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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29472-8.txt b/29472-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3220774 --- /dev/null +++ b/29472-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2484 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Select Conversations with an Uncle, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Select Conversations with an Uncle + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: July 21, 2009 [EBook #29472] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECT CONVERSATIONS WITH AN UNCLE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + +THE MAYFAIR SET + +III + +CONVERSATIONS + +WITH AN + +UNCLE + + + + +[Illustration: Title page] + + + + + +SELECT + +CONVERSATIONS + +WITH + +AN UNCLE + +(now extinct) + + + +and two other + +reminiscences by + +H. G. WELLS + + + + +LONDON: + +JOHN LANE + + +NEW YORK + +THE MERRIAM COMPANY + + +1895 + + + + +_Copyrighted in the United States._ + +_All rights reserved._ + + +_Second Edition_ + + + + +TO + +MY DEAREST + +AND BEST FRIEND + +R. A. C. + + + + +PREFATORY + +He was, I remember, short, but by no means conspicuously short, and of +a bright, almost juvenile, complexion, very active in his movements and +garrulous--or at least very talkative. His judgments were copious and +frequent in the old days, and some at least I found entertaining. At +times his fluency was really remarkable. He had a low opinion of +eminent people--a thing I have been careful to suppress, and his +dissertations had ever an irresponsible gaiety of manner that may have +blinded me to their true want of merit. That, I say, was in the old +days, before his abrupt extinction, before the cares of this world +suddenly sprang upon, and choked him. I would listen to him, +cheerfully, and afterwards I would go away and make articles out of him +for the _Pall Mall Gazette_, so adding a certain material advantage to +my mental and moral benefit. But all that has gone now, to my infinite +regret; and sorrowing, I have arranged this unworthy little tribute to +his memory, this poor dozen of casual monologues that were so +preserved. The merits of the monument are his entirely; its faults +entirely my own. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +SELECT CONVERSATIONS-- + + OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION + + THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY + + THE USE OF IDEALS + + THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED + + BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS + + ON SOCIAL MUSIC + + THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED + + LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI + + ON A TRICYCLE + + AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE + + THE GREAT CHANGE + + THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE + + +A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST + +THE MAN WITH A NOSE + + + + +OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION + +This uncle of mine, you must understand, having attained--by the purest +accident--some trifles of distinction and a certain affluence in South +Africa, came over at the earliest opportunity to London to be +photographed and lionised. He took to fame easily, as one who had long +prepared in secret. He lurked in my chambers for a week while the new +dress suit was a-making--his old one I really had to remonstrate +against--and then we went out to be admired. During the week's +retirement he secreted quite a wealth of things to say--appropriate +remarks on edibles, on music, on popular books, on conversation, +off-hand little things, jotting them down in a note-book as they came +into his mind, for he had a high conception of social intercourse, and +the public expectation. He was ever a methodical little gentleman, and +all these accumulations that he could not get into his talk, he +proposed to put away for the big volume of "Reminiscences" that was to +round off his life. At last he was a mere conversational firework, +crammed with latent wit and jollity, and ready to blaze and sparkle in +fizzing style as soon as the light of social intercourse should touch +him. + +But after we had circulated for a week or so, my uncle began to +manifest symptoms of distress. He had not had a chance. People did +not seem to talk at all in his style. "Where do the literary people +meet together, George? I am afraid you have chosen your friends ill. +Surely those long-haired serious people who sat round my joke like old +cats round a beetle--what is it?--were not the modern representatives +of a _salon_. Those abominable wig-makers' eccentricities who talked +journalistic 'shop,' and posed all over that preposterous room with the +draperies! Those hectic young men who have done nothing except run +down everybody! Don't tell me that is the literary society of London, +George. Where do they let off wit now, George? Where do they sparkle? +I want to sparkle. Badly. I shall burst, George, if I don't." + +Now really, you know, there are no salons now--I suppose we turn all +our conversation into "copy"--or the higher education has eliminated +the witty woman--and my uncle became more and more distressed. He said +a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became +afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every +lion's den I had access to. But there was no relief. + +"I see what it is, George," said my uncle, "these literary people write +themselves out. They say nothing for private use. Their brains are +weary when they come into company. They get up in the morning fresh +and bright, and write, write, write. Then, when they are jaded, they +condescend to social intercourse. It is their way of resting. But why +don't they go to bed? No more clever people for me, George. Let us +try the smart. Perhaps among them we shall find smart talking still +surviving. _Allons_, George!" + +That is how my uncle came into collision with fashion, how I came to +take him to the Fitz-Brilliants. + +Of course you have heard of the Fitz-Brilliants? If you have not, it +is not their fault. They are the smartest people in London. Always +hard at work, keeping up to date, are the Fitz-Brilliants. But my +uncle did not appreciate them. Worse! They did not appreciate my +uncle. He came to me again, more pent up than ever, and the thing I +had feared happened. He began to discourse to me. It was about +Fashion, with a decided reference to the Fitz-Brilliants, and some +reflections upon the alleys of literary ability and genius I had taken +him through. + +"George," said my uncle, "_this Fashion is just brand-new vulgarity_. +It is merely the regal side of the medal. The Highly Fashionable and +the Absolutely Vulgar are but two faces of the common coin of humanity, +struck millions at a time. Spin the thing in the light of wealth, and +I defy you, as it whizzes from the illumination of riches to the shadow +of poverty, to distinguish the one stamp from the other. You cannot +say, here the _mode_ ends, and there the unspeakable thing, its +counterpart, has its beginning. Their distinction of mere position has +vanished, and they are in seeming as in substance one and indivisible." + +My uncle was now fairly under way. + +"The fashionable is the foam on the ocean of vulgarity, George, cast up +by the waves of that ocean, and caught by the light of the sun. It is +the vulgar--blossoming. The flower it is of that earthly plant, +destined hereafter to run to seed, and to beget new groves and +thickets, new jungles, of vulgar things. + +"Note, George, how true this is of that common property of the vulgar +and fashionable--slang. The apt phrase falls and applause follows, and +then down it goes. The essential feature of slang is words misapplied; +the essential distinction of a coarse mind from one refined, an +inability to appreciate fine distinctions and minor discords; the +essential of the vulgar, good example misused. First the fashionable +get the apt phrase, and bandy it about in inapt connections until even +the novelty of its discordance has ceased to charm, and thereafter it +sinks down, down. _Fin de siècle_ and _cliché_ have, for instance, +passed downward from the courts of the fashionable among journalists +into the unspeakable depths below. Soon, if not already, _fin de +siècle_ gin and onions and haddocks will be for sale in the +Whitechapel-road, and Harriet will be calling Billy a "cliché faced +swine." Even so do ostrich feathers begin a career of glory at the +Drawing-Room and the fashionable photographer's, and, after endless +re-dyeing, come to their last pose before a Hampstead camera on a +bright Bank Holiday. + +"The fashionable and vulgar are after all but the expression of man's +gregarious instinct. Every poor mortal is torn by the conflicting +dreads of being 'common-place,' and of being 'eccentric.' He, and more +particularly she, is continually imitating and avoiding imitation, +trying to be singular and yet like other people. In the exquisitely +fashionable and in the entirely vulgar the sheep-like longing is +triumphant, and the revolting individual has disappeared. The former +is a mechanical vehicle upon which the new 'correct thing' rides forth, +to extort the astonishment of men; the latter a lifeless bier bearing +its corrupt and unrecognisable remains away to final oblivion, amidst +universal execration. + +"It is curious to notice, George, that there has of late been a fashion +in 'originality.' The commonplace has turned, as it were, upon itself, +and vehemently denied its identity. So that people who were not +eccentric have become rare, and genius, so far as it is a style of +hairdressing, and originality, so far as it is a matter of etiquette or +morals, have become the habitual garments of the commonplace. The +introduction of the word 'bourgeois' as a comminatory epithet into the +English language, by bourgeois writers writing for the bourgeois, will +remain a memorial for ever, for the philological humourist to chuckle +over. If good resolutions could change the natures of men, opinion has +lately set so decidedly against the fashionable and the vulgar that +their continued existence in this world would be very doubtful. But +the leopard cannot change his spots so easily. While the stars go on +in their courses, until the cooling of the earth puts an end to the +career of life, and the last trace of his ancestral tendency to +imitation disappears as the last man becomes an angel, depend upon it, +George, the fashionable will ever pursue this chimæra of distinguished +correctness, and trail the inseparable howling vulgar in its wake--for +ever chased, like a dog with a tin can attached, by the horror of its +own tail." + +Thus my uncle. He had said a few of his things. It is possible his +trick of talking like a disarticulated essay had something to do with +his social discomfort. But anyhow he seemed all the better for the +release. + +"Talking of tails, George," he said, "reminds me. I noticed the men at +the Fitz-Brilliants' had their coats cut--well, I should say, just a +half inch shorter here than this of mine. Your man is not up to date. +I must get the thing altered to-morrow." + + + + +THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY + +He had been sitting with his feet upon the left jamb of my mantel, +admiring the tips of his shoes in silence for some time. + +"George," he said, dropping his cigar-ash thoughtfully into my +inkstand, in order, I imagine, to save my carpet, "have you ever done +pioneer work for Humanity?" + +"Never," I said. "How do you get that sort of work?" + +"I don't know. I met a man and a woman, though, the other night, who +said they were engaged in that kind of thing. It seems to me to be +exhausting work, and it makes the hair very untidy. They do it chiefly +with their heads. It consists, so I understand, of writing stuff in a +hurry, rushing about in cabs, wearing your hair in some unpleasant +manner, and holding disorderly meetings." + +"Who are these people?" + +"Never heard of them before, though they told me they were quite well +known. The lady asked me if I had been to Chicago." + +I chuckled. I could imagine no more hideous insult to my uncle. + +"I told her that I had been to most places south-eastward and eastward, +but never across the Atlantic. She informed me that I ought to have +gone to Chicago, and that America was a great country, and I remarked +that I had always thought it was so great that one could best +appreciate it at a distance. Then she asked me what I thought of the +condition of the lower classes, and I told her I was persuaded, from +various things I had noticed, that a lot of them were frightfully hard +up. And with that she started off to show whose fault it was, by the +Socratic method." + +"Entertaining?" + +"A little. I did not get all my answers right. For instance, when she +asked, 'Who sends the members of Parliament to Westminster?' I answered +her, 'The governors of the young ones and the wives of the others.' +And when she said that was wrong--I don't remember Socrates ever saying +bluntly that an answer was wrong--I said I supposed she referred to the +Evil One. It was very dull of me, of course, and it obliged her to +dictate the right solution. + +"Afterwards she threw over teaching me anything, and explained to me +all about her Movements. At least, I got really interested in her +Movements. One thing she said struck me very much, though it could +hardly be called novel. It was that the fads of one age were the +fashions of the next; that while the majority of people were engaged in +their little present-day chores, persons like herself are making the +laws and preparing the customs for the generation to follow." + +"Poor generations to follow!" I said. + +"Yes, but there is a lot of truth in it; and do you know there flashed +upon me all at once a great theory, the Theory of the Perpetual +Discomfort of Humanity. Just let me explain it to you, George," he +said, bringing himself round so that his legs hung over the arm of his +chair. "I think you will see I have made a very great discovery, gone +to the root of the whole of this bother of reform movement, advancement +of humanity, and the rest of it." He sucked his cigar for a moment. +"Each age," he said, "has its own ideals of what constitutes human +happiness." + +"A very profound observation," said I. + +"Looking down the vista of history, one may generalise and say that we +see human beings continually troubled by the conditions under which +they live. I can think of no time in the world when there was not some +Question or other getting fussed about: at one time episcopal celibacy, +at another time the Pict and Scot problem, and so on. Always a +crumpled rose-leaf. Hence reform movements. Now, reforms move slowly, +and by the time these reforms come about, the people whom they would +have made happy, and who fussed and encountered dislike and satire and +snubbing, and burning and boiling in oil, and suchlike discouragements, +for the sake of them, were dead and buried and mere sanitary problems. +The new people had new and quite different needs, and the reforms for +which their fathers fought and died more or less uncomfortably, and got +into debt with the printers, so soon as there were printers to get into +debt with, were about as welcome as belated dinner guests. You take +me? Ireland, when Home Rule comes home to it, will simply howl with +indignation. And we are living in the embodied discontent of the +eighteenth century. Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and Priestley would have +looked upon this age and seen that it was good--devilish good; and as +you know, George, to us it is--well, a bit of a nuisance anyhow. +However, most people are like myself, and try to be as comfortable as +they can, and no doubt the next generation might do very well with it. +And then the pioneer people begin legislating, agitating, and ordering +things differently. As you know, George, I am inclined to +conservatism. Constitutionally, I tend to adapt myself to my +circumstances. It seems to me so much easier to fit the man to the age +than to fit the age to the man. Let us, I say, settle down. We shall +never be able to settle down while they keep altering things. It may +not be a perfect world, but then I am not a perfect man: Some of the +imperfections are, at least, very convenient. So my theory is this: +the people whom the age suits fairly well don't bother--_I_ don't +bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn +anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their +ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements +and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last +it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the +progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern. +Your average humanity I figure as a comfortable person like myself, +always trying to sit down and put its legs somewhere out of the way, +and being continually stirred up by women in felt hats and short +skirts, and haggard men with those beastly, long, insufficient beards, +and soulful eyes, and trumpet-headed creatures, and bogles with +spectacles and bald heads, and nephews who look at watches. What are +you looking at your watch for, George? I'm very happy as I am. + +"Has it ever occurred to you, George, that one of the most +uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have +all the reforms of your boyish liberalism coming home to roost, just as +you are settling down to the old order.... + +"Six o'clock, by Jove! We shall keep them waiting if we don't mind." + + + + +THE USE OF IDEALS + +"Ideals!" said my uncle; "certainly Ideals. Of course one must have +ideals, else life would be bare materialism. Bare fact alone, naked +necessity, is impossible barren rock for a soul to root upon. Life, +indeed, is an unfurnished house, an empty glass in a thirsty land--good +and necessary for foundation, but insufficient for any satisfaction +unless we have ideals. Or, again, ideals are the flesh upon the +skeleton of reality, and it cannot live without them. + +"It always appears to me," said my uncle, "that the comparison of +ideals to furniture is particularly appropriate. They are the +draperies of the mind, and they hide the nakedness of truth. Your +fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and +crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the +skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings +and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life +well worth the living. So that you cannot value ideals too highly. + +"Yet at the same time----" My uncle became meditative. + +"I would not have a man the _slave_ of his ideals. Hangings make the +room comfortable, but, after all, hangings _are_ hangings. Perhaps, +now and then--of course, I would not suggest continual inconstancy--a +slight change, a little rearrangement, even a partial replacement, +might brighten up the dear old dwelling-place. An ideal may be clung +to too fondly. When the moth gets into it, or the dust--did not +Carlyle warn us against this, lest they 'accumulate and at last produce +suffocation'? I am exactly at one with him there. + +"And that, as any Cabinet Minister explains every time he opens a +public library, is why we have literature. Good books are the +warehouses of ideals. Does it strike you your furniture is sombre, a +bit Calvinistic and severe--try a statuette by Pope, or a classical +piece out of Heine. Too much white and gold for every-day +purposes--then the Reverend Laurence Sterne will oblige. Urban tone +may be corrected by Hardy, and Lowell will give you urbanity. And, +however well you match and balance them, remember there is a time for +ideals, and a time when they are better out of the way. + +"The Philistine of Victorian literature, is a person without ideals, +the practical man. But just now the fashion is all for the things. +Ruskin and Carlyle set it going, and to-day the demand for ideals +exceeds the supply. And as a result, we meet with innumerable people +anxious to have the correct thing, but a little unsympathetic or +inexpert, and those unavoidable people who do not like the things but +feel compelled to get them. Ideals are not the easiest possessions to +have and manage, and they may even rise to the level of serious +inconveniences. So that I sometimes wonder these Extension people have +not taken up the subject of their management and use. + +"Note, for instance, the folly of bringing ideals too much into the +daily life; it is childish, like a baby insisting on its new toy at +meal times, and taking it to bed. Never use an ideal as a standard, +and avoid any that reflect upon your conduct. The extremest decorative +people refrain from enamelling their kettles, and my cook though a +'born lady' does not wear her silk dress in the kitchen. Ideals are +the full dress of the soul. A business man, for instance, who let +visions of reverend Venetian and Genoese seigniors interfere with his +agile City movements--who, to carry out our comparison, draped his mind +with these things--would be uncommonly like a bowler in a dressing-gown. + +"Then an ideal, we are also told, is an elevating influence in life; +but unless one is very careful one may get hoist with one's own petard +to a pitifully transitory soar above common humanity. The soar itself +is not unpleasant, but the sequel is sometimes disagreeable. + +"To show how an ideal may trip up an inexpert mortal, take that man +Javvers and his wife. She also had an ideal husband, which was, +indeed, a kind of bigamy, and her constant references to this creation +of hers used to drive poor old Javvers frantic. It became as +objectionable as if she had been its sorrowing widow, and ultimately it +wrecked the happiness of their little home very completely. + +"The seat of ideals, then, in one's mind, should be, as it were, a +lounge, over which these hangings may drape and flap harmlessly; but it +may easily become as the bed of Procrustes. To turn ideals to idols, +and to command your whole world to bow down to them, savours of the +folly of Nebuchadnezzar the king. Let your ideal world be far away +from reality, fit it with rococo furniture, angels and +birds-of-paradise, Minnesinger flowers and views of the Delectable +Mountains: and go there occasionally and rest--to return without +illusions, without encumbrance, but with renewed zest, to the sordid +world of the actual, the world of every day. Herein is the real use of +the ideal; all other is fanaticism and folly." + + + + +THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED + +"An album," said my uncle, as he sat and turned over my collection of +physiognomy, "is, I think, the best reading in the world. You get such +sidelights on the owner's heredity, George; distant cousins caricature +his features and point the moral of his nose, and ancestral faces +prophesy his fate. His friends, moreover, figure the secret of his +soul. But what a lot we have to learn yet in the art of being +photographed, what grotesque and awkward blunders your common sitters +make! Why, for instance, do men brush their hair so excessively when +they go before the lens? Your cousin here looks like a cheap chess +pawn about the head, whereas as I know him his head is a thing like a +worn-out paint-brush. Where but in a photograph would you see a +parting so straight as this? It is unnatural. You flatten down all a +man's character; for nothing shows that more than the feathers and +drakes' tails, the artful artlessness, or revolutionary tumult of his +hair. Mind you, I am not one of those who would prohibit a man wearing +what he conceives to be his best clothes to the photographer's. I like +to see the little vanity peeping out--the last moment's folly of a +foolish tie, nailed up for a lifetime. Yet all the same, people should +understand that the camera takes no note of newness, but much of the +cut and fit. And a man should certainly not go and alter his outline +into a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his troubled mane and +plastering it down with a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, but +hypocrisy. + +"We have indeed very much to learn in this matter. It is a thing that +needs teaching, like deportment or dancing. Plenty of men I have +noticed, who would never do it in real life, commit the sin of being +over-gentlemanly in an album. Their clothes are even indecently +immaculate. They become, not portraits, but fashion-plates. I hate a +man who is not rumpled and creased a little, as much as I do a brand +new pipe. And, as a sad example of sin on the other hand, on the side +of carelessness, I have seen renderings of a very august personage +indeed, in a hat--a _hat_! It was tilted, and to add to the atrocity, +he was holding a cigar. This I regard as horrible. Think! your +photograph may go into boudoirs. Imagine Gladys opening the album to +Ænone; 'Now I will show you _him_.' And there you sit, leering at +their radiant sweetness, hat on, and a cigar reeking between your +fingers. + +"No, George, a man should go very softly to a photographer's, and he +should sit before the camera with reverence in his heart and in his +attitude, as if he were in the presence of the woman he loved." + +He turned to Mrs Harborough's portrait, looked at it, hesitated, looked +again, and passed on. + +"I often think we do not take this business of photography in a +sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: +you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe. I know of one man +who has an error of youth of this kind on his mind--a fancy-dress +costume affair, Crusader or Templar--of which he is more ashamed than +many men would be of the meanest sins. For sometimes the camera has +its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your +merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments +of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the +photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its +exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the +spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals upon the film. +Yet it never really dawned upon him until he had distributed this +advertisement of his little weakness far and wide, that the camera had +called him a fool to his face. I believe he would be glad now to buy +them all back at five pounds a copy. + +"This of Minnie Hobson is a work of art. Bless me, the girl must be +thirty-seven or thirty-eight now, and just look at her! These +photographers have got a trick now, if your face is one of the long +kind, of raising the camera, bending your head forward, and firing down +at you. So our Minnie becomes quite chubby again. Then, this thing +has been retouched." My uncle peered into the photograph. "It seems +to me it is pretty nearly all retouching. For instance, if you look at +the eye, that high light is not perfectly even; that was touched in on +the negative with a pencil. Then about the neck of our Minnie I have +observed certain bones, just the slightest indication of her +collar-bone, George, but that has disappeared under the retoucher's +pencil. Then the infantile smoothness of her cheek, and the +beautifully-rounded outline, is produced by the retoucher carefully +scraping off the surface of the film where the cheekbone projected with +a sharp knife. There are also in real life little lines between the +corner of our Minnie's mouth and her nostril. And again, Minnie is one +of those people whose dresses never seem to fit, but this fits like a +glove. These retouchers are like Midas, and they turn all that comes +to their hands to gold; or, like Spring, the flowers come back at their +approach. They reverse the work of Ithuriel, and restore brightness to +the fallen. They sit at their little desks, and scratch, scratch, +scratch with those delicate pencils of theirs, scratching away age, +scratching away care, making the crooked straight, and the rough +smooth. They are the fairies of photography, and fill our albums with +winsome changelings. Their ministry anticipates in a little way the +angels who will take us when we die, releasing us from the worn and +haggard body of this death, and showing something of the eternal life +and youth that glows within. Or one might say that the spirit of the +retoucher is the spirit of Love. It makes plain women beautiful, and +common men heroic. Her regal fingers touch for the evil of +ungainliness, and, behold, we are restored. Her pencil is like the +Queen's sword, and it makes knights out of common men. + +"When I have my photograph taken," said my uncle, "I always like to +think of the retoucher. I idealise her; I fancy her with the sweetest +eyes I have ever seen, and an expression infinitely soft and tender. +And she looks closely into my face, and her little pencil goes gently +and lovingly over my features. Tickle, tickle. In that way, George, I +get a really very nice expression indeed." My uncle turned to his own +presentment, and mused pleasantly for a space. Then he looked again at +Mrs Harborough as if inadvertently, and asked her name. + +"I like this newer way of taking your photograph, against a mere grey +background; just the head of you. One should always beware of the +property furniture of the photographer. In the seventies they were +great at such aids--a pedestal, a cork rustic stile, wide landscape in +the distance, but I think that we are at least getting beyond that now. +People in those days must have been afraid to be left alone before a +camera, or they wanted it to seem that they were taken unawares, quite +against their modesty--did not know what the camera was, and were just +looking at it. A very favourite pose for girls was a graceful droop +over a sofa, chin on elegant hand. When I was at Dribblebridge--I was +a bright young fellow then--I collected a number of local photographs, +ladies chiefly, and the thing was very noticeable when I put them in a +row over my mantleshelf. The local 'artist' was intensely fond of that +pose. But fancy the local leader finding her cook drooping over the +same sofa as herself! Nowadays, I see, you get merely the heads of +your girls, with their hair flossed up, intense light from above, and +faces in shadow. I think it is infinitely better. + +What horrible things hands become in a photograph! I wonder how it is +that the hand in a photograph is always four shades darker than the +arm. Every girl who goes to be photographed in evening dress should be +solemnly warned to keep her hands out of the picture. They will look +as though she has been enamelling the grate, or toying with a bucket of +pitch. There is something that sins against my conception of womanly +purity in those dark hands." + +My uncle shut the album. "Yes, it is a neglected field of education, +an important branch of deportment altogether forgotten. Our well-bred +ease fails us before the camera; we are lucky if we merely look stiff +and self-conscious. I should fancy there would be an opening for some +clever woman to teach people how to dress for the occasion and how to +sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of +nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of +self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the +instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. +They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the +review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our +faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp +our individualities upon our photographs, and are mere 'dumb-driven +cattle' in the matter. We sin against ourselves in this neglect, and +act against the spirit of the age. Sooner or later this haphazard +treatment of posterity must come to an end." He meditated for a +moment. Then, as if pursuing a train of thought, "That Mrs Harborough +is a very pretty woman, George. Where did you happen to meet her?" + + + + +BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS + +Bagshot was rather proud of his new quarters until my uncle called upon +him. Up to then he felt assured he was doing right; had, indeed, not +the faintest doubt in the matter until my uncle unsettled him. "Nice +carpet, Bagshot," said my uncle, "nice and soft. This chair certainly +very comfortable. But what the mischief do you mean--you, with your +pretence to culture--by hanging your dwelling with all those framed and +glazed photograph and autograph dittoes? I should have thought you at +least would have known better. Love and Life, and Love and Death, the +Daphnephoria, Rembrandt's portrait--Wild Havoc, man! What were you +thinking of?" + +Bagshot seemed staggered. He ventured to intimate feebly his +persuasion that the things were rather good. + +"Good they certainly are, and well reproduced, but only the Bible and +Shakspeare could stand this incessant reiteration, and not all +Shakspeare. These things are in shop windows, man--drawing-rooms, +offices, everywhere. They afflict me like popular songs--like popular +quotations. They are good enough--as a matter of fact they are too +good. Only, don't you know Willis has Love and Life and Love and +Death? And so has Smith, and Bays has Rembrandt's portrait in his +office, and my niece Euphemia has the Daphnephoria in her drawing-room. +I can't understand, George, why you let it stay there. It is possible +to have too much of a good thing. There is no getting away from these +all too popular triumphs. They cover up the walls everywhere. They +consume all other art. I shall write a schedule some day of the Fifty +Correct Pictures of the British People. And to find _you_, Bagshot, +among the Philistines!" + +"I thought they showed rather an improvement in the general taste," +said Bagshot. "There is no reason why a thing should not be common, +and yet very beautiful. Primroses, for instance----" + +"That is true enough, but pictures are not primroses," said my uncle. +"Besides, I think we like primroses all the better because they must +soon be over; but these are perennial blossoms, like the everlasting +flowers and dried grass of a lodging house. They may still be +beautiful, but by this time, Bagshot, they are awfully dry and dusty. +Who looks at them? I notice our eyes avoid them even while we talk +about them. We have all noticed everything there is to be noticed, and +said all the possible things that are to be said about them long ago. +Surely a picture must be a little fresh to please. Else we shall come +at last to the perfect picture, and art will have an end. Don't you +see the mere popularity of these things of the pavement is enough to +condemn them in the estimation of every right-minded person?" + +"I don't see it," said Bagshot, making head against the torrent. "I +cannot afford to go to these swells and get original work of theirs----" + +"What do you want with 'these swells' and their original work?" +interrupted my uncle fiercely. "Haven't they used up all their +originality ages ago? Is it not open to such men as yourself to +discover new men? There are men pining in garrets now for you, +Bagshot. Fancy the delight of having pictures that are unfamiliar, +pictures that catch the eye and are actually to be looked at, pictures +that suggest new remarks, pictures by a name that the stray visitor has +never heard of and which therefore puzzle him dreadfully because he +hasn't the faintest idea whether to praise or blame them! Isn't it +worth hunting studios for, and even, maybe, going to the Academy? +Besides, suppose your struggling artist comes to the front. What price +the five-guinea specimen of his early style then? Your artistic virtue +is indeed its own reward, and, besides, you can boast about finding +him. The poor man of culture and the struggling artist live for one +another, or at least they ought to--though I am afraid it is not much +of a living for the struggling artist." He paused abruptly. "I +suppose that autotype cost thirty shillings, and this carpet about five +pounds?" + +Bagshot assumed an elegant attitude against his bureau. He had +discovered his reply. "You know you are bitten by the fashion for +originality. Why should I make my room hideous with the work of +third-rate mediocrity, or of men who are still learning to paint, +simply in order to be unlike my neighbour?" + +"Why," returned my uncle, "should you hang up things less interesting +than your wall paper, in mere imitation of your neighbours? For this +on your walls, Bagshot, deny it though you may, is not art but fashion. +I tell you, you do not care a rap for art. You think pictures are a +part of virtue, like a silk hat--or evening dress at dinner. And in +your choice of pictures you follow after your kind. I never met a +true-born Briton yet who dared to buy a picture on his own +accord--unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a +true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these +things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are +beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful +Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe +that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. +Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their +Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new +Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the +correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be +considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's +new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered +a little dowdy.' And so forth. This gregarious admiration is the very +antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I tell you, simply must be +individual." + +"Go on," said Bagshot, "go on." + +"And that," said my uncle, with the glow of discovery in his face, +"that is where the vulgar critic goes wrong. He conceives an +orthodoxy. He tries to explain why Velasquez is better than Raphael +and Raphael better than Gerard Dow. As well say why a cirrus cloud is +better than a sycamore and a sycamore better than a scarlet hat. Every +painter, unless he is a mere operative, must have his peculiar public. +It is incredible that any painter can really satisfy the æsthetic needs +of such a public as these reproductions indicate. True art is always +sectarian. Why were Landseer and Sidney Cooper popular a few years +ago, and why does every tea-table sneer at them now? There must be +something admirable in them, or they would never have been admired. +Then why has my niece Annie dropped admiring Poynter, and why does she +pretend--and a very thin pretence it is--to admire Whistler?" + +"You are wandering from my pictures," said Bagshot. + +"I want to," said my uncle. "But why do you try and hide your taste +under these mere formalities in frames? Why do you always say 'I pass' +in the game of decoration? Better a mess of green amateurs and love +therewith, than the richest autotypes and dull complacency. Have what +you like. There is no such thing as absolute beauty. That is the +Magna Charta of the world of art. What is beautiful to me is not +beautiful to another man, in art as in women. But take care to get the +art that fits you. Frankly, that 'Love and Death' suits you, Bagshot, +about as much as a purple toga would. Orchardson is in your style. I +tell you that the greengrocer who buys an original oil painting for +sixteen shillings with frame complete is far nearer artistic salvation +than the patron of the popular autotype. Surely you will wake up +presently, Bagshot, and wonder what you have been about. + +"Half-past four, by Jove! I must be getting on. Well, Bagshot, ta-ta. +One must talk, you know. I really hope you will be comfortable in your +new rooms." + +And so good-bye to Bagshot, staring in a puzzled way at his reviled and +desecrated walls. + + + + +ON SOCIAL MUSIC + +My poor uncle came to me the other evening in a most distressful state, +broken down to common blasphemy. His ample front was rumpled with +sorrow and his tie disorderly aslant. His hair had gone rough with his +troubles. "The time I have had, George!" he panted. "Give me +something to drink in the name of Holy Charity." + +Since the _Pall Mall Gazette_ took to reporting his little sayings +about photographs and ornaments, ideals and fashions, he has been +setting up as a conversationalist. He thinks he was designed by +Providence to that end, and aids his destiny as much as he can by +elaborately preparing remarks. + +Yet this thing had happened. "They put," said my uncle, "a little chap +at the piano, and me at a very nice girl indeed as she looked; and the +little chap began, and so did I. I said a prelude thing of mine, brand +new and rather pretty." + +He stopped. He turned to nerve himself with whisky. + +"Well," I said, when the pause seemed sufficient; "what did she say?" + +My uncle looked unspeakable things. Then in a whisper, bending towards +me: + +"_She said----Sssh_!" + +He repeated it that I might grasp its full enormity, "_Sssh_!