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diff --git a/8544.txt b/8544.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..271daf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/8544.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2788 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trivia, by Logan Pearsall Smith + +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: Trivia + +Author: Logan Pearsall Smith + + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8544] +This file was first posted on July 21, 2003 +Last Updated: May 13, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIVIA *** + + + + +Produced by Joris Van Dael, Charles Aldarondo, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +TRIVIA + + +By Logan Pearsall Smith + +1917 + + + + +_Bibliographical Note_ + + +Some of these pieces were privately printed at the Chiswick +Press in 1902. Others have appeared in the "New Statesman" and +"The New Republic," and are here reprinted with the Editors' +permission. + + + + +_Preface_ + + +"You must beware of thinking too much about Style," said my +kindly adviser, "or you will become like those fastidious people +who polish and polish until there is nothing left." + +"Then there really are such people?" I asked, lost in the thought +of how much I should like to meet them. But the well-informed +lady could give me no precise information about them. + +I often hear of them in this tantalizing manner, and perhaps one +day I shall get to know them. They sound delightful. + + + + +_The Author_ + + +These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a +large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the +Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked +Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and +the long-eared Chimpanzee. + + + + +_List of Contents_ + + +BOOK I + + Preface + + The Author + + Happiness + + To-day + + The Afternoon Post + + The Busy Bees + + The Wheat + + The Coming of Fate + + My Speech + + Stonehenge + + The Stars + + Silvia Doria + + Bligh House + + In Church + + Parsons + + The Sound of a Voice + + What Happens + + A Precaution + + The Great Work + + My Mission + + The Birds + + High Life + + Empty Shells + + Dissatisfaction + + A Fancy + + They + + In the Pulpit + + Human Ends + + Lord Arden + + The Starry Heaven + + My Map + + The Snob + + Companions + + Edification + + The Rose + + The Vicar of Lynch + + Tu Quoque Fontium + + The Spider + + +BOOK II + + L'Oiseau Bleu + + At the Bank + + Mammon + + I See the World + + Social Success Apotheosis + + The Spring in London + + Fashion Plates + + Mental Vice + + The Organ of Life + + Humiliation + + Green Ivory + + In the Park + + The Correct + + "Where Do I Come In?" + + Microbes + + The Quest + + The Kaleidoscope + + Oxford Street + + Beauty + + The Power of Words + + Self-Analysis + + The Voice of the World + + And Anyhow + + Drawbacks + + Talk + + The Church of England + + Misgiving + + Sanctuaries + + Symptoms + + Shadowed + + The Incredible + + Terror + + Pathos + + Inconstancy + + The Poplar + + On the Doorstep Old Clothes + + Youth + + Consolation + + Sir Eustace Carr + + The Lord Mayor + + The Burden + + Under an Umbrella + + + + +TRIVIA + + + + +BOOK I + + +_How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace +and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind._ + +SCOTT, of Amwell, _Moral Eclogues_ (1773) + + + + +_Happiness_ + + +Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening sunshine, +small boats that sail before the wind--all these create in me +the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a +piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have +imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but +here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered +valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead between the meadows +thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods. + + + + +_To-Day_ + + +I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, +into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom--in fact +into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet +unexplained Universe. + +Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way +thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, +I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually +down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals. + + + + +_The Afternoon Post_ + + +The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its +postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, +and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, +is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon +I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read +young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and +cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which +is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this +strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but +I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast +table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself +"Here it is!" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the +road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly +concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my +quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end. +Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for +which I am waiting? I do not know. + + + + +_The Busy Bees_ + + +Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near +the garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those +honey-merchants--sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with +their minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the +late sun to their night-long labours-I have sought instruction +from the Bees, and tried to appropriate to myself the old +industrious lesson. + +And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teachers and +who the learners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian +insects, was there no lesson to be derived from the spectacle of +Me? Gazing out at me with myriad eyes from their joyless +factories, might they not learn at last--might I not finally +teach them--a wiser and more generous-hearted way to improve the +shining hour? + + + + +_The Wheat_ + + +The Vicar, whom I met once or twice in my walks about the +fields, told me that he was glad that I was taking an interest +in farming. Only my feeling about wheat, he said, puzzled him. + +Now the feeling in regard to wheat which I had not been able to +make clear to the Vicar was simply one of amazement. Walking one +day into a field that I had watched yellowing beyond the trees, +I found myself dazzled by the glow and great expanse of gold. I +bathed myself in the intense yellow under the intense blue sky; +how dim it made the oak trees and copses and all the rest of the +English landscape seem! I had not remembered the glory of the +Wheat; nor imagined in my reading that in a country so far from +the Sun there could be anything so rich, so prodigal, so +reckless, as this opulence of ruddy gold, bursting out from the +cracked earth as from some fiery vein below. I remembered how +for thousands of years Wheat had been the staple of wealth, the +hoarded wealth of famous cities and empires; I thought of the +processes of corn-growing, the white oxen ploughing, the great +barns, the winnowing fans, the mills with the splash of their +wheels, or arms slow-turning in the wind; of cornfields at +harvest-time, with shocks and sheaves in the glow of sunset, or +under the sickle moon; what beauty it brought into the northern +landscape, the antique, passionate, Biblical beauty of the +South! + + + + +_The Coming of Fate_ + + +When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had +their beginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments +that shine for me curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that +made me take this turning at the crossroads, trivial and +fortuitous the meeting, and light as gossamer the thread +that first knit me to my friend. These are full of wonder; +more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me +with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I +did not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the +threshold; but the word was not spoken, the hand was not +held out, and the Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim +as a into the waste realms of non-existence. + +So I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm +of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents. Why, +to-day, perhaps, or next week, I may hear a voice, and, packing +up my Gladstone bag, follow it to the ends of the world. + + + + +_My Speech_ + + +"Ladies and Gentlemen," I began--The Vicar was in the chair; +Mrs. La Mountain and her daughters sat facing us; and in the +little schoolroom, with its maps and large Scripture prints, +its blackboard with the day's sums still visible on it, were +assembled the labourers of the village, the old family coachman +and his wife, the one-eyed postman, and the gardeners and +boys from the Hall. Having culled from the newspapers a few +phrases, I had composed a speech which I delivered with a +spirit and eloquence surprising even to myself, and which was +now enthusiastically received. The Vicar cried "Hear, Hear!", +the Vicar's wife pounded her umbrella with such emphasis, and +the villagers cheered so heartily, that my heart was warmed. I +began to feel the meaning of my own words; I beamed on the +audience, felt that they were all brothers, all wished well +to the Republic; and it seemed to me an occasion to express +my real ideas and hopes for the Commonwealth. + +Brushing therefore to one side, and indeed quite forgetting my +safe principles, I began to refashion and new-model the State. +Most existing institutions were soon abolished; and then, on +their ruins, I proceeded to build up the bright walls and +palaces of the City within me--the City I had read of in Plato. +With enthusiasm, and, I flatter myself, with eloquence, I +described it all--the Warriors, that race of golden youth bred +from the State-ordered embraces of the brave and fair; those +philosophic Guardians, who, being ever accustomed to the highest +and most extensive views, and thence contracting an habitual +greatness, possessed the truest fortitude, looking down indeed +with a kind of disregard on human life and death. And then, +declaring that the pattern of this City was laid up in Heaven, I +sat down, amid the cheers of the uncomprehending little +audience. + +And afterward, in my rides about the country, when I saw on +walls and the doors of barns, among advertisements of sales, or +regulations about birds' eggs or the movements of swine, little +weather-beaten, old-looking notices on which it was stated that +I would "address the meeting," I remembered how the walls and +towers of the City I had built up in that little schoolroom had +shone with no heavenly light in the eyes of the Vicar's party. + + + + +_Stonehenge_ + + +They sit there forever on the dim horizon of my mind, that +Stonehenge circle of elderly disapproving Faces--Faces of the +Uncles and Schoolmasters and Tutors who frowned on my youth. + +In the bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my +dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For +nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of +approval that ring of bleak and contemptuous Faces. + + + + +_The Stars_ + + +Battling my way homeward one dark night against the wind and +rain, a sudden gust, stronger than the others, drove me back +into the shelter of a tree. But soon the Western sky broke open; +the illumination of the Stars poured down from behind the +dispersing clouds. + +I was astonished at their brightness, to see how they filled the +night with their soft lustre. So I went my way accompanied by +them; Arcturus followed me, and becoming entangled in a leafy +tree, shone by glimpses, and then emerged triumphant, Lord of +the Western sky. Moving along the road in the silence of my own +footsteps, my thoughts were among the Constellations. I was one +of the Princes of the starry Universe; in me also there was +something that was not insignificant and mean and of no account. + + + + +_Silvia Doria_ + + +Beyond the blue hills, within riding distance, there is a +country of parks and beeches, with views of the far-off sea. I +remember in one of my rides coming on the place which was the +scene of the pretty, old-fashioned story of Silvia Doria. +Through the gates, with fine gate-posts, on which heraldic +beasts, fierce and fastidious, were upholding coroneted shields, +I could see, at the end of the avenue, the facade of the House, +with its stone pilasters, and its balustrade on the steep roof. + +More than one hundred years ago, in that Park, with its +Italianized house, and level gardens adorned with statues and +garden temples, there lived, they say, an old Lord with his two +handsome sons. The old Lord had never ceased mourning for his +Lady, though she had died a good many years before; there were +no neighbours he visited, and few strangers came inside the +great Park walls. One day in Spring, however, just when the +apple trees had burst into blossom, the gilded gates were thrown +open, and a London chariot with prancing horses drove up the +Avenue. And in the chariot, smiling and gay, and indeed very +beautiful in her dress of yellow silk, and her great Spanish hat +with drooping feathers, sat Silvia Doria, come on a visit to her +cousin, the old Lord. + +It was her father who had sent her--that he might be more free, +some said, to pursue his own wicked courses--while others +declared that he intended her to marry the old Lord's eldest +son. + +In any case, Silvia Doria came like the Spring, like the +sunlight, into the lonely place. Even the old Lord felt himself +curiously happy when he heard her voice singing about the house; +as for Henry and Francis, it was heaven for them just to walk by +her side down the garden alleys. + +And Silvia Doria, though hitherto she had been but cold toward +the London gallants who had courted her, found, little by +little, that her heart was not untouched. + +But, in spite of her father, and her own girlish love of gold +and rank, it was not for Henry that she cared, not for the old +Lord, but for Francis, the younger son. Did Francis know of +this? They were secretly lovers, the old scandal reported; and +the scandal, it may be, had reached her father's ears. + +For one day a coach with foaming horses, and the wicked face of +an old man at its window, galloped up the avenue; and soon +afterwards, when the coach drove away, Silvia Doria was sitting +by the old man's side, sobbing bitterly. + +And after she had gone, a long time, many of the old, last-century +years, went by without any change. And then Henry, the eldest son, +was killed in hunting; and the old Lord dying a few years later, +the titles and the great house and all the land and gold came to +Francis, the younger son. But after his father's death he was but +seldom there; having, as it seemed, no love for the place, and +living for the most part abroad and alone, for he never married. + +And again, many years went by. The trees grew taller and darker +about the house; the yew hedges unclipt now, hung their branches +over the moss-grown paths; ivy almost smothered the statues; and +the plaster fell away in great patches from the discoloured +garden temples. + +But at last one day a chariot drove up to the gates; a footman +pulled at the crazy bell, telling the gate-keeper that his +mistress wished to visit the Park. So the gates creaked open, +the chariot glittered up the avenue to the deserted place; and a +lady stepped out, went into the garden, and walked among its +moss-grown paths and statues. As the chariot drove out again, +"Tell your Lord," the lady said, smiling, to the lodge-keeper, +"that Silvia Doria came back." + + + + +_Bligh House_ + + +To the West, in riding past the walls of Bligh, I remembered an +incident in the well-known siege of that house, during the Civil +Wars: How, among Waller's invading Roundhead troops, there +happened to be a young scholar, a poet and lover of the Muses, +fighting for the cause, as he thought, of ancient Freedom, who, +one day, when the siege was being more hotly urged, pressing +forward and climbing a wall, suddenly found himself in a quiet +old garden by the house. And here, for a time forgetting, as it +would seem, the battle, and heedless of the bullets that now and +then flew past him like peevish wasps, the young Officer stayed, +gathering roses--old-fashioned damask roses, streaked with red +and white--which, for the sake of a Court Beauty, there besieged +with her father, he carried to the house; falling, however, +struck by a chance bullet, or shot perhaps by one of his own +party. A few of the young Officer's verses, written in the +stilted fashion of the time, and almost unreadable now, have +been preserved. The lady's portrait hangs