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diff --git a/old/esyam10.txt b/old/esyam10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..762a98d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esyam10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6832 @@ +****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays, by Alice Meynell**** +#7 in our series by Alice Meynell + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition +by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +Essays by Alice Meynell + + + + +Contents: + +WINDS AND WATERS + +Ceres' Runaway +Wells +Rain +The Tow Path +The Tethered Constellations +Rushes and Reeds + +IN A BOOK ROOM + +A Northern Fancy +Pathos +Anima Pellegrina! +A Point of Biography +The Honours of Mortality +Composure +The Little Language +A Counterchange +Harlequin Mercutio + +COMMENTARIES + +Laughter +The Rhythm of Life +Domus Angusta +Innocence and Experience +The Hours of Sleep +Solitude +Decivilized + +WAYFARING + +The Spirit of Place +Popular Burlesque +Have Patience, Little Saint +At Monastery Gates +The Sea Wall + +ARTS + +Tithonus +Symmetry and Incident +The Plaid +The Flower +Unstable Equilibrium +Victorian Caricature +The Point of Honour + +"THE CHEARFUL LADIE OF THE LIGHT" + +The Colour of Life +The Horizon +In July +Cloud +Shadows + +WOMEN AND BOOKS + +The Seventeenth Century +Mrs. Dingley +Prue +Mrs. Johnson +Madame Roland + +"THE DARLING YOUNG" + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird +The Child of Tumult +The Child of Subsiding Tumult +The Unready +That Pretty Person +Under the Early Stars +The Illusion of Historic Time + + + + +CERES' RUNAWAY + + + +One can hardly be dull possessing the pleasant imaginary picture of +a Municipality hot in chase of a wild crop--at least while the +charming quarry escapes, as it does in Rome. The Municipality does +not exist that would be nimble enough to overtake the Roman growth +of green in the high places of the city. It is true that there have +been the famous captures--those in the Colosseum, and in the Baths +of Caracalla; moreover a less conspicuous running to earth takes +place on the Appian Way, in some miles of the solitude of the +Campagna, where men are employed in weeding the roadside. They +slowly uproot the grass and lay it on the ancient stones--rows of +little corpses--for sweeping up, as at Upper Tooting; one wonders +why. The governors of the city will not succeed in making the Via +Appia look busy, or its stripped stones suggestive of a thriving +commerce. Again, at the cemetery within the now torn and shattered +Aurelian wall by the Porta San Paolo, they are often mowing of +buttercups. "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is +spread," says Shelley, whose child lies between Keats and the +pyramid. But a couple of active scythes are kept at work there +summer and spring--not that the grass is long, for it is much +overtopped by the bee-orchis, but because flowers are not to laugh +within reach of the civic vigilance. + +Yet, except that it is overtaken and put to death in these +accessible places, the wild summer growth of Rome has a prevailing +success and victory. It breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, +lodges in the sun, swings in the wind, takes wing to find the +remotest ledges, and blooms aloft. It makes light of the sixteenth +century, of the seventeenth, and of the eighteenth. As the historic +ages grow cold it banters them alike. The flagrant flourishing +statue, the haughty facade, the broken pediment (and Rome is chiefly +the city of the broken pediment) are the opportunities of this +vagrant garden in the air. One certain church, that is full of +attitude, can hardly be aware that a crimson snapdragon of great +stature and many stalks and blossoms is standing on its furthest +summit tiptoe against its sky. The cornice of another church in the +fair middle of Rome lifts out of the shadows of the streets a row of +accidental marigolds. Impartial to the antique, the mediaeval, the +Renaissance early and late, the newer modern, this wild summer finds +its account in travertine and tufa, reticulated work, brick, stucco +and stone. "A bird of the air carries the matter," or the last sea- +wind, sombre and soft, or the latest tramontana, gold and blue, has +lodged in a little fertile dust the wild grass, wild wheat, wild +oats! + +If Venus had her runaway, after whom the Elizabethans raised hue and +cry, this is Ceres'. The municipal authorities, hot-foot, cannot +catch it. And, worse than all, if they pause, dismayed, to mark the +flight of the agile fugitive safe on the arc of a flying buttress, +or taking the place of the fallen mosaics and coloured tiles of a +twelfth-century tower, and in any case inaccessible, the grass grows +under their discomfited feet. It actually casts a flush of green +over their city piazza--the wide light-grey pavements so vast that +to keep them weeded would need an army of workers. That army has +not been employed; and grass grows in a small way, but still +beautifully, in the wide space around which the tramway circles. +Perhaps a hatred of its delightful presence is what chiefly prompts +the civic government in Rome to the effort to turn the piazza into a +square. The shrub is to take the place not so much of the pavement +as of the importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten--and the +weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun takes +its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality in +tears, to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the +"third" (which is in truth the fourth) Rome. + +When I say grass I use the word widely. Italian grass is not turf; +it is full of things, and they are chiefly aromatic. No richer +scents throng each other, close and warm, than these from a little +hand-space of the grass one rests on, within the walls or on the +plain, or in the Sabine or the Alban hills. Moreover, under the +name I will take leave to include lettuce as it grows with a most +welcome surprise on certain ledges of the Vatican. That great and +beautiful palace is piled, at various angles, as it were house upon +house, here magnificent, here careless, but with nothing pretentious +and nothing furtive. And outside one lateral window on a ledge to +the sun, prospers this little garden of random salad. Buckingham +Palace has nothing whatever of the Vatican dignity, but one cannot +well think of little cheerful cabbages sunning themselves on any +parapet it may have round a corner. + +Moreover, in Italy the vegetables--the table ones--have a wildness, +a suggestion of the grass, from lands at liberty for all the +tilling. Wildish peas, wilder asparagus--the field asparagus which +seems to have disappeared from England, but of which Herrick boasts +in his manifestations of frugality--and strawberries much less than +half-way from the small and darkling ones of the woods to the pale +and corpulent of the gardens, and with nothing of the wild fragrance +lost--these are all Italian things of savage savour and simplicity. +The most cultivated of all countries, the Italy of tillage, is yet +not a garden, but something better, as her city is yet not a town +but something better, and her wilderness something better than a +desert. In all the three there is a trace of the little flying +heels of the runaway. + + + +WELLS + + + +The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or +unattractive secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and +perennial means of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for +example, and the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we +live. They are covered, they are carried, they are hushed, from the +spring to the tap; and when their voices are released at last in the +London scullery, why, it can hardly be said that the song is +eloquent of the natural source of waters, whether earthly or +heavenly. There is not one of the circumstances of this capture of +streams--the company, the water-rate, and the rest--that is not a +sign of the ill-luck of modern devices in regard to style. For +style implies a candour and simplicity of means, an action, a +gesture, as it were, in the doing of small things; it is the +ignorance of secret ways; whereas the finish of modern life and its +neatness seem to be secured by a system of little shufflings and +surprises. + +Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such +fittings; they form its very construction. Style does not exist in +modern arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for +all the successes--which are not to be denied--of their outer part; +the happy little swagger that simulates style is but another sign of +its absence, being prepared by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, +and the triumph and success of the present art of raiment--"fit" +itself--is but the result of a masked and lurking labour and device. + +The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of +the beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and +slighter actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the +way. In a word, the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is +the dexterous provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well- +appointed, and decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his +hands; whereas the artist craftsman of other times made a +manifestation of his means. The first hides the streams, under +stress and pressure, in paltry pipes which we all must make haste to +call upon the earth to cover, and the second lifted up the arches of +the aqueduct. + +The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way +to ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure +way. In all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed +by hidden means must needs, from the beginning, prepare the +abolition of dignity. This is easy to understand, but it is less +easy to explain the ill-fortune that presses upon the expert +workman, in search of easy ways to live, all the ill-favoured +materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them serviceable and +effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter them, turning +the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the daily world. +It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other hand, is it easy to +explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler devices which +are, after all, only less expert ways of labour. In those happy +conditions, neither from the material, suggesting to the workman, +nor from the workman looking askance at his unhandsome material, +comes a first proposal to pour in cement and make fast the +underworld, out of sight. But fate spares not that suggestion to +the able and the unlucky at their task of making neat work of the +means, the distribution, the traffick of life. + +The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the +means of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the +sun, with their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, +no, they are lapped in lead. + +King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals. + +Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The hiding- +place that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters of +wells are, at their deepest, in communication with the open sky. No +other mine is so visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible +there; and it is fine to think of the waters of this planet, shallow +and profound, all charged with shining suns, a multitude of waters +multiplying suns, and carrying that remote fire, as it were, within +their unalterable freshness. Not a pool without this visitant, or +without passages of stars. As for the wells of the Equator, you may +think of them in their last recesses as the daily bathing-places of +light; a luminous fancy is able so to scatter fitful figures of the +sun, and to plunge them in thousands within those deeps. + +Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the +sun is shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken +across stones, and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that +fall through chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile +figures of leaves. To all these waters the agile air has perpetual +access. Not so can great towns be watered, it will be said with +reason; and this is precisely the ill-luck of great towns. + +Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have +the grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every campo has +its circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the +pavement, its soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the +water below, and the cheerful work of the cable. + +Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their +plain with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the +watersheds in the hills to the and city; and having the waters +captive, they knew how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in +this Roman triumph. They had the wit to boast thus of their +brilliant prisoner. + +None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a +more invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the +leap of the heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They +have remained in Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the +victory was longer than empire, and their thousands of loud voices +have never ceased to confess the conquest of the cold floods, +separated long ago, drawn one by one, alive, to the head and front +of the world. + +Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest fact +of Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains or to +the distance from the city without seeing the approach of those +perpetual waters--waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. +This, then, was the style of a master, who does not lapse from +"incidental greatness," has no mean precision, out of sight, to +prepare the finish of his phrases, and does not think the means and +the approaches are to be plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, +without haste, and without misgiving are all great things to be +done, and neither interruption in the doing nor ruin after they are +done finds anything in them to betray. There was never any disgrace +of means, and when the world sees the work broken through there is +no disgrace of discovery. The labour of Michelangelo's chisel, +little more than begun, a Roman structure long exposed in disarray-- +upon these the light of day looks full, and the Roman and the +Florentine have their unrefuted praise. + + + +RAIN + + + +Not excepting the falling stars--for they are far less sudden--there +is nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the +familiar rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long +shafts from the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy +downward journey with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be +infinitely separate, units, an innumerable flight of single things, +and the simple movement of intricate points. + +The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at +once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our +impression is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of +our senses. What we are apt to call our quick impression is rather +our sensibly tardy, unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly +bewildered sense of things that flash and fall, wink, and are +overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes of man hesitate and +mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert eyes, +delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles +them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part +slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose +moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of +instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, +and causes the past, a moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon +the skies. + +The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records +of our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant +woodman's stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is +repeated in the impressions of our clinging sight. The round wheel +dazzles it, and the stroke of the bird's wing shakes it off like a +captivity evaded. Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of +these timid senses; and their perception, outrun by the shower, +shaken by the light, denied by the shadow, eluded by the distance, +makes the lingering picture that is all our art. One of the most +constant causes of all the mystery and beauty of that art is surely +not that we see by flashes, but that nature flashes on our +meditative eyes. There is no need for the impressionist to make +haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature doubles upon +him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility. + +Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the +ministration of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that +the husbandman is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet +unclaimed in the arms of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that +he binds the shower withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the +coming cloud. His sense of property takes aim and reckons distance +and speed, and even as he shoots a little ahead of the equally +uncertain ground-game, he knows approximately how to hit the cloud +of his possession. So much is the rain bound to the earth that, +unable to compel it, man has yet found a way, by lying in wait, to +put his price upon it. The exhaustible cloud "outweeps its rain," +and only the inexhaustible sun seems to repeat and to enforce his +cumulative fires upon every span of ground, innumerable. The rain +is wasted upon the sea, but only by a fantasy can the sun's waste be +made a reproach to the ocean, the desert, or the sealed-up street. +Rossetti's "vain virtues" are the virtues of the rain, falling +unfruitfully. + +Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, +as the end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its +flight warning away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing +shadow. It is a threat and a reconciliation; it removes mountains +compared with which the Alps are hillocks, and makes a childlike +peace between opposed heights and battlements of heaven. + + + +THE TOW PATH + + + +A childish pleasure in producing small mechanical effects unaided +must have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird +your shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on +the even path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames--the side +of meadows. + +The elastic resistance of the line is a "heart-animating strain," +only too slight; and sensible is the thrill in it as the ranks of +the riverside plants, with their small summit-flower of violet-pink, +are swept aside like a long green breaker of flourishing green. The +line drums lightly in the ears when the bushes are high and it grows +taut; it makes a telephone for the rush of flowers under the stress +of your easy power. + +The active delights of one who is not athletic are few, like the +joys of "feeling hearts" according to the erroneous sentiment of a +verse of Moore's. The joys of sensitive hearts are many; but the +joys of sensitive hands are few. Here, however, in the effectual +act of towing, is the ample revenge of the unmuscular upon the happy +labourers with the oar, the pole, the bicycle, and all other means +of violence. Here, on the long tow-path, between warm, embrowned +meadows and opal waters, you need but to walk in your swinging +harness, and so take your friends up-stream. + +You work merely as the mill-stream works--by simple movement. At +lock after lock along a hundred miles, deep-roofed mills shake to +the wheel that turns by no greater stress, and you and the river +have the same mere force of progress. + +There never was any kinder incentive of companionship. It is the +bright Thames walking softly in your blood, or you that are flowing +by so many curves of low shore on the level of the world. + +Now you are over against the shadows, and now opposite the sun, as +the wheeling river makes the sky wheel about your head and swings +the lighted clouds or the blue to face your eyes. The birds, flying +high for mountain air in the heat, wing nothing but their own +weight. You will not envy them for so brief a success. Did not +Wordsworth want a "little boat" for the air? Did not Byron call him +a blockhead therefor? Wordsworth had, perhaps, a sense of towing. + +All the advantage of the expert is nothing in this simple industry. +Even the athlete, though he may go further, cannot do better than +you, walking your effectual walk with the line attached to your +willing steps. Your moderate strength of a mere everyday physical +education gives you the sufficient mastery of the towpath. + +If your natural walk is heavy, there is spirit in the tackle to give +it life, and if it is buoyant it will be more buoyant under the +buoyant burden--the yielding check--than ever before. An +unharnessed walk must begin to seem to you a sorry incident of +insignificant liberty. It is easier than towing? So is the drawing +of water in a sieve easier to the arms than drawing in a bucket, but +not to the heart. + +To walk unbound is to walk in prose, without the friction of the +wings of metre, without the sweet and encouraging tug upon the +spirit and the line. + +No dead weight follows you as you tow. The burden is willing; it +depends upon you gaily, as a friend may do without making any +depressing show of helplessness; neither, on the other hand, is it +apt to set you at naught or charge you with a make-believe. It +accompanies, it almost anticipates; it lags when you are brisk, just +so much as to give your briskness good reason, and to justify you if +you should take to still more nimble heels. All your haste, +moreover, does but waken a more brilliantly-sounding ripple. + +The bounding and rebounding burden you carry (but it nearly seems to +carry you, so fine is the mutual good will) gives work to your +figure, enlists your erectness and your gait, but leaves your eyes +free. No watching of mechanisms for the labourer of the tow-path. +What little outlook is to be kept falls to the lot of the steerer +smoothly towed. Your easy and efficient work lets you carry your +head high and watch the birds, or listen to them. They fly in such +lofty air that they seem to turn blue in the blue sky. A flash of +their flight shows silver for a moment, but they are blue birds in +that sunny distance above, as mountains are blue, and horizons. The +days are so still that you do not merely hear the cawing of the +rooks--you overhear their hundred private croakings and creakings, +the soliloquy of the solitary places swept by wings. + +As for songs, it is September, and the silence of July is long at an +end. This year's robins are in full voice; and the only song that +is not for love or nesting--the childish song of boy-birds, the +freshest and youngest note--is, by a happy paradox, that of an +autumnal voice. + +Here is no hoot, nor hurry of engines, nor whisper of the cyclist's +wheel, nor foot upon a road, to overcome that light but resounding +note. Silent are feet on the grassy brink, like the innocent, +stealthy soles of the barefooted in the south. + + + +THE TETHERED CONSTELLATIONS + + + +It is no small thing--no light discovery--to find a river Andromeda +and Arcturus and their bright neighbours wheeling for half a summer +night around a pole-star in the waters. One star or two--delicate +visitants of streams--we are used to see, somewhat by a sleight of +the eyes, so fine and so fleeting is that apparition. Or the +southern waves may show the light--not the image--of the evening or +the morning planet. But this, in a pool of the country Thames at +night, is no ripple-lengthened light; it is the startling image of a +whole large constellation burning in the flood. + +These reflected heavens are different heavens. On a darker and more +vacant field than that of the real skies, the shape of the Lyre or +the Bear has an altogether new and noble solitude; and the waters +play a painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two +movements shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright +flashing of constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark +flashes of the vague bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate +with an alien motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of +large stars escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the +steady night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, +have a suddenness of gleaming life. You imagine that some +unexampled gale might make them seem to shine with such a movement +in the veritable sky; yet nothing but deep water, seeming still in +its incessant flight and rebound, could really show such altered +stars. The flood lets a constellation fly, as Juliet's "wanton" +with a tethered bird, only to pluck it home again. At moments some +rhythmic flux of the water seems about to leave the darkly-set, +widely-spaced Bear absolutely at large, to dismiss the great stars, +and refuse to imitate the skies, and all the water is obscure; then +one broken star returns, then fragments of another, and a third and +a fourth flit back to their noble places, brilliantly vague, +wonderfully visible, mobile, and unalterable. There is nothing else +at once so keen and so elusive. + +The aspen poplar had been in captive flight all day, but with no +such vanishings as these. The dimmer constellations of the soft +night are reserved by the skies. Hardly is a secondary star seen by +the large and vague eyes of the stream. They are blind to the +Pleiades. + +There is a little kind of star that drowns itself by hundreds in the +river Thames--the many-rayed silver-white seed that makes journeys +on all the winds up and down England and across it in the end of +summer. It is a most expert traveller, turning a little wheel a- +tiptoe wherever the wind lets it rest, and speeding on those pretty +points when it is not flying. The streets of London are among its +many highways, for it is fragile enough to go far in all sorts of +weather. But it gets disabled if a rough gust tumbles it on the +water so that its finely-feathered feet are wet. On gentle breezes +it is able to cross dry-shod, walking the waters. + +All unlike is this pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It +is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle +plants (or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to +the tops of many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather +have to meet it in battalions than in these invincible units astray. +But if the farmer owes it a lawful grudge, there is many a rigid +riverside garden wherein it would be a great pleasure to sow the +thistles of the nearest pasture. + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another +growth that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned +to winter than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east +wind, more than the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, +rushes, canes, and reeds were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On +them the nimble winds played their dry music. They were part of the +winter. It looked through them and spoke through them. They were +spears and javelins in array to the sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those +that stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour +of his light look through--low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of +winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They +belong to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the +river, beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes +perilous footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low +lands, the sign of streams. They grow tall between you and the near +horizon of flat lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; +and near them grow flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow +lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness +of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the +distinction of its points, its needles, and its resolute right +lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need +the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy +breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops +knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges +whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, +showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the +silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are +unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm +gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a thousand reasons for +their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, are swept into a +single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds +in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so +changed (except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, +and has in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape +elsewhere, rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south +are not conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a +gipsy people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is +rather a gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if +he is a man of sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior +doubts. His property, he says, goes right down to the centre of the +earth, in the shape of a wedge; how high up it goes into the air it +would be difficult to say, and obviously the shape of the wedge must +be continued in the direction of increase. We may therefore +proclaim his right to the clouds and their cargo. It is true that +as his ground game is apt to go upon his neighbour's land to be +shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his showers elsewhere. +But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed country-house +sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But he who +tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes +should happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his- +-he had the pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for +a time. But the bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very +thorough landowner, but a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would +endure this sort of thing no longer, and went out armed and had a +long acre of sedges scythed to death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and +upon margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a +road. No wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and +their primroses are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and +then, though, one has a kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds +of trees--the Corot trees. Standing at a distance from the more +ornamental trees, from those of fuller foliage, and from all the +indeciduous shrubs and the conifers (manifest property, every one), +two or three translucent aspens, with which the very sun and the +breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes seemed to wear a +certain look--an extra-territorial look, let us call it. They are +suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not +say so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, +are in spirit almost as extraterritorial as the rushes. In proof of +this he very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. +The view is better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are +in his ground right enough, there is a something about their heads-- +. But the reason he gives for wishing them away is merely that they +are "thin." A man does not always say everything. + + + +A NORTHERN FANCY + + + +"I remember," said Dryden, writing to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat +Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and +witty answer to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to +write like a madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing +to write like a madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a +fool.'" Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be +heard, a light high note, in English poetry throughout two centuries +at least, and one English poet lately set that untethered lyric, the +mad maid's song, flying again. + +A revolt against the oppression of the late sixteenth and early +seventeenth centuries--the age of the re-discovery of death; against +the crime of tragedies; against the tyranny of Italian example that +had made the poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, +inconstancy--may have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this +tune of innocence, and this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. +"I heard a maid in Bedlam," runs the old song. High and low the +poets tried for that note, and the singer was nearly always to be a +maid and crazed for love. Except for the temporary insanity so +indifferently worn by the soprano of the now deceased kind of +Italian opera, and except that a recent French story plays with the +flitting figure of a village girl robbed of her wits by woe (and +this, too, is a Russian villager, and the Southern author may have +found his story on the spot, as he seems to aver) I have not met +elsewhere than in England this solitary and detached poetry of the +treble note astray. + +At least, it is principally a northern fancy. Would the steadfast +Cordelia, if she had not died, have lifted the low voice to that +high note, so delicately untuned? She who would not be prodigal of +words might yet, indeed, have sung in the cage, and told old tales, +and laughed at gilded butterflies of the court of crimes, and lived +so long in the strange health of an emancipated brain as to wear out + + +Packs and sects of great ones +That ebb and flow by the moon. + + +She, if King Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry +and strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the maid +called Barbara. + +It was surely the name of the maid who died singing, as Desdemona +remembers, that lingered in the ear of Wordsworth. Of all the songs +of the distracted, written in the sanity of high imagination, there +is nothing more passionate than that beginning "'Tis said that some +have died for love." To one who has always recognized the greatness +of this poem and who possibly had known and forgotten how much +Ruskin prized it, it was a pleasure to find the judgement afresh in +Modern Painters, where this grave lyric is cited for an example of +great imagination. It is the mourning and restless song of the +lover ("the pretty Barbara died") who has not yet broken free from +memory into the alien world of the insane. + +Barbara's lover dwelt in the scene of his love, as Dryden's Adam +entreats the expelling angel that he might do, protesting that he +could endure to lose "the bliss, but not the place." (And although +this dramatic "Paradise Lost" of Dryden's is hardly named by critics +except to be scorned, this is assuredly a fine and imaginative +thought.) It is nevertheless as a wanderer that the crazed creature +visits the fancy of English poets with such a wild recurrence. The +Englishman of the far past, barred by climate, bad roads, ill- +lighted winters, and the intricate life and customs of the little +town, must have been generally a home-keeper. No adventure, no +setting forth, and small liberty, for him. But Tom-a-Bedlam, the +wild man in patches or in ribbons, with his wallet and his horn for +alms of food or drink, came and went as fitfully as the storm, free +to suffer all the cold--an unsheltered creature; and the chill fancy +of the villager followed him out to the heath on a journey that had +no law. Was it he in person, or a poet for him, that made the +swinging song: "From the hag and the hungry goblin"? If a poet, it +was one who wrote like a madman and not like a fool. + +Not a town, not a village, not a solitary cottage during the English +Middle Ages was unvisited by him who frightened the children; they +had a name for him as for the wild birds--Robin Redbreast, Dicky +Swallow, Philip Sparrow, Tom Tit, Tom-a-Bedlam. And after him came +the "Abram men," who were sane parodies of the crazed, and went to +the fairs and wakes in motley. Evelyn says of a fop: "All his body +was dressed like a maypole, or a Tom-a-Bedlam's cap." But after the +Civil Wars they vanished, and no man knew how. In time old men +remembered them only to remember that they had not seen any such +companies or solitary wanderers of late years. + +The mad maid of the poets is a vagrant too, when she is free, and +not singing within Bedlam early in the morning, "in the spring." +Wordsworth, who dealt with the legendary fancy in his "Ruth," makes +the crazed one a wanderer in the hills whom a traveller might see by +chance, rare as an Oread, and nearly as wild as Echo herself:- + + +I too have passed her in the hills +Setting her little water-mills. + + +His heart misgives him to think of the rheumatism that must befall +in such a way of living; and his grave sense of civilization, +BOURGEOIS in the humane and noble way that is his own, restores her +after death to the company of man, to the "holy bell," which +Shakespeare's Duke remembered in banishment, and to the congregation +and their "Christian psalm." + +The older poets were less responsible, less serious and more sad, +than Wordsworth, when they in turn were touched by the fancy of the +maid crazed by love. They left her to her light immortality; and +she might be drenched in dews; they would not desire to reconcile +nor bury her. She might have her hair torn by the bramble, but her +heart was light after trouble. "Many light hearts and wings"--she +had at least the bird's heart, and the poet lent to her voice the +wings of his verses. + +There is nothing in our poetry less modern than she. The vagrant +woman of later feeling was rather the sane creature of Ebenezer +Elliott's fine lines in "The Excursion" - + + +Bone-weary, many-childed, trouble-tried! +Wife of my bosom, wedded to my soul! + + +Trouble did not "try" the Elizabethan wild one, it undid her. She +had no child, or if there had ever been a child of hers, she had +long forgotten how it died. She hailed the wayfarer, who was more +weary than she, with a song; she haunted the cheerful dawn; her +"good-morrow" rings from Herrick's poem, fresh as cock-crow. She +knows that her love is dead, and her perplexity has regard rather to +the many kinds of flowers than to the old story of his death; they +distract her in the splendid meadows. + +All the tragic world paused to hear that lightest of songs, as the +tragedy of Hamlet pauses for the fitful voice of Ophelia. Strange +was the charm of this perpetual alien, and unknown to us now. The +world has become once again as it was in the mad maid's heyday, less +serious and more sad than Wordsworth; but it has not recovered, and +perhaps will never recover, that sweetness. Blake's was a more +starry madness. Crabbe, writing of village sorrows, thought himself +bound to recur to the legend of the mad maid, but his "crazed +maiden" is sane enough, sorrowful but dull, and sings of her own +"burning brow," as Herrick's wild one never sang; nor is there any +smile in her story, though she talks of flowers, or, rather, "the +herbs I loved to rear"; and perhaps she is the surest of all signs +that the strange inspiration of the past centuries was lost, +vanished like Tom-a-Bedlam himself. It had been wholly English, +whereas the English eighteenth century was not wholly English. + +It is not to be imagined that any hard Southern mind could ever have +played in poetry with such a fancy; or that Petrarch, for example, +could so have foregone the manifestation of intelligence and +intelligible sentiment. And as to Dante, who put the two eternities +into the momentary balance of the human will, cold would be his +disregard of this northern dream of innocence. If the mad maid was +an alien upon earth, what were she in the Inferno? What word can +express her strangeness there, her vagrancy there? And with what +eyes would they see this dewy face glancing in at the windows of +that City? + + + +PATHOS + + + +A fugitive writer wrote not long ago on the fugitive page of a +magazine: "For our part, the drunken tinker [Christopher Sly] is +the most real personage of the piece, and not without some hints of +the pathos that is worked out more fully, though by different ways, +in Bottom and Malvolio." Has it indeed come to this? Have the +Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or their yet later equivalents, +compared with which "le spleen" of the French Byronic age was gay, +done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature +free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. +Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your +critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the +penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come at it. It is of +little use now to explain Snug the joiner to the audience: why, it +is precisely Snug who stirs their emotions so painfully. Not the +lion; they can make shift to see through that: but the Snug within, +the human Snug. And Master Shallow has the Weltschmerz in that +latent form which is the more appealing; and discouraging questions +arise as to the end of old Double; and Harpagon is the tragic figure +of Monomania; and as to Argan, ah, what havoc in "les entrailles de +Monsieur" must have been wrought by those prescriptions! Et patati, +et patata. + +It may be only too true that the actual world is "with pathos +delicately edged." For Malvolio living we should have had living +sympathies; so much aspiration, so ill-educated a love of +refinement; so unarmed a credulity, noblest of weaknesses, betrayed +for the laughter of a chambermaid. By an actual Bottom the weaver +our pity might be reached for the sake of his single self-reliance, +his fancy and resource condemned to burlesque and ignominy by the +niggard doom of circumstance. But is not life one thing and is not +art another? Is it not the privilege of literature to treat things +singly, without the after-thoughts of life, without the troublous +completeness of the many-sided world? Is not Shakespeare, for this +reason, our refuge? Fortunately unreal is his world when he will +have it so; and there we may laugh with open heart at a grotesque +man: without misgiving, without remorse, without reluctance. If +great creating Nature has not assumed for herself she has assuredly +secured to the great creating poet the right of partiality, of +limitation, of setting aside and leaving out, of taking one +impression and one emotion as sufficient for the day. Art and +Nature are complementary; in relation, not in confusion, with one +another. And all this officious cleverness in seeing round the +corner, as it were, of a thing presented by literary art in the +flat--(the borrowing of similes from other arts is of evil tendency; +but let this pass, as it is apt)--is but another sign of the general +lack of a sense of the separation between Nature and her sentient +mirror in the mind. In some of his persons, indeed, Shakespeare is +as Nature herself, all-inclusive; but in others--and chiefly in +comedy--he is partial, he is impressionary, he refuses to know what +is not to his purpose, he is light-heartedly capricious. And in +that gay, wilful world it is that he gives us--or used to give us, +for even the word is obsolete--the pleasure of OUBLIANCE. + +Now this fugitive writer has not been so swift but that I have +caught him a clout as he went. Yet he will do it again; and those +like-minded will assuredly also continue to show how much more +completely human, how much more sensitive, how much more +responsible, is the art of the critic than the world has ever dreamt +till now. And, superior in so much, they will still count their +importunate sensibility as the choicest of their gifts. And +Lepidus, who loves to wonder, can have no better subject for his +admiration than the pathos of the time. It is bred now of your mud +by the operation of your sun. 