--so!" + +"What _is_ music," said my uncle, after a moody silence, "that +reasonable people should listen to it? I _had_ to listen to it myself, +and it struck me. It was just a tune this little chap was trying to +remember, and now he would come at it this way and now that. He never +got it quite right, though he fumbled about it for ten minutes or a +quarter of an hour. And then two girls went, and one punished the +piano while the other, with a wrist rather than an ear for music, +drowned its cries with a violin. So it went on all the evening, and +when I moved they all looked at me; I had been put on a nervous wicker +chair, and I knew my shoes squeaked like a carnival of swine, and so I +could not get away. And all the things that kept coming into my head, +George, the neat remarks and graceful sayings! + +"You see, I look at it in this light. Music is merely background, and +ought to be kept in its place. I am no enemy of music, George. The +air in a room should be melodious, for the same reason that it should +be faintly pleasing to the olfactory sense, and neither hot nor stuffy. +Just as the walls should be delightfully coloured and softly lit, and +the refreshments pleasant and at the moment of need. But surely we +meet for human intercourse. When I go to see people I go to see the +people--not to hear a hired boy play the piano. But these people plant +a _chevaux de frise_ of singers and performers upon instruments of +music between themselves and me. They gag me with a few pennyworths of +second-hand opera. There I was bursting to talk, and nice, +intelligent-looking girls to talk to, and whenever I began to say +something they said '_Sssh_!' Tantalus in a drawing-room it was--the +very Hades of hospitality. + +"Surely some day we shall learn refinement in our entertaining. Your +modern hostess issues her invitations and seems overcome with +consternation at her gathering. 'What _shall_ I do with all these +people?' she seems to ask. So she dabs cakes upon them, piles coffee +cups over them: 'Eat,' she says, 'and shut up!' and stifles their +protests with a clamorous woman and a painful piano. + +"No, of course I don't object to having music. But it is an accessory, +not an object, in life. It is, after all, a physical comfort, a +pleasant vibration in one's ears. To make an object of it is +sensuality. It is on all-fours with worshipping the wallpaper. Some +wall-papers are very beautiful things nowadays, harmonious in form and +colour, skilful in invention; but people do not expect you to sit down +and admire wall-paper, or promise you 'wallpaper at eight.' Neither do +they put an extinguisher over any girl who does not go with the +wall-paper, or expect you to dress in neutral tint on account of it, +and they are not hurt if you go away without seeming to see it. +Gustatory harmony, too, is very delicious. Yet there is no hush during +dinner; they do not insist upon a persistent gnawing in honour of the +feast. But these musical people! their god is their piano. They set +up an idol in their salon, and command all the world to bow down to it. +They found a priestcraft of pianists, and an Inquisition of fiddlers. +When I came away they were all crowded round a violin, the women +especially. They could not have fussed more if it had been a baby. +They stroked it and admired its figure. It _had_ rather a fashionable +figure, but the neck was too long...." + +I began to suspect the cause of this bitterness. + +"Yes. She was there. And while some of this piano was going on she +looked at the ear of the man who was playing with a dreamy, tender +look.... No. I couldn't get a word with her the whole evening." + + + + +THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED + +As I was passing the London University the other day I saw my uncle +emerge from the branch of the Bank of England opposite, and proceed in +the direction of the Burlington Arcade. He was elaborately disguised +as a young man, even to the youthful flower, and I was incontinently +smitten with curiosity respecting the dark purpose he might veil in +this way. There is, to me, a peculiar and possibly rather a childish +fascination in watching my more intimate friends unobserved, and, +curiously enough, I had never before studied the avuncular back view. +I found something singularly entertaining in the study of the graceful +contour of his new frock coat, and in the cheerful carriage of his +cane. He paraded, a dignified procession of one, some way down the +Arcade, hesitated for a moment outside a jeweller's shop, and then +entered it. I strolled on as far as Piccadilly, returned to the shop, +and so fell upon him suddenly in the midst of his buying. + +"Hullo, George!" he said hastily, facing me so as to hide as much of +the counter as possible. "How's Euphemia?" + +I looked him fairly in the eye. "You are buying a _ring_," I said in a +firm, decided voice. + +He turned to the counter with an air of surprise. "By Jove, so I am!" + +"A lady's ring," I said. He was, I could see, hastily collecting his +sufficiently nimble powers of subterfuge. "One must buy something, you +know, George, sometimes," he said feebly. + +He had selected some dozen or so already, the most palpable engagement +rings I think I ever saw. One of them had visible on its inner +curvature the four letters MIZP--. He looked at them, saw the posy, +and then, glancing at me, laughed affably. "I meant to tell you +yesterday, George--I will take these," to the shopman. And we emerged +with a superficial amiability; the case of rings in my uncle's pocket. +The thing was rather a shock to me, coming so suddenly and +unexpectedly. I had anticipated some innocent purchase of the +jewellery he reviles so much, but certainly not significant rings, +golden fetters for others to wear and enslave him; and we were past the +flowershop towards Hyde Park before either of us spoke. It seemed so +dreadful to me that the cheerful, talkative man beside me, my own +father's little brother, a traveller in distant countries, and a most +innocent man, and with all the inveterate habits of thirty years' +honourable bachelorhood and all the mellowness of life upon him, +should, without consulting me, have taken the first irrevocable step +towards becoming a ratepayer, a pew tenant, paterfamilias, a fighter +with schoolmasters, and the serf of a butler, that I scarcely knew what +to say adequate to the occasion. + +"Well," said I at last, with an involuntary sigh, "I suppose I must +congratulate you." + +"Don't look at it in that light, George," said my uncle; and he added +in a more cheerful tone, "I am only going to get engaged, you know." + +"You can scarcely imagine, George," he proceeded, "how I have longed to +be engaged. All my life it has been my hope and goal. It is, I think, +the ideal state of man. There was a chap with me when I was at +Kimberley who first put the idea into my head. His ways were animated +and cheerful even for a diamond field, where you know animation and +cheerfulness are, so to speak, _de rigueur_. Whisky he affected, and +jesting of the kind that paints cities scarlet. And he used every +night, before festivities began, to write a long letter to some girl in +England, and say, within limits, how bad he had been and how he longed +to reform and be with her, and never, never do anything wrong any more. +He poured all the higher and better parts of his nature into the +letter, and folded it up and sealed it very carefully. And then he +came to us in a singularly relieved frame of mind, and would be the +life and soul of as merry a game of follow-your-leader as one can well +imagine." + +Pleasant reminiscences occupied him for a moment. "Every man should be +engaged, I think, to at least one woman. It is the homage we owe to +womankind, and a duty to our souls. His _fiancée_ is indeed the +Madonna of a true-hearted man; the thought of her is a shrine at the +wayside of one's meditations, and her presence a temple wherein we +cleanse our souls. She is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, +something perhaps of the woman, possibly even propitious and helpful, +and yet something of the Holy Grail as well. You have no rights with +her, nor she with you; you owe her no definite duties, and yet she is +singularly yours. A smile is a favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint +pressure of your hand, is an infinite privilege. You cannot demand the +slightest help or concern of her, so you ask it with diffident grace +and there is an overflowing stream of gratitude from small occasions. +Whatever you give her is a gift too, while a husband is just property, +a mere draught-camel for her service. All your functions are +decorative, you hang her shrine with flowers and precious stones. You +treat her to art and literature, and as for vulgar necessities--some +one else sees to that." + +"Until you are married," began I. + +"I am speaking of being engaged. Marriage is altogether a different +thing. The essence of a proper engagement is reverence, distance, and +mystery; the essence of marriage is familiarity. A _fiancée_ is a +living eidolon; a wife, from my point of view at least, should be a +confidential companion, a fellow-conspirator, an accessory after the +fact, at least, to one's little errors; should take some share of the +burthen and heat of the day with one, and have the humour to bear with +a mood of vexation or a fit of the blues. I doubt, do you know, if the +same kind of girl is suitable for engagements as for marriage. For an +engagement give me something very innocent, a little awe-inspiring on +that account, absolutely and tenderly worshipful, yet given to moods of +caressing affection, and altogether graceful and beautiful. A man, I +think, ought to be incapable of smoking or lounging in front of the +girl he professes to love, so reverent ought his love to be. But for +marriage let me have humour and some community of taste, a woman who +can climb stiles and stand tobacco smoke, and who knows a good cook by +her fruits.... It is a complicated business, this marrying. + +"The familiarity of the marriage state, if it does not breed positive +contempt on the part of the angel, engenders at times, I think, a +considerable craving for change on the side of both parties. We men +are poor creatures at the best--I always pity your Euphemia. Married +people, for instance, always get too much of each other's conversation. +They do not have sufficient opportunity to recuperate their topics from +original sources. They get interested in outside people, merely from a +perfectly legitimate desire to get some amusing novel ideas for each +other, and then comes jealousy. I sometimes think that if Adam and Eve +had been merely engaged, she would not have talked with the serpent; +and the world had been saved an infinity of misery. + +"No, George: engagements for me. It is the state we were made for. I +have delayed this matter all too long. But, thank heaven, I am engaged +at last--I hope for all the rest of my life. Now, will you not +congratulate me?" + +"It may be very nice as you put it, but engagements end as well as +begin," I insisted. "You cannot be a law unto yourself in these +matters. When will you get married?" + +"Good Heavens!" exclaimed my uncle. "Get married and end this +delightful state! You don't think she will want me to marry her, do +you? Besides, she told me some time ago that she did not intend to +marry again. It was only that encouraged me to suggest an engagement +to her. Though she is a wonderful woman, George--a wonderful woman. +Still, I think she looks at things very much as I do." + +He paused thoughtfully. Then added with fervour, "At least I hope so." + + + + +LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI + +A RHAPSODY + +I found him in his own apartments, and strangely disordered. He went +to and fro, raving--beginning so soon as I entered the room. I noticed +a book half out of its cover, flung carelessly into the corner of the +room. + +"I am enchanted of an impalpable woman, George," he said, "I am in +bonds to a spirit of the air. I can neither think nor work nor eat nor +sleep because of her. Sometimes I go out suddenly, tramping through +seething streets, through fog and drizzle or dry east wind, mourning +for her sake. My life is rapidly becoming one colourless melancholy +through her spells and twining sorceries. I sometimes wish that I were +dead. + +"Yet I have never seen her. Often, indeed, I imagine her, anon as of +this shape, and anon of that. I know her only by her victims, those +she slays daily, and daily revives to slay. They come to me with their +complaints, mutilated, pathetic, terrible. I try to shut my ears to +them in vain. I have tried wool, but it made little or no difference. + +"The business always begins with the slamming of a door and a healthy +footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional +noises--the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and +its extraction by means of the tongs--I know it is tongs she uses by +the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to +play. She puts both her hands upon the key-board, and the treble +shrieks apprehensively, and the bass roars like a city in revolt. +After that this hush. Just this interval. + +"Yet I sometimes think this hush is really the worst of it all. It is +a voluminous apprehension, a towering impendency. You don't +understand, George. You can't. The poor devil in Poe's 'Pit and the +Pendulum' must have had a taste of my sensations. A first victim is +being chosen. I have a vision of the spirits of composers small and +great--standing up like suspects awaiting identification, while her eye +ranges over them. Chopin tries to edge behind Wagner, a difficult and +forbidding person, and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendelssohn, who +suddenly drops and crawls on all fours between Gounod's legs; Sullivan +cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed nerves desert him. She +extends her hand. There is a frantic rush to escape. Have you ever +seen a little boy picking dormice out of a cage? I always see this +same nightmare during that dreadful pause, a vision of a writhing heap +of kicking, struggling, maddened composers, and of a ghoulish piano +grinning expectant, jaw raised--lid I mean--and showing all its black +and yellow keys. ... A melancholy shriek. Do you hear, George? Tito +Mattel is captured. A song. + +"'Pum--So long the way--Pum--so dark the day--Pum--DEAR HEART! before +you come.' So Tito Mattel comes pumming through the wall into my +presence. I don't pity him. Indeed it is a positive relief that it is +only Tito Mattel. The man's no deity at the best, and a little pulling +out, and pulling crooked, and general patching together of limbs in the +wrong place scarcely matters so far as he and my taste are concerned. +Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about +the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the +autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness +of truth--I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped +notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. The +murder is over. + +"What next? That Study of Chopin's! This time the thing is more +inspiring. Once upon a time it was a favourite of mine. Now it is a +favourite of the unseen lady's. She plays it with spirit, and conjures +up strange fancies in my brain. The noises that come through the wall +now, quicker, thicker, louder, are full of a tale of weltering +confusion, marine disaster, a ship in sore labour; there is a steady +beating like the sound of pumps, and a trickle of treble notes. There +are black silences, like thunderclouds, that burst into flashes of +music. Now the poor melody swings up into the air--then comes one of +those terrible pauses, and now down into the abyss. A crash, an +ineffectual beating, a spasmodic rush. I seem to hear the pumps again, +distant, remote, ineffectual. But that is not so; the struggle is +over. Chopin's Study has been battered to pieces; only disarticulated +fragments toss amidst the froth. High up the confusion of the stormy +sky she drives in a sieve dropping notes--the witch of the storm. La +Belle Dame Sans Merci. + +"But the third piece in her repertory has begun--Rubinstein. This, at +any rate, is familiar. She plays with the confidence born of long +unpunished misdoing. That Rubinstein must indeed be sorry, and unless +their elysium is like the library of the Linnæan Society, and fitted +with double windows, all the great departed musicians must be sorry +too, that he ever wrote a Melody in F. Daily from the altars of a +thousand, of ten thousand, school pianos that melody cries to heaven. +From the empire of the music master, upon which the sun never sets, day +and night, week in week out, from year to year, Rubinstein's Melody in +F streams up for ever. These school pieces are like the Latin ritual +before the Reformation, they link all Christendom by a common use. As +the earth spins, and the sunlight sweeps ever westward, that melody +passes with the day. Now it is tinkling in a grey Moravian school, now +it dawns upon the Adige and begins in Alsace, now it has reached +Madrid, Paris, London. Then a devotee in some Connemara Establishment +for Young Ladies sets to. Presently tall ships upon the silent main +resound with it, and they are at it in the Azores and in Iceland, and +then--one solitary tinkling, doubling, reduplicating, manifolding into +an innumerable multitude--New York takes up the wondrous tale. On then +with the dawn to desolate cattle ranches, the tablelands of Mexico, the +level plains of Illinois and Michigan. So the great tide that started +in Rubinstein's cranium proceeds upon its destiny. Always somewhere +between the hours of eleven and two it comes back to me here, poor +hunted composition, running its eternal world gauntlet, pursuing its +Wandering Jew pilgrimage, and I curse and pity it as it goes by.... It +has gone. The 'Maiden's Prayer' is next usually. Then one of the +'Lieder ohne Worte,' then the 'Dead March'--all of them but the meagre +and mutilated skeletons of themselves; things of gaps and tatters, like +gibbet trophies. They are as knocked about as a fleet coming out of +action, they are as twisted and garbled as a Chinese war telegram; it +is like an hospital for congenitally diseased compositions taking the +air. And they have to hobble along sharply too; there is a certain +cruel decision in the way the notes are struck, a Nurse Gillespie touch +about this Invisible Lady. Or it may be the callousness of old habit, +a certain sense of a duty overdone, a certain impatience at the long +delay. You will hear. + +"Listen!--_Tum Tum Ti-ti-tum_--No!--_tum_. Slight pause. Tum _tum +twiddle_--vigorous crescendo--TUM. This is unusual! A stranger? A +new piece for La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Her wonted reckless dash +deserts her. She is, as it were, exploring a new region, and advances +with mischievous coyness, with an affectation of a faltering heart, +with hesitating steps. My imagination is stimulated by these dripping +notes. I see her, as it were, on an uneven pavement; here the flags +are set on end, there fungi have tilted them, a sharp turning of the +page may reveal heaven knows what horrors; presently comes a black gap +with a vault of dusty silence below. A pause, an incoherency, a +repetition! She has encountered some difficulty, some slumbering coil +of sharps and flats, and it raises its bristling front in her way.... +She has fled back to the opening again. I begin to wonder what unhappy +musician lies hidden in this new ruin, behind the bars of this +melancholy confusion. There is something familiar but elusive, like a +face that one has known and loved and lost and met again after the +cruel changes of intervening years. It conjures up oddly enough a +vision of a long room in the twilight, and an acacia in silhouette +against the pale gold of the western sky. Ah! now I know! + +"_That_ of all pieces! + +"I must have my walk, George. I cannot bear to hear that old-familiar +music so evilly entreated. But, all the same, the memory it has +touched will vibrate and smart; to-day and to-morrow, and I know not +for how many days, it will re-echo in my brain. All the old cloudy +remorse that has subsided will be set astir again. I shall hear again +a light touch upon the keys, see again the shadowy face against the +sunset, try to recall the sound of a voice.... What evil spirit has +put this mockery into the head of La Belle Dame? Surely without +this----" + +He made a dive at the folding doors and presently reappeared in his +coat. It was the only intimation I ever had that my dear little uncle +had such a thing as a Past. + + + + +ON A TRICYCLE + +I sat on the parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water +that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge +the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the +sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the +big oak trees that bent towards each other from either bank. Through +their speckled tracery of green one saw the hazy blue depths of the +further forest. I was watching the proceedings of some quick-moving +brown bird amid the rushes and marsh marigolds of the opposite bank. + +"Pleasant," said a voice beside me. + +I turned, and saw my uncle. He was disguised in a costume of +reddish-brown cloth. "Golf here?" said I, and then I noticed the +tricycle. "A vagrom man on wheels!" + +Both the suit and the machine became him very well. The machine was +low, and singularly broad between the wheels, and altogether equal to +him, and it had chubby pneumatic tires and a broad and even imposing +wallet. + +"Yes," said he, following my eye. "It is a handsome machine, a full +dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is +as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and +gentlemanly affair--if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these +things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is +altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, +with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been +so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could +not bring myself to it. But a Bishop might ride _that_ thing." + +He swung himself up upon the parapet beside me and lit a cigar. + +"The bicycle for boys, George--or fools. The things will not keep up +for a moment without you work at them, they need constant attention; I +would as soon ride a treadmill. You cannot loaf with them, and the +only true pleasure of cycling is to loaf. Yet only this morning did I +meet an elderly gentleman with a beard fit for Abraham, his face all +crimson and deliquescent with heat, and all distorted with the fury of +his haste, toiling up a hill on one of these unstable instruments. +When he saw me coming down in all my ease and dignity he damned at me +with his bell. Now, I do not like to see a bicycle wobble under a load +of years, and steer into the irascible. As years increase tempers +shorten, and bicycles, even the best of bicycles, are seductively +irritating. + +"Besides, the devil of the Wandering Jew has power over all such as go +upon two wheels. 'Onward,' he says, 'onward! Faster, thou man! This +green and breezy earth is no abiding place for you!' And +hard-breathing, crook-shaped, whirling, bell-banging lunatics try and +race you. They whiz by, thinking indignities of your dignified +progress, and sometimes saying them. Not one cyclist in a dozen, +George, and seemingly not a solitary bicyclist, seems to think of +anything but getting to the end of his pleasure. I meet these servants +of the wheel at the inns, and they tell short stories and sketches +about their pace, and show each other their shoes and saddles, and +compare maps and roads; some even try to trade machines. They talk +most indecently of the makes and prices. I would as soon ask a man who +was his tailor or where he got his hair cut and how much he paid. One +man I met was not so much a man as a hoarding, blatant about the +Gaspipe Machine Company. For them no flowers exist, no wild birds, no +trees, no landscapes, no historical memorials, and no geological +associations, nothing but the roads they traverse and the bicycles they +ride. Those that have other interests have them in the form of cheap +portable cameras, malignant things that can find no beauty in earth or +heaven." + +"George," said my uncle, suddenly, and I knew he had come upon a great +discovery; "real human beings are scarce in this world." + +"You speak bitterly," said I. "I know what has happened. You are hot +from an inn full of the viler type of cyclist, and I presume that, +after their custom, they mocked at your machinery. But don't blacken a +popular exercise on that account." + +"But these men are so aggressive! I tell you, George, it requires +moral courage to ride a tricycle about at a moderate pace, as a man of +discretion should. They want to make a sport of it; they are +race-struck, incapable of understanding a man who rides at seven miles +an hour when he might ride at fifteen. Read their special papers. +They mock and sneer at everything but pace; they worship the makes of +'94 in the interests of their advertising columns; touring simply means +hotel-touting to them, and landscape, deals in cameras; in the end they +will kill cycling--indeed, they are killing it. It is not nice to be +mocked at even when you are in the right; a blatant cad is like a +rhinoceros, and admits of no parleying, only since you must not kill +him you are obliged to keep out of his way. The common cyclist has +already driven ladies off the roads by forcing the pace, the honeymoon +tandem returns with its feelings hurt at his jesting, and now he is +driving off all quiet men." + +"All this," said I, "because they said something disrespectful about +your machine at the last inn... You don't, I see, approve of the +feminine bicycle?" + +My uncle did his best to be calm and judicial. + +"A woman in a hurry is one of the most painful sights in the world, for +exertion does not become a woman as it does a man. Let us avoid all +prejudice in this matter, George, and discuss it with open minds. She +has, in the first place, a considerable length of hair, and she does it +up into rich and beautiful shapes with things called hairpins and with +curling irons. Very few people have hair that curls naturally, George. +You are young, but you are married, and I see nothing improper in +telling you these things. Well, when a woman rides about, exerting +herself violently to keep a bicycle going, her hair gets damp and the +pleasing curls lose their curliness and become wet, straggling bands of +hair plastered over her venous forehead. And a tragic anxiety is +manifest, an expression painful for a man to meet. Also her hairpins +come out and fall on the road to wait for pneumatic tires, and her hair +is no longer rich and beautiful in form. Then she gets dirty, horribly +dirty, as though she had been used to sweep the roads with. And her +skirts have to be weirdly altered, even to the divided skirt, so that +when she rides she looks like a short, squat little man. She not only +loses her beauty but her dignity. Now, for my own part, I think a man +wants a woman to worship--it is a man's point of view, of course, but I +can't help my sex--and the worshipping of these zouaves is incredible. +She is nothing more than a shorter, fuller, and feebler man. Heaven +help her! For the woman on the tricycle there are ampler excuses as +well as ampler skirts, the exertion is not too violent for grace and +coolness, and the offensive bulging above one narrow wheel is avoided. +But women will never sacrifice so much for so little; worshipfulness, +beauty, repose, and comfort for a paltry two or three miles more an +hour of pace. They know too well the graces of delay. To do things +slowly, George, is part of the art of living. Our sex learns that when +its youthful fervour is over and all the things are done. But women +are born wise." + +"By the bye," said I, "how is Mrs Harborough?" + +"Very well, thanks. How is Euphemia? Your bit of view, George, is +pretty, but I think I will have some heather now. There is a common +three miles ahead. This indeed is the true merit of cycling. For a +view, a panorama; for one picture, a gallery. Your true artist in +cycling sits by the roadside, and rides only by way of an interlude. +As for the worship of the machine, I would as soon worship a +scene-shifter." + +He dropped off the bridge and mounted his machine, and was presently +pursuing his smooth and noiseless way. As he vanished round the corner +he sounded his gong. It was really a most potent, grave, and reverend +gong, with a certain note of philosophical melancholy in its tone, as +different from the vulgar tang of your common cycle as one can well +imagine. It asked you, at your convenience, sir (or madam), to get out +of the way, to stand aside and see a most worthy and dignified +spectacle roll by, if so be you had the mind for it. As for any +scolding insistence, any threat of imminent collision, there was none +of it. It was the bell of a man who loved margins, who was at his +ease, and would have all the world at its ease. More than anything +else, it reminded me of the boom of some ivy-clad church tower, warning +the world without unseemly haste that another hour had, with leisurely +completeness, accomplished itself. + +And so he passed out of my sight and was gone. + + + + +AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE + +(AUTHORESS UNKNOWN) + +He pushed it away from him. + +"I felt as though I had disturbed the graves of the long departed," he +said with a grimace, and then addressing the egg: "Forgive me the +sacrilege: they sold you to me as new laid, a mere thing of yesterday. +I had no idea I was opening the immemorial past. _De mortuis nihil +nisi bonum_--to you at least the quotation will be novel. Or I might +call you bad, you poor mummy. + +"Unhappy, pent-up, ineffectual thing!" he said, waving his jilted bread +and butter, and addressing the discarded inedible. "Poor old maid +among eggs! And so it has come to this absolute failure with you. Why +were you ever laid? Surely, since you were once alive, some lurking +aspiration, some lowly, and yet not lowly, but most divine, striving +towards the Higher and the Better, hath stirred within you. The warm +sunlight shone through your translucent shell, the sweet air stirred +the sweet hay of the nest, and life called you from your dreaming to +awake, and join it in its interplay. And now! You might have +been--what might you not have been? A prize hen, fountain of a +broadening stream of hens, chicks, dozens of chicks, hundreds of +chicks, a surging ocean of chickens. Had you been hatched among the +early Victorian chickens that were, I presume, your contemporaries, by +now you might have been a million fowl, and the delight and support of +hundreds of thousands of homes. You might have been worth thousands of +pounds and have eaten corn by the ton. They might have written +articles about you in half-crown reviews and devoted poultry farms to +your sole support. And instead you have been narrowed down to this +sordid back-street tragedy, a mere offence, tempting a struggling +tradesman to risk the honour of my patronage of his books, for a paltry +fraction of a pennyworth of profit. Why, I ask you, were you not +hatched? Was it lack of courage? a fear of the unknown dangers that +lie outside the shell? + +"An indescribable pity wells up in me for this lost egg, this dead end +in the tree of life, George. One thinks of the humble but deserving +amoeba, the primordial metazöon, the first fish, the remote reptile +ancestor, the countless generations of forefathers that, so far as this +egg went, have lived and learnt and suffered in vain. The torrent of +life had split and rushed by on either side of it. And you might," +cried he, turning to the egg again, "have been a Variety, a novelty, +and an improvement in chickens. No chick now will ever be _exactly_ +the chick you might have been. Only an Olive Schreiner could do full +justice to your failure, you poor nun, you futile eremite, you absolute +and hopeless impasse. Was it, I ask again, a lack of courage? + +"Perhaps a lack of opportunity? It may be you stirred and hoped in the +distant past, and the warmth to quicken you never came. Ambition may +have fretted you. Indeed, now I think of it, there is something in the +flavour of you, singularly suggestive of disappointed ambition. In +literature, and more particularly in criticism, I can assure you I have +met the very fellow of your quality, from literary rotten eggs whose +opening came too late. They are like the genii in the 'Arabian Nights' +whom Solomon, the son of David, sealed in the pot. At first he +promised infinite delights to his discoverer--and his discoverer +lagged. In the end he was filled with unreasonable hatred against all +the feeble free, and emerged as a malignant fume, eager to wreak +himself upon the world. + +"A sudden thought, George! I see my egg in a new light, and all my +pity changes to respect. Surely it is a most potent egg, a +gallinaceous Swift. After all, anything but pointless and childless, +since it has this strange quality of being offensive and engendering +thought. Food for the mind if not food for the body--didactic if not +delightful--a bit of modern literature, earnest and fundamentally real. +I must try and understand you, Ibsen Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound +parable I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely reckoned on a parable +with my bread and butter. Frankly, I must confess I bought it for the +eating." + +Now that my uncle had at last begun to grasp the true greatness of his +egg, he apparently considered it becoming to drop the tone of +half-patronising pity he had previously adopted. "Come," said he, +smiling, with a dash of raillery, over his coffee-cup; "admit you are a +humbug, you whitened sepulchre of an anticipated chick! Until you +found a congenial soul and overwhelmed me with your confidence, what a +career of deception--not mean, of course, but cynical--ironical--you +have been leading. What a jest it must have been to you to be sold as +new laid! How you laughed in your quiet way at the mockery of life. +Surely it was a worthy pair to Swift in cassock and bands conducting a +marriage service. I can well fancy your silent scorn of the hand that +put you in the bag. New laid! But now I have the full humour of you. +You must pardon my dulness of apprehension. I grasp your meaning now; +your quiet insistent teaching that all life is decay and all decay is +life. No forcing the accent, no crudity, but a pervading persuasion. +A noble gospel!" + +He paused impressively, placed the egg respectfully upon his bureau, +and presently went off at a tangent to something else. + +"Shall I throw this away?" said the girl. + +"Good heavens! Throw it away? Certainly not. Put it in the library." +(The library used to be the corner of the room by the window.) + +She stared at me with a certain attempt at confidence. She is a +callous, impertinent kind of girl, and I fear inclined to be bold. "It +_do_ smell, sir," she said to him. + +"That's the merit of it. It's irony. Go and put it on the fourth +shelf near the window. There are some yellow-covered books there, and +Swift, some comedies by a gentleman named Ibsen, and a couple of novels +by two gentlemen named George ------. But there! you don't know one +book from another! The fourth shelf from the top on the right-hand +side." + +As the girl did so she looked over her hand at me, and lifted her +eyebrows very slightly. + + + + +THE GREAT CHANGE + +My uncle had been hectic all day. I knew and dreaded what was coming, +and said nothing that by any chance could lead up to it. + +He absent-mindedly tipped the emu sixpence. Then we came to the wart +hog. + +"A bachelor," he said, meditatively, scratching the brute's back. + +I hastily felt for a saving topic in the apprehensive darkness of my +mind, and could find none. + +"I expect I shall be married in October," said my uncle. Then, +sighing: "The idyll of my engagement was short-lived." + +It was out. Now, the day--my last idle day with my poor uncle--was a +hideous wreck. All the topics he had fluttered round vanished, and, +cold and awful, there loomed over us the one great topic. + +"What do you _think_ of marriage, George?" said my uncle, after a +pause, prodding the wart hog suddenly. + +"That's your privilege," said I. "Married men don't dare to think of +it. Bigamy." + +"Privilege! Is it such a headlong wreck of one's ideals as they say?" +said my uncle. "Is that dreamland furniture really so unstable in use?" + +"Of course," said I, "it's different from what one expects. But it +seems to be worse for the other party. At least to judge from the +novels they engender in their agony." + +"So far as I can see," he proceeded, "what happens is very similar to a +thing a scientific chap was explaining to me the other day. There are +some little beasts in the sea called ascidians, and they begin life as +cheerful little tadpole things, with waggling tails and big expressive +eyes. They move freely about hither and thither, and often travel vast +distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis +begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself +head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a +mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck +round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He +loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses his bright +expressive eye." + +"The bother of it," said I, "is that very often the wandering +expressive eye is not lost in the human metamorphosis." + +"Putting it in another way, one might say that the kind of story that +Ovid is so fond of describing, the affairs of Daphne and Io, for +instance, are fables of the same thing: an interlude of sentiment and +then a change into something new and domesticated, rooted, fixed, and +bounded in." + +"It is certainly always a settling down," said I. + +"I don't like this idea of settling down, George." He shuddered. "It +must be a dreadful thing to go about always with a house on your mind." + +"You get used to it. And, besides, you don't go about so much." + +He gave the bachelor wart hog a parting dig, and we walked slowly and +silently through the zebra-house towards the elephants. "Of course we +do not intend to settle down," he said presently, with a clumsy effort +to render his previous remarks impersonal. + +"A marriage invalidates all promises," I explained. "The law +recognises this in the case of wills." + +"That's a new view," he said, evidently uncomfortable about something. + +"It follows from your doctrine of metamorphosis. A marries B. Then +the great change begins. A gradually alters into a new fixed form, C, +while B flattens and broadens out as D. It is a different couple, and +they cannot reasonably be held responsible for the vagaries of A and B." + +"That ought to be better understood." + +"It would perhaps be as well. Before marriage Edwin vows to devote his +life to Angelina, and Angelina vows she will devote her life to Edwin. +After marriage this leads to confusion if they continue to believe such +promises. Marriage certainly has that odd effect on the memory. You +remember Angelina's promises and forget your own, and _vice versa_." + +"There is no apparition more distressing than the ghost of a dead +promise," said my uncle. "Especially when it is raised in the house of +your friends." + +We passed through the elephant house in silence. + +"I wonder what kind of man I shall be after the change, George. It's +all a toss-up," he continued, after an interval. "I have seen some men +improved by it. You, for instance. You were a mere useless, indecent +aspirant to genius before the thing came upon you. Now you are a +respectable journalist and gracefully anxious to give satisfaction to +your editor. But my own impression is that a man has to be a bit of an +ass before he can be improved by marriage. Most men get so mercenary, +they simply work and do nothing a rational creature should. They are +like the male ants that shed their wings after the nuptial flight. And +their wives go round talking fashion articles, and calling them dear +old stupids, and flirting over teacups with the unmarried men, or +writing novelettes about the child-man, and living their own lives. +I've been an unmarried man and I know all about it. Every intelligent +woman now seems to want to live her own life when she is not engaged in +taking the child-man out into polite society, and trying to wean him +from alcohol and tobacco. However, this scarcely applies to me." + +"Not now," I said. And he winced. + +"I wonder how it feels. Most men go into this without knowing of the +change that hangs over them. But I am older. It would not be nice for +a caterpillar if he knew he was going to rip up all along his back in a +minute or so. Yet I could sympathise with such a caterpillar now. +Anyhow, George, I hope the change will be complete. I would not like +to undergo only a partial metamorphosis, and become a queer speckled +monster all spotted with bachelor habits. Yet I sometimes think I am +beyond the adolescent stage, and my habits rather deeply rooted. +Hitherto, I have always damned a little at braces and collars and +things like that. I wish I knew where one could pick up a few +admissible expletives. And I loaf about London all day sometimes +without any very clear idea of what I am after, telling chaps in +studios how to paint, and talking to leisurely barristers, and all that +kind of thing." + +"_She_," I said, "will probably help you to conquer habits of that +sort." + +"Yes, I dare say she will," said my uncle. "I forgot that for the +minute." + + + + +THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE + +My uncle came to a stop outside a stationer's shop in Oxford-street. +When I saw what had caught his attention I reproached myself for my +thoughtlessness. + +"Come," said I, "tell me what you think of--of representative +government." + +"It's no good, George. You did the same thing at the cake shop. Do +you think I never saw the cake shop? Since this affair was settled I +think every shop I pass reminds me of it--even the gunsmith's. I never +suspected before how entirely retail trade turned on marriage--except, +perhaps, the second-hand book shops. The whole world seems a-marrying. + +"It's queer," said he, "that a little while ago the thing that worried +me to the exclusion of everything else was the idea of being married, +and now it is so near it's entirely the getting married that upsets me. +I have forgotten the horrid consequences in the horror of the +operation." + +"It's much the same," said I, "at an execution." + +"Look at those cards." He waved his hand towards a neat array of +silver and white pasteboard. "'Jemima Smith,' with an arrow through +the Smith, and 'Podger' written above it, and on the opposite side 'Mr +and Mrs John Podger.' That is where it has me, George." + +We went on past a display of electroplate with a card about presents in +the window, past a window full of white flowers, past a +carriage-builder's and a glove shop. "It's like death," said my uncle; +"it turns up everywhere and is just the same for everybody. In that +cake shop there were piles and piles of cakes, from little cakes ten +inches across up to cakes of three hundredweight or so; all just the +same rich, uneatable, greasy stuff, and with just the same white sugar +on the top of them. I suppose every day they pack off scores. It +makes one think of marrying in swarms, like the gnats. I catch myself +wondering sometimes if the run of people really are separate +individuals, or only a kind of replicas, without any tastes of their +own. There are people who would rather not marry than marry without +one of those cakes, George. To me it seems to be almost the most +asinine position a couple of adults can be in, to have to buy a stone +or so of that concentrated biliousness and cut it up, or procure other +people to cut it up, and send it round to other adults who would almost +as soon eat arsenic. And why cake--infantile cake? Why not biscuits, +or cigarettes, or chocolate? It seems to me to be playing the fool +with a solemn occasion." + +"You see, it is the custom to have cake." + +"Well, anyhow, I intend to break the custom." + +"So did I, but I had it all the same." + +My uncle looked at me. + +"You see," said I, "when a woman says you must do this or that--must +have cake at a wedding, for instance--you must do it. It is not a case +for argument. It is a kind of privilege they have--the categorical +imperative. You will soon learn that." + +Evidently the question was open. "But _why_ do they say you must?" + +"Other women tell them to. They would despise any one dreadfully who +did not have a really big cake--from that shop." + +"But why?" + +"My dear uncle," said I, "you are going into matrimony. You do not +show a proper spirit." + +"The cake," said my uncle, "is only a type. There is this trousseau +business again. Why should a woman who is going to marry require a +complete outfit of that sort? It seems to suggest--well, pre-nuptial +rags at least, George. Then the costume. Why should a sane healthy +woman be covered up in white gauze like the confectionery in a shop +window when the flies are about? And why----?" + +He was going on in quite an aggressive tone. "There isn't a _why_," I +said, "for any of it." This sort of talk always irritates a married +man because it revives his own troubles. "It's just the rule. Surely, +if a wife is worth having she is worth being ridiculous for? You ought +to be jolly glad you don't have to wear a fool's cap and paint your +nose red. 