in the white drawing +room at Bligh; a simpering, faded figure, with ringlets and +drop-pearls, and a dress of amber-coloured silk. + + + + +_In Church_ + + +"For the Pen," said the Vicar; and in the sententious pause that +followed, I felt that I would offer any gifts of gold to avert +or postpone the solemn, inevitable, hackneyed, and yet, as it +seemed to me, perfectly appalling statement that "the Pen is +mightier than the Sword." + + + + +_Parsons_ + + +All the same I like Parsons; they think nobly of the Universe, +and believe in Souls and Eternal Happiness. And some of them, I +am told, believe in Angels--that there are Angels who guide our +footsteps, and flit to and fro unseen on errands in the air +about us. + + + + +_The Sound of a Voice_ + + +As the thoughtful Baronet talked, as his voice went on sounding +in my ears, all the light of desire, and of the sun, faded from +the Earth; I saw the vast landscape of the world dim, as in an +eclipse; its populations eating their bread with tears, its rich +men sitting listless in their palaces, and aged Kings crying +"Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity!" lugubriously from their +thrones. + + + + +_What Happens_ + + +"Yes," said Sir Thomas, speaking of a modern novel, "it +certainly does seem strange; but the novelist was right. Such +things do happen." + +"But my dear Sir," I burst out, in the rudest manner, "think +what life is--just think what really happens! Why people +suddenly swell up and turn dark purple; they hang themselves on +meat-hooks; they are drowned in horse-ponds, are run over by +butchers' carts, and are burnt alive and cooked like mutton +chops!" + + + + +_A Precaution_ + + +The folio gave at length philosophic consolations for all +the ills and misfortunes said by the author to be inseparable +from human existence--Poverty, Shipwreck, Plague, Love-Deceptions, +and Inundations. Against these antique Disasters I armed my soul; +and I thought it as well to prepare myself against another +inevitable ancient calamity called "Cornutation," or by other +less learned names. How Philosophy taught that after all it was +but a pain founded on conceit, a blow that hurt not; the reply +of the Cynic philosopher to one who reproached him, "Is it my +fault or hers?"; how Nevisanus advises the sufferer to ask +himself if he have not offended; Jerome declares it impossible +to prevent; how few or none are safe, and the inhabitants of +some countries, especially parts of Africa, consider it the +usual and natural thing; How Caesar, Pompey, Augustus, Agamemnon, +Menelaus, Marcus Aurelius, and many other great Kings and Princes +had all worn Actaeon's badge; and how Philip turned it to a jest, +Pertinax the Emperor made no reckoning of it; Erasmus declared it +was best winked at, there being no remedy but patience, _Dies +dolorem minuit_; Time, Age must mend it; and how according to +the best authorities, bars, bolts, oaken doors, and towers of +brass, are all in vain. "She is a woman," as the old Pedant +wrote to a fellow Philosopher.... + + + + +_The Great Work_ + + +Sitting, pen in hand, alone in the stillness of the library, +with flies droning behind the sunny blinds, I considered in my +thoughts what should be the subject of my great Work. Should I +complain against the mutability of Fortune, and impugn Fate and +the Constellations; or should I reprehend the never-satisfied +heart of querulous Man, drawing elegant contrasts between the +unsullied snow of mountains, the serene shining of stars, and +our hot, feverish lives and foolish repinings? Or should I +confine myself to denouncing contemporary Vices, crying "Fie!" +on the Age with Hamlet, sternly unmasking its hypocrisies, and +riddling through and through its comfortable Optimisms? + +Or with Job, should I question the Universe, and puzzle my sad +brains about Life--the meaning of Life on this apple-shaped +Planet? + + + + +_My Mission_ + + +But when in modern books, reviews, and thoughtful magazines I +read about the Needs of the Age, its Complex Questions, its +Dismays, Doubts, and Spiritual Agonies, I feel an impulse to go +out and comfort it, to still its cries, and speak earnest words +of Consolation to it. + + + + +_The Birds_ + + +But how can one toil at the great task with this hurry and +tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, +and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate +cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the +Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar--but +what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; +the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down +again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the +noonday heat; the drone of the Greenfinch lulls me into dreamy +meditations. Then suddenly from his tree-trunks and forest +recesses comes the Green Woodpecker, and mocks at me an impudent +voice full of liberty and laughter. + +Why should all the birds of the air conspire against me? My +concern is with the sad Human Species, with lapsed and erroneous +Humanity, not with that inconsiderate, wandering, feather-headed +race. + + + + +_High Life_ + + +Although that immense Country House was empty and for sale, and +I had got an order to view it, I needed all my courage to walk +through the lordly gates, and up the avenue, and then to ring +the door-bell. And when I was ushered in, and the shutters were +removed to let the daylight into those vast apartments, I +sneaked through them, cursing the dishonest curiosity which had +brought me into a place where I had no business. But I was +treated with such deference, and so plainly regarded as a +possible purchaser, that I soon began to believe in the