'Tis a strange serpent; and the tears +of it are wet. + + + +ANIMA PELLEGRINA! + + + +Every language in the world has its own phrase, fresh for the +stranger's fresh and alien sense of its signal significance; a +phrase that is its own essential possession, and yet is dearer to +the speaker of other tongues. Easily--shall I say cheaply?-- +spiritual, for example, was the nation that devised the name anima +pellegrina, wherewith to crown a creature admired. "Pilgrim soul" +is a phrase for any language, but "pilgrim soul!" addressed, singly +and sweetly to one who cannot be over-praised, "pilgrim-soul!" is a +phrase of fondness, the high homage of a lover, of one watching, of +one who has no more need of common flatteries, but has admired and +gazed while the object of his praises visibly surpassed them--this +is the facile Italian ecstasy, and it rises into an Italian heaven. + +It was by chance, and in an old play, that I came upon this +impetuous, sudden, and single sentence of admiration, as it were a +sentence of life passed upon one charged with inestimable deeds; and +the modern editor had thought it necessary to explain the +exclamation by a note. It was, he said, poetical. + +Anima pellegrina seems to be Italian of no later date than +Pergolese's airs, and suits the time as the familiar phrase of the +more modern love-song suited the day of Bellini. But it is only +Italian, bygone Italian, and not a part of the sweet past of any +other European nation, but only of this. + +To the same local boundaries and enclosed skies belongs the charm of +those buoyant words:- + + +Felice chi vi mira, +Ma piu felice chi per voi sospira! + + +And it is not only a charm of elastic sound or of grace; that would +be but a property of the turn of speech. It is rather the +profounder advantage whereby the rhymes are freighted with such +feeling as the very language keeps in store. In another tongue you +may sing, "happy who looks, happier who sighs"; but in what other +tongue shall the little meaning be so sufficient, and in what other +shall you get from so weak an antithesis the illusion of a lovely +intellectual epigram? Yet it is not worthy of an English reader to +call it an illusion; he should rather be glad to travel into the +place of a language where the phrase IS intellectual, impassioned, +and an epigram; and should thankfully for the occasion translate +himself, and not the poetry. + +I have been delighted to use a present current phrase whereof the +charm may still be unknown to Englishmen--"piuttosto bruttini." See +what an all-Italian spirit is here, and what contempt, not +reluctant, but tolerant and familiar. You may hear it said of +pictures, or works of art of several kinds, and you confess at once +that not otherwise should they be condemned. BRUTTO--ugly--is the +word of justice, the word for any language, everywhere translatable, +a circular note, to be exchanged internationally with a general +meaning, wholesale, in the course of the European concert. But +BRUTTINO is a soothing diminutive, a diminutive that forbears to +express contempt, a diminutive that implies innocence, and is, +moreover, guarded by a hesitating adverb, shrugging in the rear-- +"rather than not." "Rather ugly than not, and ugly in a little way +that we need say few words about--the fewer the better;" nay, this +paraphrase cannot achieve the homely Italian quality whereby the +printed and condemnatory criticism is made a family affair that +shall go no further. After the sound of it, the European concert +seems to be composed of brass instruments. + +How unlike is the house of English language and the enclosure into +which a traveller hither has to enter! Do we possess anything here +more essentially ours (though we share it with our sister Germany) +than our particle "un"? Poor are those living languages that have +not our use of so rich a negative. The French equivalent in +adjectives reaches no further than the adjective itself--or hardly; +it does not attain the participle; so that no French or Italian poet +has the words "unloved", "unforgiven." None such, therefore, has +the opportunity of the gravest and the most majestic of all ironies. +In our English, the words that are denied are still there--"loved," +"forgiven": excluded angels, who stand erect, attesting what is not +done, what is undone, what shall not be done. + +No merely opposite words could have so much denial, or so much pain +of loss, or so much outer darkness, or so much barred beatitude in +sight. All-present, all-significant, all-remembering, all- +foretelling is the word, and it has a plenitude of knowledge. + +We have many more conspicuous possessions that are, like this, +proper to character and thought, and by no means only an accident of +untransferable speech. And it is impossible for a reader, who is a +lover of languages for their spirit, to pass the words of +untravelled excellence, proper to their own garden enclosed, without +recognition. Never may they be disregarded or confounded with the +universal stock. If I would not so neglect PIUTTOSTO BRUTTINI, how +much less a word dominating literature! And of such words of +ascendancy and race there is no great English author but has +abundant possession. No need to recall them. But even writers who +are not great have, here and there, proved their full consciousness +of their birthright. Thus does a man who was hardly an author, +Haydon the painter, put out his hand to take his rights. He has +incomparable language when he is at a certain page of his life; at +that time he sate down to sketch his child, dying in its babyhood, +and the head he studied was, he says, full of "power and grief." + +This is a phrase of different discovery from that which reveals a +local rhyme-balanced epigram, a gracious antithesis, taking an +intellectual place--Felice chi vi mira--or the art-critic's phrase-- +piuttosto bruttini--of easy, companionable, and equal contempt. + +As for French, if it had no other sacred words--and it has many--who +would not treasure the language that has given us--no, not that has +given us, but that has kept for its own--ensoleille? Nowhere else +is the sun served with such a word. It is not to be said or written +without a convincing sense of sunshine, and from the very word come +light and radiation. The unaccustomed north could not have made it, +nor the accustomed south, but only a nation part-north and part- +south; therefore neither England nor Italy can rival it. But there +needed also the senses of the French--those senses of which they say +far too much in every second-class book of their enormous, their +general second-class, but which they have matched in their time with +some inimitable words. Perhaps that matching was done at the moment +of the full literary consciousness of the senses, somewhere about +the famous 1830. For I do not think ensoleille to be a much older +word--I make no assertion. Whatever its origin, may it have no end! +They cannot weary us with it; for it seems as new as the sun, as +remote as old Provence; village, hill-side, vineyard, and chestnut +wood shine in the splendour of the word, the air is light, and white +things passing blind the eyes--a woman's linen, white cattle, +shining on the way from shadow to shadow. A word of the sense of +sight, and a summer word, in short, compared with which the +paraphrase is but a picture. For ensoleille I would claim the +consent of all readers--that they shall all acknowledge the spirit +of that French. But perhaps it is a mere personal preference that +makes le jour s'annonce also sacred. + +If the hymn, "Stabat Mater dolorosa," was written in Latin, this +could be only that it might in time find its true language and +incomparable phrase at last--that it might await the day of life in +its proper German. I found it there (and knew at once the authentic +verse, and knew at once for what tongue it had been really destined) +in the pages of the prayer-book of an apple-woman at an Innsbruck +church, and in the accents of her voice. + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + + +There is hardly a writer now--of the third class probably not one-- +who has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of +Nature; not one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a +modern reference to the manifold death and destruction with which +the air, the branches, the mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice +of the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and +of the dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are +they--all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do +they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is +the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? +You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may +hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, +as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a +well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too +slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or +avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle back at the +bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes +violently into other forms, flashes without pause into another +flame; but not all. Amid all the killing there must be much dying. +There are, for instance, few birds of prey left in our more +accessible counties now, and many thousands of birds must die +uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if their killing is done so +modestly, so then is their dying also. Short lives have all these +wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of them always alive; +they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet they keep the +millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so +complete, that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth +conspired that February to make known all the secrets; everything +was published. Death was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, +are not more resolute than was the frost of '95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and +forced to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which +the art and imagination of England combined to raise to his memory +at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought +wrong. There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of +a bird and in exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a +soldier--passe encore. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. +And the death of the birds is so little characteristic of them that, +as has just been said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, +except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled +to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a +rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. There +is no tale of the game-bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with +strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the trees, and +see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been by, or a +man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing like a +butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the +wild world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have +turned over scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether +now and again there might be a "Life" which was not more +emphatically a death. But there never is a modern biography that +has taken the hint of Nature. One and all, these books have the +disproportionate illness, the death out of all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been +rightly his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is +assumed to be news for the first comer. Which of us would suffer +the details of any physical suffering, over and done in our own +lives, to be displayed and described? This is not a confidence we +have a mind to make; and no one is authorised to ask for attention +or pity on our behalf. The story of pain ought not to be told of +us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more +exclusively, and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and +illusions of a long delirium. When he is in common language not +himself, amends should be made for so bitter a paradox; he should be +allowed such solitude as is possible to the alienated spirit; he +should be left to the "not himself," and spared the intrusion +against which he can so ill guard that he could hardly have even +resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door +of Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His +mortal illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather +affected objection is taken every now and then to the publication of +some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. +Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is +not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his +death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told--told +briefly--it was certainly not for marble. Shelley's death had no +significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It was a detachable +and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost of fancy and of the +heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant fact, and +conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill-named biographers +who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is a part of +their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last chapter +does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of all +survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, +this is, for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. +They have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they +have to mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a +mingling of distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not +known even to dreams save in that first year of separation. But +they are not biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously +secret because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may +surprise everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The +chase goes on everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase +seems to cause no perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life +is undefended, careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost +ceased, to paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually +in that British School of water-colour art, stippled, of which +surrounding nations, it was agreed, were envious. They must have +killed their bird to paint him, for he is not to be caught dead. A +bird is more easily caught alive than dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily--too easily--caught dead. Minor +artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good sculptor +and a University together modelled their Shelley on his back, +unessentially drowned; and everybody may read about the sick mind of +Dante Rossetti. + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly +arisen, to devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in +illustrated papers--the enormous production of art in black and +white--is assuredly a confession that the Honours of Mortality are +worth working for. Fifty years ago, men worked for the honours of +immortality; these were the commonplace of their ambition; they +declined to attend to the beauty of things of use that were destined +to be broken and worn out, and they looked forward to surviving +themselves by painting bad pictures; so that what to do with their +bad pictures in addition to our own has become the problem of the +nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have began to learn +that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. Art +consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows +a most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," +and for oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap +costs the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the +inevitable that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in +the singular and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is +done for so short a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the +acceptance of death, inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. +There is a real circulation of blood-quick use, brief beauty, +abolition, recreation. The honour of the day is for ever the honour +of that day. It goes into the treasury of things that are honestly +and--completely ended and done with. And when can so happy a thing +be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise would hesitate? +To be honourable for one day--one named and dated day, separate from +all other days of the ages--or to be for an unlimited time tedious? + + + +COMPOSURE + + + +Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure +do these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the +remoteness of the Latinity the thought would come too close and +shake too cruelly. In order to the sane endurance of the intimate +trouble of the soul an aloofness of language is needful. Johnson +feared death. Did his noble English control and postpone the +terror? Did it keep the fear at some courteous, deferent distance +from the centre of that human heart, in the very act of the leap and +lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in language such an +educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is a +persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note +indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, +teaches a temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the +tone--the voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter- +change, returns to the writer's touch or breath his own intention, +articulate: this is his note. Much has always been said, many +things to the purpose have been thought, of the power and the +responsibility of the note. Of the legislation and influence of the +tone I have been led to think by comparing the tranquillity of +Johnson and the composure of Canning with the stimulated and close +emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers who have entered as +disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English. + +For if every language be a school, more significantly and more +educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that +part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is +made implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French +author is without these. They are of all the heritages of the +English writer the most important. He receives a language of dual +derivation. He may submit himself to either University, whither he +will take his impulse and his character, where he will leave their +influence, and whence he will accept their re-education. The +Frenchman has certainly a style to develop within definite limits; +but he does not subject himself to suggestions tending mainly +hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of various race within one +literature. Such a choice of subjection is the singular opportunity +of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the necessary mingling. +Happily that mingling has been done once for all for us all. Nay, +one of the most charming things that a master of English can achieve +is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so +exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools are +made to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove +them at once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world +knew they were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as +to which school of words shall have the place of honour in the great +and sensitive moments of an author's style: which school shall be +used for conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And +the choice being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses +of so many hearts quickened in thought and feeling in this day +suggests to me a deliberate return to the recollectedness of the +more tranquil language. "Doubtless there is a place of peace." + +A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to +charge some of the moralists of the eighteenth century with an +indifference into which they educated their platitudes and into +which their platitudes educated them. Addison thus gave and took, +until he was almost incapable of coming within arm's-length of a +real or spiritual emotion. There is no knowing to what distance the +removal of the "appropriate sentiment" from the central soul might +have attained but for the change and renewal in language, which came +when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed eternity far from +the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the "pleasing +hope," the "fond desire"; and the touch of war was distant from him +who conceived his "repulsed battalions" and his "doubtful battle." +What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored +once more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too +eager to go into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable +raptures over the mere making of common words. "A hand-shoe! a +finger-hat! a foreword! Beautiful!" they cried; and for the love of +German the youngest daughter of Chrysale herself might have +consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It seemed to be forgotten +that a language with all its construction visible is a language +little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that its +images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain +spiritualizing and subtilizing effect of alien derivations is a +privilege and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half +of the language within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque +allusions are at play is to possess the state and security of a dead +tongue, without the death. + +But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in +origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most +beautiful and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in +Shakespeare. "Superfluous kings," "A lass unparalleled," +"Multitudinous seas": we needed not to wait for the eighteenth +century or for the nineteenth or for the twentieth to learn the +splendour of such encounters, of such differences, of such nuptial +unlikeness and union. But it is well that we should learn them +afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic +reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a +reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to +quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise +and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong +movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of +verse might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might +stay with a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows +of Canning for his son. But it should not be attempted without a +distinct intention of submission on the part of the writer. The +couplet transgressed against, trespassed upon, used loosely, is like +a law outstripped, defied--to the dignity neither of the rebel nor +of the rule. + +To Letters do we look now for the guidance and direction which the +very closeness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes +necessary. Shall not the Thing more and more, as we compose +ourselves to literature, assume the honour, the hesitation, the +leisure, the reconciliation of the Word? + + + +THE LITTLE LANGUAGE + + + +Dialect is the elf rather than the genius of place, and a dwarfish +master of the magic of local things. + +In England we hardly know what a concentrated homeliness it +nourishes; inasmuch as, with us, the castes and classes for whom +Goldoni and Gallina and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois +of the Veneto, use no dialect at all. + +Neither Goldoni nor Gallina has charged the Venetian language with +so much literature as to take from the people the shelter of their +almost unwritten tongue. Signor Fogazzaro, bringing tragedy into +the homes of dialect, does but show us how the language staggers +under such a stress, how it breaks down, and resigns that office. +One of the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable +fiction is that old manageress of the narrow things of the house +whose daughter is dying insane. I have called the dialect a +shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not cower within; her +resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely refuge, +suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several +centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid +none but light loads upon it. They caused it to carry no more in +their homely plays than it carries in homely life. Their work +leaves it what it was--the talk of a people talking much about few +things; a people like our own and any other in their lack of +literature, but local and all Italian in their lack of silence. + +Common speech is surely a greater part of life to such a people than +to one less pleased with chatter or more pleased with books. I am +writing of men, women, and children (and children are not forgotten, +since we share a patois with children on terms of more than common +equality) who possess, for all occasions of ceremony and +opportunities of dignity, a general, national, liberal, able, and +illustrious tongue, charged with all its history and all its +achievements; for the speakers of dialect, of a certain rank, speak +Italian, too. But to tamper with their dialect, or to take it from +them, would be to leave them houseless and exposed in their daily +business. So much does their patois seem to be their refuge from +the heavy and multitudinous experiences of a literary tongue, that +the stopping of a fox's earth might be taken as the image of any act +that should spoil or stop the talk of the associated seclusion of +their town, and leave them in the bleakness of a larger patriotism. + +The Venetian people, the Genoese, and the other speakers of +languages that might all have proved right "Italian" had not Dante, +Petrarch and Boccaccio written in Tuscan, can neither write nor be +taught hard things in their dialect, although they can live, whether +easy lives or hard, and evidently can die, therein. The hands and +feet that have served the villager and the citizen at homely tasks +have all the lowliness of his patois, to his mind; and when he must +perforce yield up their employment, we may believe that it is a +simple thing to die in so simple and so narrow a language, one so +comfortable, neighbourly, tolerant, and compassionate; so +confidential; so incapable, ignorant, unappalling, inapt to wing any +wearied thought upon difficult flight or to spur it upon hard +travelling. + +Not without words is mental pain, or even physical pain, to be +undergone; but the words that have done no more than order the +things of the narrow street are not words to put a fine edge or a +piercing point to any human pang. It may even well be that to die +in dialect is easier than to die in the eloquence of Manfred, though +that declaimed language, too, is doubtless a defence, if one of a +different manner. + +These writers in Venetian--they are named because in no other +Italian dialect has work so popular as Goldoni's been done, nor so +excellent as Signor Fogazzaro's--have left the unlettered local +language in which they loved to deal, to its proper limitations. +They have not given weighty things into its charge, nor made it +heavily responsible. They have added nothing to it; nay, by writing +it they might even be said to have made it duller, had it not been +for the reader and the actor. Insomuch as the intense +expressiveness of a dialect--of a small vocabulary in the mouth of a +dramatic people--lies in the various accent wherewith a southern +citizen knows how to enrich his talk, it remains for the actor to +restore its life to the written phrase. In dialect the author is +forbidden to search for the word, for there is none lurking for his +choice; but of tones, allusions, and of references and inferences of +the voice, the speaker of dialect is a master. No range of phrases +can be his, but he has the more or the less confidential inflection, +until at times the close communication of the narrow street becomes +a very conspiracy. + +Let it be borne in mind that dialect properly so called is something +all unlike, for instance, the mere jargon of London streets. The +difference may be measured by the fact that Italian dialects have a +highly organized and orderly grammar. The Londoner cannot keep the +small and loose order of the grammar of good English; the Genoese +conjugates his patois verbs, with subjunctives and all things of +that handsome kind, lacked by the English of Universities. + +The middle class--the piccolo mondo--that shares Italian dialect +with the poor are more strictly local in their manners than either +the opulent or the indigent of the same city. They have moreover +the busy intelligence (which is the intellect of patois) at its +keenest. Their speech keeps them a sequestered place which is +Italian, Italian beyond the ken of the traveller, and beyond the +reach of alteration. And--what is pretty to observe--the speakers +are well conscious of the characters of this intimate language. An +Italian countryman who has known no other climate will vaunt, in +fervent platitudes, his Italian sun; in like manner he is conscious +of the local character of his language, and tucks himself within it +at home, whatever Tuscan he may speak abroad. A properly spelt +letter, Swift said, would seem to expose him and Mrs Dingley and +Stella to the eyes of the world; but their little language, ill- +written, was "snug." + +Lovers have made a little language in all times; finding the nobler +language insufficient, do they ensconce themselves in the smaller? +discard noble and literary speech as not noble enough, and in +despair thus prattle and gibber and stammer? Rather perhaps this +departure from English is but an excursion after gaiety. The ideal +lovers, no doubt, would be so simple as to be grave. That is a +tenable opinion. Nevertheless, age by age they have been gay; and +age by age they have exchanged language imitated from the children +they doubtless never studied, and perhaps never loved. Why so? +They might have chosen broken English of other sorts--that, for +example, which was once thought amusing in farce, as spoken by the +Frenchman conceived by the Englishman--a complication of humour +fictitious enough, one might think, to please anyone; or else a +fragment of negro dialect; or the style of telegrams; or the +masterly adaptation of the simple savage's English devised by Mrs +Plornish in her intercourse with the Italian. But none of these +found favour. The choice has always been of the language of +children. Let us suppose that the flock of winged Loves worshipping +Venus in the Titian picture, and the noble child that rides his lion +erect with a background of Venetian gloomy dusk, may be the +inspirers of those prattlings. "See then thy selfe likewise art +lyttle made," says Spenser's Venus to her child. + +Swift was the best prattler. He had caught the language, surprised +it in Stella when she was veritably a child. He did not push her +clumsily back into a childhood he had not known; he simply prolonged +in her a childhood he had loved. He is "seepy." "Nite, dealest +dea, nite dealest logue." It is a real good-night. It breathes +tenderness from that moody and uneasy bed of projects. + + + +A COUNTERCHANGE + + + +"Il s'est trompe de defunte." The writer of this phrase had his +sense of that portly manner of French, and his burlesque is fine; +but--the paradox must be risked--because he was French he was not +able to possess all its grotesque mediocrity to the full; that is +reserved for the English reader. The words are in the mouth of a +widower who, approaching his wife's tomb, perceives there another +"monsieur." "Monsieur," again; the French reader is deprived of the +value of this word, too, in its place; it says little or nothing to +him, whereas the Englishman, who has no word of the precise +bourgeois significance that it sometimes bears, but who must use one +of two English words of different allusion--man or I gentleman-- +knows the exact value of its commonplace. The serious Parisian, +then, sees "un autre monsieur;" as it proves anon, there had been a +divorce in the history of the lady, but the later widower is not yet +aware of this, and explains to himself the presence of "un monsieur" +in his own place by that weighty phrase, "Il s'est trompe de +defunte." + +The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with +national character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking +author who was debarred by his own language from possessing the +whole of his own comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his +English that an Englishman does possess it. Your official, your +professional Parisian has a vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled +mediocrity. When the novelist perceives this he does not perceive +it all, because some of the words are the only words in use. Take +an author at his serious moments, when he is not at all occupied +with the comedy of phrases, and he now and then touches a word that +has its burlesque by mere contrast with English. "L'Histoire d'un +Crime," of Victor Hugo, has so many of these touches as to be, by a +kind of reflex action, a very school of English. The whole incident +of the omnibus in that grave work has unconscious international +comedy. The Deputies seated in the interior of the omnibus had +been, it will be remembered, shut out of their Chamber by the +perpetrator of the Coup d'Etat, but each had his official scarf. +Scarf--pish!--"l'echarpe!" "Ceindre l'echarpe"--there is no real +English equivalent. Civic responsibility never was otherwise +adequately expressed. An indignant deputy passed his scarf through +the window of the omnibus, as an appeal to the public, "et l'agita." +It is a pity that the French reader, having no simpler word, is not +in a position to understand the slight burlesque. Nay, the mere +word "public," spoken with this peculiar French good faith, has for +us I know not what untransferable gravity. + +There is, in short, a general international counterchange. It is +altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, with +its extremely "specialized" manner of industry, that one people +should make a phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. And, in +fact, there are certain French authors to whom should be secured the +use of the literary German whereof Germans, and German women in +particular, ought with all severity to be deprived. For Germans +often tell you of words in their own tongue that are untranslatable; +and accordingly they should not be translated, but given over in +their own conditions, unaltered, into safer hands. There would be a +clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a better order in the +phrase; the possessors of an alien word, with the thought it +secures, would find also their advantage. + +So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English +ears. It is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate +householder, for example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the +conservatory "pour retablir la circulation," and the other who +describes himself "sous-chef de bureau dans l'enregistrement," and +he who proposes to "faire hommage" of a doubtful turbot to the +neighbouring "employe de l'octroi"--these and all their like speak +commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own country the perfection +of their dulness. We only, who have the alternative of plainer and +fresher words, understand it. It is not the least of the advantages +of our own dual English that we become sensible of the mockery of +certain phrases that in France have lost half their ridicule, +uncontrasted. + +Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation +in all Latin languages--rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, +either majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French this +proffers a frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of an +Englishman, no longer detects. A guard on a French railway, who +advised two travellers to take a certain train for fear they should +be obliged to "vegeter" for a whole hour in the waiting-room of such +or such a station seemed to the less practised tourist to be a fresh +kind of unexpected humourist. + +One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and +subscriptions in France has more than the intentional comedy of the +farce-writer; one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his +visitors in the country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to +them: "Nous jouons cinquante centimes--les benefices seront verses +integralement e la souscription qui est ouverte e la commune pour la +construction de notre maison d'ecole." + +"Fletrir," again. Nothing could be more rhetorical than this +perfectly common word of controversy. The comic dramatist is well +aware of the spent violence of this phrase, with which every serious +Frenchman will reply to opponents, especially in public matters. +But not even the comic dramatist is aware of the last state of +refuse commonplace that a word of this kind represents. Refuse +rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson's "fossil poetry," would +seem to be the right name for human language as some of the +processes of the several recent centuries have left it. + +The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an +Englishman. They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as "Il +s'est trompe de defunte." In the report of that dull, incomparable +sentence there is enough humour, and subtle enough, for both the +maker and the reader; for the author who perceives the comedy as +well as custom will permit, and for the reader who takes it with the +freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, the current +word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. When of +the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, the +deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: "Il s'est +empetre dans les futurs." But for a reader who has a full sense of +the several languages that exist in English at the service of the +several ways of human life, there is, from the mere terminology of +official France, high or low--daily France--a gratuitous and +uncovenanted smile to be had. With this the wit of the report of +French literature has not little to do. Nor is it in itself, +perhaps, reasonably comic, but the slightest irony of circumstance +makes it so. A very little of the mockery of conditions brings out +all the latent absurdity of the "sixieme et septieme arron- +dissements," in the twinkling of an eye. So is it with the mere +"domicile;" with the aid of but a little of the burlesque of life, +the suit at law to "reintegrer le domicile conjugal" becomes as +grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "e domicile" merely--the +word of every shopman--is, in the unconscious mouths of the +speakers, always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an +Englishman hears it; so is the advice of the police that you shall +"circuler" in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you +shall not, in the churches. + +So are the serious and ordinary phrases, "maison nuptiale," "maison +mortuaire," and the still more serious "repos dominical," "oraison +dominicale." There is no majesty in such words. The unsuspicious +gravity with which they are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered +at, the language offering no relief of contrast; and what is much to +the credit of the comic sensibility of literature is the fact that, +through this general unconsciousness, the ridicule of a thousand +authors of comedy perceives the fun, and singles out the familiar +thing, and compels that most elaborate dulness to amuse us. US, +above all, by virtue of the custom of counter-change here set forth. + +Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the +English poets that so persist in France may not reveal something +within the English language--one would be somewhat loth to think so- +-reserved to the French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, +Edgar Poe to the select? Then would some of the mysteries of French +reading of English be explained otherwise than by the plainer +explanation that has hitherto satisfied our haughty curiosity. The +taste for rhetoric seemed to account for Byron, and the desire of +the rhetorician to claim a taste for poetry seemed to account for +Poe. But, after all, patatras! Who can say? + + + +HARLEQUIN MERCUTIO + + + +The first time that Mercutio fell upon the English stage, there fell +with him a gay and hardly human figure; it fell, perhaps finally, +for English drama. That manner of man--Arlecchino, or Harlequin-- +had outlived his playmates, Pantaleone, Brighella, Colombina, and +the Clown. A little of Pantaleone survives in old Capulet, a little +in the father of the Shrew, but the life of Mercutio in the one +play, and of the subordinate Tranio in the other, is less quickly +spent, less easily put out, than the smouldering of the old man. +Arlecchino frolics in and out of the tragedy and comedy of +Shakespeare, until he thus dies in his lightest, his brightest, his +most vital shape. + +Arlecchino, the tricksy and shifty spirit, the contriver, the +busybody, the trusty rogue, the wonder-worker, the man in disguise, +the mercurial one, lives on buoyantly in France to the age of +Moliere. He is officious and efficacious in the skin of Mascarille +and Ergaste and Scapin; but he tends to be a lacquey, with a +reference rather to Antiquity and the Latin comedy than to the +Middle Ages, as on the English stage his mere memory survives +differently to a later age in the person of "Charles, his friend." +What convinces me that he virtually died with Mercutio is chiefly +this--that this comrade of Romeo's lives so keenly as to be fully +capable of the death that he takes at Tybalt's sword-point; he lived +indeed, he dies indeed. Another thing that marks the close of a +career of ages is his loss of his long customary good luck. Who +ever heard of Arlecchino unfortunate before, at fault with his +sword-play, overtaken by tragedy? His time had surely come. The +gay companion was to bleed; Tybalt's sword had made a way. 