'More precious than rubies'----" + +"Don't," he said. + +"It must be these tradesmen," he began bitterly after an interval. +"Some one must be responsible, and it's just their way. Do you know, +George, I sometimes fancy that they have hypnotised womankind into the +belief that all these uncomfortable things are absolutely necessary to +a valid marriage--just as they have persuaded the landlady class that +no house is complete without a big mirror over the fireplace and a +bulgy sideboard. There is a very strong flavour of mesmeric suggestion +about a woman's attitude towards these matters, considered in the light +of her customary common sense. Do you know, George, I really believe +there is a secret society of tradesmen, a kind of priesthood, who get +hold of our womenkind and muddle them up with all these fancies. It's +a sort of white magic. Have you ever been in a draper's shop, George?" + +"Never," I said: "I always wait outside--among the dogs." + +"Have you ever read a ladies' newspaper?" + +"I didn't know," said I, "that there was any part to read. It's all +advertisements; all the articles are advertisements, all the +paragraphs, the stories, the answers to correspondents--everything." + +"That's exactly what makes me think the tradesmen have hypnotised the +sex. It may be they do it in those drapers' dens. A man spots that +kind of thing at once and drops the paper. Women go on year after +year, simply worshipping a paper hoarding of that kind, and doing +patiently everything they are told to do therein. Anyhow, it is only +in this way that I can account for all these expensive miseries of +matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her +faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with--I +suppose all men submit to it under protest--for these stale and +stereotyped antics. She _must_ be magnetised." + +"They are not stale to her," I said. + +"Mrs Harborough----" he began. + +"Of course, a widow!--I forgot," I said. "But she seems so young, you +know." + +"And putting aside the details," said my uncle, with a transient dash +of cheerfulness at my mistake; "I object to the publicity of the whole +thing. It's not nice. To bring the street arab into the affair, to +subject yourself to the impertinent congratulations and presents of +every aspirant to your intimacy, to be patted on the back in the local +newspapers as though you were going to do something clever. Confound +them! It's not their affair. And I'm too old to be a blushing +bridegroom. Then think, what am I to do, George, if that cad Hagshot +sends me a present?" + +"It would be like him if he did," I said. "I fancy he will." + +"I can't go and kick him," said my uncle. + +"Declined with thanks," I suggested, "owing to pressure of other +matter." + +"You are getting shoppy, George," said my uncle, in as near an approach +to a querulous tone as I have heard from him. + +"You are getting married," I replied, with the complacency of one whose +troubles are over. "But it's a horrible nuisance, anyhow. Still, the +world grows wiser, and the burden is not quite so bad as it used to be. +A hundred years hence----" + +"I'd be willing enough to wait," said my uncle; "but I'm not the only +party in this affair." + + +He was willing enough to wait, perhaps, but time was inexorable. Save +for one hurried interview, I did not see him again for a week, and then +it was before the altar. His garrulity had fallen from him like a +garment. He was preoccupied and a trifle bashful. He fumbled with the +ring. I felt almost as though he was my younger brother. + +I stood by him to the end, and at last came the hour of parting. I +grasped his hand in silence: silently he mastered a becoming emotion. +And in silence he went from me unto the New Life. + + + + +A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST + +The gentleman with the Jovian coiffure began to speak as the train +moved. "'Tis the utmost degradation of art," he said. He had +apparently fallen into conversation with his companion upon the +platform. + +"I don't see it," said this companion, a prosperous-looking gentleman +with a gold watch-chain. "This art for art's sake--I don't believe in +it, I tell you. Art should have an aim. If it don't do you good, if +it ain't moral, I'd as soon not have it. What good is it? I believe +in Ruskin. I tell you----" + +"_Bah_!" said the gentleman in the corner, with almost explosive +violence. He fired it like a big gun across the path of the incipient +argument, and slew the prosperous-looking gentleman at once. He met +our eyes, as we turned to him, with a complacent smile on his large +white, clean-shaven face. He was a corpulent person, dressed in black, +and with something of the quality of a second-hand bishop in his +appearance. The demolished owner of the watch-chain made some +beginnings of a posthumous speech. + +"_Bah_!" said the gentleman in the corner, with even more force than +before, and so finished him. + +"These people will never understand," he said, after a momentary pause, +addressing the gentleman with the Jovian coiffure, and indicating the +remains of the prosperous gentleman by a wave of a large white hand. +"Why do you argue? Art is ever for the few." + +"I did not argue," said the gentleman with the hair. "I was +interrupted." + +The owner of the watch-chain, who had been sitting struggling with his +breath, now began to sob out his indignation. "What do you _mean_, +sir? Saying _Bah_! sir, when I am talking----" + +The gentleman with the large face held up a soothing hand. "Peace, +peace," he said. "I did not interrupt you. I annihilated you. Why +did you presume to talk to artists about art? Go away, or I shall have +to say Bah! again. Go and have a fit. Leave us--two rare souls who +may not meet again--to our talking." + +"Did you ever see such abominable _rudeness_, sir?" said the gentleman +with the watch-chain, appealing to me. There were tears in his eyes. +At the same time the young man with the aureole made some remark to the +corpulent gentleman that I failed to catch. + +"These artists," said I, "are unaccountable, irresponsible. You +must----" + +"Take it from whence it comes," said the insulted one, very loudly, and +bitterly glaring at his opponent. But the two artists were conversing +serenely. I felt the undignified quality of our conversation. "Have +you seen _Punch_?" said I, thrusting it into his hand. + +He looked at the paper for a moment in a puzzled way; then understood, +thanked me, and began to read with a thunderous scowl, every now and +then shooting murderous glances at his antagonist in the opposite +corner, or coughing in an aggressive manner. + +"You do your best," the gentleman with the long hair was saying; "and +they say, 'What is it for?' 'It is for itself,' you say. Like the +stars." + +"But these people," said the stout gentleman, "think the stars were +made to set their clocks by. They lack the magnanimity to drop the +personal reference. A friend, a _confrère_, saw a party of these +horrible Extension people at Rome before that exquisite Venus of +Titian. 'And now, Mr Something-or-other,' said one of the young +ladies, addressing the pedagogue in command, 'what is _this_ to teach +us?'" + +"I have had the same experience," said the young gentleman with the +hair. "A man sent to me only a week ago to ask what my sonnet 'The +Scarlet Thread' _meant_?" + +The stout person shook his head as though such things passed all belief. + +"Gur-r-r-r," said the gentleman with _Punch_, and scraped with his foot +on the floor of the carriage. + +"I gave him answer," said the poet, "'Twas a sonnet; not a symbol." + +"Precisely," said the stout gentleman. + +"'Tis the fate of all art to be misunderstood. I am always grossly +misunderstood--by every one. They call me fantastic, whereas I am but +inevitably new; indecent, because I am unfettered by mere trivial +personal restrictions; unwholesome." + +"It is what they say to me. They are always trying to pull me to +earth. 'Is it wholesome?' they say; 'nutritious?' I say to them, 'I +do not know. I am an artist. I do not care. It is beautiful.'" + +"You rhyme?" said the poet. + +"No. My work is--more plastic. I cook." + +For a moment, perhaps, the poet was disconcerted. "A noble art," he +said, recovering. + +"The noblest," said the cook. "But sorely misunderstood; degraded to +utilitarian ends; tested by impossible standards. I have been +seriously asked to render oily food palatable to a delicate patient. +Seriously!" + +"He said, 'Bah!' Bah! to _me_!" mumbled the defunct gentleman with +_Punch_, apparently addressing the cartoon. "A cook! Good _Lord_!" + +"I resigned. 'Cookery,' I said, 'is an art. I am not a fattener of +human cattle. Think: Is it Art to write a book with an object, to +paint a picture for strategy?' 'Are we,' I said, 'in the sixties or +the nineties? Here, in your kitchen, I am inspired with beautiful +dinners, and I produce them. It is your place to gather together, from +this place one, and from that, one, the few precious souls who can +appreciate that rare and wonderful thing, a dinner, graceful, +harmonious, exquisite, perfect.' And he argued I must study his +guests!" + +"No artist is of any worth," said the poet, "who primarily studies what +the public needs." + +"As I told him. But the next man was worse--hygienic. While with this +creature I read Poe for the first time, and I was singularly fascinated +by some of his grotesques. I tried--it was an altogether new +development, I believe, in culinary art--the Bizarre. I made some +curious arrangements in pork and strawberries, with a sauce containing +beer. Quite by accident I mentioned my design to him on the evening of +the festival. All the Philistine was aroused in him. 'It will ruin my +digestion.' 'My friend,' I said, 'I am not your doctor; I have nothing +to do with your digestion. Only here is a beautiful Japanese thing, a +quaint, queer, almost eerie dinner, that is in my humble opinion worth +many digestions. You may take it or leave it, but 'tis the last dinner +I cook for you.' ... I knew I was wasted upon him. + +"Then I produced some Nocturnes in imitation of Mr Whistler, with +mushrooms, truffles, grilled meat, pickled walnuts, black pudding, +French plums, porter--a dinner in soft velvety black, eaten in a +starlight of small scattered candles. That, too, led to a resignation: +Art will ever demand its martyrs." + +The poet made sympathetic noises. + +"Always. The awful many will never understand. Their conception of my +skill is altogether on a level with their conceptions of music, of +literature, of painting. For wall decorations they love autotypes; for +literature, harmless volumes of twaddle that leave no vivid impressions +on the mind; for dinners, harmless dishes that are forgotten as they +are eaten. _My_ dinners stick in the memory. I cannot study these +people--my genius is all too imperative. If I needed a flavour of +almonds and had nothing else to hand, I would use prussic acid. Do +right, I say, as your art instinct commands, and take no heed of the +consequences. Our function is to make the beautiful gastronomic thing, +not to pander to gluttony, not to be the Jesuits of hygiene. My +friend, you should see some of my compositions. At home I have books +and books in manuscript, Symphonies, Picnics, Fantasies, _Etudes_..." + +The train was now entering Clapham Junction. The gentleman with the +gold watch-chain returned my _Punch_. "A cook," he said in a whisper; +"just a common cook!" He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head at me, +and proceeded to extricate himself and his umbrella from the carriage. +"Out of a situation too!" he said--a little louder--as I prepared to +follow him. + +"Mere dripping!" said the artist in cookery, with a regal wave of the +hand. + +Had I felt sure I was included, I should of course have resented the +phrase. + + + + +THE MAN WITH A NOSE + +"I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived +in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning." + + +"My nose has been the curse of my life." + +The other man started. + +They had not spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on +that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards +Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted +out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous +pale green--the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay +black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a +coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone +thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace loomed large +and black, their blackness pierced irregularly by luminous windows. +Above, starlight. + +Both men had been silent, lost apparently in their own thoughts, mere +dim black figures to each other, until one had seen fit to become a +voice also, with this confidence. + +"Yes," he said, after an interval, "my nose has always stood in my way, +always." + +The second man had scarcely seemed to notice the first remark, but now +he peered through the night at his interlocutor. It was a little man +he saw, with face turned towards him. + +"I see nothing wrong with your nose." + +"If it were luminous you might," said the first speaker. "However, I +will illuminate it." + +He fumbled with something in his pocket, then held this object in his +hand. There was a scratch, a streak of greenish phosphorescent light, +and then all the world beyond became black, as a fusee vesta flared. + +There was silence for the space of a minute. An impressive pause. + +"Well?" said the man with the nose, putting his heel on the light. + +"I have seen worse," said the second man. + +"I doubt it," said the man with the nose; "and even so, it is poor +comfort. Did you notice the shape? the size? the colour? Like +Snowdon, it has a steep side and a gentle slope. The size is +preposterous: my face is like a hen-house built behind a portico. And +the tints!" + +"It is not all red," said the second man, "anyhow." + +"No, there is purple, and blue, '_lapis lazuli_, blue as a vein over +the Madonna's breast,' and in one place a greyish mole. Bah! the thing +is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my +face. But, being where the nose should be, it gets the credit of its +position from unthinking people. There is a gap in the order of the +universe in front of my face, a lump of unwrought material left over. +In that my true nose is hidden, as a statue is hidden in a lump of +marble, until the appointed time for the revelation shall come. At the +resurrection---- But one must not anticipate. Well, well. I do not +often talk about my nose, my friend, but you sat with a sympathetic +pose, it seemed to me, and to-night my heart is full of it. This +cursed nose! But do I weary you, thrusting my nose into your +meditations?" + +"If," said the second man, his voice a little unsteady, as though he +was moved, "if it eases your mind to talk of your nose, pray talk." + +"This nose, I say then, makes me think of the false noses of Carnival +times. Your dullest man has but to stick one on, and lo! mirth, wit, +and jollity. They are enough to make anything funny. I doubt if even +an Anglican bishop could wear one with impunity. Put an angel in one. +How would you like one popped on to _you_ now? Think of going +love-making, or addressing a public meeting, or dying gloriously, in a +nose like mine! Angelina laughs in your face, the public laughs, the +executioner at your martyrdom can hardly light the faggots for +laughing. By heaven! it is no joke. Often and often I have rebelled, +and said, 'I will not have this nose!'" + +"But what can one do?" + +"It is destiny. The bitter tragedy of it is that it is so comic. +Only, God knows, how glad I shall be when the Carnival is over, and I +may take the thing off and put it aside. The worst has been this +business of love. My mind is not unrefined, my body is healthy. I +know what tenderness is. But what woman could overlook a nose like +mine? How could she shut out her visions of it, and look her love into +my eyes, glaring at her over its immensity? I should have to make love +through an Inquisitor's hood, with its holes cut for the eyes--and even +then the shape would show. I have read, I have been told, I can +imagine what a lover's face is like--a sweet woman's face radiant with +love. But this Millbank penitentiary of flesh chills their dear +hearts." + +He broke off suddenly, with loud ferocious curses. A young man who had +been sitting very close to a young woman on an adjacent seat, started +up and said "Ssh!". + +He whom the man with the nose had addressed now spoke. "I have +certainly never thought before of a red nose as a sorrowful thing, but +as you put it...." + +"I thought you would understand. I have had this nose all my life. +The outline was done, even though the colour was wanting, in my school +days. They called me 'Nosey,' 'Ovid,' 'Cicero,' 'Rhino,' and the +'Excrescence.' It has ripened with the slow years, as fate deepens in +the progress of a tragedy. Love, the business of life, is a sealed +book to me. To be alone! I would thank heaven.... But no! a blind +woman could feel the shape of it." + +"Besides love," interrupted the young man thoughtfully, "there are +other things worth living for--duty. An unattractive nose would not +interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important +than love. I admit your loss, of course." + +"That only carries out the evidence of your voice, and tells me you are +young. My dear young fellow, duty is a very fine thing indeed, but +believe me, it is too colourless as a motive. There is no delight in +duty. You will know that at my age. And besides, I have an infinite +capacity for love and sympathy, an infinite bitterness in this solitude +of my soul. I infer that you would moralise on my discontent, but I +know I have seen a little of men and things from behind this +ambuscade--only a truly artistic man would fall into the sympathetic +attitude that attracted me. My life has had even too much of +observation in it, and to the systematic anthropologist, nothing tells +a man's character more than his pose after dark, when nobody seems +watching. As you sit, the black outline of you is clear against the +sky. Ah! _now_ you are sitting stiffer. But you are no Calvinist. My +friend, the best of life is its delights, and the best of delights is +loving and being loved. And for that--this nose! Well, there are +plenty of second-best things. After dark I can forget the monster a +little. Spring is delightful, air on the Downs is delightful; it is +fine to see the stars circling in the sky, while lying among the +heather. Even this London sky is soothing at night, though the edge is +all inflamed. The shadow of my nose is darkest by day. But to-night I +am bitter, because of to-morrow." + +"Why, to-morrow?" said the younger man. + +"I have to meet some new people to-morrow," said the man with the nose. +"There is an odd look, a mingling of amusement and pity, I am only too +familiar with. My cousin, who is a gifted hostess, promises people my +nose as a treat." + +"Yes, that must be bad for you," said the young man. + +And then the silence healed again, and presently the man with the nose +got up and passed into the dimness upon the slope of the hill. The +young man watched him vanish, wondering vainly how it would be possible +to console a soul under such a burthen. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Select Conversations with an Uncle, by H. G. 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G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Select Conversations with an Uncle + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: July 21, 2009 [EBook #29472] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECT CONVERSATIONS WITH AN UNCLE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MAYFAIR SET +<BR><BR> +III +<BR><BR> +CONVERSATIONS +<BR> +WITH AN +<BR> +UNCLE +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="img-title"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-title.jpg" ALT="Title page" BORDER="2" WIDTH="461" HEIGHT="794"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SELECT +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONVERSATIONS +</H2> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WITH +<BR> +AN UNCLE +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +(now extinct) +</H4> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +and two other +<BR> +reminiscences by +</H4> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +H. G. WELLS +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LONDON: +<BR> +JOHN LANE +<BR><BR> +NEW YORK +<BR> +THE MERRIAM COMPANY +<BR><BR> +1895 +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +<I>Copyrighted in the United States.</I> +<BR> +<I>All rights reserved.</I> +<BR><BR> +<I>Second Edition</I> +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TO +<BR> +MY DEAREST +<BR> +AND BEST FRIEND +<BR> +R. A. C. +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PREFATORY +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +He was, I remember, short, but by no means conspicuously short, and of +a bright, almost juvenile, complexion, very active in his movements and +garrulous—or at least very talkative. His judgments were copious and +frequent in the old days, and some at least I found entertaining. At +times his fluency was really remarkable. He had a low opinion of +eminent people—a thing I have been careful to suppress, and his +dissertations had ever an irresponsible gaiety of manner that may have +blinded me to their true want of merit. That, I say, was in the old +days, before his abrupt extinction, before the cares of this world +suddenly sprang upon, and choked him. I would listen to him, +cheerfully, and afterwards I would go away and make articles out of him +for the <I>Pall Mall Gazette</I>, so adding a certain material advantage to +my mental and moral benefit. But all that has gone now, to my infinite +regret; and sorrowing, I have arranged this unworthy little tribute to +his memory, this poor dozen of casual monologues that were so +preserved. The merits of the monument are his entirely; its faults +entirely my own. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<H3> +SELECT CONVERSATIONS— +</H3> + +<H4 STYLE="margin-left: 5%"> +<A HREF="#chap01">OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap02">THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap03">THE USE OF IDEALS</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap04">THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap05">BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap06">ON SOCIAL MUSIC</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap07">THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap08">LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap09">ON A TRICYCLE</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap10">AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap11">THE GREAT CHANGE</A><BR> +<A HREF="#chap12">THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE</A><BR> +</H4> + +<H3> +<A HREF="#chap13">A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST</A> +<BR><BR> +<A HREF="#chap14">THE MAN WITH A NOSE</A> +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +This uncle of mine, you must understand, having attained—by the purest +accident—some trifles of distinction and a certain affluence in South +Africa, came over at the earliest opportunity to London to be +photographed and lionised. He took to fame easily, as one who had long +prepared in secret. He lurked in my chambers for a week while the new +dress suit was a-making—his old one I really had to remonstrate +against—and then we went out to be admired. During the week's +retirement he secreted quite a wealth of things to say—appropriate +remarks on edibles, on music, on popular books, on conversation, +off-hand little things, jotting them down in a note-book as they came +into his mind, for he had a high conception of social intercourse, and +the public expectation. He was ever a methodical little gentleman, and +all these accumulations that he could not get into his talk, he +proposed to put away for the big volume of "Reminiscences" that was to +round off his life. At last he was a mere conversational firework, +crammed with latent wit and jollity, and ready to blaze and sparkle in +fizzing style as soon as the light of social intercourse should touch +him. +</P> + +<P> +But after we had circulated for a week or so, my uncle began to +manifest symptoms of distress. He had not had a chance. People did +not seem to talk at all in his style. "Where do the literary people +meet together, George? I am afraid you have chosen your friends ill. +Surely those long-haired serious people who sat round my joke like old +cats round a beetle—what is it?—were not the modern representatives +of a <I>salon</I>. Those abominable wig-makers' eccentricities who talked +journalistic 'shop,' and posed all over that preposterous room with the +draperies! Those hectic young men who have done nothing except run +down everybody! Don't tell me that is the literary society of London, +George. Where do they let off wit now, George? Where do they sparkle? +I want to sparkle. Badly. I shall burst, George, if I don't." +</P> + +<P> +Now really, you know, there are no salons now—I suppose we turn all +our conversation into "copy"—or the higher education has eliminated +the witty woman—and my uncle became more and more distressed. He said +a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became +afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every +lion's den I had access to. But there was no relief. +</P> + +<P> +"I see what it is, George," said my uncle, "these literary people write +themselves out. They say nothing for private use. Their brains are +weary when they come into company. They get up in the morning fresh +and bright, and write, write, write. Then, when they are jaded, they +condescend to social intercourse. It is their way of resting. But why +don't they go to bed? No more clever people for me, George. Let us +try the smart. Perhaps among them we shall find smart talking still +surviving. <I>Allons</I>, George!" +</P> + +<P> +That is how my uncle came into collision with fashion, how I came to +take him to the Fitz-Brilliants. +</P> + +<P> +Of course you have heard of the Fitz-Brilliants? If you have not, it +is not their fault. They are the smartest people in London. Always +hard at work, keeping up to date, are the Fitz-Brilliants. But my +uncle did not appreciate them. Worse! They did not appreciate my +uncle. He came to me again, more pent up than ever, and the thing I +had feared happened. He began to discourse to me. It was about +Fashion, with a decided reference to the Fitz-Brilliants, and some +reflections upon the alleys of literary ability and genius I had taken +him through. +</P> + +<P> +"George," said my uncle, "<I>this Fashion is just brand-new vulgarity</I>. +It is merely the regal side of the medal. The Highly Fashionable and +the Absolutely Vulgar are but two faces of the common coin of humanity, +struck millions at a time. Spin the thing in the light of wealth, and +I defy you, as it whizzes from the illumination of riches to the shadow +of poverty, to distinguish the one stamp from the other. You cannot +say, here the <I>mode</I> ends, and there the unspeakable thing, its +counterpart, has its beginning. Their distinction of mere position has +vanished, and they are in seeming as in substance one and indivisible." +</P> + +<P> +My uncle was now fairly under way. +</P> + +<P> +"The fashionable is the foam on the ocean of vulgarity, George, cast up +by the waves of that ocean, and caught by the light of the sun. It is +the vulgar—blossoming. The flower it is of that earthly plant, +destined hereafter to run to seed, and to beget new groves and +thickets, new jungles, of vulgar things. +</P> + +<P> +"Note, George, how true this is of that common property of the vulgar +and fashionable—slang. The apt phrase falls and applause follows, and +then down it goes. The essential feature of slang is words misapplied; +the essential distinction of a coarse mind from one refined, an +inability to appreciate fine distinctions and minor discords; the +essential of the vulgar, good example misused. First the fashionable +get the apt phrase, and bandy it about in inapt connections until even +the novelty of its discordance has ceased to charm, and thereafter it +sinks down, down. <I>Fin de siècle</I> and <I>cliché</I> have, for instance, +passed downward from the courts of the fashionable among journalists +into the unspeakable depths below. Soon, if not already, <I>fin de +siècle</I> gin and onions and haddocks will be for sale in the +Whitechapel-road, and Harriet will be calling Billy a "cliché faced +swine." Even so do ostrich feathers begin a career of glory at the +Drawing-Room and the fashionable photographer's, and, after endless +re-dyeing, come to their last pose before a Hampstead camera on a +bright Bank Holiday. +</P> + +<P> +"The fashionable and vulgar are after all but the expression of man's +gregarious instinct. Every poor mortal is torn by the conflicting +dreads of being 'common-place,' and of being 'eccentric.' He, and more +particularly she, is continually imitating and avoiding imitation, +trying to be singular and yet like other people. In the exquisitely +fashionable and in the entirely vulgar the sheep-like longing is +triumphant, and the revolting individual has disappeared. The former +is a mechanical vehicle upon which the new 'correct thing' rides forth, +to extort the astonishment of men; the latter a lifeless bier bearing +its corrupt and unrecognisable remains away to final oblivion, amidst +universal execration. +</P> + +<P> +"It is curious to notice, George, that there has of late been a fashion +in 'originality.' The commonplace has turned, as it were, upon itself, +and vehemently denied its identity. So that people who were not +eccentric have become rare, and genius, so far as it is a style of +hairdressing, and originality, so far as it is a matter of etiquette or +morals, have become the habitual garments of the commonplace. The +introduction of the word 'bourgeois' as a comminatory epithet into the +English language, by bourgeois writers writing for the bourgeois, will +remain a memorial for ever, for the philological humourist to chuckle +over. If good resolutions could change the natures of men, opinion has +lately set so decidedly against the fashionable and the vulgar that +their continued existence in this world would be very doubtful. But +the leopard cannot change his spots so easily. While the stars go on +in their courses, until the cooling of the earth puts an end to the +career of life, and the last trace of his ancestral tendency to +imitation disappears as the last man becomes an angel, depend upon it, +George, the fashionable will ever pursue this chimæra of distinguished +correctness, and trail the inseparable howling vulgar in its wake—for +ever chased, like a dog with a tin can attached, by the horror of its +own tail." +</P> + +<P> +Thus my uncle. He had said a few of his things. It is possible his +trick of talking like a disarticulated essay had something to do with +his social discomfort. But anyhow he seemed all the better for the +release. +</P> + +<P> +"Talking of tails, George," he said, "reminds me. I noticed the men at +the Fitz-Brilliants' had their coats cut—well, I should say, just a +half inch shorter here than this of mine. Your man is not up to date. +I must get the thing altered to-morrow." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +He had been sitting with his feet upon the left jamb of my mantel, +admiring the tips of his shoes in silence for some time. +</P> + +<P> +"George," he said, dropping his cigar-ash thoughtfully into my +inkstand, in order, I imagine, to save my carpet, "have you ever done +pioneer work for Humanity?" +</P> + +<P> +"Never," I said. "How do you get that sort of work?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know. I met a man and a woman, though, the other night, who +said they were engaged in that kind of thing. It seems to me to be +exhausting work, and it makes the hair very untidy. They do it chiefly +with their heads. It consists, so I understand, of writing stuff in a +hurry, rushing about in cabs, wearing your hair in some unpleasant +manner, and holding disorderly meetings." +</P> + +<P> +"Who are these people?" +</P> + +<P> +"Never heard of them before, though they told me they were quite well +known. The lady asked me if I had been to Chicago." +</P> + +<P> +I chuckled. I could imagine no more hideous insult to my uncle. +</P> + +<P> +"I told her that I had been to most places south-eastward and eastward, +but never across the Atlantic. She informed me that I ought to have +gone to Chicago, and that America was a great country, and I remarked +that I had always thought it was so great that one could best +appreciate it at a distance. Then she asked me what I thought of the +condition of the lower classes, and I told her I was persuaded, from +various things I had noticed, that a lot of them were frightfully hard +up. And with that she started off to show whose fault it was, by the +Socratic method." +</P> + +<P> +"Entertaining?" +</P> + +<P> +"A little. I did not get all my answers right. For instance, when she +asked, 'Who sends the members of Parliament to Westminster?' I answered +her, 'The governors of the young ones and the wives of the others.' +And when she said that was wrong—I don't remember Socrates ever saying +bluntly that an answer was wrong—I said I supposed she referred to the +Evil One. It was very dull of me, of course, and it obliged her to +dictate the right solution. +</P> + +<P> +"Afterwards she threw over teaching me anything, and explained to me +all about her Movements. At least, I got really interested in her +Movements. One thing she said struck me very much, though it could +hardly be called novel. It was that the fads of one age were the +fashions of the next; that while the majority of people were engaged in +their little present-day chores, persons like herself are making the +laws and preparing the customs for the generation to follow." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor generations to follow!" I said. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but there is a lot of truth in it; and do you know there flashed +upon me all at once a great theory, the Theory of the Perpetual +Discomfort of Humanity. Just let me explain it to you, George," he +said, bringing himself round so that his legs hung over the arm of his +chair. "I think you will see I have made a very great discovery, gone +to the root of the whole of this bother of reform movement, advancement +of humanity, and the rest of it." He sucked his cigar for a moment. +"Each age," he said, "has its own ideals of what constitutes human +happiness." +</P> + +<P> +"A very profound observation," said I. +</P> + +<P> +"Looking down the vista of history, one may generalise and say that we +see human beings continually troubled by the conditions under which +they live. I can think of no time in the world when there was not some +Question or other getting fussed about: at one time episcopal celibacy, +at another time the Pict and Scot problem, and so on. Always a +crumpled rose-leaf. Hence reform movements. Now, reforms move slowly, +and by the time these reforms come about, the people whom they would +have made happy, and who fussed and encountered dislike and satire and +snubbing, and burning and boiling in oil, and suchlike discouragements, +for the sake of them, were dead and buried and mere sanitary problems. +The new people had new and quite different needs, and the reforms for +which their fathers fought and died more or less uncomfortably, and got +into debt with the printers, so soon as there were printers to get into +debt with, were about as welcome as belated dinner guests. You take +me? Ireland, when Home Rule comes home to it, will simply howl with +indignation. And we are living in the embodied discontent of the +eighteenth century. Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and Priestley would have +looked upon this age and seen that it was good—devilish good; and as +you know, George, to us it is—well, a bit of a nuisance anyhow. +However, most people are like myself, and try to be as comfortable as +they can, and no doubt the next generation might do very well with it. +And then the pioneer people begin legislating, agitating, and ordering +things differently. As you know, George, I am inclined to +conservatism. Constitutionally, I tend to adapt myself to my +circumstances. It seems to me so much easier to fit the man to the age +than to fit the age to the man. Let us, I say, settle down. We shall +never be able to settle down while they keep altering things. It may +not be a perfect world, but then I am not a perfect man: Some of the +imperfections are, at least, very convenient. So my theory is this: +the people whom the age suits fairly well don't bother—<I>I</I> don't +bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn +anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their +ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements +and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last +it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the +progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern. +Your average humanity I figure as a comfortable person like myself, +always trying to sit down and put its legs somewhere out of the way, +and being continually stirred up by women in felt hats and short +skirts, and haggard men with those beastly, long, insufficient beards, +and soulful eyes, and trumpet-headed creatures, and bogles with +spectacles and bald heads, and nephews who look at watches. What are +you looking at your watch for, George? I'm very happy as I am. +</P> + +<P> +"Has it ever occurred to you, George, that one of the most +uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have +all the reforms of your boyish liberalism coming home to roost, just as +you are settling down to the old order.... +</P> + +<P> +"Six o'clock, by Jove! We shall keep them waiting if we don't mind." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE USE OF IDEALS +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"Ideals!" said my uncle; "certainly Ideals. Of course one must have +ideals, else life would be bare materialism. Bare fact alone, naked +necessity, is impossible barren rock for a soul to root upon. Life, +indeed, is an unfurnished house, an empty glass in a thirsty land—good +and necessary for foundation, but insufficient for any satisfaction +unless we have ideals. Or, again, ideals are the flesh upon the +skeleton of reality, and it cannot live without them. +</P> + +<P> +"It always appears to me," said my uncle, "that the comparison of +ideals to furniture is particularly appropriate. They are the +draperies of the mind, and they hide the nakedness of truth. Your +fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and +crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the +skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings +and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life +well worth the living. So that you cannot value ideals too highly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yet at the same time——" My uncle became meditative. +</P> + +<P> +"I would not have a man the <I>slave</I> of his ideals. Hangings make the +room comfortable, but, after all, hangings <I>are</I> hangings. Perhaps, +now and then—of course, I would not suggest continual inconstancy—a +slight change, a little rearrangement, even a partial replacement, +might brighten up the dear old dwelling-place. An ideal may be clung +to too fondly. When the moth gets into it, or the dust—did not +Carlyle warn us against this, lest they 'accumulate and at last produce +suffocation'? I am exactly at one with him there. +</P> + +<P> +"And that, as any Cabinet Minister explains every time he opens a +public library, is why we have literature. Good books are the +warehouses of ideals. Does it strike you your furniture is sombre, a +bit Calvinistic and severe—try a statuette by Pope, or a classical +piece out of Heine. Too much white and gold for every-day +purposes—then the Reverend Laurence Sterne will oblige. Urban tone +may be corrected by Hardy, and Lowell will give you urbanity. And, +however well you match and balance them, remember there is a time for +ideals, and a time when they are better out of the way. +</P> + +<P> +"The Philistine of Victorian literature, is a person without ideals, +the practical man. But just now the fashion is all for the things. +Ruskin and Carlyle set it going, and to-day the demand for ideals +exceeds the supply. And as a result, we meet with innumerable people +anxious to have the correct thing, but a little unsympathetic or +inexpert, and those unavoidable people who do not like the things but +feel compelled to get them. Ideals are not the easiest possessions to +have and manage, and they may even rise to the level of serious +inconveniences. So that I sometimes wonder these Extension people have +not taken up the subject of their management and use. +</P> + +<P> +"Note, for instance, the folly of bringing ideals too much into the +daily life; it is childish, like a baby insisting on its new toy at +meal times, and taking it to bed. Never use an ideal as a standard, +and avoid any that reflect upon your conduct. The extremest decorative +people refrain from enamelling their kettles, and my cook though a +'born lady' does not wear her silk dress in the kitchen. Ideals are +the full dress of the soul. A business man, for instance, who let +visions of reverend Venetian and Genoese seigniors interfere with his +agile City movements—who, to carry out our comparison, draped his mind +with these things—would be uncommonly like a bowler in a dressing-gown. +</P> + +<P> +"Then an ideal, we are also told, is an elevating influence in life; +but unless one is very careful one may get hoist with one's own petard +to a pitifully transitory soar above common humanity. The soar itself +is not unpleasant, but the sequel is sometimes disagreeable. +</P> + +<P> +"To show how an ideal may trip up an inexpert mortal, take that man +Javvers and his wife. She also had an ideal husband, which was, +indeed, a kind of bigamy, and her constant references to this creation +of hers used to drive poor old Javvers frantic. It became as +objectionable as if she had been its sorrowing widow, and ultimately it +wrecked the happiness of their little home very completely. +</P> + +<P> +"The seat of ideals, then, in one's mind, should be, as it were, a +lounge, over which these hangings may drape and flap harmlessly; but it +may easily become as the bed of Procrustes. To turn ideals to idols, +and to command your whole world to bow down to them, savours of the +folly of Nebuchadnezzar the king. Let your ideal world be far away +from reality, fit it with rococo furniture, angels and +birds-of-paradise, Minnesinger flowers and views of the Delectable +Mountains: and go there occasionally and rest—to return without +illusions, without encumbrance, but with renewed zest, to the sordid +world of the actual, the world of every day. Herein is the real use of +the ideal; all other is fanaticism and folly." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +"An album," said my uncle, as he sat and turned over my collection of +physiognomy, "is, I think, the best reading in the world. You get such +sidelights on the owner's heredity, George; distant cousins caricature +his features and point the moral of his nose, and ancestral faces +prophesy his fate. His friends, moreover, figure the secret of his +soul. But what a lot we have to learn yet in the art of being +photographed, what grotesque and awkward blunders your common sitters +make! Why, for instance, do men brush their hair so excessively when +they go before the lens? Your cousin here looks like a cheap chess +pawn about the head, whereas as I know him his head is a thing like a +worn-out paint-brush. Where but in a photograph would you see a +parting so straight as this? It is unnatural. You flatten down all a +man's character; for nothing shows that more than the feathers and +drakes' tails, the artful artlessness, or revolutionary tumult of his +hair. Mind you, I am not one of those who would prohibit a man wearing +what he conceives to be his best clothes to the photographer's. I like +to see the little vanity peeping out—the last moment's folly of a +foolish tie, nailed up for a lifetime. Yet all the same, people should +understand that the camera takes no note of newness, but much of the +cut and fit. And a man should certainly not go and alter his outline +into a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his troubled mane and +plastering it down with a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, but +hypocrisy. +</P> + +<P> +"We have indeed very much to learn in this matter. It is a thing that +needs teaching, like deportment or dancing. Plenty of men I have +noticed, who would never do it in real life, commit the sin of being +over-gentlemanly in an album. Their clothes are even indecently +immaculate. They become, not portraits, but fashion-plates. I hate a +man who is not rumpled and creased a little, as much as I do a brand +new pipe. And, as a sad example of sin on the other hand, on the side +of carelessness, I have seen renderings of a very august personage +indeed, in a hat—a <I>hat</I>! It was tilted, and to add to the atrocity, +he was holding a cigar. This I regard as horrible. Think! your +photograph may go into boudoirs. Imagine Gladys opening the album to +Ænone; 'Now I will show you <I>him</I>.' And there you sit, leering at +their radiant sweetness, hat on, and a cigar reeking between your +fingers. +</P> + +<P> +"No, George, a man should go very softly to a photographer's, and he +should sit before the camera with reverence in his heart and in his +attitude, as if he were in the presence of the woman he loved." +</P> + +<P> +He turned to Mrs Harborough's portrait, looked at it, hesitated, looked +again, and passed on. +</P> + +<P> +"I often think we do not take this business of photography in a +sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: +you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe. I know of one man +who has an error of youth of this kind on his mind—a fancy-dress +costume affair, Crusader or Templar—of which he is more ashamed than +many men would be of the meanest sins. For sometimes the camera has +its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your +merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments +of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the +photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its +exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the +spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals upon the film. +Yet it never really dawned upon him until he had distributed this +advertisement of his little weakness far and wide, that the camera had +called him a fool to his face. I believe he would be glad now to buy +them all back at five pounds a copy. +</P> + +<P> +"This of Minnie Hobson is a work of art. Bless me, the girl must be +thirty-seven or thirty-eight now, and just look at her! These +photographers have got a trick now, if your face is one of the long +kind, of raising the camera, bending your head forward, and firing down +at you. So our Minnie becomes quite chubby again. Then, this thing +has been retouched." My uncle peered into the photograph. "It seems +to me it is pretty nearly all retouching. For instance, if you look at +the eye, that high light is not perfectly even; that was touched in on +the negative with a pencil. Then about the neck of our Minnie I have +observed certain bones, just the slightest indication of her +collar-bone, George, but that has disappeared under the retoucher's +pencil. Then the infantile smoothness of her cheek, and the +beautifully-rounded outline, is produced by the retoucher carefully +scraping off the surface of the film where the cheekbone projected with +a sharp knife. There are also in real life little lines between the +corner of our Minnie's mouth and her nostril. And again, Minnie is one +of those people whose dresses never seem to fit, but this fits like a +glove. These retouchers are like Midas, and they turn all that comes +to their hands to gold; or, like Spring, the flowers come back at their +approach. They reverse the work of Ithuriel, and restore brightness to +the fallen. They sit at their little desks, and scratch, scratch, +scratch with those delicate pencils of theirs, scratching away age, +scratching away care, making the crooked straight, and the rough +smooth. They are the fairies of photography, and fill our albums with +winsome changelings. Their ministry anticipates in a little way the +angels who will take us when we die, releasing us from the worn and +haggard body of this death, and showing something of the eternal life +and youth that glows within. Or one might say that the spirit of the +retoucher is the spirit of Love. It makes plain women beautiful, and +common men heroic. Her regal fingers touch for the evil of +ungainliness, and, behold, we are restored. Her pencil is like the +Queen's sword, and it makes knights out of common men. +</P> + +<P> +"When I have my photograph taken," said my uncle, "I always like to +think of the retoucher. I idealise her; I fancy her with the sweetest +eyes I have ever seen, and an expression infinitely soft and tender. +And she looks closely into my face, and her little pencil goes gently +and lovingly over my features. Tickle, tickle. In that way, George, I +get a really very nice expression indeed." My uncle turned to his own +presentment, and mused pleasantly for a space. Then he looked again at +Mrs Harborough as if inadvertently, and asked her name. +</P> + +<P> +"I like this newer way of taking your photograph, against a mere grey +background; just the head of you. One should always beware of the +property furniture of the photographer. In the seventies they were +great at such aids—a pedestal, a cork rustic stile, wide landscape in +the distance, but I think that we are at least getting beyond that now. +People in those days must have been afraid to be left alone before a +camera, or they wanted it to seem that they were taken unawares, quite +against their modesty—did not know what the camera was, and were just +looking at it. A very favourite pose for girls was a graceful droop +over a sofa, chin on elegant hand. When I was at Dribblebridge—I was +a bright young fellow then—I collected a number of local photographs, +ladies chiefly, and the thing was very noticeable when I put them in a +row over my mantleshelf. The local 'artist' was intensely fond of that +pose. But fancy the local leader finding her cook drooping over the +same sofa as herself! Nowadays, I see, you get merely the heads of +your girls, with their hair flossed up, intense light from above, and +faces in shadow. I think it is infinitely better. +</P> + +<P> +What horrible things hands become in a photograph! I wonder how it is +that the hand in a photograph is always four shades darker than the +arm. Every girl who goes to be photographed in evening dress should be +solemnly warned to keep her hands out of the picture. They will look +as though she has been enamelling the grate, or toying with a bucket of +pitch. There is something that sins against my conception of womanly +purity in those dark hands." +</P> + +<P> +My uncle shut the album. "Yes, it is a neglected field of education, +an important branch of deportment altogether forgotten. Our well-bred +ease fails us before the camera; we are lucky if we merely look stiff +and self-conscious. I should fancy there would be an opening for some +clever woman to teach people how to dress for the occasion and how to +sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of +nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of +self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the +instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. +They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the +review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our +faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp +our individualities upon our photographs, and are mere 'dumb-driven +cattle' in the matter. We sin against ourselves in this neglect, and +act against the spirit of the age. Sooner or later this haphazard +treatment of posterity must come to an end." He meditated for a +moment. Then, as if pursuing a train of thought, "That Mrs Harborough +is a very pretty woman, George. Where did you happen to meet her?" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Bagshot was rather proud of his new quarters until my uncle called upon +him. Up to then he felt assured he was doing right; had, indeed, not +the faintest doubt in the matter until my uncle unsettled him. "Nice +carpet, Bagshot," said my uncle, "nice and soft. This chair certainly +very comfortable. But what the mischief do you mean—you, with your +pretence to culture—by hanging your dwelling with all those framed and +glazed photograph and autograph dittoes? I should have thought you at +least would have known better. Love and Life, and Love and Death, the +Daphnephoria, Rembrandt's portrait—Wild Havoc, man! What were you +thinking of?" +</P> + +<P> +Bagshot seemed staggered. He ventured to intimate feebly his +persuasion that the things were rather good. +</P> + +<P> +"Good they certainly are, and well reproduced, but only the Bible and +Shakspeare could stand this incessant reiteration, and not all +Shakspeare. These things are in shop windows, man—drawing-rooms, +offices, everywhere. They afflict me like popular songs—like popular +quotations. They are good enough—as a matter of fact they are too +good. Only, don't you know Willis has Love and Life and Love and +Death? And so has Smith, and Bays has Rembrandt's portrait in his +office, and my niece Euphemia has the Daphnephoria in her drawing-room. +I can't understand, George, why you let it stay there. It is possible +to have too much of a good thing. There is no getting away from these +all too popular triumphs. They cover up the walls everywhere. They +consume all other art. I shall write a schedule some day of the Fifty +Correct Pictures of the British People. And to find <I>you</I>, Bagshot, +among the Philistines!" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought they showed rather an improvement in the general taste," +said Bagshot. "There is no reason why a thing should not be common, +and yet very beautiful. Primroses, for instance——" +</P> + +<P> +"That is true enough, but pictures are not primroses," said my uncle. +"Besides, I think we like primroses all the better because they must +soon be over; but these are perennial blossoms, like the everlasting +flowers and dried grass of a lodging house. They may still be +beautiful, but by this time, Bagshot, they are awfully dry and dusty. +Who looks at them? I notice our eyes avoid them even while we talk +about them. We have all noticed everything there is to be noticed, and +said all the possible things that are to be said about them long ago. +Surely a picture must be a little fresh to please. Else we shall come +at last to the perfect picture, and art will have an end. Don't you +see the mere popularity of these things of the pavement is enough to +condemn them in the estimation of every right-minded person?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see it," said Bagshot, making head against the torrent. "I +cannot afford to go to these swells and get original work of theirs——" +</P> + +<P> +"What do you want with 'these swells' and their original work?" +interrupted my uncle fiercely. "Haven't they used up all their +originality ages ago? Is it not open to such men as yourself to +discover new men? There are men pining in garrets now for you, +Bagshot. Fancy the delight of having pictures that are unfamiliar, +pictures that catch the eye and are actually to be looked at, pictures +that suggest new remarks, pictures by a name that the stray visitor has +never heard of and which therefore puzzle him dreadfully because he +hasn't the faintest idea whether to praise or blame them! Isn't it +worth hunting studios for, and even, maybe, going to the Academy? +Besides, suppose your struggling artist comes to the front. What price +the five-guinea specimen of his early style then? Your artistic virtue +is indeed its own reward, and, besides, you can boast about finding +him. The poor man of culture and the struggling artist live for one +another, or at least they ought to—though I am afraid it is not much +of a living for the struggling artist." He paused abruptly. "I +suppose that autotype cost thirty shillings, and this carpet about five +pounds?" +</P> + +<P> +Bagshot assumed an elegant attitude against his bureau. He had +discovered his reply. "You know you are bitten by the fashion for +originality. Why should I make my room hideous with the work of +third-rate mediocrity, or of men who are still learning to paint, +simply in order to be unlike my neighbour?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why," returned my uncle, "should you hang up things less interesting +than your wall paper, in mere imitation of your neighbours? For this +on your walls, Bagshot, deny it though you may, is not art but fashion. +I tell you, you do not care a rap for art. You think pictures are a +part of virtue, like a silk hat—or evening dress at dinner. And in +your choice of pictures you follow after your kind. I never met a +true-born Briton yet who dared to buy a picture on his own +accord—unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a +true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these +things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are +beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful +Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe +that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. +Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their +Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new +Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the +correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be +considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's +new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered +a little dowdy.' And so forth. This gregarious admiration is the very +antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I tell you, simply must be +individual." +</P> + +<P> +"Go on," said Bagshot, "go on." +</P> + +<P> +"And that," said my uncle, with the glow of discovery in his face, +"that is where the vulgar critic goes wrong. He conceives an +orthodoxy. He tries to explain why Velasquez is better than Raphael +and Raphael better than Gerard Dow. As well say why a cirrus cloud is +better than a sycamore and a sycamore better than a scarlet hat. Every +painter, unless he is a mere operative, must have his peculiar public. +It is incredible that any painter can really satisfy the æsthetic needs +of such a public as these reproductions indicate. True art is always +sectarian. Why were Landseer and Sidney Cooper popular a few years +ago, and why does every tea-table sneer at them now? There must be +something admirable in them, or they would never have been admired. +Then why has my niece Annie dropped admiring Poynter, and why does she +pretend—and a very thin pretence it is—to admire Whistler?" +</P> + +<P> +"You are wandering from my pictures," said Bagshot. +</P> + +<P> +"I want to," said my uncle. "But why do you try and hide your taste +under these mere formalities in frames? Why do you always say 'I pass' +in the game of decoration? Better a mess of green amateurs and love +therewith, than the richest autotypes and dull complacency. Have what +you like. There is no such thing as absolute beauty. That is the +Magna Charta of the world of art. What is beautiful to me is not +beautiful to another man, in art as in women. But take care to get the +art that fits you. Frankly, that 'Love and Death' suits you, Bagshot, +about as much as a purple toga would. Orchardson is in your style. I +tell you that the greengrocer who buys an original oil painting for +sixteen shillings with frame complete is far nearer artistic salvation +than the patron of the popular autotype. Surely you will wake up +presently, Bagshot, and wonder what you have been about. +</P> + +<P> +"Half-past four, by Jove! I must be getting on. Well, Bagshot, ta-ta. +One must talk, you know. I really hope you will be comfortable in your +new rooms." +</P> + +<P> +And so good-bye to Bagshot, staring in a puzzled way at his reviled and +desecrated walls. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ON SOCIAL MUSIC +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +My poor uncle came to me the other evening in a most distressful state, +broken down to common blasphemy. His ample front was rumpled with +sorrow and his tie disorderly aslant. His hair had gone rough with his +troubles. "The time I have had, George!" he panted. "Give me +something to drink in the name of Holy Charity." +</P> + +<P> +Since the <I>Pall Mall Gazette</I> took to reporting his little sayings +about photographs and ornaments, ideals and fashions, he has been +setting up as a conversationalist. He thinks he was designed by +Providence to that end, and aids his destiny as much as he can by +elaborately preparing remarks. +</P> + +<P> +Yet this thing had happened. "They put," said my uncle, "a little chap +at the piano, and me at a very nice girl indeed as she looked; and the +little chap began, and so did I. I said a prelude thing of mine, brand +new and rather pretty." +</P> + +<P> +He stopped. He turned to nerve himself with whisky. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," I said, when the pause seemed sufficient; "what did she say?" +</P> + +<P> +My uncle looked unspeakable things. Then in a whisper, bending towards +me: +</P> + +<P> +"<I>She said——Sssh</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +He repeated it that I might grasp its full enormity, "<I>Sssh</I>!—so!" +</P> + +<P> +"What <I>is</I> music," said my uncle, after a moody silence, "that +reasonable people should listen to it? I <I>had</I> to listen to it myself, +and it struck me. It was just a tune this little chap was trying to +remember, and now he would come at it this way and now that. He never +got it quite right, though he fumbled about it for ten minutes or a +quarter of an hour. And then two girls went, and one punished the +piano while the other, with a wrist rather than an ear for music, +drowned its cries with a violin. So it went on all the evening, and +when I moved they all looked at me; I had been put on a nervous wicker +chair, and I knew my shoes squeaked like a carnival of swine, and so I +could not get away. And all the things that kept coming into my head, +George, the neat remarks and graceful sayings! +</P> + +<P> +"You see, I look at it in this light. Music is merely background, and +ought to be kept in its place. I am no enemy of music, George. The +air in a room should be melodious, for the same reason that it should +be faintly pleasing to the olfactory sense, and neither hot nor stuffy. +Just as the walls should be delightfully coloured and softly lit, and +the refreshments pleasant and at the moment of need. But surely we +meet for human intercourse. When I go to see people I go to see the +people—not to hear a hired boy play the piano. But these people plant +a <I>chevaux de frise</I> of singers and performers upon instruments of +music between themselves and me. They gag me with a few pennyworths of +second-hand opera. There I was bursting to talk, and nice, +intelligent-looking girls to talk to, and whenever I began to say +something they said '<I>Sssh</I>!' Tantalus in a drawing-room it was—the +very Hades of hospitality. +</P> + +<P> +"Surely some day we shall learn refinement in our entertaining. Your +modern hostess issues her invitations and seems overcome with +consternation at her gathering. 'What <I>shall</I> I do with all these +people?' she seems to ask. So she dabs cakes upon them, piles coffee +cups over them: 'Eat,' she says, 'and shut up!' and stifles their +protests with a clamorous woman and a painful piano. +</P> + +<P> +"No, of course I don't object to having music. But it is an accessory, +not an object, in life. It is, after all, a physical comfort, a +pleasant vibration in one's ears. To make an object of it is +sensuality. It is on all-fours with worshipping the wallpaper. Some +wall-papers are very beautiful things nowadays, harmonious in form and +colour, skilful in invention; but people do not expect you to sit down +and admire wall-paper, or promise you 'wallpaper at eight.' Neither do +they put an extinguisher over any girl who does not go with the +wall-paper, or expect you to dress in neutral tint on account of it, +and they are not hurt if you go away without seeming to see it. +Gustatory harmony, too, is very delicious. Yet there is no hush during +dinner; they do not insist upon a persistent gnawing in honour of the +feast. But these musical people! their god is their piano. They set +up an idol in their salon, and command all the world to bow down to it. +They found a priestcraft of pianists, and an Inquisition of fiddlers. +When I came away they were all crowded round a violin, the women +especially. They could not have fussed more if it had been a baby. +They stroked it and admired its figure. It <I>had</I> rather a fashionable +figure, but the neck was too long...." +</P> + +<P> +I began to suspect the cause of this bitterness. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. She was there. And while some of this piano was going on she +looked at the ear of the man who was playing with a dreamy, tender +look.... No. I couldn't get a word with her the whole evening." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +As I was passing the London University the other day I saw my uncle +emerge from the branch of the Bank of England opposite, and proceed in +the direction of the Burlington Arcade. He was elaborately disguised +as a young man, even to the youthful flower, and I was incontinently +smitten with curiosity respecting the dark purpose he might veil in +this way. There is, to me, a peculiar and possibly rather a childish +fascination in watching my more intimate friends unobserved, and, +curiously enough, I had never before studied the avuncular back view. +I found something singularly entertaining in the study of the graceful +contour of his new frock coat, and in the cheerful carriage of his +cane. He paraded, a dignified procession of one, some way down the +Arcade, hesitated for a moment outside a jeweller's shop, and then +entered it. I strolled on as far as Piccadilly, returned to the shop, +and so fell upon him suddenly in the midst of his buying. +</P> + +<P> +"Hullo, George!" he said hastily, facing me so as to hide as much of +the counter as possible. "How's Euphemia?" +</P> + +<P> +I looked him fairly in the eye. "You are buying a <I>ring</I>," I said in a +firm, decided voice. +</P> + +<P> +He turned to the counter with an air of surprise. "By Jove, so I am!" +</P> + +<P> +"A lady's ring," I said. He was, I could see, hastily collecting his +sufficiently nimble powers of subterfuge. "One must buy something, you +know, George, sometimes," he said feebly. +</P> + +<P> +He had selected some dozen or so already, the most palpable engagement +rings I think I ever saw. One of them had visible on its inner +curvature the four letters MIZP—. He looked at them, saw the posy, +and then, glancing at me, laughed affably. "I meant to tell you +yesterday, George—I will take these," to the shopman. And we emerged +with a superficial amiability; the case of rings in my uncle's pocket. +The thing was rather a shock to me, coming so suddenly and +unexpectedly. I had anticipated some innocent purchase of the +jewellery he reviles so much, but certainly not significant rings, +golden fetters for others to wear and enslave him; and we were past the +flowershop towards Hyde Park before either of us spoke. It seemed so +dreadful to me that the cheerful, talkative man beside me, my own +father's little brother, a traveller in distant countries, and a most +innocent man, and with all the inveterate habits of thirty years' +honourable bachelorhood and all the mellowness of life upon him, +should, without consulting me, have taken the first irrevocable step +towards becoming a ratepayer, a pew tenant, paterfamilias, a fighter +with schoolmasters, and the serf of a butler, that I scarcely knew what +to say adequate to the occasion. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said I at last, with an involuntary sigh, "I suppose I must +congratulate you." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't look at it in that light, George," said my uncle; and he added +in a more cheerful tone, "I am only going to get engaged, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"You can scarcely imagine, George," he proceeded, "how I have longed to +be engaged. All my life it has been my hope and goal. It is, I think, +the ideal state of man. There was a chap with me when I was at +Kimberley who first put the idea into my head. His ways were animated +and cheerful even for a diamond field, where you know animation and +cheerfulness are, so to speak, <I>de rigueur</I>. Whisky he affected, and +jesting of the kind that paints cities scarlet. And he used every +night, before festivities began, to write a long letter to some girl in +England, and say, within limits, how bad he had been and how he longed +to reform and be with her, and never, never do anything wrong any more. +He poured all the higher and better parts of his nature into the +letter, and folded it up and sealed it very carefully. And then he +came to us in a singularly relieved frame of mind, and would be the +life and soul of as merry a game of follow-your-leader as one can well +imagine." +</P> + +<P> +Pleasant reminiscences occupied him for a moment. "Every man should be +engaged, I think, to at least one woman. It is the homage we owe to +womankind, and a duty to our souls. His <I>fiancée</I> is indeed the +Madonna of a true-hearted man; the thought of her is a shrine at the +wayside of one's meditations, and her presence a temple wherein we +cleanse our souls. She is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, +something perhaps of the woman, possibly even propitious and helpful, +and yet something of the Holy Grail as well. You have no rights with +her, nor she with you; you owe her no definite duties, and yet she is +singularly yours. A smile is a favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint +pressure of your hand, is an infinite privilege. You cannot demand the +slightest help or concern of her, so you ask it with diffident grace +and there is an overflowing stream of gratitude from small occasions. +Whatever you give her is a gift too, while a husband is just property, +a mere draught-camel for her service. All your functions are +decorative, you hang her shrine with flowers and precious stones. You +treat her to art and literature, and as for vulgar necessities—some +one else sees to that." +</P> + +<P> +"Until you are married," began I. +</P> + +<P> +"I am speaking of being engaged. Marriage is altogether a different +thing. The essence of a proper engagement is reverence, distance, and +mystery; the essence of marriage is familiarity. A <I>fiancée</I> is a +living eidolon; a wife, from my point of view at least, should be a +confidential companion, a fellow-conspirator, an accessory after the +fact, at least, to one's little errors; should take some share of the +burthen and heat of the day with one, and have the humour to bear with +a mood of vexation or a fit of the blues. I doubt, do you know, if the +same kind of girl is suitable for engagements as for marriage. For an +engagement give me something very innocent, a little awe-inspiring on +that account, absolutely and tenderly worshipful, yet given to moods of +caressing affection, and altogether graceful and beautiful. A man, I +think, ought to be incapable of smoking or lounging in front of the +girl he professes to love, so reverent ought his love to be. But for +marriage let me have humour and some community of taste, a woman who +can climb stiles and stand tobacco smoke, and who knows a good cook by +her fruits.... It is a complicated business, this marrying. +</P> + +<P> +"The familiarity of the marriage state, if it does not breed positive +contempt on the part of the angel, engenders at times, I think, a +considerable craving for change on the side of both parties. We men +are poor creatures at the best—I always pity your Euphemia. Married +people, for instance, always get too much of each other's conversation. +They do not have sufficient opportunity to recuperate their topics from +original sources. They get interested in outside people, merely from a +perfectly legitimate desire to get some amusing novel ideas for each +other, and then comes jealousy. I sometimes think that if Adam and Eve +had been merely engaged, she would not have talked with the serpent; +and the world had been saved an infinity of misery. +</P> + +<P> +"No, George: engagements for me. It is the state we were made for. I +have delayed this matter all too long. But, thank heaven, I am engaged +at last—I hope for all the rest of my life. Now, will you not +congratulate me?" +</P> + +<P> +"It may be very nice as you put it, but engagements end as well as +begin," I insisted. "You cannot be a law unto yourself in these +matters. When will you get married?" +</P> + +<P> +"Good Heavens!" exclaimed my uncle. "Get married and end this +delightful state! You don't think she will want me to marry her, do +you? Besides, she told me some time ago that she did not intend to +marry again. It was only that encouraged me to suggest an engagement +to her. Though she is a wonderful woman, George—a wonderful woman. +Still, I think she looks at things very much as I do." +</P> + +<P> +He paused thoughtfully. Then added with fervour, "At least I hope so." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +A RHAPSODY +</H4> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +I found him in his own apartments, and strangely disordered. He went +to and fro, raving—beginning so soon as I entered the room. I noticed +a book half out of its cover, flung carelessly into the corner of the +room. +</P> + +<P> +"I am enchanted of an impalpable woman, George," he said, "I am in +bonds to a spirit of the air. I can neither think nor work nor eat nor +sleep because of her. Sometimes I go out suddenly, tramping through +seething streets, through fog and drizzle or dry east wind, mourning +for her sake. My life is rapidly becoming one colourless melancholy +through her spells and twining sorceries. I sometimes wish that I were +dead. +</P> + +<P> +"Yet I have never seen her. Often, indeed, I imagine her, anon as of +this shape, and anon of that. I know her only by her victims, those +she slays daily, and daily revives to slay. They come to me with their +complaints, mutilated, pathetic, terrible. I try to shut my ears to +them in vain. I have tried wool, but it made little or no difference. +</P> + +<P> +"The business always begins with the slamming of a door and a healthy +footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional +noises—the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and +its extraction by means of the tongs—I know it is tongs she uses by +the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to +play. She puts both her hands upon the key-board, and the treble +shrieks apprehensively, and the bass roars like a city in revolt. +After that this hush. Just this interval. +</P> + +<P> +"Yet I sometimes think this hush is really the worst of it all. It is +a voluminous apprehension, a towering impendency. You don't +understand, George. You can't. The poor devil in Poe's 'Pit and the +Pendulum' must have had a taste of my sensations. A first victim is +being chosen. I have a vision of the spirits of composers small and +great—standing up like suspects awaiting identification, while her eye +ranges over them. Chopin tries to edge behind Wagner, a difficult and +forbidding person, and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendelssohn, who +suddenly drops and crawls on all fours between Gounod's legs; Sullivan +cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed nerves desert him. She +extends her hand. There is a frantic rush to escape. Have you ever +seen a little boy picking dormice out of a cage? I always see this +same nightmare during that dreadful pause, a vision of a writhing heap +of kicking, struggling, maddened composers, and of a ghoulish piano +grinning expectant, jaw raised—lid I mean—and showing all its black +and yellow keys. ... A melancholy shriek. Do you hear, George? Tito +Mattel is captured. A song. +</P> + +<P> +"'Pum—So long the way—Pum—so dark the day—Pum—DEAR HEART! before +you come.' So Tito Mattel comes pumming through the wall into my +presence. I don't pity him. Indeed it is a positive relief that it is +only Tito Mattel. The man's no deity at the best, and a little pulling +out, and pulling crooked, and general patching together of limbs in the +wrong place scarcely matters so far as he and my taste are concerned. +Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about +the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the +autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness +of truth—I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped +notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. The +murder is over. +</P> + +<P> +"What next? That Study of Chopin's! This time the thing is more +inspiring. Once upon a time it was a favourite of mine. Now it is a +favourite of the unseen lady's. She plays it with spirit, and conjures +up strange fancies in my brain. The noises that come through the wall +now, quicker, thicker, louder, are full of a tale of weltering +confusion, marine disaster, a ship in sore labour; there is a steady +beating like the sound of pumps, and a trickle of treble notes. There +are black silences, like thunderclouds, that burst into flashes of +music. Now the poor melody swings up into the air—then comes one of +those terrible pauses, and now down into the abyss. A crash, an +ineffectual beating, a spasmodic rush. I seem to hear the pumps again, +distant, remote, ineffectual. But that is not so; the struggle is +over. Chopin's Study has been battered to pieces; only disarticulated +fragments toss amidst the froth. High up the confusion of the stormy +sky she drives in a sieve dropping notes—the witch of the storm. La +Belle Dame Sans Merci. +</P> + +<P> +"But the third piece in her repertory has begun—Rubinstein. This, at +any rate, is familiar. She plays with the confidence born of long +unpunished misdoing. That Rubinstein must indeed be sorry, and unless +their elysium is like the library of the Linnæan Society, and fitted +with double windows, all the great departed musicians must be sorry +too, that he ever wrote a Melody in F. Daily from the altars of a +thousand, of ten thousand, school pianos that melody cries to heaven. +From the empire of the music master, upon which the sun never sets, day +and night, week in week out, from year to year, Rubinstein's Melody in +F streams up for ever. These school pieces are like the Latin ritual +before the Reformation, they link all Christendom by a common use. As +the earth spins, and the sunlight sweeps ever westward, that melody +passes with the day. Now it is tinkling in a grey Moravian school, now +it dawns upon the Adige and begins in Alsace, now it has reached +Madrid, Paris, London. Then a devotee in some Connemara Establishment +for Young Ladies sets to. Presently tall ships upon the silent main +resound with it, and they are at it in the Azores and in Iceland, and +then—one solitary tinkling, doubling, reduplicating, manifolding into +an innumerable multitude—New York takes up the wondrous tale. On then +with the dawn to desolate cattle ranches, the tablelands of Mexico, the +level plains of Illinois and Michigan. So the great tide that started +in Rubinstein's cranium proceeds upon its destiny. Always somewhere +between the hours of eleven and two it comes back to me here, poor +hunted composition, running its eternal world gauntlet, pursuing its +Wandering Jew pilgrimage, and I curse and pity it as it goes by.... It +has gone. The 'Maiden's Prayer' is next usually. Then one of the +'Lieder ohne Worte,' then the 'Dead March'—all of them but the meagre +and mutilated skeletons of themselves; things of gaps and tatters, like +gibbet trophies. They are as knocked about as a fleet coming out of +action, they are as twisted and garbled as a Chinese war telegram; it +is like an hospital for congenitally diseased compositions taking the +air. And they have to hobble along sharply too; there is a certain +cruel decision in the way the notes are struck, a Nurse Gillespie touch +about this Invisible Lady. Or it may be the callousness of old habit, +a certain sense of a duty overdone, a certain impatience at the long +delay. You will hear. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen!—<I>Tum Tum Ti-ti-tum</I>—No!—<I>tum</I>. Slight pause. Tum <I>tum +twiddle</I>—vigorous crescendo—TUM. This is unusual! A stranger? A +new piece for La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Her wonted reckless dash +deserts her. She is, as it were, exploring a new region, and advances +with mischievous coyness, with an affectation of a faltering heart, +with hesitating steps. My imagination is stimulated by these dripping +notes. I see her, as it were, on an uneven pavement; here the flags +are set on end, there fungi have tilted them, a sharp turning of the +page may reveal heaven knows what horrors; presently comes a black gap +with a vault of dusty silence below. A pause, an incoherency, a +repetition! She has encountered some difficulty, some slumbering coil +of sharps and flats, and it raises its bristling front in her way.... +She has fled back to the opening again. I begin to wonder what unhappy +musician lies hidden in this new ruin, behind the bars of this +melancholy confusion. There is something familiar but elusive, like a +face that one has known and loved and lost and met again after the +cruel changes of intervening years. It conjures up oddly enough a +vision of a long room in the twilight, and an acacia in silhouette +against the pale gold of the western sky. Ah! now I know! +</P> + +<P> +"<I>That</I> of all pieces! +</P> + +<P> +"I must have my walk, George. I cannot bear to hear that old-familiar +music so evilly entreated. But, all the same, the memory it has +touched will vibrate and smart; to-day and to-morrow, and I know not +for how many days, it will re-echo in my brain. All the old cloudy +remorse that has subsided will be set astir again. I shall hear again +a light touch upon the keys, see again the shadowy face against the +sunset, try to recall the sound of a voice.... What evil spirit has +put this mockery into the head of La Belle Dame? Surely without +this——" +</P> + +<P> +He made a dive at the folding doors and presently reappeared in his +coat. It was the only intimation I ever had that my dear little uncle +had such a thing as a Past. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ON A TRICYCLE +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +I sat on the parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water +that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge +the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the +sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the +big oak trees that bent towards each other from either bank. Through +their speckled tracery of green one saw the hazy blue depths of the +further forest. I was watching the proceedings of some quick-moving +brown bird amid the rushes and marsh marigolds of the opposite bank. +</P> + +<P> +"Pleasant," said a voice beside me. +</P> + +<P> +I turned, and saw my uncle. He was disguised in a costume of +reddish-brown cloth. "Golf here?" said I, and then I noticed the +tricycle. "A vagrom man on wheels!" +</P> + +<P> +Both the suit and the machine became him very well. The machine was +low, and singularly broad between the wheels, and altogether equal to +him, and it had chubby pneumatic tires and a broad and even imposing +wallet. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said he, following my eye. "It is a handsome machine, a full +dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is +as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and +gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these +things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is +altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, +with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been +so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could +not bring myself to it. But a Bishop might ride <I>that</I> thing." +</P> + +<P> +He swung himself up upon the parapet beside me and lit a cigar. +</P> + +<P> +"The bicycle for boys, George—or fools. The things will not keep up +for a moment without you work at them, they need constant attention; I +would as soon ride a treadmill. You cannot loaf with them, and the +only true pleasure of cycling is to loaf. Yet only this morning did I +meet an elderly gentleman with a beard fit for Abraham, his face all +crimson and deliquescent with heat, and all distorted with the fury of +his haste, toiling up a hill on one of these unstable instruments. +When he saw me coming down in all my ease and dignity he damned at me +with his bell. Now, I do not like to see a bicycle wobble under a load +of years, and steer into the irascible. As years increase tempers +shorten, and bicycles, even the best of bicycles, are seductively +irritating. +</P> + +<P> +"Besides, the devil of the Wandering Jew has power over all such as go +upon two wheels. 'Onward,' he says, 'onward! Faster, thou man! This +green and breezy earth is no abiding place for you!' And +hard-breathing, crook-shaped, whirling, bell-banging lunatics try and +race you. They whiz by, thinking indignities of your dignified +progress, and sometimes saying them. Not one cyclist in a dozen, +George, and seemingly not a solitary bicyclist, seems to think of +anything but getting to the end of his pleasure. I meet these servants +of the wheel at the inns, and they tell short stories and sketches +about their pace, and show each other their shoes and saddles, and +compare maps and roads; some even try to trade machines. They talk +most indecently of the makes and prices. I would as soon ask a man who +was his tailor or where he got his hair cut and how much he paid. One +man I met was not so much a man as a hoarding, blatant about the +Gaspipe Machine Company. For them no flowers exist, no wild birds, no +trees, no landscapes, no historical memorials, and no geological +associations, nothing but the roads they traverse and the bicycles they +ride. Those that have other interests have them in the form of cheap +portable cameras, malignant things that can find no beauty in earth or +heaven." +</P> + +<P> +"George," said my uncle, suddenly, and I knew he had come upon a great +discovery; "real human beings are scarce in this world." +</P> + +<P> +"You speak bitterly," said I. "I know what has happened. You are hot +from an inn full of the viler type of cyclist, and I presume that, +after their custom, they mocked at your machinery. But don't blacken a +popular exercise on that account." +</P> + +<P> +"But these men are so aggressive! I tell you, George, it requires +moral courage to ride a tricycle about at a moderate pace, as a man of +discretion should. They want to make a sport of it; they are +race-struck, incapable of understanding a man who rides at seven miles +an hour when he might ride at fifteen. Read their special papers. +They mock and sneer at everything but pace; they worship the makes of +'94 in the interests of their advertising columns; touring simply means +hotel-touting to them, and landscape, deals in cameras; in the end they +will kill cycling—indeed, they are killing it. It is not nice to be +mocked at even when you are in the right; a blatant cad is like a +rhinoceros, and admits of no parleying, only since you must not kill +him you are obliged to keep out of his way. The common cyclist has +already driven ladies off the roads by forcing the pace, the honeymoon +tandem returns with its feelings hurt at his jesting, and now he is +driving off all quiet men." +</P> + +<P> +"All this," said I, "because they said something disrespectful about +your machine at the last inn... You don't, I see, approve of the +feminine bicycle?" +</P> + +<P> +My uncle did his best to be calm and judicial. +</P> + +<P> +"A woman in a hurry is one of the most painful sights in the world, for +exertion does not become a woman as it does a man. Let us avoid all +prejudice in this matter, George, and discuss it with open minds. She +has, in the first place, a considerable length of hair, and she does it +up into rich and beautiful shapes with things called hairpins and with +curling irons. Very few people have hair that curls naturally, George. +You are young, but you are married, and I see nothing improper in +telling you these things. Well, when a woman rides about, exerting +herself violently to keep a bicycle going, her hair gets damp and the +pleasing curls lose their curliness and become wet, straggling bands of +hair plastered over her venous forehead. And a tragic anxiety is +manifest, an expression painful for a man to meet. Also her hairpins +come out and fall on the road to wait for pneumatic tires, and her hair +is no longer rich and beautiful in form. Then she gets dirty, horribly +dirty, as though she had been used to sweep the roads with. And her +skirts have to be weirdly altered, even to the divided skirt, so that +when she rides she looks like a short, squat little man. She not only +loses her beauty but her dignity. Now, for my own part, I think a man +wants a woman to worship—it is a man's point of view, of course, but I +can't help my sex—and the worshipping of these zouaves is incredible. +She is nothing more than a shorter, fuller, and feebler man. Heaven +help her! For the woman on the tricycle there are ampler excuses as +well as ampler skirts, the exertion is not too violent for grace and +coolness, and the offensive bulging above one narrow wheel is avoided. +But women will never sacrifice so much for so little; worshipfulness, +beauty, repose, and comfort for a paltry two or three miles more an +hour of pace. They know too well the graces of delay. To do things +slowly, George, is part of the art of living. Our sex learns that when +its youthful fervour is over and all the things are done. But women +are born wise." +</P> + +<P> +"By the bye," said I, "how is Mrs Harborough?" +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, thanks. How is Euphemia? Your bit of view, George, is +pretty, but I think I will have some heather now. There is a common +three miles ahead. This indeed is the true merit of cycling. For a +view, a panorama; for one picture, a gallery. Your true artist in +cycling sits by the roadside, and rides only by way of an interlude. +As for the worship of the machine, I would as soon worship a +scene-shifter." +</P> + +<P> +He dropped off the bridge and mounted his machine, and was presently +pursuing his smooth and noiseless way. As he vanished round the corner +he sounded his gong. It was really a most potent, grave, and reverend +gong, with a certain note of philosophical melancholy in its tone, as +different from the vulgar tang of your common cycle as one can well +imagine. It asked you, at your convenience, sir (or madam), to get out +of the way, to stand aside and see a most worthy and dignified +spectacle roll by, if so be you had the mind for it. As for any +scolding insistence, any threat of imminent collision, there was none +of it. It was the bell of a man who loved margins, who was at his +ease, and would have all the world at its ease. More than anything +else, it reminded me of the boom of some ivy-clad church tower, warning +the world without unseemly haste that another hour had, with leisurely +completeness, accomplished itself. +</P> + +<P> +And so he passed out of my sight and was gone. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +(AUTHORESS UNKNOWN) +</H4> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +He pushed it away from him. +</P> + +<P> +"I felt as though I had disturbed the graves of the long departed," he +said with a grimace, and then addressing the egg: "Forgive me the +sacrilege: they sold you to me as new laid, a mere thing of yesterday. +I had no idea I was opening the immemorial past. <I>De mortuis nihil +nisi bonum</I>—to you at least the quotation will be novel. Or I might +call you bad, you poor mummy. +</P> + +<P> +"Unhappy, pent-up, ineffectual thing!" he said, waving his jilted bread +and butter, and addressing the discarded inedible. "Poor old maid +among eggs! And so it has come to this absolute failure with you. Why +were you ever laid? Surely, since you were once alive, some lurking +aspiration, some lowly, and yet not lowly, but most divine, striving +towards the Higher and the Better, hath stirred within you. The warm +sunlight shone through your translucent shell, the sweet air stirred +the sweet hay of the nest, and life called you from your dreaming to +awake, and join it in its interplay. And now! You might have +been—what might you not have been? A prize hen, fountain of a +broadening stream of hens, chicks, dozens of chicks, hundreds of +chicks, a surging ocean of chickens. Had you been hatched among the +early Victorian chickens that were, I presume, your contemporaries, by +now you might have been a million fowl, and the delight and support of +hundreds of thousands of homes. You might have been worth thousands of +pounds and have eaten corn by the ton. They might have written +articles about you in half-crown reviews and devoted poultry farms to +your sole support. And instead you have been narrowed down to this +sordid back-street tragedy, a mere offence, tempting a struggling +tradesman to risk the honour of my patronage of his books, for a paltry +fraction of a pennyworth of profit. Why, I ask you, were you not +hatched? Was it lack of courage? a fear of the unknown dangers that +lie outside the shell? +</P> + +<P> +"An indescribable pity wells up in me for this lost egg, this dead end +in the tree of life, George. One thinks of the humble but deserving +amoeba, the primordial metazöon, the first fish, the remote reptile +ancestor, the countless generations of forefathers that, so far as this +egg went, have lived and learnt and suffered in vain. The torrent of +life had split and rushed by on either side of it. And you might," +cried he, turning to the egg again, "have been a Variety, a novelty, +and an improvement in chickens. No chick now will ever be <I>exactly</I> +the chick you might have been. Only an Olive Schreiner could do full +justice to your failure, you poor nun, you futile eremite, you absolute +and hopeless impasse. Was it, I ask again, a lack of courage? +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps a lack of opportunity? It may be you stirred and hoped in the +distant past, and the warmth to quicken you never came. Ambition may +have fretted you. Indeed, now I think of it, there is something in the +flavour of you, singularly suggestive of disappointed ambition. In +literature, and more particularly in criticism, I can assure you I have +met the very fellow of your quality, from literary rotten eggs whose +opening came too late. They are like the genii in the 'Arabian Nights' +whom Solomon, the son of David, sealed in the pot. At first he +promised infinite delights to his discoverer—and his discoverer +lagged. In the end he was filled with unreasonable hatred against all +the feeble free, and emerged as a malignant fume, eager to wreak +himself upon the world. +</P> + +<P> +"A sudden thought, George! I see my egg in a new light, and all my +pity changes to respect. Surely it is a most potent egg, a +gallinaceous Swift. After all, anything but pointless and childless, +since it has this strange quality of being offensive and engendering +thought. Food for the mind if not food for the body—didactic if not +delightful—a bit of modern literature, earnest and fundamentally real. +I must try and understand you, Ibsen Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound +parable I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely reckoned on a parable +with my bread and butter. Frankly, I must confess I bought it for the +eating." +</P> + +<P> +Now that my uncle had at last begun to grasp the true greatness of his +egg, he apparently considered it becoming to drop the tone of +half-patronising pity he had previously adopted. "Come," said he, +smiling, with a dash of raillery, over his coffee-cup; "admit you are a +humbug, you whitened sepulchre of an anticipated chick! Until you +found a congenial soul and overwhelmed me with your confidence, what a +career of deception—not mean, of course, but cynical—ironical—you +have been leading. What a jest it must have been to you to be sold as +new laid! How you laughed in your quiet way at the mockery of life. +Surely it was a worthy pair to Swift in cassock and bands conducting a +marriage service. I can well fancy your silent scorn of the hand that +put you in the bag. New laid! But now I have the full humour of you. +You must pardon my dulness of apprehension. I grasp your meaning now; +your quiet insistent teaching that all life is decay and all decay is +life. No forcing the accent, no crudity, but a pervading persuasion. +A noble gospel!" +</P> + +<P> +He paused impressively, placed the egg respectfully upon his bureau, +and presently went off at a tangent to something else. +</P> + +<P> +"Shall I throw this away?" said the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"Good heavens! Throw it away? Certainly not. Put it in the library." +(The library used to be the corner of the room by the window.) +</P> + +<P> +She stared at me with a certain attempt at confidence. She is a +callous, impertinent kind of girl, and I fear inclined to be bold. "It +<I>do</I> smell, sir," she said to him. +</P> + +<P> +"That's the merit of it. It's irony. Go and put it on the fourth +shelf near the window. There are some yellow-covered books there, and +Swift, some comedies by a gentleman named Ibsen, and a couple of novels +by two gentlemen named George ———. But there! you don't know one +book from another! The fourth shelf from the top on the right-hand +side." +</P> + +<P> +As the girl did so she looked over her hand at me, and lifted her +eyebrows very slightly. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE GREAT CHANGE +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +My uncle had been hectic all day. I knew and dreaded what was coming, +and said nothing that by any chance could lead up to it. +</P> + +<P> +He absent-mindedly tipped the emu sixpence. Then we came to the wart +hog. +</P> + +<P> +"A bachelor," he said, meditatively, scratching the brute's back. +</P> + +<P> +I hastily felt for a saving topic in the apprehensive darkness of my +mind, and could find none. +</P> + +<P> +"I expect I shall be married in October," said my uncle. Then, +sighing: "The idyll of my engagement was short-lived." +</P> + +<P> +It was out. Now, the day—my last idle day with my poor uncle—was a +hideous wreck. All the topics he had fluttered round vanished, and, +cold and awful, there loomed over us the one great topic. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you <I>think</I> of marriage, George?" said my uncle, after a +pause, prodding the wart hog suddenly. +</P> + +<P> +"That's your privilege," said I. "Married men don't dare to think of +it. Bigamy." +</P> + +<P> +"Privilege! Is it such a headlong wreck of one's ideals as they say?" +said my uncle. "Is that dreamland furniture really so unstable in use?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," said I, "it's different from what one expects. But it +seems to be worse for the other party. At least to judge from the +novels they engender in their agony." +</P> + +<P> +"So far as I can see," he proceeded, "what happens is very similar to a +thing a scientific chap was explaining to me the other day. There are +some little beasts in the sea called ascidians, and they begin life as +cheerful little tadpole things, with waggling tails and big expressive +eyes. They move freely about hither and thither, and often travel vast +distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis +begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself +head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a +mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck +round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He +loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses his bright +expressive eye." +</P> + +<P> +"The bother of it," said I, "is that very often the wandering +expressive eye is not lost in the human metamorphosis." +</P> + +<P> +"Putting it in another way, one might say that the kind of story that +Ovid is so fond of describing, the affairs of Daphne and Io, for +instance, are fables of the same thing: an interlude of sentiment and +then a change into something new and domesticated, rooted, fixed, and +bounded in." +</P> + +<P> +"It is certainly always a settling down," said I. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't like this idea of settling down, George." He shuddered. "It +must be a dreadful thing to go about always with a house on your mind." +</P> + +<P> +"You get used to it. And, besides, you don't go about so much." +</P> + +<P> +He gave the bachelor wart hog a parting dig, and we walked slowly and +silently through the zebra-house towards the elephants. "Of course we +do not intend to settle down," he said presently, with a clumsy effort +to render his previous remarks impersonal. +</P> + +<P> +"A marriage invalidates all promises," I explained. "The law +recognises this in the case of wills." +</P> + +<P> +"That's a new view," he said, evidently uncomfortable about something. +</P> + +<P> +"It follows from your doctrine of metamorphosis. A marries B. Then +the great change begins. A gradually alters into a new fixed form, C, +while B flattens and broadens out as D. It is a different couple, and +they cannot reasonably be held responsible for the vagaries of A and B." +</P> + +<P> +"That ought to be better understood." +</P> + +<P> +"It would perhaps be as well. Before marriage Edwin vows to devote his +life to Angelina, and Angelina vows she will devote her life to Edwin. +After marriage this leads to confusion if they continue to believe such +promises. Marriage certainly has that odd effect on the memory. You +remember Angelina's promises and forget your own, and <I>vice versa</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"There is no apparition more distressing than the ghost of a dead +promise," said my uncle. "Especially when it is raised in the house of +your friends." +</P> + +<P> +We passed through the elephant house in silence. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder what kind of man I shall be after the change, George. It's +all a toss-up," he continued, after an interval. "I have seen some men +improved by it. You, for instance. You were a mere useless, indecent +aspirant to genius before the thing came upon you. Now you are a +respectable journalist and gracefully anxious to give satisfaction to +your editor. But my own impression is that a man has to be a bit of an +ass before he can be improved by marriage. Most men get so mercenary, +they simply work and do nothing a rational creature should. They are +like the male ants that shed their wings after the nuptial flight. And +their wives go round talking fashion articles, and calling them dear +old stupids, and flirting over teacups with the unmarried men, or +writing novelettes about the child-man, and living their own lives. +I've been an unmarried man and I know all about it. Every intelligent +woman now seems to want to live her own life when she is not engaged in +taking the child-man out into polite society, and trying to wean him +from alcohol and tobacco. However, this scarcely applies to me." +</P> + +<P> +"Not now," I said. And he winced. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder how it feels. Most men go into this without knowing of the +change that hangs over them. But I am older. It would not be nice for +a caterpillar if he knew he was going to rip up all along his back in a +minute or so. Yet I could sympathise with such a caterpillar now. +Anyhow, George, I hope the change will be complete. I would not like +to undergo only a partial metamorphosis, and become a queer speckled +monster all spotted with bachelor habits. Yet I sometimes think I am +beyond the adolescent stage, and my habits rather deeply rooted. +Hitherto, I have always damned a little at braces and collars and +things like that. I wish I knew where one could pick up a few +admissible expletives. And I loaf about London all day sometimes +without any very clear idea of what I am after, telling chaps in +studios how to paint, and talking to leisurely barristers, and all that +kind of thing." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>She</I>," I said, "will probably help you to conquer habits of that +sort." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I dare say she will," said my uncle. "I forgot that for the +minute." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +My uncle came to a stop outside a stationer's shop in Oxford-street. +When I saw what had caught his attention I reproached myself for my +thoughtlessness. +</P> + +<P> +"Come," said I, "tell me what you think of—of representative +government." +</P> + +<P> +"It's no good, George. You did the same thing at the cake shop. Do +you think I never saw the cake shop? Since this affair was settled I +think every shop I pass reminds me of it—even the gunsmith's. I never +suspected before how entirely retail trade turned on marriage—except, +perhaps, the second-hand book shops. The whole world seems a-marrying. +</P> + +<P> +"It's queer," said he, "that a little while ago the thing that worried +me to the exclusion of everything else was the idea of being married, +and now it is so near it's entirely the getting married that upsets me. +I have forgotten the horrid consequences in the horror of the +operation." +</P> + +<P> +"It's much the same," said I, "at an execution." +</P> + +<P> +"Look at those cards." He waved his hand towards a neat array of +silver and white pasteboard. "'Jemima Smith,' with an arrow through +the Smith, and 'Podger' written above it, and on the opposite side 'Mr +and Mrs John Podger.' That is where it has me, George." +</P> + +<P> +We went on past a display of electroplate with a card about presents in +the window, past a window full of white flowers, past a +carriage-builder's and a glove shop. "It's like death," said my uncle; +"it turns up everywhere and is just the same for everybody. In that +cake shop there were piles and piles of cakes, from little cakes ten +inches across up to cakes of three hundredweight or so; all just the +same rich, uneatable, greasy stuff, and with just the same white sugar +on the top of them. I suppose every day they pack off scores. It +makes one think of marrying in swarms, like the gnats. I catch myself +wondering sometimes if the run of people really are separate +individuals, or only a kind of replicas, without any tastes of their +own. There are people who would rather not marry than marry without +one of those cakes, George. To me it seems to be almost the most +asinine position a couple of adults can be in, to have to buy a stone +or so of that concentrated biliousness and cut it up, or procure other +people to cut it up, and send it round to other adults who would almost +as soon eat arsenic. And why cake—infantile cake? Why not biscuits, +or cigarettes, or chocolate? It seems to me to be playing the fool +with a solemn occasion." +</P> + +<P> +"You see, it is the custom to have cake." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, anyhow, I intend to break the custom." +</P> + +<P> +"So did I, but I had it all the same." +</P> + +<P> +My uncle looked at me. +</P> + +<P> +"You see," said I, "when a woman says you must do this or that—must +have cake at a wedding, for instance—you must do it. It is not a case +for argument. It is a kind of privilege they have—the categorical +imperative. You will soon learn that." +</P> + +<P> +Evidently the question was open. "But <I>why</I> do they say you must?" +</P> + +<P> +"Other women tell them to. They would despise any one dreadfully who +did not have a really big cake—from that shop." +</P> + +<P> +"But why?" +</P> + +<P> +"My dear uncle," said I, "you are going into matrimony. You do not +show a proper spirit." +</P> + +<P> +"The cake," said my uncle, "is only a type. There is this trousseau +business again. Why should a woman who is going to marry require a +complete outfit of that sort? It seems to suggest—well, pre-nuptial +rags at least, George. Then the costume. Why should a sane healthy +woman be covered up in white gauze like the confectionery in a shop +window when the flies are about? And why——?" +</P> + +<P> +He was going on in quite an aggressive tone. "There isn't a <I>why</I>," I +said, "for any of it." This sort of talk always irritates a married +man because it revives his own troubles. "It's just the rule. Surely, +if a wife is worth having she is worth being ridiculous for? You ought +to be jolly glad you don't have to wear a fool's cap and paint your +nose red. 'More precious than rubies'——" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"It must be these tradesmen," he began bitterly after an interval. +"Some one must be responsible, and it's just their way. Do you know, +George, I sometimes fancy that they have hypnotised womankind into the +belief that all these uncomfortable things are absolutely necessary to +a valid marriage—just as they have persuaded the landlady class that +no house is complete without a big mirror over the fireplace and a +bulgy sideboard. There is a very strong flavour of mesmeric suggestion +about a woman's attitude towards these matters, considered in the light +of her customary common sense. Do you know, George, I really believe +there is a secret society of tradesmen, a kind of priesthood, who get +hold of our womenkind and muddle them up with all these fancies. It's +a sort of white magic. Have you ever been in a draper's shop, George?" +</P> + +<P> +"Never," I said: "I always wait outside—among the dogs." +</P> + +<P> +"Have you ever read a ladies' newspaper?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know," said I, "that there was any part to read. It's all +advertisements; all the articles are advertisements, all the +paragraphs, the stories, the answers to correspondents—everything." +</P> + +<P> +"That's exactly what makes me think the tradesmen have hypnotised the +sex. It may be they do it in those drapers' dens. A man spots that +kind of thing at once and drops the paper. Women go on year after +year, simply worshipping a paper hoarding of that kind, and doing +patiently everything they are told to do therein. Anyhow, it is only +in this way that I can account for all these expensive miseries of +matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her +faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with—I +suppose all men submit to it under protest—for these stale and +stereotyped antics. She <I>must</I> be magnetised." +</P> + +<P> +"They are not stale to her," I said. +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs Harborough——" he began. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, a widow!—I forgot," I said. "But she seems so young, you +know." +</P> + +<P> +"And putting aside the details," said my uncle, with a transient dash +of cheerfulness at my mistake; "I object to the publicity of the whole +thing. It's not nice. To bring the street arab into the affair, to +subject yourself to the impertinent congratulations and presents of +every aspirant to your intimacy, to be patted on the back in the local +newspapers as though you were going to do something clever. Confound +them! It's not their affair. And I'm too old to be a blushing +bridegroom. Then think, what am I to do, George, if that cad Hagshot +sends me a present?" +</P> + +<P> +"It would be like him if he did," I said. "I fancy he will." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't go and kick him," said my uncle. +</P> + +<P> +"Declined with thanks," I suggested, "owing to pressure of other +matter." +</P> + +<P> +"You are getting shoppy, George," said my uncle, in as near an approach +to a querulous tone as I have heard from him. +</P> + +<P> +"You are getting married," I replied, with the complacency of one whose +troubles are over. "But it's a horrible nuisance, anyhow. Still, the +world grows wiser, and the burden is not quite so bad as it used to be. +A hundred years hence——" +</P> + +<P> +"I'd be willing enough to wait," said my uncle; "but I'm not the only +party in this affair." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He was willing enough to wait, perhaps, but time was inexorable. Save +for one hurried interview, I did not see him again for a week, and then +it was before the altar. His garrulity had fallen from him like a +garment. He was preoccupied and a trifle bashful. He fumbled with the +ring. I felt almost as though he was my younger brother. +</P> + +<P> +I stood by him to the end, and at last came the hour of parting. I +grasped his hand in silence: silently he mastered a becoming emotion. +And in silence he went from me unto the New Life. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +The gentleman with the Jovian coiffure began to speak as the train +moved. "'Tis the utmost degradation of art," he said. He had +apparently fallen into conversation with his companion upon the +platform. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see it," said this companion, a prosperous-looking gentleman +with a gold watch-chain. "This art for art's sake—I don't believe in +it, I tell you. Art should have an aim. If it don't do you good, if +it ain't moral, I'd as soon not have it. What good is it? I believe +in Ruskin. I tell you——" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Bah</I>!" said the gentleman in the corner, with almost explosive +violence. He fired it like a big gun across the path of the incipient +argument, and slew the prosperous-looking gentleman at once. He met +our eyes, as we turned to him, with a complacent smile on his large +white, clean-shaven face. He was a corpulent person, dressed in black, +and with something of the quality of a second-hand bishop in his +appearance. The demolished owner of the watch-chain made some +beginnings of a posthumous speech. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Bah</I>!" said the gentleman in the corner, with even more force than +before, and so finished him. +</P> + +<P> +"These people will never understand," he said, after a momentary pause, +addressing the gentleman with the Jovian coiffure, and indicating the +remains of the prosperous gentleman by a wave of a large white hand. +"Why do you argue? Art is ever for the few." +</P> + +<P> +"I did not argue," said the gentleman with the hair. "I was +interrupted." +</P> + +<P> +The owner of the watch-chain, who had been sitting struggling with his +breath, now began to sob out his indignation. "What do you <I>mean</I>, +sir? Saying <I>Bah</I>! sir, when I am talking——" +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman with the large face held up a soothing hand. "Peace, +peace," he said. "I did not interrupt you. I annihilated you. Why +did you presume to talk to artists about art? Go away, or I shall have +to say Bah! again. Go and have a fit. Leave us—two rare souls who +may not meet again—to our talking." +</P> + +<P> +"Did you ever see such abominable <I>rudeness</I>, sir?" said the gentleman +with the watch-chain, appealing to me. There were tears in his eyes. +At the same time the young man with the aureole made some remark to the +corpulent gentleman that I failed to catch. +</P> + +<P> +"These artists," said I, "are unaccountable, irresponsible. You +must——" +</P> + +<P> +"Take it from whence it comes," said the insulted one, very loudly, and +bitterly glaring at his opponent. But the two artists were conversing +serenely. I felt the undignified quality of our conversation. "Have +you seen <I>Punch</I>?" said I, thrusting it into his hand. +</P> + +<P> +He looked at the paper for a moment in a puzzled way; then understood, +thanked me, and began to read with a thunderous scowl, every now and +then shooting murderous glances at his antagonist in the opposite +corner, or coughing in an aggressive manner. +</P> + +<P> +"You do your best," the gentleman with the long hair was saying; "and +they say, 'What is it for?' 'It is for itself,' you say. Like the +stars." +</P> + +<P> +"But these people," said the stout gentleman, "think the stars were +made to set their clocks by. They lack the magnanimity to drop the +personal reference. A friend, a <I>confrère</I>, saw a party of these +horrible Extension people at Rome before that exquisite Venus of +Titian. 'And now, Mr Something-or-other,' said one of the young +ladies, addressing the pedagogue in command, 'what is <I>this</I> to teach +us?'" +</P> + +<P> +"I have had the same experience," said the young gentleman with the +hair. "A man sent to me only a week ago to ask what my sonnet 'The +Scarlet Thread' <I>meant</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +The stout person shook his head as though such things passed all belief. +</P> + +<P> +"Gur-r-r-r," said the gentleman with <I>Punch</I>, and scraped with his foot +on the floor of the carriage. +</P> + +<P> +"I gave him answer," said the poet, "'Twas a sonnet; not a symbol." +</P> + +<P> +"Precisely," said the stout gentleman. +</P> + +<P> +"'Tis the fate of all art to be misunderstood. I am always grossly +misunderstood—by every one. They call me fantastic, whereas I am but +inevitably new; indecent, because I am unfettered by mere trivial +personal restrictions; unwholesome." +</P> + +<P> +"It is what they say to me. They are always trying to pull me to +earth. 'Is it wholesome?' they say; 'nutritious?' I say to them, 'I +do not know. I am an artist. I do not care. It is beautiful.'" +</P> + +<P> +"You rhyme?" said the poet. +</P> + +<P> +"No. My work is—more plastic. I cook." +</P> + +<P> +For a moment, perhaps, the poet was disconcerted. "A noble art," he +said, recovering. +</P> + +<P> +"The noblest," said the cook. "But sorely misunderstood; degraded to +utilitarian ends; tested by impossible standards. I have been +seriously asked to render oily food palatable to a delicate patient. +Seriously!" +</P> + +<P> +"He said, 'Bah!' Bah! to <I>me</I>!" mumbled the defunct gentleman with +<I>Punch</I>, apparently addressing the cartoon. "A cook! Good <I>Lord</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"I resigned. 'Cookery,' I said, 'is an art. I am not a fattener of +human cattle. Think: Is it Art to write a book with an object, to +paint a picture for strategy?' 'Are we,' I said, 'in the sixties or +the nineties? Here, in your kitchen, I am inspired with beautiful +dinners, and I produce them. It is your place to gather together, from +this place one, and from that, one, the few precious souls who can +appreciate that rare and wonderful thing, a dinner, graceful, +harmonious, exquisite, perfect.' And he argued I must study his +guests!" +</P> + +<P> +"No artist is of any worth," said the poet, "who primarily studies what +the public needs." +</P> + +<P> +"As I told him. But the next man was worse—hygienic. While with this +creature I read Poe for the first time, and I was singularly fascinated +by some of his grotesques. I tried—it was an altogether new +development, I believe, in culinary art—the Bizarre. I made some +curious arrangements in pork and strawberries, with a sauce containing +beer. Quite by accident I mentioned my design to him on the evening of +the festival. All the Philistine was aroused in him. 'It will ruin my +digestion.' 'My friend,' I said, 'I am not your doctor; I have nothing +to do with your digestion. Only here is a beautiful Japanese thing, a +quaint, queer, almost eerie dinner, that is in my humble opinion worth +many digestions. You may take it or leave it, but 'tis the last dinner +I cook for you.' ... I knew I was wasted upon him. +</P> + +<P> +"Then I produced some Nocturnes in imitation of Mr Whistler, with +mushrooms, truffles, grilled meat, pickled walnuts, black pudding, +French plums, porter—a dinner in soft velvety black, eaten in a +starlight of small scattered candles. That, too, led to a resignation: +Art will ever demand its martyrs." +</P> + +<P> +The poet made sympathetic noises. +</P> + +<P> +"Always. The awful many will never understand. Their conception of my +skill is altogether on a level with their conceptions of music, of +literature, of painting. For wall decorations they love autotypes; for +literature, harmless volumes of twaddle that leave no vivid impressions +on the mind; for dinners, harmless dishes that are forgotten as they +are eaten. <I>My</I> dinners stick in the memory. I cannot study these +people—my genius is all too imperative. If I needed a flavour of +almonds and had nothing else to hand, I would use prussic acid. Do +right, I say, as your art instinct commands, and take no heed of the +consequences. Our function is to make the beautiful gastronomic thing, +not to pander to gluttony, not to be the Jesuits of hygiene. My +friend, you should see some of my compositions. At home I have books +and books in manuscript, Symphonies, Picnics, Fantasies, <I>Etudes</I>..." +</P> + +<P> +The train was now entering Clapham Junction. The gentleman with the +gold watch-chain returned my <I>Punch</I>. "A cook," he said in a whisper; +"just a common cook!" He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head at me, +and proceeded to extricate himself and his umbrella from the carriage. +"Out of a situation too!" he said—a little louder—as I prepared to +follow him. +</P> + +<P> +"Mere dripping!" said the artist in cookery, with a regal wave of the +hand. +</P> + +<P> +Had I felt sure I was included, I should of course have resented the +phrase. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MAN WITH A NOSE +</H3> + +<P STYLE="font-size: 80%"> +"I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived +in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"My nose has been the curse of my life." +</P> + +<P> +The other man started. +</P> + +<P> +They had not spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on +that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards +Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted +out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous +pale green—the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay +black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a +coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone +thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace loomed large +and black, their blackness pierced irregularly by luminous windows. +Above, starlight. +</P> + +<P> +Both men had been silent, lost apparently in their own thoughts, mere +dim black figures to each other, until one had seen fit to become a +voice also, with this confidence. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said, after an interval, "my nose has always stood in my way, +always." +</P> + +<P> +The second man had scarcely seemed to notice the first remark, but now +he peered through the night at his interlocutor. It was a little man +he saw, with face turned towards him. +</P> + +<P> +"I see nothing wrong with your nose." +</P> + +<P> +"If it were luminous you might," said the first speaker. "However, I +will illuminate it." +</P> + +<P> +He fumbled with something in his pocket, then held this object in his +hand. There was a scratch, a streak of greenish phosphorescent light, +and then all the world beyond became black, as a fusee vesta flared. +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for the space of a minute. An impressive pause. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" said the man with the nose, putting his heel on the light. +</P> + +<P> +"I have seen worse," said the second man. +</P> + +<P> +"I doubt it," said the man with the nose; "and even so, it is poor +comfort. Did you notice the shape? the size? the colour? Like +Snowdon, it has a steep side and a gentle slope. The size is +preposterous: my face is like a hen-house built behind a portico. And +the tints!" +</P> + +<P> +"It is not all red," said the second man, "anyhow." +</P> + +<P> +"No, there is purple, and blue, '<I>lapis lazuli</I>, blue as a vein over +the Madonna's breast,' and in one place a greyish mole. Bah! the thing +is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my +face. But, being where the nose should be, it gets the credit of its +position from unthinking people. There is a gap in the order of the +universe in front of my face, a lump of unwrought material left over. +In that my true nose is hidden, as a statue is hidden in a lump of +marble, until the appointed time for the revelation shall come. At the +resurrection—— But one must not anticipate. Well, well. I do not +often talk about my nose, my friend, but you sat with a sympathetic +pose, it seemed to me, and to-night my heart is full of it. This +cursed nose! But do I weary you, thrusting my nose into your +meditations?" +</P> + +<P> +"If," said the second man, his voice a little unsteady, as though he +was moved, "if it eases your mind to talk of your nose, pray talk." +</P> + +<P> +"This nose, I say then, makes me think of the false noses of Carnival +times. Your dullest man has but to stick one on, and lo! mirth, wit, +and jollity. They are enough to make anything funny. I doubt if even +an Anglican bishop could wear one with impunity. Put an angel in one. +How would you like one popped on to <I>you</I> now? Think of going +love-making, or addressing a public meeting, or dying gloriously, in a +nose like mine! Angelina laughs in your face, the public laughs, the +executioner at your martyrdom can hardly light the faggots for +laughing. By heaven! it is no joke. Often and often I have rebelled, +and said, 'I will not have this nose!'" +</P> + +<P> +"But what can one do?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is destiny. The bitter tragedy of it is that it is so comic. +Only, God knows, how glad I shall be when the Carnival is over, and I +may take the thing off and put it aside. The worst has been this +business of love. My mind is not unrefined, my body is healthy. I +know what tenderness is. But what woman could overlook a nose like +mine? How could she shut out her visions of it, and look her love into +my eyes, glaring at her over its immensity? I should have to make love +through an Inquisitor's hood, with its holes cut for the eyes—and even +then the shape would show. I have read, I have been told, I can +imagine what a lover's face is like—a sweet woman's face radiant with +love. But this Millbank penitentiary of flesh chills their dear +hearts." +</P> + +<P> +He broke off suddenly, with loud ferocious curses. A young man who had +been sitting very close to a young woman on an adjacent seat, started +up and said "Ssh!". +</P> + +<P> +He whom the man with the nose had addressed now spoke. "I have +certainly never thought before of a red nose as a sorrowful thing, but +as you put it...." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought you would understand. I have had this nose all my life. +The outline was done, even though the colour was wanting, in my school +days. They called me 'Nosey,' 'Ovid,' 'Cicero,' 'Rhino,' and the +'Excrescence.' It has ripened with the slow years, as fate deepens in +the progress of a tragedy. Love, the business of life, is a sealed +book to me. To be alone! I would thank heaven.... But no! a blind +woman could feel the shape of it." +</P> + +<P> +"Besides love," interrupted the young man thoughtfully, "there are +other things worth living for—duty. An unattractive nose would not +interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important +than love. I admit your loss, of course." +</P> + +<P> +"That only carries out the evidence of your voice, and tells me you are +young. My dear young fellow, duty is a very fine thing indeed, but +believe me, it is too colourless as a motive. There is no delight in +duty. You will know that at my age. And besides, I have an infinite +capacity for love and sympathy, an infinite bitterness in this solitude +of my soul. I infer that you would moralise on my discontent, but I +know I have seen a little of men and things from behind this +ambuscade—only a truly artistic man would fall into the sympathetic +attitude that attracted me. My life has had even too much of +observation in it, and to the systematic anthropologist, nothing tells +a man's character more than his pose after dark, when nobody seems +watching. As you sit, the black outline of you is clear against the +sky. Ah! <I>now</I> you are sitting stiffer. But you are no Calvinist. My +friend, the best of life is its delights, and the best of delights is +loving and being loved. And for that—this nose! Well, there are +plenty of second-best things. After dark I can forget the monster a +little. Spring is delightful, air on the Downs is delightful; it is +fine to see the stars circling in the sky, while lying among the +heather. Even this London sky is soothing at night, though the edge is +all inflamed. The shadow of my nose is darkest by day. But to-night I +am bitter, because of to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, to-morrow?" said the younger man. +</P> + +<P> +"I have to meet some new people to-morrow," said the man with the nose. +"There is an odd look, a mingling of amusement and pity, I am only too +familiar with. My cousin, who is a gifted hostess, promises people my +nose as a treat." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that must be bad for you," said the young man. +</P> + +<P> +And then the silence healed again, and presently the man with the nose +got up and passed into the dimness upon the slope of the hill. The +young man watched him vanish, wondering vainly how it would be possible +to console a soul under such a burthen. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Select Conversations with an Uncle, by H. G. Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECT CONVERSATIONS WITH AN UNCLE *** + +***** This file should be named 29472-h.htm or 29472-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/4/7/29472/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Select Conversations with an Uncle + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: July 21, 2009 [EBook #29472] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECT CONVERSATIONS WITH AN UNCLE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + +THE MAYFAIR SET + +III + +CONVERSATIONS + +WITH AN + +UNCLE + + + + +[Illustration: Title page] + + + + + +SELECT + +CONVERSATIONS + +WITH + +AN UNCLE + +(now extinct) + + + +and two other + +reminiscences by + +H. G. WELLS + + + + +LONDON: + +JOHN LANE + + +NEW YORK + +THE MERRIAM COMPANY + + +1895 + + + + +_Copyrighted in the United States._ + +_All rights reserved._ + + +_Second Edition_ + + + + +TO + +MY DEAREST + +AND BEST FRIEND + +R. A. C. + + + + +PREFATORY + +He was, I remember, short, but by no means conspicuously short, and of +a bright, almost juvenile, complexion, very active in his movements and +garrulous--or at least very talkative. His judgments were copious and +frequent in the old days, and some at least I found entertaining. At +times his fluency was really remarkable. He had a low opinion of +eminent people--a thing I have been careful to suppress, and his +dissertations had ever an irresponsible gaiety of manner that may have +blinded me to their true want of merit. That, I say, was in the old +days, before his abrupt extinction, before the cares of this world +suddenly sprang upon, and choked him. I would listen to him, +cheerfully, and afterwards I would go away and make articles out of him +for the _Pall Mall Gazette_, so adding a certain material advantage to +my mental and moral benefit. But all that has gone now, to my infinite +regret; and sorrowing, I have arranged this unworthy little tribute to +his memory, this poor dozen of casual monologues that were so +preserved. The merits of the monument are his entirely; its faults +entirely my own. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +SELECT CONVERSATIONS-- + + OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION + + THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY + + THE USE OF IDEALS + + THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED + + BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS + + ON SOCIAL MUSIC + + THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED + + LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI + + ON A TRICYCLE + + AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE + + THE GREAT CHANGE + + THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE + + +A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST + +THE MAN WITH A NOSE + + + + +OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF FASHION + +This uncle of mine, you must understand, having attained--by the purest +accident--some trifles of distinction and a certain affluence in South +Africa, came over at the earliest opportunity to London to be +photographed and lionised. He took to fame easily, as one who had long +prepared in secret. He lurked in my chambers for a week while the new +dress suit was a-making--his old one I really had to remonstrate +against--and then we went out to be admired. During the week's +retirement he secreted quite a wealth of things to say--appropriate +remarks on edibles, on music, on popular books, on conversation, +off-hand little things, jotting them down in a note-book as they came +into his mind, for he had a high conception of social intercourse, and +the public expectation. He was ever a methodical little gentleman, and +all these accumulations that he could not get into his talk, he +proposed to put away for the big volume of "Reminiscences" that was to +round off his life. At last he was a mere conversational firework, +crammed with latent wit and jollity, and ready to blaze and sparkle in +fizzing style as soon as the light of social intercourse should touch +him. + +But after we had circulated for a week or so, my uncle began to +manifest symptoms of distress. He had not had a chance. People did +not seem to talk at all in his style. "Where do the literary people +meet together, George? I am afraid you have chosen your friends ill. +Surely those long-haired serious people who sat round my joke like old +cats round a beetle--what is it?--were not the modern representatives +of a _salon_. Those abominable wig-makers' eccentricities who talked +journalistic 'shop,' and posed all over that preposterous room with the +draperies! Those hectic young men who have done nothing except run +down everybody! Don't tell me that is the literary society of London, +George. Where do they let off wit now, George? Where do they sparkle? +I want to sparkle. Badly. I shall burst, George, if I don't." + +Now really, you know, there are no salons now--I suppose we turn all +our conversation into "copy"--or the higher education has eliminated +the witty woman--and my uncle became more and more distressed. He said +a lot of his good things to me, which was sheer waste. I became +afraid. I got him all the introductions I could, pushed him into every +lion's den I had access to. But there was no relief. + +"I see what it is, George," said my uncle, "these literary people write +themselves out. They say nothing for private use. Their brains are +weary when they come into company. They get up in the morning fresh +and bright, and write, write, write. Then, when they are jaded, they +condescend to social intercourse. It is their way of resting. But why +don't they go to bed? No more clever people for me, George. Let us +try the smart. Perhaps among them we shall find smart talking still +surviving. _Allons_, George!" + +That is how my uncle came into collision with fashion, how I came to +take him to the Fitz-Brilliants. + +Of course you have heard of the Fitz-Brilliants? If you have not, it +is not their fault. They are the smartest people in London. Always +hard at work, keeping up to date, are the Fitz-Brilliants. But my +uncle did not appreciate them. Worse! They did not appreciate my +uncle. He came to me again, more pent up than ever, and the thing I +had feared happened. He began to discourse to me. It was about +Fashion, with a decided reference to the Fitz-Brilliants, and some +reflections upon the alleys of literary ability and genius I had taken +him through. + +"George," said my uncle, "_this Fashion is just brand-new vulgarity_. +It is merely the regal side of the medal. The Highly Fashionable and +the Absolutely Vulgar are but two faces of the common coin of humanity, +struck millions at a time. Spin the thing in the light of wealth, and +I defy you, as it whizzes from the illumination of riches to the shadow +of poverty, to distinguish the one stamp from the other. You cannot +say, here the _mode_ ends, and there the unspeakable thing, its +counterpart, has its beginning. Their distinction of mere position has +vanished, and they are in seeming as in substance one and indivisible." + +My uncle was now fairly under way. + +"The fashionable is the foam on the ocean of vulgarity, George, cast up +by the waves of that ocean, and caught by the light of the sun. It is +the vulgar--blossoming. The flower it is of that earthly plant, +destined hereafter to run to seed, and to beget new groves and +thickets, new jungles, of vulgar things. + +"Note, George, how true this is of that common property of the vulgar +and fashionable--slang. The apt phrase falls and applause follows, and +then down it goes. The essential feature of slang is words misapplied; +the essential distinction of a coarse mind from one refined, an +inability to appreciate fine distinctions and minor discords; the +essential of the vulgar, good example misused. First the fashionable +get the apt phrase, and bandy it about in inapt connections until even +the novelty of its discordance has ceased to charm, and thereafter it +sinks down, down. _Fin de siecle_ and _cliche_ have, for instance, +passed downward from the courts of the fashionable among journalists +into the unspeakable depths below. Soon, if not already, _fin de +siecle_ gin and onions and haddocks will be for sale in the +Whitechapel-road, and Harriet will be calling Billy a "cliche faced +swine." Even so do ostrich feathers begin a career of glory at the +Drawing-Room and the fashionable photographer's, and, after endless +re-dyeing, come to their last pose before a Hampstead camera on a +bright Bank Holiday. + +"The fashionable and vulgar are after all but the expression of man's +gregarious instinct. Every poor mortal is torn by the conflicting +dreads of being 'common-place,' and of being 'eccentric.' He, and more +particularly she, is continually imitating and avoiding imitation, +trying to be singular and yet like other people. In the exquisitely +fashionable and in the entirely vulgar the sheep-like longing is +triumphant, and the revolting individual has disappeared. The former +is a mechanical vehicle upon which the new 'correct thing' rides forth, +to extort the astonishment of men; the latter a lifeless bier bearing +its corrupt and unrecognisable remains away to final oblivion, amidst +universal execration. + +"It is curious to notice, George, that there has of late been a fashion +in 'originality.' The commonplace has turned, as it were, upon itself, +and vehemently denied its identity. So that people who were not +eccentric have become rare, and genius, so far as it is a style of +hairdressing, and originality, so far as it is a matter of etiquette or +morals, have become the habitual garments of the commonplace. The +introduction of the word 'bourgeois' as a comminatory epithet into the +English language, by bourgeois writers writing for the bourgeois, will +remain a memorial for ever, for the philological humourist to chuckle +over. If good resolutions could change the natures of men, opinion has +lately set so decidedly against the fashionable and the vulgar that +their continued existence in this world would be very doubtful. But +the leopard cannot change his spots so easily. While the stars go on +in their courses, until the cooling of the earth puts an end to the +career of life, and the last trace of his ancestral tendency to +imitation disappears as the last man becomes an angel, depend upon it, +George, the fashionable will ever pursue this chimaera of distinguished +correctness, and trail the inseparable howling vulgar in its wake--for +ever chased, like a dog with a tin can attached, by the horror of its +own tail." + +Thus my uncle. He had said a few of his things. It is possible his +trick of talking like a disarticulated essay had something to do with +his social discomfort. But anyhow he seemed all the better for the +release. + +"Talking of tails, George," he said, "reminds me. I noticed the men at +the Fitz-Brilliants' had their coats cut--well, I should say, just a +half inch shorter here than this of mine. Your man is not up to date. +I must get the thing altered to-morrow." + + + + +THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY + +He had been sitting with his feet upon the left jamb of my mantel, +admiring the tips of his shoes in silence for some time. + +"George," he said, dropping his cigar-ash thoughtfully into my +inkstand, in order, I imagine, to save my carpet, "have you ever done +pioneer work for Humanity?" + +"Never," I said. "How do you get that sort of work?" + +"I don't know. I met a man and a woman, though, the other night, who +said they were engaged in that kind of thing. It seems to me to be +exhausting work, and it makes the hair very untidy. They do it chiefly +with their heads. It consists, so I understand, of writing stuff in a +hurry, rushing about in cabs, wearing your hair in some unpleasant +manner, and holding disorderly meetings." + +"Who are these people?" + +"Never heard of them before, though they told me they were quite well +known. The lady asked me if I had been to Chicago." + +I chuckled. I could imagine no more hideous insult to my uncle. + +"I told her that I had been to most places south-eastward and eastward, +but never across the Atlantic. She informed me that I ought to have +gone to Chicago, and that America was a great country, and I remarked +that I had always thought it was so great that one could best +appreciate it at a distance. Then she asked me what I thought of the +condition of the lower classes, and I told her I was persuaded, from +various things I had noticed, that a lot of them were frightfully hard +up. And with that she started off to show whose fault it was, by the +Socratic method." + +"Entertaining?" + +"A little. I did not get all my answers right. For instance, when she +asked, 'Who sends the members of Parliament to Westminster?' I answered +her, 'The governors of the young ones and the wives of the others.' +And when she said that was wrong--I don't remember Socrates ever saying +bluntly that an answer was wrong--I said I supposed she referred to the +Evil One. It was very dull of me, of course, and it obliged her to +dictate the right solution. + +"Afterwards she threw over teaching me anything, and explained to me +all about her Movements. At least, I got really interested in her +Movements. One thing she said struck me very much, though it could +hardly be called novel. It was that the fads of one age were the +fashions of the next; that while the majority of people were engaged in +their little present-day chores, persons like herself are making the +laws and preparing the customs for the generation to follow." + +"Poor generations to follow!" I said. + +"Yes, but there is a lot of truth in it; and do you know there flashed +upon me all at once a great theory, the Theory of the Perpetual +Discomfort of Humanity. Just let me explain it to you, George," he +said, bringing himself round so that his legs hung over the arm of his +chair. "I think you will see I have made a very great discovery, gone +to the root of the whole of this bother of reform movement, advancement +of humanity, and the rest of it." He sucked his cigar for a moment. +"Each age," he said, "has its own ideals of what constitutes human +happiness." + +"A very profound observation," said I. + +"Looking down the vista of history, one may generalise and say that we +see human beings continually troubled by the conditions under which +they live. I can think of no time in the world when there was not some +Question or other getting fussed about: at one time episcopal celibacy, +at another time the Pict and Scot problem, and so on. Always a +crumpled rose-leaf. Hence reform movements. Now, reforms move slowly, +and by the time these reforms come about, the people whom they would +have made happy, and who fussed and encountered dislike and satire and +snubbing, and burning and boiling in oil, and suchlike discouragements, +for the sake of them, were dead and buried and mere sanitary problems. +The new people had new and quite different needs, and the reforms for +which their fathers fought and died more or less uncomfortably, and got +into debt with the printers, so soon as there were printers to get into +debt with, were about as welcome as belated dinner guests. You take +me? Ireland, when Home Rule comes home to it, will simply howl with +indignation. And we are living in the embodied discontent of the +eighteenth century. Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and Priestley would have +looked upon this age and seen that it was good--devilish good; and as +you know, George, to us it is--well, a bit of a nuisance anyhow. +However, most people are like myself, and try to be as comfortable as +they can, and no doubt the next generation might do very well with it. +And then the pioneer people begin legislating, agitating, and ordering +things differently. As you know, George, I am inclined to +conservatism. Constitutionally, I tend to adapt myself to my +circumstances. It seems to me so much easier to fit the man to the age +than to fit the age to the man. Let us, I say, settle down. We shall +never be able to settle down while they keep altering things. It may +not be a perfect world, but then I am not a perfect man: Some of the +imperfections are, at least, very convenient. So my theory is this: +the people whom the age suits fairly well don't bother--_I_ don't +bother; the others do. It is these confounded glaring and unshorn +anachronisms that upset everything. They go about flapping their +ideals at you, and writing novels with a motive, and starting movements +and societies, and generally poking one's epoch to rags, until at last +it is worn out and you have to start a new one. My conception of the +progress of humanity is something after the Wandering Jew pattern. +Your average humanity I figure as a comfortable person like myself, +always trying to sit down and put its legs somewhere out of the way, +and being continually stirred up by women in felt hats and short +skirts, and haggard men with those beastly, long, insufficient beards, +and soulful eyes, and trumpet-headed creatures, and bogles with +spectacles and bald heads, and nephews who look at watches. What are +you looking at your watch for, George? I'm very happy as I am. + +"Has it ever occurred to you, George, that one of the most +uncomfortable things in the world must be to outlive your age? To have +all the reforms of your boyish liberalism coming home to roost, just as +you are settling down to the old order.... + +"Six o'clock, by Jove! We shall keep them waiting if we don't mind." + + + + +THE USE OF IDEALS + +"Ideals!" said my uncle; "certainly Ideals. Of course one must have +ideals, else life would be bare materialism. Bare fact alone, naked +necessity, is impossible barren rock for a soul to root upon. Life, +indeed, is an unfurnished house, an empty glass in a thirsty land--good +and necessary for foundation, but insufficient for any satisfaction +unless we have ideals. Or, again, ideals are the flesh upon the +skeleton of reality, and it cannot live without them. + +"It always appears to me," said my uncle, "that the comparison of +ideals to furniture is particularly appropriate. They are the +draperies of the mind, and they hide the nakedness of truth. Your +fireplace is ugly, your mere necessary shelves and seats but planks and +crudity, all your surroundings so much office furniture, until the +skilful hand and the draperies come in. Then a few cunning loopings +and foldings, and behold softness and delicacy, crudity gone, and life +well worth the living. So that you cannot value ideals too highly. + +"Yet at the same time----" My uncle became meditative. + +"I would not have a man the _slave_ of his ideals. Hangings make the +room comfortable, but, after all, hangings _are_ hangings. Perhaps, +now and then--of course, I would not suggest continual inconstancy--a +slight change, a little rearrangement, even a partial replacement, +might brighten up the dear old dwelling-place. An ideal may be clung +to too fondly. When the moth gets into it, or the dust--did not +Carlyle warn us against this, lest they 'accumulate and at last produce +suffocation'? I am exactly at one with him there. + +"And that, as any Cabinet Minister explains every time he opens a +public library, is why we have literature. Good books are the +warehouses of ideals. Does it strike you your furniture is sombre, a +bit Calvinistic and severe--try a statuette by Pope, or a classical +piece out of Heine. Too much white and gold for every-day +purposes--then the Reverend Laurence Sterne will oblige. Urban tone +may be corrected by Hardy, and Lowell will give you urbanity. And, +however well you match and balance them, remember there is a time for +ideals, and a time when they are better out of the way. + +"The Philistine of Victorian literature, is a person without ideals, +the practical man. But just now the fashion is all for the things. +Ruskin and Carlyle set it going, and to-day the demand for ideals +exceeds the supply. And as a result, we meet with innumerable people +anxious to have the correct thing, but a little unsympathetic or +inexpert, and those unavoidable people who do not like the things but +feel compelled to get them. Ideals are not the easiest possessions to +have and manage, and they may even rise to the level of serious +inconveniences. So that I sometimes wonder these Extension people have +not taken up the subject of their management and use. + +"Note, for instance, the folly of bringing ideals too much into the +daily life; it is childish, like a baby insisting on its new toy at +meal times, and taking it to bed. Never use an ideal as a standard, +and avoid any that reflect upon your conduct. The extremest decorative +people refrain from enamelling their kettles, and my cook though a +'born lady' does not wear her silk dress in the kitchen. Ideals are +the full dress of the soul. A business man, for instance, who let +visions of reverend Venetian and Genoese seigniors interfere with his +agile City movements--who, to carry out our comparison, draped his mind +with these things--would be uncommonly like a bowler in a dressing-gown. + +"Then an ideal, we are also told, is an elevating influence in life; +but unless one is very careful one may get hoist with one's own petard +to a pitifully transitory soar above common humanity. The soar itself +is not unpleasant, but the sequel is sometimes disagreeable. + +"To show how an ideal may trip up an inexpert mortal, take that man +Javvers and his wife. She also had an ideal husband, which was, +indeed, a kind of bigamy, and her constant references to this creation +of hers used to drive poor old Javvers frantic. It became as +objectionable as if she had been its sorrowing widow, and ultimately it +wrecked the happiness of their little home very completely. + +"The seat of ideals, then, in one's mind, should be, as it were, a +lounge, over which these hangings may drape and flap harmlessly; but it +may easily become as the bed of Procrustes. To turn ideals to idols, +and to command your whole world to bow down to them, savours of the +folly of Nebuchadnezzar the king. Let your ideal world be far away +from reality, fit it with rococo furniture, angels and +birds-of-paradise, Minnesinger flowers and views of the Delectable +Mountains: and go there occasionally and rest--to return without +illusions, without encumbrance, but with renewed zest, to the sordid +world of the actual, the world of every day. Herein is the real use of +the ideal; all other is fanaticism and folly." + + + + +THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED + +"An album," said my uncle, as he sat and turned over my collection of +physiognomy, "is, I think, the best reading in the world. You get such +sidelights on the owner's heredity, George; distant cousins caricature +his features and point the moral of his nose, and ancestral faces +prophesy his fate. His friends, moreover, figure the secret of his +soul. But what a lot we have to learn yet in the art of being +photographed, what grotesque and awkward blunders your common sitters +make! Why, for instance, do men brush their hair so excessively when +they go before the lens? Your cousin here looks like a cheap chess +pawn about the head, whereas as I know him his head is a thing like a +worn-out paint-brush. Where but in a photograph would you see a +parting so straight as this? It is unnatural. You flatten down all a +man's character; for nothing shows that more than the feathers and +drakes' tails, the artful artlessness, or revolutionary tumult of his +hair. Mind you, I am not one of those who would prohibit a man wearing +what he conceives to be his best clothes to the photographer's. I like +to see the little vanity peeping out--the last moment's folly of a +foolish tie, nailed up for a lifetime. Yet all the same, people should +understand that the camera takes no note of newness, but much of the +cut and fit. And a man should certainly not go and alter his outline +into a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his troubled mane and +plastering it down with a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, but +hypocrisy. + +"We have indeed very much to learn in this matter. It is a thing that +needs teaching, like deportment or dancing. Plenty of men I have +noticed, who would never do it in real life, commit the sin of being +over-gentlemanly in an album. Their clothes are even indecently +immaculate. They become, not portraits, but fashion-plates. I hate a +man who is not rumpled and creased a little, as much as I do a brand +new pipe. And, as a sad example of sin on the other hand, on the side +of carelessness, I have seen renderings of a very august personage +indeed, in a hat--a _hat_! It was tilted, and to add to the atrocity, +he was holding a cigar. This I regard as horrible. Think! your +photograph may go into boudoirs. Imagine Gladys opening the album to +AEnone; 'Now I will show you _him_.' And there you sit, leering at +their radiant sweetness, hat on, and a cigar reeking between your +fingers. + +"No, George, a man should go very softly to a photographer's, and he +should sit before the camera with reverence in his heart and in his +attitude, as if he were in the presence of the woman he loved." + +He turned to Mrs Harborough's portrait, looked at it, hesitated, looked +again, and passed on. + +"I often think we do not take this business of photography in a +sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: +you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe. I know of one man +who has an error of youth of this kind on his mind--a fancy-dress +costume affair, Crusader or Templar--of which he is more ashamed than +many men would be of the meanest sins. For sometimes the camera has +its mordant moods, and amazes you by its saturnine estimate of your +merits. This man was perhaps a little out of harmony with the garments +of chivalry, and a trifle complacent and vain at the time. But the +photograph of him is so cynical and contemptuous, so merciless in its +exposure of his element of foolishness, that we may almost fancy the +spook of Carlyle had got mixed up with the chemicals upon the film. +Yet it never really dawned upon him until he had distributed this +advertisement of his little weakness far and wide, that the camera had +called him a fool to his face. I believe he would be glad now to buy +them all back at five pounds a copy. + +"This of Minnie Hobson is a work of art. Bless me, the girl must be +thirty-seven or thirty-eight now, and just look at her! These +photographers have got a trick now, if your face is one of the long +kind, of raising the camera, bending your head forward, and firing down +at you. So our Minnie becomes quite chubby again. Then, this thing +has been retouched." My uncle peered into the photograph. "It seems +to me it is pretty nearly all retouching. For instance, if you look at +the eye, that high light is not perfectly even; that was touched in on +the negative with a pencil. Then about the neck of our Minnie I have +observed certain bones, just the slightest indication of her +collar-bone, George, but that has disappeared under the retoucher's +pencil. Then the infantile smoothness of her cheek, and the +beautifully-rounded outline, is produced by the retoucher carefully +scraping off the surface of the film where the cheekbone projected with +a sharp knife. There are also in real life little lines between the +corner of our Minnie's mouth and her nostril. And again, Minnie is one +of those people whose dresses never seem to fit, but this fits like a +glove. These retouchers are like Midas, and they turn all that comes +to their hands to gold; or, like Spring, the flowers come back at their +approach. They reverse the work of Ithuriel, and restore brightness to +the fallen. They sit at their little desks, and scratch, scratch, +scratch with those delicate pencils of theirs, scratching away age, +scratching away care, making the crooked straight, and the rough +smooth. They are the fairies of photography, and fill our albums with +winsome changelings. Their ministry anticipates in a little way the +angels who will take us when we die, releasing us from the worn and +haggard body of this death, and showing something of the eternal life +and youth that glows within. Or one might say that the spirit of the +retoucher is the spirit of Love. It makes plain women beautiful, and +common men heroic. Her regal fingers touch for the evil of +ungainliness, and, behold, we are restored. Her pencil is like the +Queen's sword, and it makes knights out of common men. + +"When I have my photograph taken," said my uncle, "I always like to +think of the retoucher. I idealise her; I fancy her with the sweetest +eyes I have ever seen, and an expression infinitely soft and tender. +And she looks closely into my face, and her little pencil goes gently +and lovingly over my features. Tickle, tickle. In that way, George, I +get a really very nice expression indeed." My uncle turned to his own +presentment, and mused pleasantly for a space. Then he looked again at +Mrs Harborough as if inadvertently, and asked her name. + +"I like this newer way of taking your photograph, against a mere grey +background; just the head of you. One should always beware of the +property furniture of the photographer. In the seventies they were +great at such aids--a pedestal, a cork rustic stile, wide landscape in +the distance, but I think that we are at least getting beyond that now. +People in those days must have been afraid to be left alone before a +camera, or they wanted it to seem that they were taken unawares, quite +against their modesty--did not know what the camera was, and were just +looking at it. A very favourite pose for girls was a graceful droop +over a sofa, chin on elegant hand. When I was at Dribblebridge--I was +a bright young fellow then--I collected a number of local photographs, +ladies chiefly, and the thing was very noticeable when I put them in a +row over my mantleshelf. The local 'artist' was intensely fond of that +pose. But fancy the local leader finding her cook drooping over the +same sofa as herself! Nowadays, I see, you get merely the heads of +your girls, with their hair flossed up, intense light from above, and +faces in shadow. I think it is infinitely better. + +What horrible things hands become in a photograph! I wonder how it is +that the hand in a photograph is always four shades darker than the +arm. Every girl who goes to be photographed in evening dress should be +solemnly warned to keep her hands out of the picture. They will look +as though she has been enamelling the grate, or toying with a bucket of +pitch. There is something that sins against my conception of womanly +purity in those dark hands." + +My uncle shut the album. "Yes, it is a neglected field of education, +an important branch of deportment altogether forgotten. Our well-bred +ease fails us before the camera; we are lucky if we merely look stiff +and self-conscious. I should fancy there would be an opening for some +clever woman to teach people how to dress for the occasion and how to +sit, what to avoid and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in a state of +nervous agitation, obsequiously costumed; our last vestige of +self-assertion vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye of the +instrument, and we cower at the mercy of the thing and its attendant. +They make what they will of us, and the retoucher simply edits the +review with an eye to the market. So history is falsified before our +faces, and we prepare a lie for our grandchildren. We fail to stamp +our individualities upon our photographs, and are mere 'dumb-driven +cattle' in the matter. We sin against ourselves in this neglect, and +act against the spirit of the age. Sooner or later this haphazard +treatment of posterity must come to an end." He meditated for a +moment. Then, as if pursuing a train of thought, "That Mrs Harborough +is a very pretty woman, George. Where did you happen to meet her?" + + + + +BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS + +Bagshot was rather proud of his new quarters until my uncle called upon +him. Up to then he felt assured he was doing right; had, indeed, not +the faintest doubt in the matter until my uncle unsettled him. "Nice +carpet, Bagshot," said my uncle, "nice and soft. This chair certainly +very comfortable. But what the mischief do you mean--you, with your +pretence to culture--by hanging your dwelling with all those framed and +glazed photograph and autograph dittoes? I should have thought you at +least would have known better. Love and Life, and Love and Death, the +Daphnephoria, Rembrandt's portrait--Wild Havoc, man! What were you +thinking of?" + +Bagshot seemed staggered. He ventured to intimate feebly his +persuasion that the things were rather good. + +"Good they certainly are, and well reproduced, but only the Bible and +Shakspeare could stand this incessant reiteration, and not all +Shakspeare. These things are in shop windows, man--drawing-rooms, +offices, everywhere. They afflict me like popular songs--like popular +quotations. They are good enough--as a matter of fact they are too +good. Only, don't you know Willis has Love and Life and Love and +Death? And so has Smith, and Bays has Rembrandt's portrait in his +office, and my niece Euphemia has the Daphnephoria in her drawing-room. +I can't understand, George, why you let it stay there. It is possible +to have too much of a good thing. There is no getting away from these +all too popular triumphs. They cover up the walls everywhere. They +consume all other art. I shall write a schedule some day of the Fifty +Correct Pictures of the British People. And to find _you_, Bagshot, +among the Philistines!" + +"I thought they showed rather an improvement in the general taste," +said Bagshot. "There is no reason why a thing should not be common, +and yet very beautiful. Primroses, for instance----" + +"That is true enough, but pictures are not primroses," said my uncle. +"Besides, I think we like primroses all the better because they must +soon be over; but these are perennial blossoms, like the everlasting +flowers and dried grass of a lodging house. They may still be +beautiful, but by this time, Bagshot, they are awfully dry and dusty. +Who looks at them? I notice our eyes avoid them even while we talk +about them. We have all noticed everything there is to be noticed, and +said all the possible things that are to be said about them long ago. +Surely a picture must be a little fresh to please. Else we shall come +at last to the perfect picture, and art will have an end. Don't you +see the mere popularity of these things of the pavement is enough to +condemn them in the estimation of every right-minded person?" + +"I don't see it," said Bagshot, making head against the torrent. "I +cannot afford to go to these swells and get original work of theirs----" + +"What do you want with 'these swells' and their original work?" +interrupted my uncle fiercely. "Haven't they used up all their +originality ages ago? Is it not open to such men as yourself to +discover new men? There are men pining in garrets now for you, +Bagshot. Fancy the delight of having pictures that are unfamiliar, +pictures that catch the eye and are actually to be looked at, pictures +that suggest new remarks, pictures by a name that the stray visitor has +never heard of and which therefore puzzle him dreadfully because he +hasn't the faintest idea whether to praise or blame them! Isn't it +worth hunting studios for, and even, maybe, going to the Academy? +Besides, suppose your struggling artist comes to the front. What price +the five-guinea specimen of his early style then? Your artistic virtue +is indeed its own reward, and, besides, you can boast about finding +him. The poor man of culture and the struggling artist live for one +another, or at least they ought to--though I am afraid it is not much +of a living for the struggling artist." He paused abruptly. "I +suppose that autotype cost thirty shillings, and this carpet about five +pounds?" + +Bagshot assumed an elegant attitude against his bureau. He had +discovered his reply. "You know you are bitten by the fashion for +originality. Why should I make my room hideous with the work of +third-rate mediocrity, or of men who are still learning to paint, +simply in order to be unlike my neighbour?" + +"Why," returned my uncle, "should you hang up things less interesting +than your wall paper, in mere imitation of your neighbours? For this +on your walls, Bagshot, deny it though you may, is not art but fashion. +I tell you, you do not care a rap for art. You think pictures are a +part of virtue, like a silk hat--or evening dress at dinner. And in +your choice of pictures you follow after your kind. I never met a +true-born Briton yet who dared to buy a picture on his own +accord--unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a +true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these +things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are +beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful +Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe +that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. +Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their +Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new +Hippopotamus in the place of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the +correct thing in pictures this year, and no woman with any claim to be +considered smart will fail to have it over her piano. Marcus Stone's +new engraving will also be rather chic. Watts's Hope is now considered +a little dowdy.' And so forth. This gregarious admiration is the very +antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I tell you, simply must be +individual." + +"Go on," said Bagshot, "go on." + +"And that," said my uncle, with the glow of discovery in his face, +"that is where the vulgar critic goes wrong. He conceives an +orthodoxy. He tries to explain why Velasquez is better than Raphael +and Raphael better than Gerard Dow. As well say why a cirrus cloud is +better than a sycamore and a sycamore better than a scarlet hat. Every +painter, unless he is a mere operative, must have his peculiar public. +It is incredible that any painter can really satisfy the aesthetic needs +of such a public as these reproductions indicate. True art is always +sectarian. Why were Landseer and Sidney Cooper popular a few years +ago, and why does every tea-table sneer at them now? There must be +something admirable in them, or they would never have been admired. +Then why has my niece Annie dropped admiring Poynter, and why does she +pretend--and a very thin pretence it is--to admire Whistler?" + +"You are wandering from my pictures," said Bagshot. + +"I want to," said my uncle. "But why do you try and hide your taste +under these mere formalities in frames? Why do you always say 'I pass' +in the game of decoration? Better a mess of green amateurs and love +therewith, than the richest autotypes and dull complacency. Have what +you like. There is no such thing as absolute beauty. That is the +Magna Charta of the world of art. What is beautiful to me is not +beautiful to another man, in art as in women. But take care to get the +art that fits you. Frankly, that 'Love and Death' suits you, Bagshot, +about as much as a purple toga would. Orchardson is in your style. I +tell you that the greengrocer who buys an original oil painting for +sixteen shillings with frame complete is far nearer artistic salvation +than the patron of the popular autotype. Surely you will wake up +presently, Bagshot, and wonder what you have been about. + +"Half-past four, by Jove! I must be getting on. Well, Bagshot, ta-ta. +One must talk, you know. I really hope you will be comfortable in your +new rooms." + +And so good-bye to Bagshot, staring in a puzzled way at his reviled and +desecrated walls. + + + + +ON SOCIAL MUSIC + +My poor uncle came to me the other evening in a most distressful state, +broken down to common blasphemy. His ample front was rumpled with +sorrow and his tie disorderly aslant. His hair had gone rough with his +troubles. "The time I have had, George!" he panted. "Give me +something to drink in the name of Holy Charity." + +Since the _Pall Mall Gazette_ took to reporting his little sayings +about photographs and ornaments, ideals and fashions, he has been +setting up as a conversationalist. He thinks he was designed by +Providence to that end, and aids his destiny as much as he can by +elaborately preparing remarks. + +Yet this thing had happened. "They put," said my uncle, "a little chap +at the piano, and me at a very nice girl indeed as she looked; and the +little chap began, and so did I. I said a prelude thing of mine, brand +new and rather pretty." + +He stopped. He turned to nerve himself with whisky. + +"Well," I said, when the pause seemed sufficient; "what did she say?" + +My uncle looked unspeakable things. Then in a whisper, bending towards +me: + +"_She said----Sssh_!" + +He repeated it that I might grasp its full enormity, "_Sssh_!--so!" + +"What _is_ music," said my uncle, after a moody silence, "that +reasonable people should listen to it? I _had_ to listen to it myself, +and it struck me. It was just a tune this little chap was trying to +remember, and now he would come at it this way and now that. He never +got it quite right, though he fumbled about it for ten minutes or a +quarter of an hour. And then two girls went, and one punished the +piano while the other, with a wrist rather than an ear for music, +drowned its cries with a violin. So it went on all the evening, and +when I moved they all looked at me; I had been put on a nervous wicker +chair, and I knew my shoes squeaked like a carnival of swine, and so I +could not get away. And all the things that kept coming into my head, +George, the neat remarks and graceful sayings! + +"You see, I look at it in this light. Music is merely background, and +ought to be kept in its place. I am no enemy of music, George. The +air in a room should be melodious, for the same reason that it should +be faintly pleasing to the olfactory sense, and neither hot nor stuffy. +Just as the walls should be delightfully coloured and softly lit, and +the refreshments pleasant and at the moment of need. But surely we +meet for human intercourse. When I go to see people I go to see the +people--not to hear a hired boy play the piano. But these people plant +a _chevaux de frise_ of singers and performers upon instruments of +music between themselves and me. They gag me with a few pennyworths of +second-hand opera. There I was bursting to talk, and nice, +intelligent-looking girls to talk to, and whenever I began to say +something they said '_Sssh_!' Tantalus in a drawing-room it was--the +very Hades of hospitality. + +"Surely some day we shall learn refinement in our entertaining. Your +modern hostess issues her invitations and seems overcome with +consternation at her gathering. 'What _shall_ I do with all these +people?' she seems to ask. So she dabs cakes upon them, piles coffee +cups over them: 'Eat,' she says, 'and shut up!' and stifles their +protests with a clamorous woman and a painful piano. + +"No, of course I don't object to having music. But it is an accessory, +not an object, in life. It is, after all, a physical comfort, a +pleasant vibration in one's ears. To make an object of it is +sensuality. It is on all-fours with worshipping the wallpaper. Some +wall-papers are very beautiful things nowadays, harmonious in form and +colour, skilful in invention; but people do not expect you to sit down +and admire wall-paper, or promise you 'wallpaper at eight.' Neither do +they put an extinguisher over any girl who does not go with the +wall-paper, or expect you to dress in neutral tint on account of it, +and they are not hurt if you go away without seeming to see it. +Gustatory harmony, too, is very delicious. Yet there is no hush during +dinner; they do not insist upon a persistent gnawing in honour of the +feast. But these musical people! their god is their piano. They set +up an idol in their salon, and command all the world to bow down to it. +They found a priestcraft of pianists, and an Inquisition of fiddlers. +When I came away they were all crowded round a violin, the women +especially. They could not have fussed more if it had been a baby. +They stroked it and admired its figure. It _had_ rather a fashionable +figure, but the neck was too long...." + +I began to suspect the cause of this bitterness. + +"Yes. She was there. And while some of this piano was going on she +looked at the ear of the man who was playing with a dreamy, tender +look.... No. I couldn't get a word with her the whole evening." + + + + +THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED + +As I was passing the London University the other day I saw my uncle +emerge from the branch of the Bank of England opposite, and proceed in +the direction of the Burlington Arcade. He was elaborately disguised +as a young man, even to the youthful flower, and I was incontinently +smitten with curiosity respecting the dark purpose he might veil in +this way. There is, to me, a peculiar and possibly rather a childish +fascination in watching my more intimate friends unobserved, and, +curiously enough, I had never before studied the avuncular back view. +I found something singularly entertaining in the study of the graceful +contour of his new frock coat, and in the cheerful carriage of his +cane. He paraded, a dignified procession of one, some way down the +Arcade, hesitated for a moment outside a jeweller's shop, and then +entered it. I strolled on as far as Piccadilly, returned to the shop, +and so fell upon him suddenly in the midst of his buying. + +"Hullo, George!" he said hastily, facing me so as to hide as much of +the counter as possible. "How's Euphemia?" + +I looked him fairly in the eye. "You are buying a _ring_," I said in a +firm, decided voice. + +He turned to the counter with an air of surprise. "By Jove, so I am!" + +"A lady's ring," I said. He was, I could see, hastily collecting his +sufficiently nimble powers of subterfuge. "One must buy something, you +know, George, sometimes," he said feebly. + +He had selected some dozen or so already, the most palpable engagement +rings I think I ever saw. One of them had visible on its inner +curvature the four letters MIZP--. He looked at them, saw the posy, +and then, glancing at me, laughed affably. "I meant to tell you +yesterday, George--I will take these," to the shopman. And we emerged +with a superficial amiability; the case of rings in my uncle's pocket. +The thing was rather a shock to me, coming so suddenly and +unexpectedly. I had anticipated some innocent purchase of the +jewellery he reviles so much, but certainly not significant rings, +golden fetters for others to wear and enslave him; and we were past the +flowershop towards Hyde Park before either of us spoke. It seemed so +dreadful to me that the cheerful, talkative man beside me, my own +father's little brother, a traveller in distant countries, and a most +innocent man, and with all the inveterate habits of thirty years' +honourable bachelorhood and all the mellowness of life upon him, +should, without consulting me, have taken the first irrevocable step +towards becoming a ratepayer, a pew tenant, paterfamilias, a fighter +with schoolmasters, and the serf of a butler, that I scarcely knew what +to say adequate to the occasion. + +"Well," said I at last, with an involuntary sigh, "I suppose I must +congratulate you." + +"Don't look at it in that light, George," said my uncle; and he added +in a more cheerful tone, "I am only going to get engaged, you know." + +"You can scarcely imagine, George," he proceeded, "how I have longed to +be engaged. All my life it has been my hope and goal. It is, I think, +the ideal state of man. There was a chap with me when I was at +Kimberley who first put the idea into my head. His ways were animated +and cheerful even for a diamond field, where you know animation and +cheerfulness are, so to speak, _de rigueur_. Whisky he affected, and +jesting of the kind that paints cities scarlet. And he used every +night, before festivities began, to write a long letter to some girl in +England, and say, within limits, how bad he had been and how he longed +to reform and be with her, and never, never do anything wrong any more. +He poured all the higher and better parts of his nature into the +letter, and folded it up and sealed it very carefully. And then he +came to us in a singularly relieved frame of mind, and would be the +life and soul of as merry a game of follow-your-leader as one can well +imagine." + +Pleasant reminiscences occupied him for a moment. "Every man should be +engaged, I think, to at least one woman. It is the homage we owe to +womankind, and a duty to our souls. His _fiancee_ is indeed the +Madonna of a true-hearted man; the thought of her is a shrine at the +wayside of one's meditations, and her presence a temple wherein we +cleanse our souls. She is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, +something perhaps of the woman, possibly even propitious and helpful, +and yet something of the Holy Grail as well. You have no rights with +her, nor she with you; you owe her no definite duties, and yet she is +singularly yours. A smile is a favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint +pressure of your hand, is an infinite privilege. You cannot demand the +slightest help or concern of her, so you ask it with diffident grace +and there is an overflowing stream of gratitude from small occasions. +Whatever you give her is a gift too, while a husband is just property, +a mere draught-camel for her service. All your functions are +decorative, you hang her shrine with flowers and precious stones. You +treat her to art and literature, and as for vulgar necessities--some +one else sees to that." + +"Until you are married," began I. + +"I am speaking of being engaged. Marriage is altogether a different +thing. The essence of a proper engagement is reverence, distance, and +mystery; the essence of marriage is familiarity. A _fiancee_ is a +living eidolon; a wife, from my point of view at least, should be a +confidential companion, a fellow-conspirator, an accessory after the +fact, at least, to one's little errors; should take some share of the +burthen and heat of the day with one, and have the humour to bear with +a mood of vexation or a fit of the blues. I doubt, do you know, if the +same kind of girl is suitable for engagements as for marriage. For an +engagement give me something very innocent, a little awe-inspiring on +that account, absolutely and tenderly worshipful, yet given to moods of +caressing affection, and altogether graceful and beautiful. A man, I +think, ought to be incapable of smoking or lounging in front of the +girl he professes to love, so reverent ought his love to be. But for +marriage let me have humour and some community of taste, a woman who +can climb stiles and stand tobacco smoke, and who knows a good cook by +her fruits.... It is a complicated business, this marrying. + +"The familiarity of the marriage state, if it does not breed positive +contempt on the part of the angel, engenders at times, I think, a +considerable craving for change on the side of both parties. We men +are poor creatures at the best--I always pity your Euphemia. Married +people, for instance, always get too much of each other's conversation. +They do not have sufficient opportunity to recuperate their topics from +original sources. They get interested in outside people, merely from a +perfectly legitimate desire to get some amusing novel ideas for each +other, and then comes jealousy. I sometimes think that if Adam and Eve +had been merely engaged, she would not have talked with the serpent; +and the world had been saved an infinity of misery. + +"No, George: engagements for me. It is the state we were made for. I +have delayed this matter all too long. But, thank heaven, I am engaged +at last--I hope for all the rest of my life. Now, will you not +congratulate me?" + +"It may be very nice as you put it, but engagements end as well as +begin," I insisted. "You cannot be a law unto yourself in these +matters. When will you get married?" + +"Good Heavens!" exclaimed my uncle. "Get married and end this +delightful state! You don't think she will want me to marry her, do +you? Besides, she told me some time ago that she did not intend to +marry again. It was only that encouraged me to suggest an engagement +to her. Though she is a wonderful woman, George--a wonderful woman. +Still, I think she looks at things very much as I do." + +He paused thoughtfully. Then added with fervour, "At least I hope so." + + + + +LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI + +A RHAPSODY + +I found him in his own apartments, and strangely disordered. He went +to and fro, raving--beginning so soon as I entered the room. I noticed +a book half out of its cover, flung carelessly into the corner of the +room. + +"I am enchanted of an impalpable woman, George," he said, "I am in +bonds to a spirit of the air. I can neither think nor work nor eat nor +sleep because of her. Sometimes I go out suddenly, tramping through +seething streets, through fog and drizzle or dry east wind, mourning +for her sake. My life is rapidly becoming one colourless melancholy +through her spells and twining sorceries. I sometimes wish that I were +dead. + +"Yet I have never seen her. Often, indeed, I imagine her, anon as of +this shape, and anon of that. I know her only by her victims, those +she slays daily, and daily revives to slay. They come to me with their +complaints, mutilated, pathetic, terrible. I try to shut my ears to +them in vain. I have tried wool, but it made little or no difference. + +"The business always begins with the slamming of a door and a healthy +footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional +noises--the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and +its extraction by means of the tongs--I know it is tongs she uses by +the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to +play. She puts both her hands upon the key-board, and the treble +shrieks apprehensively, and the bass roars like a city in revolt. +After that this hush. Just this interval. + +"Yet I sometimes think this hush is really the worst of it all. It is +a voluminous apprehension, a towering impendency. You don't +understand, George. You can't. The poor devil in Poe's 'Pit and the +Pendulum' must have had a taste of my sensations. A first victim is +being chosen. I have a vision of the spirits of composers small and +great--standing up like suspects awaiting identification, while her eye +ranges over them. Chopin tries to edge behind Wagner, a difficult and +forbidding person, and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendelssohn, who +suddenly drops and crawls on all fours between Gounod's legs; Sullivan +cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed nerves desert him. She +extends her hand. There is a frantic rush to escape. Have you ever +seen a little boy picking dormice out of a cage? I always see this +same nightmare during that dreadful pause, a vision of a writhing heap +of kicking, struggling, maddened composers, and of a ghoulish piano +grinning expectant, jaw raised--lid I mean--and showing all its black +and yellow keys. ... A melancholy shriek. Do you hear, George? Tito +Mattel is captured. A song. + +"'Pum--So long the way--Pum--so dark the day--Pum--DEAR HEART! before +you come.' So Tito Mattel comes pumming through the wall into my +presence. I don't pity him. Indeed it is a positive relief that it is +only Tito Mattel. The man's no deity at the best, and a little pulling +out, and pulling crooked, and general patching together of limbs in the +wrong place scarcely matters so far as he and my taste are concerned. +Yet I always leave my work, George, when that begins, and walk about +the room. I try to persuade myself that I need fresh air, but the +autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has all the uninviting harshness +of truth--I admit I do not. Tito flops about, is riddled with dropped +notes and racked with hesitations, and presently becomes still. The +murder is over. + +"What next? That Study of Chopin's! This time the thing is more +inspiring. Once upon a time it was a favourite of mine. Now it is a +favourite of the unseen lady's. She plays it with spirit, and conjures +up strange fancies in my brain. The noises that come through the wall +now, quicker, thicker, louder, are full of a tale of weltering +confusion, marine disaster, a ship in sore labour; there is a steady +beating like the sound of pumps, and a trickle of treble notes. There +are black silences, like thunderclouds, that burst into flashes of +music. Now the poor melody swings up into the air--then comes one of +those terrible pauses, and now down into the abyss. A crash, an +ineffectual beating, a spasmodic rush. I seem to hear the pumps again, +distant, remote, ineffectual. But that is not so; the struggle is +over. Chopin's Study has been battered to pieces; only disarticulated +fragments toss amidst the froth. High up the confusion of the stormy +sky she drives in a sieve dropping notes--the witch of the storm. La +Belle Dame Sans Merci. + +"But the third piece in her repertory has begun--Rubinstein. This, at +any rate, is familiar. She plays with the confidence born of long +unpunished misdoing. That Rubinstein must indeed be sorry, and unless +their elysium is like the library of the Linnaean Society, and fitted +with double windows, all the great departed musicians must be sorry +too, that he ever wrote a Melody in F. Daily from the altars of a +thousand, of ten thousand, school pianos that melody cries to heaven. +From the empire of the music master, upon which the sun never sets, day +and night, week in week out, from year to year, Rubinstein's Melody in +F streams up for ever. These school pieces are like the Latin ritual +before the Reformation, they link all Christendom by a common use. As +the earth spins, and the sunlight sweeps ever westward, that melody +passes with the day. Now it is tinkling in a grey Moravian school, now +it dawns upon the Adige and begins in Alsace, now it has reached +Madrid, Paris, London. Then a devotee in some Connemara Establishment +for Young Ladies sets to. Presently tall ships upon the silent main +resound with it, and they are at it in the Azores and in Iceland, and +then--one solitary tinkling, doubling, reduplicating, manifolding into +an innumerable multitude--New York takes up the wondrous tale. On then +with the dawn to desolate cattle ranches, the tablelands of Mexico, the +level plains of Illinois and Michigan. So the great tide that started +in Rubinstein's cranium proceeds upon its destiny. Always somewhere +between the hours of eleven and two it comes back to me here, poor +hunted composition, running its eternal world gauntlet, pursuing its +Wandering Jew pilgrimage, and I curse and pity it as it goes by.... It +has gone. The 'Maiden's Prayer' is next usually. Then one of the +'Lieder ohne Worte,' then the 'Dead March'--all of them but the meagre +and mutilated skeletons of themselves; things of gaps and tatters, like +gibbet trophies. They are as knocked about as a fleet coming out of +action, they are as twisted and garbled as a Chinese war telegram; it +is like an hospital for congenitally diseased compositions taking the +air. And they have to hobble along sharply too; there is a certain +cruel decision in the way the notes are struck, a Nurse Gillespie touch +about this Invisible Lady. Or it may be the callousness of old habit, +a certain sense of a duty overdone, a certain impatience at the long +delay. You will hear. + +"Listen!--_Tum Tum Ti-ti-tum_--No!--_tum_. Slight pause. Tum _tum +twiddle_--vigorous crescendo--TUM. This is unusual! A stranger? A +new piece for La Belle Dame Sans Merci? Her wonted reckless dash +deserts her. She is, as it were, exploring a new region, and advances +with mischievous coyness, with an affectation of a faltering heart, +with hesitating steps. My imagination is stimulated by these dripping +notes. I see her, as it were, on an uneven pavement; here the flags +are set on end, there fungi have tilted them, a sharp turning of the +page may reveal heaven knows what horrors; presently comes a black gap +with a vault of dusty silence below. A pause, an incoherency, a +repetition! She has encountered some difficulty, some slumbering coil +of sharps and flats, and it raises its bristling front in her way.... +She has fled back to the opening again. I begin to wonder what unhappy +musician lies hidden in this new ruin, behind the bars of this +melancholy confusion. There is something familiar but elusive, like a +face that one has known and loved and lost and met again after the +cruel changes of intervening years. It conjures up oddly enough a +vision of a long room in the twilight, and an acacia in silhouette +against the pale gold of the western sky. Ah! now I know! + +"_That_ of all pieces! + +"I must have my walk, George. I cannot bear to hear that old-familiar +music so evilly entreated. But, all the same, the memory it has +touched will vibrate and smart; to-day and to-morrow, and I know not +for how many days, it will re-echo in my brain. All the old cloudy +remorse that has subsided will be set astir again. I shall hear again +a light touch upon the keys, see again the shadowy face against the +sunset, try to recall the sound of a voice.... What evil spirit has +put this mockery into the head of La Belle Dame? Surely without +this----" + +He made a dive at the folding doors and presently reappeared in his +coat. It was the only intimation I ever had that my dear little uncle +had such a thing as a Past. + + + + +ON A TRICYCLE + +I sat on the parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water +that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge +the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the +sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the +big oak trees that bent towards each other from either bank. Through +their speckled tracery of green one saw the hazy blue depths of the +further forest. I was watching the proceedings of some quick-moving +brown bird amid the rushes and marsh marigolds of the opposite bank. + +"Pleasant," said a voice beside me. + +I turned, and saw my uncle. He was disguised in a costume of +reddish-brown cloth. "Golf here?" said I, and then I noticed the +tricycle. "A vagrom man on wheels!" + +Both the suit and the machine became him very well. The machine was +low, and singularly broad between the wheels, and altogether equal to +him, and it had chubby pneumatic tires and a broad and even imposing +wallet. + +"Yes," said he, following my eye. "It is a handsome machine, a full +dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is +as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and +gentlemanly affair--if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these +things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is +altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, +with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been +so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could +not bring myself to it. But a Bishop might ride _that_ thing." + +He swung himself up upon the parapet beside me and lit a cigar. + +"The bicycle for boys, George--or fools. The things will not keep up +for a moment without you work at them, they need constant attention; I +would as soon ride a treadmill. You cannot loaf with them, and the +only true pleasure of cycling is to loaf. Yet only this morning did I +meet an elderly gentleman with a beard fit for Abraham, his face all +crimson and deliquescent with heat, and all distorted with the fury of +his haste, toiling up a hill on one of these unstable instruments. +When he saw me coming down in all my ease and dignity he damned at me +with his bell. Now, I do not like to see a bicycle wobble under a load +of years, and steer into the irascible. As years increase tempers +shorten, and bicycles, even the best of bicycles, are seductively +irritating. + +"Besides, the devil of the Wandering Jew has power over all such as go +upon two wheels. 