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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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