opulence +imputed to me. From all the novels describing the mysterious and +glittering life of the Great which I had read (and I had read +many), there came to me the enchanting vision of my own +existence in this Palace. I filled the vast spaces with the +shine of jewels and stir of voices; I saw a vision of ladies +sweeping in their tiaras down the splendid stairs. + +But my Soul, in her swell of pride, soon outgrew these paltry +limits, O no! Never could I box up and house and localize under +that lowly roof the Magnificence and Ostentation of which I was +capable. + +Then for one thing there was stabling for only forty horses; and +of course, as I told them, this would never do. + + + + +_Empty Shells_ + + +They lie like empty seashells on the shores of Time, the old +worlds which the spirit of man once built for his habitation, +and then abandoned. Those little earth-centred, heaven-encrusted +universes of the Greeks and Hebrews seem quaint enough to us, +who have formed, thought by thought from within, the immense +modern Cosmos in which we live--the great Creation of granite, +planned in such immeasurable proportions, and moved by so +pitiless a mechanism, that it sometimes appals even its own +creators. The rush of the great rotating Sun daunts us; to think +to the distance of the fixed stars cracks our brain. + +But if the ephemeral Being who has imagined these eternal +spheres and spaces, must dwell almost as an alien in their icy +vastness, yet what a splendour lights up for him and dazzles in +those great halls! Anything less limitless would be now a +prison; and he even dares to think beyond their boundaries, to +surmise that he may one day outgrow this vast Mausoleum, and +cast from him the material Creation as an integument too narrow +for his insolent Mind. + + + + +_Dissatisfaction_ + + +For one thing I hate Spiders--I dislike all kinds of Insects. +Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted +industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the +future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration +of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable +collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all +the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is +really nothing but a sieve--this, too, at times disheartens me. + + + + +_A Fancy_ + +More than once, though, I have pleased myself with the notion +that somewhere there is good Company which will like this little +Book--these Thoughts (if I may call them so) dipped up from that +phantasmagoria or phosphorescence which, by some unexplained +process of combustion, flickers over the large lump of soft gray +matter in the bowl of my skull. + + + + +_They_ + + +Their taste is exquisite; They live in Georgian houses, in +a world of ivory and precious china, of old brickwork and +stone pilasters. In white drawing rooms I see Them, or on +blue, bird-haunted lawns. They talk pleasantly of me, and +their eyes watch me. From the diminished, ridiculous picture +of myself which the glass of the world gives me, I turn for +comfort, for happiness, to my image in the kindly mirror of +those eyes. + +Who are They? Where, in what paradise or palace, shall I ever +find Them? I may walk all the streets, ring all the door-bells +of the World, but I shall never find them. Yet nothing has +value for me save In the crown of Their approval; for Their +coming--which will never be--I build and plant, and for Them +alone I secretly write this little Book, which They will never +read. + + + + +_In the Pulpit_ + + +The Vicar had certain literary tastes; in his youth he had +written an _Ode to the Moon_; and he would speak of the +difficulty he found in composing his sermons, week after week. + +Now I felt that if I composed and preached sermons, I should by +no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects--should +preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in +the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens +and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and +earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them +with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach +of Reason--Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and +Co-eternities of the incomprehensible Triad. And with what a +holy vehemence would I exclaim and cry out against all forms +of doctrinal Error--all the execrable hypotheses of the great +Heresiarchs! Then there would be many ancient and learned and +out-of-the-way Iniquities to denounce, and splendid, neglected +Virtues to inculcate--Apostolic Poverty, and Virginity, that +precious jewel, that fair garland, so prized in Heaven, but so +rare on earth. + +For in the range of creeds and morals it is the highest peaks +that shine for me with a certain splendour: it is toward those +radiant Alps that, if I were a Clergyman, I would lead my flock +to pasture. + + + + +_Human Ends_ + + +I really was impressed, as we paced up and down the avenue, by +the Vicar's words and weighty, weighed advice. He spoke of the +various professions; mentioned contemporaries of his own who had +achieved success: how one had a Seat in Parliament, would be +given a Seat in the Cabinet when his party next came in; another +was a Bishop with a Seat in the House of Lords; a third was a +Barrister who was soon, it was said, to be raised to the Bench. + +But in spite of my good intentions, my real wish to find, +before it is too late, some career or other for myself (and +the question is getting serious), I am far too much at the +mercy of ludicrous images. Front Seats, Episcopal, Judicial, +Parliamentary Benches--were all the ends then, I asked my self, +of serious, middle-aged