'Twas +not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but it served. + +Some confusion comes to pass among the typical figures of the +primitive Italian play, because Harlequin, on that conventional +little stage of the past, has a hero's place, whereas when he +interferes in human affairs he is only the auxiliary. He might be +lover and bridegroom on the primitive stage, in the comedy of these +few and unaltered types; but when Pantaloon, Clown, and Harlequin +play with really human beings, then Harlequin can be no more than a +friend of the hero, the friend of the bridegroom. The five figures +of the old stage dance attendance; they play around the business of +those who have the dignity of mortality; they, poor immortals--a +clown who does not die, a pantaloon never far from death, who yet +does not die, a Columbine who never attains Desdemona's death of +innocence or Juliet's death of rectitude and passion--flit in the +backward places of the stage. + +Ariel fulfils his office, and is not of one kind with those he +serves. Is there a memory of Harlequin in that delicate figure? +Something of the subservient immortality, of the light indignity, +proper to Pantaleone, Brighella, Arlecchino, Colombina, and the +Clown, hovers away from the stage when Ariel is released from the +trouble of human things. + +Immortality, did I say? It was immortality until Mercutio fell. +And if some claim be made to it still because Harlequin has +transformed so many scenes for the pleasure of so many thousand +children, since Mercutio died, I must reply that our modern +Harlequin is no more than a marionnette; he has returned whence he +came. A man may play him, but he is--as he was first of all--a +doll. From doll-hood Arlecchino took life, and, so promoted, +flitted through a thousand comedies, only to be again what he first +was; save that, as once a doll played the man, so now a man plays +the doll. It is but a memory of Arlecchino that our children see, a +poor statue or image endowed with mobility rather than with life. + +With Mercutio, vanished the light heart that had given to the +serious ages of the world an hour's refuge from the unforgotten +burden of responsible conscience; the light heart assumed, borrowed, +made dramatically the spectator's own. We are not serious now, and +no heart now is quite light, even for an hour. + + + +LAUGHTER + + + +Times have been, it is said, merrier than these; but it is certain +nevertheless that laughter never was so honoured as now; were it not +for the paradox one might say, it never was so grave. Everywhere +the joke "emerges"--as an "elegant" writer might have it--emerges to +catch the attention of the sense of humour; and everywhere the sense +of humour wanders, watches, and waits to honour the appeal. + +It loiters, vaguely but perpetually willing. It wears (let the +violent personification be pardoned) a hanging lip, and a wrinkle in +abeyance, and an eye in suspense. It is much at the service of the +vagrant encounterer, and may be accosted by any chance daughters of +the game. It stands in untoward places, or places that were once +inappropriate, and is early at some indefinite appointment, some +ubiquitous tryst, with the compliant jest. + +All literature becomes a field of easy assignations; there is a +constant signalling, an endless recognition. Forms of approach are +remitted. And the joke and the sense of humour, with no surprise of +meeting, or no gaiety of strangeness, so customary has the +promiscuity become, go up and down the pages of the paper and the +book. See, again, the theatre. A somewhat easy sort of comic +acting is by so much the best thing upon our present stage that +little else can claim--paradox again apart--to be taken seriously. + +There is, in a word, a determination, an increasing tendency away +from the Oriental estimate of laughter as a thing fitter for women, +fittest for children, and unfitted for the beard. Laughter is +everywhere and at every moment proclaimed to be the honourable +occupation of men, and in some degree distinctive of men, and no +mean part of their prerogative and privilege. The sense of humour +is chiefly theirs, and those who are not men are to be admitted to +the jest upon their explanation. They will not refuse explanation. +And there is little upon which a man will so value himself as upon +that sense, "in England, now." + +Meanwhile, it would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like +rhetoric and the arts, a habit. And it is in some sort a habit when +it is not inevitable. If we ask ourselves why we laugh, we must +confess that we laugh oftenest because--being amused--we intend to +show that we are amused. We are right to make the sign, but a smile +would be as sure a signal as a laugh, and more sincere; it would but +be changing the convention; and the change would restore laughter +itself to its own place. We have fallen into the way of using it to +prove something--our sense of the goodness of the jest, to wit; but +laughter should not thus be used, it should go free. It is not a +demonstration, whether in logic, or--as the word demonstration is +now generally used--in emotion; and we do ill to charge it with that +office. + +Something of the Oriental idea of dignity might not be amiss among +such a people as ourselves containing wide and numerous classes who +laugh without cause: audiences; crowds; a great many clergymen, who +perhaps first fell into the habit in the intention of proving that +they were not gloomy; but a vast number of laymen also who had not +that excuse; and many women who laugh in their uncertainty as to +what is humorous and what is not. This last is the most harmless of +all kinds of superfluous laughter. When it carries an apology, a +confession of natural and genial ignorance, and when a gentle +creature laughs a laugh of hazard and experiment, she is to be more +than forgiven. What she must not do is to laugh a laugh of +instruction, and as it were retrieve the jest that was never worth +the taking. + +There are, besides, a few women who do not disturb themselves as to +a sense of humour, but who laugh from a sense of happiness. +Childish is that trick, and sweet. For children, who always laugh +because they must, and never by way of proof or sign, laugh only +half their laughs out of their sense of humour; they laugh the rest +under a mere stimulation: because of abounding breath and blood; +because some one runs behind them, for example, and movement does so +jog their spirits that their legs fail them, for laughter, without a +jest. + +If ever the day should come when men and women shall be content to +signal their perception of humour by the natural smile, and shall +keep the laugh for its own unpremeditated act, shall laugh seldom, +and simply, and not thrice at the same thing--once for foolish +surprise, and twice for tardy intelligence, and thrice to let it be +known that they are amused--then it may be time to persuade this +laughing nation not to laugh so loud as it is wont in public. The +theatre audiences of louder-speaking nations laugh lower than ours. +The laugh that is chiefly a signal of the laugher's sense of the +ridiculous is necessarily loud; and it has the disadvantage of +covering what we may perhaps wish to hear from the actors. It is a +public laugh, and no ordinary citizen is called upon for a public +laugh. He may laugh in public, but let it be with private laughter +there. + +Let us, if anything like a general reform be possible in these times +of dispersion and of scattering, keep henceforth our sense of humour +in a place better guarded, as something worth a measure of +seclusion. It should not loiter in wait for the alms of a joke in +adventurous places. For the sense of humour has other things to do +than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter. It has +negative tasks of valid virtue; for example, the standing and +waiting within call of tragedy itself, where, excluded, it may keep +guard. + +No reasonable man will aver that the Oriental manners are best. +This would be to deny Shakespeare as his comrades knew him, where +the wit "out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine," and to deny Ben +Jonson's "tart Aristophanes, neat Terence, witty Plautus," and the +rest. Doubtless Greece determined the custom for all our Occident; +but none the less might the modern world grow more sensible of the +value of composure. + +To none other of the several powers of our souls do we so give rein +as to this of humour, and none other do we indulge with so little +fastidiousness. It is as though there were honour in governing the +other senses, and honour in refusing to govern this. It is as +though we were ashamed of reason here, and shy of dignity, and +suspicious of temperance, and diffident of moderation, and too eager +to thrust forward that which loses nothing by seclusion. + + + +THE RHYTHM OF LIFE + + + +If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. +Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to +the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, +ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. +Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last +week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again +next week or next year. Happiness is not a matter of events; it +depends upon the tides of the mind. Disease is metrical, closing in +at shorter and shorter periods towards death, sweeping abroad at +longer and longer intervals towards recovery. Sorrow for one cause +was intolerable yesterday, and will be intolerable to-morrow; to-day +it is easy to bear, but the cause has not passed. Even the burden +of a spiritual distress unsolved is bound to leave the heart to a +temporary peace; and remorse itself does not remain--it returns. +Gaiety takes us by a dear surprise. If we had made a course of +notes of its visits, we might have been on the watch, and would have +had an expectation instead of a discovery. No one makes such +observations; in all the diaries of students of the interior world, +there have never come to light the records of the Kepler of such +cycles. But Thomas e Kempis knew of the recurrences, if he did not +measure them. In his cell alone with the elements--"What wouldst +thou more than these? for out of these were all things made"--he +learnt the stay to be found in the depth of the hour of bitterness, +and the remembrance that restrains the soul at the coming of the +moment of delight, giving it a more conscious welcome, but presaging +for it an inexorable flight. And "rarely, rarely comest thou," +sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of Delight. +Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to our +service--Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial +violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is +thus compelled. THAT flits upon an orbit elliptically or +parabolically or hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what +trysts with Time. + +It seems fit that Shelley and the author of the "Imitation" should +both have been keen and simple enough to perceive these flights, and +to guess at the order of this periodicity. Both souls were in close +touch with the spirits of their several worlds, and no deliberate +human rules, no infractions of the liberty and law of the universal +movement, kept from them the knowledge of recurrences. Eppur si +muove. They knew that presence does not exist without absence; they +knew that what is just upon its flight of farewell is already on its +long path of return. They knew that what is approaching to the very +touch is hastening towards departure. "O wind," cried Shelley, in +autumn, + + +O wind, +If winter comes can spring be far behind? + + +They knew that the flux is equal to the reflux; that to interrupt +with unlawful recurrences, out of time, is to weaken the impulse of +onset and retreat; the sweep and impetus of movement. To live in +constant efforts after an equal life, whether the equality be sought +in mental production, or in spiritual sweetness, or in the joy of +the senses, is to live without either rest or full activity. The +souls of certain of the saints, being singularly simple and single, +have been in the most complete subjection to the law of periodicity. +Ecstasy and desolation visited them by seasons. They endured, +during spaces of vacant time, the interior loss of all for which +they had sacrificed the world. They rejoiced in the uncovenanted +beatitude of sweetness alighting in their hearts. Like them are the +poets whom, three times or ten times in the course of a long life, +the Muse has approached, touched, and forsaken. And yet hardly like +them; not always so docile, nor so wholly prepared for the +departure, the brevity, of the golden and irrevocable hour. Few +poets have fully recognized the metrical absence of their muse. For +full recognition is expressed in one only way--silence. + +It has been found that several tribes in Africa and in America +worship the moon, and not the sun; a great number worship both; but +no tribes are known to adore the sun, and not the moon. On her +depend the tides; and she is Selene, mother of Herse, bringer of the +dews that recurrently irrigate lands where rain is rare. More than +any other companion of earth is she the Measurer. Early Indo- +Germanic languages knew her by that name. Her metrical phases are +the symbol of the order of recurrence. Constancy in approach and in +departure is the reason of her inconstancies. Juliet will not +receive a vow spoken in invocation of the moon; but Juliet did not +live to know that love itself has tidal times--lapses and ebbs which +are due to the metrical rule of the interior heart, but which the +lover vainly and unkindly attributes to some outward alteration in +the beloved. For man--except those elect already named--is hardly +aware of periodicity. The individual man either never learns it +fully, or learns it late. And he learns it so late, because it is a +matter of cumulative experience upon which cumulative evidence is +long lacking. It is in the after-part of each life that the law is +learnt so definitely as to do away with the hope or fear of +continuance. That young sorrow comes so near to despair is a result +of this young ignorance. So is the early hope of great achievement. +Life seems so long, and its capacity so great, to one who knows +nothing of all the intervals it needs must hold--intervals between +aspirations, between actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses of +sleep. And life looks impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware +of the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. It would be for their +peace to learn that there is a tide in the affairs of men, in a +sense more subtle--if it is not too audacious to add a meaning to +Shakespeare--than the phrase was meant to contain. Their joy is +flying away from them on its way home; their life will wax and wane; +and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in its phases, +knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all things--a +sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity. + + + +DOMUS ANGUSTA + + + +The narrow house is a small human nature compelled to a large human +destiny, charged with a fate too great, a history too various, for +its slight capacities. Men have commonly complained of fate; but +their complaints have been of the smallness, not of the greatness, +of the human lot. A disproportion--all in favour of man--between +man and his destiny is one of the things to be taken for granted in +literature: so frequent and so easy is the utterance of the +habitual lamentation as to the trouble of a "vain capacity," so well +explained has it ever been. + + +Thou hast not half the power to do me harm +That I have to be hurt, + + +discontented man seems to cry to Heaven, taking the words of the +brave Emilia. But inarticulate has been the voice within the narrow +house. Obviously it never had its poet. Little elocution is there, +little argument or definition, little explicitness. And yet for +every vain capacity we may assuredly count a thousand vain +destinies, for every liberal nature a thousand liberal fates. It is +the trouble of the wide house we hear of, clamorous of its +disappointments and desires. The narrow house has no echoes; yet +its pathetic shortcoming might well move pity. On that strait stage +is acted a generous tragedy; to that inadequate soul is intrusted an +enormous sorrow; a tempest of movement makes its home within that +slender nature; and heroic happiness seeks that timorous heart. + +We may, indeed, in part know the narrow house by its +inarticulateness--not, certainly, its fewness of words, but its +inadequacy and imprecision of speech. For, doubtless, right +language enlarges the soul as no other power or influence may do. +Who, for instance, but trusts more nobly for knowing the full word +of his confidence? Who but loves more penetratingly for possessing +the ultimate syllable of his tenderness? There is a "pledging of +the word," in another sense than the ordinary sense of troth and +promise. The poet pledges his word, his sentence, his verse, and +finds therein a peculiar sanction. And I suppose that even physical +pain takes on an edge when it not only enforces a pang but whispers +a phrase. Consciousness and the word are almost as closely united +as thought and the word. Almost--not quite; in spite of its +inexpressive speech, the narrow house is aware and sensitive beyond, +as it were, its poor power. + +But as to the whole disparity between the destiny and the nature, we +know it to be general. Life is great that is trivially transmitted; +love is great that is vulgarly experienced. Death, too, is a heroic +virtue; and to the keeping of us all is death committed: death, +submissive in the indocile, modest in the fatuous, several in the +vulgar, secret in the familiar. It is destructive, because it not +only closes but contradicts life. Unlikely people die. The one +certain thing, it is also the one improbable. A dreadful paradox is +perhaps wrought upon a little nature that is incapable of death and +yet is constrained to die. That is a true destruction, and the +thought of it is obscure. + +Happy literature corrects all this disproportion by its immortal +pause. It does not bid us follow man or woman to an illogical +conclusion. Mrs. Micawber never does desert Mr. Micawber. +Considering her mental powers, by the way, an illogical conclusion +for her would be manifestly inappropriate. Shakespeare, indeed, +having seen a life whole, sees it to an end: sees it out, and +Falstaff dies. More than Promethean was the audacity that, having +kindled, quenched that spark. But otherwise the grotesque man in +literature is immortal, and with something more significant than the +immortality awarded to him in the sayings of rhetoric; he is +perdurable because he is not completed. His humours are strangely +matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; for +there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be +mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I +thank my fellow mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke +that the French so pleasantly call une joyeusete; these are to smile +at. But the gay injustice of laughter is between me and the man or +woman in a book, in fiction, or on the stage in a play. + +That narrow house--there is sometimes a message from its living +windows. Its bewilderment, its reluctance, its defect, show by +moments from eyes that are apt to express none but common things. +There are allusions unawares, involuntary appeals, in those brief +glances. Far from me and from my friends be the misfortune of +meeting such looks in reply to pain of our inflicting. To be clever +and sensitive and to hurt the foolish and the stolid--"wouldst thou +do such a deed for all the world?" + + + +INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE + + + +I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words +in union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union +in the art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are +for each poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to +take the cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in +place of the virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly +consent to take them for ordering even the most habitual of daily +affairs--is to forgo Innocence and Experience at once and together. +Obviously, Experience can be nothing except personal and separate; +and Innocence of a singularly solitary quality is his who does not +dip his hands into other men's histories, and does not give to his +own word the common sanction of other men's summaries and +conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and Experience in one, and +take them as a sign of the necessary and noble isolation of man from +man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to forgo that manner of +personal separateness, and to use the things of others, I think I +would rather appropriate their future than their past. Let me put +on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must +borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified +ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my +memory with an unjustifiable history. + +And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love- +poetry consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no +reluctance in adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom +they have not even been introduced. Their verse is full of ready- +made memories, various, numerous, and cruel. No single life-- +supposing it to be a liberal life concerned with something besides +sex--could quite suffice for so much experience, so much +disillusion, so much deception. To achieve that tone in its +fullness it is necessary to take for one's own the praeterita (say) +of Alfred de Musset and of the men who helped him--not to live but-- +to have lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than any man +lives, and to make a common hoard of erotic remembrances with all +kinds of poets. + +As the Franciscans wear each other's old habits, and one friar goes +about darned because of another's rending, so the poet of a certain +order grows cynical for the sake of many poets' old loves. Not +otherwise will the resultant verse succeed in implying so much--or +rather so many, in the feminine plural. The man of very sensitive +individuality might hesitate at the adoption. The Franciscan is +understood to have a fastidiousness and to overcome it. And yet, if +choice were, one might wish rather to make use of one's fellow men's +old shoes than put their old secrets to use, and dress one's art in +a motley of past passions. Moreover, to utilize the mental +experience of many is inevitably to use their verse and phrase. For +the rest, all the traits of this love-poetry are familiar enough. +One of them is the absence of the word of promise and pledge, the +loss of the earliest and simplest of the impulses of love: which is +the vow. "Till death!" "For ever!" are cries too simple and too +natural to be commonplace, and in their denial there is the least +tolerable of banalities--that of other men's disillusions. + +Perfect personal distinctness of Experience would be in literature a +delicate Innocence. Not a passage of cheapness, of greed, of +assumption, of sloth, or of any such sins in the work of him whose +love-poetry were thus true, and whose pudeur of personality thus +simple and inviolate. This is the private man, in other words the +gentleman, who will neither love nor remember in common. + + + +THE HOURS OF SLEEP + + + +There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None the less +are they his by some state within the mind, which answers +rhythmically and punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, +without drowsiness, without languor, and without gloom, the night +mind of man is yet not his day mind; he has night-powers of feeling +which are at their highest in dreams, but are night's as well as +sleep's. The powers of the mind in dreams, which are inexplicable, +are not altogether baffled because the mind is awake; it is the hour +of their return as it is the hour of a tide's, and they do return. + +In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to hamper +her influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the nerves +of the sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of anger and +love, contempt and terror to which not only can no event of the real +day persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not even the +capacity. This increase of capacity, which is the dream's, is +punctual to the night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at +arm's length. + +The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and +their dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he +puts off his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the +other state, by day. "I shall be able to bear this when I am grown +up" is not oftener in a young child's mind than "I shall endure to +think of it in the day-time." By this he confesses the double habit +and double experience, not to be interchanged, and communicating +together only by memory and hope. + +Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night is +to miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might +imagine the rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to +the time, and tempering the extremities of either state by messages +of remembrance and expectancy. + +Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any +delirium, would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less +would be the loss of him who had not exercised his waking thought +under the influence of the hours claimed by dreams. And as to +choosing between day and night, or guessing whether the state of day +or dark is the truer and the more natural, he would be rash who +should make too sure. + +In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too +much. That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of +night as to lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the +quietude. The hours of sleep are too much altered when they are +filled by lights and crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, +and her rhythm broken, as when the larks caged in populous streets +make ineffectual springs and sing daybreak songs when the London gas +is lighted. Nature is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, +may be set all astray as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar +hours of sleep amid so much noise and among so many people that you +shall not be aware of them; you may thus merely force and prolong +the day. But to do so is not to live well both lives; it is not to +yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in +the swing of change. + +There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such a +cradle of alternate hours. "It cannot be," says Herbert, "that I am +he on whom Thy tempests fell all night." + +It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, +has the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines in +English poetry--lines that cast sunrise shadows--are those of Blake, +written confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow and +dreams, and those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; all +is as dark as he can make it with the "bags of soot"; but the boy's +dream of the green plain and the river is too bright for day. So, +indeed, is another brightness of Blake's, which is also, in his +poem, a child's dream, and was certainly conceived by him in the +hours of sleep, in which he woke to write the Songs of Innocence:- + + +O what land is the land of dreams? +What are its mountains, and what are its streams? +O father, I saw my mother there, +Among the lilies by waters fair. +Among the lambs clothed in white, +She walk'd with her Thomas in sweet delight. + + +To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision. + +Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. In +some landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, +and it was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and +dreams claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an +illumination. Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in +summer so many of the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He +carries the mood of man's night out into the sunshine--Corot did so- +-and lives the life of night, in all its genius, in the presence of +a risen sun. In the only time when the heart can dream of light, in +the night of visions, with the rhythmic power of night at its dark +noon in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of the actual sun. + +He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. To +that life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other +kinds of beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the +extreme perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the +explanation of all the memories of dreams recalled by these +visionary paintings, done in earlier years than were those, better +known, that are the Corots of all the world. Every man who knows +what it is to dream of landscape meets with one of these works of +Corot's first manner with a cry, not of welcome only, but of +recognition. Here is morning perceived by the spirit of the hours +of sleep. + + + +SOLITUDE + + + +The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom +civilization has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom +civilization has given little but its reaction, its rebound, its +chips, its refuse, its shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to +them solitude is a right foregone or a luxury unattained; a right +foregone, we may name it, in the case of the nearly savage, and a +luxury unattained in the case of the nearly refined. These has the +movement of the world thronged together into some blind by-way. + +Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, +and virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, +unclaimed. They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their +kingdoms they are ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have +not guessed that they own for every man a space inviolate, a place +of unhidden liberty and of no obscure enfranchisement. They do not +claim even the solitude of closed corners, the narrow privacy of the +lock and key; nor could they command so much. For the solitude that +has a sky and a horizon they know not how to wish. + +It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the +woods, and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be +measured by miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are +freshly and freely the dominion of every man for the day of his +possession. There is loneliness for innumerable solitaries. As +many days as there are in all the ages, so many solitudes are there +for men. This is the open house of the earth; no one is refused. +Nor is the space shortened or the silence marred because, one by +one, men in multitudes have been alone there before. Solitude is +separate experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be numbered by days, +but by men themselves. Every man of the living and every man of the +dead might have had his "privacy of light." + +It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; +and a thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult +to get for a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude +be enclosed, it is still an open solitude, so there be "no cloister +for the eyes," and a space of far country or a cloud in the sky be +privy to your hiding-place. But the best solitude does not hide at +all. + +This the people who have drifted together into the streets live +whole lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation +of even the solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never +have a whole hour alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent +companionship, as people may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical +choice, familiar with one another and not intimate. They live under +careless observation and subject to a vagabond curiosity. Theirs is +the involuntary and perhaps the unconscious loss which is futile and +barren. + +One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or +the hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, +visible, without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication +and practice of action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or +futile loss, and they have a conviction, and they bestow the +conviction, of solitude deferred. + +Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone +and inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in +many a drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. +The girl stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the +sun for the closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as she +looks, out of sight. + +Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural +solitude of a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed +and talked about, handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, +and there is so much importunate service going forward, that a woman +is hardly alone long enough to become aware, in recollection, how +her own blood moves separately, beside her, with another rhythm and +different pulses. All is commonplace until the doors are closed +upon the two. This unique intimacy is a profound retreat, an +absolute seclusion. It is more than single solitude; it is a +redoubled isolation more remote than mountains, safer than valleys, +deeper than forests, and further than mid-sea. + +That solitude partaken--the only partaken solitude in the world--is +the Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and a +betrayal of that confidence might well be held to be the least +pardonable of all crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as +sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying +beside the longer, as a child's foot runs. But the favourite crime +of the sentimentalist is that of a woman against her child. Her +power, her intimacy, her opportunity, that should be her accusers, +are held to excuse her. She gains the most slovenly of indulgences +and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar grounds that her crime +was easy. + +Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by +the way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from +common opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the +situation. He was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was +his secret, and the public was not privy to his artistic conscience. +He does violence to the obligations of which he is aware, and which +the world does not know very explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he +is lawless in a more literal sense, but only hopes the world will +believe that he has a whole code of his own making. It would, +nevertheless, be less unworthy to break obvious rules obviously in +the obvious face of the public, and to abide the common rebuke. + +It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and +wide and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial +of the accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace or +so aside, is enough to lead thither. + +A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very +sincerely. In order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep +the published promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover +of long seclusion or of a very life of loneliness. He should have +gained the state of solitariness which is a condition of life quite +unlike any other. The traveller who may have gone astray in +countries where an almost life-long solitude is possible knows how +invincibly apart are the lonely figures he has seen in desert places +there. Their loneliness is broken by his passage, it is true, but +hardly so to them. They look at him, but they are not aware that he +looks at them. Nay, they look at him as though they were invisible. +Their un-self-consciousness is absolute; it is in the wild degree. +They are solitaries, body and soul; even when they are curious, and +turn to watch the passer-by, they are essentially alone. Now, no +one ever found that attitude in a squire's figure, or that look in +any country gentleman's eyes. The squire is not a life-long +solitary. He never bore himself as though he were invisible. He +never had the impersonal ways of a herdsman in the remoter +Apennines, with a blind, blank hut in the rocks for his dwelling. +Millet would not even have taken him as a model for a solitary in +the briefer and milder sylvan solitudes of France. And yet nothing +but a life-long, habitual, and wild solitariness would be quite +proportionate to a park of any magnitude. + +If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, +so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual +crowds. It is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris +expression. It is the quickly caught, though not interested, look, +the dull but ready glance of those who do not know of their +forfeited place apart; who have neither the open secret nor the +close; no reserve, no need of refuge, no flight nor impulse of +flight; no moods but what they may brave out in the street, no hope +of news from solitary counsels. + + + +DECIVILIZED + + + +The difficulty of dealing--in the course of any critical duty--with +decivilized man lies in this: when you accuse him of vulgarity-- +sparing him no doubt the word--he defends himself against the charge +of barbarism. Especially from new soil--remote, colonial--he faces +you, bronzed, with a half conviction of savagery, partly persuaded +of his own youthfulness of race. He writes, and recites, poems +about ranches and canyons; they are designed to betray the +recklessness of his nature and to reveal the good that lurks in the +lawless ways of a young society. He is there to explain himself, +voluble, with a glossary for his own artless slang. But his +colonialism is only provincialism very articulate. The new air does +but make old decadences seem more stale; the young soil does but set +into fresh conditions the ready-made, the uncostly, the refuse +feeling of a race decivilizing. He who played long this pattering +part of youth, hastened to assure you with so self-denying a face he +did not wear war-paint and feathers, that it became doubly difficult +to communicate to him that you had suspected him of nothing wilder +than a second-hand (figurative) dress coat. And when it was a +question not of rebuke, but of praise, even the American was ill- +content with the word of the judicious who lauded him for some +delicate successes in continuing something of the literature of +England, something of the art of France; he was more eager for the +applause that stimulated him to write poems in prose form and to +paint panoramic landscape, after brief training in academies of +native inspiration. Even now English voices are constantly calling +upon America to begin--to begin, for the world is expectant. +Whereas there is no beginning for her, but instead a fine and +admirable continuity which only a constant care can guide into +sustained advance. + +But decivilized man is not peculiar to new soil. The English town, +too, knows him in all his dailiness. In England, too, he has a +literature, an art, a music, all his own--derived from many and +various things of price. Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity +and cheapness, is impossible without a beautiful past. Its chief +characteristic--which is futility, not failure--could not be +achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory reproduction, the +quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, especially the +utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic quality, +purity, simplicity, precision--all these are among the antecedents +of trash. It is after them; it is also, alas, because of them. And +nothing can be much sadder that such a proof of what may possibly be +the failure of derivation. + +Evidently we cannot choose our posterity. Reversing the steps of +time, we may, indeed choose backwards. We may give our thoughts +noble forefathers. Well begotten, well born our fancies must be; +they shall be also well derived. We have a voice in decreeing our +inheritance, and not our inheritance only, but our heredity. Our +minds may trace upwards and follow their ways to the best well-heads +of the arts. The very habit of our thoughts may be persuaded one +way unawares by their antenatal history. Their companions must be +lovely, but need be no lovelier than their ancestors; and being so +fathered and so husbanded, our thoughts may be intrusted to keep the +counsels of literature. + +Such is our confidence in a descent we know. But, of a sequel which +of us is sure? Which of us is secured against the dangers of +subsequent depreciation? And, moreover, which of us shall trace the +contemporary tendencies, the one towards honour, the other towards +dishonour? Or who shall discover why derivation becomes +degeneration, and where and when and how the bastardy befalls? The +decivilized have every grace as the antecedent of their vulgarities, +every distinction as the precedent of their mediocrities. No +ballad-concert song, feign it sigh, frolic, or laugh, but has the +excuse that the feint was suggested, was made easy, by some living +sweetness once. Nor are the decivilized to blame as having in their +own persons possessed civilization and marred it. They did not +possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an +inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can +hardly do other than continue. + +Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and +multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because they are +many; but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what +dullness in their future! To the eye that has reluctantly +discovered this truth--that the vulgarized are not un-civilized, and +that there is no growth for them--it does not look like a future at +all. More ballad-concerts, more quaint English, more robustious +barytone songs, more piecemeal pictures, more colonial poetry, more +young nations with withered traditions. Yet it is before this +prospect that the provincial overseas lifts up his voice in a boast +or a promise common enough among the incapable young, but pardonable +only in senility. He promises the world a literature, an art, that +shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just +built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain words +were dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful and +pitiable as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them +when they are the promise of an impotent people? "I will do such +things: what they are yet I know not." + + + +THE SPIRIT OF PLACE + + + +With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets +have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too +much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her +inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The +bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature. + +To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake +together a nightingale's notes, or strike or drive them into haste, +nor can you make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your +turn, whereas wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere +movement and hustling. I have known some grim bells, with not a +single joyous note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human +festival, with their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop +of Hereford had again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry +highwayman. + +The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the +bellringer, and the chimes await their appointed time to fly--wild +prisoners--by twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives-- +one or twelve taking wing--they are sudden, they are brief, they are +gone; they are delivered from the close hands of this actual +present. Not in vain is the sudden upper door opened against the +sky; they are away, hours of the past. + +Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most +surely after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of +France when one has arrived by night; they are no more to be +forgotten than the bells in "Parsifal." They mingle with the sound +of feet in unknown streets, they are the voices of an unknown tower; +they are loud in their own language. The spirit of place, which is +to be seen in the shapes of the fields and the manner of the crops, +to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the breath of the earth, +overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of some black-smith, +calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks its local +tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and +greatly by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you +know how familiar, how childlike, how lifelong it is in the ears of +the people. The bells are strange, and you know how homely they +must be. Their utterances are, as it were, the classics of a +dialect. + +Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its +subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, +seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, +its habits, its breath, its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, +having been perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one +living body of remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place--not to +be pursued, for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never +absent, without variation--lurks in the by-ways and rules over the +towers, indestructible, an indescribable unity. It awaits us always +in its ancient and eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within +its immemorial boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white +roads outside have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give +promise not of its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular +and unforeseen goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy +to be made. Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay +such a visit? And if by good fortune it is a child who is the +pilgrim, the spirit of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for +antiquity and the conceiver of antiquity (who is only a child) know +one another; nor is there a more delicate perceiver of locality than +a child. He is well used to words and voices that he does not +understand, and this is a condition of his simplicity; and when +those unknown words are bells, loud in the night, they are to him as +homely and as old as lullabies. + +If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in +gay measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a +wedding--bells that would step to quite another and a less agile +march with a better grace--there are belfries that hold far sweeter +companies. If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a +most curious local immemorial music in many a campanile on the +heights. Their way is for the ringers to play a tune on the +festivals, and the tunes are not hymn tunes or popular melodies, but +proper bell-tunes, made for bells. Doubtless they were made in +times better versed than ours in the sub-divisions of the arts, and +better able to understand the strength that lies ready in the mere +little submission to the means of a little art, and to the limits-- +nay, the very embarrassments--of those means. If it were but +possible to give here a real bell-tune--which cannot be, for those +melodies are rather long--the reader would understand how some +village musician of the past used his narrow means as a composer for +the bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, fancy, +and what effect of liberty. + +These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. +The belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, +the time when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, +needless to say, this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. +At that time they must have had foundries for bells of tender +voices, and pure, warm, light, and golden throats, precisely tuned. +The hounds of Theseus had not a more just scale, tuned in a peal, +than a North Italian belfry holds in leash. But it does not send +them out in a mere scale, it touches them in the order of the game +of a charming melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by man this is by +far the most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the great +churches. Giotto's coloured tower in Florence, that carries the +bells for Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi's silent dome, does +not ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, +depth, and dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly +fills the country. + +The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can +therefore hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no +other bells in earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly set +open to the cloud, on a festa morning, to let fly those soft-voiced +flocks, but the nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our +local tune is uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, +secluded, sequestered art of composing melodies for bells--charming +division of an art, having its own ends and means, and keeping its +own wings for unfolding by law--dwells in these solitary places. No +tunes in a town would get this hearing, or would be made clear to +the end of their frolic amid such a wide and lofty silence. + +Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; +the custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the +nervous tourist complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact +he is made to hear an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous +tourist has not, perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of +place does not signal to him to go and find it among innumerable +hills, where one by one, one by one, the belfries stand and play +their tunes. Variable are those lonely melodies, having a differing +gaiety for the festivals; and a pitiful air is played for the burial +of a villager. + +As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten +when the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in +thought to earth's untethered sounds. This is Milton's curfew, that +sways across one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry-- +"the wide-watered." + + + +POPULAR BURLESQUE + + + +The more I consider that strange inversion of idolatry which is the +motive of Guy Fawkes Day and which annually animates the by-streets +with the sound of processionals and of recessionals--a certain +popular version of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I +hear the cries of derision raised by the makers of this likeness of +something unworshipful on the earth beneath, so much the more am I +convinced that the national humour is that of banter, and that no +other kind of mirth so gains as does this upon the public taste. + +Here, for example, is the popular idea of a street festival; that +day is as the people will actually have it, with their own +invention, their own material, their own means, and their own +spirit. They owe nothing on this occasion to the promptings or the +subscriptions of the classes that are apt to take upon themselves +the direction and tutelage of the people in relation to any form of +art. Here on every fifth of November the people have their own way +with their own art; and their way is to offer the service of the +image-maker, reversed in hissing and irony, to some creature of +their hands. + +It is a wanton fancy; and perhaps no really barbarous people is +capable of so overturning the innocent plan of original portraiture. +To make a mental image of all things that are named to the ear, or +conceived in the mind, being an industrious custom of children and +childish people which lapses in the age of much idle reading, the +making of a material image is the still more diligent and more +sedulous act, whereby the primitive man controls and caresses his +own fancy. He may take arms anon, disappointed, against his own +work; but did he ever do that work in malice from the outset? + +From the statue to the doll, images are all outraged in the person +of the guy. If it were but an antithesis to the citizen's idea of +something admirable which he might carry in procession on some other +day, the carrying of the guy would be less gloomy; but he would hoot +at a suspicion that he might admire anything so much as to make a +good-looking doll in its praise. There is absolutely no image- +making art in the practice of our people, except only this art of +rags and contumely. Or, again, if the revenge taken upon a guy were +that of anger for a certain cause, the destruction would not be the +work of so thin an annual malice and of so heartless a rancour. + +But the single motive is that popular irony which becomes daily--or +so it seems--more and more the holiday temper of the majority. +Mockery is the only animating impulse, and a loud incredulity is the +only intelligence. They make an image of some one in whom they do +not believe, to deride it. Say that the guy is the effigy of an +agitator in the cause of something to be desired; the street man and +boy have then two motives of mocking: they think the reform to be +not worth doing, and they are willing to suspect the reformer of +some kind of hypocrisy. Perhaps the guy of this occasion is most +characteristic of all guys in London. The people, having him or her +to deride, do not even wait for the opportunity of their annual +procession. They anticipate time, and make an image when it is not +November, and sell it at the market of the kerb. + +Hear, moreover, the songs which some nameless one makes for the +citizens, perhaps in thoughtful renunciation of the making of their +laws. These, too, seem to have for their inspiration the universal +taunt. They are, indeed, most in vogue when they have no meaning at +all--this it is that makes the succes fou (and here Paris is of one +mind with London) of the street; but short of such a triumph, and +when a meaning is discernible, it is an irony. + +Bank Holiday courtship (if the inappropriate word can be pardoned) +seems to be done, in real life, entirely by banter. And it is the +strangest thing to find that the banter of women by men is the most +mocking in the exchange. If the burlesque of the maid's tongue is +provocative, that of the man's is derisive. Somewhat of the order +of things as they stood before they were inverted seems to remain, +nevertheless, as a memory; nay, to give the inversion a kind of +lagging interest. Irony is made more complete by the remembrance, +and by an implicit allusion to the state of courtship in other +classes, countries, or times. Such an allusion no doubt gives all +its peculiar twang to the burlesque of love. + +With the most strange submission these Englishwomen in their +millions undergo all degrees of derision from the tongues of men who +are their mates, equals, contemporaries, perhaps in some obscure +sense their suitors, and in a strolling manner, with one knows not +what ungainly motive of reserve, even their admirers. Nor from +their tongues only; for, to pass the time, the holiday swain annoys +the girl; and if he wears her hat, it is ten to one that he has +plucked it off with a humorous disregard of her dreadful pins. + +We have to believe that unmocked love has existence in the streets, +because of the proof that is published when a man shoots a woman who +has rejected him; and from this also do we learn to believe that a +woman of the burlesque classes is able to reject. But for that sign +we should find little or nothing intelligible in what we see or +overhear of the drama of love in popular life. + +In its easy moments, in its leisure, at holiday time, it baffles all +tradition, and shows us the spirit of comedy clowning after a +fashion that is insular and not merely civic. You hear the same +twang in country places; and whether the English maid, having, like +the antique, thrown her apple at her shepherd, run into the thickets +of Hampstead Heath or among sylvan trees, it seems that the most +humorous thing to be done by the swain would be, in the opinion in +vogue, to stroll another way. Insular I have said, because I have +not seen the like of this fashion whether in America or elsewhere in +Europe. + +But the chief inversion of all, proved summarily by the annual +inversion of the worship of images on the fifth of November, is that +of a sentence of Wordsworth's--"We live by admiration." + + + +HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT + + + +Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of +communication with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the +interior act most gentle; there may be a tacit apology, and a +profound misgiving unexpressed; a reluctance not only to refuse but +to be arbiter; a dislike of the office; a regret, whether for the +unequal distribution of social luck or for a purse left at home, +equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts no word or sign, nothing +whatever of intercourse. If a dog or a cat accosts you, or a calf +in a field comes close to you with a candid infant face and +breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind of animal comes +to you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, you acknowledge +it. But the beggar to whom you give nothing expects no answer to a +question, no recognition of his presence, not so much as the turn of +your eyelid in his direction, and never a word to excuse you. + +Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer +to the beggar's remark than to leave a shop without "Good morning." +When complaint is made of the modern social manner--that it has no +merit but what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain from +courtesy with more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely +requires--the habit of manner towards beggars is probably not so +much as thought of. To the simply human eye, however, the prevalent +manner towards beggars is a striking thing; it is significant of so +much. + +Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the +intelligible act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity +that marks the caste answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, +in Italy, for example. An elderly Italian lady on her slow way from +her own ancient ancestral palazzo to the village, and accustomed to +meet, empty-handed, a certain number of beggars, answers them by a +retort which would be, literally translated, "Excuse me, dear; I, +too, am a poor devil," and the last word she naturally puts into the +feminine. + +Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect--a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal terms +as nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present the +phrase to English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. The +excellent woman who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, +and raises no smile. It is only in another climate, and amid other +manners, that one cannot recall it without a smile. To a mind +having a lively sense of contrast it is not a little pleasant to +imagine an elderly lady of corresponding station in England replying +so to importunities for alms; albeit we have nothing answering to +the good fellowship of a broad patois used currently by rich and +poor, and yet slightly grotesque in the case of all speakers--a +dialect in which, for example, no sermon is ever preached, and in +which no book is ever printed, except for fun; a dialect "familiar, +but by no means vulgar." Besides, even if our Englishwoman could by +any possibility bring herself to say to a mendicant, "Excuse me, +dear; I, too, am a poor devil," she would still not have the +opportunity of putting the last word punctually into the feminine, +which does so complete the character of the sentence. + +The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase +of excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And +everywhere in the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who +suddenly begins to beg from you when you least expected it, calls +you "my daughter," you can hardly reply without kindness. Where the +tourist is thoroughly well known, doubtless the company of beggars +are used to savage manners in the rich; but about the byways and +remoter places there must still be some dismay at the anger, the +silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive haughtiness wherewith +the opportunity of alms-giving is received by travellers. + +In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so +emphatically as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so +manifestly put themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant +to see them there; but silence or a storm of impersonal protest--a +protest that appeals vaguely less to the beggars than to some not +impossible police--does not seem the most appropriate manner of +rebuking them. We have, it may be, a scruple on the point of human +dignity, compromised by the entreaty and the thanks of the +mendicant; but we have a strange way of vindicating that dignity +when we refuse to man, woman, or child the recognition of a simply +human word. Nay, our offence is much the greater of the two. It is +not merely a rough and contemptuous intercourse, it is the refusal +of intercourse--the last outrage. How do we propose to redress +those conditions of life that annoy us when a brother whines, if we +deny the presence, the voice, and the being of this brother, and if, +because fortune has refused him money, we refuse him existence? + +We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold +it in the indifference of the wise. "Have patience, little saint," +is a phrase that might teach us the cheerful way to endure our own +unintelligible fortunes in the midst, say, of the population of a +hill-village among the most barren of the Maritime Alps, where huts +of stone stand among the stones of an unclothed earth, and there is +no sign of daily bread. The people, albeit unused to travellers, +yet know by instinct what to do, and beg without the delay of a +moment as soon as they see your unwonted figure. Let it be taken +for granted that you give all you can; some form of refusal becomes +necessary at last, and the gentlest--it is worth while to remember-- +is the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the portent +of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of +ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is +made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, +uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, +thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent +to the violence of the rich. + +It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If a +beggar is still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer +and comfort us to see; he practises not merely the conventional +seeming, which is hardly intended to convince, but a more subtle and +dramatic kind of semblance, of no good influence upon the morals of +the road. He no longer trusts the world with a sight of his gaiety. +He is not a wholehearted mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty +of unstable balance whereby an unattached creature can go in a new +direction with a new wind. The merry beggar was the only adventurer +free to yield to the lighter touches of chance, the touches that a +habit of resistance has made imperceptible to the seated and stable +social world. + +The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, +by tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has +been stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, +led underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys of +the song of the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to +capture, have ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world's +ears. But it seems that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy +beggar is still the subject of a Spanish song. + +That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw's or a robber's, +it is not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling +note of a man who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill- +fortune, but takes it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it +at the hand of unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own +choice of bonds, but has not broken his own by force. It seems, +therefore, the song of an indomitable liberty of movement, light +enough for the puffs of a zephyr chance. + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross +it, unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of +the monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see +more than beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her +in guest-house and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin--the first of the +dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, +and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of +buildings in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown +habit is this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills +of finer, sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an +Umbrian sky. Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, +and from the foot of its final crucifix you can see the sunrise +touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the encircled lake below is cool +with the last of the night. The same order of friars keep that sub- +Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the Kreuzberg beyond Bonn +with the same steep path by the same fourteen chapels, facing the +Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green +over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long +wing of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly +and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is +burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, +thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It +leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the +flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. +The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted +agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; +not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some +beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their +edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over +more than half the colour--over all the chocolate and all the blue-- +with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not +wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes +with the slight sunshine and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense--it +is modern; and the friars look young in another--they are like their +brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists of +yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or +"old world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be +by the excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers +work upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a +prosperous bee-farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass +yesterday, is gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing +press, and a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an +outhouse, and the yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose +single evil deed was that under one of the obscure impulses of a +dog's heart -atoned for by long and self-conscious remorse--he bit +the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make doggerel of +him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery +ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got +among the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, +from other valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a +moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look +at them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation +Army girl that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come +to the place with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as +she was welcome to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a +figure for Bournemouth pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched +the son of the Umbrian saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto +frescoes at Assisi and between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and +has paced the centuries continually since the coming of the friars. +One might have asked of her the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She +and he alike were so habited as to show the world that their life +was aloof from its "idle business." By some such phrase, at least, +the friar would assuredly have attempted to include her in any +spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have asked of her +the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the Salvation +Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making such +a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in +Zurbaran's ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are +busy. As a pocket it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of +the local white wine made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to +this house by the West, is carried in the cowl as a present to the +stranger at the gates. The friars tell how a brother resolved, at +Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and not only to make, but also to toss +them. Those who chanced to be in the room stood prudently aside, +and the brother tossed boldly. But that was the last that was seen +of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in La Legende des Siecles of +disappearance as the thing which no creature is able to achieve: +here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by quite an +ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was an +end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get +up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never +grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is +something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is not +merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler +point is that they can never acquire the habit of sacrificing sleep. +What art, what literature, or what life but would gain a secret +security by such a point of perpetual freshness and perpetual +initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a will +that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of +the French fields, and the hour of night--l'ora di notte--which +rings with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the +Adriatic littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the +prayer for the dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O +Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work +of the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it +is principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and +strength of heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, +the friars are not doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a +refuge from despair. These "bearded counsellors of God" keep their +cells, read, study, suffer, sing, hold silence; whereas they might +be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon the Stock Exchange, or +painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or reluctantly +jostling other men for places. They might be among the involuntary +busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is a +discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the +superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly +renounced by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output-- +again a beautiful word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. +None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once +again upon those monastery gates. + + + +THE SEA WALL + + + +A singular love of walls is mine. Perhaps because of childish +association with mountain-climbing roads narrow in the bright +shadows of grey stone, hiding olive trees whereof the topmost leaves +prick above into the blue; or perhaps because of subsequent living +in London, with its too many windows and too few walls, the city +which of all capitals takes least visible hold upon the ground; or +for the sake of some other attraction or aversion, walls, blank and +strong, reaching outward at the base, are a satisfaction to the eyes +teased by the inexpressive peering of windows, by that weak lapse +and shuffling which is the London "area," and by the helpless +hollows of shop-fronts. + +I would rather have a wall than any rail but a very good one of +wrought-iron. A wall is the safeguard of simplicity. It lays a +long level line among the indefinite chances of the landscape. But +never more majestic than in face of the wild sea, the wall, +steadying its slanting foot upon the rock, builds in the serried +ilex-wood and builds out the wave. The sea-wall is the wall at its +best. And fine as it is on the strong coast, it is beautiful on the +weak littoral and the imperilled levels of a northern beach. + +That sea wall is low and long; sea-pinks grow on the salt grass that +passes away into shingle at its foot. It is at close quarters with +the winter sea, when, from the low coast with its low horizon, the +sky-line of sea is jagged. Never from any height does the ocean- +horizon show thus broken and battered at its very verge, but from +the flat coast and the narrow world you can see the wave as far as +you can see the water; and the stormy light of a clear horizon is +seen to be mobile and shifting with the buoyant hillocks and their +restless line. + +Nowhere in Holland does there seem to be such a low sea-wall as +secures many a mile of gentle English coast to the east. The Dutch +dyke has not that aspect of a lowly parapet against a tide; it +springs with a look of haste and of height; and when you first run +upstairs from the encumbered Dutch fields to look at the sea, there +is nothing in the least like England; and even the Englishman of to- +day is apt to share something of the old perversity that was minded +to cast derision upon the Dutch in their encounters with the tides. + +There has been some fault in the Dutch, making them subject to the +slight derision of the nations who hold themselves to be more +romantic, and, as it were, more slender. We English, once upon a +time, did especially flout the little nation then acting a history +that proved worth the writing. It may be no more than a brief +perversity that has set a number of our writers to cheer the memory +of Charles II. Perhaps, even, it is no more than another rehearsal +of that untiring success at the expense of the bourgeois. The +bourgeois would be more simple than, in fact, he is were he to stand +up every time to be shocked; but, perhaps, the image of his dismay +is enough to reward the fancy of those who practise the wanton art. +And, when all is done, who performs for any but an imaginary +audience? Surely those companies of spectators and of auditors are +not the least of the makings of an author. A few men and women he +achieves within his books; but others does he create without, and to +those figures of all illusion makes the appeal of his art. More +candid is the author who has no world, but turns that appeal inwards +to his own heart. He has at least a living hearer. + +This is by the way. Charles II has been cheered; the feat is done, +the dismay is imagined with joy. And yet the Merry Monarch's was a +dismal time. Plague, fire, the arrears of pension from the French +King remembered and claimed by the restored throne of England, and +the Dutch in the Medway--all this was disaster. None the less, +having the vanity of new clothes and a pretty figure, did we-- +especially by the mouth of Andrew Marvell--deride our victors, +making sport of the Philistines with a proper national sense of +enjoyment of such physical disabilities, or such natural +difficulties, or such misfavour of fortune, as may beset the alien. + +Especially were the denials of fortune matter for merriment. They +are so still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great +novelist found the smallness of some South German States to be the +subject of unsating banter. The German scenes at the end of "Vanity +Fair," for example, may prove how much the ridicule of mere +smallness, fewness, poverty (and not even real poverty, privation, +but the poverty that shows in comparison with the gold of great +States, and is properly in proportion) rejoiced the sense of humour +in a writer and moralist who intended to teach mankind to be less +worldly. In Andrew Marvell's day they were even more candid. The +poverty of privation itself was provocative of the sincere laughter +of the inmost man, the true, infrequent laughter of the heart. +Marvell, the Puritan, laughed that very laughter--at leanness, at +hunger, cold, and solitude--in the face of the world, and in the +name of literature, in one memorable satire. I speak of "Flecno, an +English Priest in Rome," wherein nothing is spared--not the +smallness of the lodging, nor the lack of a bed, nor the scantiness +of clothing, nor the fast. + + +"This basso-rilievo of a man--" + + +personal meagreness is the first joke and the last. + +It is not to be wondered at that he should find in the smallness of +the country of Holland matter for a cordial jest. But, besides the +smallness, there was that accidental and natural disadvantage in +regard to the sea. In the Venetians, commerce with the sea, +conflict with the sea, a victory over the sea, and the ensuing +peace--albeit a less instant battle and a more languid victory--were +confessed to be noble; in the Dutch they were grotesque. "With mad +labour," says Andrew Marvell, with the spirited consciousness of the +citizen of a country well above ground and free to watch the labour +at leisure, "with mad labour" did the Dutch "fish the land to +shore." + + +How did they rivet with gigantic piles, +Thorough the centre, their new-catched miles, +And to the stake a struggling country bound, +Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; +Building their watery Babel far more high +To reach the sea than those to scale the sky! + + +It is done with a jolly wit, and in what admirable couplets! + + +The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed, +And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest. + + +And it is even better sport that the astonished tritons and sea- +nymphs should find themselves provided with a capital cabillau of +shoals of pickled Dutchmen (heeren for herring, says Marvell); and +it must be allowed that he rhymes with the enjoyment of irony. +There is not a smile for us in "Flecno," but it is more than +possible to smile over this "Character of Holland"; at the excluded +ocean returning to play at leap-frog over the steeples; at the rise +of government and authority in Holland, which belonged of right to +the man who could best invent a shovel or a pump, the country being +so leaky:- + + +Not who first sees the rising sun commands, +But who could first discern the rising lands. + + +We have lost something more than the delighted laughter of Marvell, +more than his practical joke, and more than the heart that was light +in so burly a frame--we have lost with these the wild humour that +wore so well the bonds of two equal lines, and was wild with so much +order, invention, malice, gaiety, polish, equilibrium, and vitality- +-in a word, the Couplet, the couplet of the past. We who cannot +stand firm within two lines, but must slip beyond and between the +boundaries, who tolerate the couplets of Keats and imitate them, +should praise the day of Charles II because of Marvell's art, and +not for love of the sorry reign. We had plague, fire, and the Dutch +in the Medway, but we had the couplet; and there were also the +measures of those more poetic poets, hitherto called somewhat +slightingly the Cavalier poets, who matched the wit of the Puritan +with a spirit simpler and less mocking. + +It was against an English fortress, profoundly walled, that some +remembered winter storms lately turned their great artillery. It +was a time of resounding nights; the sky was so clamorous and so +close, up in the towers of the seaside stronghold, that one seemed +to be indeed admitted to the perturbed counsels of the winds. The +gale came with an indescribable haste, hooting as it flew; it seemed +to break itself upon the heights, yet passed unbroken out to sea; in +the voice of the sea there were pauses, but none in that of the +urgent gale with its hoo-hoo-hoo all night, that clamoured down the +calling of the waves. That lack of pauses was the strangest thing +in the tempest, because the increase of sound seemed to imply a lull +before. The lull was never perceptible, but the lift was always an +alarm. The onslaught was instant, where would it stop? What was +the secret extreme to which this hurry and force were tending? You +asked less what thing was driving the flocks of the storm than what +was drawing them. The attraction seemed the greater violence, the +more irresistible, and the more unknown. And there were moments +when the end seemed about to be attained. + +The wind struck us hasty blows, and unawares we borrowed, to +describe it, words fit for the sharp strokes of material things; but +the fierce gale is soft. Along the short grass, trembling and +cowering flat on the scarped hill-side, against the staggering +horse, against the flint walls, one with the rock they grasp, the +battery of the tempest is a quick and enormous softness. What down, +what sand, what deep moss, what elastic wave could match the bed and +cushion of the gale? + +This storm tossed the wave and the stones of the sea-wall up +together. The next day it left the waters white with the thrilling +whiteness of foam in sunshine. It was only the Channel; and in such +narrow waters you do not see the distances, the wide levels of +fleeting and floating foam, that lie light between long wave and +long wave on a Mediterranean coast, regions of delicate and +transitory brightness so far out that all the waves, near and far, +seem to be breaking at the same moment, one beyond the other, and +league beyond league, into foam. But the Channel has its own +strong, short curl that catches the rushing shingle up with the +freshest of all noises and runs up with sudden curves, white upon +the white sea-wall, under the random shadow of sea-gulls and the +light of a shining cloud. + + + +TITHONUS + + + +"It was resolved," said the morning paper, "to colour the borders of +the panels and other spaces of Portland stone with arabesques and +other patterns, but that no paint should be used, as paint would +need renewing from time to time. The colours, therefore,"--and here +is the passage to be noted--"are all mixed with wax liquefied with +petroleum; and the wax surface sets as hard as marble. . . The wax +is left time to form an imperishable surface of ornament, which +would have to be cut out of the stone with a chisel if it was +desired to remove it." Not, apparently, that a new surface is +formed which, by much violence and perseverance, could, years hence, +be chipped off again; but that the "ornament" is driven in and +incorporate, burnt in and absorbed, so that there is nothing +possible to cut away by any industry. In this humorous form of +ornament we are beforehand with Posterity. Posterity is baffled. + +Will this victory over our sons' sons be the last resolute tyranny +prepared by one age for the coercion, constraint, and defeat of the +future? To impose that compulsion has been hitherto one of the +strongest of human desires. It is one, doubtless, to be outgrown by +the human race; but how slowly that growth creeps onwards, let this +success in the stencilling of St Paul's teach us, to our confusion. +There is evidently a man--a group of men--happy at this moment +because it has been possible, by great ingenuity, to force our +posterity to have their cupola of St Paul's with the stone mouldings +stencilled and "picked out" with niggling colours, whether that +undefended posterity like it or not. And this is a survival of one +of the obscure pleasures of man, attested by history. + +It is impossible to read the Thirty-nine Articles, for example, and +not to recognize in those acts of final, all-resolute, eager, +eternal legislation one of the strongest of all recorded proofs of +this former human wish. If Galileo's Inquisitors put a check upon +the earth, which yet moved, a far bolder enterprise was the +Reformers' who arrested the moving man, and inhibited the moving +God. The sixteenth century and a certain part of the age +immediately following seem to be times when the desire had +conspicuously become a passion. Say the middle of the sixteenth +century in Italy and the beginning of the seventeenth in England-- +for in those days we were somewhat in the rear. THERE is the +obstinate, confident, unreluctant, undoubting, and resolved seizure +upon power. THEN was Rome rebuilt, re-faced, marked with a single +sign and style. Then was many a human hand stretched forth to grasp +the fate of the unborn. The fortunes and the thoughts of the day to +come were to be as the day then present would have them, if the dead +hand--the living hand that was then to die, and was to keep its hold +in death--could by any means make them fast. + +Obviously, to build at all is to impose something upon an age that +may be more than willing to build for itself. The day may soon come +when no man will do even so much without some impulse of apology. +Posterity is not compelled to keep our pictures or our books in +existence, nor to read nor to look at them; but it is more or less +obliged to have a stone building in view for an age or two. We can +hardly avoid some of the forms of tyranny over the future, but few, +few are the living men who would consent to share in this horrible +ingenuity at St Paul's--this petroleum and this wax. + +In 1842 they were discussing the decoration of the Houses of +Parliament, and the efforts of all in council were directed upon the +future. How the frescoes then to be achieved by the artists of the +day should be made secure against all mischances--smoke, damp, "the +risk of bulging," even accidents attending the washing of upper +floors--all was discussed in confidence with the public. It was +impossible for anyone who read the papers then to escape from some +at least of the responsibilities of technical knowledge. From +Genoa, from Rome, from Munich especially, all kinds of expert and +most deliberate schemes were gathered in order to defeat the natural +and not superfluous operation of efficient and effacing time. + +The academic little capital of Bavaria had, at about the same date, +decorated a vast quantity of wall space of more than one order of +architecture. Art revived and was encouraged at that time and place +with unparalleled obstinacy. They had not the malice of the +petroleum that does violence to St Paul's; but they had instead an +indomitable patience. Under the commands of the master Cornelius, +they baffled time and all his work--refused his pardons, his +absolutions, his cancelling indulgences--by a perseverance that +nothing could discourage. Who has not known somewhat indifferent +painters mighty busy about their colours and varnishes? Cornelius +caused a pit to be dug for the preparation of the lime, and in the +case of the Ludwig Kirche this lime remained there for eight years, +with frequent stirrings. This was in order that the whole fresco, +when at last it was entrusted to its bed, should be set there for +immortality. Nor did the master fail to thwart time by those +mechanical means that should avert the risk of bulging already +mentioned. He neglected no detail. He was provident, and he lay in +wait for more than one of the laws of nature, to frustrate them. +Gravitation found him prepared, and so did the less majestic but not +vain dispensation of accidents. Against bulging he had an underplot +of tiles set on end; against possible trickling from an upper floor +he had asphalt; it was all part of the human conspiracy. In effect, +the dull pictures at Munich seem to stand well. It would have been +more just--so the present age thinks of these preserved walls--if +the day that admired them had had them exclusively, and our day had +been exempt. The painted cathedrals of the Middle Ages have +undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche? + +In 1842, then, the nations were standing, as it were, shoulder to +shoulder against the walk of time and against his gentle act and +art. They had just called iron into their cabal. Cornelius came +from Munich to London, looked at the walls at Westminster, and put a +heart of confidence into the breast of the Commission. The +situation, he averred, need not be too damp for immortality, with +due care. What he had done in the Glyptothek and in the Pinacothek +might be done with the best results in England, in defiance of the +weather, of the river, of the mere days, of the divine order of +alteration, and, in a word, of heaven and earth. + +Meanwhile, there was that good servant of the law of change, lime +that had not been kept quite long enough, ready to fulfil its +mission; they would have none of it. They evaded it, studied its +ways, and put it to the rout. "Many failures that might have been +hastily attributed to damp were really owing to the use of lime in +too fresh a state. Of the experimental works painted at Munich, +those only have faded which are known to have been done without due +attention to the materials. THUS, A FIGURE OF BAVARIA, PAINTED BY +KAULBACH, WHICH HAS FADED CONSIDERABLY, IS KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN +EXECUTED WITH LIME THAT WAS TOO FRESH." One cannot refrain from +italics: the way was so easy; it was only to take a little less of +this important care about the lime, to have a better confidence, to +be more impatient and eager, and all had been well: NOT to do--a +virtue of omission. + +This is not a matter of art-criticism. It is an ethical question +hitherto unstudied. The makers of laws have not always been obliged +to face it, inasmuch as their laws are made in part for the present, +and in part for that future whereof the present needs to be assured- +-that is, the future is bound as a guaranty for present security of +person or property. Some such hold upon the time to come we are +obliged to claim, and to claim it for our own sakes--because of the +reflex effect upon our own affairs, and not for the pleasure of +fettering the time to come. Every maker of a will does at least +this. + +Were the men of the sixteenth century so moderate? Not they. They +found the present all too narrow for the imposition of their will. +It did not satisfy them to disinter and scatter the bones of the +dead, nor to efface the records of a past that offended them. It +did not satisfy them to bind the present to obedience by imperative +menace and instant compulsion. When they had burnt libraries and +thrown down monuments and pursued the rebels of the past into the +other world, and had seen to it that none living should evade them, +then they outraged the future. + +Whatever misgivings may have visited those dominant minds as to the +effectual and final success of their measures--would their writ run +in time as well as place, and were the nameless populations indeed +their subjects?