'Onward,' he says, 'onward! Faster, thou man! This +green and breezy earth is no abiding place for you!' And +hard-breathing, crook-shaped, whirling, bell-banging lunatics try and +race you. They whiz by, thinking indignities of your dignified +progress, and sometimes saying them. Not one cyclist in a dozen, +George, and seemingly not a solitary bicyclist, seems to think of +anything but getting to the end of his pleasure. I meet these servants +of the wheel at the inns, and they tell short stories and sketches +about their pace, and show each other their shoes and saddles, and +compare maps and roads; some even try to trade machines. They talk +most indecently of the makes and prices. I would as soon ask a man who +was his tailor or where he got his hair cut and how much he paid. One +man I met was not so much a man as a hoarding, blatant about the +Gaspipe Machine Company. For them no flowers exist, no wild birds, no +trees, no landscapes, no historical memorials, and no geological +associations, nothing but the roads they traverse and the bicycles they +ride. Those that have other interests have them in the form of cheap +portable cameras, malignant things that can find no beauty in earth or +heaven." + +"George," said my uncle, suddenly, and I knew he had come upon a great +discovery; "real human beings are scarce in this world." + +"You speak bitterly," said I. "I know what has happened. You are hot +from an inn full of the viler type of cyclist, and I presume that, +after their custom, they mocked at your machinery. But don't blacken a +popular exercise on that account." + +"But these men are so aggressive! I tell you, George, it requires +moral courage to ride a tricycle about at a moderate pace, as a man of +discretion should. They want to make a sport of it; they are +race-struck, incapable of understanding a man who rides at seven miles +an hour when he might ride at fifteen. Read their special papers. +They mock and sneer at everything but pace; they worship the makes of +'94 in the interests of their advertising columns; touring simply means +hotel-touting to them, and landscape, deals in cameras; in the end they +will kill cycling--indeed, they are killing it. It is not nice to be +mocked at even when you are in the right; a blatant cad is like a +rhinoceros, and admits of no parleying, only since you must not kill +him you are obliged to keep out of his way. The common cyclist has +already driven ladies off the roads by forcing the pace, the honeymoon +tandem returns with its feelings hurt at his jesting, and now he is +driving off all quiet men." + +"All this," said I, "because they said something disrespectful about +your machine at the last inn... You don't, I see, approve of the +feminine bicycle?" + +My uncle did his best to be calm and judicial. + +"A woman in a hurry is one of the most painful sights in the world, for +exertion does not become a woman as it does a man. Let us avoid all +prejudice in this matter, George, and discuss it with open minds. She +has, in the first place, a considerable length of hair, and she does it +up into rich and beautiful shapes with things called hairpins and with +curling irons. Very few people have hair that curls naturally, George. +You are young, but you are married, and I see nothing improper in +telling you these things. Well, when a woman rides about, exerting +herself violently to keep a bicycle going, her hair gets damp and the +pleasing curls lose their curliness and become wet, straggling bands of +hair plastered over her venous forehead. And a tragic anxiety is +manifest, an expression painful for a man to meet. Also her hairpins +come out and fall on the road to wait for pneumatic tires, and her hair +is no longer rich and beautiful in form. Then she gets dirty, horribly +dirty, as though she had been used to sweep the roads with. And her +skirts have to be weirdly altered, even to the divided skirt, so that +when she rides she looks like a short, squat little man. She not only +loses her beauty but her dignity. Now, for my own part, I think a man +wants a woman to worship--it is a man's point of view, of course, but I +can't help my sex--and the worshipping of these zouaves is incredible. +She is nothing more than a shorter, fuller, and feebler man. Heaven +help her! For the woman on the tricycle there are ampler excuses as +well as ampler skirts, the exertion is not too violent for grace and +coolness, and the offensive bulging above one narrow wheel is avoided. +But women will never sacrifice so much for so little; worshipfulness, +beauty, repose, and comfort for a paltry two or three miles more an +hour of pace. They know too well the graces of delay. To do things +slowly, George, is part of the art of living. Our sex learns that when +its youthful fervour is over and all the things are done. But women +are born wise." + +"By the bye," said I, "how is Mrs Harborough?" + +"Very well, thanks. How is Euphemia? Your bit of view, George, is +pretty, but I think I will have some heather now. There is a common +three miles ahead. This indeed is the true merit of cycling. For a +view, a panorama; for one picture, a gallery. Your true artist in +cycling sits by the roadside, and rides only by way of an interlude. +As for the worship of the machine, I would as soon worship a +scene-shifter." + +He dropped off the bridge and mounted his machine, and was presently +pursuing his smooth and noiseless way. As he vanished round the corner +he sounded his gong. It was really a most potent, grave, and reverend +gong, with a certain note of philosophical melancholy in its tone, as +different from the vulgar tang of your common cycle as one can well +imagine. It asked you, at your convenience, sir (or madam), to get out +of the way, to stand aside and see a most worthy and dignified +spectacle roll by, if so be you had the mind for it. As for any +scolding insistence, any threat of imminent collision, there was none +of it. It was the bell of a man who loved margins, who was at his +ease, and would have all the world at its ease. More than anything +else, it reminded me of the boom of some ivy-clad church tower, warning +the world without unseemly haste that another hour had, with leisurely +completeness, accomplished itself. + +And so he passed out of my sight and was gone. + + + + +AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE + +(AUTHORESS UNKNOWN) + +He pushed it away from him. + +"I felt as though I had disturbed the graves of the long departed," he +said with a grimace, and then addressing the egg: "Forgive me the +sacrilege: they sold you to me as new laid, a mere thing of yesterday. +I had no idea I was opening the immemorial past. _De mortuis nihil +nisi bonum_--to you at least the quotation will be novel. Or I might +call you bad, you poor mummy. + +"Unhappy, pent-up, ineffectual thing!" he said, waving his jilted bread +and butter, and addressing the discarded inedible. "Poor old maid +among eggs! And so it has come to this absolute failure with you. Why +were you ever laid? Surely, since you were once alive, some lurking +aspiration, some lowly, and yet not lowly, but most divine, striving +towards the Higher and the Better, hath stirred within you. The warm +sunlight shone through your translucent shell, the sweet air stirred +the sweet hay of the nest, and life called you from your dreaming to +awake, and join it in its interplay. And now! You might have +been--what might you not have been? A prize hen, fountain of a +broadening stream of hens, chicks, dozens of chicks, hundreds of +chicks, a surging ocean of chickens. Had you been hatched among the +early Victorian chickens that were, I presume, your contemporaries, by +now you might have been a million fowl, and the delight and support of +hundreds of thousands of homes. You might have been worth thousands of +pounds and have eaten corn by the ton. They might have written +articles about you in half-crown reviews and devoted poultry farms to +your sole support. And instead you have been narrowed down to this +sordid back-street tragedy, a mere offence, tempting a struggling +tradesman to risk the honour of my patronage of his books, for a paltry +fraction of a pennyworth of profit. Why, I ask you, were you not +hatched? Was it lack of courage? a fear of the unknown dangers that +lie outside the shell? + +"An indescribable pity wells up in me for this lost egg, this dead end +in the tree of life, George. One thinks of the humble but deserving +amoeba, the primordial metazoon, the first fish, the remote reptile +ancestor, the countless generations of forefathers that, so far as this +egg went, have lived and learnt and suffered in vain. The torrent of +life had split and rushed by on either side of it. And you might," +cried he, turning to the egg again, "have been a Variety, a novelty, +and an improvement in chickens. No chick now will ever be _exactly_ +the chick you might have been. Only an Olive Schreiner could do full +justice to your failure, you poor nun, you futile eremite, you absolute +and hopeless impasse. Was it, I ask again, a lack of courage? + +"Perhaps a lack of opportunity? It may be you stirred and hoped in the +distant past, and the warmth to quicken you never came. Ambition may +have fretted you. Indeed, now I think of it, there is something in the +flavour of you, singularly suggestive of disappointed ambition. In +literature, and more particularly in criticism, I can assure you I have +met the very fellow of your quality, from literary rotten eggs whose +opening came too late. They are like the genii in the 'Arabian Nights' +whom Solomon, the son of David, sealed in the pot. At first he +promised infinite delights to his discoverer--and his discoverer +lagged. In the end he was filled with unreasonable hatred against all +the feeble free, and emerged as a malignant fume, eager to wreak +himself upon the world. + +"A sudden thought, George! I see my egg in a new light, and all my +pity changes to respect. Surely it is a most potent egg, a +gallinaceous Swift. After all, anything but pointless and childless, +since it has this strange quality of being offensive and engendering +thought. Food for the mind if not food for the body--didactic if not +delightful--a bit of modern literature, earnest and fundamentally real. +I must try and understand you, Ibsen Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound +parable I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely reckoned on a parable +with my bread and butter. Frankly, I must confess I bought it for the +eating." + +Now that my uncle had at last begun to grasp the true greatness of his +egg, he apparently considered it becoming to drop the tone of +half-patronising pity he had previously adopted. "Come," said he, +smiling, with a dash of raillery, over his coffee-cup; "admit you are a +humbug, you whitened sepulchre of an anticipated chick! Until you +found a congenial soul and overwhelmed me with your confidence, what a +career of deception--not mean, of course, but cynical--ironical--you +have been leading. What a jest it must have been to you to be sold as +new laid! How you laughed in your quiet way at the mockery of life. +Surely it was a worthy pair to Swift in cassock and bands conducting a +marriage service. I can well fancy your silent scorn of the hand that +put you in the bag. New laid! But now I have the full humour of you. +You must pardon my dulness of apprehension. I grasp your meaning now; +your quiet insistent teaching that all life is decay and all decay is +life. No forcing the accent, no crudity, but a pervading persuasion. +A noble gospel!" + +He paused impressively, placed the egg respectfully upon his bureau, +and presently went off at a tangent to something else. + +"Shall I throw this away?" said the girl. + +"Good heavens! Throw it away? Certainly not. Put it in the library." +(The library used to be the corner of the room by the window.) + +She stared at me with a certain attempt at confidence. She is a +callous, impertinent kind of girl, and I fear inclined to be bold. "It +_do_ smell, sir," she said to him. + +"That's the merit of it. It's irony. Go and put it on the fourth +shelf near the window. There are some yellow-covered books there, and +Swift, some comedies by a gentleman named Ibsen, and a couple of novels +by two gentlemen named George ------. But there! you don't know one +book from another! The fourth shelf from the top on the right-hand +side." + +As the girl did so she looked over her hand at me, and lifted her +eyebrows very slightly. + + + + +THE GREAT CHANGE + +My uncle had been hectic all day. I knew and dreaded what was coming, +and said nothing that by any chance could lead up to it. + +He absent-mindedly tipped the emu sixpence. Then we came to the wart +hog. + +"A bachelor," he said, meditatively, scratching the brute's back. + +I hastily felt for a saving topic in the apprehensive darkness of my +mind, and could find none. + +"I expect I shall be married in October," said my uncle. Then, +sighing: "The idyll of my engagement was short-lived." + +It was out. Now, the day--my last idle day with my poor uncle--was a +hideous wreck. All the topics he had fluttered round vanished, and, +cold and awful, there loomed over us the one great topic. + +"What do you _think_ of marriage, George?" said my uncle, after a +pause, prodding the wart hog suddenly. + +"That's your privilege," said I. "Married men don't dare to think of +it. Bigamy." + +"Privilege! Is it such a headlong wreck of one's ideals as they say?" +said my uncle. "Is that dreamland furniture really so unstable in use?" + +"Of course," said I, "it's different from what one expects. But it +seems to be worse for the other party. At least to judge from the +novels they engender in their agony." + +"So far as I can see," he proceeded, "what happens is very similar to a +thing a scientific chap was explaining to me the other day. There are +some little beasts in the sea called ascidians, and they begin life as +cheerful little tadpole things, with waggling tails and big expressive +eyes. They move freely about hither and thither, and often travel vast +distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis +begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself +head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a +mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck +round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He +loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses his bright +expressive eye." + +"The bother of it," said I, "is that very often the wandering +expressive eye is not lost in the human metamorphosis." + +"Putting it in another way, one might say that the kind of story that +Ovid is so fond of describing, the affairs of Daphne and Io, for +instance, are fables of the same thing: an interlude of sentiment and +then a change into something new and domesticated, rooted, fixed, and +bounded in." + +"It is certainly always a settling down," said I. + +"I don't like this idea of settling down, George." He shuddered. "It +must be a dreadful thing to go about always with a house on your mind." + +"You get used to it. And, besides, you don't go about so much." + +He gave the bachelor wart hog a parting dig, and we walked slowly and +silently through the zebra-house towards the elephants. "Of course we +do not intend to settle down," he said presently, with a clumsy effort +to render his previous remarks impersonal. + +"A marriage invalidates all promises," I explained. "The law +recognises this in the case of wills." + +"That's a new view," he said, evidently uncomfortable about something. + +"It follows from your doctrine of metamorphosis. A marries B. Then +the great change begins. A gradually alters into a new fixed form, C, +while B flattens and broadens out as D. It is a different couple, and +they cannot reasonably be held responsible for the vagaries of A and B." + +"That ought to be better understood." + +"It would perhaps be as well. Before marriage Edwin vows to devote his +life to Angelina, and Angelina vows she will devote her life to Edwin. +After marriage this leads to confusion if they continue to believe such +promises. Marriage certainly has that odd effect on the memory. You +remember Angelina's promises and forget your own, and _vice versa_." + +"There is no apparition more distressing than the ghost of a dead +promise," said my uncle. "Especially when it is raised in the house of +your friends." + +We passed through the elephant house in silence. + +"I wonder what kind of man I shall be after the change, George. It's +all a toss-up," he continued, after an interval. "I have seen some men +improved by it. You, for instance. You were a mere useless, indecent +aspirant to genius before the thing came upon you. Now you are a +respectable journalist and gracefully anxious to give satisfaction to +your editor. But my own impression is that a man has to be a bit of an +ass before he can be improved by marriage. Most men get so mercenary, +they simply work and do nothing a rational creature should. They are +like the male ants that shed their wings after the nuptial flight. And +their wives go round talking fashion articles, and calling them dear +old stupids, and flirting over teacups with the unmarried men, or +writing novelettes about the child-man, and living their own lives. +I've been an unmarried man and I know all about it. Every intelligent +woman now seems to want to live her own life when she is not engaged in +taking the child-man out into polite society, and trying to wean him +from alcohol and tobacco. However, this scarcely applies to me." + +"Not now," I said. And he winced. + +"I wonder how it feels. Most men go into this without knowing of the +change that hangs over them. But I am older. It would not be nice for +a caterpillar if he knew he was going to rip up all along his back in a +minute or so. Yet I could sympathise with such a caterpillar now. +Anyhow, George, I hope the change will be complete. I would not like +to undergo only a partial metamorphosis, and become a queer speckled +monster all spotted with bachelor habits. Yet I sometimes think I am +beyond the adolescent stage, and my habits rather deeply rooted. +Hitherto, I have always damned a little at braces and collars and +things like that. I wish I knew where one could pick up a few +admissible expletives. And I loaf about London all day sometimes +without any very clear idea of what I am after, telling chaps in +studios how to paint, and talking to leisurely barristers, and all that +kind of thing." + +"_She_," I said, "will probably help you to conquer habits of that +sort." + +"Yes, I dare say she will," said my uncle. "I forgot that for the +minute." + + + + +THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE + +My uncle came to a stop outside a stationer's shop in Oxford-street. +When I saw what had caught his attention I reproached myself for my +thoughtlessness. + +"Come," said I, "tell me what you think of--of representative +government." + +"It's no good, George. You did the same thing at the cake shop. Do +you think I never saw the cake shop? Since this affair was settled I +think every shop I pass reminds me of it--even the gunsmith's. I never +suspected before how entirely retail trade turned on marriage--except, +perhaps, the second-hand book shops. The whole world seems a-marrying. + +"It's queer," said he, "that a little while ago the thing that worried +me to the exclusion of everything else was the idea of being married, +and now it is so near it's entirely the getting married that upsets me. +I have forgotten the horrid consequences in the horror of the +operation." + +"It's much the same," said I, "at an execution." + +"Look at those cards." He waved his hand towards a neat array of +silver and white pasteboard. "'Jemima Smith,' with an arrow through +the Smith, and 'Podger' written above it, and on the opposite side 'Mr +and Mrs John Podger.' That is where it has me, George." + +We went on past a display of electroplate with a card about presents in +the window, past a window full of white flowers, past a +carriage-builder's and a glove shop. "It's like death," said my uncle; +"it turns up everywhere and is just the same for everybody. In that +cake shop there were piles and piles of cakes, from little cakes ten +inches across up to cakes of three hundredweight or so; all just the +same rich, uneatable, greasy stuff, and with just the same white sugar +on the top of them. I suppose every day they pack off scores. It +makes one think of marrying in swarms, like the gnats. I catch myself +wondering sometimes if the run of people really are separate +individuals, or only a kind of replicas, without any tastes of their +own. There are people who would rather not marry than marry without +one of those cakes, George. To me it seems to be almost the most +asinine position a couple of adults can be in, to have to buy a stone +or so of that concentrated biliousness and cut it up, or procure other +people to cut it up, and send it round to other adults who would almost +as soon eat arsenic. And why cake--infantile cake? Why not biscuits, +or cigarettes, or chocolate? It seems to me to be playing the fool +with a solemn occasion." + +"You see, it is the custom to have cake." + +"Well, anyhow, I intend to break the custom." + +"So did I, but I had it all the same." + +My uncle looked at me. + +"You see," said I, "when a woman says you must do this or that--must +have cake at a wedding, for instance--you must do it. It is not a case +for argument. It is a kind of privilege they have--the categorical +imperative. You will soon learn that." + +Evidently the question was open. "But _why_ do they say you must?" + +"Other women tell them to. They would despise any one dreadfully who +did not have a really big cake--from that shop." + +"But why?" + +"My dear uncle," said I, "you are going into matrimony. You do not +show a proper spirit." + +"The cake," said my uncle, "is only a type. There is this trousseau +business again. Why should a woman who is going to marry require a +complete outfit of that sort? It seems to suggest--well, pre-nuptial +rags at least, George. Then the costume. Why should a sane healthy +woman be covered up in white gauze like the confectionery in a shop +window when the flies are about? And why----?" + +He was going on in quite an aggressive tone. "There isn't a _why_," I +said, "for any of it." This sort of talk always irritates a married +man because it revives his own troubles. "It's just the rule. Surely, +if a wife is worth having she is worth being ridiculous for? You ought +to be jolly glad you don't have to wear a fool's cap and paint your +nose red. 'More precious than rubies'----" + +"Don't," he said. + +"It must be these tradesmen," he began bitterly after an interval. +"Some one must be responsible, and it's just their way. Do you know, +George, I sometimes fancy that they have hypnotised womankind into the +belief that all these uncomfortable things are absolutely necessary to +a valid marriage--just as they have persuaded the landlady class that +no house is complete without a big mirror over the fireplace and a +bulgy sideboard. There is a very strong flavour of mesmeric suggestion +about a woman's attitude towards these matters, considered in the light +of her customary common sense. Do you know, George, I really believe +there is a secret society of tradesmen, a kind of priesthood, who get +hold of our womenkind and muddle them up with all these fancies. It's +a sort of white magic. Have you ever been in a draper's shop, George?" + +"Never," I said: "I always wait outside--among the dogs." + +"Have you ever read a ladies' newspaper?" + +"I didn't know," said I, "that there was any part to read. It's all +advertisements; all the articles are advertisements, all the +paragraphs, the stories, the answers to correspondents--everything." + +"That's exactly what makes me think the tradesmen have hypnotised the +sex. It may be they do it in those drapers' dens. A man spots that +kind of thing at once and drops the paper. Women go on year after +year, simply worshipping a paper hoarding of that kind, and doing +patiently everything they are told to do therein. Anyhow, it is only +in this way that I can account for all these expensive miseries of +matrimony. I can't understand a woman in full possession of her +faculties deliberately exasperating the man she has to live with--I +suppose all men submit to it under protest--for these stale and +stereotyped antics. She _must_ be magnetised." + +"They are not stale to her," I said. + +"Mrs Harborough----" he began. + +"Of course, a widow!--I forgot," I said. "But she seems so young, you +know." + +"And putting aside the details," said my uncle, with a transient dash +of cheerfulness at my mistake; "I object to the publicity of the whole +thing. It's not nice. To bring the street arab into the affair, to +subject yourself to the impertinent congratulations and presents of +every aspirant to your intimacy, to be patted on the back in the local +newspapers as though you were going to do something clever. Confound +them! It's not their affair. And I'm too old to be a blushing +bridegroom. Then think, what am I to do, George, if that cad Hagshot +sends me a present?" + +"It would be like him if he did," I said. "I fancy he will." + +"I can't go and kick him," said my uncle. + +"Declined with thanks," I suggested, "owing to pressure of other +matter." + +"You are getting shoppy, George," said my uncle, in as near an approach +to a querulous tone as I have heard from him. + +"You are getting married," I replied, with the complacency of one whose +troubles are over. "But it's a horrible nuisance, anyhow. Still, the +world grows wiser, and the burden is not quite so bad as it used to be. +A hundred years hence----" + +"I'd be willing enough to wait," said my uncle; "but I'm not the only +party in this affair." + + +He was willing enough to wait, perhaps, but time was inexorable. Save +for one hurried interview, I did not see him again for a week, and then +it was before the altar. His garrulity had fallen from him like a +garment. He was preoccupied and a trifle bashful. He fumbled with the +ring. I felt almost as though he was my younger brother. + +I stood by him to the end, and at last came the hour of parting. I +grasped his hand in silence: silently he mastered a becoming emotion. +And in silence he went from me unto the New Life. + + + + +A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST + +The gentleman with the Jovian coiffure began to speak as the train +moved. "'Tis the utmost degradation of art," he said. He had +apparently fallen into conversation with his companion upon the +platform. + +"I don't see it," said this companion, a prosperous-looking gentleman +with a gold watch-chain. "This art for art's sake--I don't believe in +it, I tell you. Art should have an aim. If it don't do you good, if +it ain't moral, I'd as soon not have it. What good is it? I believe +in Ruskin. I tell you----" + +"_Bah_!" said the gentleman in the corner, with almost explosive +violence. He fired it like a big gun across the path of the incipient +argument, and slew the prosperous-looking gentleman at once. He met +our eyes, as we turned to him, with a complacent smile on his large +white, clean-shaven face. He was a corpulent person, dressed in black, +and with something of the quality of a second-hand bishop in his +appearance. The demolished owner of the watch-chain made some +beginnings of a posthumous speech. + +"_Bah_!" said the gentleman in the corner, with even more force than +before, and so finished him. + +"These people will never understand," he said, after a momentary pause, +addressing the gentleman with the Jovian coiffure, and indicating the +remains of the prosperous gentleman by a wave of a large white hand. +"Why do you argue? Art is ever for the few." + +"I did not argue," said the gentleman with the hair. "I was +interrupted." + +The owner of the watch-chain, who had been sitting struggling with his +breath, now began to sob out his indignation. "What do you _mean_, +sir? Saying _Bah_! sir, when I am talking----" + +The gentleman with the large face held up a soothing hand. "Peace, +peace," he said. "I did not interrupt you. I annihilated you. Why +did you presume to talk to artists about art? Go away, or I shall have +to say Bah! again. Go and have a fit. Leave us--two rare souls who +may not meet again--to our talking." + +"Did you ever see such abominable _rudeness_, sir?" said the gentleman +with the watch-chain, appealing to me. There were tears in his eyes. +At the same time the young man with the aureole made some remark to the +corpulent gentleman that I failed to catch. + +"These artists," said I, "are unaccountable, irresponsible. You +must----" + +"Take it from whence it comes," said the insulted one, very loudly, and +bitterly glaring at his opponent. But the two artists were conversing +serenely. I felt the undignified quality of our conversation. "Have +you seen _Punch_?" said I, thrusting it into his hand. + +He looked at the paper for a moment in a puzzled way; then understood, +thanked me, and began to read with a thunderous scowl, every now and +then shooting murderous glances at his antagonist in the opposite +corner, or coughing in an aggressive manner. + +"You do your best," the gentleman with the long hair was saying; "and +they say, 'What is it for?' 'It is for itself,' you say. Like the +stars." + +"But these people," said the stout gentleman, "think the stars were +made to set their clocks by. They lack the magnanimity to drop the +personal reference. A friend, a _confrere_, saw a party of these +horrible Extension people at Rome before that exquisite Venus of +Titian. 'And now, Mr Something-or-other,' said one of the young +ladies, addressing the pedagogue in command, 'what is _this_ to teach +us?'" + +"I have had the same experience," said the young gentleman with the +hair. "A man sent to me only a week ago to ask what my sonnet 'The +Scarlet Thread' _meant_?" + +The stout person shook his head as though such things passed all belief. + +"Gur-r-r-r," said the gentleman with _Punch_, and scraped with his foot +on the floor of the carriage. + +"I gave him answer," said the poet, "'Twas a sonnet; not a symbol." + +"Precisely," said the stout gentleman. + +"'Tis the fate of all art to be misunderstood. I am always grossly +misunderstood--by every one. They call me fantastic, whereas I am but +inevitably new; indecent, because I am unfettered by mere trivial +personal restrictions; unwholesome." + +"It is what they say to me. They are always trying to pull me to +earth. 'Is it wholesome?' they say; 'nutritious?' I say to them, 'I +do not know. I am an artist. I do not care. It is beautiful.'" + +"You rhyme?" said the poet. + +"No. My work is--more plastic. I cook." + +For a moment, perhaps, the poet was disconcerted. "A noble art," he +said, recovering. + +"The noblest," said the cook. "But sorely misunderstood; degraded to +utilitarian ends; tested by impossible standards. I have been +seriously asked to render oily food palatable to a delicate patient. +Seriously!" + +"He said, 'Bah!' Bah! to _me_!" mumbled the defunct gentleman with +_Punch_, apparently addressing the cartoon. "A cook! Good _Lord_!" + +"I resigned. 'Cookery,' I said, 'is an art. I am not a fattener of +human cattle. Think: Is it Art to write a book with an object, to +paint a picture for strategy?' 'Are we,' I said, 'in the sixties or +the nineties? Here, in your kitchen, I am inspired with beautiful +dinners, and I produce them. It is your place to gather together, from +this place one, and from that, one, the few precious souls who can +appreciate that rare and wonderful thing, a dinner, graceful, +harmonious, exquisite, perfect.' And he argued I must study his +guests!" + +"No artist is of any worth," said the poet, "who primarily studies what +the public needs." + +"As I told him. But the next man was worse--hygienic. While with this +creature I read Poe for the first time, and I was singularly fascinated +by some of his grotesques. I tried--it was an altogether new +development, I believe, in culinary art--the Bizarre. I made some +curious arrangements in pork and strawberries, with a sauce containing +beer. Quite by accident I mentioned my design to him on the evening of +the festival. All the Philistine was aroused in him. 'It will ruin my +digestion.' 'My friend,' I said, 'I am not your doctor; I have nothing +to do with your digestion. Only here is a beautiful Japanese thing, a +quaint, queer, almost eerie dinner, that is in my humble opinion worth +many digestions. You may take it or leave it, but 'tis the last dinner +I cook for you.' ... I knew I was wasted upon him. + +"Then I produced some Nocturnes in imitation of Mr Whistler, with +mushrooms, truffles, grilled meat, pickled walnuts, black pudding, +French plums, porter--a dinner in soft velvety black, eaten in a +starlight of small scattered candles. That, too, led to a resignation: +Art will ever demand its martyrs." + +The poet made sympathetic noises. + +"Always. The awful many will never understand. Their conception of my +skill is altogether on a level with their conceptions of music, of +literature, of painting. For wall decorations they love autotypes; for +literature, harmless volumes of twaddle that leave no vivid impressions +on the mind; for dinners, harmless dishes that are forgotten as they +are eaten. _My_ dinners stick in the memory. I cannot study these +people--my genius is all too imperative. If I needed a flavour of +almonds and had nothing else to hand, I would use prussic acid. Do +right, I say, as your art instinct commands, and take no heed of the +consequences. Our function is to make the beautiful gastronomic thing, +not to pander to gluttony, not to be the Jesuits of hygiene. My +friend, you should see some of my compositions. At home I have books +and books in manuscript, Symphonies, Picnics, Fantasies, _Etudes_..." + +The train was now entering Clapham Junction. The gentleman with the +gold watch-chain returned my _Punch_. "A cook," he said in a whisper; +"just a common cook!" He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head at me, +and proceeded to extricate himself and his umbrella from the carriage. +"Out of a situation too!" he said--a little louder--as I prepared to +follow him. + +"Mere dripping!" said the artist in cookery, with a regal wave of the +hand. + +Had I felt sure I was included, I should of course have resented the +phrase. + + + + +THE MAN WITH A NOSE + +"I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that lived +in purple, for there he is in his robes, burning, burning." + + +"My nose has been the curse of my life." + +The other man started. + +They had not spoken before. They were sitting, one at either end, on +that seat on the stony summit of Primrose Hill which looks towards +Regent's Park. It was night. The paths on the slope below were dotted +out by yellow lamps; the Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous +pale green--the tint of gaslight seen among trees; beyond, the park lay +black and mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist beneath and a +coppery hue in the sky above marked the blaze of the Marylebone +thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the Albert-terrace loomed large +and black, their blackness pierced irregularly by luminous windows. +Above, starlight. + +Both men had been silent, lost apparently in their own thoughts, mere +dim black figures to each other, until one had seen fit to become a +voice also, with this confidence. + +"Yes," he said, after an interval, "my nose has always stood in my way, +always." + +The second man had scarcely seemed to notice the first remark, but now +he peered through the night at his interlocutor. It was a little man +he saw, with face turned towards him. + +"I see nothing wrong with your nose." + +"If it were luminous you might," said the first speaker. "However, I +will illuminate it." + +He fumbled with something in his pocket, then held this object in his +hand. There was a scratch, a streak of greenish phosphorescent light, +and then all the world beyond became black, as a fusee vesta flared. + +There was silence for the space of a minute. An impressive pause. + +"Well?" said the man with the nose, putting his heel on the light. + +"I have seen worse," said the second man. + +"I doubt it," said the man with the nose; "and even so, it is poor +comfort. Did you notice the shape? the size? the colour? Like +Snowdon, it has a steep side and a gentle slope. The size is +preposterous: my face is like a hen-house built behind a portico. And +the tints!" + +"It is not all red," said the second man, "anyhow." + +"No, there is purple, and blue, '_lapis lazuli_, blue as a vein over +the Madonna's breast,' and in one place a greyish mole. Bah! the thing +is not a nose at all, but a bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my +face. But, being where the nose should be, it gets the credit of its +position from unthinking people. There is a gap in the order of the +universe in front of my face, a lump of unwrought material left over. +In that my true nose is hidden, as a statue is hidden in a lump of +marble, until the appointed time for the revelation shall come. At the +resurrection---- But one must not anticipate. Well, well. I do not +often talk about my nose, my friend, but you sat with a sympathetic +pose, it seemed to me, and to-night my heart is full of it. This +cursed nose! But do I weary you, thrusting my nose into your +meditations?" + +"If," said the second man, his voice a little unsteady, as though he +was moved, "if it eases your mind to talk of your nose, pray talk." + +"This nose, I say then, makes me think of the false noses of Carnival +times. Your dullest man has but to stick one on, and lo! mirth, wit, +and jollity. They are enough to make anything funny. I doubt if even +an Anglican bishop could wear one with impunity. Put an angel in one. +How would you like one popped on to _you_ now? Think of going +love-making, or addressing a public meeting, or dying gloriously, in a +nose like mine! Angelina laughs in your face, the public laughs, the +executioner at your martyrdom can hardly light the faggots for +laughing. By heaven! it is no joke. Often and often I have rebelled, +and said, 'I will not have this nose!'" + +"But what can one do?" + +"It is destiny. The bitter tragedy of it is that it is so comic. +Only, God knows, how glad I shall be when the Carnival is over, and I +may take the thing off and put it aside. The worst has been this +business of love. My mind is not unrefined, my body is healthy. I +know what tenderness is. But what woman could overlook a nose like +mine? How could she shut out her visions of it, and look her love into +my eyes, glaring at her over its immensity? I should have to make love +through an Inquisitor's hood, with its holes cut for the eyes--and even +then the shape would show. I have read, I have been told, I can +imagine what a lover's face is like--a sweet woman's face radiant with +love. But this Millbank penitentiary of flesh chills their dear +hearts." + +He broke off suddenly, with loud ferocious curses. A young man who had +been sitting very close to a young woman on an adjacent seat, started +up and said "Ssh!". + +He whom the man with the nose had addressed now spoke. "I have +certainly never thought before of a red nose as a sorrowful thing, but +as you put it...." + +"I thought you would understand. I have had this nose all my life. +The outline was done, even though the colour was wanting, in my school +days. They called me 'Nosey,' 'Ovid,' 'Cicero,' 'Rhino,' and the +'Excrescence.' It has ripened with the slow years, as fate deepens in +the progress of a tragedy. Love, the business of life, is a sealed +book to me. To be alone! I would thank heaven.... But no! a blind +woman could feel the shape of it." + +"Besides love," interrupted the young man thoughtfully, "there are +other things worth living for--duty. An unattractive nose would not +interfere with that. Some people think it is rather more important +than love. I admit your loss, of course." + +"That only carries out the evidence of your voice, and tells me you are +young. My dear young fellow, duty is a very fine thing indeed, but +believe me, it is too colourless as a motive. There is no delight in +duty. You will know that at my age. And besides, I have an infinite +capacity for love and sympathy, an infinite bitterness in this solitude +of my soul. I infer that you would moralise on my discontent, but I +know I have seen a little of men and things from behind this +ambuscade--only a truly artistic man would fall into the sympathetic +attitude that attracted me. My life has had even too much of +observation in it, and to the systematic anthropologist, nothing tells +a man's character more than his pose after dark, when nobody seems +watching. As you sit, the black outline of you is clear against the +sky. Ah! _now_ you are sitting stiffer. But you are no Calvinist. My +friend, the best of life is its delights, and the best of delights is +loving and being loved. And for that--this nose! Well, there are +plenty of second-best things. After dark I can forget the monster a +little. Spring is delightful, air on the Downs is delightful; it is +fine to see the stars circling in the sky, while lying among the +heather. Even this London sky is soothing at night, though the edge is +all inflamed. The shadow of my nose is darkest by day. But to-night I +am bitter, because of to-morrow." + +"Why, to-morrow?" said the younger man. + +"I have to meet some new people to-morrow," said the man with the nose. +"There is an odd look, a mingling of amusement and pity, I am only too +familiar with. My cousin, who is a gifted hostess, promises people my +nose as a treat." + +"Yes, that must be bad for you," said the young man. + +And then the silence healed again, and presently the man with the nose +got up and passed into the dimness upon the slope of the hill. The +young man watched him vanish, wondering vainly how it would be possible +to console a soul under such a burthen. + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Select Conversations with an Uncle, by H. G. 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