ambition only things to sit on? + + + + +_Lord Arden_ + + +"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar, "I should shut up that +great House; it's too big--what can a young unmarried man...?" + +"If I were Lord Arden," said the Vicar's wife (and Mrs. La +Mountain's tone showed how much she disapproved of that young +Nobleman), "if I were Lord Arden, I should live there, and do my +duty to my tenants and neighbours." + +"If I were Lord Arden," I said; but then it flashed vividly +into my mind, suppose I really were this opulent young Lord? +I quite forgot to whom I was talking; my memory was occupied +with the names of people who had been famous for their enormous +pleasures; who had filled their Palaces with guilty revels, and +built Pyramids, Obelisks, and half-acre Tombs, to soothe their +Pride. My mind kindled at the thought of these Audacities. "If +I were Lord Arden!" I cried.... + + + + +_The Starry Heaven_ + + +"But what are they really? What do they say they are?" the small +young lady asked me. We were looking up at the Stars, which were +quivering that night in splendid hosts above the lawns and +trees. + +So I tried to explain some of the views that have been held +about them. How people first of all had thought them mere +candles set in the sky, to guide their own footsteps when the +Sun was gone; till wise men, sitting on the Chaldean plains, and +watching them with aged eyes, became impressed with the solemn +view that those still and shining lights were the executioners +of God's decrees, and irresistible instruments of His Wrath; and +that they moved fatally among their celestial Houses to ordain +and set out the fortunes and misfortunes of each race of newborn +mortals. And so it was believed that every man or woman had, +from the cradle, fighting for or against him or her, some great +Star, Formalhaut, perhaps, Aldebaran, Altair: while great Heroes +and Princes were more splendidly attended, and marched out to +their forgotten battles with troops and armies of heavenly +Constellations. + +But this noble old view was not believed in now; the Stars were +no longer regarded as malignant or beneficent Powers; and I +explained how most serious people thought that somewhere--though +just where they did not know--above the vault of Sky, was to be +found the final home of earnest men and women; where, as a +reward for their right views and conduct, they were to rejoice +forever, wearing those diamonds of the starry night arranged in +glorious crowns. This notion, however, had been disputed by +Poets and Lovers: it was Love, according to these young +astronomers, that moved the Sun and other Stars; the +Constellations being heavenly palaces, where people who had +adored each other were to meet and live always together after +Death. + +Then I spoke of the modern and real immensity of the unfathomed +Skies. But suddenly the vast meaning of my words rushed into my +mind; I felt myself dwindling, falling through the blue. And +yet, in these silent seconds, there thrilled through me in the +cool sweet air and night no chill of death or nothingness; but +the taste and joy of this Earth, this orchard-plot of earth, +floating unknown, far away in unfathomed space, with its Moon +and meadows. + + + + +_My Map_ + + +The "Known World" I called the map which I amused myself making +for the children's schoolroom. It included France, England, +Italy, Greece, and all the old shores of the Mediterranean; but +the rest I marked "Unknown"; sketching into the East the +doubtful realms of Ninus and Semiramis; changing back Germany +into the Hyrcanian Forest; and drawing pictures of the supposed +inhabitants of these unexplored regions, Dog-Apes, Satyrs, +Cannibals, and Misanthropes, Cimmerians involved in darkness, +Amazons, and Headless Men. And all around the Map I coiled the +coils, and curled the curling waves of the great Sea _Oceanum_, +with the bursting cheeks of the four Winds, blowing from the +four imagined hinges of the Universe. + + + + +_The Snob_ + + +As I paced in fine company on that Terrace, I felt chosen, +exempt, and curiously happy. There was a glamour in the air, a +something in the special flavour of that moment that was like +the consciousness of Salvation, or the smell of ripe peaches on +a sunny wall. + +I know what you're going to call me, Reader. But I am not to be +bullied and abashed by words. And after all, why not let oneself +be dazzled and enchanted? Are not Illusions pleasant, and is +this a world in which Romance hangs on every tree? + +And how about your own life? Is that, then, so full of golden +visions? + + + + +_Companions_ + + +Dearest, prettiest, and sweetest of my retinue, who gather +with delicate industry bits of silk and down from the bleak +world to make the soft nest of my fatuous repose; who ever +whisper honied words in my ear, or trip before me holding up +deceiving mirrors--is it Hope, or is it not rather Vanity, +that I love the best? + + + + +_Edification_ + + +"I must really improve my Mind," I tell myself, and once more +begin to patch and repair that crazy structure. So I toil and +toil on at the vain task of edification, though the wind tears +off the tiles, the floors give way, the ceilings fall, strange +birds build untidy nests in the rafters, and owls hoot and laugh +in the tumbling chimneys. + + + + +_The Rose_ + + +The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her +garden, and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting +she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first +married. She and her husband had been travelling back in their +carriage from Rome (it was before the time of railways), and on +a bad piece of road south of Siena they had broken