <i>fait</i> <i>que</i> <i>constater</i>. +Her equanimity has never been overset by the wildest of his moments, +and she has witnessed them all. It is needless to say that she +is not frightened by his drama, for Nature takes care that her young +creatures shall not be injured by sympathies. Nature encloses +them in the innocent indifference that preserves their brains from the +more harassing kinds of distress.</p> +<p>Even the very frenzy of rage does not long dim or depress the boy. +It is his repentance that makes him pale, and Nature here has been rather +forced, perhaps—with no very good result. Often must a mother +wish that she might for a few years govern her child (as far as he is +governable) by the lowest motives—trivial punishments and paltry +rewards—rather than by any kind of appeal to his sensibilities. +She would wish to keep the words “right” and “wrong” +away from his childish ears, but in this she is not seconded by her +lieutenants. The child himself is quite willing to close with +her plans, in so far as he is able, and is reasonably interested in +the results of her experiments. He wishes her attempts in his +regard to have a fair chance. “Let’s hope I’ll +be good all to-morrow,” he says with the peculiar cheerfulness +of his ordinary voice. “I do hope so, old man.” +“Then I’ll get my penny. Mother, I was only naughty +once yesterday; if I have only one naughtiness to-morrow, will you give +me a halfpenny?” “No reward except for real goodness +all day long.” “All right.”</p> +<p>It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the +failure of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one +of bribery. It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all +kinds of reward might not equally be burlesqued by that word, and whether +any government, spiritual or civil, has ever even professed to deny +rewards. Moreover, those who would not give a child a penny for +being good will not hesitate to fine him a penny for being naughty, +and rewards and punishments must stand or fall together. The more +logical objection will be that goodness is ideally the normal condition, +and that it should have, therefore, no explicit extraordinary result, +whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, should have a visible and unusual +sequel. To this the rewarding mother may reply that it is not +reasonable to take “goodness” in a little child of strong +passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for him is +to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to overbear his +powers.</p> +<p>But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. +What is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the weak +will of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a sufficient +resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed as the +passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; but as it +is there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy or fear. +Let, then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at once, and mingled +with the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the suffering of +rage and frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly to make of the +little unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too hurtfully tragic. +The penny is mild and strong at once, with its still distant but certain +joys of purchase; the promise and hope break the mood of misery, and +the will takes heart to resist and conquer.</p> +<p>It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. +The lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, +knowing herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the father’s +voice with a menacing, “What’s that noise?” +The child was persistently crying and roaring on an upper floor, in +contumacy against his French nurse, when the baritone and threatening +question was sent pealing up the stairs. The child was heard to +pause and listen and then to say to his nurse, “Ce n’est +pas Monsieur; c’est Madame,” and then, without further loss +of time, to resume the interrupted clamours.</p> +<p>Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things +mainly to be done—to keep the delicate brain from the evil of +the present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, +and to break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly +the special cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain and +anger become hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for use +in the future at the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight the +importance of habit. Any means, then, that can succeed in separating +a little child from the habit of anger does fruitful work for him in +the helpless time of his childhood. The work is not easy, but +a little thought should make it easy for the elders to avoid the provocation +which they—who should ward off provocations—are apt to bring +about by sheer carelessness. It is only in childhood that our +race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow and tears, as a child’s +despair; and the theatre with us must needs copy childhood if it would +catch the note and action of a creature without hope.</p> +<h2>THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT</h2> +<p>There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the flight +of time; it does so move, and yet withstands time’s movement. +It is full of pauses that are due to the energy of change, has bounds +and rebounds, and when it is most active then it is longest. It +is not long with languor. It has room for remoteness, and leisure +for oblivion. It takes great excursions against time, and travels +so as to enlarge its hours. This certain year is any one of the +early years of fully conscious life, and therefore it is of all the +dates. The child of Tumult has been living amply and changefully +through such a year—his eighth. It is difficult to believe +that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the adult, the men +who do not breast their days.</p> +<p>For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of things. +Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men and +women never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a distant +light. There is recognition and familiarity between their seasons. +But the Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his year. Forgetfulness +and surprise set his east and his west at immeasurable distance. +His Lethe runs in the cheerful sun. You look on your own little +adult year, and in imagination enlarge it, because you know it to be +the contemporary of his. Even she who is quite old, if she have +a vital fancy, may face a strange and great extent of a few years of +her life still to come—his years, the years she is to live at +his side.</p> +<p>Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy’s +life, not so much by slow degrees as by sudden and fitful accessions. +His speech is yet so childish that he chooses, for a toy, with blushes +of pleasure, “a little duck what can walk”; but with a beautifully +clear accent he greets his mother with the colloquial question, “Well, +darling, do you know the latest?” “The <i>what</i>?” +“The latest: do you know the latest?” And then he +tells his news, generally, it must be owned, with some reference to +his own wrongs. On another occasion the unexpected little phrase +was varied; the news of the war then raging distressed him; a thousand +of the side he favoured had fallen. The child then came to his +mother’s room with the question: “Have you heard the saddest?” +Moreover the “saddest” caused him several fits of perfectly +silent tears, which seized him during the day, on his walks or at other +moments of recollection. From such great causes arise such little +things! Some of his grief was for the nation he admired, and some +was for the triumph of his brother, whose sympathies were on the other +side, and who perhaps did not spare his sensibilities.</p> +<p>The tumults of a little child’s passions of anger and grief, +growing fewer as he grows older, rather increase than lessen in their +painfulness. There is a fuller consciousness of complete capitulation +of all the childish powers to the overwhelming compulsion of anger. +This is not temptation; the word is too weak for the assault of a child’s +passion upon his will. That little will is taken captive entirely, +and before the child was seven he knew that it was so. Such a +consciousness leaves all babyhood behind and condemns the child to suffer. +For a certain passage of his life he is neither unconscious of evil, +as he was, nor strong enough to resist it, as he will be. The +time of the subsiding of the tumult is by no means the least pitiable +of the phases of human life. Happily the recovery from each trouble +is ready and sure; so that the child who had been abandoned to naughtiness +with all his will in an entire consent to the gloomy possession of his +anger, and who had later undergone a haggard repentance, has his captivity +suddenly turned again, “like rivers in the south.” +“Forget it,” he had wept, in a kind of extremity of remorse; +“forget it, darling, and don’t, don’t be sad;” +and it is he, happily, who forgets. The wasted look of his pale +face is effaced by the touch of a single cheerful thought, and five +short minutes can restore the ruin, as though a broken little German +town should in the twinkling of an eye be restored as no architect could +restore it—should be made fresh, strong, and tight again, looking +like a full box of toys, as a town was wont to look in the new days +of old.</p> +<p>When his ruthless angers are not in possession the child shows the +growth of this tardy reason that—quickened—is hereafter +to do so much for his peace and dignity, by the sweetest consideration. +Denied a second handful of strawberries, and seeing quite clearly that +the denial was enforced reluctantly, he makes haste to reply, “It +doesn’t matter, darling.” At any sudden noise in the +house his beautiful voice, with all its little difficulties of pronunciation, +is heard with the sedulous reassurance: “It’s all right, +mother, nobody hurted ourselves!” He is not surprised so +as to forget this gentle little duty, which was never required of him, +but is of his own devising.</p> +<p>According to the opinion of his dear and admired American friend, +he says all these things, good and evil, with an English accent; and +at the American play his English accent was irrepressible. “It’s +too comic; no, it’s too comic,” he called in his enjoyment; +being the only perfectly fearless child in the world, he will not consent +to the conventional shyness in public, whether he be the member of an +audience or of a congregation, but makes himself perceptible. +And even when he has a desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute +revolt—such a thing as “I <i>can’t</i> like you, mother,” +which anon he will recant with convulsions of distress—he has +to “speak the thing he will,” and when he recants it is +not for fear.</p> +<p>If such a child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for inquisitorial +government could hardly be so much as attempted) by some small means +adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it would be well for +his health, but that seems at times impossible. By no effort can +his elders altogether succeed in keeping tragedy out of the life that +is so unready for it. Against great emotions no one can defend +him by any forethought. He is their subject; and to see him thus +devoted and thus wrung, thus wrecked by tempests inwardly, so that you +feel grief has him actually by the heart, recalls the reluctance—the +question—wherewith you perceive the interior grief of poetry or +of a devout life. Cannot the Muse, cannot the Saint, you ask, +live with something less than this? If this is the truer life, +it seems hardly supportable. In like manner it should be possible +for a child of seven to come through his childhood with griefs that +should not so closely involve him, but should deal with the easier sentiments.</p> +<p>Despite all his simplicity, the child has (by way of inheritance, +for he has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. +Accused of certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge +with any effect, he flies to the old convention: “I didn’t +know what I was doing,” he avers, using a great deal of gesticulation +to express the temporary distraction of his mind. “Darling, +after nurse slapped me as hard as she could, I didn’t know what +I was doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my foot.” His +mother knows as well as does Tolstoi that men and children know what +they are doing, and are the more intently aware as the stress of feeling +makes the moments more tense; and she will not admit a plea which her +child might have learned from the undramatic authors he has never read.</p> +<p>Far from repenting of her old system of rewards, and far from taking +fright at the name of a bribe, the mother of the Child of Tumult has +only to wish she had at command rewards ample and varied enough to give +the shock of hope and promise to the heart of the little boy, and change +his passion at its height.</p> +<h2>THE UNREADY</h2> +<p>It is rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They +are, on the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until +advancing age teaches them agility. This is not lack of sensitiveness, +but mere length of process. For instance, a child nearly newly +born is cruelly startled by a sudden crash in the room—a child +who has never learnt to fear, and is merely overcome by the shock of +sound; nevertheless, that shock of sound does not reach the conscious +hearing or the nerves but after some moments, nor before some moments +more is the sense of the shock expressed. The sound travels to +the remoteness and seclusion of the child’s consciousness, as +the roar of a gun travels to listeners half a mile away.</p> +<p>So it is, too, with pain, which has learnt to be so instant and eager +with us of later age that no point of time is lost in its touches—direct +as the unintercepted message of great and candid eyes, unhampered by +trivialities; even so immediate is the communication of pain. +But you could count five between the prick of a surgeon’s instrument +upon a baby’s arm and the little whimper that answers it. +The child is then too young, also, to refer the feeling of pain to the +arm that suffers it. Even when pain has groped its way to his +mind it hardly seems to bring local tidings thither. The baby +does not turn his eyes in any degree towards his arm or towards the +side that is so vexed with vaccination. He looks in any other +direction at haphazard, and cries at random.</p> +<p>See, too, how slowly the unpractised apprehension of an older child +trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest +failure to take these little <i>gobe</i>-<i>mouches</i> to a good conjurer. +His successes leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what +it was the good man meant to surprise them withal. The amateur +it is who really astonishes them. They cannot come up even with +your amateur beginner, performing at close quarters; whereas the master +of his craft on a platform runs quite away at the outset from the lagging +senses of his honest audience.</p> +<p>You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under +his ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its +place and off again ten times before the little breathless boy has begun +to perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched.</p> +<p>Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit +of awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. +The simple little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a common +sentence are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot use two +pronouns but they must confuse them. I never found that a young +child—one of something under nine years—was able to say, +“I send them my love” at the first attempt. It will +be “I send me my love,” “I send them their love,” +“They send me my love”; not, of course, through any confusion +of understanding, but because of the tardy setting of words in order +with the thoughts. The child visibly grapples with the difficulty, +and is beaten.</p> +<p>It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like +twice-told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They +are not eager, for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If +you hide and they cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is +comparatively small; but let them know perfectly well what cupboard +you are in, and they will find you with shouts of discovery. The +better the hiding-place is understood between you the more lively the +drama. They make a convention of art for their play. The +younger the children the more dramatic; and when the house is filled +with outcries of laughter from the breathless breast of a child, it +is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding his mother where +he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that never tires. +Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he tries to +put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for, if +not, he will find that children also have a manner of substitution, +and that they will put half-hearted laughter in the place of their natural +impetuous clamours. It is certain that very young children like +to play upon their own imaginations, and enjoy their own short game.</p> +<p>There is something so purely childlike in the delays of a child that +any exercise asking for the swift apprehension of later life, for the +flashes of understanding and action, from the mind and members of childhood, +is no pleasure to see. The piano, for instance, as experts understand +it, and even as the moderately-trained may play it, claims all the immediate +action, the instantaneousness, most unnatural to childhood. There +may possibly be feats of skill to which young children could be trained +without this specific violence directed upon the thing characteristic +of their age—their unreadiness—but virtuosity at the piano +cannot be one of them. It is no delight, indeed, to see the shyness +of children, or anything that is theirs, conquered and beaten; but their +poor little slowness is so distinctively their own, and must needs be +physiologically so proper to their years, so much a natural condition +of the age of their brain, that of all childishnesses it is the one +that the world should have the patience to attend upon, the humanity +to foster, and the intelligence to understand.</p> +<p>It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a +very little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions there +are between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not the brain +that is quick. If, on a voyage in space, electricity takes thus +much time, and light thus much, and sound thus much, there is one little +jogging traveller that would arrive after the others had forgotten their +journey, and this is the perception of a child. Surely our own +memories might serve to remind us how in our childhood we inevitably +missed the principal point in any procession or pageant intended by +our elders to furnish us with a historical remembrance for the future. +It was not our mere vagueness of understanding, it was the unwieldiness +of our senses, of our reply to the suddenness of the grown up. +We lived through the important moments of the passing of an Emperor +at a different rate from theirs; we stared long in the wake of his Majesty, +and of anything else of interest; every flash of movement, that got +telegraphic answers from our parents’ eyes, left us stragglers. +We fell out of all ranks. Among the sights proposed for our instruction, +that which befitted us best was an eclipse of the moon, done at leisure. +In good time we found the moon in the sky, in good time the eclipse +set in and made reasonable progress; we kept up with everything.</p> +<p>It is too often required of children that they should adjust themselves +to the world, practised and alert. But it would be more to the +purpose that the world should adjust itself to children in all its dealings +with them. Those who run and keep together have to run at the +pace of the tardiest. But we are apt to command instant obedience, +stripped of the little pauses that a child, while very young, cannot +act without. It is not a child of ten or twelve that needs them +so; it is the young creature who has but lately ceased to be a baby, +slow to be startled.</p> +<p>We have but to consider all that it implies of the loitering of senses +and of an unprepared consciousness—this capacity for receiving +a great shock from a noise and this perception of the shock after two +or three appreciable moments—if we would know anything of the +moments of a baby</p> +<p>Even as we must learn that our time, when it is long, is too long +for children, so must we learn that our time, when it is short, is too +short for them. When it is exceedingly short they cannot, without +an unnatural effort, have any perception of it. When children +do not see the jokes of the elderly, and disappoint expectation in other +ways, only less intimate, the reason is almost always there. The +child cannot turn in mid-career; he goes fast, but the impetus took +place moments ago.</p> +<h2>THAT PRETTY PERSON</h2> +<p>During the many years in which “evolution” was the favourite +word, one significant lesson—so it seems—was learnt, which +has outlived controversy, and has remained longer than the questions +at issue—an interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm +of thoughts. This is a disposition, a general consent, to find +the use and the value of process, and even to understand a kind of repose +in the very wayfaring of progress. With this is a resignation +to change, and something more than resignation—a delight in those +qualities that could not be but for their transitoriness.</p> +<p>What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the +world, for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, +and that for the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not +now hold, perhaps, that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if +we held it high, we should acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned +with its own conditions.</p> +<p>But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing +but a patient prophecy (the mother’s), so was education, some +two hundred years ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father’s) +of the full stature of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of +the future hunting. If her song is not restless, it is because +she has a sense of the results of time, and has submitted her heart +to experience. Childhood is a time of danger; “Would it +were done.” But, meanwhile, the right thing is to put it +to sleep and guard its slumbers. It will pass. She sings +prophecies to the child of his hunting, as she sings a song about the +robe while she spins, and a song about bread as she grinds corn. +She bids good speed.</p> +<p>John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child—“that +pretty person” in Jeremy Taylor’s letter of condolence—was +chiefly precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of +the man he never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when +the boy was dead, says of him: “At two and a half years of age +he pronounced English, Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly +read in these three languages.” As he lived precisely five +years, all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: +“He got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French +primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into +Latin, and <i>vice</i> <i>versa</i>, construe and prove what he read, +and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, +and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius’s +‘Janua,’ and had a strong passion for Greek.”</p> +<p>Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man +is not to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; +it is the very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those +hasty times. All being favourable, the child of Evelyn’s +studious home would have done all these things in the course of nature +within a few years. It was the fact that he did them out of the +course of nature that was, to Evelyn, so exquisite. The course +of nature had not any beauty in his eyes. It might be borne with +for the sake of the end, but it was not admired for the majesty of its +unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns with him “the strangely +hopeful child,” who—without Comenius’s “Janua” +and without congruous syntax—was fulfilling, had they known it, +an appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning +and closing a separate expectation every day of his five years.</p> +<p>Ah! the word “hopeful” seems, to us, in this day, a word +too flattering to the estate of man. They thought their little +boy strangely hopeful because he was so quick on his way to be something +else. They lost the timely perfection the while they were so intent +upon their hopes. And yet it is our own modern age that is charged +with haste!</p> +<p>It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, +must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not +slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, not yet hailing it, with +Faust, “Stay, thou art so fair!” Childhood is but +change made gay and visible, and the world has lately been converted +to change.</p> +<p>Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it +in the act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every passage +is a goal, and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; but +some of them wear apparent wings.</p> +<p><i>Tout</i> <i>passe</i>. Is the fruit for the flower, or the +flower for the fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed +to shelter and contain? It seems as though our forefathers had +answered this question most arbitrarily as to the life of man.</p> +<p>All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, +this suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time of +fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because +they had the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of +this unpausing life.</p> +<p>Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon +as might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be +eight years old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had +no cause to be proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged +in idleness by an “honoured grandmother” that he was “not +initiated into any rudiments” till he was four years of age. +He seems even to have been a youth of eight before Latin was seriously +begun; but this fact he is evidently, in after years, with a total lack +of a sense of humour, rather ashamed of, and hardly acknowledges. +It is difficult to imagine what childhood must have been when nobody, +looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything that was proper to five +years old was defect. A strange good conceit of themselves and +of their own ages had those fathers.</p> +<p>They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn +has nothing to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile +in it. Twice are children not his own mentioned in his diary. +Once he goes to the wedding of a maid of five years old—a curious +thing, but not, evidently, an occasion of sensibility. Another +time he stands by, in a French hospital, while a youth of less than +nine years of age undergoes a frightful surgical operation “with +extraordinary patience.” “The use I made of it was +to give Almighty God hearty thanks that I had not been subject to this +deplorable infirmitie.” This is what he says.</p> +<p>See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that +there were in all ages—even those—certain few boys who insisted +upon being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. +Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, +and there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one +who is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the “Last +Communion of St. Jerome” might be called Tommy. But there +were no “little radiant girls.” Now and then an “Education +of the Virgin” is the exception, and then it is always a matter +of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when +they were so young that their hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped +through their fetters, they are always recorded as refusing importunate +suitors, which seems necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval +mind, but mars them for ours.</p> +<p>So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen +in the Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa +“who passed through all those turbulent waters without so much +as the least stain or tincture in her christall.” She held +her state with men and maids for her servants, guided herself by most +exact rules, such as that of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent +example and instruction to the other maids of honour, was “severely +careful how she might give the least countenance to that liberty which +the gallants there did usually assume,” refused the addresses +of the “greatest persons,” and was as famous for her beauty +as for her wit. One would like to forget the age at which she +did these things. When she began her service she was eleven. +When she was making her rule never to speak to the King she was not +thirteen.</p> +<p>Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April +into May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if +they shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The +particular year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as +who should say a fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at two +years old, and ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as +Keats a poet would not have patience with the process of the seasons, +but boasted of untimely flowers. The “musk-rose” is +never in fact the child of mid-May, as he has it.</p> +<p>The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His +fear of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper +with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen +in the “Spectator” has looked upon herself as marriageable +“for the last six years.” The famous letter describing +the figure, the dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely +is supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, “willing to settle +in the world as soon as she can.” She adds, “I have +a good portion which they cannot hinder me of.” This correspondent +is one of “the women who seldom ask advice before they have bought +their wedding clothes.” There was no sense of childhood +in an age that could think this an opportune pleasantry.</p> +<p>But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from +a later century—an age that has found all things to be on a journey, +and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and has +its appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather +than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children +to seem, at last, something else than a defect.</p> +<h2>UNDER THE EARLY STARS</h2> +<p>Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. +There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel +in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. Summer +dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how +you may. They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent +upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over choppings and +poundings. But when late twilight comes, there comes also the +punctual wildness. The children will run and pursue, and laugh +for the mere movement—it does so jolt their spirits.</p> +<p>What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths +and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all +fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in +the mimicry of hunting.</p> +<p>The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and +a rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are +to go home. But, with more or less of life and fire, the children +strike some blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of +the ineffectual child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, +something is done for freedom under the early stars.</p> +<p>This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict +with the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy +of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens +at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts +of the poor.</p> +<p>Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved +by children. Three tiny girls were to be taught “old maid” +to beguile the time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was +persuading another to play. “Oh come,” she said, “and +play with me at new maid.”</p> +<p>The time of falling asleep is a child’s immemorial and incalculable +hour. It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. +The habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation +of the fixity of some customs in mankind. But if the inquirers +who appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they +would seek no further. See the habits in falling to sleep which +have children in their thralldom. Try to overcome them in any +child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your hand.</p> +<p>Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense +of mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The +French sleep-song is the most romantic. There is in it such a +sound of history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, +with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. +“Le Bon Roi Dagobert” has been sung over French cradles +since the legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more sleepy +than the tune and the verse that she herself slept to when a child. +The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in “Le Pont d’Avignon,” +is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the <i>tête</i> <i>à</i> +<i>tête</i> of child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered +rooms at night. “Malbrook” would be comparatively +modern, were not all things that are sung to a drowsing child as distant +as the day of Abraham.</p> +<p>If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some +of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate +races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to +the white child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep +in the tropical night. His closing eyes are filled with alien +images.</p> +<h2>THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME</h2> +<p>He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious +of something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his +apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing +than the destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand +where they did, and the mere relation of time is as it was. But +that which has fallen together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and +lies in a little heap, is the past itself—time—the fact +of antiquity.</p> +<p>He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There +are no more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. +The unit of measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes +a thing of paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of +mankind. He had thought them to be wide.</p> +<p>For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the +states, the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the +measure which he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. +His first ten years had given him the illusion of a most august scale +and measure. It was then that he conceived Antiquity. But +now! Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in +his hand—ten of his mature years—that men give the dignity +of a century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now +so small that the word age has lost its gravity?</p> +<p>In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has +a most noble rod to measure it by—he has his own ten years. +He attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He +confers distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness +is his. He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends +armies fighting into the extremities of the past. He assigns the +Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to sidereal +time.</p> +<p>If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having +conceived old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the mystery +to the mind of the man. The man perceives at last all the illusion, +but he cannot forget what was his conviction when he was a child. +He had once a persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for nothing. +The enormous undeception that comes upon him still leaves spaces in +his mind.</p> +<p>But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive +shocks. It is as though one strained level eyes towards the horizon, +and then were bidden to shorten his sight and to close his search within +a poor half acre before his face. Now, it is that he suddenly +perceives the hitherto remote, remote youth of his own parents to have +been something familiarly near, so measured by his new standard; again, +it is the coming of Attila that is displaced. Those ten last years +of his have corrected the world. There needs no other rod than +that ten years’ rod to chastise all the imaginations of the spirit +of man. It makes history skip.</p> +<p>To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, +the mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change +that trudges through our own world—our contemporary world—is +not very mysterious. We perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. +Even so, we now consider, jolted the changes of the past, with the same +hurry.</p> +<p>The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels +that he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If +the Argonauts, for instance, had been children, it would have been well +enough for the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with +his own magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. +Thus they belong to him as he is now—a man; and not to him as +he was once—a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child’s +enormous ten years’ rule along the path from our time to theirs; +that path must be skipped by the nimble yard in the man’s present +possession. Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy.</p> +<p>What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle +of such little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created +the illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is +itself Antiquity—to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection +of childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; +but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham. <i>There</i> +is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood—no +further—if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the +mystery of change.</p> +<p>For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it +rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has +an apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; +an illusive apprehension when he is learning “ancient” history—a +real apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. +If there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed +and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind.</p> +<p>And it is of this—merely of this—that “ancient” +history seems to partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman +history, and that is why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of +thirty-five heard, at that present age, for the first time of Romulus. +Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter +of fact, when every one was seven years old. It is by good fortune +that “ancient” history is taught in the only ancient days. +So, for a time, the world is magical.</p> +<p>Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by +learning something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges +the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion +is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught +back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man +remains capable of great spaces of time. He will not find them +in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he contains them, he +is aware of them. History has fallen together, but childhood surrounds +and encompasses history, stretches beyond and passes on the road to +eternity.</p> +<p>He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years +that are the treasury of preceptions—the first. The great +disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together +the days that made them. “Far apart,” I have said, +and that “far apart” is wonderful. The past of childhood +is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits +a world away one from the other. Year from year differs as the +antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man +of thirty-five knows for ever afterwards what is flight, even though +he finds no great historic distances to prove his wings by.</p> +<p>There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious childhood, +which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. Many +other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten years. +Hours of weariness are long—not with a mysterious length, but +with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called minutes +and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their apparent +contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not merely +one of these—it is a space not of long, but of immeasurable, time. +It is the moment of going to sleep. The man knows that borderland, +and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased to find antiquity there. +It has become a common enough margin of dreams to him; and he does not +attend to its phantasies. He knows that he has a frolic spirit +in his head which has its way at those hours, but he is not interested +in it. It is the inexperienced child who passes with simplicity +through the marginal country; and the thing he meets there is principally +the yet further conception of illimitable time.</p> +<p>His nurse’s lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. +She sings absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what +they may mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep +they tell of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep +to the sound of them all his life; and “all his life” means +more than older speech can well express.</p> +<p>Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child +is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, +that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to +throw it further back—it is already so far. That is, it +looks as remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man +of seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in +the contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw!</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> It is +worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, and the ascription +of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted phrase, a letter of Stevenson’s +was published, and proved that he had read Lucy Hutchinson’s writings, +and that he did not love her. “I have possessed myself of +Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I admire, etc. . . I sometimes wish +the old Colonel had got drunk and beaten her, in the bitterness of my +spirit. . . The way in which she talks of herself makes one’s +blood run cold.” He was young at that time of writing, and +perhaps hardly aware of the lesson in English he had taken from her. +We know that he never wasted the opportunity for such a lesson; and +the fact that he did allow her to administer one to him in right seventeenth-century +diction is established—it is not too bold to say so—by my +recognition of his style in her own. I had surely caught the retrospective +reflex note, heard first in his voice, recognized in hers.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> I found +it afterwards: it was Rebecca.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1434-h.htm or 1434-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/1434 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Essays + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 15, 2005 [eBook #1434] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays by Alice Meynell + + +Contents: + +WINDS AND WATERS + +Ceres' Runaway +Wells +Rain +The Tow Path +The Tethered Constellations +Rushes and Reeds + +IN A BOOK ROOM + +A Northern Fancy +Pathos +Anima Pellegrina! +A Point of Biography +The Honours of Mortality +Composure +The Little Language +A Counterchange +Harlequin Mercutio + +COMMENTARIES + +Laughter +The Rhythm of Life +Domus Angusta +Innocence and Experience +The Hours of Sleep +Solitude +Decivilized + +WAYFARING + +The Spirit of Place +Popular Burlesque +Have Patience, Little Saint +At Monastery Gates +The Sea Wall + +ARTS + +Tithonus +Symmetry and Incident +The Plaid +The Flower +Unstable Equilibrium +Victorian Caricature +The Point of Honour + +"THE CHEARFUL LADIE OF THE LIGHT" + +The Colour of Life +The Horizon +In July +Cloud +Shadows + +WOMEN AND BOOKS + +The Seventeenth Century +Mrs. Dingley +Prue +Mrs. Johnson +Madame Roland + +"THE DARLING YOUNG" + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird +The Child of Tumult +The Child of Subsiding Tumult +The Unready +That Pretty Person +Under the Early Stars +The Illusion of Historic Time + + + + +CERES' RUNAWAY + + +One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture of a +Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop--at least while the charming +quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality does not exist that +would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth of green in the high +places of the city. It is true that there have been the famous +captures--those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths of Caracalla; moreover +a less conspicuous running to earth takes place on the Appian Way, in +some miles of the solitude of the Campagna, where men are employed in +weeding the roadside. They slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the +ancient stones--rows of little corpses--for sweeping up, as at Upper +Tooting; one wonders why. The governors of the city will not succeed in +making the Via Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a +thriving commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and +shattered Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of +buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread," +says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the pyramid. But a +couple of active scythes are kept at work there summer and spring--not +that the grass is long, for it is much overtopped by the bee-orchis, but +because flowers are not to laugh within reach of the civic vigilance. + +Yet, except that it is overtaken and put to death in these accessible +places, the wild summer growth of Rome has a prevailing success and +victory. It breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, lodges in the sun, +swings in the wind, takes wing to find the remotest ledges, and blooms +aloft. It makes light of the sixteenth century, of the seventeenth, and +of the eighteenth. As the historic ages grow cold it banters them alike. +The flagrant flourishing statue, the haughty facade, the broken pediment +(and Rome is chiefly the city of the broken pediment) are the +opportunities of this vagrant garden in the air. One certain church, +that is full of attitude, can hardly be aware that a crimson snapdragon +of great stature and many stalks and blossoms is standing on its furthest +summit tiptoe against its sky. The cornice of another church in the fair +middle of Rome lifts out of the shadows of the streets a row of +accidental marigolds. Impartial to the antique, the mediaeval, the +Renaissance early and late, the newer modern, this wild summer finds its +account in travertine and tufa, reticulated work, brick, stucco and +stone. "A bird of the air carries the matter," or the last sea-wind, +sombre and soft, or the latest tramontana, gold and blue, has lodged in a +little fertile dust the wild grass, wild wheat, wild oats! + +If Venus had her runaway, after whom the Elizabethans raised hue and cry, +this is Ceres'. The municipal authorities, hot-foot, cannot catch it. +And, worse than all, if they pause, dismayed, to mark the flight of the +agile fugitive safe on the arc of a flying buttress, or taking the place +of the fallen mosaics and coloured tiles of a twelfth-century tower, and +in any case inaccessible, the grass grows under their discomfited feet. +It actually casts a flush of green over their city _piazza_--the wide +light-grey pavements so vast that to keep them weeded would need an army +of workers. That army has not been employed; and grass grows in a small +way, but still beautifully, in the wide space around which the tramway +circles. Perhaps a hatred of its delightful presence is what chiefly +prompts the civic government in Rome to the effort to turn the _piazza_ +into a square. The shrub is to take the place not so much of the +pavement as of the importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten--and +the weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun takes +its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality in tears, +to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the "third" (which +is in truth the fourth) Rome. + +When I say grass I use the word widely. Italian grass is not turf; it is +full of things, and they are chiefly aromatic. No richer scents throng +each other, close and warm, than these from a little hand-space of the +grass one rests on, within the walls or on the plain, or in the Sabine or +the Alban hills. Moreover, under the name I will take leave to include +lettuce as it grows with a most welcome surprise on certain ledges of the +Vatican. That great and beautiful palace is piled, at various angles, as +it were house upon house, here magnificent, here careless, but with +nothing pretentious and nothing furtive. And outside one lateral window +on a ledge to the sun, prospers this little garden of random salad. +Buckingham Palace has nothing whatever of the Vatican dignity, but one +cannot well think of little cheerful cabbages sunning themselves on any +parapet it may have round a corner. + +Moreover, in Italy the vegetables--the table ones--have a wildness, a +suggestion of the grass, from lands at liberty for all the tilling. +Wildish peas, wilder asparagus--the field asparagus which seems to have +disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts in his +manifestations of frugality--and strawberries much less than half-way +from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale and corpulent +of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance lost--these are +all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. The most cultivated +of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet not a garden, but +something better, as her city is yet not a town but something better, and +her wilderness something better than a desert. In all the three there is +a trace of the little flying heels of the runaway. + + + + +WELLS + + +The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or unattractive +secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and perennial means of +life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and the plumber +sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They are covered, they +are carried, they are hushed, from the spring to the tap; and when their +voices are released at last in the London scullery, why, it can hardly be +said that the song is eloquent of the natural source of waters, whether +earthly or heavenly. There is not one of the circumstances of this +capture of streams--the company, the water-rate, and the rest--that is +not a sign of the ill-luck of modern devices in regard to style. For +style implies a candour and simplicity of means, an action, a gesture, as +it were, in the doing of small things; it is the ignorance of secret +ways; whereas the finish of modern life and its neatness seem to be +secured by a system of little shufflings and surprises. + +Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such fittings; +they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern +arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the +successes--which are not to be denied--of their outer part; the happy +little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, +being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph +and success of the present art of raiment--"fit" itself--is but the +result of a masked and lurking labour and device. + +The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of the +beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and slighter +actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the way. In a word, +the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is the dexterous +provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well-appointed, and +decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his hands; whereas the +artist craftsman of other times made a manifestation of his means. The +first hides the streams, under stress and pressure, in paltry pipes which +we all must make haste to call upon the earth to cover, and the second +lifted up the arches of the aqueduct. + +The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way to +ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure way. In +all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed by hidden means +must needs, from the beginning, prepare the abolition of dignity. This +is easy to understand, but it is less easy to explain the ill-fortune +that presses upon the expert workman, in search of easy ways to live, all +the ill-favoured materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them +serviceable and effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter +them, turning the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the daily +world. It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other hand, is it easy to +explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler devices which are, +after all, only less expert ways of labour. In those happy conditions, +neither from the material, suggesting to the workman, nor from the +workman looking askance at his unhandsome material, comes a first +proposal to pour in cement and make fast the underworld, out of sight. +But fate spares not that suggestion to the able and the unlucky at their +task of making neat work of the means, the distribution, the traffick of +life. + +The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the means +of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the sun, with +their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, no, they are +lapped in lead. + +King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals. + +Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The hiding-place +that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters of wells are, at +their deepest, in communication with the open sky. No other mine is so +visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible there; and it is fine to +think of the waters of this planet, shallow and profound, all charged +with shining suns, a multitude of waters multiplying suns, and carrying +that remote fire, as it were, within their unalterable freshness. Not a +pool without this visitant, or without passages of stars. As for the +wells of the Equator, you may think of them in their last recesses as the +daily bathing-places of light; a luminous fancy is able so to scatter +fitful figures of the sun, and to plunge them in thousands within those +deeps. + +Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the sun is +shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken across stones, +and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that fall through +chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile figures of leaves. To +all these waters the agile air has perpetual access. Not so can great +towns be watered, it will be said with reason; and this is precisely the +ill-luck of great towns. + +Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have the +grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every _campo_ has its +circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the pavement, its +soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the water below, and +the cheerful work of the cable. + +Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their plain +with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the watersheds +in the hills to the and city; and having the waters captive, they knew +how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in this Roman triumph. +They had the wit to boast thus of their brilliant prisoner. + +None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a more +invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the leap of the +heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They have remained in +Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the victory was longer than +empire, and their thousands of loud voices have never ceased to confess +the conquest of the cold floods, separated long ago, drawn one by one, +alive, to the head and front of the world. + +Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest fact of +Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains or to the +distance from the city without seeing the approach of those perpetual +waters--waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. This, then, +was the style of a master, who does not lapse from "incidental +greatness," has no mean precision, out of sight, to prepare the finish of +his phrases, and does not think the means and the approaches are to be +plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, without haste, and without +misgiving are all great things to be done, and neither interruption in +the doing nor ruin after they are done finds anything in them to betray. +There was never any disgrace of means, and when the world sees the work +broken through there is no disgrace of discovery. The labour of +Michelangelo's chisel, little more than begun, a Roman structure long +exposed in disarray--upon these the light of day looks full, and the +Roman and the Florentine have their unrefuted praise. + + + + +RAIN + + +Not excepting the falling stars--for they are far less sudden--there is +nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the familiar +rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from the +clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey with +them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, units, an +innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement of intricate +points. + +The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at once, +being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression +is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. What +we are apt to call our quick impression is rather our sensibly tardy, +unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly bewildered sense of things that +flash and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes +of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert +eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles +them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly +from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose moments are +not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of instants as invests +all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, and causes the past, a +moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon the skies. + +The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records of +our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant woodman's +stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is repeated in the +impressions of our clinging sight. The round wheel dazzles it, and the +stroke of the bird's wing shakes it off like a captivity evaded. +Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of these timid senses; and +their perception, outrun by the shower, shaken by the light, denied by +the shadow, eluded by the distance, makes the lingering picture that is +all our art. One of the most constant causes of all the mystery and +beauty of that art is surely not that we see by flashes, but that nature +flashes on our meditative eyes. There is no need for the impressionist +to make haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature doubles upon +him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility. + +Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the +ministration of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that the +husbandman is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet unclaimed in +the arms of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that he binds the shower +withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the coming cloud. His sense +of property takes aim and reckons distance and speed, and even as he +shoots a little ahead of the equally uncertain ground-game, he knows +approximately how to hit the cloud of his possession. So much is the +rain bound to the earth that, unable to compel it, man has yet found a +way, by lying in wait, to put his price upon it. The exhaustible cloud +"outweeps its rain," and only the inexhaustible sun seems to repeat and +to enforce his cumulative fires upon every span of ground, innumerable. +The rain is wasted upon the sea, but only by a fantasy can the sun's +waste be made a reproach to the ocean, the desert, or the sealed-up +street. Rossetti's "vain virtues" are the virtues of the rain, falling +unfruitfully. + +Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, as the +end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its flight warning +away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing shadow. It is a threat +and a reconciliation; it removes mountains compared with which the Alps +are hillocks, and makes a childlike peace between opposed heights and +battlements of heaven. + + + + +THE TOW PATH + + +A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided must +have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird your +shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on the even +path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames--the side of meadows. + +The elastic resistance of the line is a "heart-animating strain," only +too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of the +riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, are +swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green. The line +drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows taut; it +makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress of your easy +power. + +The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the joys of +"feeling hearts" according to the erroneous sentiment of a verse of +Moore's. The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the joys of +sensitive hands are few. Here, however, in the effectual act of towing, +is the ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy labourers with the +oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all other means of violence. Here, on +the long tow-path, between warm, embrowned meadows and opal waters, you +need but to walk in your swinging harness, and so take your friends up- +stream. + +You work merely as the mill-stream works--by simple movement. At lock +after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to the wheel +that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river have the same mere +force of progress. + +There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is the bright +Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing by so many +curves of low shore on the level of the world. + +Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as the +wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings the lighted +clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying high for +mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own weight. You will +not envy them for so brief a success. Did not Wordsworth want a "little +boat" for the air? Did not Byron call him a blockhead therefor? +Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing. + +All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. Even +the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than you, walking +your effectual walk with the line attached to your willing steps. Your +moderate strength of a mere everyday physical education gives you the +sufficient mastery of the tow-path. + +If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give it +life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the buoyant +burden--the yielding check--than ever before. An unharnessed walk must +begin to seem to you a sorry incident of insignificant liberty. It is +easier than towing? So is the drawing of water in a sieve easier to the +arms than drawing in a bucket, but not to the heart. + +To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the wings of +metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the spirit and the +line. + +No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; it depends +upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any depressing show of +helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it apt to set you at naught +or charge you with a make-believe. It accompanies, it almost +anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just so much as to give your +briskness good reason, and to justify you if you should take to still +more nimble heels. All your haste, moreover, does but waken a more +brilliantly-sounding ripple. + +The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems to +carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your figure, +enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes free. No +watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. What little +outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer smoothly towed. +Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your head high and watch the +birds, or listen to them. They fly in such lofty air that they seem to +turn blue in the blue sky. A flash of their flight shows silver for a +moment, but they are blue birds in that sunny distance above, as +mountains are blue, and horizons. The days are so still that you do not +merely hear the cawing of the rooks--you overhear their hundred private +croakings and creakings, the soliloquy of the solitary places swept by +wings. + +As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at an end. +This year's robins are in full voice; and the only song that is not for +love or nesting--the childish song of boy-birds, the freshest and +youngest note--is, by a happy paradox, that of an autumnal voice. + +Here is no hoot, nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist's +wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding note. +Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, stealthy soles of +the barefooted in the south. + + + + +THE TETHERED CONSTELLATIONS + + +It is no small thing--no light discovery--to find a river Andromeda and +Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer night +around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two--delicate visitants of +streams--we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of the eyes, so fine +and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the southern waves may show the +light--not the image--of the evening or the morning planet. But this, in +a pool of the country Thames at night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it +is the startling image of a whole large constellation burning in the +flood. + +These reflected heavens are different heavens. On a darker and more +vacant field than that of the real skies, the shape of the Lyre or the +Bear has an altogether new and noble solitude; and the waters play a +painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two movements +shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright flashing of +constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark flashes of the vague +bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien motion. +Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars escapes and +returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady night, those +constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a suddenness of +gleaming life. You imagine that some unexampled gale might make them +seem to shine with such a movement in the veritable sky; yet nothing but +deep water, seeming still in its incessant flight and rebound, could +really show such altered stars. The flood lets a constellation fly, as +Juliet's "wanton" with a tethered bird, only to pluck it home again. At +moments some rhythmic flux of the water seems about to leave the darkly- +set, widely-spaced Bear absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, +and refuse to imitate the skies, and all the water is obscure; then one +broken star returns, then fragments of another, and a third and a fourth +flit back to their noble places, brilliantly vague, wonderfully visible, +mobile, and unalterable. There is nothing else at once so keen and so +elusive. + +The aspen poplar had been in captive flight all day, but with no such +vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft night are +reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen by the large and +vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the Pleiades. + +There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in the +river Thames--the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys on all +the winds up and down England and across it in the end of summer. It is +a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a-tiptoe wherever the +wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty points when it is not +flying. The streets of London are among its many highways, for it is +fragile enough to go far in all sorts of weather. But it gets disabled +if a rough gust tumbles it on the water so that its finely-feathered feet +are wet. On gentle breezes it is able to cross dry-shod, walking the +waters. + +All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is +far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle plants +(or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to the tops of +many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather have to meet it +in battalions than in these invincible units astray. But if the farmer +owes it a lawful grudge, there is many a rigid riverside garden wherein +it would be a great pleasure to sow the thistles of the nearest pasture. + + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another growth +that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned to winter +than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east wind, more than +the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, rushes, canes, and reeds +were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On them the nimble winds played +their dry music. They were part of the winter. It looked through them +and spoke through them. They were spears and javelins in array to the +sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those that +stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour of his +light look through--low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They belong +to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the river, +beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes perilous +footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low lands, the sign +of streams. They grow tall between you and the near horizon of flat +lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; and near them grow +flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness of +the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction of +its points, its needles, and its resolute right lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need the +sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and +betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. +Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a +mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their +sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in +the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses +many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a +thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, +are swept into a single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of +the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds in +England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed +(except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has in +fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, +rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not +conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a gipsy +people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is rather a +gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if he is a man of +sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior doubts. His property, he +says, goes right down to the centre of the earth, in the shape of a +wedge; how high up it goes into the air it would be difficult to say, and +obviously the shape of the wedge must be continued in the direction of +increase. We may therefore proclaim his right to the clouds and their +cargo. It is true that as his ground game is apt to go upon his +neighbour's land to be shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his +showers elsewhere. But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed +country-house sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But +he who tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes should +happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his--he had the +pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for a time. But the +bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very thorough landowner, but +a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would endure this sort of thing no +longer, and went out armed and had a long acre of sedges scythed to +death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and upon +margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a road. No +wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and their primroses +are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and then, though, one has a +kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds of trees--the Corot trees. +Standing at a distance from the more ornamental trees, from those of +fuller foliage, and from all the indeciduous shrubs and the conifers +(manifest property, every one), two or three translucent aspens, with +which the very sun and the breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes +seemed to wear a certain look--an extra-territorial look, let us call it. +They are suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not say +so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, are in +spirit almost as extra-territorial as the rushes. In proof of this he +very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. The view is +better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are in his ground +right enough, there is a something about their heads--. But the reason +he gives for wishing them away is merely that they are "thin." A man +does not always say everything. + + + + +A NORTHERN FANCY + + +"I remember," said Dryden, writing to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat Lee, +who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and witty answer +to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to write like a +madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing to write like a +madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.'" Nevertheless, +the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light high note, in +English poetry throughout two centuries at least, and one English poet +lately set that untethered lyric, the mad maid's song, flying again. + +A revolt against the oppression of the late sixteenth and early +seventeenth centuries--the age of the re-discovery of death; against the +crime of tragedies; against the tyranny of Italian example that had made +the poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, inconstancy--may +have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this tune of innocence, and +this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. "I heard a maid in Bedlam," +runs the old song. High and low the poets tried for that note, and the +singer was nearly always to be a maid and crazed for love. Except for +the temporary insanity so indifferently worn by the soprano of the now +deceased kind of Italian opera, and except that a recent French story +plays with the flitting figure of a village girl robbed of her wits by +woe (and this, too, is a Russian villager, and the Southern author may +have found his story on the spot, as he seems to aver) I have not met +elsewhere than in England this solitary and detached poetry of the treble +note astray. + +At least, it is principally a northern fancy. Would the steadfast +Cordelia, if she had not died, have lifted the low voice to that high +note, so delicately untuned? She who would not be prodigal of words +might yet, indeed, have sung in the cage, and told old tales, and laughed +at gilded butterflies of the court of crimes, and lived so long in the +strange health of an emancipated brain as to wear out + + Packs and sects of great ones + That ebb and flow by the moon. + +She, if King Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry and +strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the maid called +Barbara. + +It was surely the name of the maid who died singing, as Desdemona +remembers, that lingered in the ear of Wordsworth. Of all the songs of +the distracted, written in the sanity of high imagination, there is +nothing more passionate than that beginning "'Tis said that some have +died for love." To one who has always recognized the greatness of this +poem and who possibly had known and forgotten how much Ruskin prized it, +it was a pleasure to find the judgement afresh in _Modern Painters_, +where this grave lyric is cited for an example of great imagination. It +is the mourning and restless song of the lover ("the pretty Barbara +died") who has not yet broken free from memory into the alien world of +the insane. + +Barbara's lover dwelt in the scene of his love, as Dryden's Adam entreats +the expelling angel that he might do, protesting that he could endure to +lose "the bliss, but not the place." (And although this dramatic +"Paradise Lost" of Dryden's is hardly named by critics except to be +scorned, this is assuredly a fine and imaginative thought.) It is +nevertheless as a wanderer that the crazed creature visits the fancy of +English poets with such a wild recurrence. The Englishman of the far +past, barred by climate, bad roads, ill-lighted winters, and the +intricate life and customs of the little town, must have been generally a +home-keeper. No adventure, no setting forth, and small liberty, for him. +But Tom-a-Bedlam, the wild man in patches or in ribbons, with his wallet +and his horn for alms of food or drink, came and went as fitfully as the +storm, free to suffer all the cold--an unsheltered creature; and the +chill fancy of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey +that had no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the +swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it was +one who wrote like a madman and not like a fool. + +Not a town, not a village, not a solitary cottage during the English +Middle Ages was unvisited by him who frightened the children; they had a +name for him as for the wild birds--Robin Redbreast, Dicky Swallow, +Philip Sparrow, Tom Tit, Tom-a-Bedlam. And after him came the "Abram +men," who were sane parodies of the crazed, and went to the fairs and +wakes in motley. Evelyn says of a fop: "All his body was dressed like a +maypole, or a Tom-a-Bedlam's cap." But after the Civil Wars they +vanished, and no man knew how. In time old men remembered them only to +remember that they had not seen any such companies or solitary wanderers +of late years. + +The mad maid of the poets is a vagrant too, when she is free, and not +singing within Bedlam early in the morning, "in the spring." Wordsworth, +who dealt with the legendary fancy in his "Ruth," makes the crazed one a +wanderer in the hills whom a traveller might see by chance, rare as an +Oread, and nearly as wild as Echo herself:- + + I too have passed her in the hills + Setting her little water-mills. + +His heart misgives him to think of the rheumatism that must befall in +such a way of living; and his grave sense of civilization, _bourgeois_ in +the humane and noble way that is his own, restores her after death to the +company of man, to the "holy bell," which Shakespeare's Duke remembered +in banishment, and to the congregation and their "Christian psalm." + +The older poets were less responsible, less serious and more sad, than +Wordsworth, when they in turn were touched by the fancy of the maid +crazed by love. They left her to her light immortality; and she might be +drenched in dews; they would not desire to reconcile nor bury her. She +might have her hair torn by the bramble, but her heart was light after +trouble. "Many light hearts and wings"--she had at least the bird's +heart, and the poet lent to her voice the wings of his verses. + +There is nothing in our poetry less modern than she. The vagrant woman +of later feeling was rather the sane creature of Ebenezer Elliott's fine +lines in "The Excursion"-- + + Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried! + Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul! + +Trouble did not "try" the Elizabethan wild one, it undid her. She had no +child, or if there had ever been a child of hers, she had long forgotten +how it died. She hailed the wayfarer, who was more weary than she, with +a song; she haunted the cheerful dawn; her "good-morrow" rings from +Herrick's poem, fresh as cock-crow. She knows that her love is dead, and +her perplexity has regard rather to the many kinds of flowers than to the +old story of his death; they distract her in the splendid meadows. + +All the tragic world paused to hear that lightest of songs, as the +tragedy of Hamlet pauses for the fitful voice of Ophelia. Strange was +the charm of this perpetual alien, and unknown to us now. The world has +become once again as it was in the mad maid's heyday, less serious and +more sad than Wordsworth; but it has not recovered, and perhaps will +never recover, that sweetness. Blake's was a more starry madness. +Crabbe, writing of village sorrows, thought himself bound to recur to the +legend of the mad maid, but his "crazed maiden" is sane enough, sorrowful +but dull, and sings of her own "burning brow," as Herrick's wild one +never sang; nor is there any smile in her story, though she talks of +flowers, or, rather, "the herbs I loved to rear"; and perhaps she is the +surest of all signs that the strange inspiration of the past centuries +was lost, vanished like Tom-a-Bedlam himself. It had been wholly +English, whereas the English eighteenth century was not wholly English. + +It is not to be imagined that any hard Southern mind could ever have +played in poetry with such a fancy; or that Petrarch, for example, could +so have foregone the manifestation of intelligence and intelligible +sentiment. And as to Dante, who put the two eternities into the +momentary balance of the human will, cold would be his disregard of this +northern dream of innocence. If the mad maid was an alien upon earth, +what were she in the Inferno? What word can express her strangeness +there, her vagrancy there? And with what eyes would they see this dewy +face glancing in at the windows of that City? + + + + +PATHOS + + +A fugitive writer wrote not long ago on the fugitive page of a magazine: +"For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is the most real +personage of the piece, and not without some hints of the pathos that is +worked out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and Malvolio." +Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or +their yet later equivalents, compared with which "le spleen" of the +French Byronic age was gay, done so much for us? Is there to be no +laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real- +life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in +his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. +By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is +of little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it is +precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the lion; they +can make shift to see through that: but the Snug within, the human Snug. +And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in that latent form which is the +more appealing; and discouraging questions arise as to the end of old +Double; and Harpagon is the tragic figure of Monomania; and as to Argan, +ah, what havoc in "les entrailles de Monsieur" must have been wrought by +those prescriptions! _Et patati, et patata_. + +It may be only too true that the actual world is "with pathos delicately +edged." For Malvolio living we should have had living sympathies; so +much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of refinement; so unarmed a +credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed for the laughter of a +chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the weaver our pity might be reached +for the sake of his single self-reliance, his fancy and resource +condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the niggard doom of circumstance. +But is not life one thing and is not art another? Is it not the +privilege of literature to treat things singly, without the +after-thoughts of life, without the troublous completeness of the many- +sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this reason, our refuge? +Fortunately unreal is his world when he will have it so; and there we may +laugh with open heart at a grotesque man: without misgiving, without +remorse, without reluctance. If great creating Nature has not assumed +for herself she has assuredly secured to the great creating poet the +right of partiality, of limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of +taking one impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and +Nature are complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with one +another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the corner, +as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the flat--(the +borrowing of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; but let this +pass, as it is apt)--is but another sign of the general lack of a sense +of the separation between Nature and her sentient mirror in the mind. In +some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is as Nature herself, +all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in comedy--he is partial, he is +impressionary, he refuses to know what is not to his purpose, he is light- +heartedly capricious. And in that gay, wilful world it is that he gives +us--or used to give us, for even the word is obsolete--the pleasure of +_oubliance_. + +Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have caught him +a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those like-minded will +assuredly also continue to show how much more completely human, how much +more sensitive, how much more responsible, is the art of the critic than +the world has ever dreamt till now. And, superior in so much, they will +still count their importunate sensibility as the choicest of their gifts. +And Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his +admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud by +the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears of it +are wet. + + + + +ANIMA PELLEGRINA! + + +Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the stranger's +fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a phrase that is its +own essential possession, and yet is dearer to the speaker of other +tongues. Easily--shall I say cheaply?--spiritual, for example, was the +nation that devised the name _anima pellegrina_, wherewith to crown a +creature admired. "Pilgrim soul" is a phrase for any language, but +"pilgrim soul!" addressed, singly and sweetly to one who cannot be over- +praised, "pilgrim-soul!" is a phrase of fondness, the high homage of a +lover, of one watching, of one who has no more need of common flatteries, +but has admired and gazed while the object of his praises visibly +surpassed them--this is the facile Italian ecstasy, and it rises into an +Italian heaven. + +It was by chance, and in an old play, that I came upon this impetuous, +sudden, and single sentence of admiration, as it were a sentence of life +passed upon one charged with inestimable deeds; and the modern editor had +thought it necessary to explain the exclamation by a note. It was, he +said, poetical. + +_Anima pellegrina_ seems to be Italian of no later date than +Pergolese's airs, and suits the time as the familiar phrase of the more +modern love-song suited the day of Bellini. But it is only Italian, +bygone Italian, and not a part of the sweet past of any other European +nation, but only of this. + +To the same local boundaries and enclosed skies belongs the charm of +those buoyant words:- + + Felice chi vi mira, + Ma piu felice chi per voi sospira! + +And it is not only a charm of elastic sound or of grace; that would be +but a property of the turn of speech. It is rather the profounder +advantage whereby the rhymes are freighted with such feeling as the very +language keeps in store. In another tongue you may sing, "happy who +looks, happier who sighs"; but in what other tongue shall the little +meaning be so sufficient, and in what other shall you get from so weak an +antithesis the illusion of a lovely intellectual epigram? Yet it is not +worthy of an English reader to call it an illusion; he should rather be +glad to travel into the place of a language where the phrase _is_ +intellectual, impassioned, and an epigram; and should thankfully for the +occasion translate himself, and not the poetry. + +I have been delighted to use a present current phrase whereof the charm +may still be unknown to Englishmen--"_piuttosto bruttini_." See what +an all-Italian spirit is here, and what contempt, not reluctant, but +tolerant and familiar. You may hear it said of pictures, or works of art +of several kinds, and you confess at once that not otherwise should they +be condemned. _Brutto_--ugly--is the word of justice, the word for any +language, everywhere translatable, a circular note, to be exchanged +internationally with a general meaning, wholesale, in the course of the +European concert. But _bruttino_ is a soothing diminutive, a diminutive +that forbears to express contempt, a diminutive that implies innocence, +and is, moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging in the +rear--"rather than not." "Rather ugly than not, and ugly in a little way +that we need say few words about--the fewer the better;" nay, this +paraphrase cannot achieve the homely Italian quality whereby the printed +and condemnatory criticism is made a family affair that shall go no +further. After the sound of it, the European concert seems to be +composed of brass instruments. + +How unlike is the house of English language and the enclosure into which +a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything here more +essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) than our +particle "un"? Poor are those living languages that have not our use of +so rich a negative. The French equivalent in adjectives reaches no +further than the adjective itself--or hardly; it does not attain the +participle; so that no French or Italian poet has the words "unloved", +"unforgiven." None such, therefore, has the opportunity of the gravest +and the most majestic of all ironies. In our English, the words that are +denied are still there--"loved," "forgiven": excluded angels, who stand +erect, attesting what is not done, what is undone, what shall not be +done. + +No merely opposite words could have so much denial, or so much pain of +loss, or so much outer darkness, or so much barred beatitude in sight. +All-present, all-significant, all-remembering, all-foretelling is the +word, and it has a plenitude of knowledge. + +We have many more conspicuous possessions that are, like this, proper to +character and thought, and by no means only an accident of untransferable +speech. And it is impossible for a reader, who is a lover of languages +for their spirit, to pass the words of untravelled excellence, proper to +their own garden enclosed, without recognition. Never may they be +disregarded or confounded with the universal stock. If I would not so +neglect _piuttosto bruttini_, how much less a word dominating +literature! And of such words of ascendancy and race there is no great +English author but has abundant possession. No need to recall them. But +even writers who are not great have, here and there, proved their full +consciousness of their birthright. Thus does a man who was hardly an +author, Haydon the painter, put out his hand to take his rights. He has +incomparable language when he is at a certain page of his life; at that +time he sate down to sketch his child, dying in its babyhood, and the +head he studied was, he says, full of "power and grief." + +This is a phrase of different discovery from that which reveals a local +rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an intellectual +place--_Felice chi vi mira_--or the art-critic's phrase--_piuttosto +bruttini_--of easy, companionable, and equal contempt. + +As for French, if it had no other sacred words--and it has many--who +would not treasure the language that has given us--no, not that has given +us, but that has kept for its own--_ensoleille_? Nowhere else is the sun +served with such a word. It is not to be said or written without a +convincing sense of sunshine, and from the very word come light and +radiation. The unaccustomed north could not have made it, nor the +accustomed south, but only a nation part-north and part-south; therefore +neither England nor Italy can rival it. But there needed also the senses +of the French--those senses of which they say far too much in every +second-class book of their enormous, their general second-class, but +which they have matched in their time with some inimitable words. Perhaps +that matching was done at the moment of the full literary consciousness +of the senses, somewhere about the famous 1830. For I do not think +_ensoleille_ to be a much older word--I make no assertion. Whatever its +origin, may it have no end! They cannot weary us with it; for it seems +as new as the sun, as remote as old Provence; village, hill-side, +vineyard, and chestnut wood shine in the splendour of the word, the air +is light, and white things passing blind the eyes--a woman's linen, white +cattle, shining on the way from shadow to shadow. A word of the sense of +sight, and a summer word, in short, compared with which the paraphrase is +but a picture. For _ensoleille_ I would claim the consent of all +readers--that they shall all acknowledge the spirit of that French. But +perhaps it is a mere personal preference that makes _le jour +s'annonce_ also sacred. + +If the hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," was written in Latin, this could be +only that it might in time find its true language and incomparable phrase +at last--that it might await the day of life in its proper German. I +found it there (and knew at once the authentic verse, and knew at once +for what tongue it had been really destined) in the pages of the prayer- +book of an apple-woman at an Innsbruck church, and in the accents of her +voice. + + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + +There is hardly a writer now--of the third class probably not one--who +has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of Nature; not +one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a modern reference to +the manifold death and destruction with which the air, the branches, the +mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice of +the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and of the +dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are they--all the +dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their +little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence +concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is +true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a +snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a +kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some +little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a +meaner man might hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you +twinkle back at the bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes violently +into other forms, flashes without pause into another flame; but not all. +Amid all the killing there must be much dying. There are, for instance, +few birds of prey left in our more accessible counties now, and many +thousands of birds must die uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if +their killing is done so modestly, so then is their dying also. Short +lives have all these wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of +them always alive; they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet +they keep the millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so complete, +that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth conspired that +February to make known all the secrets; everything was published. Death +was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, are not more resolute than +was the frost of '95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and forced +to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which the art and +imagination of England combined to raise to his memory at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought wrong. +There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of a bird and in +exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a soldier--_passe +encore_. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. And the death of +the birds is so little characteristic of them that, as has just been +said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, except only in the +case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled to die with +observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a rule. There is no +display of the battlefield in the fields. There is no tale of the game- +bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with strange decorum. You may +pass a fine season under the trees, and see nothing dead except here and +there where a boy has been by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. +There is nothing like a butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the wild +world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have turned over +scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether now and again +there might be a "Life" which was not more emphatically a death. But +there never is a modern biography that has taken the hint of Nature. One +and all, these books have the disproportionate illness, the death out of +all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been rightly +his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is assumed to be news +for the first comer. Which of us would suffer the details of any +physical suffering, over and done in our own lives, to be displayed and +described? This is not a confidence we have a mind to make; and no one +is authorised to ask for attention or pity on our behalf. The story of +pain ought not to be told of us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not +be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more exclusively, +and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and illusions of a long +delirium. When he is in common language not himself, amends should be +made for so bitter a paradox; he should be allowed such solitude as is +possible to the alienated spirit; he should be left to the "not himself," +and spared the intrusion against which he can so ill guard that he could +hardly have even resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door of +Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His mortal +illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather affected +objection is taken every now and then to the publication of some facts +(others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. Nevertheless, +these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is not biography is +the detail of the accident of the manner of his death, the detail of his +cremation. Or if it was to be told--told briefly--it was certainly not +for marble. Shelley's death had no significance, except inasmuch as he +died young. It was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was +a frost of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an +insignificant fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill- +named biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death +is a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last +chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of +all survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, this is, +for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. They +have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they have to +mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a mingling of +distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not known even to +dreams save in that first year of separation. But they are not +biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously secret +because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may surprise +everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The chase goes on +everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase seems to cause no +perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life is undefended, +careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost ceased, to +paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually in that British +School of water-colour art, stippled, of which surrounding nations, it +was agreed, were envious. They must have killed their bird to paint him, +for he is not to be caught dead. A bird is more easily caught alive than +dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily--too easily--caught dead. Minor +artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good sculptor and +a University together modelled their Shelley on his back, unessentially +drowned; and everybody may read about the sick mind of Dante Rossetti. + + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, to +devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated +papers--the enormous production of art in black and white--is assuredly a +confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working for. Fifty +years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; these were the +commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend to the beauty of +things of use that were destined to be broken and worn out, and they +looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad pictures; so that +what to do with their bad pictures in addition to our own has become the +problem of the nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have +began to learn that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. +Art consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows a +most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," and for +oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap costs +the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the inevitable +that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in the singular +and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is done for so short +a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the acceptance of death, +inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. There is a real circulation of +blood-quick use, brief beauty, abolition, recreation. The honour of the +day is for ever the honour of that day. It goes into the treasury of +things that are honestly and--completely ended and done with. And when +can so happy a thing be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise +would hesitate? To be honourable for one day--one named and dated day, +separate from all other days of the ages--or to be for an unlimited time +tedious? + + + + +COMPOSURE + + +Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure do +these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness +of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly. +In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an +aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble +English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some +courteous, deferent distance from the centre of that human heart, in the +very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in +language such an educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is +a persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note +indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, teaches a +temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the tone--the +voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counterchange, returns to +the writer's touch or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his +note. Much has always been said, many things to the purpose have been +thought, of the power and the responsibility of the note. Of the +legislation and influence of the tone I have been led to think by +comparing the tranquillity of Johnson and the composure of Canning with +the stimulated and close emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers +who have entered as disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English. + +For if every language be a school, more significantly and more +educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that +part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is made +implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French author is +without these. They are of all the heritages of the English writer the +most important. He receives a language of dual derivation. He may +submit himself to either University, whither he will take his impulse and +his character, where he will leave their influence, and whence he will +accept their re-education. The Frenchman has certainly a style to +develop within definite limits; but he does not subject himself to +suggestions tending mainly hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of +various race within one literature. Such a choice of subjection is the +singular opportunity of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the +necessary mingling. Happily that mingling has been done once for all for +us all. Nay, one of the most charming things that a master of English +can achieve is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their +results so exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools +are made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove +them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world knew +they were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as to which +school of words shall have the place of honour in the great and sensitive +moments of an author's style: which school shall be used for +conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And the choice +being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses of so many hearts +quickened in thought and feeling in this day suggests to me a deliberate +return to the recollectedness of the more tranquil language. "Doubtless +there is a place of peace." + +A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to charge +some of the moralists of the eighteenth century with an indifference into +which they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes +educated them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable +of coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is +no knowing to what distance the removal of the "appropriate sentiment" +from the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal +in language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly +removed eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato +hailed the "pleasing hope," the "fond desire"; and the touch of war was +distant from him who conceived his "repulsed battalions" and his +"doubtful battle." What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness +were restored once more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men +were too eager to go into the workshop of language. There were +unreasonable raptures over the mere making of common words. "A +hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!" they cried; and for the +love of German the youngest daughter of Chrysale herself might have +consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It seemed to be forgotten that a +language with all its construction visible is a language little fitted +for the more advanced mental processes; that its images are material; and +that, on the other hand, a certain spiritualizing and subtilizing effect +of alien derivations is a privilege and an advantage incalculable--that +to possess that half of the language within which Latin heredities lurk +and Romanesque allusions are at play is to possess the state and security +of a dead tongue, without the death. + +But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most beautiful +and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare. +"Superfluous kings," "A lass unparalleled," "Multitudinous seas": we +needed not to wait for the eighteenth century or for the nineteenth or +for the twentieth to learn the splendour of such encounters, of such +differences, of such nuptial unlikeness and union. But it is well that +we should learn them afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not +resist the rhythmic reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the +Latin. Such a reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We +want to quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the +poise and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong +movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse +might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with +a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for +his son. But it should not be attempted without a distinct intention of +submission on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against, +trespassed upon, used loosely, is like a law outstripped, defied--to the +dignity neither of the rebel nor of the rule. + +To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the very +closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. Shall +not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature, +assume the honour, the hesitation, the leisure, the reconciliation of the +Word? + + + + +THE LITTLE LANGUAGE + + +Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish master +of the magic of local things. + +In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it nourishes; +inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom Goldoni and Gallina +and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois of the Veneto, use no +dialect at all. + +Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with so +much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their almost +unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into the homes of +dialect, does but show us how the language staggers under such a stress, +how it breaks down, and resigns that office. One of the finest of the +characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is that old manageress +of the narrow things of the house whose daughter is dying insane. I have +called the dialect a shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not +cower within; her resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely +refuge, suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several +centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid none +but light loads upon it. They caused it to carry no more in their homely +plays than it carries in homely life. Their work leaves it what it +was--the talk of a people talking much about few things; a people like +our own and any other in their lack of literature, but local and all +Italian in their lack of silence. + +Common speech is surely a greater part of life to such a people than to +one less pleased with chatter or more pleased with books. I am writing +of men, women, and children (and children are not forgotten, since we +share a patois with children on terms of more than common equality) who +possess, for all occasions of ceremony and opportunities of dignity, a +general, national, liberal, able, and illustrious tongue, charged with +all its history and all its achievements; for the speakers of dialect, of +a certain rank, speak Italian, too. But to tamper with their dialect, or +to take it from them, would be to leave them houseless and exposed in +their daily business. So much does their patois seem to be their refuge +from the heavy and multitudinous experiences of a literary tongue, that +the stopping of a fox's earth might be taken as the image of any act that +should spoil or stop the talk of the associated seclusion of their town, +and leave them in the bleakness of a larger patriotism. + +The Venetian people, the Genoese, and the other speakers of languages +that might all have proved right "Italian" had not Dante, Petrarch and +Boccaccio written in Tuscan, can neither write nor be taught hard things +in their dialect, although they can live, whether easy lives or hard, and +evidently can die, therein. The hands and feet that have served the +villager and the citizen at homely tasks have all the lowliness of his +patois, to his mind; and when he must perforce yield up their employment, +we may believe that it is a simple thing to die in so simple and so +narrow a language, one so comfortable, neighbourly, tolerant, and +compassionate; so confidential; so incapable, ignorant, unappalling, +inapt to wing any wearied thought upon difficult flight or to spur it +upon hard travelling. + +Not without words is mental pain, or even physical pain, to be undergone; +but the words that have done no more than order the things of the narrow +street are not words to put a fine edge or a piercing point to any human +pang. It may even well be that to die in dialect is easier than to die +in the eloquence of Manfred, though that declaimed language, too, is +doubtless a defence, if one of a different manner. + +These writers in Venetian--they are named because in no other Italian +dialect has work so popular as Goldoni's been done, nor so excellent as +Signor Fogazzaro's--have left the unlettered local language in which they +loved to deal, to its proper limitations. They have not given weighty +things into its charge, nor made it heavily responsible. They have added +nothing to it; nay, by writing it they might even be said to have made it +duller, had it not been for the reader and the actor. Insomuch as the +intense expressiveness of a dialect--of a small vocabulary in the mouth +of a dramatic people--lies in the various accent wherewith a southern +citizen knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to restore +its life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is forbidden to +search for the word, for there is none lurking for his choice; but of +tones, allusions, and of references and inferences of the voice, the +speaker of dialect is a master. No range of phrases can be his, but he +has the more or the less confidential inflection, until at times the +close communication of the narrow street becomes a very conspiracy. + +Let it be borne in mind that dialect properly so called is something all +unlike, for instance, the mere jargon of London streets. The difference +may be measured by the fact that Italian dialects have a highly organized +and orderly grammar. The Londoner cannot keep the small and loose order +of the grammar of good English; the Genoese conjugates his patois verbs, +with subjunctives and all things of that handsome kind, lacked by the +English of Universities. + +The middle class--the _piccolo mondo_--that shares Italian dialect with +the poor are more strictly local in their manners than either the opulent +or the indigent of the same city. They have moreover the busy +intelligence (which is the intellect of patois) at its keenest. Their +speech keeps them a sequestered place which is Italian, Italian beyond +the ken of the traveller, and beyond the reach of alteration. And--what +is pretty to observe--the speakers are well conscious of the characters +of this intimate language. An Italian countryman who has known no other +climate will vaunt, in fervent platitudes, his Italian sun; in like +manner he is conscious of the local character of his language, and tucks +himself within it at home, whatever Tuscan he may speak abroad. A +properly spelt letter, Swift said, would seem to expose him and Mrs +Dingley and Stella to the eyes of the world; but their little language, +ill-written, was "snug." + +Lovers have made a little language in all times; finding the nobler +language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? +discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in despair +thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this departure from +English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal lovers, no doubt, +would be so simple as to be grave. That is a tenable opinion. +Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and age by age they have +exchanged language imitated from the children they doubtless never +studied, and perhaps never loved. Why so? They might have chosen broken +English of other sorts--that, for example, which was once thought amusing +in farce, as spoken by the Frenchman conceived by the Englishman--a +complication of humour fictitious enough, one might think, to please +anyone; or else a fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; +or the masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs +Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. But none of these found +favour. The choice has always been of the language of children. Let us +suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping Venus in the Titian +picture, and the noble child that rides his lion erect with a background +of Venetian gloomy dusk, may be the inspirers of those prattlings. "See +then thy selfe likewise art lyttle made," says Spenser's Venus to her +child. + +Swift was the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised it in +Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her clumsily back +into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged in her a childhood +he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest dea, nite dealest logue." +It is a real good-night. It breathes tenderness from that moody and +uneasy bed of projects. + + + + +A COUNTERCHANGE + + +"Il s'est trompe de defunte." The writer of this phrase had his sense of +that portly manner of French, and his burlesque is fine; but--the paradox +must be risked--because he was French he was not able to possess all its +grotesque mediocrity to the full; that is reserved for the English +reader. The words are in the mouth of a widower who, approaching his +wife's tomb, perceives there another "monsieur." "Monsieur," again; the +French reader is deprived of the value of this word, too, in its place; +it says little or nothing to him, whereas the Englishman, who has no word +of the precise bourgeois significance that it sometimes bears, but who +must use one of two English words of different allusion--man or I +gentleman--knows the exact value of its commonplace. The serious +Parisian, then, sees "un autre monsieur;" as it proves anon, there had +been a divorce in the history of the lady, but the later widower is not +yet aware of this, and explains to himself the presence of "un monsieur" +in his own place by that weighty phrase, "Il s'est trompe de defunte." + +The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with national +character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking author who +was debarred by his own language from possessing the whole of his own +comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his English that an Englishman +does possess it. Your official, your professional Parisian has a +vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled mediocrity. When the novelist +perceives this he does not perceive it all, because some of the words are +the only words in use. Take an author at his serious moments, when he is +not at all occupied with the comedy of phrases, and he now and then +touches a word that has its burlesque by mere contrast with English. +"L'Histoire d'un Crime," of Victor Hugo, has so many of these touches as +to be, by a kind of reflex action, a very school of English. The whole +incident of the omnibus in that grave work has unconscious international +comedy. The Deputies seated in the interior of the omnibus had been, it +will be remembered, shut out of their Chamber by the perpetrator of the +Coup d'Etat, but each had his official scarf. Scarf--pish!--"l'echarpe!" +"Ceindre l'echarpe"--there is no real English equivalent. Civic +responsibility never was otherwise adequately expressed. An indignant +deputy passed his scarf through the window of the omnibus, as an appeal +to the public, "et l'agita." It is a pity that the French reader, having +no simpler word, is not in a position to understand the slight burlesque. +Nay, the mere word "public," spoken with this peculiar French good faith, +has for us I know not what untransferable gravity. + +There is, in short, a general international counterchange. It is +altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, with its +extremely "specialized" manner of industry, that one people should make a +phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. And, in fact, there are +certain French authors to whom should be secured the use of the literary +German whereof Germans, and German women in particular, ought with all +severity to be deprived. For Germans often tell you of words in their +own tongue that are untranslatable; and accordingly they should not be +translated, but given over in their own conditions, unaltered, into safer +hands. There would be a clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a +better order in the phrase; the possessors of an alien word, with the +thought it secures, would find also their advantage. + +So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English ears. It +is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate householder, for +example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the conservatory "pour +retablir la circulation," and the other who describes himself "sous-chef +de bureau dans l'enregistrement," and he who proposes to "faire hommage" +of a doubtful turbot to the neighbouring "employe de l'octroi"--these and +all their like speak commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own +country the perfection of their dulness. We only, who have the +alternative of plainer and fresher words, understand it. It is not the +least of the advantages of our own dual English that we become sensible +of the mockery of certain phrases that in France have lost half their +ridicule, uncontrasted. + +Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation in +all Latin languages--rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, either +majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French this proffers a +frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of an Englishman, no +longer detects. A guard on a French railway, who advised two travellers +to take a certain train for fear they should be obliged to "vegeter" for +a whole hour in the waiting-room of such or such a station seemed to the +less practised tourist to be a fresh kind of unexpected humourist. + +One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and +subscriptions in France has more than the intentional comedy of the farce- +writer; one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his visitors +in the country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to them: "Nous jouons +cinquante centimes--les benefices seront verses integralement a la +souscription qui est ouverte a la commune pour la construction de notre +maison d'ecole." + +"Fletrir," again. Nothing could be more rhetorical than this perfectly +common word of controversy. The comic dramatist is well aware of the +spent violence of this phrase, with which every serious Frenchman will +reply to opponents, especially in public matters. But not even the comic +dramatist is aware of the last state of refuse commonplace that a word of +this kind represents. Refuse rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson's +"fossil poetry," would seem to be the right name for human language as +some of the processes of the several recent centuries have left it. + +The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an Englishman. +They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as "Il s'est trompe de +defunte." In the report of that dull, incomparable sentence there is +enough humour, and subtle enough, for both the maker and the reader; for +the author who perceives the comedy as well as custom will permit, and +for the reader who takes it with the freshness of a stranger. But if not +so keen as this, the current word of French comedy is of the same quality +of language. When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, +for instance, the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: +"Il s'est empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full +sense of the several languages that exist in English at the service of +the several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology of +official France, high or low--daily France--a gratuitous and uncovenanted +smile to be had. With this the wit of the report of French literature +has not little to do. Nor is it in itself, perhaps, reasonably comic, +but the slightest irony of circumstance makes it so. A very little of +the mockery of conditions brings out all the latent absurdity of the +"sixieme et septieme arron-dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So +is it with the mere "domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the +burlesque of life, the suit at law to "reintegrer le domicile conjugal" +becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "a domicile" +merely--the word of every shopman--is, in the unconscious mouths of the +speakers, always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an +Englishman hears it; so is the advice of the police that you shall +"circuler" in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you shall +not, in the churches. + +So are the serious and ordinary phrases, "maison nuptiale," "maison +mortuaire," and the still more serious "repos dominical," "oraison +dominicale." There is no majesty in such words. The unsuspicious +gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at, +the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to the +credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, through +this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand authors of +comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar thing, and compels +that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. _Us_, above all, by virtue of +the custom of counterchange here set forth. + +Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the English +poets that so persist in France may not reveal something within the +English language--one would be somewhat loth to think so--reserved to the +French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, Edgar Poe to the +select? Then would some of the mysteries of French reading of English be +explained otherwise than by the plainer explanation that has hitherto +satisfied our haughty curiosity. The taste for rhetoric seemed to +account for Byron, and the desire of the rhetorician to claim a taste for +poetry seemed to account for Poe. But, after all, _patatras_! Who can +say? + + + + +HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO + + +The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell with +him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, for English +drama. That manner of man--Arlecchino, or Harlequin--had outlived his +playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and the Clown. A little of +Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little in the father of the Shrew, +but the life of Mercutio in the one play, and of the subordinate Tranio +in the other, is less quickly spent, less easily put out, than the +smouldering of the old man. Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy +and comedy of Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his lightest, his +brightest, his most vital shape. + +Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the busybody, +the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, the mercurial +one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of Moliere. He is officious +and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille and Ergaste and Scapin; but he +tends to be a lacquey, with a reference rather to Antiquity and the Latin +comedy than to the Middle Ages, as on the English stage his mere memory +survives differently to a later age in the person of "Charles, his +friend." What convinces me that he virtually died with Mercutio is +chiefly this--that this comrade of Romeo's lives so keenly as to be fully +capable of the death that he takes at Tybalt's sword-point; he lived +indeed, he dies indeed. Another thing that marks the close of a career +of ages is his loss of his long customary good luck. Who ever heard of +Arlecchino unfortunate before, at fault with his sword-play, overtaken by +tragedy? His time had surely come. The gay companion was to bleed; +Tybalt's sword had made a way. 'Twas not so deep as a well nor so wide +as a church-door, but it served. + +Some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the primitive +Italian play, because Harlequin, on that conventional little stage of the +past, has a hero's place, whereas when he interferes in human affairs he +is only the auxiliary. He might be lover and bridegroom on the primitive +stage, in the comedy of these few and unaltered types; but when +Pantaloon, Clown, and Harlequin play with really human beings, then +Harlequin can be no more than a friend of the hero, the friend of the +bridegroom. The five figures of the old stage dance attendance; they +play around the business of those who have the dignity of mortality; +they, poor immortals--a clown who does not die, a pantaloon never far +from death, who yet does not die, a Columbine who never attains +Desdemona's death of innocence or Juliet's death of rectitude and +passion--flit in the backward places of the stage. + +Ariel fulfils his office, and is not of one kind with those he serves. Is +there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? Something of the +subservient immortality, of the light indignity, proper to Pantaleone, +Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the Clown, hovers away from the +stage when Ariel is released from the trouble of human things. + +Immortality, did I say? It was immortality until Mercutio fell. And if +some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has transformed so many +scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand children, since Mercutio +died, I must reply that our modern Harlequin is no more than a +_marionnette_; he has returned whence he came. A man may play him, but +he is--as he was first of all--a doll. From doll-hood Arlecchino took +life, and, so promoted, flitted through a thousand comedies, only to be +again what he first was; save that, as once a doll played the man, so now +a man plays the doll. It is but a memory of Arlecchino that our children +see, a poor statue or image endowed with mobility rather than with life. + +With Mercutio, vanished the light heart that had given to the serious +ages of the world an hour's refuge from the unforgotten burden of +responsible conscience; the light heart assumed, borrowed, made +dramatically the spectator's own. We are not serious now, and no heart +now is quite light, even for an hour. + + + + +LAUGHTER + + +Times have been, it is said, merrier than these; but it is certain +nevertheless that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not for +the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere the joke +"emerges"--as an "elegant" writer might have it--emerges to catch the +attention of the sense of humour; and everywhere the sense of humour +wanders, watches, and waits to honour the appeal. + +It loiters, vaguely but perpetually willing. It wears (let the violent +personification be pardoned) a hanging lip, and a wrinkle in abeyance, +and an eye in suspense. It is much at the service of the vagrant +encounterer, and may be accosted by any chance daughters of the game. It +stands in untoward places, or places that were once inappropriate, and is +early at some indefinite appointment, some ubiquitous tryst, with the +compliant jest. + +All literature becomes a field of easy assignations; there is a constant +signalling, an endless recognition. Forms of approach are remitted. And +the joke and the sense of humour, with no surprise of meeting, or no +gaiety of strangeness, so customary has the promiscuity become, go up and +down the pages of the paper and the book. See, again, the theatre. A +somewhat easy sort of comic acting is by so much the best thing upon our +present stage that little else can claim--paradox again apart--to be +taken seriously. + +There is, in a word, a determination, an increasing tendency away from +the Oriental estimate of laughter as a thing fitter for women, fittest +for children, and unfitted for the beard. Laughter is everywhere and at +every moment proclaimed to be the honourable occupation of men, and in +some degree distinctive of men, and no mean part of their prerogative and +privilege. The sense of humour is chiefly theirs, and those who are not +men are to be admitted to the jest upon their explanation. They will not +refuse explanation. And there is little upon which a man will so value +himself as upon that sense, "in England, now." + +Meanwhile, it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like +rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit when it +is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we must confess +that we laugh oftenest because--being amused--we intend to show that we +are amused. We are right to make the sign, but a smile would be as sure +a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; it would but be changing the +convention; and the change would restore laughter itself to its own +place. We have fallen into the way of using it to prove something--our +sense of the goodness of the jest, to wit; but laughter should not thus +be used, it should go free. It is not a demonstration, whether in logic, +or--as the word demonstration is now generally used--in emotion; and we +do ill to charge it with that office. + +Something of the Oriental idea of dignity might not be amiss among such a +people as ourselves containing wide and numerous classes who laugh +without cause: audiences; crowds; a great many clergymen, who perhaps +first fell into the habit in the intention of proving that they were not +gloomy; but a vast number of laymen also who had not that excuse; and +many women who laugh in their uncertainty as to what is humorous and what +is not. This last is the most harmless of all kinds of superfluous +laughter. When it carries an apology, a confession of natural and genial +ignorance, and when a gentle creature laughs a laugh of hazard and +experiment, she is to be more than forgiven. What she must not do is to +laugh a laugh of instruction, and as it were retrieve the jest that was +never worth the taking. + +There are, besides, a few women who do not disturb themselves as to a +sense of humour, but who laugh from a sense of happiness. Childish is +that trick, and sweet. For children, who always laugh because they must, +and never by way of proof or sign, laugh only half their laughs out of +their sense of humour; they laugh the rest under a mere stimulation: +because of abounding breath and blood; because some one runs behind them, +for example, and movement does so jog their spirits that their legs fail +them, for laughter, without a jest. + +If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to signal +their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall keep the laugh +for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, and simply, and not +thrice at the same thing--once for foolish surprise, and twice for tardy +intelligence, and thrice to let it be known that they are amused--then it +may be time to persuade this laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it +is wont in public. The theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations +laugh lower than ours. The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the +laugher's sense of the ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the +disadvantage of covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the +actors. It is a public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for +a public laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private +laughter there. + +Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times of +dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour in a +place better guarded, as something worth a measure of seclusion. It +should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in adventurous places. +For the sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself +conspicuous in the act of laughter. It has negative tasks of valid +virtue; for example, the standing and waiting within call of tragedy +itself, where, excluded, it may keep guard. + +No reasonable man will aver that the Oriental manners are best. This +would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where the wit "out- +did the meat, out-did the frolic wine," and to deny Ben Jonson's "tart +Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus," and the rest. Doubtless +Greece determined the custom for all our Occident; but none the less +might the modern world grow more sensible of the value of composure. + +To none other of the several powers of our souls do we so give rein as to +this of humour, and none other do we indulge with so little +fastidiousness. It is as though there were honour in governing the other +senses, and honour in refusing to govern this. It is as though we were +ashamed of reason here, and shy of dignity, and suspicious of temperance, +and diffident of moderation, and too eager to thrust forward that which +loses nothing by seclusion. + + + + +THE RHYTHM OF LIFE + + +If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity +rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the +orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, +velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the +recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it +does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year. +Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the +mind. Disease is metrical, closing in at shorter and shorter periods +towards death, sweeping abroad at longer and longer intervals towards +recovery. Sorrow for one cause was intolerable yesterday, and will be +intolerable to-morrow; to-day it is easy to bear, but the cause has not +passed. Even the burden of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to +leave the heart to a temporary peace; and remorse itself does not +remain--it returns. Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made +a course of notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and +would have had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such +observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, there +have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such cycles. But +Thomas a Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not measure them. In +his cell alone with the elements--"What wouldst thou more than these? for +out of these were all things made"--he learnt the stay to be found in the +depth of the hour of bitterness, and the remembrance that restrains the +soul at the coming of the moment of delight, giving it a more conscious +welcome, but presaging for it an inexorable flight. And "rarely, rarely +comest thou," sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of +Delight. Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to +our service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial +violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus +compelled. _That_ flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or +hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what trysts with Time. + +It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the "Imitation" should both +have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, and to guess +at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close touch with +the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate human rules, no +infractions of the liberty and law of the universal movement, kept from +them the knowledge of recurrences. _Eppur si muove_. They knew that +presence does not exist without absence; they knew that what is just upon +its flight of farewell is already on its long path of return. They knew +that what is approaching to the very touch is hastening towards +departure. "O wind," cried Shelley, in autumn, + + O wind, + If winter comes can spring be far behind? + +They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt with +unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of onset and +retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in constant efforts +after an equal life, whether the equality be sought in mental production, +or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of the senses, is to live +without either rest or full activity. The souls of certain of the +saints, being singularly simple and single, have been in the most +complete subjection to the law of periodicity. Ecstasy and desolation +visited them by seasons. They endured, during spaces of vacant time, the +interior loss of all for which they had sacrificed the world. They +rejoiced in the uncovenanted beatitude of sweetness alighting in their +hearts. Like them are the poets whom, three times or ten times in the +course of a long life, the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken. +And yet hardly like them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared +for the departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few +poets have fully recognized the metrical absence of their muse. For full +recognition is expressed in one only way--silence. + +It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America worship +the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but no tribes are +known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her depend the tides; and +she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the dews that recurrently +irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than any other companion of +earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo-Germanic languages knew her by +that name. Her metrical phases are the symbol of the order of +recurrence. Constancy in approach and in departure is the reason of her +inconstancies. Juliet will not receive a vow spoken in invocation of the +moon; but Juliet did not live to know that love itself has tidal +times--lapses and ebbs which are due to the metrical rule of the interior +heart, but which the lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward +alteration in the beloved. For man--except those elect already named--is +hardly aware of periodicity. The individual man either never learns it +fully, or learns it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a +matter of cumulative experience upon which cumulative evidence is long +lacking. It is in the after-part of each life that the law is learnt so +definitely as to do away with the hope or fear of continuance. That +young sorrow comes so near to despair is a result of this young +ignorance. So is the early hope of great achievement. Life seems so +long, and its capacity so great, to one who knows nothing of all the +intervals it needs must hold--intervals between aspirations, between +actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses of sleep. And life looks +impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware of the inevitable and +unfailing refreshment. It would be for their peace to learn that there +is a tide in the affairs of men, in a sense more subtle--if it is not too +audacious to add a meaning to Shakespeare--than the phrase was meant to +contain. Their joy is flying away from them on its way home; their life +will wax and wane; and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in +its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all +things--a sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity. + + + + +DOMUS ANGUSTA + + +The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for its +slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but their +complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, of the human +lot. A disproportion--all in favour of man--between man and his destiny +is one of the things to be taken for granted in literature: so frequent +and so easy is the utterance of the habitual lamentation as to the +trouble of a "vain capacity," so well explained has it ever been. + + Thou hast not half the power to do me harm + That I have to be hurt, + +discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the brave +Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow house. +Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution is there, little +argument or definition, little explicitness. And yet for every vain +capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain destinies, for every +liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. It is the trouble of the wide +house we hear of, clamorous of its disappointments and desires. The +narrow house has no echoes; yet its pathetic shortcoming might well move +pity. On that strait stage is acted a generous tragedy; to that +inadequate soul is intrusted an enormous sorrow; a tempest of movement +makes its home within that slender nature; and heroic happiness seeks +that timorous heart. + +We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its +inarticulateness--not, certainly, its fewness of words, but its +inadequacy and imprecision of speech. For, doubtless, right language +enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. Who, for +instance, but trusts more nobly for knowing the full word of his +confidence? Who but loves more penetratingly for possessing the ultimate +syllable of his tenderness? There is a "pledging of the word," in +another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and promise. The poet +pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and finds therein a peculiar +sanction. And I suppose that even physical pain takes on an edge when it +not only enforces a pang but whispers a phrase. Consciousness and the +word are almost as closely united as thought and the word. Almost--not +quite; in spite of its inexpressive speech, the narrow house is aware and +sensitive beyond, as it were, its poor power. + +But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, we know +it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; love is +great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic virtue; and +to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, submissive in the +indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the vulgar, secret in the +familiar. It is destructive, because it not only closes but contradicts +life. Unlikely people die. The one certain thing, it is also the one +improbable. A dreadful paradox is perhaps wrought upon a little nature +that is incapable of death and yet is constrained to die. That is a true +destruction, and the thought of it is obscure. + +Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal pause. +It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical conclusion. Mrs. +Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. Considering her mental powers, +by the way, an illogical conclusion for her would be manifestly +inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, having seen a life whole, sees it to +an end: sees it out, and Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the +audacity that, having kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the +grotesque man in literature is immortal, and with something more +significant than the immortality awarded to him in the sayings of +rhetoric; he is perdurable because he is not completed. His humours are +strangely matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; +for there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be +mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I thank +my fellow mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke that the +French so pleasantly call _une joyeusete_; these are to smile at. But +the gay injustice of laughter is between me and the man or woman in a +book, in fiction, or on the stage in a play. + +That narrow house--there is sometimes a message from its living windows. +Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by moments from eyes +that are apt to express none but common things. There are allusions +unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief glances. Far from me and +from my friends be the misfortune of meeting such looks in reply to pain +of our inflicting. To be clever and sensitive and to hurt the foolish +and the stolid--"wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?" + + + + +INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE + + +I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words in +union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union in the +art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are for each +poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to take the +cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in place of the +virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly consent to take them +for ordering even the most habitual of daily affairs--is to forgo +Innocence and Experience at once and together. Obviously, Experience can +be nothing except personal and separate; and Innocence of a singularly +solitary quality is his who does not dip his hands into other men's +histories, and does not give to his own word the common sanction of other +men's summaries and conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and +Experience in one, and take them as a sign of the necessary and noble +isolation of man from man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to +forgo that manner of personal separateness, and to use the things of +others, I think I would rather appropriate their future than their past. +Let me put on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must +borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified +ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my memory +with an unjustifiable history. + +And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love-poetry +consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no reluctance in +adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom they have not even +been introduced. Their verse is full of ready-made memories, various, +numerous, and cruel. No single life--supposing it to be a liberal life +concerned with something besides sex--could quite suffice for so much +experience, so much disillusion, so much _deception_. To achieve that +tone in its fullness it is necessary to take for one's own the +_praeterita_ (say) of Alfred de Musset and of the men who helped him--not +to live but--to have lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than +any man lives, and to make a common hoard of erotic remembrances with all +kinds of poets. + +As the Franciscans wear each other's old habits, and one friar goes about +darned because of another's rending, so the poet of a certain order grows +cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not otherwise will the +resultant verse succeed in implying so much--or rather so many, in the +feminine plural. The man of very sensitive individuality might hesitate +at the adoption. The Franciscan is understood to have a fastidiousness +and to overcome it. And yet, if choice were, one might wish rather to +make use of one's fellow men's old shoes than put their old secrets to +use, and dress one's art in a motley of past passions. Moreover, to +utilize the mental experience of many is inevitably to use their verse +and phrase. For the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are +familiar enough. One of them is the absence of the word of promise and +pledge, the loss of the earliest and simplest of the impulses of love: +which is the vow. "Till death!" "For ever!" are cries too simple and +too natural to be commonplace, and in their denial there is the least +tolerable of banalities--that of other men's disillusions. + +Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature a +delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of assumption, +of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose love-poetry were +thus true, and whose _pudeur_ of personality thus simple and inviolate. +This is the private man, in other words the gentleman, who will neither +love nor remember in common. + + + + +THE HOURS OF SLEEP + + +There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None the less are +they his by some state within the mind, which answers rhythmically and +punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, without drowsiness, without +languor, and without gloom, the night mind of man is yet not his day +mind; he has night-powers of feeling which are at their highest in +dreams, but are night's as well as sleep's. The powers of the mind in +dreams, which are inexplicable, are not altogether baffled because the +mind is awake; it is the hour of their return as it is the hour of a +tide's, and they do return. + +In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to hamper her +influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the nerves of the +sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of anger and love, +contempt and terror to which not only can no event of the real day +persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not even the capacity. +This increase of capacity, which is the dream's, is punctual to the +night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at arm's length. + +The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and their +dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he puts off +his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the other state, +by day. "I shall be able to bear this when I am grown up" is not oftener +in a young child's mind than "I shall endure to think of it in the day- +time." By this he confesses the double habit and double experience, not +to be interchanged, and communicating together only by memory and hope. + +Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night is to +miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might imagine the +rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to the time, and +tempering the extremities of either state by messages of remembrance and +expectancy. + +Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any delirium, +would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less would be the loss +of him who had not exercised his waking thought under the influence of +the hours claimed by dreams. And as to choosing between day and night, +or guessing whether the state of day or dark is the truer and the more +natural, he would be rash who should make too sure. + +In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. +That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to lose +the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The hours of sleep +are too much altered when they are filled by lights and crowds; and +Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, as when the +larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs and sing +daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature is easily +deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray as to the +hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid so much noise and +among so many people that you shall not be aware of them; you may thus +merely force and prolong the day. But to do so is not to live well both +lives; it is not to yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to +be cradled in the swing of change. + +There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such a +cradle of alternate hours. "It cannot be," says Herbert, "that I am he +on whom Thy tempests fell all night." + +It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, has +the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines in English +poetry--lines that cast sunrise shadows--are those of Blake, written +confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow and dreams, and +those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; all is as dark as he +can make it with the "bags of soot"; but the boy's dream of the green +plain and the river is too bright for day. So, indeed, is another +brightness of Blake's, which is also, in his poem, a child's dream, and +was certainly conceived by him in the hours of sleep, in which he woke to +write the Songs of Innocence:- + + O what land is the land of dreams? + What are its mountains, and what are its streams? + O father, I saw my mother there, + Among the lilies by waters fair. + Among the lambs clothed in white, + She walk'd with her Thomas in sweet delight. + +To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision. + +Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. In some +landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, and it +was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and dreams +claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an illumination. +Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in summer so many of +the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He carries the mood of man's +night out into the sunshine--Corot did so--and lives the life of night, +in all its genius, in the presence of a risen sun. In the only time when +the heart can dream of light, in the night of visions, with the rhythmic +power of night at its dark noon in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of +the actual sun. + +He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. To that +life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other kinds of +beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the extreme +perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the explanation of +all the memories of dreams recalled by these visionary paintings, done in +earlier years than were those, better known, that are the Corots of all +the world. Every man who knows what it is to dream of landscape meets +with one of these works of Corot's first manner with a cry, not of +welcome only, but of recognition. Here is morning perceived by the +spirit of the hours of sleep. + + + + +SOLITUDE + + +The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom civilization +has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom civilization has +given little but its reaction, its rebound, its chips, its refuse, its +shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to them solitude is a right +foregone or a luxury unattained; a right foregone, we may name it, in the +case of the nearly savage, and a luxury unattained in the case of the +nearly refined. These has the movement of the world thronged together +into some blind by-way. + +Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, and +virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, unclaimed. +They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their kingdoms they are +ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have not guessed that they own +for every man a space inviolate, a place of unhidden liberty and of no +obscure enfranchisement. They do not claim even the solitude of closed +corners, the narrow privacy of the lock and key; nor could they command +so much. For the solitude that has a sky and a horizon they know not how +to wish. + +It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the woods, +and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be measured by +miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are freshly and freely the +dominion of every man for the day of his possession. There is loneliness +for innumerable solitaries. As many days as there are in all the ages, +so many solitudes are there for men. This is the open house of the +earth; no one is refused. Nor is the space shortened or the silence +marred because, one by one, men in multitudes have been alone there +before. Solitude is separate experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be +numbered by days, but by men themselves. Every man of the living and +every man of the dead might have had his "privacy of light." + +It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; and a +thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult to get for +a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude be enclosed, it +is still an open solitude, so there be "no cloister for the eyes," and a +space of far country or a cloud in the sky be privy to your hiding-place. +But the best solitude does not hide at all. + +This the people who have drifted together into the streets live whole +lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation of even the +solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never have a whole hour +alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent companionship, as people +may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical choice, familiar with one another +and not intimate. They live under careless observation and subject to a +vagabond curiosity. Theirs is the involuntary and perhaps the +unconscious loss which is futile and barren. + +One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or the +hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, visible, +without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication and practice of +action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or futile loss, and +they have a conviction, and they bestow the conviction, of solitude +deferred. + +Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone and +inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in many a +drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. The girl +stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the sun for the +closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as she looks, out of +sight. + +Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural solitude of +a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed and talked about, +handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, and there is so much +importunate service going forward, that a woman is hardly alone long +enough to become aware, in recollection, how her own blood moves +separately, beside her, with another rhythm and different pulses. All is +commonplace until the doors are closed upon the two. This unique +intimacy is a profound retreat, an absolute seclusion. It is more than +single solitude; it is a redoubled isolation more remote than mountains, +safer than valleys, deeper than forests, and further than mid-sea. + +That solitude partaken--the only partaken solitude in the world--is the +Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and a betrayal +of that confidence might well be held to be the least pardonable of all +crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a +woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a +child's foot runs. But the favourite crime of the sentimentalist is that +of a woman against her child. Her power, her intimacy, her opportunity, +that should be her accusers, are held to excuse her. She gains the most +slovenly of indulgences and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar +grounds that her crime was easy. + +Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by the +way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from common +opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the situation. He +was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was his secret, and the +public was not privy to his artistic conscience. He does violence to the +obligations of which he is aware, and which the world does not know very +explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he is lawless in a more literal +sense, but only hopes the world will believe that he has a whole code of +his own making. It would, nevertheless, be less unworthy to break +obvious rules obviously in the obvious face of the public, and to abide +the common rebuke. + +It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and wide +and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial of the +accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace or so aside, +is enough to lead thither. + +A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very sincerely. In +order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep the published +promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover of long seclusion +or of a very life of loneliness. He should have gained the state of +solitariness which is a condition of life quite unlike any other. The +traveller who may have gone astray in countries where an almost life-long +solitude is possible knows how invincibly apart are the lonely figures he +has seen in desert places there. Their loneliness is broken by his +passage, it is true, but hardly so to them. They look at him, but they +are not aware that he looks at them. Nay, they look at him as though +they were invisible. Their un-self-consciousness is absolute; it is in +the wild degree. They are solitaries, body and soul; even when they are +curious, and turn to watch the passer-by, they are essentially alone. +Now, no one ever found that attitude in a squire's figure, or that look +in any country gentleman's eyes. The squire is not a life-long solitary. +He never bore himself as though he were invisible. He never had the +impersonal ways of a herdsman in the remoter Apennines, with a blind, +blank hut in the rocks for his dwelling. Millet would not even have +taken him as a model for a solitary in the briefer and milder sylvan +solitudes of France. And yet nothing but a life-long, habitual, and wild +solitariness would be quite proportionate to a park of any magnitude. + +If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so +there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. It +is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris expression. It is +the quickly caught, though not interested, look, the dull but ready +glance of those who do not know of their forfeited place apart; who have +neither the open secret nor the close; no reserve, no need of refuge, no +flight nor impulse of flight; no moods but what they may brave out in the +street, no hope of news from solitary counsels. + + + + +DECIVILIZED + + +The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with +decivilized man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity--sparing +him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge of +barbarism. Especially from new soil--remote, colonial--he faces you, +bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded of his own +youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems about ranches and +canyons; they are designed to betray the recklessness of his nature and +to reveal the good that lurks in the lawless ways of a young society. He +is there to explain himself, voluble, with a glossary for his own artless +slang. But his colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The +new air does but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does +but set into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse +feeling of a race decivilizing. He who played long this pattering part +of youth, hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he did not +wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult to +communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder than a +second-hand (figurative) dress coat. And when it was a question not of +rebuke, but of praise, even the American was ill-content with the word of +the judicious who lauded him for some delicate successes in continuing +something of the literature of England, something of the art of France; +he was more eager for the applause that stimulated him to write poems in +prose form and to paint panoramic landscape, after brief training in +academies of native inspiration. Even now English voices are constantly +calling upon America to begin--to begin, for the world is expectant. +Whereas there is no beginning for her, but instead a fine and admirable +continuity which only a constant care can guide into sustained advance. + +But decivilized man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, too, +knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a literature, an +art, a music, all his own--derived from many and various things of price. +Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity and cheapness, is impossible +without a beautiful past. Its chief characteristic--which is futility, +not failure--could not be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory +reproduction, the quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, +especially the utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic +quality, purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the +antecedents of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of +them. And nothing can be much sadder that such a proof of what may +possibly be the failure of derivation. + +Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of time, +we may, indeed choose backwards. We may give our thoughts noble +forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; they shall be +also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our inheritance, and not +our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our minds may trace upwards and +follow their ways to the best well-heads of the arts. The very habit of +our thoughts may be persuaded one way unawares by their antenatal +history. Their companions must be lovely, but need be no lovelier than +their ancestors; and being so fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may +be intrusted to keep the counsels of literature. + +Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel which of +us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers of subsequent +depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the contemporary +tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards dishonour? Or who +shall discover why derivation becomes degeneration, and where and when +and how the bastardy befalls? The decivilized have every grace as the +antecedent of their vulgarities, every distinction as the precedent of +their mediocrities. No ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or +laugh, but has the excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by +some living sweetness once. Nor are the decivilized to blame as having +in their own persons possessed civilization and marred it. They did not +possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an +inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can hardly +do other than continue. + +Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and +multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because they are many; +but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what dullness in +their future! To the eye that has reluctantly discovered this truth--that +the vulgarized are not _un_-civilized, and that there is no growth for +them--it does not look like a future at all. More ballad-concerts, more +quaint English, more robustious barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, +more colonial poetry, more young nations with withered traditions. Yet +it is before this prospect that the provincial overseas lifts up his +voice in a boast or a promise common enough among the incapable young, +but pardonable only in senility. He promises the world a literature, an +art, that shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just +built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain words were +dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful and pitiable +as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them when they are +the promise of an impotent people? "I will do such things: what they are +yet I know not." + + + + +THE SPIRIT OF PLACE + + +With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets have +all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too much +interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible +utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The bell, like the bird, +is a musician pestered with literature. + +To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake together +a nightingale's notes, or strike or drive them into haste, nor can you +make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your turn, whereas +wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere movement and hustling. I +have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous note in the whole +peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with their harshness made +light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had again been forced to dance +in his boots by a merry highwayman. + +The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, +and the chimes await their appointed time to fly--wild prisoners--by twos +or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives--one or twelve taking +wing--they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; they are delivered +from the close hands of this actual present. Not in vain is the sudden +upper door opened against the sky; they are away, hours of the past. + +Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most surely +after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of France when one +has arrived by night; they are no more to be forgotten than the bells in +"Parsifal." They mingle with the sound of feet in unknown streets, they +are the voices of an unknown tower; they are loud in their own language. +The spirit of place, which is to be seen in the shapes of the fields and +the manner of the crops, to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the +breath of the earth, overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of +some black-smith, calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks +its local tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and +greatly by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you know +how familiar, how childlike, how life-long it is in the ears of the +people. The bells are strange, and you know how homely they must be. +Their utterances are, as it were, the classics of a dialect. + +Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and +where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides +entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, +its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, having been perceived a week, +and is not scattered but abides, one living body of remembrance. The +untravelled spirit of place--not to be pursued, for it never flies, but +always to be discovered, never absent, without variation--lurks in the by- +ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. +It awaits us always in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and +nimble within its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long +white roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give +promise not of its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular and +unforeseen goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be +made. Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay such a +visit? And if by good fortune it is a child who is the pilgrim, the +spirit of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for antiquity and the +conceiver of antiquity (who is only a child) know one another; nor is +there a more delicate perceiver of locality than a child. He is well +used to words and voices that he does not understand, and this is a +condition of his simplicity; and when those unknown words are bells, loud +in the night, they are to him as homely and as old as lullabies. + +If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in gay +measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a +wedding--bells that would step to quite another and a less agile march +with a better grace--there are belfries that hold far sweeter companies. +If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a most curious +local immemorial music in many a campanile on the heights. Their way is +for the ringers to play a tune on the festivals, and the tunes are not +hymn tunes or popular melodies, but proper bell-tunes, made for bells. +Doubtless they were made in times better versed than ours in the +sub-divisions of the arts, and better able to understand the strength +that lies ready in the mere little submission to the means of a little +art, and to the limits--nay, the very embarrassments--of those means. If +it were but possible to give here a real bell-tune--which cannot be, for +those melodies are rather long--the reader would understand how some +village musician of the past used his narrow means as a composer for the +bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, fancy, and what +effect of liberty. + +These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. The +belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the time +when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, needless to say, +this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. At that time they must +have had foundries for bells of tender voices, and pure, warm, light, and +golden throats, precisely tuned. The hounds of Theseus had not a more +just scale, tuned in a peal, than a North Italian belfry holds in leash. +But it does not send them out in a mere scale, it touches them in the +order of the game of a charming melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by +man this is by far the most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the +great churches. Giotto's coloured tower in Florence, that carries the +bells for Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's silent dome, does not +ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, depth, and +dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly fills the country. + +The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can therefore +hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no other bells in +earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly set open to the cloud, +on a _festa_ morning, to let fly those soft-voiced flocks, but the +nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our local tune is +uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, secluded, sequestered +art of composing melodies for bells--charming division of an art, having +its own ends and means, and keeping its own wings for unfolding by +law--dwells in these solitary places. No tunes in a town would get this +hearing, or would be made clear to the end of their frolic amid such a +wide and lofty silence. + +Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; the +custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the nervous tourist +complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact he is made to hear +an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous tourist has not, +perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of place does not signal to +him to go and find it among innumerable hills, where one by one, one by +one, the belfries stand and play their tunes. Variable are those lonely +melodies, having a differing gaiety for the festivals; and a pitiful air +is played for the burial of a villager. + +As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten when +the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in thought to +earth's untethered sounds. This is Milton's curfew, that sways across +one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry--"the wide-watered." + + + + +POPULAR BURLESQUE + + +The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the +motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets with +the sound of processionals and of recessionals--a certain popular version +of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I hear the cries of +derision raised by the makers of this likeness of something unworshipful +on the earth beneath, so much the more am I convinced that the national +humour is that of banter, and that no other kind of mirth so gains as +does this upon the public taste. + +Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that day is +as the people will actually have it, with their own invention, their own +material, their own means, and their own spirit. They owe nothing on +this occasion to the promptings or the subscriptions of the classes that +are apt to take upon themselves the direction and tutelage of the people +in relation to any form of art. Here on every fifth of November the +people have their own way with their own art; and their way is to offer +the service of the image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some +creature of their hands. + +It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is capable +of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. To make a +mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or conceived in the +mind, being an industrious custom of children and childish people which +lapses in the age of much idle reading, the making of a material image is +the still more diligent and more sedulous act, whereby the primitive man +controls and caresses his own fancy. He may take arms anon, +disappointed, against his own work; but did he ever do that work in +malice from the outset? + +From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person of the +guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen's idea of something +admirable which he might carry in procession on some other day, the +carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would hoot at a +suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a good-looking +doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image-making art in the +practice of our people, except only this art of rags and contumely. Or, +again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were that of anger for a certain +cause, the destruction would not be the work of so thin an annual malice +and of so heartless a rancour. + +But the single motive is that popular irony which becomes daily--or so it +seems--more and more the holiday temper of the majority. Mockery is the +only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the only intelligence. +They make an image of some one in whom they do not believe, to deride it. +Say that the guy is the effigy of an agitator in the cause of something +to be desired; the street man and boy have then two motives of mocking: +they think the reform to be not worth doing, and they are willing to +suspect the reformer of some kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this +occasion is most characteristic of all guys in London. The people, +having him or her to deride, do not even wait for the opportunity of +their annual procession. They anticipate time, and make an image when it +is not November, and sell it at the market of the kerb. + +Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the citizens, +perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their laws. These, +too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal taunt. They are, +indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at all--this it is that +makes the _succes fou_ (and here Paris is of one mind with London) of +the street; but short of such a triumph, and when a meaning is +discernible, it is an irony. + +Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) seems +to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is the strangest +thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most mocking in the +exchange. If the burlesque of the maid's tongue is provocative, that of +the man's is derisive. Somewhat of the order of things as they stood +before they were inverted seems to remain, nevertheless, as a memory; +nay, to give the inversion a kind of lagging interest. Irony is made +more complete by the remembrance, and by an implicit allusion to the +state of courtship in other classes, countries, or times. Such an +allusion no doubt gives all its peculiar twang to the burlesque of love. + +With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their millions +undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who are their +mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure sense their +suitors, and in a strolling manner, with one knows not what ungainly +motive of reserve, even their admirers. Nor from their tongues only; +for, to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys the girl; and if he wears +her hat, it is ten to one that he has plucked it off with a humorous +disregard of her dreadful pins. + +We have to believe that unmocked love has existence in the streets, +because of the proof that is published when a man shoots a woman who has +rejected him; and from this also do we learn to believe that a woman of +the burlesque classes is able to reject. But for that sign we should +find little or nothing intelligible in what we see or overhear of the +drama of love in popular life. + +In its easy moments, in its leisure, at holiday time, it baffles all +tradition, and shows us the spirit of comedy clowning after a fashion +that is insular and not merely civic. You hear the same twang in country +places; and whether the English maid, having, like the antique, thrown +her apple at her shepherd, run into the thickets of Hampstead Heath or +among sylvan trees, it seems that the most humorous thing to be done by +the swain would be, in the opinion in vogue, to stroll another way. +Insular I have said, because I have not seen the like of this fashion +whether in America or elsewhere in Europe. + +But the chief inversion of all, proved summarily by the annual inversion +of the worship of images on the fifth of November, is that of a sentence +of Wordsworth's--"We live by admiration." + + + + +HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT + + +Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of communication +with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the interior act most gentle; +there may be a tacit apology, and a profound misgiving unexpressed; a +reluctance not only to refuse but to be arbiter; a dislike of the office; +a regret, whether for the unequal distribution of social luck or for a +purse left at home, equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts no word or +sign, nothing whatever of intercourse. If a dog or a cat accosts you, or +a calf in a field comes close to you with a candid infant face and +breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind of animal comes to +you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, you acknowledge it. But +the beggar to whom you give nothing expects no answer to a question, no +recognition of his presence, not so much as the turn of your eyelid in +his direction, and never a word to excuse you. + +Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer to the +beggar's remark than to leave a shop without "Good morning." When +complaint is made of the modern social manner--that it has no merit but +what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain from courtesy with +more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely requires--the habit of +manner towards beggars is probably not so much as thought of. To the +simply human eye, however, the prevalent manner towards beggars is a +striking thing; it is significant of so much. + +Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the intelligible +act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity that marks the caste +answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, in Italy, for example. An +elderly Italian lady on her slow way from her own ancient ancestral +_palazzo_ to the village, and accustomed to meet, empty-handed, a certain +number of beggars, answers them by a retort which would be, literally +translated, "Excuse me, dear; I, too, am a poor devil," and the last word +she naturally puts into the feminine. + +Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect--a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal terms as +nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present the phrase to +English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. The excellent woman +who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, and raises no smile. +It is only in another climate, and amid other manners, that one cannot +recall it without a smile. To a mind having a lively sense of contrast +it is not a little pleasant to imagine an elderly lady of corresponding +station in England replying so to importunities for alms; albeit we have +nothing answering to the good fellowship of a broad patois used currently +by rich and poor, and yet slightly grotesque in the case of all +speakers--a dialect in which, for example, no sermon is ever preached, +and in which no book is ever printed, except for fun; a dialect +"familiar, but by no means vulgar." Besides, even if our Englishwoman +could by any possibility bring herself to say to a mendicant, "Excuse me, +dear; I, too, am a poor devil," she would still not have the opportunity +of putting the last word punctually into the feminine, which does so +complete the character of the sentence. + +The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase of +excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And everywhere in +the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who suddenly begins to +beg from you when you least expected it, calls you "my daughter," you can +hardly reply without kindness. Where the tourist is thoroughly well +known, doubtless the company of beggars are used to savage manners in the +rich; but about the byways and remoter places there must still be some +dismay at the anger, the silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive +haughtiness wherewith the opportunity of alms-giving is received by +travellers. + +In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so emphatically +as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so manifestly put +themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant to see them there; +but silence or a storm of impersonal protest--a protest that appeals +vaguely less to the beggars than to some not impossible police--does not +seem the most appropriate manner of rebuking them. We have, it may be, a +scruple on the point of human dignity, compromised by the entreaty and +the thanks of the mendicant; but we have a strange way of vindicating +that dignity when we refuse to man, woman, or child the recognition of a +simply human word. Nay, our offence is much the greater of the two. It +is not merely a rough and contemptuous intercourse, it is the refusal of +intercourse--the last outrage. How do we propose to redress those +conditions of life that annoy us when a brother whines, if we deny the +presence, the voice, and the being of this brother, and if, because +fortune has refused him money, we refuse him existence? + +We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold it in +the indifference of the wise. "Have patience, little saint," is a phrase +that might teach us the cheerful way to endure our own unintelligible +fortunes in the midst, say, of the population of a hill-village among the +most barren of the Maritime Alps, where huts of stone stand among the +stones of an unclothed earth, and there is no sign of daily bread. The +people, albeit unused to travellers, yet know by instinct what to do, and +beg without the delay of a moment as soon as they see your unwonted +figure. Let it be taken for granted that you give all you can; some form +of refusal becomes necessary at last, and the gentlest--it is worth while +to remember--is the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the +portent of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that +of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made +to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, +uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, +thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to +the violence of the rich. + +It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If a beggar is +still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer and comfort us +to see; he practises not merely the conventional seeming, which is hardly +intended to convince, but a more subtle and dramatic kind of semblance, +of no good influence upon the morals of the road. He no longer trusts +the world with a sight of his gaiety. He is not a wholehearted +mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty of unstable balance whereby +an unattached creature can go in a new direction with a new wind. The +merry beggar was the only adventurer free to yield to the lighter touches +of chance, the touches that a habit of resistance has made imperceptible +to the seated and stable social world. + +The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, by +tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has been +stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, led +underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys of the song of +the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to capture, have +ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world's ears. But it seems +that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy beggar is still the +subject of a Spanish song. + +That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw's or a robber's, it is +not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling note of a man +who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill-fortune, but takes +it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand of +unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own choice of bonds, +but has not broken his own by force. It seems, therefore, the song of an +indomitable liberty of movement, light enough for the puffs of a zephyr +chance. + + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross it, +unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of the +monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see more than +beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her in guest-house +and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin--the first of the +dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, and +backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings in a +cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is this, and +these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, sharper, and +loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. Just such a +Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot of its final +crucifix you can see the sunrise touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the +encircled lake below is cool with the last of the night. The same order +of friars keep that sub-Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the +Kreuzberg beyond Bonn with the same steep path by the same fourteen +chapels, facing the Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green over +the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing of +smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and languidly +cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; +the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and +lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and +the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady +ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining +people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages +are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates +have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon +their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more +than half the colour--over all the chocolate and all the blue--with which +the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, +simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine +and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense--it is +modern; and the friars look young in another--they are like their +brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists of +yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or "old +world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be by the +excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers work +upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous bee- +farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is gaily hanging +the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and a machine which +slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the yard thereby is +guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the +obscure impulses of a dog's heart--atoned for by long and self-conscious +remorse--he bit the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make +doggerel of him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on +monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among +the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other +valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at +them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl +that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place +with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome +to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth +pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian +saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and +between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries +continually since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her +the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited as to +show the world that their life was aloof from its "idle business." By +some such phrase, at least, the friar would assuredly have attempted to +include her in any spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have +asked of her the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the +Salvation Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making +such a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran's +ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As a pocket +it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the local white wine +made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this house by the West, is +carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger at the gates. The +friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and +not only to make, but also to toss them. Those who chanced to be in the +room stood prudently aside, and the brother tossed boldly. But that was +the last that was seen of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in _La +Legende des Siecles_ of disappearance as the thing which no creature +is able to achieve: here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by +quite an ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was +an end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up +gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy +or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found +but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome +the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the +habit of sacrificing sleep. What art, what literature, or what life but +would gain a secret security by such a point of perpetual freshness and +perpetual initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a +will that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of the +French fields, and the hour of night--_l'ora di notte_--which rings +with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the Adriatic +littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the prayer for the +dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work of +the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it is +principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and strength of +heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, the friars are not +doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a refuge from despair. These +"bearded counsellors of God" keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing, +hold silence; whereas they might be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon +the Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or +reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among the +involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is +a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous +activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the +dwellers within such walls as these. The output--again a beautiful +word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the +stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once again upon those monastery +gates. + + + + +THE SEA WALL + + +A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish +association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright shadows of +grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves prick above +into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living in London, with +its too many windows and too few walls, the city which of all capitals +takes least visible hold upon the ground; or for the sake of some other +attraction or aversion, walls, blank and strong, reaching outward at the +base, are a satisfaction to the eyes teased by the inexpressive peering +of windows, by that weak lapse and shuffling which is the London "area," +and by the helpless hollows of shop-fronts. + +I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of wrought- +iron. A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a long level line +among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But never more majestic +than in face of the wild sea, the wall, steadying its slanting foot upon +the rock, builds in the serried ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The +sea-wall is the wall at its best. And fine as it is on the strong coast, +it is beautiful on the weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a +northern beach. + +That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that +passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with the +winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the sky-line +of sea is jagged. Never from any height does the ocean-horizon show thus +broken and battered at its very verge, but from the flat coast and the +narrow world you can see the wave as far as you can see the water; and +the stormy light of a clear horizon is seen to be mobile and shifting +with the buoyant hillocks and their restless line. + +Nowhere in Holland does there seem to be such a low sea-wall as secures +many a mile of gentle English coast to the east. The Dutch dyke has not +that aspect of a lowly parapet against a tide; it springs with a look of +haste and of height; and when you first run upstairs from the encumbered +Dutch fields to look at the sea, there is nothing in the least like +England; and even the Englishman of to-day is apt to share something of +the old perversity that was minded to cast derision upon the Dutch in +their encounters with the tides. + +There has been some fault in the Dutch, making them subject to the slight +derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more romantic, and, as +it were, more slender. We English, once upon a time, did especially +flout the little nation then acting a history that proved worth the +writing. It may be no more than a brief perversity that has set a number +of our writers to cheer the memory of Charles II. Perhaps, even, it is +no more than another rehearsal of that untiring success at the expense of +the bourgeois. The bourgeois would be more simple than, in fact, he is +were he to stand up every time to be shocked; but, perhaps, the image of +his dismay is enough to reward the fancy of those who practise the wanton +art. And, when all is done, who performs for any but an imaginary +audience? Surely those companies of spectators and of auditors are not +the least of the makings of an author. A few men and women he achieves +within his books; but others does he create without, and to those figures +of all illusion makes the appeal of his art. More candid is the author +who has no world, but turns that appeal inwards to his own heart. He has +at least a living hearer. + +This is by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is done, the +dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch's was a dismal +time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the French King +remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, and the Dutch +in the Medway--all this was disaster. None the less, having the vanity +of new clothes and a pretty figure, did we--especially by the mouth of +Andrew Marvell--deride our victors, making sport of the Philistines with +a proper national sense of enjoyment of such physical disabilities, or +such natural difficulties, or such misfavour of fortune, as may beset the +alien. + +Especially were the denials of fortune matter for merriment. They are so +still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great novelist found +the smallness of some South German States to be the subject of unsating +banter. The German scenes at the end of "Vanity Fair," for example, may +prove how much the ridicule of mere smallness, fewness, poverty (and not +even real poverty, privation, but the poverty that shows in comparison +with the gold of great States, and is properly in proportion) rejoiced +the sense of humour in a writer and moralist who intended to teach +mankind to be less worldly. In Andrew Marvell's day they were even more +candid. The poverty of privation itself was provocative of the sincere +laughter of the inmost man, the true, infrequent laughter of the heart. +Marvell, the Puritan, laughed that very laughter--at leanness, at hunger, +cold, and solitude--in the face of the world, and in the name of +literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an English +Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared--not the smallness of the +lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness of clothing, nor the +fast. + + "This basso-rilievo of a man--" + +personal meagreness is the first joke and the last. + +It is not to be wondered at that he should find in the smallness of the +country of Holland matter for a cordial jest. But, besides the +smallness, there was that accidental and natural disadvantage in regard +to the sea. In the Venetians, commerce with the sea, conflict with the +sea, a victory over the sea, and the ensuing peace--albeit a less instant +battle and a more languid victory--were confessed to be noble; in the +Dutch they were grotesque. "With mad labour," says Andrew Marvell, with +the spirited consciousness of the citizen of a country well above ground +and free to watch the labour at leisure, "with mad labour" did the Dutch +"fish the land to shore." + + How did they rivet with gigantic piles, + Thorough the centre, their new-catched miles, + And to the stake a struggling country bound, + Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; + Building their watery Babel far more high + To reach the sea than those to scale the sky! + +It is done with a jolly wit, and in what admirable couplets! + + The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, + And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest. + +And it is even better sport that the astonished tritons and sea-nymphs +should find themselves provided with a capital _cabillau_ of shoals of +pickled Dutchmen (heeren for herring, says Marvell); and it must be +allowed that he rhymes with the enjoyment of irony. There is not a smile +for us in "Flecno," but it is more than possible to smile over this +"Character of Holland"; at the excluded ocean returning to play at leap- +frog over the steeples; at the rise of government and authority in +Holland, which belonged of right to the man who could best invent a +shovel or a pump, the country being so leaky:- + + Not who first sees the rising sun commands, + But who could first discern the rising lands. + +We have lost something more than the delighted laughter of Marvell, more +than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light in so +burly a frame--we have lost with these the wild humour that wore so well +the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much order, invention, +malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality--in a word, the +Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot stand firm within two +lines, but must slip beyond and between the boundaries, who tolerate the +couplets of Keats and imitate them, should praise the day of Charles II +because of Marvell's art, and not for love of the sorry reign. We had +plague, fire, and the Dutch in the Medway, but we had the couplet; and +there were also the measures of those more poetic poets, hitherto called +somewhat slightingly the Cavalier poets, who matched the wit of the +Puritan with a spirit simpler and less mocking. + +It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some +remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. It was a +time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so close, up in +the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed to be indeed +admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The gale came with an +indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed to break itself upon +the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in the voice of the sea +there were pauses, but none in that of the urgent gale with its hoo-hoo- +hoo all night, that clamoured down the calling of the waves. That lack +of pauses was the strangest thing in the tempest, because the increase of +sound seemed to imply a lull before. The lull was never perceptible, but +the lift was always an alarm. The onslaught was instant, where would it +stop? What was the secret extreme to which this hurry and force were +tending? You asked less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm +than what was drawing them. The attraction seemed the greater violence, +the more irresistible, and the more unknown. And there were moments when +the end seemed about to be attained. + +The wind struck us hasty blows, and unawares we borrowed, to describe it, +words fit for the sharp strokes of material things; but the fierce gale +is soft. Along the short grass, trembling and cowering flat on the +scarped hill-side, against the staggering horse, against the flint walls, +one with the rock they grasp, the battery of the tempest is a quick and +enormous softness. What down, what sand, what deep moss, what elastic +wave could match the bed and cushion of the gale? + +This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up together. +The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling whiteness of +foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such narrow waters you +do not see the distances, the wide levels of fleeting and floating foam, +that lie light between long wave and long wave on a Mediterranean coast, +regions of delicate and transitory brightness so far out that all the +waves, near and far, seem to be breaking at the same moment, one beyond +the other, and league beyond league, into foam. But the Channel has its +own strong, short curl that catches the rushing shingle up with the +freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, white upon the +white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls and the light of a +shining cloud. + + + + +TITHONUS + + +"It was resolved," said the morning paper, "to colour the borders of the +panels and other spaces of Portland stone with arabesques and other +patterns, but that no paint should be used, as paint would need renewing +from time to time. The colours, therefore,"--and here is the passage to +be noted--"are all mixed with wax liquefied with petroleum; and the wax +surface sets as hard as marble. . . The wax is left time to form an +imperishable surface of ornament, which would have to be cut out of the +stone with a chisel if it was desired to remove it." Not, apparently, +that a new surface is formed which, by much violence and perseverance, +could, years hence, be chipped off again; but that the "ornament" is +driven in and incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is +nothing possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of +ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled. + +Will this victory over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny +prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the +future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the strongest +of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by the human +race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this success in the +stencilling of St Paul's teach us, to our confusion. There is evidently +a man--a group of men--happy at this moment because it has been possible, +by great ingenuity, to force our posterity to have their cupola of St +Paul's with the stone mouldings stencilled and "picked out" with niggling +colours, whether that undefended posterity like it or not. And this is a +survival of one of the obscure pleasures of man, attested by history. + +It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and not +to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, eternal +legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of this former +human wish. If Galileo's Inquisitors put a check upon the earth, which +yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the Reformers' who arrested the +moving man, and inhibited the moving God. The sixteenth century and a +certain part of the age immediately following seem to be times when the +desire had conspicuously become a passion. Say the middle of the +sixteenth century in Italy and the beginning of the seventeenth in +England--for in those days we were somewhat in the rear. _There_ is the +obstinate, confident, unreluctant, undoubting, and resolved seizure upon +power. _Then_ was Rome rebuilt, re-faced, marked with a single sign and +style. Then was many a human hand stretched forth to grasp the fate of +the unborn. The fortunes and the thoughts of the day to come were to be +as the day then present would have them, if the dead hand--the living +hand that was then to die, and was to keep its hold in death--could by +any means make them fast. + +Obviously, to build at all is to impose something upon an age that may be +more than willing to build for itself. The day may soon come when no man +will do even so much without some impulse of apology. Posterity is not +compelled to keep our pictures or our books in existence, nor to read nor +to look at them; but it is more or less obliged to have a stone building +in view for an age or two. We can hardly avoid some of the forms of +tyranny over the future, but few, few are the living men who would +consent to share in this horrible ingenuity at St Paul's--this petroleum +and this wax. + +In 1842 they were discussing the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, +and the efforts of all in council were directed upon the future. How the +frescoes then to be achieved by the artists of the day should be made +secure against all mischances--smoke, damp, "the risk of bulging," even +accidents attending the washing of upper floors--all was discussed in +confidence with the public. It was impossible for anyone who read the +papers then to escape from some at least of the responsibilities of +technical knowledge. From Genoa, from Rome, from Munich especially, all +kinds of expert and most deliberate schemes were gathered in order to +defeat the natural and not superfluous operation of efficient and +effacing time. + +The academic little capital of Bavaria had, at about the same date, +decorated a vast quantity of wall space of more than one order of +architecture. Art revived and was encouraged at that time and place with +unparalleled obstinacy. They had not the malice of the petroleum that +does violence to St Paul's; but they had instead an indomitable patience. +Under the commands of the master Cornelius, they baffled time and all his +work--refused his pardons, his absolutions, his cancelling indulgences--by +a perseverance that nothing could discourage. Who has not known somewhat +indifferent painters mighty busy about their colours and varnishes? +Cornelius caused a pit to be dug for the preparation of the lime, and in +the case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime remained there for eight years, +with frequent stirrings. This was in order that the whole fresco, when +at last it was entrusted to its bed, should be set there for immortality. +Nor did the master fail to thwart time by those mechanical means that +should avert the risk of bulging already mentioned. He neglected no +detail. He was provident, and he lay in wait for more than one of the +laws of nature, to frustrate them. Gravitation found him prepared, and +so did the less majestic but not vain dispensation of accidents. Against +bulging he had an underplot of tiles set on end; against possible +trickling from an upper floor he had asphalt; it was all part of the +human conspiracy. In effect, the dull pictures at Munich seem to stand +well. It would have been more just--so the present age thinks of these +preserved walls--if the day that admired them had had them exclusively, +and our day had been exempt. The painted cathedrals of the Middle Ages +have undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche? + +In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to +shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and art. +They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came from Munich +to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a heart of +confidence into the breast of the Commission. The situation, he averred, +need not be too damp for immortality, with due care. What he had done in +the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek might be done with the best results +in England, in defiance of the weather, of the river, of the mere days, +of the divine order of alteration, and, in a word, of heaven and earth. + +Meanwhile, there was that good servant of the law of change, lime that +had not been kept quite long enough, ready to fulfil its mission; they +would have none of it. They evaded it, studied its ways, and put it to +the rout. "Many failures that might have been hastily attributed to damp +were really owing to the use of lime in too fresh a state. Of the +experimental works painted at Munich, those only have faded which are +known to have been done without due attention to the materials. _Thus, +a figure of Bavaria, painted by Kaulbach, which has faded considerably, +is known to have been executed with lime that was too fresh_." One +cannot refrain from italics: the way was so easy; it was only to take a +little less of this important care about the lime, to have a better +confidence, to be more impatient and eager, and all had been well: +_not_ to do--a virtue of omission. + +This is not a matter of art-criticism. It is an ethical question +hitherto unstudied. The makers of laws have not always been obliged to +face it, inasmuch as their laws are made in part for the present, and in +part for that future whereof the present needs to be assured--that is, +the future is bound as a guaranty for present security of person or +property. Some such hold upon the time to come we are obliged to claim, +and to claim it for our own sakes--because of the reflex effect upon our +own affairs, and not for the pleasure of fettering the time to come. +Every maker of a will does at least this. + +Were the men of the sixteenth century so moderate? Not they. They found +the present all too narrow for the imposition of their will. It did not +satisfy them to disinter and scatter the bones of the dead, nor to efface +the records of a past that offended them. It did not satisfy them to +bind the present to obedience by imperative menace and instant +compulsion. When they had burnt libraries and thrown down monuments and +pursued the rebels of the past into the other world, and had seen to it +that none living should evade them, then they outraged the future. + +Whatever misgivings may have visited those dominant minds as to the +effectual and final success of their measures--would their writ run in +time as well as place, and were the nameless populations indeed their +subjects?--whatever questions may have peered in upon those rigid +counsels and upon those busy vigils of the keepers of the world, they +silenced by legislation and yet more legislation. They wrote in statute +books; they would have written their will across the skies. Their hearts +would have burnt for lack of records more inveterate, and of testimonials +that mankind should lack courage to question, if in truth they did ever +doubt lest posterity might try their lock. Perhaps they did never so +much as foresee the race of the unnumbered and emancipated for whom their +prohibitions and penalties are no more than documents of history. + +If the tyrannous day of our fathers had but possessed the means of these +our more diffident times! They, who would have written their present and +actual will upon the skies, might certainly have written it in petroleum +and wax upon the stone. Fate did them wrong in withholding from their +hands this means of finality and violence. Into our hands it has been +given at a time when the student of the race thought, perhaps, that we +had been proved in the school of forbearance. Something, indeed, we may +have learnt therein, but not enough, as we now find. + +We have not yet the natural respect for the certain knowledge and the +probable wisdom of our successors. A certain reverend official document, +not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately recommended to the +veneration of the present times "those past ages with their store of +experience." Doubtless, as the posterity of their predecessors our +predecessors had experience, but, as our ancestors, none--none. +Therefore, if they were a little reverend our own posterity is right +reverend. It is a flippant and novelty-loving humour that so flatters +the unproved past and refuses the deference due to the burden of years +which is ours, which--grown still graver--will be our children's. + + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the art +of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of accident, +it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of accidental value, +and not of integral necessity. The virtual discovery of Japanese art, +during the later years of the second French Empire, caused Europe to +relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how lovely Incident may look +when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson was most welcome. Japan has +had her full influence. European art has learnt the value of position +and the tact of the unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her +characteristic art) content with her own conventions; she is local, +provincial, alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world +that has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched by +Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained the +noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, too, +symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of phase +and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong in a +complete melody--of symmetry in its most delicate and lively and least +stationary form--balance; whereas the _leit-motif_ is isolated. In +domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make a familiar +antithesis--the very commonplace of rival methods of art. But the same +antithesis exists in less obvious forms. The poets have sought +"irregular" metres. Incident hovers, in the very act of choosing its +right place, in the most modern of modern portraits. In these we have, +if not the Japanese suppression of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese +exaggeration of major emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. +The smile, the figure, the drapery--not yet settled from the arranging +touch of a hand, and showing its mark--the restless and unstationary +foot, and the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In passing, +a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture and the aspect +of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; whether still or in +motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have the alertness and +expectancy of flight in all their flocks of leaves, while the oaks and +elms are gathered in their station. All this is not Japanese, but from +such accident is Japanese art inspired, with its good luck of +perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counterchange +for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction +between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives may +be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not known as +motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. Repetition +and counterchange, of course, have their place in Japanese ornament, as +in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular an +invention, but here, too, uniqueness and position are the principal +inspiration. And it is quite worth while, and much to the present +purpose, to call attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese +diaper patterns, which is _interruption_. Repetition there must +necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which +is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and the +avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese design of +this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, you have a +curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though a separate +intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. Such renewed +consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness in design has more +peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of Japanese lines, in their +curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary to say that a line, in all +other schools of art, is long or short according to its place and +purpose; but only the Japanese designer so contrives his patterns that +the line is always short; and many repeating designs are entirely +composed of this various and variously-occurring brevity, this prankish +avoidance of the goal. Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the +unit of their repeating patterns, by another simple device--that of +numbers. They make a small difference in the number of curves and of +lines. A great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it +would look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one side +and six on another would be something else than a mere variation, and +variety would be lost by the use of them. The Japanese decorator will +vary three in this place by two in that, and a sense of the defeat of +symmetry is immediately produced. With more violent means the idea of +symmetry would have been neither suggested nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in Japanese +compositions, complete designs in which there is no point of symmetry. It +is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. There is no sense of lack +of equilibrium, because place is, most subtly, made to have the effect of +giving or of subtracting value. A small thing is arranged to reply to a +large one, for the small thing is placed at the precise distance that +makes it a (Japanese) equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other +countries) the scales commonly in use are furnished with only a single +weight that increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it +nearer or farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many +ounces when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it +hangs from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese +composition. Its place is its significance and its value. Such an art +of position implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few +things and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or +silences in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or +material, of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of +space--that is, collocation--that makes the value of empty intervals. The +space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is valuable +because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, is only another +way of saying that position is the principle of this apparently wilful +art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped to +justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending +Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral +support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind of +shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator's +knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the +spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. +Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written his signs so +freely had not the Japanese so freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, +the transitory and destructible material of Japanese art has done as much +as the multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer--the black and white artist--to working +for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of its daily life +by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means of paper, printed. +But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a destructive people, paper with +us means short life, quick abolition, transformation, re-appearance, a +very circulation of life. This is our present way of surviving +ourselves--the new version of that feat of life. Time was when to +survive yourself meant to secure, for a time indefinitely longer than the +life of man, such dull form as you had given to your work; to intrude +upon posterity. To survive yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into +daily oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper does +not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them a +different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned old +lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory +material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. What of +Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to a monotonous +convention to merit the serious study of races that have produced Cotman +and Corot. Japanese landscape-drawing reduces things seen to such +fewness as must have made the art insuperably tedious to any people less +fresh-spirited and more inclined to take themselves seriously than these +Orientals. A preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little +closer attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape--it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive--a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, and the +flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions of a people +intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to define by that +phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? Upon such search these +people are avowedly intent, even though they show themselves capable of +exquisite appreciation of the form of a normal bird and of the habit of +growth of a normal flower. They are not in search of the perpetual +slight novelty which was Aristotle's ideal of the language poetic ("a +little wildly, or with the flower of the mind," says Emerson of the way +of a poet's speech)--and such novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of +the pinion, that keeps verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are +intent upon is perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields +has eyes less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in +the path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in +fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness +he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. The +art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and not +the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby this people +conventionally signify wave or cloud. All these curls have an attitude +which is like that of a figure slightly malformed, and not like that of a +human body that is perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or +niggling labour. Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard +to say; they have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where +the upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and--especially in gold embroideries--is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, while +the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads take by +nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no other +art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The Japanese have +generally evaded even the local beauty of their own race for the sake of +perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is remote from our sympathy and +admiration; and it is quite possible that we might miss it in pictorial +presentation, and that the Japanese artist may have intended human beauty +where we do not recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is +certainly not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate dignity, +even--to be very generous--has been admired by the Japanese artist, and +is represented here and there occasionally, in the figure of warrior or +mousme. But even with this exception the habit of Japanese +figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, and crooked. It is +curious to observe that the search for slight deformity is so constant as +to make use, for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective +foreshortening. With us it is to the youngest child only that there +would appear to be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently +forward, would seem to have his head "beneath his shoulders." The +European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, +but--unused to the same effect "in the flat"--he thinks it prodigiously +humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. The Japanese +keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but +not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened +figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it than +the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion of +ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not precisely +scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous models. He +makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no need to +insist upon the ignoble character of those that are intentional +caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek decoration, and +would be glad to forget it, with the intention of learning that art +afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. But whatever may be +the phases of the arts, there is the abiding principle of symmetry in the +body of man, that goes erect, like an upright soul. Its balance is +equal. Exterior human symmetry is surely a curious physiological fact +where there is no symmetry interiorly. For the centres of life and +movement within the body are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is +Greek without and Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the +skeleton and of the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a +principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human +action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite +incidents--inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of +sleep--the symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that +symmetry complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because this +hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and that the +sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal +heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are +inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, +and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, +fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art. The order of +inflection that is not infraction has been explained in a most +authoritative sentence of criticism of literature, a sentence that should +save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak +experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, +"should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been +the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the _modulus_ of whose verse has been most +variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with feelings and +passions which are the inflections of moral law in their theme. Law puts +a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon law. +Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language is a +continual _slight_ novelty. In the highest poetry, like that of Milton, +these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all +chime together in praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual +proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry is +a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition of +human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle or +be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious +life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and +the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form +of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the +nobler and the more perdurable relation. + + + + +THE PLAID + + +It is disconcerting to hear of the plaid in India. Our dyes, we know, +they use in the silk mills of Bombay, with the deplorable result that +their old clothes are dull and unintentionally falsified with +infelicitous decay. The Hindus are a washing people; and the sun and +water that do but dim, soften, and warm the native vegetable dyes to the +last, do but burlesque the aniline. Magenta is bad enough when it is +itself; but the worst of magenta is that it spoils but poorly. No bad +modern forms and no bad modern colours spoil well. And spoiling is an +important process. It is a test--one of the ironical tests that come too +late with their proofs. London portico-houses will make some such ruins +as do chemical dyes, which undergo no use but derides them, no accidents +but caricature them. This is an old enough grievance. But the plaid! + +The plaid is the Scotchman's contribution to the decorative art of the +world. Scotland has no other indigenous decoration. In his most +admirable lecture on "The Two Paths," Ruskin acknowledged, with a passing +misgiving, that his Highlanders had little art. And the misgiving was +but passing, because he considered how fatally wrong was the art of +India--"it never represents a natural fact. It forms its compositions +out of meaningless fragments of colour and flowings of line . . . It will +not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, +but only a spiral or a zig-zag." Because of this aversion from Nature +the Hindu and his art tended to evil, we read. But of the Scot we are +told, "You will find upon reflection that all the highest points of the +Scottish character are connected with impressions derived straight from +the natural scenery of their country." + +What, then, about the plaid? Where is the natural fact there? If the +Indian, by practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, cuts +himself off "from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or natural +delight," to what did the good and healthy Highlander condemn himself by +practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may be found in the vine, and +a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in nature is the plaid to be found? +There is surely no curve or curl that can be drawn by a designing hand +but is a play upon some infinitely various natural fact. The smoke of +the cigarette, more sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its +waves so multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and +such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence and +impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering curls +ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand--and that is not a Hindu hand, nor +any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured the curve of the +section of a sea-wave--its flow, relaxation, and fall; but this is a +single movement, whereas the line of cigarette-smoke in a still room +fluctuates in twenty delicate directions. No, it is impossible to accept +the saying that the poor spiral or scroll of a human design is anything +but a participation in the innumerable curves and curls of nature. + +Now the plaid is not only "cut off" from natural sources, as Ruskin says +of Oriental design--the plaid is not only cut off from nature, and cut +off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured off in inorganic +quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional contradiction of all +natural or vital forms. And it is equally defiant of vital tone and of +vital colour. Everywhere in nature tone is gradual, and between the +fainting of a tone and the failing of a curve there is a charming +analogy. But the tartan insists that its tone shall be invariable, and +sharply defined by contrasts of dark and light. As to colour, it has +colours, not colour. + +But that plaid should now go so far afield as to decorate the noble +garment of the Indies is ill news. True, Ruskin saw nothing but cruelty +and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an Indian maxim in +regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready sufferers: "There," says +the _Mahabharata_, "where women are treated with respect, the very gods +are said to be filled with joy. Women deserve to be honoured. Serve ye +them. Bend your will before them. By honouring women ye are sure to +attain to the fruition of all things." And the rash teachers of our +youth would have persuaded us that this generous lesson was first learnt +in Teutonic forests! + +Nothing but extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be +suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. Accordingly +the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil to the souls of +her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great-grandmother-in-law, in +gratitude for their giving her a good husband. And to go back for a +moment to Ruskin's contrast of the two races, it was assuredly under the +stress of some too rash reasoning that he judged the lovely art of the +East as a ministrant to superstition, cruelty, and pleasure, whether +wrought upon the temple, the sword, or the girdle. The innocent art of +innocent Hindu women for centuries decked their most modest heads, their +dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving breasts, and +consecrated chambers. + + + + +THE FLOWER + + +There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed by +those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere witnesses, in +its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the flower. In the shape of +the flower his own paltriness revisits him--his triviality, his sloth, +his cheapness, his wholesale habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. +These return to him and wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the +tyranny really had grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country +lodgings, where the most ordinary things of design and decoration have +sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a +cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal +and leaf--the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by +rote--are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and +insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all +imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed +for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is beset with flowers. It +blooms, a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron garden. The floor flourishes +with blossoms adust, poorly conventionalized into a kind of order; the +table-cover is ablaze with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper +is set with bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and +lilies in its very construction; over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig +is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the plaster +picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in the pediment +of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the barometer, in the +finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger-plates of the "grained" +door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait or to be traced the stale +inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the grate +but some blunt, black-leaded garland? The recital is wearisome, but the +retribution of the flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution +of man, the haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his +inconsiderable brain. + +The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling--subjection to the +smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap patterns is +no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain and transitory +author by the phrase. In literature as in all else man merits his +subjection to trivialities by his economical greed. A condition for +using justly and gaily any decoration would seem to be a measure of +reluctance. Ornament--strange as the doctrine sounds in a world +decivilized--was in the beginning intended to be something jocund; and +jocundity was never to be achieved but by postponement, deference, and +modesty. Nor can the prodigality of the meadows in May be quoted in +dispute. For Nature has something even more severe than modertion: she +has an innumerable singleness. Her buttercup meadows are not prodigal; +they show multitude, but not multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly +the disgrace of decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his +delights? or who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his +wishes--the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous +Fate that man should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her +answer every time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the day +when she shall make the one tremendous difference among her gifts--and +make it perhaps in secret--by naming one of them the ultimate. What, for +novelty, what, for singleness, what, for separateness, can equal the +last? Of many thousand kisses the poor last--but even the kisses of your +mouth are all numbered. + + + + +UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM + + +It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of +man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the form of +man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is at least as +important as the scenery of geological structure, or the scenery of +architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the lovers of +mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have consented to +ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, inasmuch as it has the +finest lines and therewith those slender, diminishing forms which, coming +at the base of the human structure, show it to be a thing of life by its +unstable equilibrium. A lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the +body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never +stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first +suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is +erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, +because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best +leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which +the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor +supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure it is the foot, +with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives the precious +instability, the spring and balance that are so organic. But man should +no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of +piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid. Inexpressive +of what they clothe as no kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they +are neither implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly +possible to err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent +writer is praised for "clothing his thought," it is to modern raiment +that one's agile fancy flies--fain of completing the metaphor! + +The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other than +the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the multiplication of +undignified forms that fill the streets, and demonstrate, and meet, and +listen to the speaker. For the undistinguished are very important by +their numbers. These are they who make the look of the artificial world. +They are man generalized; as units they inevitably lack something of +interest; all the more they have cumulative effect. It would be well if +we could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in +the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to be +changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are their +national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing of other +men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the reformed +dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have turned second- +hand. + + + + +VICTORIAN CARICATURE + + +There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, of a +certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century and +earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its aim the +vulgarizing of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas Jerrold +for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that humourist's serial, +"Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," which were presumably considered good +comic reading in the "Punch" of that time, and to make acquaintance with +a certain ideal of the grotesque. Obviously to make a serious comment on +anything which others consider or have considered humorous is to put +oneself at a disadvantage. He who sees the joke holds himself somewhat +the superior of the man who would see it, such as it is, if he thought it +worth his eyesight. The last-named has to bear the least tolerable of +modern reproaches--that he lacks humour; but he need not always care. Now +to turn over Douglas Jerrold's monologues is to find that people in the +mid-century took their mirth principally from the life of the _arriere +boutique_. On that shabby stage was enacted the comedy of literature. +Therefore we must take something of the vulgarity of Jerrold as a +circumstance of the social ranks wherein he delighted. But the essential +vulgarity is that of the woman. There is in some old "Punch" volume a +drawing by Leech--whom one is weary of hearing named the gentle, the +refined--where the work of the artist has vied with the spirit of the +letterpress. Douglas Jerrold treats of the woman's jealousy, Leech of +her stays. They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And +page by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that time +there was, moreover, one great humourist, one whom I infinitely admire; +he, too, I am grieved to remember, bore his part willingly in vulgarizing +the woman; and the part that fell to him was the vulgarizing of the act +of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing man at the law for evading her +fatuous companionship, woman incoherent, woman abandoned without +restraint to violence and temper, woman feigning sensibility--in none of +these ignominies is woman so common and so foolish for Dickens as she is +in child-bearing. + +I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are +humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is +moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is that +her husband--himself wearisome enough to die of--is weary of her, finds +the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him that she should +furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, to the annoyance of her +husband, and that her husband should have no desire to adorn her, and +that her mother should be intolerable. It pleases him that her baby, +with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette in its hat--a burlesque +baby--should be a grotesque object of her love, for that too makes subtly +for her abasement. Charles Keene, again--another contemporary, though he +lived into a later and different time. He saw little else than common +forms of human ignominy--indignities of civic physique, of stupid +prosperity, of dress, of bearing. He transmits these things in greater +proportion than he found them--whether for love of the humour of them, or +by a kind of inverted disgust that is as eager as delight--one is not +sure which is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities is rendered +with a completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain +sensitiveness of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get +convinced that real apprehension--real apprehensiveness--would not have +insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through almost +a whole career. There is one drawing in the "Punch" of years ago, in +which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible to even the +invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual broadcloth, has +gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and his umbrella open, and +the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when she awakes, the wife asleep +at his side in a night-cap. Every one who knows Keene's work can imagine +how the huge well-fed figure was drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across +the back, and how the bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene +drawing is matched by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, +ignominies of married life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old +common jape against the mother-in-law; abominable weddings: in one +drawing a bridegroom with shambling side-long legs asks his bride if she +is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, "No, never was." In all +these things there is very little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was +in the figures of his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness which in really +fine work could never be absent from a man's thought of a child or from +his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the subject in hand, is +absolutely lacking in Keene's designs; nevertheless, we acknowledge that +there is humour. It is also in some of his clerical figures when they +are not caricatures, and certainly in "Robert," the City waiter of +"Punch." But so irresistible is the derision of the woman that all +Charles Keene's persistent sense of vulgarity is intent centrally upon +her. Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the +social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for +her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies +and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper +the possession of whom is her boast, what then is she? + +This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular form +of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the habit by which +some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, whereas a silly man is +not reproached through his sex. But the vulgarity of which I have +written here was distinctively English--the most English thing that +England had in days when she bragged of many another--and it was not able +to survive an increased commerce of manners and letters with France. It +was the chief immorality destroyed by the French novel. + + + + +THE POINT OF HONOUR + + +Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. In +Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not +explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his trustworthiness; he +made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; he relied on his own +candour, and asked that the candid should rely upon him; he kept the +chastity of art when other masters were content with its honesty, and +when others saved artistic conscience he safeguarded the point of honour. +Contemporary masters more or less proved their position, and convinced +the world by something of demonstration; the first Impressionist simply +asked that his word should be accepted. To those who would not take his +word he offers no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of +a share in his responsibility. + +Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to be +believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of his +credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, his self- +defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible mysteries in art. +"You can see for yourself," the lesser man seems to say to the world, +"thus things are, and I render them in such manner that your intelligence +may be satisfied." This is an appeal to average experience--at the best +the cumulative experience; and with the average, or with the sum, art +cannot deal without derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: "Thus things +are in my pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so." We are not +excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain +authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art of +seeing pictorially which is the beginning and not far from the end--not +far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little indeed are we +shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's impression that +Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his colleagues. Thus may each +of us to whom he appeals take praise from the praised: he leaves my +educated eyes to do a little of the work. He respects my responsibility +no less--though he respects it less explicitly--than I do his. What he +allows me would not be granted by a meaner master. If he does not hold +himself bound to prove his own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It +is as though he used his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his +house my own. In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the +honours of his picture. + +Because Impressionism with all its extreme--let us hope its +ultimate--derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. Because +there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times responsible. To +undertake this art for the sake of its privileges without confessing its +obligations--or at least without confessing them up to the point of +honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see immunities precisely where +there are duties, and an advantage where there is a bond. A very mob of +men have taken Impressionism upon themselves, in several forms and under +a succession of names, in this our later day. It is against all +probabilities that more than a few among these have within them the point +of honour. In their galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And to +distrust is more humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of these +landscape-painters, deliberately rash, are painting the truth of their +own impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is easily answered; +truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the intelligence of the +common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the _dubium_ concerns +not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that their +sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate equipoise of +perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are enough? Now +Impressionists have told us things as to their impressions--as to the +effect of things upon the temperament of this man and upon the mood of +that--which should not be asserted except on the artistic point of +honour. The majority can tell ordinary truth, but should not trust +themselves for truth extraordinary. They can face the general judgement, +but they should hesitate to produce work that appeals to the last +judgement, which is the judgement within. There is too much reason to +divine that a certain number of those who aspire to differ from the +greatest of masters have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of +view worth seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying. +And to be, _de parti pris_, an Impressionist without these! O +Velasquez! Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach in her own +things. An author, here and there, will make as though he had a word +worth hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to withdraw +even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too +probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is the craft +and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded +by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy +risk, that undefined salvation. If the artistic temperament--tedious +word!--with all its grotesque privileges, becomes yet more common than it +is, there will be yet less responsibility; for the point of honour is the +simple secret of the few. + + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But the +true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, or of +life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the colour +of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully +visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal +and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not the manifestation +thereof. It is one of the things the value of which is secrecy, one of +the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. The true colour of life +is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit +and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the +modest colour of the unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life is +outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that it is +white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than earth; red, +but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less lucid than the +colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in all fine colour; +but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. Under Sicilian skies, +indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under the misty blue of the +English zenith, and the warm grey of the London horizon, it is as +delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, out to their utmost, flat as +stars, in the hedges of the end of June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any mass. +The human face does not give much of it, what with features, and beards, +and the shadow of the top-hat and _chapeau melon_ of man, and of the +veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is subject to a thousand +injuries and accidents. The popular face of the Londoner has soon lost +its gold, its white, and the delicacy of its red and brown. We miss +little beauty by the fact that it is never seen freely in great numbers +out-of-doors. You get it in some quantity when all the heads of a great +indoor meeting are turned at once upon a speaker; but it is only in the +open air, needless to say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in +the open air, "clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and +direct, or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of all his +ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer north-west +evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke of eight he +sheds the slough of nameless colours--all allied to the hues of dust, +soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has chosen for its +boys--and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and delicate flush between +the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. Clothed now with the sun, he +is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars as he goes to bathe, and the +reflection of an early moon is under his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. They +are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but only a +little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. The last and +most finished action of her intellect, passion, and knowledge is, as it +were, the flicking away of some insignificant thing mistaken for art by +other actors, some little obstacle to the way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, and +the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking colour +of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, he still +shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels and elastic +syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, his +brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening +midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature +has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the happily easy +way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to grow in the +streets--and no streets could ask for a more charming finish than your +green grass. The gasometer even must fall to pieces unless it is +renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is nothing so remediable as +the work of modern man--"a thought which is also," as Mr Pecksniff said, +"very soothing." And by remediable I mean, of course, destructible. As +the bathing child shuffles off his garments--they are few, and one brace +suffices him--so the land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off +its yellow brick and purple slate, and all the things that collect about +railway stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery of +Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea-coast. To +have once seen it there should be enough to make a colourist. O +memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared +setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea had the +dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect--the dark and +not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything was very +definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The most luminous +thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be +white because it was a little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. +It was still the whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous +thing was the little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of +life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the +violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious +history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the +scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. +Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you +consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to +spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but +to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, +social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, +according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the +tribune, was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and the +innermost--the privacy of death--was never allowed to put obstacles in +the way of public action for a public cause. Women might be, and were, +duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gouges, they claimed a +"right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of +the laws"; but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear +political responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was +guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public and complete amends. + + + + +THE HORIZON + + +To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter than +yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you raise the +horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. It is like the +scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his dramatic Italian hands, +bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does more than bid them. He lifts +them, he gathers them up, far and near, with the upward gesture of both +arms; he takes them to their feet with the compulsion of his expressive +force. Or it is as when a conductor takes his players to successive +heights of music. You summon the sea, you bring the mountains, the +distances unfold unlooked-for wings and take an even flight. You are but +a man lifting his weight upon the upward road, but as you climb the +circle of the world goes up to face you. + +Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen unfolds. +This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are on the wing, +and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and wait upon your +eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your eyelids, but by the +pilgrimage of your body. "Lift thine eyes to the mountains." It is then +that other mountains lift themselves to your human eyes. + +It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another that +makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All the landscape +is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, and its inner harbours +literally come to light; the headlands repeat themselves; little cups +within the treeless hills open and show their farms. In the sea are many +regions. A breeze is at play for a mile or two, and the surface is +turned. There are roads and curves in the blue and in the white. Not a +step of your journey up the height that has not its replies in the steady +motion of land and sea. Things rise together like a flock of +many-feathered birds. + +But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search of. +That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift the horizon to +the equality of your sight that you go high. You give it a distance +worthy of the skies. There is no distance, except the distance in the +sky, to be seen from the level earth; but from the height is to be seen +the distance of this world. The line is sent back into the remoteness of +light, the verge is removed beyond verge, into a distance that is +enormous and minute. + +So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less near +than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here on the edges +of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world--we know no other +place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so small and tender. The +touches of her passing, as close as dreams, or the utmost vanishing of +the forest or the ocean in the white light between the earth and the air; +nothing else is quite so intimate and fine. The extremities of a +mountain view have just such tiny touches as the closeness of closed eyes +shuts in. + +On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars the +simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface it, +by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky disappears on +that shining edge; there is not substance enough for colour. The rim of +the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, of the sea--let it only be +far enough--has the same absorption of colour; and even the dark things +drawn upon the bright edges of the sky are lucid, the light is among +them, and they are mingled with it. The horizon has its own way of +making bright the pencilled figures of forests, which are black but +luminous. + +On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. There +you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds--not a thunder sky--is not a +wall but the underside of a floor. You see the clouds that repeat each +other grow smaller by distance; and you find a new unity in the sky and +earth that gather alike the great lines of their designs to the same +distant close. There is no longer an alien sky, tossed up in +unintelligible heights above a world that is subject to intelligible +perspective. + +Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted is +the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; not the +spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from the +parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of soot; but +rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a beautiful thing of the +London smoke at times, and in some places of the sky; but not there, not +where the soft sharp distance ought to shine. To be dull there is to put +all relations and comparisons in the wrong, and to make the sky lawless. + +A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens the line +and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly dims it, +or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the sky. The stormy +horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high enough, and you can raise +the light from beyond the shower, and the shadow from behind the ray. +Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke disobeys and defeats the summer of +the eyes. + +Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their sea. A +child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they +cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never in the +solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape +Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman seen +anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, when he was +alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. The sailor has +nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast he would be isolated +in as small a world as that of a traveller through the plains. + +Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them so +perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying to flight +with flight. + +A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing +hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think +something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the +centre of it. + +As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so steady, +so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further sea lies away, +hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding world, with its looks +serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals of many miles, its +signs and communications of light, gathers down and pauses. This flock +of birds which is the mobile landscape wheels and goes to earth. The +Cardinal weighs down the audience with his downward hands. Farewell to +the most delicate horizon. + + + + +IN JULY + + +One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of the +green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of maturity, +for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand in their +differences of character and not of mere date. Almost all the green is +grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened and a daily colour, in +majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey skies, and might look, to +inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as eleven o'clock looks after +the dawn. + +Gravity is the word--not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace as at +night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, common +freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and day. In +childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise +than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher +sensibility for April and April evenings--a heartache for them, which in +riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled. + +But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find daily +things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has no great +delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness of the summer +that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere day and of late +summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have long ceased to be +sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot now find anything in +nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, lost sight of the further +awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer see so much of the past in April +twilight as they saw when they had no past; but which look freshly at the +dailiness of green summer, of early afternoon, of every sky of any form +that comes to pass, and of the darkened elms. + +Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting close, +unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when it looks alone to +a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, across all the old +forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, and could walk a county +gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, as one walks a garden +collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, would not the harvest be +a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion for poplars is a most +intelligible passion. The eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole +day's journey. Not one is unperceived, even though great timber should +be passed, and hill-sides dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a +poplar day of it. Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for +the poplars everywhere reply to the glance. The woods may be all +various, but the poplars are separate. + +All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with them) +shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. It is easy +to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance pay them a flash of +recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you journey you are suddenly +aware of them close by. Light and the breezes are as quick as the eyes +of a poplar-lover to find the willing tree that dances to be seen. + +No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for oneself an +oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and many would be +missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert enough for a +traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do not sleep. From +within some little grove of other trees a single poplar makes a slight +sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep the wind. They are salient +everywhere, and full of replies. They are as fresh as streams. + +It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. And +yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much mingled with +a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes to recognize their +unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and keep still, the poplar +and the aspen do not darken--or hardly--and the deepest summer will not +find a day in which they do not keep awake. No waters are so vigilant, +even where a lake is bare to the wind. + +When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair "with fingers +cool as aspen leaves," he knew the coolest thing in the world. It is a +coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which the breeze takes on both +sides--the greenish and the greyish. The poplar green has no glows, no +gold; it is an austere colour, as little rich as the colour of willows, +and less silvery than theirs. The sun can hardly gild it; but he can +shine between. Poplars and aspens let the sun through with the wind. You +may have the sky sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the +woods are close. + +Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher's net ever took such glancing fishes, nor +did the net of a constellation's shape ever enclose more vibrating +Pleiades. + + + + +CLOUD + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to see the +clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by the rest of +England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not to see the clear +sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in London. You may go +for a week or two at a time, even though you hold your head up as you +walk, and even though you have windows that really open, and yet you +shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled glass +towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They are, +therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other windows were +used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or even knew so much +as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world knows. +Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; +but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes its way round the +world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The +terrestrial scenery--the tourist's--is a prisoner compared with this. The +tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with +earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for +its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green +flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the +greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or fade +according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, the +luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that their +own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, effaced +before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the +cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful +of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate +revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground +shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain +slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the +view by the rough method of standing in front of it. But its greatest +things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence does it distribute the +sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more mysteries +than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. Thence it +writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or lets the pencils +of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and yet making dark, it +sheds deep colour upon the forest land of Sussex, so that, seen from the +hills, all the country is divided between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the world. Its +own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to improve. It is +always great: above the street, above the suburbs, above the gas-works +and the stucco, above the faces of painted white houses--the painted +surfaces that have been devised as the only things able to vulgarise +light, as they catch it and reflect it grotesquely from their importunate +gloss. This is to be well seen on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above some +little landscape of rather paltry interest--a conventional river heavy +with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, and shrubberies; +and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as the novelists always +have it, with "autumn tints." High over these rises, in the enormous +scale of the scenery of clouds, what no man expected--an heroic sky. Few +of the things that were ever done upon earth are great enough to be done +under such a heaven. It was surely designed for other days. It is for +an epic world. Your eyes sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the +distances of earth to these, and what are the distances of the clear and +cloudless sky? The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the +round world dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are +unmeasured--you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star +itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, with +conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. Man would +not have known distance veritably without the clouds. There are +mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of the earth are +pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not overpowering by +disproportion, like some futile building fatuously made too big for the +human measure. The cloud in its majestic place composes with a little +Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the futile building, while the +cloud is no mansion for man, and out of reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the custody +of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. The cloud +veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry ray, suddenly +bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a background. Or +when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals him, gentle beyond hope. +It makes peace, constantly, just before sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. There is +a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are bowled by a +breeze from behind the evening. They are round and brilliant, and come +leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is a frolic and haphazard +sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed about +it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the clouds in +turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes aloft are swept +at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. Promontory after +league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in the sky is called +out of mist and grey by the same finger. The cloudland is very great, +but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this scenery. +It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of the winter, that +the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for many and many a day no +London eye can see the horizon, or the first threat of the cloud like a +man's hand. There never was a great painter who had not exquisite +horizons, and if Corot and Crome were right, the Londoner loses a great +thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he loses its +shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and rosy head piling +into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the base and the altitude. +The perspective of a cloud is a great part of its design--whether it lies +so that you can look along the immense horizontal distances of its floor, +or whether it rears so upright a pillar that you look up its mountain +steeps in the sky as you look at the rising heights of a mountain that +stands, with you, on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not merely +the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the sun's +treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We talk of +sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the +illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic +of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon is the bride, this is +the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most beautiful +of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no name, and no other +cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such heights of blue air. The +shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, comes across the sky with so +influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can be better worth +watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London streets is that people +take their rain there without knowing anything of the cloud that drops +it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. The shower-cloud there has +limits of time, but no limits of form, and no history whatever. It has +not come from the clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not +shoulder anon the hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly +comes or goes; it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the +path of its retreat. + + + + +SHADOWS + + +Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and +unencumbered with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple house +is that the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs of +shadows. The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought oftener to be +offered to the light and to yonder handful of long sedges and rushes in a +vase. Their slender grey design of shadows upon white walls is better +than a tedious, trivial, or anxious device from the shop. + +The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into line +and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, not to the +mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. It is single; +it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and will never be seen +again, and that, untouched, varies with the journey of the sun, shifts +the interrelation of a score of delicate lines at the mere passing of +time, though all the room be motionless. Why will design insist upon its +importunate immortality? Wiser is the drama, and wiser the dance, that +do not pause upon an attitude. But these walk with passion or pleasure, +while the shadow walks with the earth. It alters as the hours wheel. + +Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it is shed +by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; it betrays +the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies--a sun that takes the +midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a sally-porte, and is +about to alight on an unused horizon. So does the grey drawing, with +which you have allowed the sun and your pot of rushes to adorn your room, +play the stealthy game of the year. + +You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It needs but +four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most buoyant +jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a symmetrical +countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches close with one +another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and their paler greys +darkening. It is hard to believe that there are many to prefer a +"repeating pattern." + +It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration the +walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a plaque or a +picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To dress a room once +for all, and to give it no more heed, is to neglect the units of the +days. + +Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of shadows +which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you see little +except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow--be the day bright +enough--compose the very air through which you see the light. The trees +show you a shadow for every leaf, and the poplars are sprinkled upon the +shining sky with little shadows that look translucent. The liveliness of +every shadow is that some light is reflected into it; shade and shine +have been entangled as though by some wild wind through their million +molecules. + +The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the unclouded +sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to life, and are +themselves the life, the action, and the transparence of their day. + +To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light looks +still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide for so many +hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are extinguished. +Him who lies alone there the outer world touches less by this long +sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. Although there may +be no tree to stand between his window and the south, and although no +noonday wind may blow a branch of roses across the blind, shadows and +their life will be carried across by a brilliant bird. + +To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot see +its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does but darken +his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does not see it +pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows him wings. What +flash of light could be more bright for him than such a flash of +darkness? + +It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. If +he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less--the bird's shadow +was a message from the sun. + +There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight of +the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. This goes +across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray for a while +in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer and larger, runs, +quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker on the soft and dry +grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird swoops to a branch and +clings. + +In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, about +Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high birds are the +movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there are no woods to make +a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse of flocks of pearl-white +sea birds, or of the solitary creature driving on the wind. Theirs is +always a surprise of flight. The clouds go one way, but the birds go all +ways: in from the sea or out, across the sands, inland to high northern +fields, where the crops are late by a month. They fly so high that +though they have the shadow of the sun under their wings, they have the +light of the earth there also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, +and they fly between lights. + +Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, "swift as +dreams," at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, and +ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They subside by +degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings and cries until +there comes the general shadow of night wherewith the little shadows +close, complete. + +The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds have traced +wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their shadows have +fled all day faster than her streams, and have overtaken all the movement +of her wingless creatures. But now it is the flight of the very earth +that carries her clasped shadow from the sun. + + + + +THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY + + +All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling and +election to the most wifely of all wifehoods--that of a soldier's +wife--history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as Colonel +Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is something more than +his biographer--his historian. And she convinces her reader that her +Puritan principles kept abreast of her affections. There is no +self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; keeps her own footing; wife of +a soldier as she is, would not have armed him without her own previous +indignation against the enemy. She is a soldier at his orders, but she +had warily and freely chosen her captain. + +Briefly, and with the dignity that the language of her day kept unmarred +for her use, she relates her own childhood and youth. She was a child +such as those serious times desired that a child should be; that is, she +was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, as might be. Childhood, +as an age of progress, was not to be delayed, as an age of imperfection +was to be improved, as an age of inability was not to be exposed except +when precocity distinguished it. It must at any rate be shortened. Lucy +Apsley, at four years old, read English perfectly, and was "carried to +sermons, and could remember and repeat them exactly." "At seven she had +eight tutors in several qualities." She outstripped her brothers in +Latin, albeit they were at school and she had no teacher except her +father's chaplain, who, poor gentleman, was "a pitiful dull fellow." She +was not companionable. Her many friends were indulged with "babies" +(that is, dolls) and these she pulled to pieces. She exhorted the maids, +she owned, "much." But she also heard much of their love stories, and +acquired a taste for sonnets. + +It was a sonnet, and indeed one of her own writing, that brought about +her acquaintance with Mr. Hutchinson. The sonnet was read to him, and +discussed amongst his friends, with guesses at the authorship; for a +young woman did not, in that world, write a sonnet without a feint of +hiding its origin. One gentleman believed a woman had made it. Another +said, if so, there were but two women capable of making it; but he owned, +later, that he said "two" out of civility (very good civility of a kind +that is not now practised) to a lady who chanced to be present; but that +he knew well there was but one; and he named her. From her future +husband Lucy Apsley received that praise of exceptions wherewith women +are now, and always will be, praised: "Mr. Hutchinson," she says, +"fancying something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary +reach of a she-wit, could scarcely believe it was a woman's." + +He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured +conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young +friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy +than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in +setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of +her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity +did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set head of hair" in +long locks that were an offence to many of his own sect, but, she says, +"a great ornament to him." But for herself she has some dissimulated +vanities. She was negligent of dress, and when, after much waiting and +many devices, her suitor first saw her, she was "not ugly in a careless +riding-habit." As for him, "in spite of all her indifference, she was +surprised (she writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw +this gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to +beget love in any one." He married her as soon as she could leave her +chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that "the priest and all +that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God recompensed his +justice and constancy by restoring her." + +The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy +Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our own +time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of gesture +of language; this is where she praises her husband's "handsome management +of love." {1} She thus prefaces her description of her honoured lord: "If +my treacherous memory have not lost the dearest treasure that ever I +committed to its trust--." She boasts of her country in lofty phrase: +"God hath, as it were, enclosed a people here, out of the waste common of +the world." And again of her husband: "It will be as hard to say which +was the predominant virtue in him as which is so in its own nature." "He +had made up his accounts with life and death, and fixed his purpose to +entertain both honourably." "The heat of his youth a little inclined him +to the passion of anger, and the goodness of his nature to those of love +and grief; but reason was never dethroned by them, but continued governor +and moderator of his soul." + +She describes sweetly certain three damsels who had "conceived a +kindness" for her lord, their susceptibility, their willingness, their +"admirable tempting beauty," and "such excellent good-nature as would +have thawed a rock of ice"; but she adds no less beautifully, "It was not +his time to love." In her widowhood she remembered that she had been +commanded "not to grieve at the common rate of women"; and this is the +lovely phrase of her grief: "As his shadow, she waited on him everywhere, +till he was taken to that region of light which admits of none, and then +she vanished into nothing." + +She has an invincible anger against the enemies of her husband and of the +cause. The fevers, "little less than plagues," that were common in that +age carry them off exemplarily by families at a time. An adversary is +"the devil's exquisite solicitor." All Royalists are of "the wicked +faction." She suspected his warders of poisoning Colonel Hutchinson in +the prison wherein he died. The keeper had given him, under pretence of +kindness, a bottle of excellent wine, and the two gentlemen who drank of +it died within four months. A poison of strange operation! "We must +leave it to the great day, when all crimes, how secret soever, will be +made manifest, whether they added poison to all their other iniquity, +whereby they certainly murdered this guiltless servant of God." When he +was near death, she adds, "a gentlewoman of the Castle came up and asked +him how he did. He told her, Incomparably well, and full of faith." + +On the subject of politics, Mrs. Hutchinson writes, it must be owned, +platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with dignity. Her +power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the liberal and public +interests of her life, her good breeding, her education, her exquisite +diction, are such as may well make a reader ask how and why the +literature of England declined upon the vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, +foolishness, that became "feminine" in the estimation of a later age; +that is, in the character of women succeeding her, and in the estimation +of men succeeding her lord. The noble graces of Lucy Hutchinson, I say, +may well make us marvel at the downfall following--at Goldsmith's +invention of the women of "The Vicar or Wakefield" in one age, and at +Thackeray's invention of the women of "Esmond" in another. + +Mrs. Hutchinson has little leisure for much praise of the natural beauty +of sky and landscape, but now and then in her work there appears an +abiding sense of the pleasantness of the rural world--in her day an +implicit feeling rather than an explicit. "The happiness of the soil and +air contribute all things that are necessary to the use or delight of +man's life." "He had an opportunity of conversing with her in those +pleasant walks which, at the sweet season of the spring, invited all the +neighbouring inhabitants to seek their joys." And she describes a dream +whereof the scene was in the green fields of Southwark. What an England +was hers! And what an English! A memorable vintage of our literature +and speech was granted in her day; we owe much to those who--as she +did--gathered it in. + + + + +MRS. DINGLEY + + +We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {2} All we have to call +her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties her to Stella, with +whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved "better a thousand times +than life, as hope saved." MD, without full stops, Swift writes it eight +times in a line for the pleasure of writing it. "MD sometimes means +Stella alone," says one of many editors. "The letters were written +nominally to Stella and Mrs. Dingley," says another, "but it does not +require to be said that it was really for Stella's sake alone that they +were penned." Not so. "MD" never stands for Stella alone. And the +editor does not yet live who shall persuade one honest reader, against +the word of Swift, that Swift loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, +and not, by a most delicate exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that +they make the "she" and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper +of reparation to Mrs. Dingley. + +No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. In +love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; and Dingley's half +of the tender things said to MD is equal to any whole, and takes nothing +from the whole of Stella's half. But the sentimentalist has fought +against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He has disliked her, shirked her, +misconceived her, and effaced her. Sly sentimentalist--he finds her +irksome. Through one of his most modern representatives he has but +lately called her a "chaperon." A chaperon! + +MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been +pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this respect +been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy charming MD," +"saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys mine," "little +mischievous girls," "nautinautinautidear girls," "brats," "huzzies both," +"impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," "my dearest lives and +delights," "dear little young women," "good dallars, not crying dallars" +(which means "girls"), "ten thousand times dearest MD," and so forth in a +hundred repetitions. They are, every now and then, "poor MD," but +obviously not because of their own complaining. Swift called them so +because they were mortal; and he, like all great souls, lived and loved, +conscious every day of the price, which is death. + +The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with his +summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately put them +asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than foolishly play +havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the most secluded thing in +the world. "I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters, +except MD's;" "I ought to read these letters I write after I have done. +But I hope it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: +but methinks," he adds, "when I write plain, I do not know how, but we +are not alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it +looks like PMD." Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you +must know, are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us +happy together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may +never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." "Farewell, +dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one happy +day since he left you, as hope saved." + +With them--with her--he hid himself in the world, at Court, at the bar of +St. James's coffee-house, whither he went on the Irish mail-day, and was +"in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting." He hid with them in the +long labours of these exquisite letters every night and morning. If no +letter came, he comforted himself with thinking that "he had it yet to be +happy with." And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold and +lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity--the distinction--of this +sweet romance. "Little, sequestered pleasure-house"--it seemed as though +"the many could not miss it," but not even the few have found it. + +It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella should +be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift. But day +and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's little letters; he +waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of journal, and when it is +full I will send it whether MD writes or not; and so that will be +pretty." "Naughty girls that will not write to a body!" "I wish you +were whipped for forgetting to send. Go, be far enough, negligent +baggages." "You, Mistress Stella, shall write your share, and then comes +Dingley altogether, and then Stella a little crumb at the end; and then +conclude with something handsome and genteel, as 'your most humble +cumdumble.'" But Scott and Macaulay and Thackeray are all exceedingly +sorry for Stella. + +Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: "Here +is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I must be writing +every night; O Lord, O Lord!" "I must go write idle things, and twittle +twattle." "These saucy jades take up so much of my time with writing to +them in the morning." Is it not a stealthy wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley +that she should be stripped of all these ornaments to her name and +memory? When Swift tells a woman in a letter that there he is "writing +in bed, like a tiger," she should go gay in the eyes of all generations. + +They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will not +let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. Marry come up! +Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages (taken very +seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, then? That would +have been no ill share for Dingley. But no, forsooth, Dingley is allowed +nothing. + +There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from her. For +now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does so he invariably +drops those initials and writes "Stella" or "Ppt" for the one, and "D" or +"Dingley" for the other. There is no exception to this anywhere. He is +anxious about Stella's "little eyes," and about her health generally; +whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he thinks, will not catch the "new +fever," because she is not well; "but why should D escape it, pray?" And +Mrs. Dingley is rebuked for her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. +"I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not +so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers." Stella is often reproved for her +spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. But she is a +puzzle-headed woman, like another. "What do you mean by my fourth +letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella say you had my fifth, goody +Blunder?" "Now, Mistress Dingley, are you not an impudent slut to except +a letter next packet? Unreasonable baggage! No, little Dingley, I am +always in bed by twelve, and I take great care of myself." "You are a +pretending slut, indeed, with your 'fourth' and 'fifth' in the margin, +and your 'journal' and everything. O Lord, never saw the like, we shall +never have done." "I never saw such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, +so everything." Swift is insistently grateful for their inquiries for +his health. He pauses seriously to thank them in the midst of his +prattle. Both women--MD--are rallied on their politics: "I have a fancy +that Ppt is a Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort of trimmer." + +But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in his +lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her in Ireland. +"He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible litter; but I say +nothing; I am as tame as a clout." + +Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the ignominy, in +a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to Swift as an unclaimed +wife; so far so good. But two hundred years is long for her to have gone +stripped of so radiant a glory as is hers by right. "Better, thanks to +MD's prayers," wrote the immortal man who loved her, in a private +fragment of a journal, never meant for Dingley's eyes, nor for Ppt's, nor +for any human eyes; and the rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all +the credit of those prayers, and all the thanks of that pious +benediction. + + + + +PRUE + + +Through the long history of human relations, which is the history of the +life of our race, there sounds at intervals the clamour of a single voice +which has not the tone of oratory, but asks, answers, interrupts itself, +interrupts--what else? Whatever else it interrupts is silence; there are +pauses, but no answers. There is the jest without the laugh, and again +the laugh without the jest. And this is because the letters written by +Madame de Sevigne were all saved, and not many written to her; because +Swift burnt the letters that were the dearest things in life to him, +while "MD" both made a treasury of his; and because Prue kept all the +letters which Steele wrote to her from their marriage-day onwards, and +Steele kept none of hers. + +In Swift's case the silence is full of echoes; that is to say, his +letters repeat the phrases of Stella's and Dingley's, to play with them, +flout them, and toss them back against the two silenced voices. He never +lets the word of these two women fall to the ground; and when they have +but blundered with it, and aimed it wide, and sent it weakly, he will +catch it, and play you twenty delicate and expert juggling pranks with it +as he sends it back into their innocent faces. So we have something of +MD's letters in the "journal," and this in the only form in which we +desire them, to tell the truth; for when Swift gravely saves us some +specimens of Stella's wit, after her death, as she spoke them, and not as +he mimicked them, they make a sorry show. + +In many correspondences, where one voice remains and the other is gone, +the retort is enough for two. It is as when, the other day, the half of +a pretty quarrel between nurse and child came down from an upper floor to +the ears of a mother who decided that she need not interfere. The voice +of the undaunted child it was that was audible alone, and it replied, +"I'm not; _you_ are"; and anon, "I'll tell _yours_." Nothing was really +missing there. + +But Steele's letters to Prue, his wife, are no such simple matter. The +turn we shall give them depends upon the unheard tone whereto they reply. +And there is room for conjecture. It has pleased the more modern of the +many spirits of banter to supply Prue's eternal silence with the voice of +a scold. It is painful to me to complain of Thackeray; but see what a +figure he makes of Prue in "Esmond." It is, says the nineteenth-century +humourist, in defence against the pursuit of a jealous, exacting, +neglected, or evaded wife that poor Dick Steele sends those little notes +of excuse: "Dearest Being on earth, pardon me if you do not see me till +eleven o'clock, having met a schoolfellow from India"; "My dear, dear +wife, I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged +to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account +(when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient +husband"; "Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your +welfare"; "I stay here in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for me, +and shall dine with him to that end"; and so forth. Once only does +Steele really afford the recent humourist the suggestion that is +apparently always so welcome. It is when he writes that he is invited to +supper to Mr. Boyle's, and adds: "Dear Prue, do not send after me, for I +shall be ridiculous." But even this is to be read not ungracefully by a +well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused to the world. Her +husband, by the way, had been already married; and his greater age makes +his constant deference all the more charming. + +But with this one exception, Steele's little notes, kept by his wife +while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter and his, +are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. It is +worth while to remember that Steele's dinner, which it was so often +difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore of mid- +business. But that is a detail. What is desirable is that a reasonable +degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; for it is no more than +just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: "How often has your +tenderness removed pain from my aching head, how often anguish from my +afflicted heart. If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are +thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in +inclination, or more charming in form, than my wife." + +True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; and +these carry to her his assurance that she is "the beautifullest object in +the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to +the pleasure I have in your person and society." "But indeed, though you +have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which almost +frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that you do not love to +dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me proud +of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine." The +correction of the phrase is finely considerate. + +Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a reply, +full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a little +flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence of +uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with what +simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her invitation, +and perform! She wanted a compliment, though they had been long married +then, and he immediately turned it. This was no dowdy Prue. + +Her request, by the way, which he repeats in obeying it, is one of the +few instances of the other side of the correspondence--one of the few +direct echoes of that one of the two voices which is silent. + +The ceremony of the letters and the deferent method of address and +signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. It +is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and state is +supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of the husband +of farce, the "rogue." One does not like the word. Is it not clownish +to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? He did not pay, he +was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, he did many other +things that tarnish honour, more or less, and things for which he had to +beg Prue's special pardon; but yet he is not a fit subject for the +unhandsome incredulity which is proud to be always at hand with an ironic +commentary on such letters as his. + +I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words. He +wrote to Prue at night when the burgundy had been too much for him, and +in the morning after. He announces that he is coming to her "within a +pint of wine." One of his gayest letters--a love-letter before the +marriage, addressed to "dear lovely Mrs. Scurlock"--confesses candidly +that he had been pledging her too well: "I have been in very good +company, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved +best, has been often drunk; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for +your sake, which is more than _I die for you_." + +Steele obviously drank burgundy wildly, as did his "good company"; as did +also the admirable Addison, who was so solitary in character and so +serene in temperament. But no one has, for this fault, the right to put +a railing accusation into the mouth of Prue. Every woman has a right to +her own silence, whether her silence be hers of set purpose or by +accident. And every creature has a right to security from the banterings +peculiar to the humourists of a succeeding age. To every century its own +ironies, to every century its own vulgarities. In Steele's time they had +theirs. They might have rallied Prue more coarsely, but it would have +been with a different rallying. Writers of the nineteenth century went +about to rob her of her grace. + +She kept some four hundred of these little letters of her lord's. It was +a loyal keeping. But what does Thackeray call it? His word is +"thrifty." He says: "There are four hundred letters of Dick Steele's to +his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately." + +"Thrifty" is a hard word to apply to her whom Steele styled, in the year +before her death, his "charming little insolent." She was ill in Wales, +and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and "took it to be a sin to go to +sleep." Thrifty they may call her, and accurate if they will; but she +lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele called her "your Prueship." + + + + +MRS. JOHNSON + + +This paper shall not be headed "Tetty." What may be a graceful enough +freedom with the wives of other men shall be prohibited in the case of +Johnson's, she with whose name no writer until now has scrupled to take +freedoms whereto all graces were lacking. "Tetty" it should not be, if +for no other reason, for this--that the chance of writing "Tetty" as a +title is a kind of facile literary opportunity; it shall be denied. The +Essay owes thus much amends of deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. +But, indeed, the reason is graver. What wish would he have had but that +the language in the making whereof he took no ignoble part should +somewhere, at some time, treat his only friend with ordinary honour? + +Men who would trust Dr. Johnson with their orthodoxy, with their +vocabulary, and with the most intimate vanity of their human wishes, +refuse, with every mark of insolence, to trust him in regard to his wife. +On that one point no reverence is paid to him, no deference, no respect, +not so much as the credit due to our common sanity. Yet he is not +reviled on account of his Thrale--nor, indeed, is his Thrale now +seriously reproached for her Piozzi. It is true that Macaulay, preparing +himself and his reader "in his well-known way" (as a rustic of Mr. +Hardy's might have it) for the recital of her second marriage, says that +it would have been well if she had been laid beside the kind and generous +Thrale when, in the prime of her life, he died. But Macaulay has not +left us heirs to his indignation. His well-known way was to exhaust +those possibilities of effect in which the commonplace is so rich. And +he was permitted to point his paragraphs as he would, not only by calling +Mrs. Thrale's attachment to her second husband "a degrading passion," but +by summoning a chorus of "all London" to the same purpose. She fled, he +tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen +to a land where she was unknown. Thus when Macaulay chastises Mrs. +Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is not inconsistent, for he +pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for her audacity in keeping gaiety +and grace in her mind and manners longer than Macaulay liked to see such +ornaments added to the charm of twice "married brows." + +It is not so with succeeding essayists. One of these minor biographers +is so gentle as to call the attachment of Mrs. Thrale and Piozzi "a +mutual affection." He adds, "No one who has had some experience of life +will be inclined to condemn Mrs. Thrale." But there is no such courtesy, +even from him, for Mrs. Johnson. Neither to him nor to any other writer +has it yet occurred that if England loves her great Englishman's memory, +she owes not only courtesy, but gratitude, to the only woman who loved +him while there was yet time. + +Not a thought of that debt has stayed the alacrity with which a +caricature has been acclaimed as the only possible portrait of Mrs. +Johnson. Garrick's school reminiscences would probably have made a much +more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his remembrances; +we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of envying those who heard +him. But honest laughter should not fall into that tone of common +antithesis which seems to say, "See what are the absurdities of the +great! Such is life! On this one point we, even we, are wiser than Dr. +Johnson--we know how grotesque was his wife. We know something of the +privacies of her toilet-table. We are able to compare her figure with +the figures we, unlike him in his youth, have had the opportunity of +admiring--the figures of the well-bred and well-dressed." It is a sorry +success to be able to say so much. + +But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, at +twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over himself +which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, a woman who +had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite of first sight. +"That," she said to her daughter, "is the most sensible man I ever met." +He was penniless. She had what was no mean portion for those times and +those conditions; and, granted that she was affected, and provincial, and +short, and all the rest with which she is charged, she was probably not +without suitors; nor do her defects or faults seem to have been those of +an unadmired or neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the +aspect of Johnson's form and face, even in his twenties, and how little +he could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. This one +loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the noblest of +all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. And English +literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay's--"She +accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses of +a suitor who might have been her son." + +Her readiness did her incalculable honour. But it is at last worth +remembering that Johnson had first done her incalculable honour. No one +has given to man or woman the right to judge as to the worthiness of her +who received it. The meanest man is generally allowed his own counsel as +to his own wife; one of the greatest of men has been denied it. "The +lover," says Macaulay, "continued to be under the illusions of the +wedding day till the lady died." What is so graciously said is not +enough. He was under those "illusions" until he too died, when he had +long passed her latest age, and was therefore able to set right that +balance of years which has so much irritated the impertinent. Johnson +passed from this life twelve years older than she, and so for twelve +years his constant eyes had to turn backwards to dwell upon her. Time +gave him a younger wife. + +And here I will put into Mrs. Johnson's mouth, that mouth to which no one +else has ever attributed any beautiful sayings, the words of Marceline +Desbordes-Valmore to the young husband she loved: "Older than thou! Let +me never see thou knowest it. Forget it! I will remember it, to die +before thy death." + +Macaulay, in his unerring effectiveness, uses Johnson's short sight for +an added affront to Mrs. Johnson. The bridegroom was too weak of +eyesight "to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom." Nevertheless, he +saw well enough, when he was old, to distinguish Mrs. Thrale's dresses. +He reproved her for wearing a dark dress; it was unsuitable, he said, for +her size; a little creature should show gay colours "like an insect." We +are not called upon to admire his wife; why, then, our taste being thus +uncompromised, do we not suffer him to admire her? It is the most +gratuitous kind of intrusion. Moreover, the biographers are eager to +permit that touch of romance and grace in his relations to Mrs. Thrale, +which they officially deny in the case of Mrs. Johnson. But the +difference is all on the other side. He would not have bidden his wife +dress like an insect. Mrs. Thrale was to him "the first of womankind" +only because his wife was dead. + +Beauclerc, we learn, was wont to cap Garrick's mimicry of Johnson's love- +making by repeating the words of Johnson himself in after-years--"It was +a love-match on both sides." And obviously he was as strange a lover as +they said. Who doubted it? Was there any other woman in England to give +such a suitor the opportunity of an eternal love? "A life radically +wretched," was the life of this master of Letters; but she, who has +received nothing in return except ignominy from these unthankful Letters, +had been alone to make it otherwise. Well for him that he married so +young as to earn the ridicule of all the biographers in England; for by +doing so he, most happily, possessed his wife for nearly twenty years. I +have called her his only friend. So indeed she was, though he had +followers, disciples, rivals, competitors, and companions, many degrees +of admirers, a biographer, a patron, and a public. He had also the +houseful of sad old women who quarrelled under his beneficent protection. +But what friend had he? He was "solitary" from the day she died. + +Let us consider under what solemn conditions and in what immortal phrase +the word "solitary" stands. He wrote it, all Englishmen know where. He +wrote it in the hour of that melancholy triumph when he had been at last +set free from the dependence upon hope. He hoped no more, and he needed +not to hope. The "notice" of Lord Chesterfield had been too long +deferred; it was granted at last, when it was a flattery which Johnson's +court of friends would applaud. But not for their sake was it welcome. +To no living ear would he bring it and report it with delight. + +He was indifferent, he was known. The sensitiveness to pleasure was +gone, and the sensitiveness to pain, slights, and neglect would +thenceforth be suffered to rest; no man in England would put that to +proof again. No man in England, did I say? But, indeed, that is not so. +No slight to him, to his person, or to his fame could have had power to +cause him pain more sensibly than the customary, habitual, ready-made +ridicule that has been cast by posterity upon her whom he loved for +twenty years, prayed for during thirty-two years more, who satisfied one +of the saddest human hearts, but to whom the world, assiduous to admire +him, hardly accords human dignity. He wrote praises of her manners and +of her person for her tomb. But her epitaph, that does not name her, is +in the greatest of English prose. What was favour to him? "I am +indifferent . . . I am known . . . I am solitary, and cannot impart it." + + + + +MADAME ROLAND + + +The articulate heroine has her reward of appreciation and her dues of +praise; it is her appropriate fortune to have it definitely measured, and +generally on equal terms. She takes pains to explain herself, and is +understood, and pitied, when need is, on the right occasions. For +instance, Madame Roland, a woman of merit, who knew her "merit's name and +place," addressed her memoirs, her studies in contemporary history, her +autobiography, her many speeches, and her last phrase at the foot of the +undaunting scaffold, to a great audience of her equals (more or less) +then living and to live in the ages then to come--her equals and those +she raises to her own level, as the heroic example has authority to do. + +Another woman--the Queen--suffered at that time, and suffered without the +command of language, the exactitude of phrase, the precision of +judgement, the proffer of prophecy, the explicit sense of Innocence and +Moderation oppressed in her person. These were Madame Roland's; but the +other woman, without eloquence, without literature, and without any +judicial sense of history, addresses no mere congregation of readers. +Marie Antoinette's unrecorded pangs pass into the treasuries of the +experience of the whole human family. All that are human have some part +there; genius itself may lean in contemplation over that abyss of woe; +the great poets themselves may look into its distances and solitudes. +Compassion here has no measure and no language. Madame Roland speaks +neither to genius nor to complete simplicity; Marie Antoinette holds her +peace in the presence of each, dumb in her presence. + +Madame Roland had no dumbness of the spirit, as history, prompted by her +own musical voice, presents her to a world well prepared to do her +justice. Of that justice she had full expectation; justice here, justice +in the world--the world that even when universal philosophy should reign +would be inevitably the world of mediocrity; justice that would come of +enlightened views; justice that would be the lesson learnt by the nations +widely educated up to some point generally accessible; justice well +within earthly sight and competence. This confidence was also her +reward. For what justice did the Queen look? Here it is the "abyss that +appeals to the abyss." + +Twice only in the life of Madame Roland is there a lapse into silence, +and for the record of these two poor failures of that long, indomitable, +reasonable, temperate, explicit utterance which expressed her life and +mind we are debtors to her friends. She herself has not confessed them. +Nowhere else, whether in her candid history of herself, or in her wise +history of her country, or in her judicial history of her contemporaries, +whose spirit she discerned, whose powers she appraised, whose errors she +foresaw; hardly in her thought, and never in her word, is a break to be +perceived; she is not silent and she hardly stammers; and when she tells +us of her tears--the tears of youth only--her record is voluble and all +complete. For the dignity of her style, of her force, and of her +balanced character, Madame Roland would doubtless have effaced the two +imperfections which, to us who would be glad to admire in silence her +heroic figure, if that heroic figure would but cease to talk, are finer +and more noble than her well-placed language and the high successes of +her decision and her endurance. More than this, the two failures of this +unfailing woman are two little doors opened suddenly into those wider +spaces and into that dominion of solitude which, after all, do doubtless +exist even in the most garrulous soul. By these two outlets Manon Roland +also reaches the region of Marie Antoinette. But they befell her at the +close of her life, and they shall be named at the end of this brief +study. + +Madame Roland may seem the more heroic to those whose suffrages she seeks +in all times and nations because of the fact that she manifestly +suppresses in her self-descriptions any signs of a natural gaiety. Her +memoirs give evidence of no such thing; it is only in her letters, not +intended for the world, that we are aware of the inadvertence of moments. +We may overhear a laugh at times, but not in those consciously sprightly +hours that she spent with her convent-school friend gathering fruit and +counting eggs at the farm. She pursued these country tasks not without +offering herself the cultivated congratulation of one whom cities had +failed to allure, and who bore in mind the examples of Antiquity. She +did not forget the death of Socrates. Or, rather, she finds an occasion +to reproach herself with having once forgotten it, and with having +omitted what another might have considered the tedious recollection of +the condemnation of Phocion. She never wearied of these examples. But +it is her inexhaustible freshness in these things that has helped other +writers of her time to weary us. + +In her manner of telling her story there is an absence of all +exaggeration, which gives the reader a constant sense of security. That +virtue of style and thought was one she proposed to herself and attained +with exact consciousness of success. It would be almost enough (in the +perfection of her practice) to make a great writer; even a measure of it +goes far to make a fair one. Her moderation of statement is never +shaken; and if she now and then glances aside from her direct narrative +road to hazard a conjecture, the error she may make is on the generous +side of hope and faith. For instance, she is too sure that her Friends +(so she always calls the _Girondins_, using no nicknames) are safe, +whereas they were then all doomed; a young man who had carried a harmless +message for her--a mere notification to her family of her arrest--receives +her cheerful commendation for his good feeling; from a note we learn that +for this action he suffered on the scaffold and that his father soon +thereafter died of grief. But Madame Roland never matched such a +delirious event as this by any delirium of her own imagination. The +delirium was in things and in the acts of men; her mind was never hurried +from its sane self-possession, when the facts raved. + +It was only when she used the rhetoric ready to her hand that she stooped +to verbal violence; _et encore_! References to the banishment of +Aristides and the hemlock of Socrates had become toy daggers and bending +swords in the hands of her compatriots, and she is hardly to be accused +of violence in brandishing those weapons. Sometimes, refuse rhetoric +being all too ready, she takes it on her pen, in honest haste, as though +it were honest speech, and stands committed to such a phrase as this: +"The dregs of the nation placed such a one at the helm of affairs." + +But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and +efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, but +without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity is +somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In "Bleak +House" there is an old lady who insisted that the name "Mr. Turveydrop," +as it appeared polished on the door-plate of the dancing master, was the +name of the pretentious father and not of the industrious son--albeit, +needless to say, one name was common to them. With equal severity I aver +that when Madame Roland wrote to her husband in the second person +singular she was using the _tu_ of Rome and not the _tu_ of Paris. French +was indeed the language; but had it been French in spirit she would (in +spite of the growing Republican fashion) have said _vous_ to this "homme +eclaire, de moeurs pures, a qui l'on ne peut reprocher que sa grande +admiration pour les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le +faible de trop aimer a parler de lui." There was no French _tu_ in her +relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, discreetly +rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports she wrote, and +whom she observed as he slowly began to think he himself had composed +them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, and discriminating +affection, and when she had been put to death, he, still at liberty, fell +upon his sword. + +This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent the +exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take opium in +the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she chose that those +who oppressed her country should have their way with her to the last. +But, while still intending self-destruction, she had written to her +husband: "Forgive me, respectable man, for disposing of a life that I had +consecrated to thee." In quoting this I mean to make no too-easy effect +with the word "respectable," grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our +own present fashion of speech. + +Madame Roland, I have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two spaces of +silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had heard her +condemnation to death. Passing out of the court she beckoned to her +friends, and signified to them her sentence "by a gesture." And again +there was a pause, in the course of her last days, during which her +speeches had not been few, and had been spoken with her beautiful voice +unmarred; "she leant," says Riouffe, "alone against her window, and wept +there three hours." + + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed +of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the preoccupations. You +cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, do not +compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not the tone, but +the note alters. So with the uncovenanted ways of a child you keep no +tryst. They meet you at another place, after failing you where you +tarried; your former experiences, your documents are at fault. You are +the fellow traveller of a bird. The bird alights and escapes out of time +to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of four +years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the sweet and +unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with your loving dolls." +A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to come down from the heights +and play with him on the floor, but sensible, perhaps, that there was a +dignity to be observed none the less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a +lady frog." None ever said their good things before these indeliberate +authors. Even their own kind--children--have not preceded them. No +child in the past ever found the same replies as the girl of five whose +father made that appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, +perverse, and unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and +had a mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy things +for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely puddin's?" Yes, +even for these. The subject must have seemed to her to be worth +pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been drowned in +the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that she should +forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay subject--her +wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, "what I should +like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a whistle!" Her mother +was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer +as to the dolls. But the whistle seemed practicable. "It is for me to +whistle for cabs," said the child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go +to parties." Another morning she came down radiant. "Did you hear a +great noise in the miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried +because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his +nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, nothing +feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than you," is the word +of a very young egotist. An older child says, "I'd better go, bettern't +I, mother?" He calls a little space at the back of a London house, "the +backy-garden." A little creature proffers almost daily the reminder at +luncheon--at tart-time: "Father, I hope you will remember that I am the +favourite of the crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent +the naif things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, +he would hardly light upon the device of the little _troupe_ who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of candle-shades. + +"It's _jolly_ dull without you, mother," says a little girl who--gentlest +of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she makes no +secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her feats of +metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are involuntary: the +"stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing chamine." Genoese +peasants have the same prank when they try to speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they should +by any means have an impression of the country or the sea annually. A +London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows it with her +pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who wants to play +with a bronze Japanese lobster, asks "Will you please let me have that +tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the most +touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to save him. +How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of the "saving" of +other things of interest--especially chocolate creams taken for +safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me to-day? Nurse is +going out, will you save me, mother?" The same little variant upon +common use is in another child's courteous reply to a summons to help in +the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, was +taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different standing from +her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a Saturday Reviewer. As +he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the town unknown to her, she +noted with interest the shops of the neighbourhood as she went, for they +might be those of the _fournisseurs_ of her friend. "That is his bread +shop, and that is his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, +with even heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming _parterre_ of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I suppose, +is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is intent +upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We have all +heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, of collecting +cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a joy that costs her +nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names over all +shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. "I began three weeks +ago next Monday, mother," she says with precision, "and I have got thirty- +nine." "Thirty-nine what?" "Smiths." + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like collecting +together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, single of their +kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and that is the +rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported +them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their natural reply to "are +you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have +nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it +raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain resumes, "Lift I up +and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered for +her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, and with +some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she took no +pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her friend. He +had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of Heaven, and the +decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, and of her hair--"a +brown tress." She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and +she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of +Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The +unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase +for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said, +more or less after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the years +of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current word into +use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to save the +interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly detected, in +children old enough to show their motives, a conviction that a word of +their own making is as good a communication as another, and as +intelligible. There is even a general implicit conviction among them +that the grown-up people, too, make words by the wayside as occasion +befalls. How otherwise should words be so numerous that every day brings +forward some hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he thinks to +belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out of a +child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much +confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything +strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts +genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first sight of +sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without allowing +himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, "summersets." This was +simple and unexpected; so was the comment of a sister a very little +older. "Why does he call those flowers summersets?" their mother said; +and the girl, with a darkly brilliant look of humour and penetration, +answered, "because they are so big." There seemed to be no further +question possible after an explanation that was presented thus charged +with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, somewhat +at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases hazarded to express +a meaning well realized--a personal matter. Questioned as to the eating +of an uncertain number of buns just before lunch, the child averred, "I +took them just to appetize my hunger." As she betrayed a familiar +knowledge of the tariff of an attractive confectioner, she was asked +whether she and her sisters had been frequenting those little tables on +their way from school. "I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; +"but I generally speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. Dryden +does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer passages. But +sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite intelligible to elders. +Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother who had, it seems, +allowed her family to see that she was inclined to be satisfied with +something of her own writing. The child has a full and gay sense of the +sweetest kinds of irony. There was no need for her to write, she and her +mother being both at home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy +of a pen:--"My dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that +article, if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not +write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister, +and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew just how old she +is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They can see she is +pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children who in +time betray a little consciousness and a slight _mefiance_ as to where +the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, obscure. These +children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking in their talk, +but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word of which they do +not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness was barely enough +to cause her to stop to choose between two words, was wont to bring a cup +of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who had often feigned +indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the +infusion." "I'm afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and +then, in a half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not +told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + + +THE CHILD OF TUMULT + + +A poppy bud, packed into tight bundles by so hard and resolute a hand +that the petals of the flower never afterwards lose the creases, is a +type of the child. Nothing but the unfolding, which is as yet in the non- +existing future, can explain the manner of the close folding of +character. In both flower and child it looks much as though the process +had been the reverse of what it was--as though a finished and open thing +had been folded up into the bud--so plainly and certainly is the future +implied, and the intention of compressing and folding-close made +manifest. + +With the other incidents of childish character, the crowd of impulses +called "naughtiness" is perfectly perceptible--it would seem heartless to +say how soon. The naughty child (who is often an angel of tenderness and +charm, affectionate beyond the capacity of his fellows, and a very +ascetic of penitence when the time comes) opens early his brief campaigns +and raises the standard of revolt as soon as he is capable of the +desperate joys of disobedience. + +But even the naughty child is an individual, and must not be treated in +the mass. He is numerous indeed, but not general, and to describe him +you must take the unit, with all his incidents and his organic qualities +as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty child in the reality +of his life. He is but six years old, slender and masculine, and not +wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate dress. His face is delicate +and too often haggard with tears of penitence that Justice herself would +be glad to spare him. Some beauty he has, and his mouth especially is so +lovely as to seem not only angelic but itself an angel. He has +absolutely no self-control and his passions find him without defence. +They come upon him in the midst of his usual brilliant gaiety and cut +short the frolic comedy of his fine spirits. + +Then for a wild hour he is the enemy of the laws. If you imprison him, +you may hear his resounding voice as he takes a running kick at the door, +shouting his justification in unconquerable rage. "I'm good now!" is +made as emphatic as a shot by the blow of his heel upon the panel. But +if the moment of forgiveness is deferred, in the hope of a more promising +repentance, it is only too likely that he will betake himself to a +hostile silence and use all the revenge yet known to his imagination. +"Darling mother, open the door!" cries his touching voice at last; but if +the answer should be "I must leave you for a short time, for punishment," +the storm suddenly thunders again. "There (crash!) I have broken a +plate, and I'm glad it is broken into such little pieces that you can't +mend it. I'm going to break the 'lectric light." When things are at +this pass there is one way, and only one, to bring the child to an +overwhelming change of mind; but it is a way that would be cruel, used +more than twice or thrice in his whole career of tempest and defiance. +This is to let him see that his mother is troubled. "Oh, don't cry! Oh, +don't be sad!" he roars, unable still to deal with his own passionate +anger, which is still dealing with him. With his kicks of rage he +suddenly mingles a dance of apprehension lest his mother should have +tears in her eyes. Even while he is still explicitly impenitent and +defiant he tries to pull her round to the light that he may see her face. +It is but a moment before the other passion of remorse comes to make +havoc of the helpless child, and the first passion of anger is quelled +outright. + +Only to a trivial eye is there nothing tragic in the sight of these great +passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a word, the +small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a little nature, and +the stage is too narrow for the action of a tragedy, the disproportion +has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed history of actual life or +sometimes a famous book; it is the manifest core of George Eliot's story +of _Adam Bede_, where the suffering of Hetty is, as it were, the eye of +the storm. All is expressive around her, but she is hardly articulate; +the book is full of words--preachings, speeches, daily talk, aphorisms, +but a space of silence remains about her in the midst of the story. And +the disproportion of passion--the inner disproportion--is at least as +tragic as that disproportion of fate and action; it is less intelligible, +and leads into the intricacies of nature which are more difficult than +the turn of events. + +It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow +limits of a child's nature far oftener than in those of an adult and +finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there is unequal +force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling of powers and +energies that are hurrying to their development and pressing for exercise +and life. It is this helpless inequality--this untimeliness--that makes +the guileless comedy mingling with the tragedies of a poor child's day. +He knows thus much--that life is troubled around him and that the fates +are strong. He implicitly confesses "the strong hours" of antique song. +This same boy--the tempestuous child of passion and revolt--went out with +quiet cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was put on, "Now, +mother, you are going to have a little peace." This way of accepting his +own conditions is shared by a sister, a very little older, who, being of +an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to violence of every kind and +tender to all without disquiet, observes the boy's brief frenzies as a +citizen observes the climate. She knows the signs quite well and can at +any time give the explanation of some particular outburst, but without +any attempt to go in search of further or more original causes. Still +less is she moved by the virtuous indignation that is the least charming +of the ways of some little girls. _Elle ne fait que constater_. +Her equanimity has never been overset by the wildest of his moments, and +she has witnessed them all. It is needless to say that she is not +frightened by his drama, for Nature takes care that her young creatures +shall not be injured by sympathies. Nature encloses them in the innocent +indifference that preserves their brains from the more harassing kinds of +distress. + +Even the very frenzy of rage does not long dim or depress the boy. It is +his repentance that makes him pale, and Nature here has been rather +forced, perhaps--with no very good result. Often must a mother wish that +she might for a few years govern her child (as far as he is governable) +by the lowest motives--trivial punishments and paltry rewards--rather +than by any kind of appeal to his sensibilities. She would wish to keep +the words "right" and "wrong" away from his childish ears, but in this +she is not seconded by her lieutenants. The child himself is quite +willing to close with her plans, in so far as he is able, and is +reasonably interested in the results of her experiments. He wishes her +attempts in his regard to have a fair chance. "Let's hope I'll be good +all to-morrow," he says with the peculiar cheerfulness of his ordinary +voice. "I do hope so, old man." "Then I'll get my penny. Mother, I was +only naughty once yesterday; if I have only one naughtiness to-morrow, +will you give me a halfpenny?" "No reward except for real goodness all +day long." "All right." + +It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the failure +of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one of bribery. +It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all kinds of reward might +not equally be burlesqued by that word, and whether any government, +spiritual or civil, has ever even professed to deny rewards. Moreover, +those who would not give a child a penny for being good will not hesitate +to fine him a penny for being naughty, and rewards and punishments must +stand or fall together. The more logical objection will be that goodness +is ideally the normal condition, and that it should have, therefore, no +explicit extraordinary result, whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, +should have a visible and unusual sequel. To this the rewarding mother +may reply that it is not reasonable to take "goodness" in a little child +of strong passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for him is +to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to overbear his +powers. + +But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. What +is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the weak will +of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a sufficient +resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed as the +passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; but as it is +there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy or fear. Let, +then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at once, and mingled with +the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the suffering of rage and +frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly to make of the little +unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too hurtfully tragic. The penny +is mild and strong at once, with its still distant but certain joys of +purchase; the promise and hope break the mood of misery, and the will +takes heart to resist and conquer. + +It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. The +lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, knowing +herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the father's voice +with a menacing, "What's that noise?" The child was persistently crying +and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy against his French nurse, +when the baritone and threatening question was sent pealing up the +stairs. The child was heard to pause and listen and then to say to his +nurse, "Ce n'est pas Monsieur; c'est Madame," and then, without further +loss of time, to resume the interrupted clamours. + +Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things +mainly to be done--to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the +present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, and to +break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly the special +cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain and anger become +hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for use in the future at +the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight the importance of habit. +Any means, then, that can succeed in separating a little child from the +habit of anger does fruitful work for him in the helpless time of his +childhood. The work is not easy, but a little thought should make it +easy for the elders to avoid the provocation which they--who should ward +off provocations--are apt to bring about by sheer carelessness. It is +only in childhood that our race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow +and tears, as a child's despair; and the theatre with us must needs copy +childhood if it would catch the note and action of a creature without +hope. + + + + +THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT + + +There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the flight of +time; it does so move, and yet withstands time's movement. It is full of +pauses that are due to the energy of change, has bounds and rebounds, and +when it is most active then it is longest. It is not long with languor. +It has room for remoteness, and leisure for oblivion. It takes great +excursions against time, and travels so as to enlarge its hours. This +certain year is any one of the early years of fully conscious life, and +therefore it is of all the dates. The child of Tumult has been living +amply and changefully through such a year--his eighth. It is difficult +to believe that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the adult, +the men who do not breast their days. + +For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of things. +Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men and women +never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a distant light. +There is recognition and familiarity between their seasons. But the +Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his year. Forgetfulness and +surprise set his east and his west at immeasurable distance. His Lethe +runs in the cheerful sun. You look on your own little adult year, and in +imagination enlarge it, because you know it to be the contemporary of +his. Even she who is quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a +strange and great extent of a few years of her life still to come--his +years, the years she is to live at his side. + +Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy's life, not so +much by slow degrees as by sudden and fitful accessions. His speech is +yet so childish that he chooses, for a toy, with blushes of pleasure, "a +little duck what can walk"; but with a beautifully clear accent he greets +his mother with the colloquial question, "Well, darling, do you know the +latest?" "The _what_?" "The latest: do you know the latest?" And then +he tells his news, generally, it must be owned, with some reference to +his own wrongs. On another occasion the unexpected little phrase was +varied; the news of the war then raging distressed him; a thousand of the +side he favoured had fallen. The child then came to his mother's room +with the question: "Have you heard the saddest?" Moreover the "saddest" +caused him several fits of perfectly silent tears, which seized him +during the day, on his walks or at other moments of recollection. From +such great causes arise such little things! Some of his grief was for +the nation he admired, and some was for the triumph of his brother, whose +sympathies were on the other side, and who perhaps did not spare his +sensibilities. + +The tumults of a little child's passions of anger and grief, growing +fewer as he grows older, rather increase than lessen in their +painfulness. There is a fuller consciousness of complete capitulation of +all the childish powers to the overwhelming compulsion of anger. This is +not temptation; the word is too weak for the assault of a child's passion +upon his will. That little will is taken captive entirely, and before +the child was seven he knew that it was so. Such a consciousness leaves +all babyhood behind and condemns the child to suffer. For a certain +passage of his life he is neither unconscious of evil, as he was, nor +strong enough to resist it, as he will be. The time of the subsiding of +the tumult is by no means the least pitiable of the phases of human life. +Happily the recovery from each trouble is ready and sure; so that the +child who had been abandoned to naughtiness with all his will in an +entire consent to the gloomy possession of his anger, and who had later +undergone a haggard repentance, has his captivity suddenly turned again, +"like rivers in the south." "Forget it," he had wept, in a kind of +extremity of remorse; "forget it, darling, and don't, don't be sad;" and +it is he, happily, who forgets. The wasted look of his pale face is +effaced by the touch of a single cheerful thought, and five short minutes +can restore the ruin, as though a broken little German town should in the +twinkling of an eye be restored as no architect could restore it--should +be made fresh, strong, and tight again, looking like a full box of toys, +as a town was wont to look in the new days of old. + +When his ruthless angers are not in possession the child shows the growth +of this tardy reason that--quickened--is hereafter to do so much for his +peace and dignity, by the sweetest consideration. Denied a second +handful of strawberries, and seeing quite clearly that the denial was +enforced reluctantly, he makes haste to reply, "It doesn't matter, +darling." At any sudden noise in the house his beautiful voice, with all +its little difficulties of pronunciation, is heard with the sedulous +reassurance: "It's all right, mother, nobody hurted ourselves!" He is +not surprised so as to forget this gentle little duty, which was never +required of him, but is of his own devising. + +According to the opinion of his dear and admired American friend, he says +all these things, good and evil, with an English accent; and at the +American play his English accent was irrepressible. "It's too comic; no, +it's too comic," he called in his enjoyment; being the only perfectly +fearless child in the world, he will not consent to the conventional +shyness in public, whether he be the member of an audience or of a +congregation, but makes himself perceptible. And even when he has a +desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute revolt--such a thing as +"I _can't_ like you, mother," which anon he will recant with convulsions +of distress--he has to "speak the thing he will," and when he recants it +is not for fear. + +If such a child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for inquisitorial +government could hardly be so much as attempted) by some small means +adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it would be well for his +health, but that seems at times impossible. By no effort can his elders +altogether succeed in keeping tragedy out of the life that is so unready +for it. Against great emotions no one can defend him by any forethought. +He is their subject; and to see him thus devoted and thus wrung, thus +wrecked by tempests inwardly, so that you feel grief has him actually by +the heart, recalls the reluctance--the question--wherewith you perceive +the interior grief of poetry or of a devout life. Cannot the Muse, +cannot the Saint, you ask, live with something less than this? If this +is the truer life, it seems hardly supportable. In like manner it should +be possible for a child of seven to come through his childhood with +griefs that should not so closely involve him, but should deal with the +easier sentiments. + +Despite all his simplicity, the child has (by way of inheritance, for he +has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. Accused of +certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge with any effect, +he flies to the old convention: "I didn't know what I was doing," he +avers, using a great deal of gesticulation to express the temporary +distraction of his mind. "Darling, after nurse slapped me as hard as she +could, I didn't know what I was doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my +foot." His mother knows as well as does Tolstoi that men and children +know what they are doing, and are the more intently aware as the stress +of feeling makes the moments more tense; and she will not admit a plea +which her child might have learned from the undramatic authors he has +never read. + +Far from repenting of her old system of rewards, and far from taking +fright at the name of a bribe, the mother of the Child of Tumult has only +to wish she had at command rewards ample and varied enough to give the +shock of hope and promise to the heart of the little boy, and change his +passion at its height. + + + + +THE UNREADY + + +It is rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They are, on +the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until advancing +age teaches them agility. This is not lack of sensitiveness, but mere +length of process. For instance, a child nearly newly born is cruelly +startled by a sudden crash in the room--a child who has never learnt to +fear, and is merely overcome by the shock of sound; nevertheless, that +shock of sound does not reach the conscious hearing or the nerves but +after some moments, nor before some moments more is the sense of the +shock expressed. The sound travels to the remoteness and seclusion of +the child's consciousness, as the roar of a gun travels to listeners half +a mile away. + +So it is, too, with pain, which has learnt to be so instant and eager +with us of later age that no point of time is lost in its touches--direct +as the unintercepted message of great and candid eyes, unhampered by +trivialities; even so immediate is the communication of pain. But you +could count five between the prick of a surgeon's instrument upon a +baby's arm and the little whimper that answers it. The child is then too +young, also, to refer the feeling of pain to the arm that suffers it. +Even when pain has groped its way to his mind it hardly seems to bring +local tidings thither. The baby does not turn his eyes in any degree +towards his arm or towards the side that is so vexed with vaccination. He +looks in any other direction at haphazard, and cries at random. + +See, too, how slowly the unpractised apprehension of an older child +trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest failure +to take these little _gobe-mouches_ to a good conjurer. His successes +leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it was the good man +meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is who really astonishes +them. They cannot come up even with your amateur beginner, performing at +close quarters; whereas the master of his craft on a platform runs quite +away at the outset from the lagging senses of his honest audience. + +You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under his +ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its place and +off again ten times before the little breathless boy has begun to +perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched. + +Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit of +awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. The simple +little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a common sentence +are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot use two pronouns but +they must confuse them. I never found that a young child--one of +something under nine years--was able to say, "I send them my love" at the +first attempt. It will be "I send me my love," "I send them their love," +"They send me my love"; not, of course, through any confusion of +understanding, but because of the tardy setting of words in order with +the thoughts. The child visibly grapples with the difficulty, and is +beaten. + +It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like twice- +told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They are not eager, +for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If you hide and they +cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is comparatively small; +but let them know perfectly well what cupboard you are in, and they will +find you with shouts of discovery. The better the hiding-place is +understood between you the more lively the drama. They make a convention +of art for their play. The younger the children the more dramatic; and +when the house is filled with outcries of laughter from the breathless +breast of a child, it is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding +his mother where he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that +never tires. Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he +tries to put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for, +if not, he will find that children also have a manner of substitution, +and that they will put half-hearted laughter in the place of their +natural impetuous clamours. It is certain that very young children like +to play upon their own imaginations, and enjoy their own short game. + +There is something so purely childlike in the delays of a child that any +exercise asking for the swift apprehension of later life, for the flashes +of understanding and action, from the mind and members of childhood, is +no pleasure to see. The piano, for instance, as experts understand it, +and even as the moderately-trained may play it, claims all the immediate +action, the instantaneousness, most unnatural to childhood. There may +possibly be feats of skill to which young children could be trained +without this specific violence directed upon the thing characteristic of +their age--their unreadiness--but virtuosity at the piano cannot be one +of them. It is no delight, indeed, to see the shyness of children, or +anything that is theirs, conquered and beaten; but their poor little +slowness is so distinctively their own, and must needs be physiologically +so proper to their years, so much a natural condition of the age of their +brain, that of all childishnesses it is the one that the world should +have the patience to attend upon, the humanity to foster, and the +intelligence to understand. + +It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a very +little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions there are +between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not the brain that +is quick. If, on a voyage in space, electricity takes thus much time, +and light thus much, and sound thus much, there is one little jogging +traveller that would arrive after the others had forgotten their journey, +and this is the perception of a child. Surely our own memories might +serve to remind us how in our childhood we inevitably missed the +principal point in any procession or pageant intended by our elders to +furnish us with a historical remembrance for the future. It was not our +mere vagueness of understanding, it was the unwieldiness of our senses, +of our reply to the suddenness of the grown up. We lived through the +important moments of the passing of an Emperor at a different rate from +theirs; we stared long in the wake of his Majesty, and of anything else +of interest; every flash of movement, that got telegraphic answers from +our parents' eyes, left us stragglers. We fell out of all ranks. Among +the sights proposed for our instruction, that which befitted us best was +an eclipse of the moon, done at leisure. In good time we found the moon +in the sky, in good time the eclipse set in and made reasonable progress; +we kept up with everything. + +It is too often required of children that they should adjust themselves +to the world, practised and alert. But it would be more to the purpose +that the world should adjust itself to children in all its dealings with +them. Those who run and keep together have to run at the pace of the +tardiest. But we are apt to command instant obedience, stripped of the +little pauses that a child, while very young, cannot act without. It is +not a child of ten or twelve that needs them so; it is the young creature +who has but lately ceased to be a baby, slow to be startled. + +We have but to consider all that it implies of the loitering of senses +and of an unprepared consciousness--this capacity for receiving a great +shock from a noise and this perception of the shock after two or three +appreciable moments--if we would know anything of the moments of a baby + +Even as we must learn that our time, when it is long, is too long for +children, so must we learn that our time, when it is short, is too short +for them. When it is exceedingly short they cannot, without an unnatural +effort, have any perception of it. When children do not see the jokes of +the elderly, and disappoint expectation in other ways, only less +intimate, the reason is almost always there. The child cannot turn in +mid-career; he goes fast, but the impetus took place moments ago. + + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, one +significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. This +is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the value of +process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the very wayfaring of +progress. With this is a resignation to change, and something more than +resignation--a delight in those qualities that could not be but for their +transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the world, +for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, and that for +the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now hold, perhaps, +that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held it high, we should +acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred years +ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the full stature +of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future hunting. If her +song is not restless, it is because she has a sense of the results of +time, and has submitted her heart to experience. Childhood is a time of +danger; "Would it were done." But, meanwhile, the right thing is to put +it to sleep and guard its slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies +to the child of his hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she +spins, and a song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child--"that +pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was chiefly +precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of the man he +never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when the boy was dead, +says of him: "At two and a half years of age he pronounced English, +Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly read in these three +languages." As he lived precisely five years, all he did was done at +that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the +entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make +congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and _vice versa_, construe +and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, +verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a +considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for +Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man is not +to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; it is the +very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those hasty +times. All being favourable, the child of Evelyn's studious home would +have done all these things in the course of nature within a few years. It +was the fact that he did them out of the course of nature that was, to +Evelyn, so exquisite. The course of nature had not any beauty in his +eyes. It might be borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not +admired for the majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns +with him "the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" +and without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too flattering +to the estate of man. They thought their little boy strangely hopeful +because he was so quick on his way to be something else. They lost the +timely perfection the while they were so intent upon their hopes. And +yet it is our own modern age that is charged with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, must +rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not slighting +it, or bidding it hasten its work, not yet hailing it, with Faust, "Stay, +thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made gay and visible, and the +world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the +act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every passage is a goal, +and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; but some of them wear +apparent wings. + +_Tout passe_. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this question +most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, this +suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time of +fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because they had +the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of this unpausing +life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight years +old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause to be +proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in idleness by +an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated into any rudiments" +till he was four years of age. He seems even to have been a youth of +eight before Latin was seriously begun; but this fact he is evidently, in +after years, with a total lack of a sense of humour, rather ashamed of, +and hardly acknowledges. It is difficult to imagine what childhood must +have been when nobody, looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything +that was proper to five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of +themselves and of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has nothing +to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in it. Twice are +children not his own mentioned in his diary. Once he goes to the wedding +of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, but not, evidently, an +occasion of sensibility. Another time he stands by, in a French +hospital, while a youth of less than nine years of age undergoes a +frightful surgical operation "with extraordinary patience." "The use I +made of it was to give Almighty God hearty thanks that I had not been +subject to this deplorable infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there were +in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon being +children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. Art, for +example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and there were the +prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who is hauling up his +little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" might be +called Tommy. But there were no "little radiant girls." Now and then an +"Education of the Virgin" is the exception, and then it is always a +matter of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when +they were so young that their hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped +through their fetters, they are always recorded as refusing importunate +suitors, which seems necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval +mind, but mars them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in the +Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa "who +passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as the least +stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state with men and +maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact rules, such as that +of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent example and instruction +to the other maids of honour, was "severely careful how she might give +the least countenance to that liberty which the gallants there did +usually assume," refused the addresses of the "greatest persons," and was +as famous for her beauty as for her wit. One would like to forget the +age at which she did these things. When she began her service she was +eleven. When she was making her rule never to speak to the King she was +not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April into +May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if they +shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The particular +year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as who should say a +fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at two years old, and +ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as Keats a poet would not +have patience with the process of the seasons, but boasted of untimely +flowers. The "musk-rose" is never in fact the child of mid-May, as he +has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear of +losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the +bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen in the +"Spectator" has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the last six +years." The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the +stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl +of thirteen, "willing to settle in the world as soon as she can." She +adds, "I have a good portion which they cannot hinder me of." This +correspondent is one of "the women who seldom ask advice before they have +bought their wedding clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age +that could think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a later +century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, and all +things complete in their day because it is their day, and has its +appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather than a +sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children to seem, +at last, something else than a defect. + + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. +There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in +sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. Summer dusk, +especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how you may. +They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent upon all kinds of +close industries, breathing hard over choppings and poundings. But when +late twilight comes, there comes also the punctual wildness. The +children will run and pursue, and laugh for the mere movement--it does so +jolt their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and +crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours. The +children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the mimicry of +hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike some +blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual +child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done +for freedom under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict with +the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy of men +should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens at some +time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts of the +poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved by +children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to beguile the +time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was persuading another to +play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable hour. +It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The habit of +prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of the fixity of +some customs in mankind. But if the inquirers who appeal to that +beginning remembered better their own infancy, they would seek no +further. See the habits in falling to sleep which have children in their +thralldom. Try to overcome them in any child, and his own conviction of +their high antiquity weakens your hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French sleep- +song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of history as +must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, with a sense of the +incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. "Le Bon Roi Dagobert" +has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh. The nurse +knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she herself +slept to when a child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in "Le Pont +d'Avignon," is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the _tete a tete_ +of child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered rooms at night. +"Malbrook" would be comparatively modern, were not all things that are +sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of +them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate races +that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white +child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical +night. His closing eyes are filled with alien images. + + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious of +something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his +apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing than the +destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand where they did, +and the mere relation of time is as it was. But that which has fallen +together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and lies in a little heap, is +the past itself--time--the fact of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are no +more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit of +measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing of +paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He had +thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the states, +the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the measure which +he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. His first ten years +had given him the illusion of a most august scale and measure. It was +then that he conceived Antiquity. But now! Is it to a decade of ten +such little years as these now in his hand--ten of his mature years--that +men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life +shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a most +noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He attributes an +overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers distance. He, and +he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. He creates more than +mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting into the extremities of the +past. He assigns the Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of +Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having conceived +old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the mystery to the mind +of the man. The man perceives at last all the illusion, but he cannot +forget what was his conviction when he was a child. He had once a +persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for nothing. The enormous +undeception that comes upon him still leaves spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive shocks. It +is as though one strained level eyes towards the horizon, and then were +bidden to shorten his sight and to close his search within a poor half +acre before his face. Now, it is that he suddenly perceives the hitherto +remote, remote youth of his own parents to have been something familiarly +near, so measured by his new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila +that is displaced. Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. +There needs no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world--our contemporary world--is not very mysterious. We +perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we now consider, jolted +the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that he +was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, for +instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for the child +to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own magnificent +measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus they belong to him +as he is now--a man; and not to him as he was once--a child. It was +quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten years' rule along the path +from our time to theirs; that path must be skipped by the nimble yard in +the man's present possession. Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for +the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the illusion +of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself Antiquity--to +every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of childhood cannot make +Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; but the beginning +of every life is older than Abraham. _There_ is the abyss of time. Let +a man turn to his own childhood--no further--if he would renew his sense +of remoteness, and of the mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes; +but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension +not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive +apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real apprehension +when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no +historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and +unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is why +it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at that present +age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But +he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every one was seven years +old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" history is taught in the only +ancient days. So, for a time, the world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges the +sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion is over +and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught back and +chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man remains capable +of great spaces of time. He will not find them in Egypt, it is true, but +he finds them within, he contains them, he is aware of them. History has +fallen together, but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, +stretches beyond and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years that +are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great disillusion shall +never shorten those years, nor set nearer together the days that made +them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far apart" is wonderful. The +past of childhood is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one +point; it has summits a world away one from the other. Year from year +differs as the antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And +the man of thirty-five knows for ever afterwards what is flight, even +though he finds no great historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious childhood, +which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. Many other +moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten years. Hours of +weariness are long--not with a mysterious length, but with a mere length +of protraction, so that the things called minutes and half-hours by the +elderly may be something else to their apparent contemporaries, the +children. The ancient moment is not merely one of these--it is a space +not of long, but of immeasurable, time. It is the moment of going to +sleep. The man knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has +long ceased to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough +margin of dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He +knows that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those +hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who +passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he +meets there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable +time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She sings +absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may mean to +waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell of the +beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of them all +his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech can well +express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is beset +with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere +adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further +back--it is already so far. That is, it looks as remote to the memory of +a man of thirty as to that of a man of seventy. What are a mere forty +years of added later life in the contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} It is worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, and +the ascription of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted phrase, a +letter of Stevenson's was published, and proved that he had read Lucy +Hutchinson's writings, and that he did not love her. "I have possessed +myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I admire, etc. . . I +sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and beaten her, in the +bitterness of my spirit. . . The way in which she talks of herself makes +one's blood run cold." He was young at that time of writing, and perhaps +hardly aware of the lesson in English he had taken from her. We know +that he never wasted the opportunity for such a lesson; and the fact that +he did allow her to administer one to him in right seventeenth-century +diction is established--it is not too bold to say so--by my recognition +of his style in her own. I had surely caught the retrospective reflex +note, heard first in his voice, recognized in hers. + +{2} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1434.txt or 1434.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/1434 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays by Alice Meynell + + + + +Contents: + +WINDS AND WATERS + +Ceres' Runaway +Wells +Rain +The Tow Path +The Tethered Constellations +Rushes and Reeds + +IN A BOOK ROOM + +A Northern Fancy +Pathos +Anima Pellegrina! +A Point of Biography +The Honours of Mortality +Composure +The Little Language +A Counterchange +Harlequin Mercutio + +COMMENTARIES + +Laughter +The Rhythm of Life +Domus Angusta +Innocence and Experience +The Hours of Sleep +Solitude +Decivilized + +WAYFARING + +The Spirit of Place +Popular Burlesque +Have Patience, Little Saint +At Monastery Gates +The Sea Wall + +ARTS + +Tithonus +Symmetry and Incident +The Plaid +The Flower +Unstable Equilibrium +Victorian Caricature +The Point of Honour + +"THE CHEARFUL LADIE OF THE LIGHT" + +The Colour of Life +The Horizon +In July +Cloud +Shadows + +WOMEN AND BOOKS + +The Seventeenth Century +Mrs. Dingley +Prue +Mrs. Johnson +Madame Roland + +"THE DARLING YOUNG" + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird +The Child of Tumult +The Child of Subsiding Tumult +The Unready +That Pretty Person +Under the Early Stars +The Illusion of Historic Time + + + + +CERES' RUNAWAY + + + +One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture of +a Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop--at least while the +charming quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality does +not exist that would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth +of green in the high places of the city. It is true that there have +been the famous captures--those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths +of Caracalla; moreover a less conspicuous running to earth takes +place on the Appian Way, in some miles of the solitude of the +Campagna, where men are employed in weeding the roadside. They +slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the ancient stones--rows of +little corpses--for sweeping up, as at Upper Tooting; one wonders +why. The governors of the city will not succeed in making the Via +Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a thriving +commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and shattered +Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of +buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is +spread," says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the +pyramid. But a couple of active scythes are kept at work there +summer and spring--not that the grass is long, for it is much +overtopped by the bee-orchis, but because flowers are not to laugh +within reach of the civic vigilance. + +Yet, except that it is overtaken and put to death in these +accessible places, the wild summer growth of Rome has a prevailing +success and victory. It breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, +lodges in the sun, swings in the wind, takes wing to find the +remotest ledges, and blooms aloft. It makes light of the sixteenth +century, of the seventeenth, and of the eighteenth. As the historic +ages grow cold it banters them alike. The flagrant flourishing +statue, the haughty facade, the broken pediment (and Rome is chiefly +the city of the broken pediment) are the opportunities of this +vagrant garden in the air. One certain church, that is full of +attitude, can hardly be aware that a crimson snapdragon of great +stature and many stalks and blossoms is standing on its furthest +summit tiptoe against its sky. The cornice of another church in the +fair middle of Rome lifts out of the shadows of the streets a row of +accidental marigolds. Impartial to the antique, the mediaeval, the +Renaissance early and late, the newer modern, this wild summer finds +its account in travertine and tufa, reticulated work, brick, stucco +and stone. "A bird of the air carries the matter," or the last sea- +wind, sombre and soft, or the latest tramontana, gold and blue, has +lodged in a little fertile dust the wild grass, wild wheat, wild +oats! + +If Venus had her runaway, after whom the Elizabethans raised hue and +cry, this is Ceres'. The municipal authorities, hot-foot, cannot +catch it. And, worse than all, if they pause, dismayed, to mark the +flight of the agile fugitive safe on the arc of a flying buttress, +or taking the place of the fallen mosaics and coloured tiles of a +twelfth-century tower, and in any case inaccessible, the grass grows +under their discomfited feet. It actually casts a flush of green +over their city piazza--the wide light-grey pavements so vast that +to keep them weeded would need an army of workers. That army has +not been employed; and grass grows in a small way, but still +beautifully, in the wide space around which the tramway circles. +Perhaps a hatred of its delightful presence is what chiefly prompts +the civic government in Rome to the effort to turn the piazza into a +square. The shrub is to take the place not so much of the pavement +as of the importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten--and the +weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun takes +its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality in +tears, to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the +"third" (which is in truth the fourth) Rome. + +When I say grass I use the word widely. Italian grass is not turf; +it is full of things, and they are chiefly aromatic. No richer +scents throng each other, close and warm, than these from a little +hand-space of the grass one rests on, within the walls or on the +plain, or in the Sabine or the Alban hills. Moreover, under the +name I will take leave to include lettuce as it grows with a most +welcome surprise on certain ledges of the Vatican. That great and +beautiful palace is piled, at various angles, as it were house upon +house, here magnificent, here careless, but with nothing pretentious +and nothing furtive. And outside one lateral window on a ledge to +the sun, prospers this little garden of random salad. Buckingham +Palace has nothing whatever of the Vatican dignity, but one cannot +well think of little cheerful cabbages sunning themselves on any +parapet it may have round a corner. + +Moreover, in Italy the vegetables--the table ones--have a wildness, +a suggestion of the grass, from lands at liberty for all the +tilling. Wildish peas, wilder asparagus--the field asparagus which +seems to have disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts +in his manifestations of frugality--and strawberries much less than +half-way from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale +and corpulent of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance +lost--these are all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. +The most cultivated of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet +not a garden, but something better, as her city is yet not a town +but something better, and her wilderness something better than a +desert. In all the three there is a trace of the little flying +heels of the runaway. + + + +WELLS + + + +The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or +unattractive secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and +perennial means of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for +example, and the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we +live. They are covered, they are carried, they are hushed, from the +spring to the tap; and when their voices are released at last in the +London scullery, why, it can hardly be said that the song is +eloquent of the natural source of waters, whether earthly or +heavenly. There is not one of the circumstances of this capture of +streams--the company, the water-rate, and the rest--that is not a +sign of the ill-luck of modern devices in regard to style. For +style implies a candour and simplicity of means, an action, a +gesture, as it were, in the doing of small things; it is the +ignorance of secret ways; whereas the finish of modern life and its +neatness seem to be secured by a system of little shufflings and +surprises. + +Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such +fittings; they form its very construction. Style does not exist in +modern arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for +all the successes--which are not to be denied--of their outer part; +the happy little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of +its absence, being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, +and the triumph and success of the present art of raiment--"fit" +itself--is but the result of a masked and lurking labour and device. + +The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of +the beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and +slighter actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the +way. In a word, the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is +the dexterous provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well- +appointed, and decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his +hands; whereas the artist craftsman of other times made a +manifestation of his means. The first hides the streams, under +stress and pressure, in paltry pipes which we all must make haste to +call upon the earth to cover, and the second lifted up the arches of +the aqueduct. + +The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way +to ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure +way. In all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed +by hidden means must needs, from the beginning, prepare the +abolition of dignity. This is easy to understand, but it is less +easy to explain the ill-fortune that presses upon the expert +workman, in search of easy ways to live, all the ill-favoured +materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them serviceable and +effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter them, turning +the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the daily world. +It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other hand, is it easy to +explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler devices which +are, after all, only less expert ways of labour. In those happy +conditions, neither from the material, suggesting to the workman, +nor from the workman looking askance at his unhandsome material, +comes a first proposal to pour in cement and make fast the +underworld, out of sight. But fate spares not that suggestion to +the able and the unlucky at their task of making neat work of the +means, the distribution, the traffick of life. + +The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the +means of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the +sun, with their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, +no, they are lapped in lead. + +King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals. + +Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The hiding- +place that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters of +wells are, at their deepest, in communication with the open sky. No +other mine is so visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible +there; and it is fine to think of the waters of this planet, shallow +and profound, all charged with shining suns, a multitude of waters +multiplying suns, and carrying that remote fire, as it were, within +their unalterable freshness. Not a pool without this visitant, or +without passages of stars. As for the wells of the Equator, you may +think of them in their last recesses as the daily bathing-places of +light; a luminous fancy is able so to scatter fitful figures of the +sun, and to plunge them in thousands within those deeps. + +Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the +sun is shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken +across stones, and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that +fall through chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile +figures of leaves. To all these waters the agile air has perpetual +access. Not so can great towns be watered, it will be said with +reason; and this is precisely the ill-luck of great towns. + +Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have +the grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every campo has +its circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the +pavement, its soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the +water below, and the cheerful work of the cable. + +Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their +plain with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the +watersheds in the hills to the and city; and having the waters +captive, they knew how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in +this Roman triumph. They had the wit to boast thus of their +brilliant prisoner. + +None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a +more invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the +leap of the heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They +have remained in Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the +victory was longer than empire, and their thousands of loud voices +have never ceased to confess the conquest of the cold floods, +separated long ago, drawn one by one, alive, to the head and front +of the world. + +Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest fact +of Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains or to +the distance from the city without seeing the approach of those +perpetual waters--waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. +This, then, was the style of a master, who does not lapse from +"incidental greatness," has no mean precision, out of sight, to +prepare the finish of his phrases, and does not think the means and +the approaches are to be plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, +without haste, and without misgiving are all great things to be +done, and neither interruption in the doing nor ruin after they are +done finds anything in them to betray. There was never any disgrace +of means, and when the world sees the work broken through there is +no disgrace of discovery. The labour of Michelangelo's chisel, +little more than begun, a Roman structure long exposed in disarray-- +upon these the light of day looks full, and the Roman and the +Florentine have their unrefuted praise. + + + +RAIN + + + +Not excepting the falling stars--for they are far less sudden--there +is nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the +familiar rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long +shafts from the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy +downward journey with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be +infinitely separate, units, an innumerable flight of single things, +and the simple movement of intricate points. + +The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at +once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our +impression is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of +our senses. What we are apt to call our quick impression is rather +our sensibly tardy, unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly +bewildered sense of things that flash and fall, wink, and are +overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes of man hesitate and +mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert eyes, +delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles +them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part +slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose +moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of +instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, +and causes the past, a moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon +the skies. + +The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records +of our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant +woodman's stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is +repeated in the impressions of our clinging sight. The round wheel +dazzles it, and the stroke of the bird's wing shakes it off like a +captivity evaded. Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of +these timid senses; and their perception, outrun by the shower, +shaken by the light, denied by the shadow, eluded by the distance, +makes the lingering picture that is all our art. One of the most +constant causes of all the mystery and beauty of that art is surely +not that we see by flashes, but that nature flashes on our +meditative eyes. There is no need for the impressionist to make +haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature doubles upon +him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility. + +Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the +ministration of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that +the husbandman is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet +unclaimed in the arms of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that +he binds the shower withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the +coming cloud. His sense of property takes aim and reckons distance +and speed, and even as he shoots a little ahead of the equally +uncertain ground-game, he knows approximately how to hit the cloud +of his possession. So much is the rain bound to the earth that, +unable to compel it, man has yet found a way, by lying in wait, to +put his price upon it. The exhaustible cloud "outweeps its rain," +and only the inexhaustible sun seems to repeat and to enforce his +cumulative fires upon every span of ground, innumerable. The rain +is wasted upon the sea, but only by a fantasy can the sun's waste be +made a reproach to the ocean, the desert, or the sealed-up street. +Rossetti's "vain virtues" are the virtues of the rain, falling +unfruitfully. + +Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, +as the end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its +flight warning away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing +shadow. It is a threat and a reconciliation; it removes mountains +compared with which the Alps are hillocks, and makes a childlike +peace between opposed heights and battlements of heaven. + + + +THE TOW PATH + + + +A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided +must have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird +your shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on +the even path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames--the side +of meadows. + +The elastic resistance of the line is a "heart-animating strain," +only too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of +the riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, +are swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green. The +line drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows +taut; it makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress +of your easy power. + +The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the +joys of "feeling hearts" according to the erroneous sentiment of a +verse of Moore's. The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the +joys of sensitive hands are few. Here, however, in the effectual +act of towing, is the ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy +labourers with the oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all other means +of violence. Here, on the long tow-path, between warm, embrowned +meadows and opal waters, you need but to walk in your swinging +harness, and so take your friends up-stream. + +You work merely as the mill-stream works--by simple movement. At +lock after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to +the wheel that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river +have the same mere force of progress. + +There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is the +bright Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing +by so many curves of low shore on the level of the world. + +Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as +the wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings +the lighted clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying +high for mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own +weight. You will not envy them for so brief a success. Did not +Wordsworth want a "little boat" for the air? Did not Byron call him +a blockhead therefor? Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing. + +All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. +Even the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than +you, walking your effectual walk with the line attached to your +willing steps. Your moderate strength of a mere everyday physical +education gives you the sufficient mastery of the towpath. + +If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give +it life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the +buoyant burden--the yielding check--than ever before. An +unharnessed walk must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of +insignificant liberty. It is easier than towing? So is the drawing +of water in a sieve easier to the arms than drawing in a bucket, but +not to the heart. + +To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the +wings of metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the +spirit and the line. + +No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; it +depends upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any +depressing show of helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it +apt to set you at naught or charge you with a make-believe. It +accompanies, it almost anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just +so much as to give your briskness good reason, and to justify you if +you should take to still more nimble heels. All your haste, +moreover, does but waken a more brilliantly-sounding ripple. + +The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems to +carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your +figure, enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes +free. No watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. +What little outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer +smoothly towed. Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your +head high and watch the birds, or listen to them. They fly in such +lofty air that they seem to turn blue in the blue sky. A flash of +their flight shows silver for a moment, but they are blue birds in +that sunny distance above, as mountains are blue, and horizons. The +days are so still that you do not merely hear the cawing of the +rooks--you overhear their hundred private croakings and creakings, +the soliloquy of the solitary places swept by wings. + +As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at an +end. This year's robins are in full voice; and the only song that +is not for love or nesting--the childish song of boy-birds, the +freshest and youngest note--is, by a happy paradox, that of an +autumnal voice. + +Here is no hoot, nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist's +wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding +note. Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, +stealthy soles of the barefooted in the south. + + + +THE TETHERED CONSTELLATIONS + + + +It is no small thing--no light discovery--to find a river Andromeda +and Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer +night around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two--delicate +visitants of streams--we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of +the eyes, so fine and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the +southern waves may show the light--not the image--of the evening or +the morning planet. But this, in a pool of the country Thames at +night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it is the startling image of a +whole large constellation burning in the flood. + +These reflected heavens are different heavens. On a darker and more +vacant field than that of the real skies, the shape of the Lyre or +the Bear has an altogether new and noble solitude; and the waters +play a painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two +movements shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright +flashing of constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark +flashes of the vague bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate +with an alien motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of +large stars escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the +steady night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, +have a suddenness of gleaming life. You imagine that some +unexampled gale might make them seem to shine with such a movement +in the veritable sky; yet nothing but deep water, seeming still in +its incessant flight and rebound, could really show such altered +stars. The flood lets a constellation fly, as Juliet's "wanton" +with a tethered bird, only to pluck it home again. At moments some +rhythmic flux of the water seems about to leave the darkly-set, +widely-spaced Bear absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, +and refuse to imitate the skies, and all the water is obscure; then +one broken star returns, then fragments of another, and a third and +a fourth flit back to their noble places, brilliantly vague, +wonderfully visible, mobile, and unalterable. There is nothing else +at once so keen and so elusive. + +The aspen poplar had been in captive flight all day, but with no +such vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft +night are reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen by +the large and vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the +Pleiades. + +There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in the +river Thames--the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys +on all the winds up and down England and across it in the end of +summer. It is a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a- +tiptoe wherever the wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty +points when it is not flying. The streets of London are among its +many highways, for it is fragile enough to go far in all sorts of +weather. But it gets disabled if a rough gust tumbles it on the +water so that its finely-feathered feet are wet. On gentle breezes +it is able to cross dry-shod, walking the waters. + +All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It +is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle +plants (or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to +the tops of many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather +have to meet it in battalions than in these invincible units astray. +But if the farmer owes it a lawful grudge, there is many a rigid +riverside garden wherein it would be a great pleasure to sow the +thistles of the nearest pasture. + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another +growth that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned +to winter than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east +wind, more than the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, +rushes, canes, and reeds were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On +them the nimble winds played their dry music. They were part of the +winter. It looked through them and spoke through them. They were +spears and javelins in array to the sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those +that stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour +of his light look through--low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of +winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They +belong to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the +river, beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes +perilous footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low +lands, the sign of streams. They grow tall between you and the near +horizon of flat lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; +and near them grow flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow +lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness +of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the +distinction of its points, its needles, and its resolute right +lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need +the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy +breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops +knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges +whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, +showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the +silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are +unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm +gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a thousand reasons for +their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, are swept into a +single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds +in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so +changed (except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, +and has in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape +elsewhere, rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south +are not conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a +gipsy people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is +rather a gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if +he is a man of sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior +doubts. His property, he says, goes right down to the centre of the +earth, in the shape of a wedge; how high up it goes into the air it +would be difficult to say, and obviously the shape of the wedge must +be continued in the direction of increase. We may therefore +proclaim his right to the clouds and their cargo. It is true that +as his ground game is apt to go upon his neighbour's land to be +shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his showers elsewhere. +But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed country-house +sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But he who +tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes +should happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his- +-he had the pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for +a time. But the bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very +thorough landowner, but a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would +endure this sort of thing no longer, and went out armed and had a +long acre of sedges scythed to death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and +upon margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a +road. No wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and +their primroses are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and +then, though, one has a kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds +of trees--the Corot trees. Standing at a distance from the more +ornamental trees, from those of fuller foliage, and from all the +indeciduous shrubs and the conifers (manifest property, every one), +two or three translucent aspens, with which the very sun and the +breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes seemed to wear a +certain look--an extra-territorial look, let us call it. They are +suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not +say so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, +are in spirit almost as extraterritorial as the rushes. In proof of +this he very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. +The view is better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are +in his ground right enough, there is a something about their heads-- +. But the reason he gives for wishing them away is merely that they +are "thin." A man does not always say everything. + + + +A NORTHERN FANCY + + + +"I remember," said Dryden, writing to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat +Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and +witty answer to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to +write like a madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing +to write like a madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a +fool.'" Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be +heard, a light high note, in English poetry throughout two centuries +at least, and one English poet lately set that untethered lyric, the +mad maid's song, flying again. + +A revolt against the oppression of the late sixteenth and early +seventeenth centuries--the age of the re-discovery of death; against +the crime of tragedies; against the tyranny of Italian example that +had made the poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, +inconstancy--may have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this +tune of innocence, and this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. +"I heard a maid in Bedlam," runs the old song. High and low the +poets tried for that note, and the singer was nearly always to be a +maid and crazed for love. Except for the temporary insanity so +indifferently worn by the soprano of the now deceased kind of +Italian opera, and except that a recent French story plays with the +flitting figure of a village girl robbed of her wits by woe (and +this, too, is a Russian villager, and the Southern author may have +found his story on the spot, as he seems to aver) I have not met +elsewhere than in England this solitary and detached poetry of the +treble note astray. + +At least, it is principally a northern fancy. Would the steadfast +Cordelia, if she had not died, have lifted the low voice to that +high note, so delicately untuned? She who would not be prodigal of +words might yet, indeed, have sung in the cage, and told old tales, +and laughed at gilded butterflies of the court of crimes, and lived +so long in the strange health of an emancipated brain as to wear out + + +Packs and sects of great ones +That ebb and flow by the moon. + + +She, if King Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry +and strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the maid +called Barbara. + +It was surely the name of the maid who died singing, as Desdemona +remembers, that lingered in the ear of Wordsworth. Of all the songs +of the distracted, written in the sanity of high imagination, there +is nothing more passionate than that beginning "'Tis said that some +have died for love." To one who has always recognized the greatness +of this poem and who possibly had known and forgotten how much +Ruskin prized it, it was a pleasure to find the judgement afresh in +Modern Painters, where this grave lyric is cited for an example of +great imagination. It is the mourning and restless song of the +lover ("the pretty Barbara died") who has not yet broken free from +memory into the alien world of the insane. + +Barbara's lover dwelt in the scene of his love, as Dryden's Adam +entreats the expelling angel that he might do, protesting that he +could endure to lose "the bliss, but not the place." (And although +this dramatic "Paradise Lost" of Dryden's is hardly named by critics +except to be scorned, this is assuredly a fine and imaginative +thought.) It is nevertheless as a wanderer that the crazed creature +visits the fancy of English poets with such a wild recurrence. The +Englishman of the far past, barred by climate, bad roads, ill- +lighted winters, and the intricate life and customs of the little +town, must have been generally a home-keeper. No adventure, no +setting forth, and small liberty, for him. But Tom-a-Bedlam, the +wild man in patches or in ribbons, with his wallet and his horn for +alms of food or drink, came and went as fitfully as the storm, free +to suffer all the cold--an unsheltered creature; and the chill fancy +of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey that had +no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the +swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it +was one who wrote like a madman and not like a fool. + +Not a town, not a village, not a solitary cottage during the English +Middle Ages was unvisited by him who frightened the children; they +had a name for him as for the wild birds--Robin Redbreast, Dicky +Swallow, Philip Sparrow, Tom Tit, Tom-a-Bedlam. And after him came +the "Abram men," who were sane parodies of the crazed, and went to +the fairs and wakes in motley. Evelyn says of a fop: "All his body +was dressed like a maypole, or a Tom-a-Bedlam's cap." But after the +Civil Wars they vanished, and no man knew how. In time old men +remembered them only to remember that they had not seen any such +companies or solitary wanderers of late years. + +The mad maid of the poets is a vagrant too, when she is free, and +not singing within Bedlam early in the morning, "in the spring." +Wordsworth, who dealt with the legendary fancy in his "Ruth," makes +the crazed one a wanderer in the hills whom a traveller might see by +chance, rare as an Oread, and nearly as wild as Echo herself:- + + +I too have passed her in the hills +Setting her little water-mills. + + +His heart misgives him to think of the rheumatism that must befall +in such a way of living; and his grave sense of civilization, +BOURGEOIS in the humane and noble way that is his own, restores her +after death to the company of man, to the "holy bell," which +Shakespeare's Duke remembered in banishment, and to the congregation +and their "Christian psalm." + +The older poets were less responsible, less serious and more sad, +than Wordsworth, when they in turn were touched by the fancy of the +maid crazed by love. They left her to her light immortality; and +she might be drenched in dews; they would not desire to reconcile +nor bury her. She might have her hair torn by the bramble, but her +heart was light after trouble. "Many light hearts and wings"--she +had at least the bird's heart, and the poet lent to her voice the +wings of his verses. + +There is nothing in our poetry less modern than she. The vagrant +woman of later feeling was rather the sane creature of Ebenezer +Elliott's fine lines in "The Excursion" - + + +Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried! +Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul! + + +Trouble did not "try" the Elizabethan wild one, it undid her. She +had no child, or if there had ever been a child of hers, she had +long forgotten how it died. She hailed the wayfarer, who was more +weary than she, with a song; she haunted the cheerful dawn; her +"good-morrow" rings from Herrick's poem, fresh as cock-crow. She +knows that her love is dead, and her perplexity has regard rather to +the many kinds of flowers than to the old story of his death; they +distract her in the splendid meadows. + +All the tragic world paused to hear that lightest of songs, as the +tragedy of Hamlet pauses for the fitful voice of Ophelia. Strange +was the charm of this perpetual alien, and unknown to us now. The +world has become once again as it was in the mad maid's heyday, less +serious and more sad than Wordsworth; but it has not recovered, and +perhaps will never recover, that sweetness. Blake's was a more +starry madness. Crabbe, writing of village sorrows, thought himself +bound to recur to the legend of the mad maid, but his "crazed +maiden" is sane enough, sorrowful but dull, and sings of her own +"burning brow," as Herrick's wild one never sang; nor is there any +smile in her story, though she talks of flowers, or, rather, "the +herbs I loved to rear"; and perhaps she is the surest of all signs +that the strange inspiration of the past centuries was lost, +vanished like Tom-a-Bedlam himself. It had been wholly English, +whereas the English eighteenth century was not wholly English. + +It is not to be imagined that any hard Southern mind could ever have +played in poetry with such a fancy; or that Petrarch, for example, +could so have foregone the manifestation of intelligence and +intelligible sentiment. And as to Dante, who put the two eternities +into the momentary balance of the human will, cold would be his +disregard of this northern dream of innocence. If the mad maid was +an alien upon earth, what were she in the Inferno? What word can +express her strangeness there, her vagrancy there? And with what +eyes would they see this dewy face glancing in at the windows of +that City? + + + +PATHOS + + + +A fugitive writer wrote not long ago on the fugitive page of a +magazine: "For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is +the most real personage of the piece, and not without some hints of +the pathos that is worked out more fully, though by different ways, +in Bottom and Malvolio." Has it indeed come to this? Have the +Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or their yet later equivalents, +compared with which "le spleen" of the French Byronic age was gay, +done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature +free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. +Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your +critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the +penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of +little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it +is precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the +lion; they can make shift to see through that: but the Snug within, +the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in that +latent form which is the more appealing; and discouraging questions +arise as to the end of old Double; and Harpagon is the tragic figure +of Monomania; and as to Argan, ah, what havoc in "les entrailles de +Monsieur" must have been wrought by those prescriptions! Et patati, +et patata. + +It may be only too true that the actual world is "with pathos +delicately edged." For Malvolio living we should have had living +sympathies; so much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of +refinement; so unarmed a credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed +for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the weaver +our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, +his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the +niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not +art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to treat things +singly, without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous +completeness of the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this +reason, our refuge? Fortunately unreal is his world when he will +have it so; and there we may laugh with open heart at a grotesque +man: without misgiving, without remorse, without reluctance. If +great creating Nature has not assumed for herself she has assuredly +secured to the great creating poet the right of partiality, of +limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of taking one +impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and +Nature are complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with one +another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the +corner, as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the +flat--(the borrowing of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; +but let this pass, as it is apt)--is but another sign of the general +lack of a sense of the separation between Nature and her sentient +mirror in the mind. In some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is +as Nature herself, all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in +comedy--he is partial, he is impressionary, he refuses to know what +is not to his purpose, he is light-heartedly capricious. And in +that gay, wilful world it is that he gives us--or used to give us, +for even the word is obsolete--the pleasure of OUBLIANCE. + +Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have +caught him a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those +like-minded will assuredly also continue to show how much more +completely human, how much more sensitive, how much more +responsible, is the art of the critic than the world has ever dreamt +till now. And, superior in so much, they will still count their +importunate sensibility as the choicest of their gifts. And +Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his +admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud +by the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears +of it are wet. + + + +ANIMA PELLEGRINA! + + + +Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the +stranger's fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a +phrase that is its own essential possession, and yet is dearer to +the speaker of other tongues. Easily--shall I say cheaply?-- +spiritual, for example, was the nation that devised the name anima +pellegrina, wherewith to crown a creature admired. "Pilgrim soul" +is a phrase for any language, but "pilgrim soul!" addressed, singly +and sweetly to one who cannot be over-praised, "pilgrim-soul!" is a +phrase of fondness, the high homage of a lover, of one watching, of +one who has no more need of common flatteries, but has admired and +gazed while the object of his praises visibly surpassed them--this +is the facile Italian ecstasy, and it rises into an Italian heaven. + +It was by chance, and in an old play, that I came upon this +impetuous, sudden, and single sentence of admiration, as it were a +sentence of life passed upon one charged with inestimable deeds; and +the modern editor had thought it necessary to explain the +exclamation by a note. It was, he said, poetical. + +Anima pellegrina seems to be Italian of no later date than +Pergolese's airs, and suits the time as the familiar phrase of the +more modern love-song suited the day of Bellini. But it is only +Italian, bygone Italian, and not a part of the sweet past of any +other European nation, but only of this. + +To the same local boundaries and enclosed skies belongs the charm of +those buoyant words:- + + +Felice chi vi mira, +Ma piu felice chi per voi sospira! + + +And it is not only a charm of elastic sound or of grace; that would +be but a property of the turn of speech. It is rather the +profounder advantage whereby the rhymes are freighted with such +feeling as the very language keeps in store. In another tongue you +may sing, "happy who looks, happier who sighs"; but in what other +tongue shall the little meaning be so sufficient, and in what other +shall you get from so weak an antithesis the illusion of a lovely +intellectual epigram? Yet it is not worthy of an English reader to +call it an illusion; he should rather be glad to travel into the +place of a language where the phrase IS intellectual, impassioned, +and an epigram; and should thankfully for the occasion translate +himself, and not the poetry. + +I have been delighted to use a present current phrase whereof the +charm may still be unknown to Englishmen--"piuttosto bruttini." See +what an all-Italian spirit is here, and what contempt, not +reluctant, but tolerant and familiar. You may hear it said of +pictures, or works of art of several kinds, and you confess at once +that not otherwise should they be condemned. BRUTTO--ugly--is the +word of justice, the word for any language, everywhere translatable, +a circular note, to be exchanged internationally with a general +meaning, wholesale, in the course of the European concert. But +BRUTTINO is a soothing diminutive, a diminutive that forbears to +express contempt, a diminutive that implies innocence, and is, +moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging in the rear-- +"rather than not." "Rather ugly than not, and ugly in a little way +that we need say few words about--the fewer the better;" nay, this +paraphrase cannot achieve the homely Italian quality whereby the +printed and condemnatory criticism is made a family affair that +shall go no further. After the sound of it, the European concert +seems to be composed of brass instruments. + +How unlike is the house of English language and the enclosure into +which a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything here +more essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) +than our particle "un"? Poor are those living languages that have +not our use of so rich a negative. The French equivalent in +adjectives reaches no further than the adjective itself--or hardly; +it does not attain the participle; so that no French or Italian poet +has the words "unloved", "unforgiven." None such, therefore, has +the opportunity of the gravest and the most majestic of all ironies. +In our English, the words that are denied are still there--"loved," +"forgiven": excluded angels, who stand erect, attesting what is not +done, what is undone, what shall not be done. + +No merely opposite words could have so much denial, or so much pain +of loss, or so much outer darkness, or so much barred beatitude in +sight. All-present, all-significant, all-remembering, all- +foretelling is the word, and it has a plenitude of knowledge. + +We have many more conspicuous possessions that are, like this, +proper to character and thought, and by no means only an accident of +untransferable speech. And it is impossible for a reader, who is a +lover of languages for their spirit, to pass the words of +untravelled excellence, proper to their own garden enclosed, without +recognition. Never may they be disregarded or confounded with the +universal stock. If I would not so neglect PIUTTOSTO BRUTTINI, how +much less a word dominating literature! And of such words of +ascendancy and race there is no great English author but has +abundant possession. No need to recall them. But even writers who +are not great have, here and there, proved their full consciousness +of their birthright. Thus does a man who was hardly an author, +Haydon the painter, put out his hand to take his rights. He has +incomparable language when he is at a certain page of his life; at +that time he sate down to sketch his child, dying in its babyhood, +and the head he studied was, he says, full of "power and grief." + +This is a phrase of different discovery from that which reveals a +local rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an +intellectual place--Felice chi vi mira--or the art-critic's phrase-- +piuttosto bruttini--of easy, companionable, and equal contempt. + +As for French, if it had no other sacred words--and it has many--who +would not treasure the language that has given us--no, not that has +given us, but that has kept for its own--ensoleille? Nowhere else +is the sun served with such a word. It is not to be said or written +without a convincing sense of sunshine, and from the very word come +light and radiation. The unaccustomed north could not have made it, +nor the accustomed south, but only a nation part-north and part- +south; therefore neither England nor Italy can rival it. But there +needed also the senses of the French--those senses of which they say +far too much in every second-class book of their enormous, their +general second-class, but which they have matched in their time with +some inimitable words. Perhaps that matching was done at the moment +of the full literary consciousness of the senses, somewhere about +the famous 1830. For I do not think ensoleille to be a much older +word--I make no assertion. Whatever its origin, may it have no end! +They cannot weary us with it; for it seems as new as the sun, as +remote as old Provence; village, hill-side, vineyard, and chestnut +wood shine in the splendour of the word, the air is light, and white +things passing blind the eyes--a woman's linen, white cattle, +shining on the way from shadow to shadow. A word of the sense of +sight, and a summer word, in short, compared with which the +paraphrase is but a picture. For ensoleille I would claim the +consent of all readers--that they shall all acknowledge the spirit +of that French. But perhaps it is a mere personal preference that +makes le jour s'annonce also sacred. + +If the hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," was written in Latin, this +could be only that it might in time find its true language and +incomparable phrase at last--that it might await the day of life in +its proper German. I found it there (and knew at once the authentic +verse, and knew at once for what tongue it had been really destined) +in the pages of the prayer-book of an apple-woman at an Innsbruck +church, and in the accents of her voice. + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + + +There is hardly a writer now--of the third class probably not one-- +who has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of +Nature; not one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a +modern reference to the manifold death and destruction with which +the air, the branches, the mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice +of the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and +of the dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are +they--all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do +they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is +the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? +You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may +hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, +as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a +well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too +slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or +avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle back at the +bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes +violently into other forms, flashes without pause into another +flame; but not all. Amid all the killing there must be much dying. +There are, for instance, few birds of prey left in our more +accessible counties now, and many thousands of birds must die +uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if their killing is done so +modestly, so then is their dying also. Short lives have all these +wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of them always alive; +they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet they keep the +millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so +complete, that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth +conspired that February to make known all the secrets; everything +was published. Death was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, +are not more resolute than was the frost of '95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and +forced to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which +the art and imagination of England combined to raise to his memory +at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought +wrong. There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of +a bird and in exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a +soldier--passe encore. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. +And the death of the birds is so little characteristic of them that, +as has just been said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, +except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled +to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a +rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. There +is no tale of the game-bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with +strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the trees, and +see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been by, or a +man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing like a +butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the +wild world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have +turned over scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether +now and again there might be a "Life" which was not more +emphatically a death. But there never is a modern biography that +has taken the hint of Nature. One and all, these books have the +disproportionate illness, the death out of all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been +rightly his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is +assumed to be news for the first comer. Which of us would suffer +the details of any physical suffering, over and done in our own +lives, to be displayed and described? This is not a confidence we +have a mind to make; and no one is authorised to ask for attention +or pity on our behalf. The story of pain ought not to be told of +us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more +exclusively, and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and +illusions of a long delirium. When he is in common language not +himself, amends should be made for so bitter a paradox; he should be +allowed such solitude as is possible to the alienated spirit; he +should be left to the "not himself," and spared the intrusion +against which he can so ill guard that he could hardly have even +resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door +of Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His +mortal illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather +affected objection is taken every now and then to the publication of +some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. +Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is +not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his +death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told--told +briefly--it was certainly not for marble. Shelley's death had no +significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It was a detachable +and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost of fancy and of the +heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant fact, and +conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill-named biographers +who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is a part of +their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last chapter +does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of all +survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, +this is, for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. +They have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they +have to mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a +mingling of distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not +known even to dreams save in that first year of separation. But +they are not biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously +secret because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may +surprise everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The +chase goes on everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase +seems to cause no perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life +is undefended, careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost +ceased, to paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually +in that British School of water-colour art, stippled, of which +surrounding nations, it was agreed, were envious. They must have +killed their bird to paint him, for he is not to be caught dead. A +bird is more easily caught alive than dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily--too easily--caught dead. Minor +artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good sculptor +and a University together modelled their Shelley on his back, +unessentially drowned; and everybody may read about the sick mind of +Dante Rossetti. + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly +arisen, to devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in +illustrated papers--the enormous production of art in black and +white--is assuredly a confession that the Honours of Mortality are +worth working for. Fifty years ago, men worked for the honours of +immortality; these were the commonplace of their ambition; they +declined to attend to the beauty of things of use that were destined +to be broken and worn out, and they looked forward to surviving +themselves by painting bad pictures; so that what to do with their +bad pictures in addition to our own has become the problem of the +nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have began to learn +that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. Art +consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows +a most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," +and for oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap +costs the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the +inevitable that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in +the singular and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is +done for so short a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the +acceptance of death, inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. +There is a real circulation of blood-quick use, brief beauty, +abolition, recreation. The honour of the day is for ever the honour +of that day. It goes into the treasury of things that are honestly +and--completely ended and done with. And when can so happy a thing +be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise would hesitate? +To be honourable for one day--one named and dated day, separate from +all other days of the ages--or to be for an unlimited time tedious? + + + +COMPOSURE + + + +Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure +do these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the +remoteness of the Latinity the thought would come too close and +shake too cruelly. In order to the sane endurance of the intimate +trouble of the soul an aloofness of language is needful. Johnson +feared death. Did his noble English control and postpone the +terror? Did it keep the fear at some courteous, deferent distance +from the centre of that human heart, in the very act of the leap and +lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in language such an +educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is a +persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note +indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, +teaches a temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the +tone--the voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter- +change, returns to the writer's touch or breath his own intention, +articulate: this is his note. Much has always been said, many +things to the purpose have been thought, of the power and the +responsibility of the note. Of the legislation and influence of the +tone I have been led to think by comparing the tranquillity of +Johnson and the composure of Canning with the stimulated and close +emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers who have entered as +disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English. + +For if every language be a school, more significantly and more +educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that +part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is +made implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French +author is without these. They are of all the heritages of the +English writer the most important. He receives a language of dual +derivation. He may submit himself to either University, whither he +will take his impulse and his character, where he will leave their +influence, and whence he will accept their re-education. The +Frenchman has certainly a style to develop within definite limits; +but he does not subject himself to suggestions tending mainly +hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of various race within one +literature. Such a choice of subjection is the singular opportunity +of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the necessary mingling. +Happily that mingling has been done once for all for us all. Nay, +one of the most charming things that a master of English can achieve +is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so +exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools are +made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove +them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world +knew they were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as +to which school of words shall have the place of honour in the great +and sensitive moments of an author's style: which school shall be +used for conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And +the choice being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses +of so many hearts quickened in thought and feeling in this day +suggests to me a deliberate return to the recollectedness of the +more tranquil language. "Doubtless there is a place of peace." + +A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to +charge some of the moralists of the eighteenth century with an +indifference into which they educated their platitudes and into +which their platitudes educated them. Addison thus gave and took, +until he was almost incapable of coming within arm's-length of a +real or spiritual emotion. There is no knowing to what distance the +removal of the "appropriate sentiment" from the central soul might +have attained but for the change and renewal in language, which came +when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed eternity far from +the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the "pleasing +hope," the "fond desire"; and the touch of war was distant from him +who conceived his "repulsed battalions" and his "doubtful battle." +What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored +once more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too +eager to go into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable +raptures over the mere making of common words. "A hand-shoe! a +finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!" they cried; and for the love of +German the youngest daughter of Chrysale herself might have +consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It seemed to be forgotten +that a language with all its construction visible is a language +little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that its +images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain +spiritualizing and subtilizing effect of alien derivations is a +privilege and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half +of the language within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque +allusions are at play is to possess the state and security of a dead +tongue, without the death. + +But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most +beautiful and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in +Shakespeare. "Superfluous kings," "A lass unparalleled," +"Multitudinous seas": we needed not to wait for the eighteenth +century or for the nineteenth or for the twentieth to learn the +splendour of such encounters, of such differences, of such nuptial +unlikeness and union. But it is well that we should learn them +afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic +reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a +reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to +quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise +and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong +movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of +verse might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might +stay with a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows +of Canning for his son. But it should not be attempted without a +distinct intention of submission on the part of the writer. The +couplet transgressed against, trespassed upon, used loosely, is like +a law outstripped, defied--to the dignity neither of the rebel nor +of the rule. + +To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the +very closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes +necessary. Shall not the Thing more and more, as we compose +ourselves to literature, assume the honour, the hesitation, the +leisure, the reconciliation of the Word? + + + +THE LITTLE LANGUAGE + + + +Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish +master of the magic of local things. + +In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it +nourishes; inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom +Goldoni and Gallina and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois +of the Veneto, use no dialect at all. + +Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with +so much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their +almost unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into +the homes of dialect, does but show us how the language staggers +under such a stress, how it breaks down, and resigns that office. +One of the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable +fiction is that old manageress of the narrow things of the house +whose daughter is dying insane. I have called the dialect a +shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not cower within; her +resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely refuge, +suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several +centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid +none but light loads upon it. They caused it to carry no more in +their homely plays than it carries in homely life. Their work +leaves it what it was--the talk of a people talking much about few +things; a people like our own and any other in their lack of +literature, but local and all Italian in their lack of silence. + +Common speech is surely a greater part of life to such a people than +to one less pleased with chatter or more pleased with books. I am +writing of men, women, and children (and children are not forgotten, +since we share a patois with children on terms of more than common +equality) who possess, for all occasions of ceremony and +opportunities of dignity, a general, national, liberal, able, and +illustrious tongue, charged with all its history and all its +achievements; for the speakers of dialect, of a certain rank, speak +Italian, too. But to tamper with their dialect, or to take it from +them, would be to leave them houseless and exposed in their daily +business. So much does their patois seem to be their refuge from +the heavy and multitudinous experiences of a literary tongue, that +the stopping of a fox's earth might be taken as the image of any act +that should spoil or stop the talk of the associated seclusion of +their town, and leave them in the bleakness of a larger patriotism. + +The Venetian people, the Genoese, and the other speakers of +languages that might all have proved right "Italian" had not Dante, +Petrarch and Boccaccio written in Tuscan, can neither write nor be +taught hard things in their dialect, although they can live, whether +easy lives or hard, and evidently can die, therein. The hands and +feet that have served the villager and the citizen at homely tasks +have all the lowliness of his patois, to his mind; and when he must +perforce yield up their employment, we may believe that it is a +simple thing to die in so simple and so narrow a language, one so +comfortable, neighbourly, tolerant, and compassionate; so +confidential; so incapable, ignorant, unappalling, inapt to wing any +wearied thought upon difficult flight or to spur it upon hard +travelling. + +Not without words is mental pain, or even physical pain, to be +undergone; but the words that have done no more than order the +things of the narrow street are not words to put a fine edge or a +piercing point to any human pang. It may even well be that to die +in dialect is easier than to die in the eloquence of Manfred, though +that declaimed language, too, is doubtless a defence, if one of a +different manner. + +These writers in Venetian--they are named because in no other +Italian dialect has work so popular as Goldoni's been done, nor so +excellent as Signor Fogazzaro's--have left the unlettered local +language in which they loved to deal, to its proper limitations. +They have not given weighty things into its charge, nor made it +heavily responsible. They have added nothing to it; nay, by writing +it they might even be said to have made it duller, had it not been +for the reader and the actor. Insomuch as the intense +expressiveness of a dialect--of a small vocabulary in the mouth of a +dramatic people--lies in the various accent wherewith a southern +citizen knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to +restore its life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is +forbidden to search for the word, for there is none lurking for his +choice; but of tones, allusions, and of references and inferences of +the voice, the speaker of dialect is a master. No range of phrases +can be his, but he has the more or the less confidential inflection, +until at times the close communication of the narrow street becomes +a very conspiracy. + +Let it be borne in mind that dialect properly so called is something +all unlike, for instance, the mere jargon of London streets. The +difference may be measured by the fact that Italian dialects have a +highly organized and orderly grammar. The Londoner cannot keep the +small and loose order of the grammar of good English; the Genoese +conjugates his patois verbs, with subjunctives and all things of +that handsome kind, lacked by the English of Universities. + +The middle class--the piccolo mondo--that shares Italian dialect +with the poor are more strictly local in their manners than either +the opulent or the indigent of the same city. They have moreover +the busy intelligence (which is the intellect of patois) at its +keenest. Their speech keeps them a sequestered place which is +Italian, Italian beyond the ken of the traveller, and beyond the +reach of alteration. And--what is pretty to observe--the speakers +are well conscious of the characters of this intimate language. An +Italian countryman who has known no other climate will vaunt, in +fervent platitudes, his Italian sun; in like manner he is conscious +of the local character of his language, and tucks himself within it +at home, whatever Tuscan he may speak abroad. A properly spelt +letter, Swift said, would seem to expose him and Mrs Dingley and +Stella to the eyes of the world; but their little language, ill- +written, was "snug." + +Lovers have made a little language in all times; finding the nobler +language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? +discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in +despair thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this +departure from English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal +lovers, no doubt, would be so simple as to be grave. That is a +tenable opinion. Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and +age by age they have exchanged language imitated from the children +they doubtless never studied, and perhaps never loved. Why so? +They might have chosen broken English of other sorts--that, for +example, which was once thought amusing in farce, as spoken by the +Frenchman conceived by the Englishman--a complication of humour +fictitious enough, one might think, to please anyone; or else a +fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; or the +masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs +Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. But none of these +found favour. The choice has always been of the language of +children. Let us suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping +Venus in the Titian picture, and the noble child that rides his lion +erect with a background of Venetian gloomy dusk, may be the +inspirers of those prattlings. "See then thy selfe likewise art +lyttle made," says Spenser's Venus to her child. + +Swift was the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised +it in Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her +clumsily back into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged +in her a childhood he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest +dea, nite dealest logue." It is a real good-night. It breathes +tenderness from that moody and uneasy bed of projects. + + + +A COUNTERCHANGE + + + +"Il s'est trompe de defunte." The writer of this phrase had his +sense of that portly manner of French, and his burlesque is fine; +but--the paradox must be risked--because he was French he was not +able to possess all its grotesque mediocrity to the full; that is +reserved for the English reader. The words are in the mouth of a +widower who, approaching his wife's tomb, perceives there another +"monsieur." "Monsieur," again; the French reader is deprived of the +value of this word, too, in its place; it says little or nothing to +him, whereas the Englishman, who has no word of the precise +bourgeois significance that it sometimes bears, but who must use one +of two English words of different allusion--man or I gentleman-- +knows the exact value of its commonplace. The serious Parisian, +then, sees "un autre monsieur;" as it proves anon, there had been a +divorce in the history of the lady, but the later widower is not yet +aware of this, and explains to himself the presence of "un monsieur" +in his own place by that weighty phrase, "Il s'est trompe de +defunte." + +The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with +national character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking +author who was debarred by his own language from possessing the +whole of his own comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his +English that an Englishman does possess it. Your official, your +professional Parisian has a vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled +mediocrity. When the novelist perceives this he does not perceive +it all, because some of the words are the only words in use. Take +an author at his serious moments, when he is not at all occupied +with the comedy of phrases, and he now and then touches a word that +has its burlesque by mere contrast with English. "L'Histoire d'un +Crime," of Victor Hugo, has so many of these touches as to be, by a +kind of reflex action, a very school of English. The whole incident +of the omnibus in that grave work has unconscious international +comedy. The Deputies seated in the interior of the omnibus had +been, it will be remembered, shut out of their Chamber by the +perpetrator of the Coup d'Etat, but each had his official scarf. +Scarf--pish!--"l'echarpe!" "Ceindre l'echarpe"--there is no real +English equivalent. Civic responsibility never was otherwise +adequately expressed. An indignant deputy passed his scarf through +the window of the omnibus, as an appeal to the public, "et l'agita." +It is a pity that the French reader, having no simpler word, is not +in a position to understand the slight burlesque. Nay, the mere +word "public," spoken with this peculiar French good faith, has for +us I know not what untransferable gravity. + +There is, in short, a general international counterchange. It is +altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, with +its extremely "specialized" manner of industry, that one people +should make a phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. And, in +fact, there are certain French authors to whom should be secured the +use of the literary German whereof Germans, and German women in +particular, ought with all severity to be deprived. For Germans +often tell you of words in their own tongue that are untranslatable; +and accordingly they should not be translated, but given over in +their own conditions, unaltered, into safer hands. There would be a +clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a better order in the +phrase; the possessors of an alien word, with the thought it +secures, would find also their advantage. + +So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English +ears. It is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate +householder, for example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the +conservatory "pour retablir la circulation," and the other who +describes himself "sous-chef de bureau dans l'enregistrement," and +he who proposes to "faire hommage" of a doubtful turbot to the +neighbouring "employe de l'octroi"--these and all their like speak +commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own country the perfection +of their dulness. We only, who have the alternative of plainer and +fresher words, understand it. It is not the least of the advantages +of our own dual English that we become sensible of the mockery of +certain phrases that in France have lost half their ridicule, +uncontrasted. + +Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation +in all Latin languages--rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, +either majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French this +proffers a frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of an +Englishman, no longer detects. A guard on a French railway, who +advised two travellers to take a certain train for fear they should +be obliged to "vegeter" for a whole hour in the waiting-room of such +or such a station seemed to the less practised tourist to be a fresh +kind of unexpected humourist. + +One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and +subscriptions in France has more than the intentional comedy of the +farce-writer; one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his +visitors in the country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to +them: "Nous jouons cinquante centimes--les benefices seront verses +integralement e la souscription qui est ouverte e la commune pour la +construction de notre maison d'ecole." + +"Fletrir," again. Nothing could be more rhetorical than this +perfectly common word of controversy. The comic dramatist is well +aware of the spent violence of this phrase, with which every serious +Frenchman will reply to opponents, especially in public matters. +But not even the comic dramatist is aware of the last state of +refuse commonplace that a word of this kind represents. Refuse +rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson's "fossil poetry," would +seem to be the right name for human language as some of the +processes of the several recent centuries have left it. + +The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an +Englishman. They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as "Il +s'est trompe de defunte." In the report of that dull, incomparable +sentence there is enough humour, and subtle enough, for both the +maker and the reader; for the author who perceives the comedy as +well as custom will permit, and for the reader who takes it with the +freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, the current +word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. When of +the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, the +deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: "Il s'est +empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full sense of +the several languages that exist in English at the service of the +several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology of +official France, high or low--daily France--a gratuitous and +uncovenanted smile to be had. With this the wit of the report of +French literature has not little to do. Nor is it in itself, +perhaps, reasonably comic, but the slightest irony of circumstance +makes it so. A very little of the mockery of conditions brings out +all the latent absurdity of the "sixieme et septieme arron- +dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So is it with the mere +"domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the burlesque of life, +the suit at law to "reintegrer le domicile conjugal" becomes as +grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "e domicile" merely--the +word of every shopman--is, in the unconscious mouths of the +speakers, always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an +Englishman hears it; so is the advice of the police that you shall +"circuler" in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you +shall not, in the churches. + +So are the serious and ordinary phrases, "maison nuptiale," "maison +mortuaire," and the still more serious "repos dominical," "oraison +dominicale." There is no majesty in such words. The unsuspicious +gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered +at, the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to +the credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, +through this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand +authors of comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar +thing, and compels that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. US, +above all, by virtue of the custom of counter-change here set forth. + +Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the +English poets that so persist in France may not reveal something +within the English language--one would be somewhat loth to think so- +-reserved to the French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, +Edgar Poe to the select? Then would some of the mysteries of French +reading of English be explained otherwise than by the plainer +explanation that has hitherto satisfied our haughty curiosity. The +taste for rhetoric seemed to account for Byron, and the desire of +the rhetorician to claim a taste for poetry seemed to account for +Poe. But, after all, patatras! Who can say? + + + +HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO + + + +The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell +with him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, +for English drama. That manner of man--Arlecchino, or Harlequin-- +had outlived his playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and +the Clown. A little of Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little +in the father of the Shrew, but the life of Mercutio in the one +play, and of the subordinate Tranio in the other, is less quickly +spent, less easily put out, than the smouldering of the old man. +Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy and comedy of +Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his lightest, his brightest, his +most vital shape. + +Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the +busybody, the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, +the mercurial one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of +Moliere. He is officious and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille +and Ergaste and Scapin; but he tends to be a lacquey, with a +reference rather to Antiquity and the Latin comedy than to the +Middle Ages, as on the English stage his mere memory survives +differently to a later age in the person of "Charles, his friend." +What convinces me that he virtually died with Mercutio is chiefly +this--that this comrade of Romeo's lives so keenly as to be fully +capable of the death that he takes at Tybalt's sword-point; he lived +indeed, he dies indeed. Another thing that marks the close of a +career of ages is his loss of his long customary good luck. Who +ever heard of Arlecchino unfortunate before, at fault with his +sword-play, overtaken by tragedy? His time had surely come. The +gay companion was to bleed; Tybalt's sword had made a way. 'Twas +not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but it served. + +Some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the +primitive Italian play, because Harlequin, on that conventional +little stage of the past, has a hero's place, whereas when he +interferes in human affairs he is only the auxiliary. He might be +lover and bridegroom on the primitive stage, in the comedy of these +few and unaltered types; but when Pantaloon, Clown, and Harlequin +play with really human beings, then Harlequin can be no more than a +friend of the hero, the friend of the bridegroom. The five figures +of the old stage dance attendance; they play around the business of +those who have the dignity of mortality; they, poor immortals--a +clown who does not die, a pantaloon never far from death, who yet +does not die, a Columbine who never attains Desdemona's death of +innocence or Juliet's death of rectitude and passion--flit in the +backward places of the stage. + +Ariel fulfils his office, and is not of one kind with those he +serves. Is there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? +Something of the subservient immortality, of the light indignity, +proper to Pantaleone, Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the +Clown, hovers away from the stage when Ariel is released from the +trouble of human things. + +Immortality, did I say? It was immortality until Mercutio fell. +And if some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has +transformed so many scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand +children, since Mercutio died, I must reply that our modern +Harlequin is no more than a marionnette; he has returned whence he +came. A man may play him, but he is--as he was first of all--a +doll. From doll-hood Arlecchino took life, and, so promoted, +flitted through a thousand comedies, only to be again what he first +was; save that, as once a doll played the man, so now a man plays +the doll. It is but a memory of Arlecchino that our children see, a +poor statue or image endowed with mobility rather than with life. + +With Mercutio, vanished the light heart that had given to the +serious ages of the world an hour's refuge from the unforgotten +burden of responsible conscience; the light heart assumed, borrowed, +made dramatically the spectator's own. We are not serious now, and +no heart now is quite light, even for an hour. + + + +LAUGHTER + + + +Times have been, it is said, merrier than these; but it is certain +nevertheless that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not +for the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere +the joke "emerges"--as an "elegant" writer might have it--emerges to +catch the attention of the sense of humour; and everywhere the sense +of humour wanders, watches, and waits to honour the appeal. + +It loiters, vaguely but perpetually willing. It wears (let the +violent personification be pardoned) a hanging lip, and a wrinkle in +abeyance, and an eye in suspense. It is much at the service of the +vagrant encounterer, and may be accosted by any chance daughters of +the game. It stands in untoward places, or places that were once +inappropriate, and is early at some indefinite appointment, some +ubiquitous tryst, with the compliant jest. + +All literature becomes a field of easy assignations; there is a +constant signalling, an endless recognition. Forms of approach are +remitted. And the joke and the sense of humour, with no surprise of +meeting, or no gaiety of strangeness, so customary has the +promiscuity become, go up and down the pages of the paper and the +book. See, again, the theatre. A somewhat easy sort of comic +acting is by so much the best thing upon our present stage that +little else can claim--paradox again apart--to be taken seriously. + +There is, in a word, a determination, an increasing tendency away +from the Oriental estimate of laughter as a thing fitter for women, +fittest for children, and unfitted for the beard. Laughter is +everywhere and at every moment proclaimed to be the honourable +occupation of men, and in some degree distinctive of men, and no +mean part of their prerogative and privilege. The sense of humour +is chiefly theirs, and those who are not men are to be admitted to +the jest upon their explanation. They will not refuse explanation. +And there is little upon which a man will so value himself as upon +that sense, "in England, now." + +Meanwhile, it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like +rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit when +it is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we must +confess that we laugh oftenest because--being amused--we intend to +show that we are amused. We are right to make the sign, but a smile +would be as sure a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; it would but +be changing the convention; and the change would restore laughter +itself to its own place. We have fallen into the way of using it to +prove something--our sense of the goodness of the jest, to wit; but +laughter should not thus be used, it should go free. It is not a +demonstration, whether in logic, or--as the word demonstration is +now generally used--in emotion; and we do ill to charge it with that +office. + +Something of the Oriental idea of dignity might not be amiss among +such a people as ourselves containing wide and numerous classes who +laugh without cause: audiences; crowds; a great many clergymen, who +perhaps first fell into the habit in the intention of proving that +they were not gloomy; but a vast number of laymen also who had not +that excuse; and many women who laugh in their uncertainty as to +what is humorous and what is not. This last is the most harmless of +all kinds of superfluous laughter. When it carries an apology, a +confession of natural and genial ignorance, and when a gentle +creature laughs a laugh of hazard and experiment, she is to be more +than forgiven. What she must not do is to laugh a laugh of +instruction, and as it were retrieve the jest that was never worth +the taking. + +There are, besides, a few women who do not disturb themselves as to +a sense of humour, but who laugh from a sense of happiness. +Childish is that trick, and sweet. For children, who always laugh +because they must, and never by way of proof or sign, laugh only +half their laughs out of their sense of humour; they laugh the rest +under a mere stimulation: because of abounding breath and blood; +because some one runs behind them, for example, and movement does so +jog their spirits that their legs fail them, for laughter, without a +jest. + +If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to +signal their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall +keep the laugh for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, +and simply, and not thrice at the same thing--once for foolish +surprise, and twice for tardy intelligence, and thrice to let it be +known that they are amused--then it may be time to persuade this +laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it is wont in public. The +theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations laugh lower than ours. +The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the laugher's sense of the +ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the disadvantage of +covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the actors. It is a +public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for a public +laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private laughter +there. + +Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times +of dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour +in a place better guarded, as something worth a measure of +seclusion. It should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in +adventurous places. For the sense of humour has other things to do +than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter. It has +negative tasks of valid virtue; for example, the standing and +waiting within call of tragedy itself, where, excluded, it may keep +guard. + +No reasonable man will aver that the Oriental manners are best. +This would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where +the wit "out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine," and to deny Ben +Jonson's "tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus," and the +rest. Doubtless Greece determined the custom for all our Occident; +but none the less might the modern world grow more sensible of the +value of composure. + +To none other of the several powers of our souls do we so give rein +as to this of humour, and none other do we indulge with so little +fastidiousness. It is as though there were honour in governing the +other senses, and honour in refusing to govern this. It is as +though we were ashamed of reason here, and shy of dignity, and +suspicious of temperance, and diffident of moderation, and too eager +to thrust forward that which loses nothing by seclusion. + + + +THE RHYTHM OF LIFE + + + +If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. +Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to +the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, +ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. +Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last +week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again +next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it +depends upon the tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in +at shorter and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at +longer and longer intervals towards recovery. Sorrow for one cause +was intolerable yesterday, and will be intolerable to-morrow; to-day +it is easy to bear, but the cause has not passed. Even the burden +of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a +temporary peace; and remorse itself does not remain--it returns. +Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made a course of +notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and would have +had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such +observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, +there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such +cycles. But Thomas e Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not +measure them. In his cell alone with the elements--"What wouldst +thou more than these? for out of these were all things made"--he +learnt the stay to be found in the depth of the hour of bitterness, +and the remembrance that restrains the soul at the coming of the +moment of delight, giving it a more conscious welcome, but presaging +for it an inexorable flight. And "rarely, rarely comest thou," +sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of Delight. +Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to our +service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial +violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is +thus compelled. THAT flits upon an orbit elliptically or +parabolically or hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what +trysts with Time. + +It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the "Imitation" should +both have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, and +to guess at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close +touch with the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate +human rules, no infractions of the liberty and law of the universal +movement, kept from them the knowledge of recurrences. Eppur si +muove. They knew that presence does not exist without absence; they +knew that what is just upon its flight of farewell is already on its +long path of return. They knew that what is approaching to the very +touch is hastening towards departure. "O wind," cried Shelley, in +autumn, + + +O wind, +If winter comes can spring be far behind? + + +They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt +with unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of +onset and retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in +constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought +in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of +the senses, is to live without either rest or full activity. The +souls of certain of the saints, being singularly simple and single, +have been in the most complete subjection to the law of periodicity. +Ecstasy and desolation visited them by seasons. They endured, +during spaces of vacant time, the interior loss of all for which +they had sacrificed the world. They rejoiced in the uncovenanted +beatitude of sweetness alighting in their hearts. Like them are the +poets whom, three times or ten times in the course of a long life, +the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken. And yet hardly like +them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared for the +departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few +poets have fully recognized the metrical absence of their muse. For +full recognition is expressed in one only way--silence. + +It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America +worship the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but +no tribes are known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her +depend the tides; and she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the +dews that recurrently irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than +any other companion of earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo- +Germanic languages knew her by that name. Her metrical phases are +the symbol of the order of recurrence. Constancy in approach and in +departure is the reason of her inconstancies. Juliet will not +receive a vow spoken in invocation of the moon; but Juliet did not +live to know that love itself has tidal times--lapses and ebbs which +are due to the metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the +lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in +the beloved. For man--except those elect already named--is hardly +aware of periodicity. The individual man either never learns it +fully, or learns it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a +matter of cumulative experience upon which cumulative evidence is +long lacking. It is in the after-part of each life that the law is +learnt so definitely as to do away with the hope or fear of +continuance. That young sorrow comes so near to despair is a result +of this young ignorance. So is the early hope of great achievement. +Life seems so long, and its capacity so great, to one who knows +nothing of all the intervals it needs must hold--intervals between +aspirations, between actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses of +sleep. And life looks impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware +of the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. It would be for their +peace to learn that there is a tide in the affairs of men, in a +sense more subtle--if it is not too audacious to add a meaning to +Shakespeare--than the phrase was meant to contain. Their joy is +flying away from them on its way home; their life will wax and wane; +and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in its phases, +knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all things--a +sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity. + + + +DOMUS ANGUSTA + + + +The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for +its slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but +their complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, +of the human lot. A disproportion--all in favour of man--between +man and his destiny is one of the things to be taken for granted in +literature: so frequent and so easy is the utterance of the +habitual lamentation as to the trouble of a "vain capacity," so well +explained has it ever been. + + +Thou hast not half the power to do me harm +That I have to be hurt, + + +discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the +brave Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow +house. Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution is there, +little argument or definition, little explicitness. And yet for +every vain capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain +destinies, for every liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. It is +the trouble of the wide house we hear of, clamorous of its +disappointments and desires. The narrow house has no echoes; yet +its pathetic shortcoming might well move pity. On that strait stage +is acted a generous tragedy; to that inadequate soul is intrusted an +enormous sorrow; a tempest of movement makes its home within that +slender nature; and heroic happiness seeks that timorous heart. + +We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its +inarticulateness--not, certainly, its fewness of words, but its +inadequacy and imprecision of speech. For, doubtless, right +language enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. +Who, for instance, but trusts more nobly for knowing the full word +of his confidence? Who but loves more penetratingly for possessing +the ultimate syllable of his tenderness? There is a "pledging of +the word," in another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and +promise. The poet pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and +finds therein a peculiar sanction. And I suppose that even physical +pain takes on an edge when it not only enforces a pang but whispers +a phrase. Consciousness and the word are almost as closely united +as thought and the word. Almost--not quite; in spite of its +inexpressive speech, the narrow house is aware and sensitive beyond, +as it were, its poor power. + +But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, we +know it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; +love is great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic +virtue; and to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, +submissive in the indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the +vulgar, secret in the familiar. It is destructive, because it not +only closes but contradicts life. Unlikely people die. The one +certain thing, it is also the one improbable. A dreadful paradox is +perhaps wrought upon a little nature that is incapable of death and +yet is constrained to die. That is a true destruction, and the +thought of it is obscure. + +Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal +pause. It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical +conclusion. Mrs. Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. +Considering her mental powers, by the way, an illogical conclusion +for her would be manifestly inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, +having seen a life whole, sees it to an end: sees it out, and +Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the audacity that, having +kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the grotesque man in +literature is immortal, and with something more significant than the +immortality awarded to him in the sayings of rhetoric; he is +perdurable because he is not completed. His humours are strangely +matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; for +there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be +mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I +thank my fellow mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke +that the French so pleasantly call une joyeusete; these are to smile +at. But the gay injustice of laughter is between me and the man or +woman in a book, in fiction, or on the stage in a play. + +That narrow house--there is sometimes a message from its living +windows. Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by +moments from eyes that are apt to express none but common things. +There are allusions unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief +glances. Far from me and from my friends be the misfortune of +meeting such looks in reply to pain of our inflicting. To be clever +and sensitive and to hurt the foolish and the stolid--"wouldst thou +do such a deed for all the world?" + + + +INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE + + + +I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words +in union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union +in the art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are +for each poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to +take the cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in +place of the virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly +consent to take them for ordering even the most habitual of daily +affairs--is to forgo Innocence and Experience at once and together. +Obviously, Experience can be nothing except personal and separate; +and Innocence of a singularly solitary quality is his who does not +dip his hands into other men's histories, and does not give to his +own word the common sanction of other men's summaries and +conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and Experience in one, and +take them as a sign of the necessary and noble isolation of man from +man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to forgo that manner of +personal separateness, and to use the things of others, I think I +would rather appropriate their future than their past. Let me put +on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must +borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified +ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my +memory with an unjustifiable history. + +And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love- +poetry consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no +reluctance in adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom +they have not even been introduced. Their verse is full of ready- +made memories, various, numerous, and cruel. No single life-- +supposing it to be a liberal life concerned with something besides +sex--could quite suffice for so much experience, so much +disillusion, so much deception. To achieve that tone in its +fullness it is necessary to take for one's own the praeterita (say) +of Alfred de Musset and of the men who helped him--not to live but-- +to have lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than any man +lives, and to make a common hoard of erotic remembrances with all +kinds of poets. + +As the Franciscans wear each other's old habits, and one friar goes +about darned because of another's rending, so the poet of a certain +order grows cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not +otherwise will the resultant verse succeed in implying so much--or +rather so many, in the feminine plural. The man of very sensitive +individuality might hesitate at the adoption. The Franciscan is +understood to have a fastidiousness and to overcome it. And yet, if +choice were, one might wish rather to make use of one's fellow men's +old shoes than put their old secrets to use, and dress one's art in +a motley of past passions. Moreover, to utilize the mental +experience of many is inevitably to use their verse and phrase. For +the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are familiar enough. +One of them is the absence of the word of promise and pledge, the +loss of the earliest and simplest of the impulses of love: which is +the vow. "Till death!" "For ever!" are cries too simple and too +natural to be commonplace, and in their denial there is the least +tolerable of banalities--that of other men's disillusions. + +Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature a +delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of +assumption, of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose +love-poetry were thus true, and whose pudeur of personality thus +simple and inviolate. This is the private man, in other words the +gentleman, who will neither love nor remember in common. + + + +THE HOURS OF SLEEP + + + +There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None the less +are they his by some state within the mind, which answers +rhythmically and punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, +without drowsiness, without languor, and without gloom, the night +mind of man is yet not his day mind; he has night-powers of feeling +which are at their highest in dreams, but are night's as well as +sleep's. The powers of the mind in dreams, which are inexplicable, +are not altogether baffled because the mind is awake; it is the hour +of their return as it is the hour of a tide's, and they do return. + +In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to hamper +her influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the nerves +of the sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of anger and +love, contempt and terror to which not only can no event of the real +day persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not even the +capacity. This increase of capacity, which is the dream's, is +punctual to the night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at +arm's length. + +The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and +their dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he +puts off his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the +other state, by day. "I shall be able to bear this when I am grown +up" is not oftener in a young child's mind than "I shall endure to +think of it in the day-time." By this he confesses the double habit +and double experience, not to be interchanged, and communicating +together only by memory and hope. + +Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night is +to miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might +imagine the rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to +the time, and tempering the extremities of either state by messages +of remembrance and expectancy. + +Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any +delirium, would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less +would be the loss of him who had not exercised his waking thought +under the influence of the hours claimed by dreams. And as to +choosing between day and night, or guessing whether the state of day +or dark is the truer and the more natural, he would be rash who +should make too sure. + +In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too +much. That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of +night as to lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the +quietude. The hours of sleep are too much altered when they are +filled by lights and crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, +and her rhythm broken, as when the larks caged in populous streets +make ineffectual springs and sing daybreak songs when the London gas +is lighted. Nature is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, +may be set all astray as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar +hours of sleep amid so much noise and among so many people that you +shall not be aware of them; you may thus merely force and prolong +the day. But to do so is not to live well both lives; it is not to +yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in +the swing of change. + +There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such a +cradle of alternate hours. "It cannot be," says Herbert, "that I am +he on whom Thy tempests fell all night." + +It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, +has the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines in +English poetry--lines that cast sunrise shadows--are those of Blake, +written confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow and +dreams, and those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; all +is as dark as he can make it with the "bags of soot"; but the boy's +dream of the green plain and the river is too bright for day. So, +indeed, is another brightness of Blake's, which is also, in his +poem, a child's dream, and was certainly conceived by him in the +hours of sleep, in which he woke to write the Songs of Innocence:- + + +O what land is the land of dreams? +What are its mountains, and what are its streams? +O father, I saw my mother there, +Among the lilies by waters fair. +Among the lambs clothed in white, +She walk'd with her Thomas in sweet delight. + + +To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision. + +Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. In +some landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, +and it was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and +dreams claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an +illumination. Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in +summer so many of the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He +carries the mood of man's night out into the sunshine--Corot did so- +-and lives the life of night, in all its genius, in the presence of +a risen sun. In the only time when the heart can dream of light, in +the night of visions, with the rhythmic power of night at its dark +noon in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of the actual sun. + +He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. To +that life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other +kinds of beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the +extreme perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the +explanation of all the memories of dreams recalled by these +visionary paintings, done in earlier years than were those, better +known, that are the Corots of all the world. Every man who knows +what it is to dream of landscape meets with one of these works of +Corot's first manner with a cry, not of welcome only, but of +recognition. Here is morning perceived by the spirit of the hours +of sleep. + + + +SOLITUDE + + + +The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom +civilization has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom +civilization has given little but its reaction, its rebound, its +chips, its refuse, its shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to +them solitude is a right foregone or a luxury unattained; a right +foregone, we may name it, in the case of the nearly savage, and a +luxury unattained in the case of the nearly refined. These has the +movement of the world thronged together into some blind by-way. + +Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, +and virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, +unclaimed. They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their +kingdoms they are ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have +not guessed that they own for every man a space inviolate, a place +of unhidden liberty and of no obscure enfranchisement. They do not +claim even the solitude of closed corners, the narrow privacy of the +lock and key; nor could they command so much. For the solitude that +has a sky and a horizon they know not how to wish. + +It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the +woods, and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be +measured by miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are +freshly and freely the dominion of every man for the day of his +possession. There is loneliness for innumerable solitaries. As +many days as there are in all the ages, so many solitudes are there +for men. This is the open house of the earth; no one is refused. +Nor is the space shortened or the silence marred because, one by +one, men in multitudes have been alone there before. Solitude is +separate experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be numbered by days, +but by men themselves. Every man of the living and every man of the +dead might have had his "privacy of light." + +It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; +and a thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult +to get for a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude +be enclosed, it is still an open solitude, so there be "no cloister +for the eyes," and a space of far country or a cloud in the sky be +privy to your hiding-place. But the best solitude does not hide at +all. + +This the people who have drifted together into the streets live +whole lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation +of even the solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never +have a whole hour alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent +companionship, as people may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical +choice, familiar with one another and not intimate. They live under +careless observation and subject to a vagabond curiosity. Theirs is +the involuntary and perhaps the unconscious loss which is futile and +barren. + +One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or +the hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, +visible, without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication +and practice of action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or +futile loss, and they have a conviction, and they bestow the +conviction, of solitude deferred. + +Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone +and inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in +many a drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. +The girl stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the +sun for the closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as she +looks, out of sight. + +Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural +solitude of a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed +and talked about, handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, +and there is so much importunate service going forward, that a woman +is hardly alone long enough to become aware, in recollection, how +her own blood moves separately, beside her, with another rhythm and +different pulses. All is commonplace until the doors are closed +upon the two. This unique intimacy is a profound retreat, an +absolute seclusion. It is more than single solitude; it is a +redoubled isolation more remote than mountains, safer than valleys, +deeper than forests, and further than mid-sea. + +That solitude partaken--the only partaken solitude in the world--is +the Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and a +betrayal of that confidence might well be held to be the least +pardonable of all crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as +sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying +beside the longer, as a child's foot runs. But the favourite crime +of the sentimentalist is that of a woman against her child. Her +power, her intimacy, her opportunity, that should be her accusers, +are held to excuse her. She gains the most slovenly of indulgences +and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar grounds that her crime +was easy. + +Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by +the way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from +common opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the +situation. He was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was +his secret, and the public was not privy to his artistic conscience. +He does violence to the obligations of which he is aware, and which +the world does not know very explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he +is lawless in a more literal sense, but only hopes the world will +believe that he has a whole code of his own making. It would, +nevertheless, be less unworthy to break obvious rules obviously in +the obvious face of the public, and to abide the common rebuke. + +It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and +wide and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial +of the accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace or +so aside, is enough to lead thither. + +A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very +sincerely. In order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep +the published promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover +of long seclusion or of a very life of loneliness. He should have +gained the state of solitariness which is a condition of life quite +unlike any other. The traveller who may have gone astray in +countries where an almost life-long solitude is possible knows how +invincibly apart are the lonely figures he has seen in desert places +there. Their loneliness is broken by his passage, it is true, but +hardly so to them. They look at him, but they are not aware that he +looks at them. Nay, they look at him as though they were invisible. +Their un-self-consciousness is absolute; it is in the wild degree. +They are solitaries, body and soul; even when they are curious, and +turn to watch the passer-by, they are essentially alone. Now, no +one ever found that attitude in a squire's figure, or that look in +any country gentleman's eyes. The squire is not a life-long +solitary. He never bore himself as though he were invisible. He +never had the impersonal ways of a herdsman in the remoter +Apennines, with a blind, blank hut in the rocks for his dwelling. +Millet would not even have taken him as a model for a solitary in +the briefer and milder sylvan solitudes of France. And yet nothing +but a life-long, habitual, and wild solitariness would be quite +proportionate to a park of any magnitude. + +If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, +so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual +crowds. It is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris +expression. It is the quickly caught, though not interested, look, +the dull but ready glance of those who do not know of their +forfeited place apart; who have neither the open secret nor the +close; no reserve, no need of refuge, no flight nor impulse of +flight; no moods but what they may brave out in the street, no hope +of news from solitary counsels. + + + +DECIVILIZED + + + +The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with +decivilized man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity-- +sparing him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge +of barbarism. Especially from new soil--remote, colonial--he faces +you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded +of his own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems +about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the +recklessness of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the +lawless ways of a young society. He is there to explain himself, +voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his +colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does +but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set +into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse +feeling of a race decivilizing. He who played long this pattering +part of youth, hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he +did not wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult +to communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder +than a second-hand (figurative) dress coat. And when it was a +question not of rebuke, but of praise, even the American was ill- +content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some +delicate successes in continuing something of the literature of +England, something of the art of France; he was more eager for the +applause that stimulated him to write poems in prose form and to +paint panoramic landscape, after brief training in academies of +native inspiration. Even now English voices are constantly calling +upon America to begin--to begin, for the world is expectant. +Whereas there is no beginning for her, but instead a fine and +admirable continuity which only a constant care can guide into +sustained advance. + +But decivilized man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, +too, knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a +literature, an art, a music, all his own--derived from many and +various things of price. Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity +and cheapness, is impossible without a beautiful past. Its chief +characteristic--which is futility, not failure--could not be +achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory reproduction, the +quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, especially the +utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic quality, +purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the antecedents +of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of them. And +nothing can be much sadder that such a proof of what may possibly be +the failure of derivation. + +Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of +time, we may, indeed choose backwards. We may give our thoughts +noble forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; +they shall be also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our +inheritance, and not our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our +minds may trace upwards and follow their ways to the best well-heads +of the arts. The very habit of our thoughts may be persuaded one +way unawares by their antenatal history. Their companions must be +lovely, but need be no lovelier than their ancestors; and being so +fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may be intrusted to keep the +counsels of literature. + +Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel which +of us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers of +subsequent depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the +contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards +dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes +degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The +decivilized have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, +every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No +ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the +excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living +sweetness once. Nor are the decivilized to blame as having in their +own persons possessed civilization and marred it. They did not +possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an +inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can +hardly do other than continue. + +Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and +multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because they are +many; but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what +dullness in their future! To the eye that has reluctantly +discovered this truth--that the vulgarized are not un-civilized, and +that there is no growth for them--it does not look like a future at +all. More ballad-concerts, more quaint English, more robustious +barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, more colonial poetry, more +young nations with withered traditions. Yet it is before this +prospect that the provincial overseas lifts up his voice in a boast +or a promise common enough among the incapable young, but pardonable +only in senility. He promises the world a literature, an art, that +shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just +built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain words +were dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful and +pitiable as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them +when they are the promise of an impotent people? "I will do such +things: what they are yet I know not." + + + +THE SPIRIT OF PLACE + + + +With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets +have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too +much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her +inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The +bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature. + +To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake +together a nightingale's notes, or strike or drive them into haste, +nor can you make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your +turn, whereas wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere +movement and hustling. I have known some grim bells, with not a +single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human +festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop +of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry +highwayman. + +The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the +bellringer, and the chimes await their appointed time to fly--wild +prisoners--by twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives-- +one or twelve taking wing--they are sudden, they are brief, they are +gone; they are delivered from the close hands of this actual +present. Not in vain is the sudden upper door opened against the +sky; they are away, hours of the past. + +Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most +surely after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of +France when one has arrived by night; they are no more to be +forgotten than the bells in "Parsifal." They mingle with the sound +of feet in unknown streets, they are the voices of an unknown tower; +they are loud in their own language. The spirit of place, which is +to be seen in the shapes of the fields and the manner of the crops, +to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the breath of the earth, +overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of some black-smith, +calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks its local +tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and +greatly by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you +know how familiar, how childlike, how lifelong it is in the ears of +the people. The bells are strange, and you know how homely they +must be. Their utterances are, as it were, the classics of a +dialect. + +Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its +subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, +seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, +its habits, its breath, its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, +having been perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one +living body of remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place--not to +be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never +absent, without variation--lurks in the by-ways and rules over the +towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always +in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within +its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white +roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give +promise not of its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular +and unforeseen goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy +to be made. Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay +such a visit? And if by good fortune it is a child who is the +pilgrim, the spirit of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for +antiquity and the conceiver of antiquity (who is only a child) know +one another; nor is there a more delicate perceiver of locality than +a child. He is well used to words and voices that he does not +understand, and this is a condition of his simplicity; and when +those unknown words are bells, loud in the night, they are to him as +homely and as old as lullabies. + +If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in +gay measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a +wedding--bells that would step to quite another and a less agile +march with a better grace--there are belfries that hold far sweeter +companies. If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a +most curious local immemorial music in many a campanile on the +heights. Their way is for the ringers to play a tune on the +festivals, and the tunes are not hymn tunes or popular melodies, but +proper bell-tunes, made for bells. Doubtless they were made in +times better versed than ours in the sub-divisions of the arts, and +better able to understand the strength that lies ready in the mere +little submission to the means of a little art, and to the limits-- +nay, the very embarrassments--of those means. If it were but +possible to give here a real bell-tune--which cannot be, for those +melodies are rather long--the reader would understand how some +village musician of the past used his narrow means as a composer for +the bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, fancy, +and what effect of liberty. + +These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. +The belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, +the time when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, +needless to say, this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. +At that time they must have had foundries for bells of tender +voices, and pure, warm, light, and golden throats, precisely tuned. +The hounds of Theseus had not a more just scale, tuned in a peal, +than a North Italian belfry holds in leash. But it does not send +them out in a mere scale, it touches them in the order of the game +of a charming melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by man this is by +far the most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the great +churches. Giotto's coloured tower in Florence, that carries the +bells for Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's silent dome, does +not ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, +depth, and dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly +fills the country. + +The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can +therefore hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no +other bells in earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly set +open to the cloud, on a festa morning, to let fly those soft-voiced +flocks, but the nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our +local tune is uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, +secluded, sequestered art of composing melodies for bells--charming +division of an art, having its own ends and means, and keeping its +own wings for unfolding by law--dwells in these solitary places. No +tunes in a town would get this hearing, or would be made clear to +the end of their frolic amid such a wide and lofty silence. + +Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; +the custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the +nervous tourist complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact +he is made to hear an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous +tourist has not, perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of +place does not signal to him to go and find it among innumerable +hills, where one by one, one by one, the belfries stand and play +their tunes. Variable are those lonely melodies, having a differing +gaiety for the festivals; and a pitiful air is played for the burial +of a villager. + +As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten +when the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in +thought to earth's untethered sounds. This is Milton's curfew, that +sways across one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry-- +"the wide-watered." + + + +POPULAR BURLESQUE + + + +The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the +motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets +with the sound of processionals and of recessionals--a certain +popular version of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I +hear the cries of derision raised by the makers of this likeness of +something unworshipful on the earth beneath, so much the more am I +convinced that the national humour is that of banter, and that no +other kind of mirth so gains as does this upon the public taste. + +Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that +day is as the people will actually have it, with their own +invention, their own material, their own means, and their own +spirit. They owe nothing on this occasion to the promptings or the +subscriptions of the classes that are apt to take upon themselves +the direction and tutelage of the people in relation to any form of +art. Here on every fifth of November the people have their own way +with their own art; and their way is to offer the service of the +image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some creature of +their hands. + +It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is +capable of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. +To make a mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or +conceived in the mind, being an industrious custom of children and +childish people which lapses in the age of much idle reading, the +making of a material image is the still more diligent and more +sedulous act, whereby the primitive man controls and caresses his +own fancy. He may take arms anon, disappointed, against his own +work; but did he ever do that work in malice from the outset? + +From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person +of the guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen's idea of +something admirable which he might carry in procession on some other +day, the carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would hoot +at a suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a +good-looking doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image- +making art in the practice of our people, except only this art of +rags and contumely. Or, again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were +that of anger for a certain cause, the destruction would not be the +work of so thin an annual malice and of so heartless a rancour. + +But the single motive is that popular irony which becomes daily--or +so it seems--more and more the holiday temper of the majority. +Mockery is the only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the +only intelligence. They make an image of some one in whom they do +not believe, to deride it. Say that the guy is the effigy of an +agitator in the cause of something to be desired; the street man and +boy have then two motives of mocking: they think the reform to be +not worth doing, and they are willing to suspect the reformer of +some kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this occasion is most +characteristic of all guys in London. The people, having him or her +to deride, do not even wait for the opportunity of their annual +procession. They anticipate time, and make an image when it is not +November, and sell it at the market of the kerb. + +Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the +citizens, perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their +laws. These, too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal +taunt. They are, indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at +all--this it is that makes the succes fou (and here Paris is of one +mind with London) of the street; but short of such a triumph, and +when a meaning is discernible, it is an irony. + +Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) +seems to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is the +strangest thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most +mocking in the exchange. If the burlesque of the maid's tongue is +provocative, that of the man's is derisive. Somewhat of the order +of things as they stood before they were inverted seems to remain, +nevertheless, as a memory; nay, to give the inversion a kind of +lagging interest. Irony is made more complete by the remembrance, +and by an implicit allusion to the state of courtship in other +classes, countries, or times. Such an allusion no doubt gives all +its peculiar twang to the burlesque of love. + +With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their +millions undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who +are their mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure +sense their suitors, and in a strolling manner, with one knows not +what ungainly motive of reserve, even their admirers. Nor from +their tongues only; for, to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys +the girl; and if he wears her hat, it is ten to one that he has +plucked it off with a humorous disregard of her dreadful pins. + +We have to believe that unmocked love has existence in the streets, +because of the proof that is published when a man shoots a woman who +has rejected him; and from this also do we learn to believe that a +woman of the burlesque classes is able to reject. But for that sign +we should find little or nothing intelligible in what we see or +overhear of the drama of love in popular life. + +In its easy moments, in its leisure, at holiday time, it baffles all +tradition, and shows us the spirit of comedy clowning after a +fashion that is insular and not merely civic. You hear the same +twang in country places; and whether the English maid, having, like +the antique, thrown her apple at her shepherd, run into the thickets +of Hampstead Heath or among sylvan trees, it seems that the most +humorous thing to be done by the swain would be, in the opinion in +vogue, to stroll another way. Insular I have said, because I have +not seen the like of this fashion whether in America or elsewhere in +Europe. + +But the chief inversion of all, proved summarily by the annual +inversion of the worship of images on the fifth of November, is that +of a sentence of Wordsworth's--"We live by admiration." + + + +HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT + + + +Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of +communication with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the +interior act most gentle; there may be a tacit apology, and a +profound misgiving unexpressed; a reluctance not only to refuse but +to be arbiter; a dislike of the office; a regret, whether for the +unequal distribution of social luck or for a purse left at home, +equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts no word or sign, nothing +whatever of intercourse. If a dog or a cat accosts you, or a calf +in a field comes close to you with a candid infant face and +breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind of animal comes +to you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, you acknowledge +it. But the beggar to whom you give nothing expects no answer to a +question, no recognition of his presence, not so much as the turn of +your eyelid in his direction, and never a word to excuse you. + +Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer +to the beggar's remark than to leave a shop without "Good morning." +When complaint is made of the modern social manner--that it has no +merit but what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain from +courtesy with more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely +requires--the habit of manner towards beggars is probably not so +much as thought of. To the simply human eye, however, the prevalent +manner towards beggars is a striking thing; it is significant of so +much. + +Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the +intelligible act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity +that marks the caste answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, +in Italy, for example. An elderly Italian lady on her slow way from +her own ancient ancestral palazzo to the village, and accustomed to +meet, empty-handed, a certain number of beggars, answers them by a +retort which would be, literally translated, "Excuse me, dear; I, +too, am a poor devil," and the last word she naturally puts into the +feminine. + +Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect--a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal terms +as nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present the +phrase to English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. The +excellent woman who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, +and raises no smile. It is only in another climate, and amid other +manners, that one cannot recall it without a smile. To a mind +having a lively sense of contrast it is not a little pleasant to +imagine an elderly lady of corresponding station in England replying +so to importunities for alms; albeit we have nothing answering to +the good fellowship of a broad patois used currently by rich and +poor, and yet slightly grotesque in the case of all speakers--a +dialect in which, for example, no sermon is ever preached, and in +which no book is ever printed, except for fun; a dialect "familiar, +but by no means vulgar." Besides, even if our Englishwoman could by +any possibility bring herself to say to a mendicant, "Excuse me, +dear; I, too, am a poor devil," she would still not have the +opportunity of putting the last word punctually into the feminine, +which does so complete the character of the sentence. + +The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase +of excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And +everywhere in the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who +suddenly begins to beg from you when you least expected it, calls +you "my daughter," you can hardly reply without kindness. Where the +tourist is thoroughly well known, doubtless the company of beggars +are used to savage manners in the rich; but about the byways and +remoter places there must still be some dismay at the anger, the +silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive haughtiness wherewith +the opportunity of alms-giving is received by travellers. + +In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so +emphatically as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so +manifestly put themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant +to see them there; but silence or a storm of impersonal protest--a +protest that appeals vaguely less to the beggars than to some not +impossible police--does not seem the most appropriate manner of +rebuking them. We have, it may be, a scruple on the point of human +dignity, compromised by the entreaty and the thanks of the +mendicant; but we have a strange way of vindicating that dignity +when we refuse to man, woman, or child the recognition of a simply +human word. Nay, our offence is much the greater of the two. It is +not merely a rough and contemptuous intercourse, it is the refusal +of intercourse--the last outrage. How do we propose to redress +those conditions of life that annoy us when a brother whines, if we +deny the presence, the voice, and the being of this brother, and if, +because fortune has refused him money, we refuse him existence? + +We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold +it in the indifference of the wise. "Have patience, little saint," +is a phrase that might teach us the cheerful way to endure our own +unintelligible fortunes in the midst, say, of the population of a +hill-village among the most barren of the Maritime Alps, where huts +of stone stand among the stones of an unclothed earth, and there is +no sign of daily bread. The people, albeit unused to travellers, +yet know by instinct what to do, and beg without the delay of a +moment as soon as they see your unwonted figure. Let it be taken +for granted that you give all you can; some form of refusal becomes +necessary at last, and the gentlest--it is worth while to remember-- +is the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the portent +of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of +ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is +made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, +uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, +thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent +to the violence of the rich. + +It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If a +beggar is still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer +and comfort us to see; he practises not merely the conventional +seeming, which is hardly intended to convince, but a more subtle and +dramatic kind of semblance, of no good influence upon the morals of +the road. He no longer trusts the world with a sight of his gaiety. +He is not a wholehearted mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty +of unstable balance whereby an unattached creature can go in a new +direction with a new wind. The merry beggar was the only adventurer +free to yield to the lighter touches of chance, the touches that a +habit of resistance has made imperceptible to the seated and stable +social world. + +The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, +by tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has +been stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, +led underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys of +the song of the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to +capture, have ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world's +ears. But it seems that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy +beggar is still the subject of a Spanish song. + +That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw's or a robber's, +it is not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling +note of a man who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill- +fortune, but takes it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it +at the hand of unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own +choice of bonds, but has not broken his own by force. It seems, +therefore, the song of an indomitable liberty of movement, light +enough for the puffs of a zephyr chance. + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross +it, unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of +the monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see +more than beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her +in guest-house and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin--the first of the +dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, +and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of +buildings in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown +habit is this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills +of finer, sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an +Umbrian sky. Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, +and from the foot of its final crucifix you can see the sunrise +touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the encircled lake below is cool +with the last of the night. The same order of friars keep that sub- +Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the Kreuzberg beyond Bonn +with the same steep path by the same fourteen chapels, facing the +Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green +over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long +wing of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly +and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is +burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, +thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It +leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the +flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. +The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted +agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; +not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some +beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their +edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over +more than half the colour--over all the chocolate and all the blue-- +with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not +wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes +with the slight sunshine and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense--it +is modern; and the friars look young in another--they are like their +brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists of +yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or +"old world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be +by the excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers +work upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a +prosperous bee-farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass +yesterday, is gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing +press, and a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an +outhouse, and the yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose +single evil deed was that under one of the obscure impulses of a +dog's heart -atoned for by long and self-conscious remorse--he bit +the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make doggerel of +him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery +ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got +among the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, +from other valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a +moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look +at them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation +Army girl that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come +to the place with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as +she was welcome to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a +figure for Bournemouth pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched +the son of the Umbrian saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto +frescoes at Assisi and between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and +has paced the centuries continually since the coming of the friars. +One might have asked of her the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She +and he alike were so habited as to show the world that their life +was aloof from its "idle business." By some such phrase, at least, +the friar would assuredly have attempted to include her in any +spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have asked of her +the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the Salvation +Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making such +a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in +Zurbaran's ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are +busy. As a pocket it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of +the local white wine made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to +this house by the West, is carried in the cowl as a present to the +stranger at the gates. The friars tell how a brother resolved, at +Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and not only to make, but also to toss +them. Those who chanced to be in the room stood prudently aside, +and the brother tossed boldly. But that was the last that was seen +of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in La Legende des Siecles of +disappearance as the thing which no creature is able to achieve: +here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by quite an +ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was an +end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get +up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never +grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is +something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is not +merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler +point is that they can never acquire the habit of sacrificing sleep. +What art, what literature, or what life but would gain a secret +security by such a point of perpetual freshness and perpetual +initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a will +that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of +the French fields, and the hour of night--l'ora di notte--which +rings with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the +Adriatic littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the +prayer for the dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O +Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work +of the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it +is principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and +strength of heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, +the friars are not doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a +refuge from despair. These "bearded counsellors of God" keep their +cells, read, study, suffer, sing, hold silence; whereas they might +be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon the Stock Exchange, or +painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or reluctantly +jostling other men for places. They might be among the involuntary +busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is a +discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the +superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly +renounced by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output-- +again a beautiful word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. +None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once +again upon those monastery gates. + + + +THE SEA WALL + + + +A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish +association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright +shadows of grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves +prick above into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living +in London, with its too many windows and too few walls, the city +which of all capitals takes least visible hold upon the ground; or +for the sake of some other attraction or aversion, walls, blank and +strong, reaching outward at the base, are a satisfaction to the eyes +teased by the inexpressive peering of windows, by that weak lapse +and shuffling which is the London "area," and by the helpless +hollows of shop-fronts. + +I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of +wrought-iron. A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a +long level line among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But +never more majestic than in face of the wild sea, the wall, +steadying its slanting foot upon the rock, builds in the serried +ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The sea-wall is the wall at its +best. And fine as it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the +weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a northern beach. + +That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that +passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with +the winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the +sky-line of sea is jagged. Never from any height does the ocean- +horizon show thus broken and battered at its very verge, but from +the flat coast and the narrow world you can see the wave as far as +you can see the water; and the stormy light of a clear horizon is +seen to be mobile and shifting with the buoyant hillocks and their +restless line. + +Nowhere in Holland does there seem to be such a low sea-wall as +secures many a mile of gentle English coast to the east. The Dutch +dyke has not that aspect of a lowly parapet against a tide; it +springs with a look of haste and of height; and when you first run +upstairs from the encumbered Dutch fields to look at the sea, there +is nothing in the least like England; and even the Englishman of to- +day is apt to share something of the old perversity that was minded +to cast derision upon the Dutch in their encounters with the tides. + +There has been some fault in the Dutch, making them subject to the +slight derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more +romantic, and, as it were, more slender. We English, once upon a +time, did especially flout the little nation then acting a history +that proved worth the writing. It may be no more than a brief +perversity that has set a number of our writers to cheer the memory +of Charles II. Perhaps, even, it is no more than another rehearsal +of that untiring success at the expense of the bourgeois. The +bourgeois would be more simple than, in fact, he is were he to stand +up every time to be shocked; but, perhaps, the image of his dismay +is enough to reward the fancy of those who practise the wanton art. +And, when all is done, who performs for any but an imaginary +audience? Surely those companies of spectators and of auditors are +not the least of the makings of an author. A few men and women he +achieves within his books; but others does he create without, and to +those figures of all illusion makes the appeal of his art. More +candid is the author who has no world, but turns that appeal inwards +to his own heart. He has at least a living hearer. + +This is by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is done, +the dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch's was a +dismal time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the French +King remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, and +the Dutch in the Medway--all this was disaster. None the less, +having the vanity of new clothes and a pretty figure, did we-- +especially by the mouth of Andrew Marvell--deride our victors, +making sport of the Philistines with a proper national sense of +enjoyment of such physical disabilities, or such natural +difficulties, or such misfavour of fortune, as may beset the alien. + +Especially were the denials of fortune matter for merriment. They +are so still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great +novelist found the smallness of some South German States to be the +subject of unsating banter. The German scenes at the end of "Vanity +Fair," for example, may prove how much the ridicule of mere +smallness, fewness, poverty (and not even real poverty, privation, +but the poverty that shows in comparison with the gold of great +States, and is properly in proportion) rejoiced the sense of humour +in a writer and moralist who intended to teach mankind to be less +worldly. In Andrew Marvell's day they were even more candid. The +poverty of privation itself was provocative of the sincere laughter +of the inmost man, the true, infrequent laughter of the heart. +Marvell, the Puritan, laughed that very laughter--at leanness, at +hunger, cold, and solitude--in the face of the world, and in the +name of literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an +English Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared--not the +smallness of the lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness +of clothing, nor the fast. + + +"This basso-rilievo of a man--" + + +personal meagreness is the first joke and the last. + +It is not to be wondered at that he should find in the smallness of +the country of Holland matter for a cordial jest. But, besides the +smallness, there was that accidental and natural disadvantage in +regard to the sea. In the Venetians, commerce with the sea, +conflict with the sea, a victory over the sea, and the ensuing +peace--albeit a less instant battle and a more languid victory--were +confessed to be noble; in the Dutch they were grotesque. "With mad +labour," says Andrew Marvell, with the spirited consciousness of the +citizen of a country well above ground and free to watch the labour +at leisure, "with mad labour" did the Dutch "fish the land to +shore." + + +How did they rivet with gigantic piles, +Thorough the centre, their new-catched miles, +And to the stake a struggling country bound, +Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; +Building their watery Babel far more high +To reach the sea than those to scale the sky! + + +It is done with a jolly wit, and in what admirable couplets! + + +The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, +And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest. + + +And it is even better sport that the astonished tritons and sea- +nymphs should find themselves provided with a capital cabillau of +shoals of pickled Dutchmen (heeren for herring, says Marvell); and +it must be allowed that he rhymes with the enjoyment of irony. +There is not a smile for us in "Flecno," but it is more than +possible to smile over this "Character of Holland"; at the excluded +ocean returning to play at leap-frog over the steeples; at the rise +of government and authority in Holland, which belonged of right to +the man who could best invent a shovel or a pump, the country being +so leaky:- + + +Not who first sees the rising sun commands, +But who could first discern the rising lands. + + +We have lost something more than the delighted laughter of Marvell, +more than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light +in so burly a frame--we have lost with these the wild humour that +wore so well the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much +order, invention, malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality- +-in a word, the Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot +stand firm within two lines, but must slip beyond and between the +boundaries, who tolerate the couplets of Keats and imitate them, +should praise the day of Charles II because of Marvell's art, and +not for love of the sorry reign. We had plague, fire, and the Dutch +in the Medway, but we had the couplet; and there were also the +measures of those more poetic poets, hitherto called somewhat +slightingly the Cavalier poets, who matched the wit of the Puritan +with a spirit simpler and less mocking. + +It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some +remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. It +was a time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so +close, up in the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed +to be indeed admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The +gale came with an indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed +to break itself upon the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in +the voice of the sea there were pauses, but none in that of the +urgent gale with its hoo-hoo-hoo all night, that clamoured down the +calling of the waves. That lack of pauses was the strangest thing +in the tempest, because the increase of sound seemed to imply a lull +before. The lull was never perceptible, but the lift was always an +alarm. The onslaught was instant, where would it stop? What was +the secret extreme to which this hurry and force were tending? You +asked less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm than what +was drawing them. The attraction seemed the greater violence, the +more irresistible, and the more unknown. And there were moments +when the end seemed about to be attained. + +The wind struck us hasty blows, and unawares we borrowed, to +describe it, words fit for the sharp strokes of material things; but +the fierce gale is soft. Along the short grass, trembling and +cowering flat on the scarped hill-side, against the staggering +horse, against the flint walls, one with the rock they grasp, the +battery of the tempest is a quick and enormous softness. What down, +what sand, what deep moss, what elastic wave could match the bed and +cushion of the gale? + +This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up +together. The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling +whiteness of foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such +narrow waters you do not see the distances, the wide levels of +fleeting and floating foam, that lie light between long wave and +long wave on a Mediterranean coast, regions of delicate and +transitory brightness so far out that all the waves, near and far, +seem to be breaking at the same moment, one beyond the other, and +league beyond league, into foam. But the Channel has its own +strong, short curl that catches the rushing shingle up with the +freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, white upon +the white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls and the +light of a shining cloud. + + + +TITHONUS + + + +"It was resolved," said the morning paper, "to colour the borders of +the panels and other spaces of Portland stone with arabesques and +other patterns, but that no paint should be used, as paint would +need renewing from time to time. The colours, therefore,"--and here +is the passage to be noted--"are all mixed with wax liquefied with +petroleum; and the wax surface sets as hard as marble. . . The wax +is left time to form an imperishable surface of ornament, which +would have to be cut out of the stone with a chisel if it was +desired to remove it." Not, apparently, that a new surface is +formed which, by much violence and perseverance, could, years hence, +be chipped off again; but that the "ornament" is driven in and +incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is nothing +possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of +ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled. + +Will this victory over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny +prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the +future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the +strongest of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by +the human race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this +success in the stencilling of St Paul's teach us, to our confusion. +There is evidently a man--a group of men--happy at this moment +because it has been possible, by great ingenuity, to force our +posterity to have their cupola of St Paul's with the stone mouldings +stencilled and "picked out" with niggling colours, whether that +undefended posterity like it or not. And this is a survival of one +of the obscure pleasures of man, attested by history. + +It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and +not to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, +eternal legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of +this former human wish. If Galileo's Inquisitors put a check upon +the earth, which yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the +Reformers' who arrested the moving man, and inhibited the moving +God. The sixteenth century and a certain part of the age +immediately following seem to be times when the desire had +conspicuously become a passion. Say the middle of the sixteenth +century in Italy and the beginning of the seventeenth in England-- +for in those days we were somewhat in the rear. THERE is the +obstinate, confident, unreluctant, undoubting, and resolved seizure +upon power. THEN was Rome rebuilt, re-faced, marked with a single +sign and style. Then was many a human hand stretched forth to grasp +the fate of the unborn. The fortunes and the thoughts of the day to +come were to be as the day then present would have them, if the dead +hand--the living hand that was then to die, and was to keep its hold +in death--could by any means make them fast. + +Obviously, to build at all is to impose something upon an age that +may be more than willing to build for itself. The day may soon come +when no man will do even so much without some impulse of apology. +Posterity is not compelled to keep our pictures or our books in +existence, nor to read nor to look at them; but it is more or less +obliged to have a stone building in view for an age or two. We can +hardly avoid some of the forms of tyranny over the future, but few, +few are the living men who would consent to share in this horrible +ingenuity at St Paul's--this petroleum and this wax. + +In 1842 they were discussing the decoration of the Houses of +Parliament, and the efforts of all in council were directed upon the +future. How the frescoes then to be achieved by the artists of the +day should be made secure against all mischances--smoke, damp, "the +risk of bulging," even accidents attending the washing of upper +floors--all was discussed in confidence with the public. It was +impossible for anyone who read the papers then to escape from some +at least of the responsibilities of technical knowledge. From +Genoa, from Rome, from Munich especially, all kinds of expert and +most deliberate schemes were gathered in order to defeat the natural +and not superfluous operation of efficient and effacing time. + +The academic little capital of Bavaria had, at about the same date, +decorated a vast quantity of wall space of more than one order of +architecture. Art revived and was encouraged at that time and place +with unparalleled obstinacy. They had not the malice of the +petroleum that does violence to St Paul's; but they had instead an +indomitable patience. Under the commands of the master Cornelius, +they baffled time and all his work--refused his pardons, his +absolutions, his cancelling indulgences--by a perseverance that +nothing could discourage. Who has not known somewhat indifferent +painters mighty busy about their colours and varnishes? Cornelius +caused a pit to be dug for the preparation of the lime, and in the +case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime remained there for eight years, +with frequent stirrings. This was in order that the whole fresco, +when at last it was entrusted to its bed, should be set there for +immortality. Nor did the master fail to thwart time by those +mechanical means that should avert the risk of bulging already +mentioned. He neglected no detail. He was provident, and he lay in +wait for more than one of the laws of nature, to frustrate them. +Gravitation found him prepared, and so did the less majestic but not +vain dispensation of accidents. Against bulging he had an underplot +of tiles set on end; against possible trickling from an upper floor +he had asphalt; it was all part of the human conspiracy. In effect, +the dull pictures at Munich seem to stand well. It would have been +more just--so the present age thinks of these preserved walls--if +the day that admired them had had them exclusively, and our day had +been exempt. The painted cathedrals of the Middle Ages have +undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche? + +In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to +shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and +art. They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came +from Munich to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a +heart of confidence into the breast of the Commission. The +situation, he averred, need not be too damp for immortality, with +due care. What he had done in the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek +might be done with the best results in England, in defiance of the +weather, of the river, of the mere days, of the divine order of +alteration, and, in a word, of heaven and earth. + +Meanwhile, there was that good servant of the law of change, lime +that had not been kept quite long enough, ready to fulfil its +mission; they would have none of it. They evaded it, studied its +ways, and put it to the rout. "Many failures that might have been +hastily attributed to damp were really owing to the use of lime in +too fresh a state. Of the experimental works painted at Munich, +those only have faded which are known to have been done without due +attention to the materials. THUS, A FIGURE OF BAVARIA, PAINTED BY +KAULBACH, WHICH HAS FADED CONSIDERABLY, IS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN +EXECUTED WITH LIME THAT WAS TOO FRESH." One cannot refrain from +italics: the way was so easy; it was only to take a little less of +this important care about the lime, to have a better confidence, to +be more impatient and eager, and all had been well: NOT to do--a +virtue of omission. + +This is not a matter of art-criticism. It is an ethical question +hitherto unstudied. The makers of laws have not always been obliged +to face it, inasmuch as their laws are made in part for the present, +and in part for that future whereof the present needs to be assured- +-that is, the future is bound as a guaranty for present security of +person or property. Some such hold upon the time to come we are +obliged to claim, and to claim it for our own sakes--because of the +reflex effect upon our own affairs, and not for the pleasure of +fettering the time to come. Every maker of a will does at least +this. + +Were the men of the sixteenth century so moderate? Not they. They +found the present all too narrow for the imposition of their will. +It did not satisfy them to disinter and scatter the bones of the +dead, nor to efface the records of a past that offended them. It +did not satisfy them to bind the present to obedience by imperative +menace and instant compulsion. When they had burnt libraries and +thrown down monuments and pursued the rebels of the past into the +other world, and had seen to it that none living should evade them, +then they outraged the future. + +Whatever misgivings may have visited those dominant minds as to the +effectual and final success of their measures--would their writ run +in time as well as place, and were the nameless populations indeed +their subjects?