--whatever questions may have peered in upon those +rigid counsels and upon those busy vigils of the keepers of the +world, they silenced by legislation and yet more legislation. They +wrote in statute books; they would have written their will across +the skies. Their hearts would have burnt for lack of records more +inveterate, and of testimonials that mankind should lack courage to +question, if in truth they did ever doubt lest posterity might try +their lock. Perhaps they did never so much as foresee the race of +the unnumbered and emancipated for whom their prohibitions and +penalties are no more than documents of history. + +If the tyrannous day of our fathers had but possessed the means of +these our more diffident times! They, who would have written their +present and actual will upon the skies, might certainly have written +it in petroleum and wax upon the stone. Fate did them wrong in +withholding from their hands this means of finality and violence. +Into our hands it has been given at a time when the student of the +race thought, perhaps, that we had been proved in the school of +forbearance. Something, indeed, we may have learnt therein, but not +enough, as we now find. + +We have not yet the natural respect for the certain knowledge and +the probable wisdom of our successors. A certain reverend official +document, not guiltless of some confusion of thought, lately +recommended to the veneration of the present times "those past ages +with their store of experience." Doubtless, as the posterity of +their predecessors our predecessors had experience, but, as our +ancestors, none--none. Therefore, if they were a little reverend +our own posterity is right reverend. It is a flippant and novelty- +loving humour that so flatters the unproved past and refuses the +deference due to the burden of years which is ours, which--grown +still graver--will be our children's. + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the +art of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of +accident, it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of +accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual +discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second +French Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, +and how lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. +The lesson was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. +European art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the +unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic +art) content with her own conventions; she is local, provincial, +alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world that +has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been +touched by Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had +attained the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but +in music, too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, +the music of phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of +symmetry is strong in a complete melody--of symmetry in its most +delicate and lively and least stationary form--balance; whereas the +leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and +Incident make a familiar antithesis--the very commonplace of rival +methods of art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious +forms. The poets have sought "irregular" metres. Incident hovers, +in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern of +modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression +of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major +emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. The smile, the +figure, the drapery--not yet settled from the arranging touch of a +hand, and showing its mark--the restless and unstationary foot, and +the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In +passing, a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture +and the aspect of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; +whether still or in motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have +the alertness and expectancy of flight in all their flocks of +leaves, while the oaks and elms are gathered in their station. All +this is not Japanese, but from such accident is Japanese art +inspired, with its good luck of perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counter- +change for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the +distinction between this motive and that of the Japanese. The +Japanese motives may be defined as uniqueness and position. And +these were not known as motives of decoration before the study of +Japanese decoration. Repetition and counter-change, of course, have +their place in Japanese ornament, as in the diaper patterns for +which these people have so singular an invention, but here, too, +uniqueness and position are the principal inspiration. And it is +quite worth while, and much to the present purpose, to call +attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese diaper patterns, +which is INTERRUPTION. Repetition there must necessarily be in +these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which is, to the +Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and +the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese +design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, +you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though +a separate intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. +Such renewed consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness +in design has more peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of +Japanese lines, in their curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary +to say that a line, in all other schools of art, is long or short +according to its place and purpose; but only the Japanese designer +so contrives his patterns that the line is always short; and many +repeating designs are entirely composed of this various and +variously-occurring brevity, this prankish avoidance of the goal. +Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the unit of their +repeating patterns, by another simple device--that of numbers. They +make a small difference in the number of curves and of lines. A +great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it would +look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one side +and six on another would be something else than a mere variation, +and variety would be lost by the use of them. The Japanese +decorator will vary three in this place by two in that, and a sense +of the defeat of symmetry is immediately produced. With more +violent means the idea of symmetry would have been neither suggested +nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in +Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point +of symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. +There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most +subtly, made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value. +A small thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small +thing is placed at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese) +equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other countries) the scales +commonly in use are furnished with only a single weight that +increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it nearer or +farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces +when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs +from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a +Japanese composition. Its place is its significance and its value. +Such an art of position implies a great art of intervals. The +Japanese chooses a few things and leaves the space between them +free, as free as the pauses or silences in music. But as time, not +silence, is the subject, or material, of contrast in musical pauses, +so it is the measurement of space--that is, collocation--that makes +the value of empty intervals. The space between this form and that, +in a Japanese composition, is valuable because it is just so wide +and no more. And this, again, is only another way of saying that +position is the principle of this apparently wilful art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped +to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly +transcending Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly +accepted moral support from the islands of the Japanese. He too +etches a kind of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the +spectator's knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to +nothing but the spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists +work in ways dissimilar. Nevertheless, the French etcher would +never have written his signs so freely had not the Japanese so +freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, the transitory and +destructible material of Japanese art has done as much as the +multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer--the black and white artist--to +working for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of +its daily life by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means +of paper, printed. But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a +destructive people, paper with us means short life, quick abolition, +transformation, re-appearance, a very circulation of life. This is +our present way of surviving ourselves--the new version of that feat +of life. Time was when to survive yourself meant to secure, for a +time indefinitely longer than the life of man, such dull form as you +had given to your work; to intrude upon posterity. To survive +yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into daily oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper +does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to +them a different condition of ornament from that with which they +adorned old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For +the transitory material they keep the more purely pictorial art of +landscape. What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far +reduced to a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of +races that have produced Cotman and Corot. Japanese landscape- +drawing reduces things seen to such fewness as must have made the +art insuperably tedious to any people less fresh-spirited and more +inclined to take themselves seriously than these Orientals. A +preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little closer +attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape--it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive--a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, +and the flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions +of a people intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to +define by that phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? +Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, even though they +show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of the form of a +normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. They are +not in search of the perpetual slight novelty which was Aristotle's +ideal of the language poetic ("a little wildly, or with the flower +of the mind," says Emerson of the way of a poet's speech)--and such +novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of the pinion, that keeps +verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are intent upon is +perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields has eyes +less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the +path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure +in fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque +strangeness he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to +his garden. The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the +art of peace, and not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and +curves whereby this people conventionally signify wave or cloud. +All these curls have an attitude which is like that of a figure +slightly malformed, and not like that of a human body that is +perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or niggling labour. +Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard to say; they +have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where the +upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and--especially in gold embroideries--is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, +while the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads +take by nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no +other art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The +Japanese have generally evaded even the local beauty of their own +race for the sake of perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is +remote from our sympathy and admiration; and it is quite possible +that we might miss it in pictorial presentation, and that the +Japanese artist may have intended human beauty where we do not +recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is certainly +not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate +dignity, even--to be very generous--has been admired by the Japanese +artist, and is represented here and there occasionally, in the +figure of warrior or mousme. But even with this exception the habit +of Japanese figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, and +crooked. It is curious to observe that the search for slight +deformity is so constant as to make use, for its purposes, not of +action only, but of perspective foreshortening. With us it is to +the youngest child only that there would appear to be mirth in the +drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would seem to have +his head "beneath his shoulders." The European child would not see +fun in the living man so presented, but--unused to the same effect +"in the flat"--he thinks it prodigiously humorous in a drawing. But +so only when he is quite young. The Japanese keeps, apparently, his +sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but not perhaps +altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened figure +should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it +than the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion +of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not +precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous +models. He makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar +with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no +need to insist upon the ignoble character of those that are +intentional caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek +decoration, and would be glad to forget it, with the intention of +learning that art afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. +But whatever may be the phases of the arts, there is the abiding +principle of symmetry in the body of man, that goes erect, like an +upright soul. Its balance is equal. Exterior human symmetry is +surely a curious physiological fact where there is no symmetry +interiorly. For the centres of life and movement within the body +are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is Greek without and +Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of +the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a principle. It +controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human action. +Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite incidents-- +inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of sleep--the +symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that symmetry +complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because +this hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and +that the sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses +the unequal heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and +strength are inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation +upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it +would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless +art. The order of inflection that is not infraction has been +explained in a most authoritative sentence of criticism of +literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble of +some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the +rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the +poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the +subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the modulus of whose verse has been +most variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with +feelings and passions which are the inflections of moral law in +their theme. Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds +with a strain upon law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the +quality of poetic language is a continual SLIGHT novelty. In the +highest poetry, like that of Milton, these three modes of +inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all chime together in +praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That +perpetual proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of +life. Symmetry is a profound, if disregarded because perpetually +inflected, condition of human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may +settle or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it +has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides +the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as +the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal +heart. And this seems to be the nobler and the more perdurable +relation. + + + +THE PLAID + + + +It is disconcerting to hear of the plaid in India. Our dyes, we +know, they use in the silk mills of Bombay, with the deplorable +result that their old clothes are dull and unintentionally falsified +with infelicitous decay. The Hindus are a washing people; and the +sun and water that do but dim, soften, and warm the native vegetable +dyes to the last, do but burlesque the aniline. Magenta is bad +enough when it is itself; but the worst of magenta is that it spoils +but poorly. No bad modern forms and no bad modern colours spoil +well. And spoiling is an important process. It is a test--one of +the ironical tests that come too late with their proofs. London +portico-houses will make some such ruins as do chemical dyes, which +undergo no use but derides them, no accidents but caricature them. +This is an old enough grievance. But the plaid! + +The plaid is the Scotchman's contribution to the decorative art of +the world. Scotland has no other indigenous decoration. In his +most admirable lecture on "The Two Paths," Ruskin acknowledged, with +a passing misgiving, that his Highlanders had little art. And the +misgiving was but passing, because he considered how fatally wrong +was the art of India--"it never represents a natural fact. It forms +its compositions out of meaningless fragments of colour and flowings +of line . . . It will not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it +will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zig-zag." Because of +this aversion from Nature the Hindu and his art tended to evil, we +read. But of the Scot we are told, "You will find upon reflection +that all the highest points of the Scottish character are connected +with impressions derived straight from the natural scenery of their +country." + +What, then, about the plaid? Where is the natural fact there? If +the Indian, by practising a non-natural art of spirals and zig-zags, +cuts himself off "from all possible sources of healthy knowledge or +natural delight," to what did the good and healthy Highlander +condemn himself by practising the art of the plaid? A spiral may be +found in the vine, and a zig-zag in the lightning, but where in +nature is the plaid to be found? There is surely no curve or curl +that can be drawn by a designing hand but is a play upon some +infinitely various natural fact. The smoke of the cigarette, more +sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its waves so +multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and +such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence +and impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering +curls ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand--and that is not a +Hindu hand, nor any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured +the curve of the section of a sea-wave--its flow, relaxation, and +fall; but this is a single movement, whereas the line of cigarette- +smoke in a still room fluctuates in twenty delicate directions. No, +it is impossible to accept the saying that the poor spiral or scroll +of a human design is anything but a participation in the innumerable +curves and curls of nature. + +Now the plaid is not only "cut off" from natural sources, as Ruskin +says of Oriental design--the plaid is not only cut off from nature, +and cut off from nature by the yard, for it is to be measured off in +inorganic quantity; but it is even a kind of intentional +contradiction of all natural or vital forms. And it is equally +defiant of vital tone and of vital colour. Everywhere in nature +tone is gradual, and between the fainting of a tone and the failing +of a curve there is a charming analogy. But the tartan insists that +its tone shall be invariable, and sharply defined by contrasts of +dark and light. As to colour, it has colours, not colour. + +But that plaid should now go so far afield as to decorate the noble +garment of the Indies is ill news. True, Ruskin saw nothing but +cruelty and corruption in Indian life or art; but let us hear an +Indian maxim in regard to those who, in cruel places, are ready +sufferers: "There," says the Mahabharata, "where women are treated +with respect, the very gods are said to be filled with joy. Women +deserve to be honoured. Serve ye them. Bend your will before them. +By honouring women ye are sure to attain to the fruition of all +things." And the rash teachers of our youth would have persuaded us +that this generous lesson was first learnt in Teutonic forests! + +Nothing but extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be +suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. +Accordingly the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil +to the souls of her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great- +grandmother-in-law, in gratitude for their giving her a good +husband. And to go back for a moment to Ruskin's contrast of the +two races, it was assuredly under the stress of some too rash +reasoning that he judged the lovely art of the East as a ministrant +to superstition, cruelty, and pleasure, whether wrought upon the +temple, the sword, or the girdle. The innocent art of innocent +Hindu women for centuries decked their most modest heads, their +dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving breasts, and +consecrated chambers. + + + +THE FLOWER + + + +There is a form of oppression that has not until now been confessed +by those who suffer from it or who are participants, as mere +witnesses, in its tyranny. It is the obsession of man by the +flower. In the shape of the flower his own paltriness revisits him- +-his triviality, his sloth, his cheapness, his wholesale +habitualness, his slatternly ostentation. These return to him and +wreak upon him their dull revenges. What the tyranny really had +grown to can be gauged nowhere so well as in country lodgings, where +the most ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down +and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative +force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and +leaf--the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by +rote--are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness +and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly +of all imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm- +house arrayed for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is +beset with flowers. It blooms, a dry, woollen, papery, cast-iron +garden. The floor flourishes with blossoms adust, poorly +conventionalized into a kind of order; the table-cover is ablaze +with a more realistic florescence; the wall-paper is set with +bunches; the rigid machine-lace curtain is all of roses and lilies +in its very construction; over the muslin blinds an impotent sprig +is scattered. In the worsted rosettes of the bell-ropes, in the +plaster picture-frames, in the painted tea-tray and on the cups, in +the pediment of the sideboard, in the ornament that crowns the +barometer, in the finials of sofa and arm-chair, in the finger- +plates of the "grained" door, is to be seen the ineffectual portrait +or to be traced the stale inspiration of the flower. And what is +this bossiness around the grate but some blunt, black-leaded +garland? The recital is wearisome, but the retribution of the +flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution of man, the +haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his +inconsiderable brain. + +The man so possessed suffers the lot of the weakling--subjection to +the smallest of the things he has abused. The designer of cheap +patterns is no more inevitably ridden by the flower than is the vain +and transitory author by the phrase. In literature as in all else +man merits his subjection to trivialities by his economical greed. +A condition for using justly and gaily any decoration would seem to +be a measure of reluctance. Ornament--strange as the doctrine +sounds in a world decivilized--was in the beginning intended to be +something jocund; and jocundity was never to be achieved but by +postponement, deference, and modesty. Nor can the prodigality of +the meadows in May be quoted in dispute. For Nature has something +even more severe than modertion: she has an innumerable singleness. +Her buttercup meadows are not prodigal; they show multitude, but not +multiplicity, and multiplicity is exactly the disgrace of +decoration. Who has ever multiplied or repeated his delights? or +who has ever gained the granting of the most foolish of his wishes-- +the prayer for reiteration? It is a curious slight to generous Fate +that man should, like a child, ask for one thing many times. Her +answer every time is a resembling but new and single gift; until the +day when she shall make the one tremendous difference among her +gifts--and make it perhaps in secret--by naming one of them the +ultimate. What, for novelty, what, for singleness, what, for +separateness, can equal the last? Of many thousand kisses the poor +last--but even the kisses of your mouth are all numbered. + + + +UNSTABLE EQUILIBRIUM + + + +It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress +of man is so much to be desired. The leg, completing as it does the +form of man, should make a great part of that human scenery which is +at least as important as the scenery of geological structure, or the +scenery of architecture, or the scenery of vegetation, but which the +lovers of mountains and the preservers of ancient buildings have +consented to ignore. The leg is the best part of the figure, +inasmuch as it has the finest lines and therewith those slender, +diminishing forms which, coming at the base of the human structure, +show it to be a thing of life by its unstable equilibrium. A +lifeless structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, +poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without +implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested +the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is +erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, +because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the +best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, +in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither +movement nor supporting strength. In the case of the woman's figure +it is the foot, with its extreme proportional smallness, that gives +the precious instability, the spring and balance that are so +organic. But man should no longer disguise the long lines, the +strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all +garments the most stupid. Inexpressive of what they clothe as no +kind of concealing drapery could ever be, they are neither +implicitly nor explicitly good raiment. It is hardly possible to +err by violence in denouncing them. Why, when an indifferent writer +is praised for "clothing his thought," it is to modern raiment that +one's agile fancy flies--fain of completing the metaphor! + +The human scenery: yes, costume could make a crowd something other +than the mass of sooty colour--dark without depth--and the +multiplication of undignified forms that fill the streets, and +demonstrate, and meet, and listen to the speaker. For the +undistinguished are very important by their numbers. These are they +who make the look of the artificial world. They are man +generalized; as units they inevitably lack something of interest; +all the more they have cumulative effect. It would be well if we +could persuade the average man to take on a certain human dignity in +the clothing of his average body. Unfortunately he will be slow to +be changed. And as to the poorer part of the mass, so wretched are +their national customs--and the wretchedest of them all the wearing +of other men's old raiment--that they must wait for reform until the +reformed dress, which the reformers have not yet put on, shall have +turned second-hand. + + + +VICTORIAN CARICATURE + + + +There has been no denunciation, and perhaps even no recognition, of +a certain social immorality in the caricature of the mid-century and +earlier. Literary and pictorial alike, it had for its aim the +vulgarizing of the married woman. No one now would read Douglas +Jerrold for pleasure, but it is worth while to turn up that +humourist's serial, "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures," which were +presumably considered good comic reading in the "Punch" of that +time, and to make acquaintance with a certain ideal of the +grotesque. Obviously to make a serious comment on anything which +others consider or have considered humorous is to put oneself at a +disadvantage. He who sees the joke holds himself somewhat the +superior of the man who would see it, such as it is, if he thought +it worth his eyesight. The last-named has to bear the least +tolerable of modern reproaches--that he lacks humour; but he need +not always care. Now to turn over Douglas Jerrold's monologues is +to find that people in the mid-century took their mirth principally +from the life of the arriere boutique. On that shabby stage was +enacted the comedy of literature. Therefore we must take something +of the vulgarity of Jerrold as a circumstance of the social ranks +wherein he delighted. But the essential vulgarity is that of the +woman. There is in some old "Punch" volume a drawing by Leech--whom +one is weary of hearing named the gentle, the refined--where the +work of the artist has vied with the spirit of the letterpress. +Douglas Jerrold treats of the woman's jealousy, Leech of her stays. +They lie on a chair by the bed, beyond description gross. And page +by page the woman is derided, with an unfailing enjoyment of her +foolish ugliness of person, of manners, and of language. In that +time there was, moreover, one great humourist, one whom I infinitely +admire; he, too, I am grieved to remember, bore his part willingly +in vulgarizing the woman; and the part that fell to him was the +vulgarizing of the act of maternity. Woman spiteful, woman suing +man at the law for evading her fatuous companionship, woman +incoherent, woman abandoned without restraint to violence and +temper, woman feigning sensibility--in none of these ignominies is +woman so common and so foolish for Dickens as she is in child- +bearing. + +I named Leech but now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's +contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are +humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is +moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is +that her husband--himself wearisome enough to die of--is weary of +her, finds the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him +that she should furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, to the +annoyance of her husband, and that her husband should have no desire +to adorn her, and that her mother should be intolerable. It pleases +him that her baby, with enormous cheeks and a hideous rosette in its +hat--a burlesque baby--should be a grotesque object of her love, for +that too makes subtly for her abasement. Charles Keene, again-- +another contemporary, though he lived into a later and different +time. He saw little else than common forms of human ignominy-- +indignities of civic physique, of stupid prosperity, of dress, of +bearing. He transmits these things in greater proportion than he +found them--whether for love of the humour of them, or by a kind of +inverted disgust that is as eager as delight--one is not sure which +is the impulse. The grossness of the vulgarities is rendered with a +completeness that goes far to convince us of a certain sensitiveness +of apprehension in the designer; and then again we get convinced +that real apprehension--real apprehensiveness--would not have +insisted upon such things, could not have lived with them through +almost a whole career. There is one drawing in the "Punch" of years +ago, in which Charles Keene achieved the nastiest thing possible to +even the invention of that day. A drunken citizen, in the usual +broadcloth, has gone to bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and +his umbrella open, and the joke lies in the surprise awaiting, when +she awakes, the wife asleep at his side in a night-cap. Every one +who knows Keene's work can imagine how the huge well-fed figure was +drawn, and how the coat wrinkled across the back, and how the +bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene drawing is matched +by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, ignominies of married +life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old common jape against +the mother-in-law; abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom +with shambling side-long legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she +is a widow, and she answers, "No, never was." In all these things +there is very little humour. Where Keene achieved fun was in the +figures of his schoolboys. The hint of tenderness which in really +fine work could never be absent from a man's thought of a child or +from his touch of one, however frolic or rowdy the subject in hand, +is absolutely lacking in Keene's designs; nevertheless, we +acknowledge that there is humour. It is also in some of his +clerical figures when they are not caricatures, and certainly in +"Robert," the City waiter of "Punch." But so irresistible is the +derision of the woman that all Charles Keene's persistent sense of +vulgarity is intent centrally upon her. Never for any grace gone +astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for +prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for +the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she +vindicates her ignoble rights. If this is the shopkeeper the +possession of whom is her boast, what then is she? + +This great immorality, centring in the irreproachable days of the +Exhibition of 1851, or thereabouts--the pleasure in this particular +form of human disgrace--has passed, leaving one trace only: the +habit by which some men reproach a silly woman through her sex, +whereas a silly man is not reproached through his sex. But the +vulgarity of which I have written here was distinctively English-- +the most English thing that England had in days when she bragged of +many another--and it was not able to survive an increased commerce +of manners and letters with France. It was the chief immorality +destroyed by the French novel. + + + +THE POINT OF HONOUR + + + +Not without significance is the Spanish nationality of Velasquez. +In Spain was the Point put upon Honour; and Velasquez was the first +Impressionist. As an Impressionist he claimed, implicitly if not +explicitly, a whole series of delicate trusts in his +trustworthiness; he made an appeal to the confidence of his peers; +he relied on his own candour, and asked that the candid should rely +upon him; he kept the chastity of art when other masters were +content with its honesty, and when others saved artistic conscience +he safeguarded the point of honour. Contemporary masters more or +less proved their position, and convinced the world by something of +demonstration; the first Impressionist simply asked that his word +should be accepted. To those who would not take his word he offers +no bond. To those who will, he grants the distinction of a share in +his responsibility. + +Somewhat unrefined, in comparison with his lofty and simple claim to +be believed on a suggestion, is the commoner painter's production of +his credentials, his appeal to the sanctions of ordinary experience, +his self-defence against the suspicion of making irresponsible +mysteries in art. "You can see for yourself," the lesser man seems +to say to the world, "thus things are, and I render them in such +manner that your intelligence may be satisfied." This is an appeal +to average experience--at the best the cumulative experience; and +with the average, or with the sum, art cannot deal without +derogation. The Spaniard seems to say: "Thus things are in my +pictorial sight. Trust me, I apprehend them so." We are not +excluded from his counsels, but we are asked to attribute a certain +authority to him, master of the craft as he is, master of that art +of seeing pictorially which is the beginning and not far from the +end--not far short of the whole--of the art of painting. So little +indeed are we shut out from the mysteries of a great Impressionist's +impression that Velasquez requires us to be in some degree his +colleagues. Thus may each of us to whom he appeals take praise from +the praised: he leaves my educated eyes to do a little of the work. +He respects my responsibility no less--though he respects it less +explicitly--than I do his. What he allows me would not be granted +by a meaner master. If he does not hold himself bound to prove his +own truth, he returns thanks for my trust. It is as though he used +his countrymen's courteous hyperbole and called his house my own. +In a sense of the most noble hostship he does me the honours of his +picture. + +Because Impressionism with all its extreme--let us hope its +ultimate--derivatives is so free, therefore is it doubly bound. +Because there is none to arraign it, it is a thousand times +responsible. To undertake this art for the sake of its privileges +without confessing its obligations--or at least without confessing +them up to the point of honour--is to take a vulgar freedom: to see +immunities precisely where there are duties, and an advantage where +there is a bond. A very mob of men have taken Impressionism upon +themselves, in several forms and under a succession of names, in +this our later day. It is against all probabilities that more than +a few among these have within them the point of honour. In their +galleries we are beset with a dim distrust. And to distrust is more +humiliating than to be distrusted. How many of these landscape- +painters, deliberately rash, are painting the truth of their own +impressions? An ethical question as to loyalty is easily answered; +truth and falsehood as to fact are, happily for the intelligence of +the common conscience, not hard to divide. But when the dubium +concerns not fact but artistic truth, can the many be sure that +their sensitiveness, their candour, their scruple, their delicate +equipoise of perceptions, the vigilance of their apprehension, are +enough? Now Impressionists have told us things as to their +impressions--as to the effect of things upon the temperament of this +man and upon the mood of that--which should not be asserted except +on the artistic point of honour. The majority can tell ordinary +truth, but should not trust themselves for truth extraordinary. +They can face the general judgement, but they should hesitate to +produce work that appeals to the last judgement, which is the +judgement within. There is too much reason to divine that a certain +number of those who aspire to differ from the greatest of masters +have no temperaments worth speaking of, no point of view worth +seizing, no vigilance worth awaiting, no mood worth waylaying. And +to be, de parti pris, an Impressionist without these! O Velasquez! +Nor is literature quite free from a like reproach in her own things. +An author, here and there, will make as though he had a word worth +hearing--nay, worth over-hearing--a word that seeks to withdraw even +while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too +probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not--as is the +craft and mystery of painting--so at the mercy of a half-imposture, +so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is +reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. If the +artistic temperament--tedious word!