down, and had +been forced to pass the night in a little house by the roadside. +The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a +sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her +window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to watch the +dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue +mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off +town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter, +till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink +of the rising sun, and suddenly the town was lit as by an +illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting +the sun's beams, till at last the whole little city twinkled and +sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars. + +That morning, finding they would have to wait while their +carriage was being repaired, they had driven in a local +conveyance up to the city on the mountain, where they had been +told they would find better quarters; and there they had stayed +two or three days. It was one of the miniature Italian cities +with a high church, a pretentious piazza, a few narrow streets +and little palaces, perched all compact and complete, on the top +of a mountain, within an enclosure of walls hardly larger than +an English kitchen garden. But it was full of life and noise, +echoing all day and all night with the sounds of feet and +voices. + +The Cafe of the simple inn where they stayed was the meeting-place +of the notabilities of the little city; the _Sindaco_, the +_avvocato_, the doctor, and a few others; and among them they +noticed a beautiful, slim, talkative old man, with bright black +eyes and snow-white hair--tail and straight and still with +the figure of a youth, although the waiter told them with +pride that the _Conte_ was _molto vecchio_--would in fact be +eighty in the following year. He was the last of his family, the +waiter added--they had once been great and rich people--but he +had no descendants; in fact the waiter mentioned with complacency, +as if it were a story on which the locality prided itself, that +the _Conte_ had been unfortunate in love, and had never married. + +The old gentleman, however, seemed cheerful enough; and it was +plain that he took an interest in the strangers, and wished to +make their acquaintance. This was soon effected by the friendly +waiter; and after a little talk the old man invited them to +visit his villa and garden which were just outside the walls of +the town. So the next afternoon, when the sun began to descend, +and they saw in glimpses through doorways and windows blue +shadows beginning to spread over the brown mountains, they went +to pay their visit. It was not much of a place, a small, +modernized stucco villa, with a hot pebbly garden, and in it a +stone basin with torpid gold fish, and a statue of Diana and her +hounds against the wall. But what gave a glory to it was a +gigantic rose-tree which clambered over the house, almost +smothering the windows, and filling the air with the perfume +of its sweetness. Yes, it was a fine rose, the _Conte_ said +proudly when they praised it, and he would tell the Signora +about it. And as they sat there, drinking the wine he offered +them, he alluded with the cheerful indifference of old age to +his love-affair, as though he took for granted that they had +heard of it already. + +"The lady lived across the valley there beyond that hill. I was +a young man then, for it was many years ago. I used to ride over +to see her; it was a long way, but I rode fast, for young men, +as no doubt the Signora knows, are impatient. But the lady was +not kind, she would keep me waiting, oh, for hours; and one day +when I had waited very long I grew very angry, and as I walked +up and down in the garden where she had told me she would see +me, I broke one of her roses, broke a branch from it; and when I +saw what I had done, I hid it inside my coat--so--and when I +came home I planted it, and the Signora sees how it has grown. +If the Signora admires it, I must give her a cutting to plant +also in her garden; I am told the English have beautiful gardens +that are green, and not burnt with the sun like ours." + +The next day, when their mended carriage had come up to fetch +them, and they were just starting to drive away from the inn, +the _Conte's_ old servant appeared with the rose-cutting neatly +wrapped up, and the compliments and wishes for a _buon viaggio_ +from her master. The town collected to see them depart, and the +children ran after their carriage through the gate of the little +city. They heard a rush of feet behind them for a few moments, +but soon they were far down toward the valley; the little town +with all its noise and life was high above them on its mountain +peak. + +She had planted the rose at home, where it had grown and +flourished in a wonderful manner, and every June the great mass +of leaves and shoots still broke out into a passionate splendour +of scent and scarlet colour, as if in its root and fibres there +still burnt the anger and thwarted desire of that Italian lover. +Of course the old _Conte_ must have died many years ago; she had +forgotten his name, and had even forgotten the name of the +mountain city that she had stayed in, after first seeing it +twinkling at dawn in the sky, like a nest of stars. + + + + +_The Vicar of Lynch_ + + +When I heard through country gossip of the strange happening at +Lynch which had caused so great a scandal, and led to the +disappearance of the deaf old Vicar of that remote village, I +collected all the reports I could about it, for I felt that at +the centre of this uncomprehending talk and wild anecdote there +was something with more meaning than