--whatever questions may have peered in upon those +rigid counsels and upon those busy vigils of the keepers of the +world, they silenced by legislation and yet more legislation. They +wrote in statute books; they would have written their will across +the skies. Their hearts would have burnt for lack of records more +inveterate, and of testimonials that mankind should lack courage to +question, if in truth they did ever doubt lest posterity might try +their lock. Perhaps they did never so much as foresee the race of +the unnumbered and emancipated for whom their prohibitions and +penalties are no more than documents of history. + +If the tyrannous day of our fathers had but possessed the means of +these our more diffident times! They, who would have written their +present and actual will upon the skies, might certainly have written +it in petroleum and wax upon the stone. Fate did them wrong in +withholding from their hands this means of finality and violence. +Into our hands it has been given at a time when the student of the +race thought, perhaps, that we had been proved in the school of +forbearance. Something, indeed, we may have learnt therein, but not +enough, as we now find. + +We have not yet the natural respect for the certain knowledge and +the probable wisdom of our successors. A certain reverend official +document, not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately +recommended to the veneration of the present times "those past ages +with their store of experience." Doubtless, as the posterity of +their predecessors our predecessors had experience, but, as our +ancestors, none--none. Therefore, if they were a little reverend +our own posterity is right reverend. It is a flippant and novelty- +loving humour that so flatters the unproved past and refuses the +deference due to the burden of years which is ours, which--grown +still graver--will be our children's. + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the +art of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of +accident, it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of +accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual +discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second +French Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, +and how lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. +The lesson was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. +European art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the +unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic +art) content with her own conventions; she is local, provincial, +alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world that +has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been +touched by Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had +attained the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but +in music, too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, +the music of phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of +symmetry is strong in a complete melody--of symmetry in its most +delicate and lively and least stationary form--balance; whereas the +leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and +Incident make a familiar antithesis--the very commonplace of rival +methods of art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious +forms. The poets have sought "irregular" metres. Incident hovers, +in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern of +modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression +of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major +emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. The smile, the +figure, the drapery--not yet settled from the arranging touch of a +hand, and showing its mark--the restless and unstationary foot, and +the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In +passing, a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture +and the aspect of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; +whether still or in motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have +the alertness and expectancy of flight in all their flocks of +leaves, while the oaks and elms are gathered in their station. All +this is not Japanese, but from such accident is Japanese art +inspired, with its good luck of perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counter- +change for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the +distinction between this motive and that of the Japanese. The +Japanese motives may be defined as uniqueness and position. And +these were not known as motives of decoration before the study of +Japanese decoration. Repetition and counter-change, of course, have +their place in Japanese ornament, as in the diaper patterns for +which these people have so singular an invention, but here, too, +uniqueness and position are the principal inspiration. And it is +quite worth while, and much to the present purpose, to call +attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese diaper patterns, +which is INTERRUPTION. Repetition there must necessarily be in +these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which is, to the +Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and +the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese +design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, +you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though +a separate intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. +Such renewed consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness +in design has more peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of +Japanese lines, in their curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary +to say that a line, in all other schools of art, is long or short +according to its place and purpose; but only the Japanese designer +so contrives his patterns that the line is always short; and many +repeating designs are entirely composed of this various and +variously-occurring brevity, this prankish avoidance of the goal. +Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the unit of their +repeating patterns, by another simple device--that of numbers. They +make a small difference in the number of curves and of lines. A +great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it would +look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one side +and six on another would be something else than a mere variation, +and variety would be lost by the use of them. The Japanese +decorator will vary three in this place by two in that, and a sense +of the defeat of symmetry is immediately produced. With more +violent means the idea of symmetry would have been neither suggested +nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in +Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point +of symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. +There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most +subtly, made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value. +A small thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small +thing is placed at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese) +equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other countries) the scales +commonly in use are furnished with only a single weight that +increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it nearer or +farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces +when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs +from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a +Japanese composition. Its place is its significance and its value. +Such an art of position implies a great art of intervals. The +Japanese chooses a few things and leaves the space between them +free, as free as the pauses or silences in music. But as time, not +silence, is the subject, or material, of contrast in musical pauses, +so it is the measurement of space--that is, collocation--that makes +the value of empty intervals. The space between this form and that, +in a Japanese composition, is valuable because it is just so wide +and no more. And this, again, is only another way of saying that +position is the principle of this apparently wilful art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped +to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly +transcending Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly +accepted moral support from the islands of the Japanese. He too +etches a kind of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the +spectator's knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to +nothing but the spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists +work in ways dissimilar. Nevertheless, the French etcher would +never have written his signs so freely had not the Japanese so +freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, the transitory and +destructible material of Japanese art has done as much as the +multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer--the black and white artist--to +working for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of +its daily life by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means +of paper, printed. But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a +destructive people, paper with us means short life, quick abolition, +transformation, re-appearance, a very circulation of life. This is +our present way of surviving ourselves--the new version of that feat +of life. Time was when to survive yourself meant to secure, for a +time indefinitely longer than the life of man, such dull form as you +had given to your work; to intrude upon posterity. To survive +yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into daily oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper +does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to +them a different condition of ornament from that with which they +adorned old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For +the transitory material they keep the more purely pictorial art of +landscape. What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far +reduced to a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of +races that have produced Cotman and Corot. Japanese landscape- +drawing reduces things seen to such fewness as must have made the +art insuperably tedious to any people less fresh-spirited and more +inclined to take themselves seriously than these Orientals. A +preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little closer +attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape--it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive--a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, +and the flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions +of a people intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to +define by that phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? +Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, even though they +show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of the form of a +normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. They are +not in search of the perpetual slight novelty which was Aristotle's +ideal of the language poetic ("a little wildly, or with the flower +of the mind," says Emerson of the way of a poet's speech)--and such +novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of the pinion, that keeps +verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are intent upon is +perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields has eyes +less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the +path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure +in fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque +strangeness he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to +his garden. The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the +art of peace, and not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and +curves whereby this people conventionally signify wave or cloud. +All these curls have an attitude which is like that of a figure +slightly malformed, and not like that of a human body that is +perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or niggling labour. +Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard to say; they +have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where the +upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and--especially in gold embroideries--is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, +while the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads +take by nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no +other art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The +Japanese have generally evaded even the local beauty of their own +race for the sake of perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is +remote from our sympathy and admiration; and it is quite possible +that we might miss it in pictorial presentation, and that the +Japanese artist may have intended human beauty where we do not +recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is certainly +not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate +dignity, even--to be very generous--has been admired by the Japanese +artist, and is represented here and there occasionally, in the +figure of warrior or mousme. But even with this exception the habit +of Japanese figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, and +crooked. It is curious to observe that the search for slight +deformity is so constant as to make use, for its purposes, not of +action only, but of perspective foreshortening. With us it is to +the youngest child only that there would appear to be mirth in the +drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would seem to have +his head "beneath his shoulders." The European child would not see +fun in the living man so presented, but--unused to the same effect +"in the flat"--he thinks it prodigiously humorous in a drawing. But +so only when he is quite young. The Japanese keeps, apparently, his +sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but not perhaps +altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened figure +should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it +than the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion +of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not +precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous +models. He makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar +with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no +need to insist upon the ignoble character of those that are +intentional caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek +decoration, and would be glad to forget it, with the intention of +learning that art afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. +But whatever may be the phases of the arts, there is the abiding +principle of symmetry in the body of man, that goes erect, like an +upright soul. Its balance is equal. Exterior human symmetry is +surely a curious physiological fact where there is no symmetry +interiorly. For the centres of life and movement within the body +are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is Greek without and +Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of +the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a principle. It +controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human action. +Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite incidents-- +inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of sleep--the +symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that symmetry +complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because +this hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and +that the sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses +the unequal heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and +strength are inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation +upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it +would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless +art. The order of inflection that is not infraction has been +explained in a most authoritative sentence of criticism of +literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble of +some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the +rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the +poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the +subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the modulus of whose verse has been +most variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with +feelings and passions which are the inflections of moral law in +their theme. Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds +with a strain upon law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the +quality of poetic language is a continual SLIGHT novelty. In the +highest poetry, like that of Milton, these three modes of +inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all chime together in +praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That +perpetual proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of +life. Symmetry is a profound, if disregarded because perpetually +inflected, condition of human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may +settle or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it +has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides +the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as +the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal +heart. And this seems to be the nobler and the more perdurable +relation. + + + +THE PLAID + + + +It is disconcerting to hear of the plaid in India. Our dyes, we +know, they use in the silk mills of Bombay, with the deplorable +result that their old clothes are dull and unintentionally falsified +with infelicitous decay. The Hindus are a washing people; and the +sun and water that do but dim, soften, and warm the native vegetable +dyes to the last, do but burlesque the aniline. Magenta is bad +enough when it is itself; but the worst of magenta is that it spoils +but poorly. No bad modern forms and no bad modern colours spoil +well. And spoiling is an important process. It is a test--one of +the ironical tests that come too late with their proofs. London +portico-houses will make some such ruins as do chemical dyes, which +undergo no use but derides them, no accidents but caricature them. +This is an old enough grievance. But the plaid! + +The plaid is the Scotchman's contribution to the decorative art of +the world. Scotland has no other indigenous decoration. In his +most admirable lecture on "The Two Paths," Ruskin acknowledged, with +a passing misgiving, that his Highlanders had little art. And the +misgiving was but passing, because he considered how fatally wrong +was the art of India--"it never represents a natural fact. It forms +its compositions out of meaningless fragments of colour and flowings +of line . . . It will not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it +will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zig-zag." Because of +this aversion from Nature the Hindu and his art tended to evil, we +read. But of the Scot we are told, "You will find upon reflection +that all the highest points of the Scottish character are connected +with impressions derived straight from the natural scenery of their +country." + +What, then, about the plaid? Where is the natural fact there? If +the Indian, by practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, +cuts himself off "from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or +natural delight," to what did the good and healthy Highlander +condemn himself by practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may be +found in the vine, and a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in +nature is the plaid to be found? There is surely no curve or curl +that can be drawn by a designing hand but is a play upon some +infinitely various natural fact. The smoke of the cigarette, more +sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its waves so +multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and +such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence +and impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering +curls ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand--and that is not a +Hindu hand, nor any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured +the curve of the section of a sea-wave--its flow, relaxation, and +fall; but this is a single movement, whereas the line of cigarette- +smoke in a still room fluctuates in twenty delicate directions. No, +it is impossible to accept the saying that the poor spiral or scroll +of a human design is anything but a participation in the innumerable +curves and curls of nature. + +Now the plaid is not only "cut off" from natural sources, as Ruskin +says of Oriental design--the plaid is not only cut off from nature, +and cut off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured off in +inorganic quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional +contradiction of all natural or vital forms. And it is equally +defiant of vital tone and of vital colour. Everywhere in nature +tone is gradual, and between the fainting of a tone and the failing +of a curve there is a charming analogy. But the tartan insists that +its tone shall be invariable, and sharply defined by contrasts of +dark and light. As to colour, it has colours, not colour. + +But that plaid should now go so far afield as to decorate the noble +garment of the Indies is ill news. True, Ruskin saw nothing but +cruelty and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an +Indian maxim in regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready +sufferers: "There," says the Mahabharata, "where women are treated +with respect, the very gods are said to be filled with joy. Women +deserve to be honoured. Serve ye them. Bend your will before them. +By honouring women ye are sure to attain to the fruition of all +things." And the rash teachers of our youth would have persuaded us +that this generous lesson was first learnt in Teutonic forests! + +Nothing but extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be +suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. +Accordingly the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil +to the souls of her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great- +grandmother-in-law, in gratitude for their giving her a good +husband. And to go back for a moment to Ruskin's contrast of the +two races, it was assuredly under the stress of some too rash +reasoning that he judged the lovely art of the East as a ministrant +to superstition, cruelty, and pleasure, whether wrought upon the +temple, the sword, or the girdle. The innocent art of innocent +Hindu women for centuries decked their most modest heads, their +dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving breasts, and +consecrated chambers. + + + +THE FLOWER + + + +There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed +by those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere +witnesses, in its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the +flower. In the shape of the flower his own paltriness revisits him- +-his triviality, his sloth, his cheapness, his wholesale +habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. These return to him and +wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the tyranny really had +grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where +the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down +and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative +force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and +leaf--the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by +rote--are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness +and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly +of all imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm- +house arrayed for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is +beset with flowers. It blooms, a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron +garden. The floor flourishes with blossoms adust, poorly +conventionalized into a kind of order; the table-cover is ablaze +with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper is set with +bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and lilies +in its very construction; over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig +is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the +plaster picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in +the pediment of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the +barometer, in the finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger- +plates of the "grained" door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait +or to be traced the stale inspiration of the flower. And what is +this bossiness around the grate but some blunt, black-leaded +garland? The recital is wearisome, but the retribution of the +flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution of man, the +haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his +inconsiderable brain. + +The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling--subjection to +the smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap +patterns is no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain +and transitory author by the phrase. In literature as in all else +man merits his subjection to trivialities by his economical greed. +A condition for using justly and gaily any decoration would seem to +be a measure of reluctance. Ornament--strange as the doctrine +sounds in a world decivilized--was in the beginning intended to be +something jocund; and jocundity was never to be achieved but by +postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of +the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something +even more severe than modertion: she has an innumerable singleness. +Her buttercup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not +multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of +decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or +who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes-- +the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous Fate +that man should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her +answer every time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the +day when she shall make the one tremendous difference among her +gifts--and make it perhaps in secret--by naming one of them the +ultimate. What, for novelty, what, for singleness, what, for +separateness, can equal the last? Of many thousand kisses the poor +last--but even the kisses of your mouth are all numbered. + + + +UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM + + + +It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress +of man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the +form of man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is +at least as important as the scenery of geological structure, or the +scenery of architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the +lovers of mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have +consented to ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, +inasmuch as it has the finest lines and therewith those slender, +diminishing forms which, coming at the base of the human structure, +show it to be a thing of life by its unstable equilibrium. A +lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, +poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without +implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested +the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is +erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, +because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the +best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, +in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither +movement nor supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure +it is the foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives +the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so +organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, the +strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all +garments the most stupid. Inexpressive of what they clothe as no +kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they are neither +implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly possible to +err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent writer +is praised for "clothing his thought," it is to modern raiment that +one's agile fancy flies--fain of completing the metaphor! + +The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other +than the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the +multiplication of undignified forms that fill the streets, and +demonstrate, and meet, and listen to the speaker. For the +undistinguished are very important by their numbers. These are they +who make the look of the artificial world. They are man +generalized; as units they inevitably lack something of interest; +all the more they have cumulative effect. It would be well if we +could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in +the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to +be changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are +their national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing +of other men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the +reformed dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have +turned second-hand. + + + +VICTORIAN CARICATURE + + + +There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, of +a certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century and +earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its aim the +vulgarizing of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas +Jerrold for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that +humourist's serial, "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," which were +presumably considered good comic reading in the "Punch" of that +time, and to make acquaintance with a certain ideal of the +grotesque. Obviously to make a serious comment on anything which +others consider or have considered humorous is to put oneself at a +disadvantage. He who sees the joke holds himself somewhat the +superior of the man who would see it, such as it is, if he thought +it worth his eyesight. The last-named has to bear the least +tolerable of modern reproaches--that he lacks humour; but he need +not always care. Now to turn over Douglas Jerrold's monologues is +to find that people in the mid-century took their mirth principally +from the life of the arriere boutique. On that shabby stage was +enacted the comedy of literature. Therefore we must take something +of the vulgarity of Jerrold as a circumstance of the social ranks +wherein he delighted. But the essential vulgarity is that of the +woman. There is in some old "Punch" volume a drawing by Leech--whom +one is weary of hearing named the gentle, the refined--where the +work of the artist has vied with the spirit of the letterpress. +Douglas Jerrold treats of the woman's jealousy, Leech of her stays. +They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And page +by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that +time there was, moreover, one great humourist, one whom I infinitely +admire; he, too, I am grieved to remember, bore his part willingly +in vulgarizing the woman; and the part that fell to him was the +vulgarizing of the act of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing +man at the law for evading her fatuous companionship, woman +incoherent, woman abandoned without restraint to violence and +temper, woman feigning sensibility--in none of these ignominies is +woman so common and so foolish for Dickens as she is in child- +bearing. + +I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are +humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is +moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is +that her husband--himself wearisome enough to die of--is weary of +her, finds the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him +that she should furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, to the +annoyance of her husband, and that her husband should have no desire +to adorn her, and that her mother should be intolerable. It pleases +him that her baby, with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette in its +hat--a burlesque baby--should be a grotesque object of her love, for +that too makes subtly for her abasement. Charles Keene, again-- +another contemporary, though he lived into a later and different +time. He saw little else than common forms of human ignominy-- +indignities of civic physique, of stupid prosperity, of dress, of +bearing. He transmits these things in greater proportion than he +found them--whether for love of the humour of them, or by a kind of +inverted disgust that is as eager as delight--one is not sure which +is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities is rendered with a +completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain sensitiveness +of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get convinced +that real apprehension--real apprehensiveness--would not have +insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through +almost a whole career. There is one drawing in the "Punch" of years +ago, in which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible to +even the invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual +broadcloth, has gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and +his umbrella open, and the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when +she awakes, the wife asleep at his side in a night-cap. Every one +who knows Keene's work can imagine how the huge well-fed figure was +drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across the back, and how the +bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene drawing is matched +by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, ignominies of married +life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old common jape against +the mother-in-law; abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom +with shambling side-long legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she +is a widow, and she answers, "No, never was." In all these things +there is very little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was in the +figures of his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness which in really +fine work could never be absent from a man's thought of a child or +from his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the subject in hand, +is absolutely lacking in Keene's designs; nevertheless, we +acknowledge that there is humour. It is also in some of his +clerical figures when they are not caricatures, and certainly in +"Robert," the City waiter of "Punch." But so irresistible is the +derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of +vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone +astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for +prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for +the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she +vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the +possession of whom is her boast, what then is she? + +This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular +form of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the +habit by which some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, +whereas a silly man is not reproached through his sex. But the +vulgarity of which I have written here was distinctively English-- +the most English thing that England had in days when she bragged of +many another--and it was not able to survive an increased commerce +of manners and letters with France. It was the chief immorality +destroyed by the French novel. + + + +THE POINT OF HONOUR + + + +Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. +In Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not +explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his +trustworthiness; he made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; +he relied on his own candour, and asked that the candid should rely +upon him; he kept the chastity of art when other masters were +content with its honesty, and when others saved artistic conscience +he safeguarded the point of honour. Contemporary masters more or +less proved their position, and convinced the world by something of +demonstration; the first Impressionist simply asked that his word +should be accepted. To those who would not take his word he offers +no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of a share in +his responsibility. + +Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to +be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of +his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, +his self-defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible +mysteries in art. "You can see for yourself," the lesser man seems +to say to the world, "thus things are, and I render them in such +manner that your intelligence may be satisfied." This is an appeal +to average experience--at the best the cumulative experience; and +with the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal without +derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: "Thus things are in my +pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so." We are not +excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain +authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art +of seeing pictorially which is the beginning and not far from the +end--not far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little +indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's +impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his +colleagues. Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take praise from +the praised: he leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the work. +He respects my responsibility no less--though he respects it less +explicitly--than I do his. What he allows me would not be granted +by a meaner master. If he does not hold himself bound to prove his +own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It is as though he used +his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his house my own. +In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the honours of his +picture. + +Because Impressionism with all its extreme--let us hope its +ultimate--derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. +Because there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times +responsible. To undertake this art for the sake of its privileges +without confessing its obligations--or at least without confessing +them up to the point of honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see +immunities precisely where there are duties, and an advantage where +there is a bond. A very mob of men have taken Impressionism upon +themselves, in several forms and under a succession of names, in +this our later day. It is against all probabilities that more than +a few among these have within them the point of honour. In their +galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And to distrust is more +humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of these landscape- +painters, deliberately rash, are painting the truth of their own +impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is easily answered; +truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the intelligence of +the common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the dubium +concerns not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that +their sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate +equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are +enough? Now Impressionists have told us things as to their +impressions--as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this +man and upon the mood of that--which should not be asserted except +on the artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary +truth, but should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. +They can face the general judgement, but they should hesitate to +produce work that appeals to the last judgement, which is the +judgement within. There is too much reason to divine that a certain +number of those who aspire to differ from the greatest of masters +have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of view worth +seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying. And +to be, de parti pris, an Impressionist without these! O Velasquez! +Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach in her own things. +An author, here and there, will make as though he had a word worth +hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to withdraw even +while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too +probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is the +craft and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture, +so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is +reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. If the +artistic temperament--tedious word!--with all its grotesque +privileges, becomes yet more common than it is, there will be yet +less responsibility; for the point of honour is the simple secret of +the few. + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But +the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, +or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed +the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. +Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the +act of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not +the manifestation thereof. It is one of the things the value of +which is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a +napkin. The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the +colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the +living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the +unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life +is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that +it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than +earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less +lucid than the colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in +all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. +Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under +the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of the +London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, +out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of +June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any +mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, +and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and chapeau melon of man, +and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is +subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular face of +the Londoner has soon lost its gold, its white, and the delicacy of +its red and brown. We miss little beauty by the fact that it is +never seen freely in great numbers out-of-doors. You get it in some +quantity when all the heads of a great indoor meeting are turned at +once upon a speaker; but it is only in the open air, needless to +say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in the open air, +"clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and direct, +or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of +all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer +north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke +of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours--all allied to the +hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has +chosen for its boys--and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and +delicate flush between the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. +Clothed now with the sun, he is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars +as he goes to bathe, and the reflection of an early moon is under +his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. +They are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but +only a little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. +The last and most finished action of her intellect, passion, and +knowledge is, as it were, the flicking away of some insignificant +thing mistaken for art by other actors, some little obstacle to the +way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second +boot, and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the +lacking colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even +undressed, he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect +pure vowels and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, +his slenderness, his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild +rose in the deepening midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his +world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where +Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the +happily easy way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to +grow in the streets--and no streets could ask for a more charming +finish than your green grass. The gasometer even must fall to +pieces unless it is renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is +nothing so remediable as the work of modern man--"a thought which is +also," as Mr Pecksniff said, "very soothing." And by remediable I +mean, of course, destructible. As the bathing child shuffles off +his garments--they are few, and one brace suffices him--so the land +might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off its yellow brick and +purple slate, and all the things that collect about railway +stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery +of Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea- +coast. To have once seen it there should be enough to make a +colourist. O memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour +as it neared setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the +land. The sea had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of +that aspect--the dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also +deep. Everything was very definite, without mystery, and +exceedingly simple. The most luminous thing was the shining white +of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be white because it was a +little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. It was still the +whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous thing was the +little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that +the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the +curious history of the political rights of woman under the +Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the +fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that +seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted +political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the +obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was +granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, +international. The blood wherewith she should, according to +Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was +exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and +the innermost--the privacy of death--was never allowed to put +obstacles in the way of public action for a public cause. Women +might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de +Gouges, they claimed a "right to concur in the choice of +representatives for the formation of the laws"; but in her person, +too, they were liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to +the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus +made her public and complete amends. + + + +THE HORIZON + + + +To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter +than yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you +raise the horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. +It is like the scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his +dramatic Italian hands, bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does +more than bid them. He lifts them, he gathers them up, far and +near, with the upward gesture of both arms; he takes them to their +feet with the compulsion of his expressive force. Or it is as when +a conductor takes his players to successive heights of music. You +summon the sea, you bring the mountains, the distances unfold +unlooked-for wings and take an even flight. You are but a man +lifting his weight upon the upward road, but as you climb the circle +of the world goes up to face you. + +Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen +unfolds. This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are +on the wing, and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and +wait upon your eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your +eyelids, but by the pilgrimage of your body. "Lift thine eyes to +the mountains." It is then that other mountains lift themselves to +your human eyes. + +It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another +that makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All the +landscape is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, and its +inner harbours literally come to light; the headlands repeat +themselves; little cups within the treeless hills open and show +their farms. In the sea are many regions. A breeze is at play for +a mile or two, and the surface is turned. There are roads and +curves in the blue and in the white. Not a step of your journey up +the height that has not its replies in the steady motion of land and +sea. Things rise together like a flock of many-feathered birds. + +But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search +of. That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift the +horizon to the equality of your sight that you go high. You give it +a distance worthy of the skies. There is no distance, except the +distance in the sky, to be seen from the level earth; but from the +height is to be seen the distance of this world. The line is sent +back into the remoteness of light, the verge is removed beyond +verge, into a distance that is enormous and minute. + +So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less +near than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here on +the edges of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world--we +know no other place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so +small and tender. The touches of her passing, as close as dreams, +or the utmost vanishing of the forest or the ocean in the white +light between the earth and the air; nothing else is quite so +intimate and fine. The extremities of a mountain view have just +such tiny touches as the closeness of closed eyes shuts in. + +On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars the +simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface +it, by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky +disappears on that shining edge; there is not substance enough for +colour. The rim of the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, +of the sea--let it only be far enough--has the same absorption of +colour; and even the dark things drawn upon the bright edges of the +sky are lucid, the light is among them, and they are mingled with +it. The horizon has its own way of making bright the pencilled +figures of forests, which are black but luminous. + +On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. +There you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds--not a thunder +sky--is not a wall but the underside of a floor. You see the clouds +that repeat each other grow smaller by distance; and you find a new +unity in the sky and earth that gather alike the great lines of +their designs to the same distant close. There is no longer an +alien sky, tossed up in unintelligible heights above a world that is +subject to intelligible perspective. + +Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted +is the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; not +the spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from +the parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of +soot; but rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a +beautiful thing of the London smoke at times, and in some places of +the sky; but not there, not where the soft sharp distance ought to +shine. To be dull there is to put all relations and comparisons in +the wrong, and to make the sky lawless. + +A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens the +line and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly +dims it, or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the +sky. The stormy horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high +enough, and you can raise the light from beyond the shower, and the +shadow from behind the ray. Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke +disobeys and defeats the summer of the eyes. + +Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their +sea. A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes +that they cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. +Never in the solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of +Good Hope and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has +the seaman seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient +Mariner, when he was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow +solitudes. The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but +for his mast he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a +traveller through the plains. + +Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them +so perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying +to flight with flight. + +A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing +hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think +something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the +centre of it. + +As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so +steady, so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further +sea lies away, hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding +world, with its looks serene and alert, its distant replies, its +signals of many miles, its signs and communications of light, +gathers down and pauses. This flock of birds which is the mobile +landscape wheels and goes to earth. The Cardinal weighs down the +audience with his downward hands. Farewell to the most delicate +horizon. + + + +IN JULY + + + +One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of +the green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of +maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and +stand in their differences of character and not of mere date. +Almost all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a +darkened and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony +with dark grey skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic +after spring as eleven o'clock looks after the dawn. + +Gravity is the word--not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace as +at night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, +common freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and +day. In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and +summer sunrise than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also +a far higher sensibility for April and April evenings--a heartache +for them, which in riper years is gradually and irretrievably +consoled. + +But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find +daily things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has +no great delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness +of the summer that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere +day and of late summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have +long ceased to be sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot +now find anything in nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, +lost sight of the further awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer +see so much of the past in April twilight as they saw when they had +no past; but which look freshly at the dailiness of green summer, of +early afternoon, of every sky of any form that comes to pass, and of +the darkened elms. + +Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting +close, unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when it +looks alone to a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, +across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, +and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the +mind, as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in +the hand, would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A +veritable passion for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The +eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole day's journey. Not +one is unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and +hill-sides dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a poplar day +of it. Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for the +poplars everywhere reply to the glance. The woods may be all +various, but the poplars are separate. + +All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with +them) shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. +It is easy to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance pay +them a flash of recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you +journey you are suddenly aware of them close by. Light and the +breezes are as quick as the eyes of a poplar-lover to find the +willing tree that dances to be seen. + +No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for +oneself an oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and +many would be missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert +enough for a traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do +not sleep. From within some little grove of other trees a single +poplar makes a slight sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep +the wind. They are salient everywhere, and full of replies. They +are as fresh as streams. + +It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. +And yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much +mingled with a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes +to recognize their unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and +keep still, the poplar and the aspen do not darken--or hardly--and +the deepest summer will not find a day in which they do not keep +awake. No waters are so vigilant, even where a lake is bare to the +wind. + +When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair "with +fingers cool as aspen leaves," he knew the coolest thing in the +world. It is a coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which the +breeze takes on both sides--the greenish and the greyish. The +poplar green has no glows, no gold; it is an austere colour, as +little rich as the colour of willows, and less silvery than theirs. +The sun can hardly gild it; but he can shine between. Poplars and +aspens let the sun through with the wind. You may have the sky +sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the woods are +close. + +Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher's net ever took such glancing fishes, +nor did the net of a constellation's shape ever enclose more +vibrating Pleiades. + + + +CLOUD + + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to +see the clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by +the rest of England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not +to see the clear sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in +London. You may go for a week or two at a time, even though you +hold your head up as you walk, and even though you have windows that +really open, and yet you shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, +the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled +glass towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They +are, therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other +windows were used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or +even knew so much as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world +knows. Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in +search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes +its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, +it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery--the tourist's--is a +prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, +but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it +is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends +upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own +sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must +wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or +fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to +foot, the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud +permits, that their own local colour and their own local season are +lost and cease, effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is +the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a +handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge +with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and +makes the foreground shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the +mountain slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out +part of the view by the rough method of standing in front of it. +But its greatest things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence +does it distribute the sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more +mysteries than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. +Thence it writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or +lets the pencils of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and +yet making dark, it sheds deep colour upon the forest land of +Sussex, so that, seen from the hills, all the country is divided +between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the +world. Its own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to +improve. It is always great: above the street, above the suburbs, +above the gas-works and the stucco, above the faces of painted white +houses--the painted surfaces that have been devised as the only +things able to vulgarise light, as they catch it and reflect it +grotesquely from their importunate gloss. This is to be well seen +on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above +some little landscape of rather paltry interest--a conventional +river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, +and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, +as the novelists always have it, with "autumn tints." High over +these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, what no +man expected--an heroic sky. Few of the things that were ever done +upon earth are great enough to be done under such a heaven. It was +surely designed for other days. It is for an epic world. Your eyes +sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the distances of earth to +these, and what are the distances of the clear and cloudless sky? +The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the round world +dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are +unmeasured--you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the +star itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, +with conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. +Man would not have known distance veritably without the clouds. +There are mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of +the earth are pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not +overpowering by disproportion, like some futile building fatuously +made too big for the human measure. The cloud in its majestic place +composes with a little Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the +futile building, while the cloud is no mansion for man, and out of +reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the +custody of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. +The cloud veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry +ray, suddenly bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a +background. Or when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals +him, gentle beyond hope. It makes peace, constantly, just before +sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. +There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds +are bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and +brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is +a frolic and haphazard sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed +about it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the +clouds in turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes +aloft are swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single +colour. Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller +Mediterranean in the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same +finger. The cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its +nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this +scenery. It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of +the winter, that the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for +many and many a day no London eye can see the horizon, or the first +threat of the cloud like a man's hand. There never was a great +painter who had not exquisite horizons, and if Corot and Crome were +right, the Londoner loses a great thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he +loses its shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and +rosy head piling into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the +base and the altitude. The perspective of a cloud is a great part +of its design--whether it lies so that you can look along the +immense horizontal distances of its floor, or whether it rears so +upright a pillar that you look up its mountain steeps in the sky as +you look at the rising heights of a mountain that stands, with you, +on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not +merely the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the +sun's treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We +talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet +one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of +the most majestic of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon +is the bride, this is the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most +beautiful of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no +name, and no other cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such +heights of blue air. The shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, +comes across the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going +out to sea can be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps +in the London streets is that people take their rain there without +knowing anything of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and +means wetness. The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no +limits of form, and no history whatever. It has not come from the +clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the +hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly comes or goes; +it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the path of +its retreat. + + + +SHADOWS + + + +Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and +unencumbered with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple +house is that the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs +of shadows. The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought +oftener to be offered to the light and to yonder handful of long +sedges and rushes in a vase. Their slender grey design of shadows +upon white walls is better than a tedious, trivial, or anxious +device from the shop. + +The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into +line and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, +not to the mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. +It is single; it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and +will never be seen again, and that, untouched, varies with the +journey of the sun, shifts the interrelation of a score of delicate +lines at the mere passing of time, though all the room be +motionless. Why will design insist upon its importunate +immortality? Wiser is the drama, and wiser the dance, that do not +pause upon an attitude. But these walk with passion or pleasure, +while the shadow walks with the earth. It alters as the hours +wheel. + +Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it is +shed by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; it +betrays the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies--a sun that +takes the midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a +sally-porte, and is about to alight on an unused horizon. So does +the grey drawing, with which you have allowed the sun and your pot +of rushes to adorn your room, play the stealthy game of the year. + +You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It needs +but four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most +buoyant jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a +symmetrical countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches +close with one another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and +their paler greys darkening. It is hard to believe that there are +many to prefer a "repeating pattern." + +It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration +the walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a +plaque or a picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To +dress a room once for all, and to give it no more heed, is to +neglect the units of the days. + +Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of +shadows which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you +see little except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow-- +be the day bright enough--compose the very air through which you see +the light. The trees show you a shadow for every leaf, and the +poplars are sprinkled upon the shining sky with little shadows that +look translucent. The liveliness of every shadow is that some light +is reflected into it; shade and shine have been entangled as though +by some wild wind through their million molecules. + +The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the +unclouded sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to +life, and are themselves the life, the action, and the transparence +of their day. + +To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light +looks still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide for +so many hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are +extinguished. Him who lies alone there the outer world touches less +by this long sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. +Although there may be no tree to stand between his window and the +south, and although no noonday wind may blow a branch of roses +across the blind, shadows and their life will be carried across by a +brilliant bird. + +To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot +see its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does but +darken his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does +not see it pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows him +wings. What flash of light could be more bright for him than such a +flash of darkness? + +It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. +If he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less--the bird's +shadow was a message from the sun. + +There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight +of the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. This +goes across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray +for a while in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer +and larger, runs, quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker +on the soft and dry grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird +swoops to a branch and clings. + +In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, +about Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high +birds are the movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there +are no woods to make a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse +of flocks of pearl-white sea birds, or of the solitary creature +driving on the wind. Theirs is always a surprise of flight. The +clouds go one way, but the birds go all ways: in from the sea or +out, across the sands, inland to high northern fields, where the +crops are late by a month. They fly so high that though they have +the shadow of the sun under their wings, they have the light of the +earth there also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, and +they fly between lights. + +Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, "swift +as dreams," at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, +and ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They +subside by degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings +and cries until there comes the general shadow of night wherewith +the little shadows close, complete. + +The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds have +traced wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their +shadows have fled all day faster than her streams, and have +overtaken all the movement of her wingless creatures. But now it is +the flight of the very earth that carries her clasped shadow from +the sun. + + + +THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY + + + +All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling +and election to the most wifely of all wifehoods--that of a +soldier's wife--history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as +Colonel Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is +something more than his biographer--his historian. And she +convinces her reader that her Puritan principles kept abreast of her +affections. There is no self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; +keeps her own footing; wife of a soldier as she is, would not have +armed him without her own previous indignation against the enemy. +She is a soldier at his orders, but she had warily and freely chosen +her captain. + +Briefly, and with the dignity that the language of her day kept +unmarred for her use, she relates her own childhood and youth. She +was a child such as those serious times desired that a child should +be; that is, she was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, +as might be. Childhood, as an age of progress, was not to be +delayed, as an age of imperfection was to be improved, as an age of +inability was not to be exposed except when precocity distinguished +it. It must at any rate be shortened. Lucy Apsley, at four years +old, read English perfectly, and was "carried to sermons, and could +remember and repeat them exactly." "At seven she had eight tutors +in several qualities." She outstripped her brothers in Latin, +albeit they were at school and she had no teacher except her +father's chaplain, who, poor gentleman, was "a pitiful dull fellow." +She was not companionable. Her many friends were indulged with +"babies" (that is, dolls) and these she pulled to pieces. She +exhorted the maids, she owned, "much." But she also heard much of +their love stories, and acquired a taste for sonnets. + +It was a sonnet, and indeed one of her own writing, that brought +about her acquaintance with Mr. Hutchinson. The sonnet was read to +him, and discussed amongst his friends, with guesses at the +authorship; for a young woman did not, in that world, write a sonnet +without a feint of hiding its origin. One gentleman believed a +woman had made it. Another said, if so, there were but two women +capable of making it; but he owned, later, that he said "two" out of +civility (very good civility of a kind that is not now practised) to +a lady who chanced to be present; but that he knew well there was +but one; and he named her. From her future husband Lucy Apsley +received that praise of exceptions wherewith women are now, and +always will be, praised: "Mr. Hutchinson, she says, "fancying +something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary reach of +a she-wit, could scarcely believe it was a woman's." + +He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured +conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young +friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer +jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or +precise in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered +up the envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's +splendour. His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, +thick-set head of hair" in long locks that were an offence to many +of his own sect, but, she says, "a great ornament to him." But for +herself she has some dissimulated vanities. She was negligent of +dress, and when, after much waiting and many devices, her suitor +first saw her, she was "not ugly in a careless riding-habit." As +for him, "in spite of all her indifference, she was surprised (she +writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw this +gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to +beget love in any one." He married her as soon as she could leave +her chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that "the priest +and all that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God +recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her." + +The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy +Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our +own time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of +gesture of language; this is where she praises her husband's +"handsome management of love." {1} She thus prefaces her description +of her honoured lord: "If my treacherous memory have not lost the +dearest treasure that ever I committed to its trust -." She boasts +of her country in lofty phrase: "God hath, as it were, enclosed a +people here, out of the waste common of the world." And again of +her husband: "It will be as hard to say which was the predominant +virtue in him as which is so in its own nature." "He had made up +his accounts with life and death, and fixed his purpose to entertain +both honourably." "The heat of his youth a little inclined him to +the passion of anger, and the goodness of his nature to those of +love and grief; but reason was never dethroned by them, but +continued governor and moderator of his soul." + +She describes sweetly certain three damsels who had "conceived a +kindness" for her lord, their susceptibility, their willingness, +their "admirable tempting beauty," and "such excellent good-nature +as would have thawed a rock of ice"; but she adds no less +beautifully, "It was not his time to love." In her widowhood she +remembered that she had been commanded "not to grieve at the common +rate of women"; and this is the lovely phrase of her grief: "As his +shadow, she waited on him everywhere, till he was taken to that +region of light which admits of none, and then she vanished into +nothing." + +She has an invincible anger against the enemies of her husband and +of the cause. The fevers, "little less than plagues," that were +common in that age carry them off exemplarily by families at a time. +An adversary is "the devil's exquisite solicitor." All Royalists +are of "the wicked faction." She suspected his warders of poisoning +Colonel Hutchinson in the prison wherein he died. The keeper had +given him, under pretence of kindness, a bottle of excellent wine, +and the two gentlemen who drank of it died within four months. A +poison of strange operation! "We must leave it to the great day, +when all crimes, how secret soever, will be made manifest, whether +they added poison to all their other iniquity, whereby they +certainly murdered this guiltless servant of God." When he was near +death, she adds, "a gentlewoman of the Castle came up and asked him +how he did. He told her, Incomparably well, and full of faith." + +On the subject of politics, Mrs. Hutchinson writes, it must be +owned, platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with +dignity. Her power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the +liberal and public interests of her life, her good breeding, her +education, her exquisite diction, are such as may well make a reader +ask how and why the literature of England declined upon the +vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, foolishness, that became "feminine" +in the estimation of a later age; that is, in the character of women +succeeding her, and in the estimation of men succeeding her lord. +The noble graces of Lucy Hutchinson, I say, may well make us marvel +at the downfall following--at Goldsmith's invention of the women of +"The Vicar or Wakefield" in one age, and at Thackeray's invention of +the women of "Esmond" in another. + +Mrs. Hutchinson has little leisure for much praise of the natural +beauty of sky and landscape, but now and then in her work there +appears an abiding sense of the pleasantness of the rural world--in +her day an implicit feeling rather than an explicit. "The happiness +of the soil and air contribute all things that are necessary to the +use or delight of man's life." "He had an opportunity of conversing +with her in those pleasant walks which, at the sweet season of the +spring, invited all the neighbouring inhabitants to seek their +joys." And she describes a dream whereof the scene was in the green +fields of Southwark. What an England was hers! And what an +English! A memorable vintage of our literature and speech was +granted in her day; we owe much to those who--as she did--gathered +it in. + + + +MRS. DINGLEY + + + +We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {2} All we have to +call her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties her to +Stella, with whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved "better a +thousand times than life, as hope saved." MD, without full stops, +Swift writes it eight times in a line for the pleasure of writing +it. "MD sometimes means Stella alone," says one of many editors. +"The letters were written nominally to Stella and Mrs. Dingley," +says another, "but it does not require to be said that it was really +for Stella's sake alone that they were penned." Not so. "MD" never +stands for Stella alone. And the editor does not yet live who shall +persuade one honest reader, against the word of Swift, that Swift +loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, and not, by a most +delicate exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that they make the +"she" and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper of +reparation to Mrs. Dingley. + +No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her +honours. In love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; +and Dingley's half of the tender things said to MD is equal to any +whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella's half. But the +sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He +has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. +Sly sentimentalist--he finds her irksome. Through one of his most +modern representatives he has but lately called her a "chaperon." A +chaperon! + +MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been +pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this +respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy +charming MD," "saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys +mine," "little mischievous girls," "nautinautinautidear girls," +"brats," "huzzies both," "impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," +"my dearest lives and delights," "dear little young women," "good +dallars, not crying dallars" (which means "girls"), "ten thousand +times dearest MD," and so forth in a hundred repetitions. They are, +every now and then, "poor MD," but obviously not because of their +own complaining. Swift called them so because they were mortal; and +he, like all great souls, lived and loved, conscious every day of +the price, which is death. + +The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with +his summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately +put them asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than +foolishly play havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the most +secluded thing in the world. "I am weary of friends, and +friendships are all monsters, except MD's;" "I ought to read these +letters I write after I have done. But I hope it does not puzzle +little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks," he adds, +"when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not alone, all +the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." +Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, +are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy +together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may +never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." +"Farewell, dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has +not had one happy day since he left you, as hope saved." + +With them--with her--he hid himself in the world, at Court, at the +bar of St. James's coffee-house, whither he went on the Irish mail- +day, and was "in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting." He +hid with them in the long labours of these exquisite letters every +night and morning. If no letter came, he comforted himself with +thinking that "he had it yet to be happy with." And the world has +agreed to hide under its own manifold and lachrymose blunders the +grace and singularity--the distinction--of this sweet romance. +"Little, sequestered pleasure-house"--it seemed as though "the many +could not miss it," but not even the few have found it. + +It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella +should be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from +Swift. But day and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's +little letters; he waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of +journal, and when it is full I will send it whether MD writes or +not; and so that will be pretty." "Naughty girls that will not +write to a body!" "I wish you were whipped for forgetting to send. +Go, be far enough, negligent baggages." "You, Mistress Stella, +shall write your share, and then comes Dingley altogether, and then +Stella a little crumb at the end; and then conclude with something +handsome and genteel, as 'your most humble cumdumble.'" But Scott +and Macaulay and Thackeray are all exceedingly sorry for Stella. + +Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: +"Here is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I must +be writing every night; O Lord, O Lord!" "I must go write idle +things, and twittle twattle." "These saucy jades take up so much of +my time with writing to them in the morning." Is it not a stealthy +wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley that she should be stripped of all +these ornaments to her name and memory? When Swift tells a woman in +a letter that there he is "writing in bed, like a tiger," she should +go gay in the eyes of all generations. + +They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will +not let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. Marry +come up! Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages +(taken very seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, +then? That would have been no ill share for Dingley. But no, +forsooth, Dingley is allowed nothing. + +There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from +her. For now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does so he +invariably drops those initials and writes "Stella" or "Ppt" for the +one, and "D" or "Dingley" for the other. There is no exception to +this anywhere. He is anxious about Stella's "little eyes," and +about her health generally; whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he +thinks, will not catch the "new fever," because she is not well; +"but why should D escape it, pray?" And Mrs. Dingley is rebuked for +her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. "I doubt, Madam +Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as +Stella; she tells thumpers." Stella is often reproved for her +spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. But she is +a puzzle-headed woman, like another. "What do you mean by my fourth +letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella say you had my fifth, +goody Blunder?" "Now, Mistress Dingley, are you not an impudent +slut to except a letter next packet? Unreasonable baggage! No, +little Dingley, I am always in bed by twelve, and I take great care +of myself." "You are a pretending slut, indeed, with your 'fourth' +and 'fifth' in the margin, and your 'journal' and everything. O +Lord, never saw the like, we shall never have done." "I never saw +such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, so everything." Swift is +insistently grateful for their inquiries for his health. He pauses +seriously to thank them in the midst of his prattle. Both women-- +MD--are rallied on their politics: "I have a fancy that Ppt is a +Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort of trimmer." + +But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in +his lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her in +Ireland. "He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible +litter; but I say nothing; I am as tame as a clout." + +Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the +ignominy, in a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to +Swift as an unclaimed wife; so far so good. But two hundred years +is long for her to have gone stripped of so radiant a glory as is +hers by right. "Better, thanks to MD's prayers," wrote the immortal +man who loved her, in a private fragment of a journal, never meant +for Dingley's eyes, nor for Ppt's, nor for any human eyes; and the +rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all the credit of those +prayers, and all the thanks of that pious benediction. + + + +PRUE + + + +Through the long history of human relations, which is the history of +the life of our race, there sounds at intervals the clamour of a +single voice which has not the tone of oratory, but asks, answers, +interrupts itself, interrupts--what else? Whatever else it +interrupts is silence; there are pauses, but no answers. There is +the jest without the laugh, and again the laugh without the jest. +And this is because the letters written by Madame de Sevigne were +all saved, and not many written to her; because Swift burnt the +letters that were the dearest things in life to him, while "MD" both +made a treasury of his; and because Prue kept all the letters which +Steele wrote to her from their marriage-day onwards, and Steele kept +none of hers. + +In Swift's case the silence is full of echoes; that is to say, his +letters repeat the phrases of Stella's and Dingley's, to play with +them, flout them, and toss them back against the two silenced +voices. He never lets the word of these two women fall to the +ground; and when they have but blundered with it, and aimed it wide, +and sent it weakly, he will catch it, and play you twenty delicate +and expert juggling pranks with it as he sends it back into their +innocent faces. So we have something of MD's letters in the +"journal," and this in the only form in which we desire them, to +tell the truth; for when Swift gravely saves us some specimens of +Stella's wit, after her death, as she spoke them, and not as he +mimicked them, they make a sorry show. + +In many correspondences, where one voice remains and the other is +gone, the retort is enough for two. It is as when, the other day, +the half of a pretty quarrel between nurse and child came down from +an upper floor to the ears of a mother who decided that she need not +interfere. The voice of the undaunted child it was that was audible +alone, and it replied, "I'm not; YOU are"; and anon, "I'll tell +YOURS." Nothing was really missing there. + +But Steele's letters to Prue, his wife, are no such simple matter. +The turn we shall give them depends upon the unheard tone whereto +they reply. And there is room for conjecture. It has pleased the +more modern of the many spirits of banter to supply Prue's eternal +silence with the voice of a scold. It is painful to me to complain +of Thackeray; but see what a figure he makes of Prue in "Esmond." +It is, says the nineteenth-century humourist, in defence against the +pursuit of a jealous, exacting, neglected, or evaded wife that poor +Dick Steele sends those little notes of excuse: "Dearest Being on +earth, pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having +met a schoolfellow from India"; "My dear, dear wife, I write to let +you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some +business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see +you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband"; +"Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your +welfare"; "I stay here in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for +me, and shall dine with him to that end"; and so forth. Once only +does Steele really afford the recent humourist the suggestion that +is apparently always so welcome. It is when he writes that he is +invited to supper to Mr. Boyle's, and adds: "Dear Prue, do not send +after me, for I shall be ridiculous." But even this is to be read +not ungracefully by a well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused +to the world. Her husband, by the way, had been already married; +and his greater age makes his constant deference all the more +charming. + +But with this one exception, Steele's little notes, kept by his wife +while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter and +his, are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. +It is worth while to remember that Steele's dinner, which it was so +often difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore +of mid-business. But that is a detail. What is desirable is that a +reasonable degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; for it +is no more than just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: "How +often has your tenderness removed pain from my aching head, how +often anguish from my afflicted heart. If there are such beings as +guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of +them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form, than +my wife." + +True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; +and these carry to her his assurance that she is "the beautifullest +object in the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree +comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and society." "But +indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant +fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, +that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my +request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride +I have that you are mine." The correction of the phrase is finely +considerate. + +Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a +reply, full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a +little flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence +of uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with +what simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her +invitation, and perform! She wanted a compliment, though they had +been long married then, and he immediately turned it. This was no +dowdy Prue. + +Her request, by the way, which he repeats in obeying it, is one of +the few instances of the other side of the correspondence--one of +the few direct echoes of that one of the two voices which is silent. + +The ceremony of the letters and the deferent method of address and +signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. +It is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and +state is supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of +the husband of farce, the "rogue." One does not like the word. Is +it not clownish to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? +He did not pay, he was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, +he did many other things that tarnish honour, more or less, and +things for which he had to beg Prue's special pardon; but yet he is +not a fit subject for the unhandsome incredulity which is proud to +be always at hand with an ironic commentary on such letters as his. + +I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words. +He wrote to Prue at night when the burgundy had been too much for +him, and in the morning after. He announces that he is coming to +her "within a pint of wine." One of his gayest letters--a love- +letter before the marriage, addressed to "dear lovely Mrs. +Scurlock"--confesses candidly that he had been pledging her too +well: "I have been in very good company, where your health, under +the character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk; so +that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more +than I DIE FOR YOU." + +Steele obviously drank burgundy wildly, as did his "good company"; +as did also the admirable Addison, who was so solitary in character +and so serene in temperament. But no one has, for this fault, the +right to put a railing accusation into the mouth of Prue. Every +woman has a right to her own silence, whether her silence be hers of +set purpose or by accident. And every creature has a right to +security from the banterings peculiar to the humourists of a +succeeding age. To every century its own ironies, to every century +its own vulgarities. In Steele's time they had theirs. They might +have rallied Prue more coarsely, but it would have been with a +different rallying. Writers of the nineteenth century went about to +rob her of her grace. + +She kept some four hundred of these little letters of her lord's. +It was a loyal keeping. But what does Thackeray call it? His word +is "thrifty." He says: "There are four hundred letters of Dick +Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved +accurately." + +"Thrifty" is a hard word to apply to her whom Steele styled, in the +year before her death, his "charming little insolent." She was ill +in Wales, and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and "took it to be +a sin to go to sleep." Thrifty they may call her, and accurate if +they will; but she lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele called her +"your Prueship." + + + +MRS. JOHNSON + + + +This paper shall not be headed "Tetty." What may be a graceful +enough freedom with the wives of other men shall be prohibited in +the case of Johnson's, she with whose name no writer until now has +scrupled to take freedoms whereto all graces were lacking. "Tetty" +it should not be, if for no other reason, for this--that the chance +of writing "Tetty" as a title is a kind of facile literary +opportunity; it shall be denied. The Essay owes thus much amends of +deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. But, indeed, the reason is +graver. What wish would he have had but that the language in the +making whereof he took no ignoble part should somewhere, at some +time, treat his only friend with ordinary honour? + +Men who would trust Dr. Johnson with their orthodoxy, with their +vocabulary, and with the most intimate vanity of their human wishes, +refuse, with every mark of insolence, to trust him in regard to his +wife. On that one point no reverence is paid to him, no deference, +no respect, not so much as the credit due to our common sanity. Yet +he is not reviled on account of his Thrale--nor, indeed, is his +Thrale now seriously reproached for her Piozzi. It is true that +Macaulay, preparing himself and his reader "in his well-known way" +(as a rustic of Mr. Hardy's might have it) for the recital of her +second marriage, says that it would have been well if she had been +laid beside the kind and generous Thrale when, in the prime of her +life, he died. But Macaulay has not left us heirs to his +indignation. His well-known way was to exhaust those possibilities +of effect in which the commonplace is so rich. And he was permitted +to point his paragraphs as he would, not only by calling Mrs. +Thrale's attachment to her second husband "a degrading passion," but +by summoning a chorus of "all London" to the same purpose. She +fled, he tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen +and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown. Thus when +Macaulay chastises Mrs. Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is +not inconsistent, for he pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for +her audacity in keeping gaiety and grace in her mind and manners +longer than Macaulay liked to see such ornaments added to the charm +of twice "married brows." + +It is not so with succeeding essayists. One of these minor +biographers is so gentle as to call the attachment of Mrs. Thrale +and Piozzi "a mutual affection." He adds, "No one who has had some +experience of life will be inclined to condemn Mrs. Thrale." But +there is no such courtesy, even from him, for Mrs. Johnson. Neither +to him nor to any other writer has it yet occurred that if England +loves her great Englishman's memory, she owes not only courtesy, but +gratitude, to the only woman who loved him while there was yet time. + +Not a thought of that debt has stayed the alacrity with which a +caricature has been acclaimed as the only possible portrait of Mrs. +Johnson. Garrick's school reminiscences would probably have made a +much more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his +remembrances; we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of +envying those who heard him. But honest laughter should not fall +into that tone of common antithesis which seems to say, "See what +are the absurdities of the great! Such is life! On this one point +we, even we, are wiser than Dr. Johnson--we know how grotesque was +his wife. We know something of the privacies of her toilet-table. +We are able to compare her figure with the figures we, unlike him in +his youth, have had the opportunity of admiring--the figures of the +well-bred and well-dressed." It is a sorry success to be able to +say so much. + +But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, +at twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over +himself which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, a +woman who had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite +of first sight. "That," she said to her daughter, "is the most +sensible man I ever met." He was penniless. She had what was no +mean portion for those times and those conditions; and, granted that +she was affected, and provincial, and short, and all the rest with +which she is charged, she was probably not without suitors; nor do +her defects or faults seem to have been those of an unadmired or +neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the aspect of +Johnson's form and face, even in his twenties, and how little he +could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. This +one loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the +noblest of all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. And +English literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay's- +-"She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the +addresses of a suitor who might have been her son." + +Her readiness did her incalculable honour. But it is at last worth +remembering that Johnson had first done her incalculable honour. No +one has given to man or woman the right to judge as to the +worthiness of her who received it. The meanest man is generally +allowed his own counsel as to his own wife; one of the greatest of +men has been denied it. "The lover," says Macaulay, "continued to +be under the illusions of the wedding day till the lady died." What +is so graciously said is not enough. He was under those "illusions" +until he too died, when he had long passed her latest age, and was +therefore able to set right that balance of years which has so much +irritated the impertinent. Johnson passed from this life twelve +years older than she, and so for twelve years his constant eyes had +to turn backwards to dwell upon her. Time gave him a younger wife. + +And here I will put into Mrs. Johnson's mouth, that mouth to which +no one else has ever attributed any beautiful sayings, the words of +Marceline Desbordes-Valmore to the young husband she loved: "Older +than thou! Let me never see thou knowest it. Forget it! I will +remember it, to die before thy death." + +Macaulay, in his unerring effectiveness, uses Johnson's short sight +for an added affront to Mrs. Johnson. The bridegroom was too weak +of eyesight "to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom." +Nevertheless, he saw well enough, when he was old, to distinguish +Mrs. Thrale's dresses. He reproved her for wearing a dark dress; it +was unsuitable, he said, for her size; a little creature should show +gay colours "like an insect." We are not called upon to admire his +wife; why, then, our taste being thus uncompromised, do we not +suffer him to admire her? It is the most gratuitous kind of +intrusion. Moreover, the biographers are eager to permit that touch +of romance and grace in his relations to Mrs. Thrale, which they +officially deny in the case of Mrs. Johnson. But the difference is +all on the other side. He would not have bidden his wife dress like +an insect. Mrs. Thrale was to him "the first of womankind" only +because his wife was dead. + +Beauclerc, we learn, was wont to cap Garrick's mimicry of Johnson's +love-making by repeating the words of Johnson himself in after- +years--"It was a love-match on both sides." And obviously he was as +strange a lover as they said. Who doubted it? Was there any other +woman in England to give such a suitor the opportunity of an eternal +love? "A life radically wretched," was the life of this master of +Letters; but she, who has received nothing in return except ignominy +from these unthankful Letters, had been alone to make it otherwise. +Well for him that he married so young as to earn the ridicule of all +the biographers in England; for by doing so he, most happily, +possessed his wife for nearly twenty years. I have called her his +only friend. So indeed she was, though he had followers, disciples, +rivals, competitors, and companions, many degrees of admirers, a +biographer, a patron, and a public. He had also the houseful of sad +old women who quarrelled under his beneficent protection. But what +friend had he? He was "solitary" from the day she died. + +Let us consider under what solemn conditions and in what immortal +phrase the word "solitary" stands. He wrote it, all Englishmen know +where. He wrote it in the hour of that melancholy triumph when he +had been at last set free from the dependence upon hope. He hoped +no more, and he needed not to hope. The "notice" of Lord +Chesterfield had been too long deferred; it was granted at last, +when it was a flattery which Johnson's court of friends would +applaud. But not for their sake was it welcome. To no living ear +would he bring it and report it with delight. + +He was indifferent, he was known. The sensitiveness to pleasure was +gone, and the sensitiveness to pain, slights, and neglect would +thenceforth be suffered to rest; no man in England would put that to +proof again. No man in England, did I say? But, indeed, that is +not so. No slight to him, to his person, or to his fame could have +had power to cause him pain more sensibly than the customary, +habitual, ready-made ridicule that has been cast by posterity upon +her whom he loved for twenty years, prayed for during thirty-two +years more, who satisfied one of the saddest human hearts, but to +whom the world, assiduous to admire him, hardly accords human +dignity. He wrote praises of her manners and of her person for her +tomb. But her epitaph, that does not name her, is in the greatest +of English prose. What was favour to him? "I am indifferent . . . +I am known . . . I am solitary, and cannot impart it." + + + +MADAME ROLAND + + + +The articulate heroine has her reward of appreciation and her dues +of praise; it is her appropriate fortune to have it definitely +measured, and generally on equal terms. She takes pains to explain +herself, and is understood, and pitied, when need is, on the right +occasions. For instance, Madame Roland, a woman of merit, who knew +her "merit's name and place," addressed her memoirs, her studies in +contemporary history, her autobiography, her many speeches, and her +last phrase at the foot of the undaunting scaffold, to a great +audience of her equals (more or less) then living and to live in the +ages then to come--her equals and those she raises to her own level, +as the heroic example has authority to do. + +Another woman--the Queen--suffered at that time, and suffered +without the command of language, the exactitude of phrase, the +precision of judgement, the proffer of prophecy, the explicit sense +of Innocence and Moderation oppressed in her person. These were +Madame Roland's; but the other woman, without eloquence, without +literature, and without any judicial sense of history, addresses no +mere congregation of readers. Marie Antoinette's unrecorded pangs +pass into the treasuries of the experience of the whole human +family. All that are human have some part there; genius itself may +lean in contemplation over that abyss of woe; the great poets +themselves may look into its distances and solitudes. Compassion +here has no measure and no language. Madame Roland speaks neither +to genius nor to complete simplicity; Marie Antoinette holds her +peace in the presence of each, dumb in her presence. + +Madame Roland had no dumbness of the spirit, as history, prompted by +her own musical voice, presents her to a world well prepared to do +her justice. Of that justice she had full expectation; justice +here, justice in the world--the world that even when universal +philosophy should reign would be inevitably the world of mediocrity; +justice that would come of enlightened views; justice that would be +the lesson learnt by the nations widely educated up to some point +generally accessible; justice well within earthly sight and +competence. This confidence was also her reward. For what justice +did the Queen look? Here it is the "abyss that appeals to the +abyss." + +Twice only in the life of Madame Roland is there a lapse into +silence, and for the record of these two poor failures of that long, +indomitable, reasonable, temperate, explicit utterance which +expressed her life and mind we are debtors to her friends. She +herself has not confessed them. Nowhere else, whether in her candid +history of herself, or in her wise history of her country, or in her +judicial history of her contemporaries, whose spirit she discerned, +whose powers she appraised, whose errors she foresaw; hardly in her +thought, and never in her word, is a break to be perceived; she is +not silent and she hardly stammers; and when she tells us of her +tears--the tears of youth only--her record is voluble and all +complete. For the dignity of her style, of her force, and of her +balanced character, Madame Roland would doubtless have effaced the +two imperfections which, to us who would be glad to admire in +silence her heroic figure, if that heroic figure would but cease to +talk, are finer and more noble than her well-placed language and the +high successes of her decision and her endurance. More than this, +the two failures of this unfailing woman are two little doors opened +suddenly into those wider spaces and into that dominion of solitude +which, after all, do doubtless exist even in the most garrulous +soul. By these two outlets Manon Roland also reaches the region of +Marie Antoinette. But they befell her at the close of her life, and +they shall be named at the end of this brief study. + +Madame Roland may seem the more heroic to those whose suffrages she +seeks in all times and nations because of the fact that she +manifestly suppresses in her self-descriptions any signs of a +natural gaiety. Her memoirs give evidence of no such thing; it is +only in her letters, not intended for the world, that we are aware +of the inadvertence of moments. We may overhear a laugh at times, +but not in those consciously sprightly hours that she spent with her +convent-school friend gathering fruit and counting eggs at the farm. +She pursued these country tasks not without offering herself the +cultivated congratulation of one whom cities had failed to allure, +and who bore in mind the examples of Antiquity. She did not forget +the death of Socrates. Or, rather, she finds an occasion to +reproach herself with having once forgotten it, and with having +omitted what another might have considered the tedious recollection +of the condemnation of Phocion. She never wearied of these +examples. But it is her inexhaustible freshness in these things +that has helped other writers of her time to weary us. + +In her manner of telling her story there is an absence of all +exaggeration, which gives the reader a constant sense of security. +That virtue of style and thought was one she proposed to herself and +attained with exact consciousness of success. It would be almost +enough (in the perfection of her practice) to make a great writer; +even a measure of it goes far to make a fair one. Her moderation of +statement is never shaken; and if she now and then glances aside +from her direct narrative road to hazard a conjecture, the error she +may make is on the generous side of hope and faith. For instance, +she is too sure that her Friends (so she always calls the Girondins, +using no nicknames) are safe, whereas they were then all doomed; a +young man who had carried a harmless message for her--a mere +notification to her family of her arrest--receives her cheerful +commendation for his good feeling; from a note we learn that for +this action he suffered on the scaffold and that his father soon +thereafter died of grief. But Madame Roland never matched such a +delirious event as this by any delirium of her own imagination. The +delirium was in things and in the acts of men; her mind was never +hurried from its sane self-possession, when the facts raved. + +It was only when she used the rhetoric ready to her hand that she +stooped to verbal violence; et encore! References to the banishment +of Aristides and the hemlock of Socrates had become toy daggers and +bending swords in the hands of her compatriots, and she is hardly to +be accused of violence in brandishing those weapons. Sometimes, +refuse rhetoric being all too ready, she takes it on her pen, in +honest haste, as though it were honest speech, and stands committed +to such a phrase as this: "The dregs of the nation placed such a +one at the helm of affairs." + +But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and +efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, but +without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity is +somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In "Bleak +House" there is an old lady who insisted that the name "Mr. +Turveydrop," as it appeared polished on the door-plate of the +dancing master, was the name of the pretentious father and not of +the industrious son--albeit, needless to say, one name was common to +them. With equal severity I aver that when Madame Roland wrote to +her husband in the second person singular she was using the TU of +Rome and not the TU of Paris. French was indeed the language; but +had it been French in spirit she would (in spite of the growing +Republican fashion) have said VOUS to this "homme eclaire, de moeurs +pures, e qui l'on ne peut reprocher que sa grande admiration pour +les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le faible de +trop aimer e parler de lui." There was no French TU in her +relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, +discreetly rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports +she wrote, and whom she observed as he slowly began to think he +himself had composed them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, +and discriminating affection, and when she had been put to death, +he, still at liberty, fell upon his sword. + +This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent +the exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take +opium in the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she +chose that those who oppressed her country should have their way +with her to the last. But, while still intending self-destruction, +she had written to her husband: "Forgive me, respectable man, for +disposing of a life that I had consecrated to thee." In quoting +this I mean to make no too-easy effect with the word "respectable," +grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our own present fashion of +speech. + +Madame Roland, I have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two +spaces of silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had +heard her condemnation to death. Passing out of the court she +beckoned to her friends, and signified to them her sentence "by a +gesture." And again there was a pause, in the course of her last +days, during which her speeches had not been few, and had been +spoken with her beautiful voice unmarred; "she leant," says Riouffe, +"alone against her window, and wept there three hours." + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD + + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, +disappointed of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the +preoccupations. You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard +year by year, do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs +alike. Not the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenanted +ways of a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, +after failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your +documents are at fault. You are the fellow traveller of a bird. +The bird alights and escapes out of time to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of +four years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the +sweet and unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with +your loving dolls." A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to +come down from the heights and play with him on the floor, but +sensible, perhaps, that there was a dignity to be observed none the +less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a lady frog." None ever said +their good things before these indeliberate authors. Even their own +kind--children--have not preceded them. No child in the past ever +found the same replies as the girl of five whose father made that +appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, perverse, and +unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and had a +mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy +things for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely +puddin's?" Yes, even for these. The subject must have seemed to +her to be worth pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't +like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been +drowned in the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that +she should forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay +subject--her wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, +"what I should like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a +whistle!" Her mother was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, +that she could make no offer as to the dolls. But the whistle +seemed practicable. "It is for me to whistle for cabs," said the +child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go to parties." Another +morning she came down radiant. "Did you hear a great noise in the +miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried because I dreamt +that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, +nothing feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than +you," is the word of a very young egotist. An older child says, +"I'd better go, bettern't I, mother?" He calls a little space at +the back of a London house, "the backy-garden." A little creature +proffers almost daily the reminder at luncheon--at tart-time: +"Father, I hope you will remember that I am the favourite of the +crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent the naif +things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, he +would hardly light upon the device of the little troupe who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of candle-shades. + +"It's JOLLY dull without you, mother," says a little girl who-- +gentlest of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she +makes no secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her +feats of metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are +involuntary: the "stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing +chamine." Genoese peasants have the same prank when they try to +speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they +should by any means have an impression of the country or the sea +annually. A London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows +it with her pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who +wants to play with a bronze Japanese lobster, asks "Will you please +let me have that tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the +most touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to +save him. How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of +the "saving" of other things of interest--especially chocolate +creams taken for safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me +to-day? Nurse is going out, will you save me, mother?" The same +little variant upon common use is in another child's courteous reply +to a summons to help in the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite +at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, +was taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different +standing from her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a +Saturday Reviewer. As he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the +town unknown to her, she noted with interest the shops of the +neighbourhood as she went, for they might be those of the +fournisseurs of her friend. "That is his bread shop, and that is +his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, with even +heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming parterre of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I +suppose, is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is +intent upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We +have all heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, +of collecting cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a +joy that costs her nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper +names over all shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. +"I began three weeks ago next Monday, mother," she says with +precision, "and I have got thirty-nine." "Thirty-nine what?" +"Smiths." + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like +collecting together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, +single of their kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and +that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who +have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their +natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing +sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. +"Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it +does not rain resumes, "Lift I up and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered +for her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, +and with some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she +took no pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her +friend. He had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of +Heaven, and the decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, +and of her hair--"a brown tress." She had gravely heard the words +as "a brown dress," and she silently bore the poet a grudge for +having been the accessory of Providence in the mandate that she +should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised ear played +another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for snubbing any +anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said, more or less +after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the +years of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a +current word into use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, +so as to save the interruption of a pause for search. I have +certainly detected, in children old enough to show their motives, a +conviction that a word of their own making is as good a +communication as another, and as intelligible. There is even a +general implicit conviction among them that the grown-up people, +too, make words by the wayside as occasion befalls. How otherwise +should words be so numerous that every day brings forward some +hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he +thinks to belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out +of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so +much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent +anything strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The +child trusts genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by +his first sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and +called them, without allowing himself to be checked for the trifle +of a name, "summersets." This was simple and unexpected; so was the +comment of a sister a very little older. "Why does he call those +flowers summersets?" their mother said; and the girl, with a darkly +brilliant look of humour and penetration, answered, "because they +are so big." There seemed to be no further question possible after +an explanation that was presented thus charged with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, +somewhat at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases +hazarded to express a meaning well realized--a personal matter. +Questioned as to the eating of an uncertain number of buns just +before lunch, the child averred, "I took them just to appetize my +hunger." As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an +attractive confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters +had been frequenting those little tables on their way from school. +"I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; "but I generally +speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. +Dryden does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer +passages. But sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite +intelligible to elders. Take the letter written by a little girl to +a mother who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was +inclined to be satisfied with something of her own writing. The +child has a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. +There was no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at +home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen: --"My +dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, +if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will +not write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger +sister, and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew +just how old she is, mother, then they would know she is onward. +They can see she is pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward +baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children +who in time betray a little consciousness and a slight mefiance as +to where the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, +obscure. These children may not be shy enough to suffer any self- +checking in their talk, but they are now and then to be heard +slurring a word of which they do not feel too sure. A little girl +whose sensitiveness was barely enough to cause her to stop to choose +between two words, was wont to bring a cup of tea to the writing- +table of her mother, who had often feigned indignation at the +weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the infusion." "I'm +afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and then, in a +half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not told, +and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + +THE CHILD OF TUMULT + + + +A poppy bud, packed into tight bundles by so hard and resolute a +hand that the petals of the flower never afterwards lose the +creases, is a type of the child. Nothing but the unfolding, which +is as yet in the non-existing future, can explain the manner of the +close folding of character. In both flower and child it looks much +as though the process had been the reverse of what it was--as though +a finished and open thing had been folded up into the bud--so +plainly and certainly is the future implied, and the intention of +compressing and folding-close made manifest. + +With the other incidents of childish character, the crowd of +impulses called "naughtiness" is perfectly perceptible--it would +seem heartless to say how soon. The naughty child (who is often an +angel of tenderness and charm, affectionate beyond the capacity of +his fellows, and a very ascetic of penitence when the time comes) +opens early his brief campaigns and raises the standard of revolt as +soon as he is capable of the desperate joys of disobedience. + +But even the naughty child is an individual, and must not be treated +in the mass. He is numerous indeed, but not general, and to +describe him you must take the unit, with all his incidents and his +organic qualities as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty +child in the reality of his life. He is but six years old, slender +and masculine, and not wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate +dress. His face is delicate and too often haggard with tears of +penitence that Justice herself would be glad to spare him. Some +beauty he has, and his mouth especially is so lovely as to seem not +only angelic but itself an angel. He has absolutely no self-control +and his passions find him without defence. They come upon him in +the midst of his usual brilliant gaiety and cut short the frolic +comedy of his fine spirits. + +Then for a wild hour he is the enemy of the laws. If you imprison +him, you may hear his resounding voice as he takes a running kick at +the door, shouting his justification in unconquerable rage. "I'm +good now!" is made as emphatic as a shot by the blow of his heel +upon the panel. But if the moment of forgiveness is deferred, in +the hope of a more promising repentance, it is only too likely that +he will betake himself to a hostile silence and use all the revenge +yet known to his imagination. "Darling mother, open the door!" +cries his touching voice at last; but if the answer should be "I +must leave you for a short time, for punishment," the storm suddenly +thunders again. "There (crash!) I have broken a plate, and I'm glad +it is broken into such little pieces that you can't mend it. I'm +going to break the 'lectric light." When things are at this pass +there is one way, and only one, to bring the child to an +overwhelming change of mind; but it is a way that would be cruel, +used more than twice or thrice in his whole career of tempest and +defiance. This is to let him see that his mother is troubled. "Oh, +don't cry! Oh, don't be sad!" he roars, unable still to deal with +his own passionate anger, which is still dealing with him. With his +kicks of rage he suddenly mingles a dance of apprehension lest his +mother should have tears in her eyes. Even while he is still +explicitly impenitent and defiant he tries to pull her round to the +light that he may see her face. It is but a moment before the other +passion of remorse comes to make havoc of the helpless child, and +the first passion of anger is quelled outright. + +Only to a trivial eye is there nothing tragic in the sight of these +great passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a +word, the small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a +little nature, and the stage is too narrow for the action of a +tragedy, the disproportion has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed +history of actual life or sometimes a famous book; it is the +manifest core of George Eliot's story of Adam Bede, where the +suffering of Hetty is, as it were, the eye of the storm. All is +expressive around her, but she is hardly articulate; the book is +full of words--preachings, speeches, daily talk, aphorisms, but a +space of silence remains about her in the midst of the story. And +the disproportion of passion--the inner disproportion--is at least +as tragic as that disproportion of fate and action; it is less +intelligible, and leads into the intricacies of nature which are +more difficult than the turn of events. + +It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow +limits of a child's nature far oftener than in those of an adult and +finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there is +unequal force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling +of powers and energies that are hurrying to their development and +pressing for exercise and life. It is this helpless inequality-- +this untimeliness--that makes the guileless comedy mingling with the +tragedies of a poor child's day. He knows thus much--that life is +troubled around him and that the fates are strong. He implicitly +confesses "the strong hours" of antique song. This same boy--the +tempestuous child of passion and revolt--went out with quiet +cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was put on, "Now, +mother, you are going to have a little peace." This way of +accepting his own conditions is shared by a sister, a very little +older, who, being of an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to +violence of every kind and tender to all without disquiet, observes +the boy's brief frenzies as a citizen observes the climate. She +knows the signs quite well and can at any time give the explanation +of some particular outburst, but without any attempt to go in search +of further or more original causes. Still less is she moved by the +virtuous indignation that is the least charming of the ways of some +little girls. Elle ne fait que constater. Her equanimity has never +been overset by the wildest of his moments, and she has witnessed +them all. It is needless to say that she is not frightened by his +drama, for Nature takes care that her young creatures shall not be +injured by sympathies. Nature encloses them in the innocent +indifference that preserves their brains from the more harassing +kinds of distress. + +Even the very frenzy of rage does not long dim or depress the boy. +It is his repentance that makes him pale, and Nature here has been +rather forced, perhaps--with no very good result. Often must a +mother wish that she might for a few years govern her child (as far +as he is governable) by the lowest motives--trivial punishments and +paltry rewards--rather than by any kind of appeal to his +sensibilities. She would wish to keep the words "right" and "wrong" +away from his childish ears, but in this she is not seconded by her +lieutenants. The child himself is quite willing to close with her +plans, in so far as he is able, and is reasonably interested in the +results of her experiments. He wishes her attempts in his regard to +have a fair chance. "Let's hope I'll be good all to-morrow," he +says with the peculiar cheerfulness of his ordinary voice. "I do +hope so, old man." "Then I'll get my penny. Mother, I was only +naughty once yesterday; if I have only one naughtiness to-morrow, +will you give me a halfpenny?" "No reward except for real goodness +all day long." "All right." + +It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the +failure of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one +of bribery. It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all +kinds of reward might not equally be burlesqued by that word, and +whether any government, spiritual or civil, has ever even professed +to deny rewards. Moreover, those who would not give a child a penny +for being good will not hesitate to fine him a penny for being +naughty, and rewards and punishments must stand or fall together. +The more logical objection will be that goodness is ideally the +normal condition, and that it should have, therefore, no explicit +extraordinary result, whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, should +have a visible and unusual sequel. To this the rewarding mother may +reply that it is not reasonable to take "goodness" in a little child +of strong passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for +him is to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to +overbear his powers. + +But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. +What is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the +weak will of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a +sufficient resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed +as the passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; +but as it is there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy +or fear. Let, then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at +once, and mingled with the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the +suffering of rage and frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly +to make of the little unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too +hurtfully tragic. The penny is mild and strong at once, with its +still distant but certain joys of purchase; the promise and hope +break the mood of misery, and the will takes heart to resist and +conquer. + +It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. +The lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, +knowing herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the +father's voice with a menacing, "What's that noise?" The child was +persistently crying and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy +against his French nurse, when the baritone and threatening question +was sent pealing up the stairs. The child was heard to pause and +listen and then to say to his nurse, "Ce n'est pas Monsieur; c'est +Madame," and then, without further loss of time, to resume the +interrupted clamours. + +Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things +mainly to be done--to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the +present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, +and to break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly +the special cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain +and anger become hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for +use in the future at the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight +the importance of habit. Any means, then, that can succeed in +separating a little child from the habit of anger does fruitful work +for him in the helpless time of his childhood. The work is not +easy, but a little thought should make it easy for the elders to +avoid the provocation which they--who should ward off provocations-- +are apt to bring about by sheer carelessness. It is only in +childhood that our race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow +and tears, as a child's despair; and the theatre with us must needs +copy childhood if it would catch the note and action of a creature +without hope. + + + +THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT + + + +There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the +flight of time; it does so move, and yet withstands time's movement. +It is full of pauses that are due to the energy of change, has +bounds and rebounds, and when it is most active then it is longest. +It is not long with languor. It has room for remoteness, and +leisure for oblivion. It takes great excursions against time, and +travels so as to enlarge its hours. This certain year is any one of +the early years of fully conscious life, and therefore it is of all +the dates. The child of Tumult has been living amply and +changefully through such a year--his eighth. It is difficult to +believe that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the +adult, the men who do not breast their days. + +For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of +things. Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men +and women never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a +distant light. There is recognition and familiarity between their +seasons. But the Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his +year. Forgetfulness and surprise set his east and his west at +immeasurable distance. His Lethe runs in the cheerful sun. You +look on your own little adult year, and in imagination enlarge it, +because you know it to be the contemporary of his. Even she who is +quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a strange and great +extent of a few years of her life still to come--his years, the +years she is to live at his side. + +Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy's life, +not so much by slow degrees as by sudden and fitful accessions. His +speech is yet so childish that he chooses, for a toy, with blushes +of pleasure, "a little duck what can walk"; but with a beautifully +clear accent he greets his mother with the colloquial question, +"Well, darling, do you know the latest?" "The WHAT?" "The latest: +do you know the latest?" And then he tells his news, generally, it +must be owned, with some reference to his own wrongs. On another +occasion the unexpected little phrase was varied; the news of the +war then raging distressed him; a thousand of the side he favoured +had fallen. The child then came to his mother's room with the +question: "Have you heard the saddest?" Moreover the "saddest" +caused him several fits of perfectly silent tears, which seized him +during the day, on his walks or at other moments of recollection. +From such great causes arise such little things! Some of his grief +was for the nation he admired, and some was for the triumph of his +brother, whose sympathies were on the other side, and who perhaps +did not spare his sensibilities. + +The tumults of a little child's passions of anger and grief, growing +fewer as he grows older, rather increase than lessen in their +painfulness. There is a fuller consciousness of complete +capitulation of all the childish powers to the overwhelming +compulsion of anger. This is not temptation; the word is too weak +for the assault of a child's passion upon his will. That little +will is taken captive entirely, and before the child was seven he +knew that it was so. Such a consciousness leaves all babyhood +behind and condemns the child to suffer. For a certain passage of +his life he is neither unconscious of evil, as he was, nor strong +enough to resist it, as he will be. The time of the subsiding of +the tumult is by no means the least pitiable of the phases of human +life. Happily the recovery from each trouble is ready and sure; so +that the child who had been abandoned to naughtiness with all his +will in an entire consent to the gloomy possession of his anger, and +who had later undergone a haggard repentance, has his captivity +suddenly turned again, "like rivers in the south." "Forget it," he +had wept, in a kind of extremity of remorse; "forget it, darling, +and don't, don't be sad;" and it is he, happily, who forgets. The +wasted look of his pale face is effaced by the touch of a single +cheerful thought, and five short minutes can restore the ruin, as +though a broken little German town should in the twinkling of an eye +be restored as no architect could restore it--should be made fresh, +strong, and tight again, looking like a full box of toys, as a town +was wont to look in the new days of old. + +When his ruthless angers are not in possession the child shows the +growth of this tardy reason that--quickened--is hereafter to do so +much for his peace and dignity, by the sweetest consideration. +Denied a second handful of strawberries, and seeing quite clearly +that the denial was enforced reluctantly, he makes haste to reply, +"It doesn't matter, darling." At any sudden noise in the house his +beautiful voice, with all its little difficulties of pronunciation, +is heard with the sedulous reassurance: "It's all right, mother, +nobody hurted ourselves!" He is not surprised so as to forget this +gentle little duty, which was never required of him, but is of his +own devising. + +According to the opinion of his dear and admired American friend, he +says all these things, good and evil, with an English accent; and at +the American play his English accent was irrepressible. "It's too +comic; no, it's too comic," he called in his enjoyment; being the +only perfectly fearless child in the world, he will not consent to +the conventional shyness in public, whether he be the member of an +audience or of a congregation, but makes himself perceptible. And +even when he has a desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute +revolt--such a thing as "I CAN'T like you, mother," which anon he +will recant with convulsions of distress--he has to "speak the thing +he will," and when he recants it is not for fear. + +If such a child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for +inquisitorial government could hardly be so much as attempted) by +some small means adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it +would be well for his health, but that seems at times impossible. +By no effort can his elders altogether succeed in keeping tragedy +out of the life that is so unready for it. Against great emotions +no one can defend him by any forethought. He is their subject; and +to see him thus devoted and thus wrung, thus wrecked by tempests +inwardly, so that you feel grief has him actually by the heart, +recalls the reluctance--the question--wherewith you perceive the +interior grief of poetry or of a devout life. Cannot the Muse, +cannot the Saint, you ask, live with something less than this? If +this is the truer life, it seems hardly supportable. In like manner +it should be possible for a child of seven to come through his +childhood with griefs that should not so closely involve him, but +should deal with the easier sentiments. + +Despite all his simplicity, the child has (by way of inheritance, +for he has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. +Accused of certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge +with any effect, he flies to the old convention: "I didn't know +what I was doing," he avers, using a great deal of gesticulation to +express the temporary distraction of his mind. "Darling, after +nurse slapped me as hard as she could, I didn't know what I was +doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my foot." His mother knows as +well as does Tolstoi that men and children know what they are doing, +and are the more intently aware as the stress of feeling makes the +moments more tense; and she will not admit a plea which her child +might have learned from the undramatic authors he has never read. + +Far from repenting of her old system of rewards, and far from taking +fright at the name of a bribe, the mother of the Child of Tumult has +only to wish she had at command rewards ample and varied enough to +give the shock of hope and promise to the heart of the little boy, +and change his passion at its height. + + + +THE UNREADY + + + +It is rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They are, +on the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until +advancing age teaches them agility. This is not lack of +sensitiveness, but mere length of process. For instance, a child +nearly newly born is cruelly startled by a sudden crash in the room- +-a child who has never learnt to fear, and is merely overcome by the +shock of sound; nevertheless, that shock of sound does not reach the +conscious hearing or the nerves but after some moments, nor before +some moments more is the sense of the shock expressed. The sound +travels to the remoteness and seclusion of the child's +consciousness, as the roar of a gun travels to listeners half a mile +away. + +So it is, too, with pain, which has learnt to be so instant and +eager with us of later age that no point of time is lost in its +touches--direct as the unintercepted message of great and candid +eyes, unhampered by trivialities; even so immediate is the +communication of pain. But you could count five between the prick +of a surgeon's instrument upon a baby's arm and the little whimper +that answers it. The child is then too young, also, to refer the +feeling of pain to the arm that suffers it. Even when pain has +groped its way to his mind it hardly seems to bring local tidings +thither. The baby does not turn his eyes in any degree towards his +arm or towards the side that is so vexed with vaccination. He looks +in any other direction at haphazard, and cries at random. + +See, too, how slowly the unpractised apprehension of an older child +trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest +failure to take these little gobe-mouches to a good conjurer. His +successes leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it +was the good man meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is +who really astonishes them. They cannot come up even with your +amateur beginner, performing at close quarters; whereas the master +of his craft on a platform runs quite away at the outset from the +lagging senses of his honest audience. + +You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under +his ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its +place and off again ten times before the little breathless boy has +begun to perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched. + +Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit +of awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. +The simple little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a +common sentence are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot +use two pronouns but they must confuse them. I never found that a +young child--one of something under nine years--was able to say, "I +send them my love" at the first attempt. It will be "I send me my +love," "I send them their love," "They send me my love"; not, of +course, through any confusion of understanding, but because of the +tardy setting of words in order with the thoughts. The child +visibly grapples with the difficulty, and is beaten. + +It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like +twice-told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They are +not eager, for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If you +hide and they cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is +comparatively small; but let them know perfectly well what cupboard +you are in, and they will find you with shouts of discovery. The +better the hiding-place is understood between you the more lively +the drama. They make a convention of art for their play. The +younger the children the more dramatic; and when the house is filled +with outcries of laughter from the breathless breast of a child, it +is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding his mother where +he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that never tires. +Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he tries to +put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for, if +not, he will find that children also have a manner of substitution, +and that they will put half-hearted laughter in the place of their +natural impetuous clamours. It is certain that very young children +like to play upon their own imaginations, and enjoy their own short +game. + +There is something so purely childlike in the delays of a child that +any exercise asking for the swift apprehension of later life, for +the flashes of understanding and action, from the mind and members +of childhood, is no pleasure to see. The piano, for instance, as +experts understand it, and even as the moderately-trained may play +it, claims all the immediate action, the instantaneousness, most +unnatural to childhood. There may possibly be feats of skill to +which young children could be trained without this specific violence +directed upon the thing characteristic of their age--their +unreadiness--but virtuosity at the piano cannot be one of them. It +is no delight, indeed, to see the shyness of children, or anything +that is theirs, conquered and beaten; but their poor little slowness +is so distinctively their own, and must needs be physiologically so +proper to their years, so much a natural condition of the age of +their brain, that of all childishnesses it is the one that the world +should have the patience to attend upon, the humanity to foster, and +the intelligence to understand. + +It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a +very little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions +there are between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not +the brain that is quick. If, on a voyage in space, electricity +takes thus much time, and light thus much, and sound thus much, +there is one little jogging traveller that would arrive after the +others had forgotten their journey, and this is the perception of a +child. Surely our own memories might serve to remind us how in our +childhood we inevitably missed the principal point in any procession +or pageant intended by our elders to furnish us with a historical +remembrance for the future. It was not our mere vagueness of +understanding, it was the unwieldiness of our senses, of our reply +to the suddenness of the grown up. We lived through the important +moments of the passing of an Emperor at a different rate from +theirs; we stared long in the wake of his Majesty, and of anything +else of interest; every flash of movement, that got telegraphic +answers from our parents' eyes, left us stragglers. We fell out of +all ranks. Among the sights proposed for our instruction, that +which befitted us best was an eclipse of the moon, done at leisure. +In good time we found the moon in the sky, in good time the eclipse +set in and made reasonable progress; we kept up with everything. + +It is too often required of children that they should adjust +themselves to the world, practised and alert. But it would be more +to the purpose that the world should adjust itself to children in +all its dealings with them. Those who run and keep together have to +run at the pace of the tardiest. But we are apt to command instant +obedience, stripped of the little pauses that a child, while very +young, cannot act without. It is not a child of ten or twelve that +needs them so; it is the young creature who has but lately ceased to +be a baby, slow to be startled. + +We have but to consider all that it implies of the loitering of +senses and of an unprepared consciousness--this capacity for +receiving a great shock from a noise and this perception of the +shock after two or three appreciable moments--if we would know +anything of the moments of a baby + +Even as we must learn that our time, when it is long, is too long +for children, so must we learn that our time, when it is short, is +too short for them. When it is exceedingly short they cannot, +without an unnatural effort, have any perception of it. When +children do not see the jokes of the elderly, and disappoint +expectation in other ways, only less intimate, the reason is almost +always there. The child cannot turn in mid-career; he goes fast, +but the impetus took place moments ago. + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, +one significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. +This is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the +value of process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the +very wayfaring of progress. With this is a resignation to change, +and something more than resignation--a delight in those qualities +that could not be but for their transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the +world, for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, +and that for the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now +hold, perhaps, that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held +it high, we should acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned +with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred +years ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the +full stature of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future +hunting. If her song is not restless, it is because she has a sense +of the results of time, and has submitted her heart to experience. +Childhood is a time of danger; "Would it were done." But, +meanwhile, the right thing is to put it to sleep and guard its +slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies to the child of his +hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she spins, and a +song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child-- +"that pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was +chiefly precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of +the man he never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when +the boy was dead, says of him: "At two and a half years of age he +pronounced English, Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly +read in these three languages." As he lived precisely five years, +all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He +got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French +primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into +Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the +government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and +many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in +Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man +is not to be too much believed when he is describing what he +admires; it is the very fact of his admiration that is so curious a +sign of those hasty times. All being favourable, the child of +Evelyn's studious home would have done all these things in the +course of nature within a few years. It was the fact that he did +them out of the course of nature that was, to Evelyn, so exquisite. +The course of nature had not any beauty in his eyes. It might be +borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not admired for the +majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns with him +"the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" and +without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too +flattering to the estate of man. They thought their little boy +strangely hopeful because he was so quick on his way to be something +else. They lost the timely perfection the while they were so intent +upon their hopes. And yet it is our own modern age that is charged +with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, +must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not +slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, not yet hailing it, +with Faust, "Stay, thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made +gay and visible, and the world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it +in the act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every +passage is a goal, and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; +but some of them wear apparent wings. + +Tout passe. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this +question most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, +this suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time +of fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because +they had the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of +this unpausing life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight +years old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause +to be proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in +idleness by an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated +into any rudiments" till he was four years of age. He seems even to +have been a youth of eight before Latin was seriously begun; but +this fact he is evidently, in after years, with a total lack of a +sense of humour, rather ashamed of, and hardly acknowledges. It is +difficult to imagine what childhood must have been when nobody, +looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything that was proper to +five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of themselves and +of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has +nothing to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in +it. Twice are children not his own mentioned in his diary. Once he +goes to the wedding of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, +but not, evidently, an occasion of sensibility. Another time he +stands by, in a French hospital, while a youth of less than nine +years of age undergoes a frightful surgical operation "with +extraordinary patience." "The use I made of it was to give Almighty +God hearty thanks that I had not been subject to this deplorable +infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there +were in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon +being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. +Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and +there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who +is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion +of St. Jerome" might be called Tommy. But there were no "little +radiant girls." Now and then an "Education of the Virgin" is the +exception, and then it is always a matter of sewing and reading. As +for the little girl saints, even when they were so young that their +hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped through their fetters, they +are always recorded as refusing importunate suitors, which seems +necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval mind, but mars +them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in +the Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa +"who passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as +the least stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state +with men and maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact +rules, such as that of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent +example and instruction to the other maids of honour, was "severely +careful how she might give the least countenance to that liberty +which the gallants there did usually assume," refused the addresses +of the "greatest persons," and was as famous for her beauty as for +her wit. One would like to forget the age at which she did these +things. When she began her service she was eleven. When she was +making her rule never to speak to the King she was not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April +into May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if +they shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The +particular year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as +who should say a fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at +two years old, and ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as +Keats a poet would not have patience with the process of the +seasons, but boasted of untimely flowers. The "musk-rose" is never +in fact the child of mid-May, as he has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear +of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper +with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen +in the "Spectator" has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the +last six years." The famous letter describing the figure, the +dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is +supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, "willing to settle in +the world as soon as she can." She adds, "I have a good portion +which they cannot hinder me of." This correspondent is one of "the +women who seldom ask advice before they have bought their wedding +clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age that could +think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a +later century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, +and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and +has its appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather +than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of +children to seem, at last, something else than a defect. + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at +random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization +is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of +dusk. Summer dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, +baffle them how you may. They may have been in a pottering mood all +day, intent upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over +choppings and poundings. But when late twilight comes, there comes +also the punctual wildness. The children will run and pursue, and +laugh for the mere movement--it does so jolt their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths +and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all +fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the +mimicry of hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike +some blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the +ineffectual child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, +something is done for freedom under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict +with the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy +of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which +happens at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in +the jaunts of the poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved +by children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to +beguile the time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was +persuading another to play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me +at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable +hour. It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The +habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of +the fixity of some customs in mankind. But if the inquirers who +appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they +would seek no further. See the habits in falling to sleep which +have children in their thralldom. Try to overcome them in any +child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your +hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French +sleep-song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of +history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, +with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. +"Le Bon Roi Dagobert" has been sung over French cradles since the +legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune +and the verse that she herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of +the thirteenth century, in "Le Pont d'Avignon," is put mysteriously +to sleep, away in the tete e tete of child and nurse, in a thousand +little sequestered rooms at night. "Malbrook" would be +comparatively modern, were not all things that are sung to a +drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some +of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate +races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to +the white child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep +in the tropical night. His closing eyes are filled with alien +images. + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become +conscious of something more than a change in his sense of the +present and in his apprehension of the future. He must be aware of +no less a thing than the destruction of the past. Its events and +empires stand where they did, and the mere relation of time is as it +was. But that which has fallen together, has fallen in, has fallen +close, and lies in a little heap, is the past itself--time--the fact +of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are +no more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit +of measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing +of paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He +had thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the +states, the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the +measure which he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. +His first ten years had given him the illusion of a most august +scale and measure. It was then that he conceived Antiquity. But +now! Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in his +hand--ten of his mature years--that men give the dignity of a +century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now so small +that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a +most noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He +attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers +distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. +He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting +into the extremities of the past. He assigns the Parthenon to a +hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having +conceived old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the +mystery to the mind of the man. The man perceives at last all the +illusion, but he cannot forget what was his conviction when he was a +child. He had once a persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for +nothing. The enormous undeception that comes upon him still leaves +spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive +shocks. It is as though one strained level eyes towards the +horizon, and then were bidden to shorten his sight and to close his +search within a poor half acre before his face. Now, it is that he +suddenly perceives the hitherto remote, remote youth of his own +parents to have been something familiarly near, so measured by his +new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila that is displaced. +Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. There needs +no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world--our contemporary world--is not very +mysterious. We perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we +now consider, jolted the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that +he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, +for instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for +the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own +magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus +they belong to him as he is now--a man; and not to him as he was +once--a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten +years' rule along the path from our time to theirs; that path must +be skipped by the nimble yard in the man's present possession. +Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the +illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself +Antiquity--to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of +childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of +thirty-five; but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham. +THERE is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood--no +further--if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the +mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it +rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an +apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an +illusive apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real +apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If +there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the +renewed and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is +why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at +that present age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would +be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every +one was seven years old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" +history is taught in the only ancient days. So, for a time, the +world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges +the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great +illusion is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and +flight caught back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains +enlarged. The man remains capable of great spaces of time. He will +not find them in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he +contains them, he is aware of them. History has fallen together, +but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, stretches beyond +and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years +that are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great +disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together +the days that made them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far +apart" is wonderful. The past of childhood is not single, is not +motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits a world away one +from the other. Year from year differs as the antiquity of Mexico +from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man of thirty-five knows for +ever afterwards what is flight, even though he finds no great +historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious +childhood, which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. +Many other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten +years. Hours of weariness are long--not with a mysterious length, +but with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called +minutes and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their +apparent contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not +merely one of these--it is a space not of long, but of immeasurable, +time. It is the moment of going to sleep. The man knows that +borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased to find +antiquity there. It has become a common enough margin of dreams to +him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He knows that he has +a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those hours, but he +is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who passes +with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he meets +there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She +sings absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may +mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell +of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of +them all his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech +can well express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is +beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that +the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to +throw it further back--it is already so far. That is, it looks as +remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man of +seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in the +contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} It is worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, +and the ascription of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted +phrase, a letter of Stevenson's was published, and proved that he +had read Lucy Hutchinson's writings, and that he did not love her. +"I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I +admire, etc. . . I sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and +beaten her, in the bitterness of my spirit. . . The way in which she +talks of herself makes one's blood run cold." He was young at that +time of writing, and perhaps hardly aware of the lesson in English +he had taken from her. We know that he never wasted the opportunity +for such a lesson; and the fact that he did allow her to administer +one to him in right seventeenth-century diction is established--it +is not too bold to say so--by my recognition of his style in her +own. I had surely caught the retrospective reflex note, heard first +in his voice, recognized in hers. + +{2} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg eText Essays by Alice Meynell + diff --git a/old/esyam10.zip b/old/esyam10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f636f73 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esyam10.zip |