--with all its grotesque +privileges, becomes yet more common than it is, there will be yet +less responsibility; for the point of honour is the simple secret of +the few. + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But +the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, +or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed +the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. +Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the +act of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not +the manifestation thereof. It is one of the things the value of +which is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a +napkin. The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the +colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the +living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the +unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life +is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that +it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than +earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less +lucid than the colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in +all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. +Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under +the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of the +London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, +out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of +June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any +mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, +and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and chapeau melon of man, +and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is +subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular face of +the Londoner has soon lost its gold, its white, and the delicacy of +its red and brown. We miss little beauty by the fact that it is +never seen freely in great numbers out-of-doors. You get it in some +quantity when all the heads of a great indoor meeting are turned at +once upon a speaker; but it is only in the open air, needless to +say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in the open air, +"clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and direct, +or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of +all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer +north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke +of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours--all allied to the +hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has +chosen for its boys--and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and +delicate flush between the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. +Clothed now with the sun, he is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars +as he goes to bathe, and the reflection of an early moon is under +his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. +They are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but +only a little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. +The last and most finished action of her intellect, passion, and +knowledge is, as it were, the flicking away of some insignificant +thing mistaken for art by other actors, some little obstacle to the +way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second +boot, and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the +lacking colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even +undressed, he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect +pure vowels and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, +his slenderness, his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild +rose in the deepening midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his +world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where +Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the +happily easy way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to +grow in the streets--and no streets could ask for a more charming +finish than your green grass. The gasometer even must fall to +pieces unless it is renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is +nothing so remediable as the work of modern man--"a thought which is +also," as Mr Pecksniff said, "very soothing." And by remediable I +mean, of course, destructible. As the bathing child shuffles off +his garments--they are few, and one brace suffices him--so the land +might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off its yellow brick and +purple slate, and all the things that collect about railway +stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery +of Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea- +coast. To have once seen it there should be enough to make a +colourist. O memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour +as it neared setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the +land. The sea had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of +that aspect--the dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also +deep. Everything was very definite, without mystery, and +exceedingly simple. The most luminous thing was the shining white +of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be white because it was a +little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. It was still the +whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous thing was the +little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that +the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the +curious history of the political rights of woman under the +Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the +fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that +seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted +political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the +obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was +granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, +international. The blood wherewith she should, according to +Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was +exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and +the innermost--the privacy of death--was never allowed to put +obstacles in the way of public action for a public cause. Women +might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de +Gouges, they claimed a "right to concur in the choice of +representatives for the formation of the laws"; but in her person, +too, they were liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to +the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus +made her public and complete amends. + + + +THE HORIZON + + + +To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter +than yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you +raise the horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. +It is like the scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his +dramatic Italian hands, bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does +more than bid them. He lifts them, he gathers them up, far and +near, with the upward gesture of both arms; he takes them to their +feet with the compulsion of his expressive force. Or it is as when +a conductor takes his players to successive heights of music. You +summon the sea, you bring the mountains, the distances unfold +unlooked-for wings and take an even flight. You are but a man +lifting his weight upon the upward road, but as you climb the circle +of the world goes up to face you. + +Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen +unfolds. This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are +on the wing, and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and +wait upon your eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your +eyelids, but by the pilgrimage of your body. "Lift thine eyes to +the mountains." It is then that other mountains lift themselves to +your human eyes. + +It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another +that makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All the +landscape is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, and its +inner harbours literally come to light; the headlands repeat +themselves; little cups within the treeless hills open and show +their farms. In the sea are many regions. A breeze is at play for +a mile or two, and the surface is turned. There are roads and +curves in the blue and in the white. Not a step of your journey up +the height that has not its replies in the steady motion of land and +sea. Things rise together like a flock of many-feathered birds. + +But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search +of. That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift the +horizon to the equality of your sight that you go high. You give it +a distance worthy of the skies. There is no distance, except the +distance in the sky, to be seen from the level earth; but from the +height is to be seen the distance of this world. The line is sent +back into the remoteness of light, the verge is removed beyond +verge, into a distance that is enormous and minute. + +So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less +near than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here on +the edges of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world--we +know no other place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so +small and tender. The touches of her passing, as close as dreams, +or the utmost vanishing of the forest or the ocean in the white +light between the earth and the air; nothing else is quite so +intimate and fine. The extremities of a mountain view have just +such tiny touches as the closeness of closed eyes shuts in. + +On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars the +simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface +it, by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky +disappears on that shining edge; there is not substance enough for +colour. The rim of the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, +of the sea--let it only be far enough--has the same absorption of +colour; and even the dark things drawn upon the bright edges of the +sky are lucid, the light is among them, and they are mingled with +it. The horizon has its own way of making bright the pencilled +figures of forests, which are black but luminous. + +On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. +There you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds--not a thunder +sky--is not a wall but the underside of a floor. You see the clouds +that repeat each other grow smaller by distance; and you find a new +unity in the sky and earth that gather alike the great lines of +their designs to the same distant close. There is no longer an +alien sky, tossed up in unintelligible heights above a world that is +subject to intelligible perspective. + +Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted +is the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; not +the spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from +the parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of +soot; but rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a +beautiful thing of the London smoke at times, and in some places of +the sky; but not there, not where the soft sharp distance ought to +shine. To be dull there is to put all relations and comparisons in +the wrong, and to make the sky lawless. + +A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens the +line and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly +dims it, or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the +sky. The stormy horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high +enough, and you can raise the light from beyond the shower, and the +shadow from behind the ray. Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke +disobeys and defeats the summer of the eyes. + +Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their +sea. A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes +that they cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. +Never in the solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of +Good Hope and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has +the seaman seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient +Mariner, when he was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow +solitudes. The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but +for his mast he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a +traveller through the plains. + +Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps them +so perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying +to flight with flight. + +A close circlet of waves is the sailor's famous offing. His offing +hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you might think +something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit down in the +centre of it. + +As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so +steady, so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further +sea lies away, hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding +world, with its looks serene and alert, its distant replies, its +signals of many miles, its signs and communications of light, +gathers down and pauses. This flock of birds which is the mobile +landscape wheels and goes to earth. The Cardinal weighs down the +audience with his downward hands. Farewell to the most delicate +horizon. + + + +IN JULY + + + +One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of +the green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of +maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and +stand in their differences of character and not of mere date. +Almost all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a +darkened and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony +with dark grey skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic +after spring as eleven o'clock looks after the dawn. + +Gravity is the word--not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace as +at night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, +common freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and +day. In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and +summer sunrise than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also +a far higher sensibility for April and April evenings--a heartache +for them, which in riper years is gradually and irretrievably +consoled. + +But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find +daily things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has +no great delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness +of the summer that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere +day and of late summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have +long ceased to be sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot +now find anything in nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, +lost sight of the further awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer +see so much of the past in April twilight as they saw when they had +no past; but which look freshly at the dailiness of green summer, of +early afternoon, of every sky of any form that comes to pass, and of +the darkened elms. + +Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting +close, unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when it +looks alone to a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, +across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, +and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the +mind, as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in +the hand, would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A +veritable passion for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The +eyes do gather them, far and near, on a whole day's journey. Not +one is unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and +hill-sides dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a poplar day +of it. Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for the +poplars everywhere reply to the glance. The woods may be all +various, but the poplars are separate. + +All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with +them) shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. +It is easy to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance pay +them a flash of recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you +journey you are suddenly aware of them close by. Light and the +breezes are as quick as the eyes of a poplar-lover to find the +willing tree that dances to be seen. + +No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for +oneself an oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and +many would be missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert +enough for a traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do +not sleep. From within some little grove of other trees a single +poplar makes a slight sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep +the wind. They are salient everywhere, and full of replies. They +are as fresh as streams. + +It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. +And yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much +mingled with a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes +to recognize their unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and +keep still, the poplar and the aspen do not darken--or hardly--and +the deepest summer will not find a day in which they do not keep +awake. No waters are so vigilant, even where a lake is bare to the +wind. + +When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair "with +fingers cool as aspen leaves," he knew the coolest thing in the +world. It is a coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which the +breeze takes on both sides--the greenish and the greyish. The +poplar green has no glows, no gold; it is an austere colour, as +little rich as the colour of willows, and less silvery than theirs. +The sun can hardly gild it; but he can shine between. Poplars and +aspens let the sun through with the wind. You may have the sky +sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the woods are +close. + +Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher's net ever took such glancing fishes, +nor did the net of a constellation's shape ever enclose more +vibrating Pleiades. + + + +CLOUD + + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to +see the clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by +the rest of England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not +to see the clear sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in +London. You may go for a week or two at a time, even though you +hold your head up as you walk, and even though you have windows that +really open, and yet you shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, +the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled +glass towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They +are, therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other +windows were used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or +even knew so much as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world +knows. Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in +search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes +its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, +it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery--the tourist's--is a +prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, +but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it +is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends +upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own +sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must +wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or +fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to +foot, the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud +permits, that their own local colour and their own local season are +lost and cease, effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is +the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a +handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge +with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and +makes the foreground shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the +mountain slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out +part of the view by the rough method of standing in front of it. +But its greatest things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence +does it distribute the sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more +mysteries than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. +Thence it writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or +lets the pencils of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and +yet making dark, it sheds deep colour upon the forest land of +Sussex, so that, seen from the hills, all the country is divided +between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the +world. Its own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to +improve. It is always great: above the street, above the suburbs, +above the gas-works and the stucco, above the faces of painted white +houses--the painted surfaces that have been devised as the only +things able to vulgarise light, as they catch it and reflect it +grotesquely from their importunate gloss. This is to be well seen +on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above +some little landscape of rather paltry interest--a conventional +river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, +and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, +as the novelists always have it, with "autumn tints." High over +these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, what no +man expected--an heroic sky. Few of the things that were ever done +upon earth are great enough to be done under such a heaven. It was +surely designed for other days. It is for an epic world. Your eyes +sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the distances of earth to +these, and what are the distances of the clear and cloudless sky? +The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the round world +dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are +unmeasured--you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the +star itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, +with conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. +Man would not have known distance veritably without the clouds. +There are mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of +the earth are pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not +overpowering by disproportion, like some futile building fatuously +made too big for the human measure. The cloud in its majestic place +composes with a little Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the +futile building, while the cloud is no mansion for man, and out of +reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the +custody of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. +The cloud veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry +ray, suddenly bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a +background. Or when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals +him, gentle beyond hope. It makes peace, constantly, just before +sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. +There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds +are bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and +brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is +a frolic and haphazard sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed +about it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the +clouds in turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes +aloft are swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single +colour. Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller +Mediterranean in the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same +finger. The cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its +nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this +scenery. It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of +the winter, that the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for +many and many a day no London eye can see the horizon, or the first +threat of the cloud like a man's hand. There never was a great +painter who had not exquisite horizons, and if Corot and Crome were +right, the Londoner loses a great thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he +loses its shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and +rosy head piling into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the +base and the altitude. The perspective of a cloud is a great part +of its design--whether it lies so that you can look along the +immense horizontal distances of its floor, or whether it rears so +upright a pillar that you look up its mountain steeps in the sky as +you look at the rising heights of a mountain that stands, with you, +on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not +merely the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the +sun's treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We +talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet +one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of +the most majestic of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon +is the bride, this is the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most +beautiful of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no +name, and no other cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such +heights of blue air. The shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, +comes across the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going +out to sea can be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps +in the London streets is that people take their rain there without +knowing anything of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and +means wetness. The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no +limits of form, and no history whatever. It has not come from the +clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the +hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly comes or goes; +it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the path of +its retreat. + + + +SHADOWS + + + +Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and +unencumbered with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple +house is that the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs +of shadows. The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought +oftener to be offered to the light and to yonder handful of long +sedges and rushes in a vase. Their slender grey design of shadows +upon white walls is better than a tedious, trivial, or anxious +device from the shop. + +The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into +line and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, +not to the mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. +It is single; it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and +will never be seen again, and that, untouched, varies with the +journey of the sun, shifts the interrelation of a score of delicate +lines at the mere passing of time, though all the room be +motionless. Why will design insist upon its importunate +immortality? Wiser is the drama, and wiser the dance, that do not +pause upon an attitude. But these walk with passion or pleasure, +while the shadow walks with the earth. It alters as the hours +wheel. + +Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it is +shed by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; it +betrays the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies--a sun that +takes the midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a +sally-porte, and is about to alight on an unused horizon. So does +the grey drawing, with which you have allowed the sun and your pot +of rushes to adorn your room, play the stealthy game of the year. + +You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It needs +but four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most +buoyant jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a +symmetrical countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches +close with one another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and +their paler greys darkening. It is hard to believe that there are +many to prefer a "repeating pattern." + +It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration +the walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a +plaque or a picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To +dress a room once for all, and to give it no more heed, is to +neglect the units of the days. + +Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of +shadows which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you +see little except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow-- +be the day bright enough--compose the very air through which you see +the light. The trees show you a shadow for every leaf, and the +poplars are sprinkled upon the shining sky with little shadows that +look translucent. The liveliness of every shadow is that some light +is reflected into it; shade and shine have been entangled as though +by some wild wind through their million molecules. + +The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the +unclouded sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to +life, and are themselves the life, the action, and the transparence +of their day. + +To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light +looks still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide for +so many hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are +extinguished. Him who lies alone there the outer world touches less +by this long sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. +Although there may be no tree to stand between his window and the +south, and although no noonday wind may blow a branch of roses +across the blind, shadows and their life will be carried across by a +brilliant bird. + +To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot +see its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does but +darken his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does +not see it pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows him +wings. What flash of light could be more bright for him than such a +flash of darkness? + +It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. +If he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less--the bird's +shadow was a message from the sun. + +There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight +of the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. This +goes across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray +for a while in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer +and larger, runs, quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker +on the soft and dry grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird +swoops to a branch and clings. + +In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, +about Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high +birds are the movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there +are no woods to make a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse +of flocks of pearl-white sea birds, or of the solitary creature +driving on the wind. Theirs is always a surprise of flight. The +clouds go one way, but the birds go all ways: in from the sea or +out, across the sands, inland to high northern fields, where the +crops are late by a month. They fly so high that though they have +the shadow of the sun under their wings, they have the light of the +earth there also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, and +they fly between lights. + +Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, "swift +as dreams," at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, +and ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They +subside by degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings +and cries until there comes the general shadow of night wherewith +the little shadows close, complete. + +The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds have +traced wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their +shadows have fled all day faster than her streams, and have +overtaken all the movement of her wingless creatures. But now it is +the flight of the very earth that carries her clasped shadow from +the sun. + + + +THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY + + + +All Englishmen know the name of Lucy Hutchinson; and of her calling +and election to the most wifely of all wifehoods--that of a +soldier's wife--history has made her countrymen aware. Inasmuch as +Colonel Hutchinson was a political soldier, moreover, she is +something more than his biographer--his historian. And she +convinces her reader that her Puritan principles kept abreast of her +affections. There is no self-abandonment; she is not precipitate; +keeps her own footing; wife of a soldier as she is, would not have +armed him without her own previous indignation against the enemy. +She is a soldier at his orders, but she had warily and freely chosen +her captain. + +Briefly, and with the dignity that the language of her day kept +unmarred for her use, she relates her own childhood and youth. She +was a child such as those serious times desired that a child should +be; that is, she was as slightly a child, and for as brief a time, +as might be. Childhood, as an age of progress, was not to be +delayed, as an age of imperfection was to be improved, as an age of +inability was not to be exposed except when precocity distinguished +it. It must at any rate be shortened. Lucy Apsley, at four years +old, read English perfectly, and was "carried to sermons, and could +remember and repeat them exactly." "At seven she had eight tutors +in several qualities." She outstripped her brothers in Latin, +albeit they were at school and she had no teacher except her +father's chaplain, who, poor gentleman, was "a pitiful dull fellow." +She was not companionable. Her many friends were indulged with +"babies" (that is, dolls) and these she pulled to pieces. She +exhorted the maids, she owned, "much." But she also heard much of +their love stories, and acquired a taste for sonnets. + +It was a sonnet, and indeed one of her own writing, that brought +about her acquaintance with Mr. Hutchinson. The sonnet was read to +him, and discussed amongst his friends, with guesses at the +authorship; for a young woman did not, in that world, write a sonnet +without a feint of hiding its origin. One gentleman believed a +woman had made it. Another said, if so, there were but two women +capable of making it; but he owned, later, that he said "two" out of +civility (very good civility of a kind that is not now practised) to +a lady who chanced to be present; but that he knew well there was +but one; and he named her. From her future husband Lucy Apsley +received that praise of exceptions wherewith women are now, and +always will be, praised: "Mr. Hutchinson, she says, "fancying +something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary reach of +a she-wit, could scarcely believe it was a woman's." + +He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured +conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young +friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer +jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or +precise in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered +up the envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's +splendour. His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, +thick-set head of hair" in long locks that were an offence to many +of his own sect, but, she says, "a great ornament to him." But for +herself she has some dissimulated vanities. She was negligent of +dress, and when, after much waiting and many devices, her suitor +first saw her, she was "not ugly in a careless riding-habit." As +for him, "in spite of all her indifference, she was surprised (she +writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw this +gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to +beget love in any one." He married her as soon as she could leave +her chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that "the priest +and all that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God +recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her." + +The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy +Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our +own time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of +gesture of language; this is where she praises her husband's +"handsome management of love." {1} She thus prefaces her description +of her honoured lord: "If my treacherous memory have not lost the +dearest treasure that ever I committed to its trust -." She boasts +of her country in lofty phrase: "God hath, as it were, enclosed a +people here, out of the waste common of the world." And again of +her husband: "It will be as hard to say which was the predominant +virtue in him as which is so in its own nature." "He had made up +his accounts with life and death, and fixed his purpose to entertain +both honourably." "The heat of his youth a little inclined him to +the passion of anger, and the goodness of his nature to those of +love and grief; but reason was never dethroned by them, but +continued governor and moderator of his soul." + +She describes sweetly certain three damsels who had "conceived a +kindness" for her lord, their susceptibility, their willingness, +their "admirable tempting beauty," and "such excellent good-nature +as would have thawed a rock of ice"; but she adds no less +beautifully, "It was not his time to love." In her widowhood she +remembered that she had been commanded "not to grieve at the common +rate of women"; and this is the lovely phrase of her grief: "As his +shadow, she waited on him everywhere, till he was taken to that +region of light which admits of none, and then she vanished into +nothing." + +She has an invincible anger against the enemies of her husband and +of the cause. The fevers, "little less than plagues," that were +common in that age carry them off exemplarily by families at a time. +An adversary is "the devil's exquisite solicitor." All Royalists +are of "the wicked faction." She suspected his warders of poisoning +Colonel Hutchinson in the prison wherein he died. The keeper had +given him, under pretence of kindness, a bottle of excellent wine, +and the two gentlemen who drank of it died within four months. A +poison of strange operation! "We must leave it to the great day, +when all crimes, how secret soever, will be made manifest, whether +they added poison to all their other iniquity, whereby they +certainly murdered this guiltless servant of God." When he was near +death, she adds, "a gentlewoman of the Castle came up and asked him +how he did. He told her, Incomparably well, and full of faith." + +On the subject of politics, Mrs. Hutchinson writes, it must be +owned, platitudes; but all are simple, and some are stated with +dignity. Her power, her integrity, her tenderness, her pomp, the +liberal and public interests of her life, her good breeding, her +education, her exquisite diction, are such as may well make a reader +ask how and why the literature of England declined upon the +vulgarity, ignorance, cowardice, foolishness, that became "feminine" +in the estimation of a later age; that is, in the character of women +succeeding her, and in the estimation of men succeeding her lord. +The noble graces of Lucy Hutchinson, I say, may well make us marvel +at the downfall following--at Goldsmith's invention of the women of +"The Vicar or Wakefield" in one age, and at Thackeray's invention of +the women of "Esmond" in another. + +Mrs. Hutchinson has little leisure for much praise of the natural +beauty of sky and landscape, but now and then in her work there +appears an abiding sense of the pleasantness of the rural world--in +her day an implicit feeling rather than an explicit. "The happiness +of the soil and air contribute all things that are necessary to the +use or delight of man's life." "He had an opportunity of conversing +with her in those pleasant walks which, at the sweet season of the +spring, invited all the neighbouring inhabitants to seek their +joys." And she describes a dream whereof the scene was in the green +fields of Southwark. What an England was hers! And what an +English! A memorable vintage of our literature and speech was +granted in her day; we owe much to those who--as she did--gathered +it in. + + + +MRS. DINGLEY + + + +We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {2} All we have to +call her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties her to +Stella, with whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved "better a +thousand times than life, as hope saved." MD, without full stops, +Swift writes it eight times in a line for the pleasure of writing +it. "MD sometimes means Stella alone," says one of many editors. +"The letters were written nominally to Stella and Mrs. Dingley," +says another, "but it does not require to be said that it was really +for Stella's sake alone that they were penned." Not so. "MD" never +stands for Stella alone. And the editor does not yet live who shall +persuade one honest reader, against the word of Swift, that Swift +loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, and not, by a most +delicate exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that they make the +"she" and "her" of every letter. And this shall be a paper of +reparation to Mrs. Dingley. + +No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her +honours. In love "to divide is not to take away," as Shelley says; +and Dingley's half of the tender things said to MD is equal to any +whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella's half. But the +sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. He +has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. +Sly sentimentalist--he finds her irksome. Through one of his most +modern representatives he has but lately called her a "chaperon." A +chaperon! + +MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she has been +pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in this +respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were "saucy +charming MD," "saucy little, pretty, dear rogues," "little monkeys +mine," "little mischievous girls," "nautinautinautidear girls," +"brats," "huzzies both," "impudence and saucy-face," "saucy noses," +"my dearest lives and delights," "dear little young women," "good +dallars, not crying dallars" (which means "girls"), "ten thousand +times dearest MD," and so forth in a hundred repetitions. They are, +every now and then, "poor MD," but obviously not because of their +own complaining. Swift called them so because they were mortal; and +he, like all great souls, lived and loved, conscious every day of +the price, which is death. + +The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with +his summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately +put them asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than +foolishly play havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the most +secluded thing in the world. "I am weary of friends, and +friendships are all monsters, except MD's;" "I ought to read these +letters I write after I have done. But I hope it does not puzzle +little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks," he adds, +"when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not alone, all +the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks like PMD." +Again: "I do not like women so much as I did. MD, you must know, +are not women." "God Almighty preserve you both and make us happy +together." "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may +never be asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives." +"Farewell, dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has +not had one happy day since he left you, as hope saved." + +With them--with her--he hid himself in the world, at Court, at the +bar of St. James's coffee-house, whither he went on the Irish mail- +day, and was "in pain except he saw MD's little handwriting." He +hid with them in the long labours of these exquisite letters every +night and morning. If no letter came, he comforted himself with +thinking that "he had it yet to be happy with." And the world has +agreed to hide under its own manifold and lachrymose blunders the +grace and singularity--the distinction--of this sweet romance. +"Little, sequestered pleasure-house"--it seemed as though "the many +could not miss it," but not even the few have found it. + +It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella +should be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from +Swift. But day and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD's +little letters; he waits upon "her" will: "I shall make a sort of +journal, and when it is full I will send it whether MD writes or +not; and so that will be pretty." "Naughty girls that will not +write to a body!" "I wish you were whipped for forgetting to send. +Go, be far enough, negligent baggages." "You, Mistress Stella, +shall write your share, and then comes Dingley altogether, and then +Stella a little crumb at the end; and then conclude with something +handsome and genteel, as 'your most humble cumdumble.'" But Scott +and Macaulay and Thackeray are all exceedingly sorry for Stella. + +Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: +"Here is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I must +be writing every night; O Lord, O Lord!" "I must go write idle +things, and twittle twattle." "These saucy jades take up so much of +my time with writing to them in the morning." Is it not a stealthy +wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley that she should be stripped of all +these ornaments to her name and memory? When Swift tells a woman in +a letter that there he is "writing in bed, like a tiger," she should +go gay in the eyes of all generations. + +They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will +not let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. Marry +come up! Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages +(taken very seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, +then? That would have been no ill share for Dingley. But no, +forsooth, Dingley is allowed nothing. + +There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from +her. For now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does so he +invariably drops those initials and writes "Stella" or "Ppt" for the +one, and "D" or "Dingley" for the other. There is no exception to +this anywhere. He is anxious about Stella's "little eyes," and +about her health generally; whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he +thinks, will not catch the "new fever," because she is not well; +"but why should D escape it, pray?" And Mrs. Dingley is rebuked for +her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. "I doubt, Madam +Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as +Stella; she tells thumpers." Stella is often reproved for her +spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. But she is +a puzzle-headed woman, like another. "What do you mean by my fourth +letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella say you had my fifth, +goody Blunder?" "Now, Mistress Dingley, are you not an impudent +slut to except a letter next packet? Unreasonable baggage! No, +little Dingley, I am always in bed by twelve, and I take great care +of myself." "You are a pretending slut, indeed, with your 'fourth' +and 'fifth' in the margin, and your 'journal' and everything. O +Lord, never saw the like, we shall never have done." "I never saw +such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, so everything." Swift is +insistently grateful for their inquiries for his health. He pauses +seriously to thank them in the midst of his prattle. Both women-- +MD--are rallied on their politics: "I have a fancy that Ppt is a +Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort of trimmer." + +But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in +his lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her in +Ireland. "He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible +litter; but I say nothing; I am as tame as a clout." + +Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the +ignominy, in a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to +Swift as an unclaimed wife; so far so good. But two hundred years +is long for her to have gone stripped of so radiant a glory as is +hers by right. "Better, thanks to MD's prayers," wrote the immortal +man who loved her, in a private fragment of a journal, never meant +for Dingley's eyes, nor for Ppt's, nor for any human eyes; and the +rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all the credit of those +prayers, and all the thanks of that pious benediction. + + + +PRUE + + + +Through the long history of human relations, which is the history of +the life of our race, there sounds at intervals the clamour of a +single voice which has not the tone of oratory, but asks, answers, +interrupts itself, interrupts--what else? Whatever else it +interrupts is silence; there are pauses, but no answers. There is +the jest without the laugh, and again the laugh without the jest. +And this is because the letters written by Madame de Sevigne were +all saved, and not many written to her; because Swift burnt the +letters that were the dearest things in life to him, while "MD" both +made a treasury of his; and because Prue kept all the letters which +Steele wrote to her from their marriage-day onwards, and Steele kept +none of hers. + +In Swift's case the silence is full of echoes; that is to say, his +letters repeat the phrases of Stella's and Dingley's, to play with +them, flout them, and toss them back against the two silenced +voices. He never lets the word of these two women fall to the +ground; and when they have but blundered with it, and aimed it wide, +and sent it weakly, he will catch it, and play you twenty delicate +and expert juggling pranks with it as he sends it back into their +innocent faces. So we have something of MD's letters in the +"journal," and this in the only form in which we desire them, to +tell the truth; for when Swift gravely saves us some specimens of +Stella's wit, after her death, as she spoke them, and not as he +mimicked them, they make a sorry show. + +In many correspondences, where one voice remains and the other is +gone, the retort is enough for two. It is as when, the other day, +the half of a pretty quarrel between nurse and child came down from +an upper floor to the ears of a mother who decided that she need not +interfere. The voice of the undaunted child it was that was audible +alone, and it replied, "I'm not; YOU are"; and anon, "I'll tell +YOURS." Nothing was really missing there. + +But Steele's letters to Prue, his wife, are no such simple matter. +The turn we shall give them depends upon the unheard tone whereto +they reply. And there is room for conjecture. It has pleased the +more modern of the many spirits of banter to supply Prue's eternal +silence with the voice of a scold. It is painful to me to complain +of Thackeray; but see what a figure he makes of Prue in "Esmond." +It is, says the nineteenth-century humourist, in defence against the +pursuit of a jealous, exacting, neglected, or evaded wife that poor +Dick Steele sends those little notes of excuse: "Dearest Being on +earth, pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having +met a schoolfellow from India"; "My dear, dear wife, I write to let +you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some +business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see +you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband"; +"Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your +welfare"; "I stay here in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for +me, and shall dine with him to that end"; and so forth. Once only +does Steele really afford the recent humourist the suggestion that +is apparently always so welcome. It is when he writes that he is +invited to supper to Mr. Boyle's, and adds: "Dear Prue, do not send +after me, for I shall be ridiculous." But even this is to be read +not ungracefully by a well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused +to the world. Her husband, by the way, had been already married; +and his greater age makes his constant deference all the more +charming. + +But with this one exception, Steele's little notes, kept by his wife +while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter and +his, are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. +It is worth while to remember that Steele's dinner, which it was so +often difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore +of mid-business. But that is a detail. What is desirable is that a +reasonable degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; for it +is no more than just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: "How +often has your tenderness removed pain from my aching head, how +often anguish from my afflicted heart. If there are such beings as +guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of +them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form, than +my wife." + +True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; +and these carry to her his assurance that she is "the beautifullest +object in the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree +comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and society." "But +indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant +fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, +that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my +request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride +I have that you are mine." The correction of the phrase is finely +considerate. + +Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a +reply, full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a +little flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence +of uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with +what simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her +invitation, and perform! She wanted a compliment, though they had +been long married then, and he immediately turned it. This was no +dowdy Prue. + +Her request, by the way, which he repeats in obeying it, is one of +the few instances of the other side of the correspondence--one of +the few direct echoes of that one of the two voices which is silent. + +The ceremony of the letters and the deferent method of address and +signature are never dropped in this most intimate of letter-writing. +It is not a little depressing to think that in this very form and +state is supposed, by the modern reader, to lurk the stealthiness of +the husband of farce, the "rogue." One does not like the word. Is +it not clownish to apply it with intention to the husband of Prue? +He did not pay, he was always in difficulties, he hid from bailiffs, +he did many other things that tarnish honour, more or less, and +things for which he had to beg Prue's special pardon; but yet he is +not a fit subject for the unhandsome incredulity which is proud to +be always at hand with an ironic commentary on such letters as his. + +I have no wish to bowdlerize Sir Richard Steele, his ways and words. +He wrote to Prue at night when the burgundy had been too much for +him, and in the morning after. He announces that he is coming to +her "within a pint of wine." One of his gayest letters--a love- +letter before the marriage, addressed to "dear lovely Mrs. +Scurlock"--confesses candidly that he had been pledging her too +well: "I have been in very good company, where your health, under +the character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk; so +that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more +than I DIE FOR YOU." + +Steele obviously drank burgundy wildly, as did his "good company"; +as did also the admirable Addison, who was so solitary in character +and so serene in temperament. But no one has, for this fault, the +right to put a railing accusation into the mouth of Prue. Every +woman has a right to her own silence, whether her silence be hers of +set purpose or by accident. And every creature has a right to +security from the banterings peculiar to the humourists of a +succeeding age. To every century its own ironies, to every century +its own vulgarities. In Steele's time they had theirs. They might +have rallied Prue more coarsely, but it would have been with a +different rallying. Writers of the nineteenth century went about to +rob her of her grace. + +She kept some four hundred of these little letters of her lord's. +It was a loyal keeping. But what does Thackeray call it? His word +is "thrifty." He says: "There are four hundred letters of Dick +Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved +accurately." + +"Thrifty" is a hard word to apply to her whom Steele styled, in the +year before her death, his "charming little insolent." She was ill +in Wales, and he, at home, wept upon her pillow, and "took it to be +a sin to go to sleep." Thrifty they may call her, and accurate if +they will; but she lies in Westminster Abbey, and Steele called her +"your Prueship." + + + +MRS. JOHNSON + + + +This paper shall not be headed "Tetty." What may be a graceful +enough freedom with the wives of other men shall be prohibited in +the case of Johnson's, she with whose name no writer until now has +scrupled to take freedoms whereto all graces were lacking. "Tetty" +it should not be, if for no other reason, for this--that the chance +of writing "Tetty" as a title is a kind of facile literary +opportunity; it shall be denied. The Essay owes thus much amends of +deliberate care to Dr. Johnson's wife. But, indeed, the reason is +graver. What wish would he have had but that the language in the +making whereof he took no ignoble part should somewhere, at some +time, treat his only friend with ordinary honour? + +Men who would trust Dr. Johnson with their orthodoxy, with their +vocabulary, and with the most intimate vanity of their human wishes, +refuse, with every mark of insolence, to trust him in regard to his +wife. On that one point no reverence is paid to him, no deference, +no respect, not so much as the credit due to our common sanity. Yet +he is not reviled on account of his Thrale--nor, indeed, is his +Thrale now seriously reproached for her Piozzi. It is true that +Macaulay, preparing himself and his reader "in his well-known way" +(as a rustic of Mr. Hardy's might have it) for the recital of her +second marriage, says that it would have been well if she had been +laid beside the kind and generous Thrale when, in the prime of her +life, he died. But Macaulay has not left us heirs to his +indignation. His well-known way was to exhaust those possibilities +of effect in which the commonplace is so rich. And he was permitted +to point his paragraphs as he would, not only by calling Mrs. +Thrale's attachment to her second husband "a degrading passion," but +by summoning a chorus of "all London" to the same purpose. She +fled, he tells us, from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen +and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown. Thus when +Macaulay chastises Mrs. Elizabeth Porter for marrying Johnson, he is +not inconsistent, for he pursues Mrs. Thrale with equal rigour for +her audacity in keeping gaiety and grace in her mind and manners +longer than Macaulay liked to see such ornaments added to the charm +of twice "married brows." + +It is not so with succeeding essayists. One of these minor +biographers is so gentle as to call the attachment of Mrs. Thrale +and Piozzi "a mutual affection." He adds, "No one who has had some +experience of life will be inclined to condemn Mrs. Thrale." But +there is no such courtesy, even from him, for Mrs. Johnson. Neither +to him nor to any other writer has it yet occurred that if England +loves her great Englishman's memory, she owes not only courtesy, but +gratitude, to the only woman who loved him while there was yet time. + +Not a thought of that debt has stayed the alacrity with which a +caricature has been acclaimed as the only possible portrait of Mrs. +Johnson. Garrick's school reminiscences would probably have made a +much more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his +remembrances; we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of +envying those who heard him. But honest laughter should not fall +into that tone of common antithesis which seems to say, "See what +are the absurdities of the great! Such is life! On this one point +we, even we, are wiser than Dr. Johnson--we know how grotesque was +his wife. We know something of the privacies of her toilet-table. +We are able to compare her figure with the figures we, unlike him in +his youth, have had the opportunity of admiring--the figures of the +well-bred and well-dressed." It is a sorry success to be able to +say so much. + +But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, +at twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over +himself which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, a +woman who had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite +of first sight. "That," she said to her daughter, "is the most +sensible man I ever met." He was penniless. She had what was no +mean portion for those times and those conditions; and, granted that +she was affected, and provincial, and short, and all the rest with +which she is charged, she was probably not without suitors; nor do +her defects or faults seem to have been those of an unadmired or +neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the aspect of +Johnson's form and face, even in his twenties, and how little he +could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. This +one loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the +noblest of all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. And +English literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay's- +-"She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the +addresses of a suitor who might have been her son." + +Her readiness did her incalculable honour. But it is at last worth +remembering that Johnson had first done her incalculable honour. No +one has given to man or woman the right to judge as to the +worthiness of her who received it. The meanest man is generally +allowed his own counsel as to his own wife; one of the greatest of +men has been denied it. "The lover," says Macaulay, "continued to +be under the illusions of the wedding day till the lady died." What +is so graciously said is not enough. He was under those "illusions" +until he too died, when he had long passed her latest age, and was +therefore able to set right that balance of years which has so much +irritated the impertinent. Johnson passed from this life twelve +years older than she, and so for twelve years his constant eyes had +to turn backwards to dwell upon her. Time gave him a younger wife. + +And here I will put into Mrs. Johnson's mouth, that mouth to which +no one else has ever attributed any beautiful sayings, the words of +Marceline Desbordes-Valmore to the young husband she loved: "Older +than thou! Let me never see thou knowest it. Forget it! I will +remember it, to die before thy death." + +Macaulay, in his unerring effectiveness, uses Johnson's short sight +for an added affront to Mrs. Johnson. The bridegroom was too weak +of eyesight "to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom." +Nevertheless, he saw well enough, when he was old, to distinguish +Mrs. Thrale's dresses. He reproved her for wearing a dark dress; it +was unsuitable, he said, for her size; a little creature should show +gay colours "like an insect." We are not called upon to admire his +wife; why, then, our taste being thus uncompromised, do we not +suffer him to admire her? It is the most gratuitous kind of +intrusion. Moreover, the biographers are eager to permit that touch +of romance and grace in his relations to Mrs. Thrale, which they +officially deny in the case of Mrs. Johnson. But the difference is +all on the other side. He would not have bidden his wife dress like +an insect. Mrs. Thrale was to him "the first of womankind" only +because his wife was dead. + +Beauclerc, we learn, was wont to cap Garrick's mimicry of Johnson's +love-making by repeating the words of Johnson himself in after- +years--"It was a love-match on both sides." And obviously he was as +strange a lover as they said. Who doubted it? Was there any other +woman in England to give such a suitor the opportunity of an eternal +love? "A life radically wretched," was the life of this master of +Letters; but she, who has received nothing in return except ignominy +from these unthankful Letters, had been alone to make it otherwise. +Well for him that he married so young as to earn the ridicule of all +the biographers in England; for by doing so he, most happily, +possessed his wife for nearly twenty years. I have called her his +only friend. So indeed she was, though he had followers, disciples, +rivals, competitors, and companions, many degrees of admirers, a +biographer, a patron, and a public. He had also the houseful of sad +old women who quarrelled under his beneficent protection. But what +friend had he? He was "solitary" from the day she died. + +Let us consider under what solemn conditions and in what immortal +phrase the word "solitary" stands. He wrote it, all Englishmen know +where. He wrote it in the hour of that melancholy triumph when he +had been at last set free from the dependence upon hope. He hoped +no more, and he needed not to hope. The "notice" of Lord +Chesterfield had been too long deferred; it was granted at last, +when it was a flattery which Johnson's court of friends would +applaud. But not for their sake was it welcome. To no living ear +would he bring it and report it with delight. + +He was indifferent, he was known. The sensitiveness to pleasure was +gone, and the sensitiveness to pain, slights, and neglect would +thenceforth be suffered to rest; no man in England would put that to +proof again. No man in England, did I say? But, indeed, that is +not so. No slight to him, to his person, or to his fame could have +had power to cause him pain more sensibly than the customary, +habitual, ready-made ridicule that has been cast by posterity upon +her whom he loved for twenty years, prayed for during thirty-two +years more, who satisfied one of the saddest human hearts, but to +whom the world, assiduous to admire him, hardly accords human +dignity. He wrote praises of her manners and of her person for her +tomb. But her epitaph, that does not name her, is in the greatest +of English prose. What was favour to him? "I am indifferent . . . +I am known . . . I am solitary, and cannot impart it." + + + +MADAME ROLAND + + + +The articulate heroine has her reward of appreciation and her dues +of praise; it is her appropriate fortune to have it definitely +measured, and generally on equal terms. She takes pains to explain +herself, and is understood, and pitied, when need is, on the right +occasions. For instance, Madame Roland, a woman of merit, who knew +her "merit's name and place," addressed her memoirs, her studies in +contemporary history, her autobiography, her many speeches, and her +last phrase at the foot of the undaunting scaffold, to a great +audience of her equals (more or less) then living and to live in the +ages then to come--her equals and those she raises to her own level, +as the heroic example has authority to do. + +Another woman--the Queen--suffered at that time, and suffered +without the command of language, the exactitude of phrase, the +precision of judgement, the proffer of prophecy, the explicit sense +of Innocence and Moderation oppressed in her person. These were +Madame Roland's; but the other woman, without eloquence, without +literature, and without any judicial sense of history, addresses no +mere congregation of readers. Marie Antoinette's unrecorded pangs +pass into the treasuries of the experience of the whole human +family. All that are human have some part there; genius itself may +lean in contemplation over that abyss of woe; the great poets +themselves may look into its distances and solitudes. Compassion +here has no measure and no language. Madame Roland speaks neither +to genius nor to complete simplicity; Marie Antoinette holds her +peace in the presence of each, dumb in her presence. + +Madame Roland had no dumbness of the spirit, as history, prompted by +her own musical voice, presents her to a world well prepared to do +her justice. Of that justice she had full expectation; justice +here, justice in the world--the world that even when universal +philosophy should reign would be inevitably the world of mediocrity; +justice that would come of enlightened views; justice that would be +the lesson learnt by the nations widely educated up to some point +generally accessible; justice well within earthly sight and +competence. This confidence was also her reward. For what justice +did the Queen look? Here it is the "abyss that appeals to the +abyss." + +Twice only in the life of Madame Roland is there a lapse into +silence, and for the record of these two poor failures of that long, +indomitable, reasonable, temperate, explicit utterance which +expressed her life and mind we are debtors to her friends. She +herself has not confessed them. Nowhere else, whether in her candid +history of herself, or in her wise history of her country, or in her +judicial history of her contemporaries, whose spirit she discerned, +whose powers she appraised, whose errors she foresaw; hardly in her +thought, and never in her word, is a break to be perceived; she is +not silent and she hardly stammers; and when she tells us of her +tears--the tears of youth only--her record is voluble and all +complete. For the dignity of her style, of her force, and of her +balanced character, Madame Roland would doubtless have effaced the +two imperfections which, to us who would be glad to admire in +silence her heroic figure, if that heroic figure would but cease to +talk, are finer and more noble than her well-placed language and the +high successes of her decision and her endurance. More than this, +the two failures of this unfailing woman are two little doors opened +suddenly into those wider spaces and into that dominion of solitude +which, after all, do doubtless exist even in the most garrulous +soul. By these two outlets Manon Roland also reaches the region of +Marie Antoinette. But they befell her at the close of her life, and +they shall be named at the end of this brief study. + +Madame Roland may seem the more heroic to those whose suffrages she +seeks in all times and nations because of the fact that she +manifestly suppresses in her self-descriptions any signs of a +natural gaiety. Her memoirs give evidence of no such thing; it is +only in her letters, not intended for the world, that we are aware +of the inadvertence of moments. We may overhear a laugh at times, +but not in those consciously sprightly hours that she spent with her +convent-school friend gathering fruit and counting eggs at the farm. +She pursued these country tasks not without offering herself the +cultivated congratulation of one whom cities had failed to allure, +and who bore in mind the examples of Antiquity. She did not forget +the death of Socrates. Or, rather, she finds an occasion to +reproach herself with having once forgotten it, and with having +omitted what another might have considered the tedious recollection +of the condemnation of Phocion. She never wearied of these +examples. But it is her inexhaustible freshness in these things +that has helped other writers of her time to weary us. + +In her manner of telling her story there is an absence of all +exaggeration, which gives the reader a constant sense of security. +That virtue of style and thought was one she proposed to herself and +attained with exact consciousness of success. It would be almost +enough (in the perfection of her practice) to make a great writer; +even a measure of it goes far to make a fair one. Her moderation of +statement is never shaken; and if she now and then glances aside +from her direct narrative road to hazard a conjecture, the error she +may make is on the generous side of hope and faith. For instance, +she is too sure that her Friends (so she always calls the Girondins, +using no nicknames) are safe, whereas they were then all doomed; a +young man who had carried a harmless message for her--a mere +notification to her family of her arrest--receives her cheerful +commendation for his good feeling; from a note we learn that for +this action he suffered on the scaffold and that his father soon +thereafter died of grief. But Madame Roland never matched such a +delirious event as this by any delirium of her own imagination. The +delirium was in things and in the acts of men; her mind was never +hurried from its sane self-possession, when the facts raved. + +It was only when she used the rhetoric ready to her hand that she +stooped to verbal violence; et encore! References to the banishment +of Aristides and the hemlock of Socrates had become toy daggers and +bending swords in the hands of her compatriots, and she is hardly to +be accused of violence in brandishing those weapons. Sometimes, +refuse rhetoric being all too ready, she takes it on her pen, in +honest haste, as though it were honest speech, and stands committed +to such a phrase as this: "The dregs of the nation placed such a +one at the helm of affairs." + +But her manner was not generally to write anything but a clear and +efficient French language. She never wrote for the love of art, but +without some measure of art she did not write; and her simplicity is +somewhat altered by that importunate love of the Antique. In "Bleak +House" there is an old lady who insisted that the name "Mr. +Turveydrop," as it appeared polished on the door-plate of the +dancing master, was the name of the pretentious father and not of +the industrious son--albeit, needless to say, one name was common to +them. With equal severity I aver that when Madame Roland wrote to +her husband in the second person singular she was using the TU of +Rome and not the TU of Paris. French was indeed the language; but +had it been French in spirit she would (in spite of the growing +Republican fashion) have said VOUS to this "homme eclaire, de moeurs +pures, e qui l'on ne peut reprocher que sa grande admiration pour +les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le faible de +trop aimer e parler de lui." There was no French TU in her +relations with this husband, gravely esteemed and appraised, +discreetly rebuked, the best passages of whose Ministerial reports +she wrote, and whom she observed as he slowly began to think he +himself had composed them. She loved him with a loyal, obedient, +and discriminating affection, and when she had been put to death, +he, still at liberty, fell upon his sword. + +This last letter was written at a moment when, in order to prevent +the exposure of a public death, Madame Roland had intended to take +opium in the end of her cruel imprisonment. A little later she +chose that those who oppressed her country should have their way +with her to the last. But, while still intending self-destruction, +she had written to her husband: "Forgive me, respectable man, for +disposing of a life that I had consecrated to thee." In quoting +this I mean to make no too-easy effect with the word "respectable," +grown grotesque by the tedious gibe of our own present fashion of +speech. + +Madame Roland, I have said, was twice inarticulate; she had two +spaces of silence, one when she, pure and selfless patriot, had +heard her condemnation to death. Passing out of the court she +beckoned to her friends, and signified to them her sentence "by a +gesture." And again there was a pause, in the course of her last +days, during which her speeches had not been few, and had been +spoken with her beautiful voice unmarred; "she leant," says Riouffe, +"alone against her window, and wept there three hours." + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD + + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, +disappointed of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the +preoccupations. You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard +year by year, do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs +alike. Not the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenanted +ways of a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, +after failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your +documents are at fault. You are the fellow traveller of a bird. +The bird alights and escapes out of time to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of +four years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the +sweet and unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with +your loving dolls." A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to +come down from the heights and play with him on the floor, but +sensible, perhaps, that there was a dignity to be observed none the +less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a lady frog." None ever said +their good things before these indeliberate authors. Even their own +kind--children--have not preceded them. No child in the past ever +found the same replies as the girl of five whose father made that +appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, perverse, and +unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and had a +mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy +things for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely +puddin's?" Yes, even for these. The subject must have seemed to +her to be worth pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't +like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been +drowned in the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that +she should forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay +subject--her wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, +"what I should like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a +whistle!" Her mother was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, +that she could make no offer as to the dolls. But the whistle +seemed practicable. "It is for me to whistle for cabs," said the +child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go to parties." Another +morning she came down radiant. "Did you hear a great noise in the +miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried because I dreamt +that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, +nothing feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than +you," is the word of a very young egotist. An older child says, +"I'd better go, bettern't I, mother?" He calls a little space at +the back of a London house, "the backy-garden." A little creature +proffers almost daily the reminder at luncheon--at tart-time: +"Father, I hope you will remember that I am the favourite of the +crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent the naif +things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, he +would hardly light upon the device of the little troupe who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of candle-shades. + +"It's JOLLY dull without you, mother," says a little girl who-- +gentlest of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she +makes no secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her +feats of metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are +involuntary: the "stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing +chamine." Genoese peasants have the same prank when they try to +speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they +should by any means have an impression of the country or the sea +annually. A London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows +it with her pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who +wants to play with a bronze Japanese lobster, asks "Will you please +let me have that tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the +most touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to +save him. How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of +the "saving" of other things of interest--especially chocolate +creams taken for safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me +to-day? Nurse is going out, will you save me, mother?" The same +little variant upon common use is in another child's courteous reply +to a summons to help in the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite +at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, +was taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different +standing from her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a +Saturday Reviewer. As he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the +town unknown to her, she noted with interest the shops of the +neighbourhood as she went, for they might be those of the +fournisseurs of her friend. "That is his bread shop, and that is +his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, with even +heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming parterre of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I +suppose, is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is +intent upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We +have all heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, +of collecting cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a +joy that costs her nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper +names over all shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. +"I began three weeks ago next Monday, mother," she says with +precision, "and I have got thirty-nine." "Thirty-nine what?" +"Smiths." + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like +collecting together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, +single of their kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and +that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who +have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is"; their +natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing +sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. +"Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it +does not rain resumes, "Lift I up and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered +for her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, +and with some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she +took no pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her +friend. He had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of +Heaven, and the decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, +and of her hair--"a brown tress." She had gravely heard the words +as "a brown dress," and she silently bore the poet a grudge for +having been the accessory of Providence in the mandate that she +should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised ear played +another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for snubbing any +anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said, more or less +after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the +years of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a +current word into use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, +so as to save the interruption of a pause for search. I have +certainly detected, in children old enough to show their motives, a +conviction that a word of their own making is as good a +communication as another, and as intelligible. There is even a +general implicit conviction among them that the grown-up people, +too, make words by the wayside as occasion befalls. How otherwise +should words be so numerous that every day brings forward some +hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he +thinks to belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out +of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so +much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent +anything strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The +child trusts genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by +his first sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and +called them, without allowing himself to be checked for the trifle +of a name, "summersets." This was simple and unexpected; so was the +comment of a sister a very little older. "Why does he call those +flowers summersets?" their mother said; and the girl, with a darkly +brilliant look of humour and penetration, answered, "because they +are so big." There seemed to be no further question possible after +an explanation that was presented thus charged with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, +somewhat at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases +hazarded to express a meaning well realized--a personal matter. +Questioned as to the eating of an uncertain number of buns just +before lunch, the child averred, "I took them just to appetize my +hunger." As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an +attractive confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters +had been frequenting those little tables on their way from school. +"I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; "but I generally +speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. +Dryden does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer +passages. But sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite +intelligible to elders. Take the letter written by a little girl to +a mother who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was +inclined to be satisfied with something of her own writing. The +child has a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. +There was no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at +home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen: --"My +dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, +if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will +not write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger +sister, and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew +just how old she is, mother, then they would know she is onward. +They can see she is pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward +baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children +who in time betray a little consciousness and a slight mefiance as +to where the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, +obscure. These children may not be shy enough to suffer any self- +checking in their talk, but they are now and then to be heard +slurring a word of which they do not feel too sure. A little girl +whose sensitiveness was barely enough to cause her to stop to choose +between two words, was wont to bring a cup of tea to the writing- +table of her mother, who had often feigned indignation at the +weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the infusion." "I'm +afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and then, in a +half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not told, +and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + +THE CHILD OF TUMULT + + + +A poppy bud, packed into tight bundles by so hard and resolute a +hand that the petals of the flower never afterwards lose the +creases, is a type of the child. Nothing but the unfolding, which +is as yet in the non-existing future, can explain the manner of the +close folding of character. In both flower and child it looks much +as though the process had been the reverse of what it was--as though +a finished and open thing had been folded up into the bud--so +plainly and certainly is the future implied, and the intention of +compressing and folding-close made manifest. + +With the other incidents of childish character, the crowd of +impulses called "naughtiness" is perfectly perceptible--it would +seem heartless to say how soon. The naughty child (who is often an +angel of tenderness and charm, affectionate beyond the capacity of +his fellows, and a very ascetic of penitence when the time comes) +opens early his brief campaigns and raises the standard of revolt as +soon as he is capable of the desperate joys of disobedience. + +But even the naughty child is an individual, and must not be treated +in the mass. He is numerous indeed, but not general, and to +describe him you must take the unit, with all his incidents and his +organic qualities as they are. Take then, for instance, one naughty +child in the reality of his life. He is but six years old, slender +and masculine, and not wronged by long hair, curls, or effeminate +dress. His face is delicate and too often haggard with tears of +penitence that Justice herself would be glad to spare him. Some +beauty he has, and his mouth especially is so lovely as to seem not +only angelic but itself an angel. He has absolutely no self-control +and his passions find him without defence. They come upon him in +the midst of his usual brilliant gaiety and cut short the frolic +comedy of his fine spirits. + +Then for a wild hour he is the enemy of the laws. If you imprison +him, you may hear his resounding voice as he takes a running kick at +the door, shouting his justification in unconquerable rage. "I'm +good now!" is made as emphatic as a shot by the blow of his heel +upon the panel. But if the moment of forgiveness is deferred, in +the hope of a more promising repentance, it is only too likely that +he will betake himself to a hostile silence and use all the revenge +yet known to his imagination. "Darling mother, open the door!" +cries his touching voice at last; but if the answer should be "I +must leave you for a short time, for punishment," the storm suddenly +thunders again. "There (crash!) I have broken a plate, and I'm glad +it is broken into such little pieces that you can't mend it. I'm +going to break the 'lectric light." When things are at this pass +there is one way, and only one, to bring the child to an +overwhelming change of mind; but it is a way that would be cruel, +used more than twice or thrice in his whole career of tempest and +defiance. This is to let him see that his mother is troubled. "Oh, +don't cry! Oh, don't be sad!" he roars, unable still to deal with +his own passionate anger, which is still dealing with him. With his +kicks of rage he suddenly mingles a dance of apprehension lest his +mother should have tears in her eyes. Even while he is still +explicitly impenitent and defiant he tries to pull her round to the +light that he may see her face. It is but a moment before the other +passion of remorse comes to make havoc of the helpless child, and +the first passion of anger is quelled outright. + +Only to a trivial eye is there nothing tragic in the sight of these +great passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a +word, the small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a +little nature, and the stage is too narrow for the action of a +tragedy, the disproportion has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed +history of actual life or sometimes a famous book; it is the +manifest core of George Eliot's story of Adam Bede, where the +suffering of Hetty is, as it were, the eye of the storm. All is +expressive around her, but she is hardly articulate; the book is +full of words--preachings, speeches, daily talk, aphorisms, but a +space of silence remains about her in the midst of the story. And +the disproportion of passion--the inner disproportion--is at least +as tragic as that disproportion of fate and action; it is less +intelligible, and leads into the intricacies of nature which are +more difficult than the turn of events. + +It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow +limits of a child's nature far oftener than in those of an adult and +finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there is +unequal force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling +of powers and energies that are hurrying to their development and +pressing for exercise and life. It is this helpless inequality-- +this untimeliness--that makes the guileless comedy mingling with the +tragedies of a poor child's day. He knows thus much--that life is +troubled around him and that the fates are strong. He implicitly +confesses "the strong hours" of antique song. This same boy--the +tempestuous child of passion and revolt--went out with quiet +cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was put on, "Now, +mother, you are going to have a little peace." This way of +accepting his own conditions is shared by a sister, a very little +older, who, being of an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to +violence of every kind and tender to all without disquiet, observes +the boy's brief frenzies as a citizen observes the climate. She +knows the signs quite well and can at any time give the explanation +of some particular outburst, but without any attempt to go in search +of further or more original causes. Still less is she moved by the +virtuous indignation that is the least charming of the ways of some +little girls. Elle ne fait que constater. Her equanimity has never +been overset by the wildest of his moments, and she has witnessed +them all. It is needless to say that she is not frightened by his +drama, for Nature takes care that her young creatures shall not be +injured by sympathies. Nature encloses them in the innocent +indifference that preserves their brains from the more harassing +kinds of distress. + +Even the very frenzy of rage does not long dim or depress the boy. +It is his repentance that makes him pale, and Nature here has been +rather forced, perhaps--with no very good result. Often must a +mother wish that she might for a few years govern her child (as far +as he is governable) by the lowest motives--trivial punishments and +paltry rewards--rather than by any kind of appeal to his +sensibilities. She would wish to keep the words "right" and "wrong" +away from his childish ears, but in this she is not seconded by her +lieutenants. The child himself is quite willing to close with her +plans, in so far as he is able, and is reasonably interested in the +results of her experiments. He wishes her attempts in his regard to +have a fair chance. "Let's hope I'll be good all to-morrow," he +says with the peculiar cheerfulness of his ordinary voice. "I do +hope so, old man." "Then I'll get my penny. Mother, I was only +naughty once yesterday; if I have only one naughtiness to-morrow, +will you give me a halfpenny?" "No reward except for real goodness +all day long." "All right." + +It is only too probable that this system (adopted only after the +failure of other ways of reform) will be greatly disapproved as one +of bribery. It may, however, be curiously inquired whether all +kinds of reward might not equally be burlesqued by that word, and +whether any government, spiritual or civil, has ever even professed +to deny rewards. Moreover, those who would not give a child a penny +for being good will not hesitate to fine him a penny for being +naughty, and rewards and punishments must stand or fall together. +The more logical objection will be that goodness is ideally the +normal condition, and that it should have, therefore, no explicit +extraordinary result, whereas naughtiness, being abnormal, should +have a visible and unusual sequel. To this the rewarding mother may +reply that it is not reasonable to take "goodness" in a little child +of strong passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for +him is to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to +overbear his powers. + +But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. +What is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the +weak will of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a +sufficient resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed +as the passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; +but as it is there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy +or fear. Let, then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at +once, and mingled with the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the +suffering of rage and frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly +to make of the little unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too +hurtfully tragic. The penny is mild and strong at once, with its +still distant but certain joys of purchase; the promise and hope +break the mood of misery, and the will takes heart to resist and +conquer. + +It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. +The lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, +knowing herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the +father's voice with a menacing, "What's that noise?" The child was +persistently crying and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy +against his French nurse, when the baritone and threatening question +was sent pealing up the stairs. The child was heard to pause and +listen and then to say to his nurse, "Ce n'est pas Monsieur; c'est +Madame," and then, without further loss of time, to resume the +interrupted clamours. + +Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things +mainly to be done--to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the +present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, +and to break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly +the special cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain +and anger become hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for +use in the future at the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight +the importance of habit. Any means, then, that can succeed in +separating a little child from the habit of anger does fruitful work +for him in the helpless time of his childhood. The work is not +easy, but a little thought should make it easy for the elders to +avoid the provocation which they--who should ward off provocations-- +are apt to bring about by sheer carelessness. It is only in +childhood that our race knows such physical abandonment to sorrow +and tears, as a child's despair; and the theatre with us must needs +copy childhood if it would catch the note and action of a creature +without hope. + + + +THE CHILD OF SUBSIDING TUMULT + + + +There is a certain year that is winged, as it were, against the +flight of time; it does so move, and yet withstands time's movement. +It is full of pauses that are due to the energy of change, has +bounds and rebounds, and when it is most active then it is longest. +It is not long with languor. It has room for remoteness, and +leisure for oblivion. It takes great excursions against time, and +travels so as to enlarge its hours. This certain year is any one of +the early years of fully conscious life, and therefore it is of all +the dates. The child of Tumult has been living amply and +changefully through such a year--his eighth. It is difficult to +believe that his is a year of the self-same date as that of the +adult, the men who do not breast their days. + +For them is the inelastic, or but slightly elastic, movement of +things. Month matched with month shows a fairly equal length. Men +and women never travel far from yesterday; nor is their morrow in a +distant light. There is recognition and familiarity between their +seasons. But the Child of Tumult has infinite prospects in his +year. Forgetfulness and surprise set his east and his west at +immeasurable distance. His Lethe runs in the cheerful sun. You +look on your own little adult year, and in imagination enlarge it, +because you know it to be the contemporary of his. Even she who is +quite old, if she have a vital fancy, may face a strange and great +extent of a few years of her life still to come--his years, the +years she is to live at his side. + +Reason seems to be making good her rule in this little boy's life, +not so much by slow degrees as by sudden and fitful accessions. His +speech is yet so childish that he chooses, for a toy, with blushes +of pleasure, "a little duck what can walk"; but with a beautifully +clear accent he greets his mother with the colloquial question, +"Well, darling, do you know the latest?" "The WHAT?" "The latest: +do you know the latest?" And then he tells his news, generally, it +must be owned, with some reference to his own wrongs. On another +occasion the unexpected little phrase was varied; the news of the +war then raging distressed him; a thousand of the side he favoured +had fallen. The child then came to his mother's room with the +question: "Have you heard the saddest?" Moreover the "saddest" +caused him several fits of perfectly silent tears, which seized him +during the day, on his walks or at other moments of recollection. +From such great causes arise such little things! Some of his grief +was for the nation he admired, and some was for the triumph of his +brother, whose sympathies were on the other side, and who perhaps +did not spare his sensibilities. + +The tumults of a little child's passions of anger and grief, growing +fewer as he grows older, rather increase than lessen in their +painfulness. There is a fuller consciousness of complete +capitulation of all the childish powers to the overwhelming +compulsion of anger. This is not temptation; the word is too weak +for the assault of a child's passion upon his will. That little +will is taken captive entirely, and before the child was seven he +knew that it was so. Such a consciousness leaves all babyhood +behind and condemns the child to suffer. For a certain passage of +his life he is neither unconscious of evil, as he was, nor strong +enough to resist it, as he will be. The time of the subsiding of +the tumult is by no means the least pitiable of the phases of human +life. Happily the recovery from each trouble is ready and sure; so +that the child who had been abandoned to naughtiness with all his +will in an entire consent to the gloomy possession of his anger, and +who had later undergone a haggard repentance, has his captivity +suddenly turned again, "like rivers in the south." "Forget it," he +had wept, in a kind of extremity of remorse; "forget it, darling, +and don't, don't be sad;" and it is he, happily, who forgets. The +wasted look of his pale face is effaced by the touch of a single +cheerful thought, and five short minutes can restore the ruin, as +though a broken little German town should in the twinkling of an eye +be restored as no architect could restore it--should be made fresh, +strong, and tight again, looking like a full box of toys, as a town +was wont to look in the new days of old. + +When his ruthless angers are not in possession the child shows the +growth of this tardy reason that--quickened--is hereafter to do so +much for his peace and dignity, by the sweetest consideration. +Denied a second handful of strawberries, and seeing quite clearly +that the denial was enforced reluctantly, he makes haste to reply, +"It doesn't matter, darling." At any sudden noise in the house his +beautiful voice, with all its little difficulties of pronunciation, +is heard with the sedulous reassurance: "It's all right, mother, +nobody hurted ourselves!" He is not surprised so as to forget this +gentle little duty, which was never required of him, but is of his +own devising. + +According to the opinion of his dear and admired American friend, he +says all these things, good and evil, with an English accent; and at +the American play his English accent was irrepressible. "It's too +comic; no, it's too comic," he called in his enjoyment; being the +only perfectly fearless child in the world, he will not consent to +the conventional shyness in public, whether he be the member of an +audience or of a congregation, but makes himself perceptible. And +even when he has a desperate thing to say, in the moment of absolute +revolt--such a thing as "I CAN'T like you, mother," which anon he +will recant with convulsions of distress--he has to "speak the thing +he will," and when he recants it is not for fear. + +If such a child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for +inquisitorial government could hardly be so much as attempted) by +some small means adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it +would be well for his health, but that seems at times impossible. +By no effort can his elders altogether succeed in keeping tragedy +out of the life that is so unready for it. Against great emotions +no one can defend him by any forethought. He is their subject; and +to see him thus devoted and thus wrung, thus wrecked by tempests +inwardly, so that you feel grief has him actually by the heart, +recalls the reluctance--the question--wherewith you perceive the +interior grief of poetry or of a devout life. Cannot the Muse, +cannot the Saint, you ask, live with something less than this? If +this is the truer life, it seems hardly supportable. In like manner +it should be possible for a child of seven to come through his +childhood with griefs that should not so closely involve him, but +should deal with the easier sentiments. + +Despite all his simplicity, the child has (by way of inheritance, +for he has never heard them) the self-excusing fictions of our race. +Accused of certain acts of violence, and unable to rebut the charge +with any effect, he flies to the old convention: "I didn't know +what I was doing," he avers, using a great deal of gesticulation to +express the temporary distraction of his mind. "Darling, after +nurse slapped me as hard as she could, I didn't know what I was +doing, so I suppose I pushed her with my foot." His mother knows as +well as does Tolstoi that men and children know what they are doing, +and are the more intently aware as the stress of feeling makes the +moments more tense; and she will not admit a plea which her child +might have learned from the undramatic authors he has never read. + +Far from repenting of her old system of rewards, and far from taking +fright at the name of a bribe, the mother of the Child of Tumult has +only to wish she had at command rewards ample and varied enough to +give the shock of hope and promise to the heart of the little boy, +and change his passion at its height. + + + +THE UNREADY + + + +It is rashly said that the senses of children are quick. They are, +on the contrary, unwieldy in turning, unready in reporting, until +advancing age teaches them agility. This is not lack of +sensitiveness, but mere length of process. For instance, a child +nearly newly born is cruelly startled by a sudden crash in the room- +-a child who has never learnt to fear, and is merely overcome by the +shock of sound; nevertheless, that shock of sound does not reach the +conscious hearing or the nerves but after some moments, nor before +some moments more is the sense of the shock expressed. The sound +travels to the remoteness and seclusion of the child's +consciousness, as the roar of a gun travels to listeners half a mile +away. + +So it is, too, with pain, which has learnt to be so instant and +eager with us of later age that no point of time is lost in its +touches--direct as the unintercepted message of great and candid +eyes, unhampered by trivialities; even so immediate is the +communication of pain. But you could count five between the prick +of a surgeon's instrument upon a baby's arm and the little whimper +that answers it. The child is then too young, also, to refer the +feeling of pain to the arm that suffers it. Even when pain has +groped its way to his mind it hardly seems to bring local tidings +thither. The baby does not turn his eyes in any degree towards his +arm or towards the side that is so vexed with vaccination. He looks +in any other direction at haphazard, and cries at random. + +See, too, how slowly the unpractised apprehension of an older child +trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest +failure to take these little gobe-mouches to a good conjurer. His +successes leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it +was the good man meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is +who really astonishes them. They cannot come up even with your +amateur beginner, performing at close quarters; whereas the master +of his craft on a platform runs quite away at the outset from the +lagging senses of his honest audience. + +You may rob a child of his dearest plate at table, almost from under +his ingenuous eyes, send him off in chase of it, and have it in its +place and off again ten times before the little breathless boy has +begun to perceive in what direction his sweets have been snatched. + +Teachers of young children should therefore teach themselves a habit +of awaiting, should surround themselves with pauses of patience. +The simple little processes of logic that arrange the grammar of a +common sentence are too quick for these young blunderers, who cannot +use two pronouns but they must confuse them. I never found that a +young child--one of something under nine years--was able to say, "I +send them my love" at the first attempt. It will be "I send me my +love," "I send them their love," "They send me my love"; not, of +course, through any confusion of understanding, but because of the +tardy setting of words in order with the thoughts. The child +visibly grapples with the difficulty, and is beaten. + +It is no doubt this unreadiness that causes little children to like +twice-told tales and foregone conclusions in their games. They are +not eager, for a year or two yet to come, for surprises. If you +hide and they cannot see you hiding, their joy in finding you is +comparatively small; but let them know perfectly well what cupboard +you are in, and they will find you with shouts of discovery. The +better the hiding-place is understood between you the more lively +the drama. They make a convention of art for their play. The +younger the children the more dramatic; and when the house is filled +with outcries of laughter from the breathless breast of a child, it +is that he is pretending to be surprised at finding his mother where +he bade her pretend to hide. This is the comedy that never tires. +Let the elder who cannot understand its charm beware how he tries to +put a more intelligible form of delight in the place of it; for, if +not, he will find that children also have a manner of substitution, +and that they will put half-hearted laughter in the place of their +natural impetuous clamours. It is certain that very young children +like to play upon their own imaginations, and enjoy their own short +game. + +There is something so purely childlike in the delays of a child that +any exercise asking for the swift apprehension of later life, for +the flashes of understanding and action, from the mind and members +of childhood, is no pleasure to see. The piano, for instance, as +experts understand it, and even as the moderately-trained may play +it, claims all the immediate action, the instantaneousness, most +unnatural to childhood. There may possibly be feats of skill to +which young children could be trained without this specific violence +directed upon the thing characteristic of their age--their +unreadiness--but virtuosity at the piano cannot be one of them. It +is no delight, indeed, to see the shyness of children, or anything +that is theirs, conquered and beaten; but their poor little slowness +is so distinctively their own, and must needs be physiologically so +proper to their years, so much a natural condition of the age of +their brain, that of all childishnesses it is the one that the world +should have the patience to attend upon, the humanity to foster, and +the intelligence to understand. + +It is true that the movements of young children are quick, but a +very little attention would prove how many apparent disconnexions +there are between the lively motion and the first impulse; it is not +the brain that is quick. If, on a voyage in space, electricity +takes thus much time, and light thus much, and sound thus much, +there is one little jogging traveller that would arrive after the +others had forgotten their journey, and this is the perception of a +child. Surely our own memories might serve to remind us how in our +childhood we inevitably missed the principal point in any procession +or pageant intended by our elders to furnish us with a historical +remembrance for the future. It was not our mere vagueness of +understanding, it was the unwieldiness of our senses, of our reply +to the suddenness of the grown up. We lived through the important +moments of the passing of an Emperor at a different rate from +theirs; we stared long in the wake of his Majesty, and of anything +else of interest; every flash of movement, that got telegraphic +answers from our parents' eyes, left us stragglers. We fell out of +all ranks. Among the sights proposed for our instruction, that +which befitted us best was an eclipse of the moon, done at leisure. +In good time we found the moon in the sky, in good time the eclipse +set in and made reasonable progress; we kept up with everything. + +It is too often required of children that they should adjust +themselves to the world, practised and alert. But it would be more +to the purpose that the world should adjust itself to children in +all its dealings with them. Those who run and keep together have to +run at the pace of the tardiest. But we are apt to command instant +obedience, stripped of the little pauses that a child, while very +young, cannot act without. It is not a child of ten or twelve that +needs them so; it is the young creature who has but lately ceased to +be a baby, slow to be startled. + +We have but to consider all that it implies of the loitering of +senses and of an unprepared consciousness--this capacity for +receiving a great shock from a noise and this perception of the +shock after two or three appreciable moments--if we would know +anything of the moments of a baby + +Even as we must learn that our time, when it is long, is too long +for children, so must we learn that our time, when it is short, is +too short for them. When it is exceedingly short they cannot, +without an unnatural effort, have any perception of it. When +children do not see the jokes of the elderly, and disappoint +expectation in other ways, only less intimate, the reason is almost +always there. The child cannot turn in mid-career; he goes fast, +but the impetus took place moments ago. + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, +one significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. +This is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the +value of process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the +very wayfaring of progress. With this is a resignation to change, +and something more than resignation--a delight in those qualities +that could not be but for their transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the +world, for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, +and that for the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now +hold, perhaps, that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held +it high, we should acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned +with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred +years ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the +full stature of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future +hunting. If her song is not restless, it is because she has a sense +of the results of time, and has submitted her heart to experience. +Childhood is a time of danger; "Would it were done." But, +meanwhile, the right thing is to put it to sleep and guard its +slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies to the child of his +hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she spins, and a +song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child-- +"that pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was +chiefly precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of +the man he never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when +the boy was dead, says of him: "At two and a half years of age he +pronounced English, Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly +read in these three languages." As he lived precisely five years, +all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He +got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French +primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into +Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the +government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and +many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in +Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man +is not to be too much believed when he is describing what he +admires; it is the very fact of his admiration that is so curious a +sign of those hasty times. All being favourable, the child of +Evelyn's studious home would have done all these things in the +course of nature within a few years. It was the fact that he did +them out of the course of nature that was, to Evelyn, so exquisite. +The course of nature had not any beauty in his eyes. It might be +borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not admired for the +majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns with him +"the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" and +without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too +flattering to the estate of man. They thought their little boy +strangely hopeful because he was so quick on his way to be something +else. They lost the timely perfection the while they were so intent +upon their hopes. And yet it is our own modern age that is charged +with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, +must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not +slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, not yet hailing it, +with Faust, "Stay, thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made +gay and visible, and the world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it +in the act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every +passage is a goal, and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; +but some of them wear apparent wings. + +Tout passe. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this +question most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, +this suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time +of fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because +they had the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of +this unpausing life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight +years old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause +to be proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in +idleness by an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated +into any rudiments" till he was four years of age. He seems even to +have been a youth of eight before Latin was seriously begun; but +this fact he is evidently, in after years, with a total lack of a +sense of humour, rather ashamed of, and hardly acknowledges. It is +difficult to imagine what childhood must have been when nobody, +looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything that was proper to +five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of themselves and +of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has +nothing to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in +it. Twice are children not his own mentioned in his diary. Once he +goes to the wedding of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, +but not, evidently, an occasion of sensibility. Another time he +stands by, in a French hospital, while a youth of less than nine +years of age undergoes a frightful surgical operation "with +extraordinary patience." "The use I made of it was to give Almighty +God hearty thanks that I had not been subject to this deplorable +infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there +were in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon +being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. +Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and +there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who +is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion +of St. Jerome" might be called Tommy. But there were no "little +radiant girls." Now and then an "Education of the Virgin" is the +exception, and then it is always a matter of sewing and reading. As +for the little girl saints, even when they were so young that their +hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped through their fetters, they +are always recorded as refusing importunate suitors, which seems +necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval mind, but mars +them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in +the Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa +"who passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as +the least stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state +with men and maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact +rules, such as that of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent +example and instruction to the other maids of honour, was "severely +careful how she might give the least countenance to that liberty +which the gallants there did usually assume," refused the addresses +of the "greatest persons," and was as famous for her beauty as for +her wit. One would like to forget the age at which she did these +things. When she began her service she was eleven. When she was +making her rule never to speak to the King she was not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April +into May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if +they shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The +particular year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as +who should say a fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at +two years old, and ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as +Keats a poet would not have patience with the process of the +seasons, but boasted of untimely flowers. The "musk-rose" is never +in fact the child of mid-May, as he has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear +of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper +with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen +in the "Spectator" has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the +last six years." The famous letter describing the figure, the +dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is +supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, "willing to settle in +the world as soon as she can." She adds, "I have a good portion +which they cannot hinder me of." This correspondent is one of "the +women who seldom ask advice before they have bought their wedding +clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age that could +think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a +later century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, +and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and +has its appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather +than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of +children to seem, at last, something else than a defect. + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at +random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization +is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of +dusk. Summer dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, +baffle them how you may. They may have been in a pottering mood all +day, intent upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over +choppings and poundings. But when late twilight comes, there comes +also the punctual wildness. The children will run and pursue, and +laugh for the mere movement--it does so jolt their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths +and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all +fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the +mimicry of hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike +some blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the +ineffectual child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, +something is done for freedom under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict +with the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy +of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which +happens at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in +the jaunts of the poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved +by children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to +beguile the time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was +persuading another to play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me +at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable +hour. It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The +habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of +the fixity of some customs in mankind. But if the inquirers who +appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they +would seek no further. See the habits in falling to sleep which +have children in their thralldom. Try to overcome them in any +child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your +hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French +sleep-song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of +history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, +with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. +"Le Bon Roi Dagobert" has been sung over French cradles since the +legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune +and the verse that she herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of +the thirteenth century, in "Le Pont d'Avignon," is put mysteriously +to sleep, away in the tete e tete of child and nurse, in a thousand +little sequestered rooms at night. "Malbrook" would be +comparatively modern, were not all things that are sung to a +drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some +of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate +races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to +the white child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep +in the tropical night. His closing eyes are filled with alien +images. + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become +conscious of something more than a change in his sense of the +present and in his apprehension of the future. He must be aware of +no less a thing than the destruction of the past. Its events and +empires stand where they did, and the mere relation of time is as it +was. But that which has fallen together, has fallen in, has fallen +close, and lies in a little heap, is the past itself--time--the fact +of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are +no more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit +of measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing +of paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He +had thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the +states, the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the +measure which he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. +His first ten years had given him the illusion of a most august +scale and measure. It was then that he conceived Antiquity. But +now! Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in his +hand--ten of his mature years--that men give the dignity of a +century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now so small +that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a +most noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He +attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers +distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. +He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting +into the extremities of the past. He assigns the Parthenon to a +hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having +conceived old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the +mystery to the mind of the man. The man perceives at last all the +illusion, but he cannot forget what was his conviction when he was a +child. He had once a persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for +nothing. The enormous undeception that comes upon him still leaves +spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive +shocks. It is as though one strained level eyes towards the +horizon, and then were bidden to shorten his sight and to close his +search within a poor half acre before his face. Now, it is that he +suddenly perceives the hitherto remote, remote youth of his own +parents to have been something familiarly near, so measured by his +new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila that is displaced. +Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. There needs +no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world--our contemporary world--is not very +mysterious. We perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we +now consider, jolted the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that +he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, +for instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for +the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own +magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus +they belong to him as he is now--a man; and not to him as he was +once--a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten +years' rule along the path from our time to theirs; that path must +be skipped by the nimble yard in the man's present possession. +Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the +illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself +Antiquity--to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of +childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of +thirty-five; but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham. +THERE is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood--no +further--if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the +mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it +rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an +apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an +illusive apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real +apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If +there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the +renewed and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is +why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at +that present age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would +be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every +one was seven years old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" +history is taught in the only ancient days. So, for a time, the +world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges +the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great +illusion is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and +flight caught back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains +enlarged. The man remains capable of great spaces of time. He will +not find them in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he +contains them, he is aware of them. History has fallen together, +but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, stretches beyond +and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years +that are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great +disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together +the days that made them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far +apart" is wonderful. The past of childhood is not single, is not +motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits a world away one +from the other. Year from year differs as the antiquity of Mexico +from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man of thirty-five knows for +ever afterwards what is flight, even though he finds no great +historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious +childhood, which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. +Many other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten +years. Hours of weariness are long--not with a mysterious length, +but with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called +minutes and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their +apparent contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not +merely one of these--it is a space not of long, but of immeasurable, +time. It is the moment of going to sleep. The man knows that +borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased to find +antiquity there. It has become a common enough margin of dreams to +him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He knows that he has +a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those hours, but he +is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who passes +with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he meets +there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She +sings absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may +mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell +of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of +them all his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech +can well express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is +beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that +the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to +throw it further back--it is already so far. That is, it looks as +remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man of +seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in the +contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} It is worth noting that long after the writing of this paper, +and the ascription of a Stevenson-like character to the quoted +phrase, a letter of Stevenson's was published, and proved that he +had read Lucy Hutchinson's writings, and that he did not love her. +"I have possessed myself of Mrs. Hutchinson, whom, of course, I +admire, etc. . . I sometimes wish the old Colonel had got drunk and +beaten her, in the bitterness of my spirit. . . The way in which she +talks of herself makes one's blood run cold." He was young at that +time of writing, and perhaps hardly aware of the lesson in English +he had taken from her. We know that he never wasted the opportunity +for such a lesson; and the fact that he did allow her to administer +one to him in right seventeenth-century diction is established--it +is not too bold to say so--by my recognition of his style in her +own. I had surely caught the retrospective reflex note, heard first +in his voice, recognized in hers. + +{2} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg eText Essays by Alice Meynell + diff --git a/old/esyam10.zip b/old/esyam10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f636f73 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/esyam10.zip |