a mere sudden outbreak of +blasphemy and madness. + +It appeared that the old Vicar, after some years spent in the +quiet discharge of his parochial duties, had been noticed to +become more and more odd in his appearance and behaviour; and +it was also said that he had gradually introduced certain +alterations into the Church services. These had been vaguely +supposed at the time to be of a High Church character, but +afterwards they were put down to a growing mental derangement, +which had finally culminated at that notorious Harvest Festival, +when his career as a clergyman of the Church of England had +ended. On this painful occasion the old man had come into church +outlandishly dressed, and had gone through a service with +chanted gibberish and unaccustomed gestures, and prayers which +were unfamiliar to his congregation. There was also talk of a +woman's figure on the altar, which the Vicar had unveiled at a +solemn moment in this performance; and I also heard echo of +other gossip--gossip that was, however, authoritatively +contradicted and suppressed as much as possible--about the use +of certain other symbols of a most unsuitable kind. Then a few +days after the old man had disappeared--some of the neighbours +believed that he was dead; some, that he was now shut up in an +asylum for the insane. + +Such was the fantastic and almost incredible talk I listened to, +but in which, as I say, I found much more meaning than my +neighbours. For one thing, although they knew that the Vicar had +come from Oxford to this remote College living, they knew +nothing of his work and scholarly reputation in that University, +and none of them had probably ever heard of--much less read--an +important book which he had written, and which was the standard +work on his special subject. To them he was simply a deaf, +eccentric, and solitary clergyman; and I think I was the only +person in the neighbourhood who had conversed with him on the +subject concerning which he was the greatest living authority in +England. + +For I had seen the old man once--curiously enough at the time of +a Harvest Festival, though it was some years before the one +which had led to his disappearance. Bicycling one day over the +hills, I had ridden down into a valley of cornfields, and then, +passing along an unfenced road that ran across a wide expanse of +stubble, I came, after getting off to open three or four gates, +upon a group of thatched cottages, with a little, unrestored +Norman church standing among great elms, I left my bicycle and +walked through the churchyard, and as I went into the church, +through its deeply-recessed Norman doorway, a surprisingly +pretty sight met my eyes. The dim, cool, little interior was +set out and richly adorned with an abundance of fruit and +vegetables, yellow gourds, apples and plums and golden wheat +sheaves, great loaves of bread, and garlands of September +flowers. A shabby-looking old clergyman was standing on the top +of a step-ladder, finishing the decorations, when I entered. As +soon as he saw me he came down, and I spoke to him, praising the +decorations, and raising my voice a little, for I noticed that +he was somewhat deaf. We talked of the Harvest Festival, and as +I soon perceived that I was talking with a man of books and +University education, I ventured to hint at what had vividly +impressed me in that old, gaudily-decorated church--its pagan +character, as if it were a rude archaic temple in some corner of +the antique world, which had been adorned, two thousand years +ago, by pious country folk for some local festival. The old +clergyman was not in the least shocked by my remark; it seemed +indeed rather to please him; there was, he agreed, something of +a pagan character in the modern Harvest Festival--it was no +doubt a bit of the old primitive Vegetation Ritual, the old +Religion of the soil; a Festival, which, like so many others, +had not been destroyed by Christianity, but absorbed into it, +and given a new meaning. "Indeed," he added, talking on as if +the subject interested him, and expressing himself with a +certain donnish carefulness of speech that I found pleasant to +listen to, "the Harvest Festival is undoubtedly a survival of +the prehistoric worship of that Corn Goddess who, in classical +times, was called Demeter and Ioulo and Ceres, but whose cult as +an Earth-Mother and Corn-Spirit is of much greater antiquity. +For there is no doubt that this Vegetation Spirit has been +worshipped from the earliest times by agricultural peoples; the +wheat fields and ripe harvests being naturally suggestive of the +presence amid the corn of a kindly Being, who, in return for due +rites and offerings, will vouchsafe nourishing rains and golden +harvests." He mentioned the references in Virgil, and the +description in Theocritus of a Sicilian Harvest Festival--these +were no doubt familiar to me; but if I was interested in the +subject, I should find, he said, much more information collected +in a book which he had written, but of which I had probably +never heard, about the Vegetation Deities in Greek Religion. As +it happened I knew the book, and felt now much interested in my +chance meeting with the distinguished author; and after +expressing this as best I could, I rode off, promising to visit +him again. This promise I was never able to fulfil; but when +afterwards, on my return to the neighbourhood, I heard of that +unhappy scandal, my memory of this meeting and our talk enabled +me to form a theory as to what had really happened. + +It seemed plain to me that the change had been too violent for +this elderly scholar, taken from his books and college rooms and +set down in the solitude of this remote valley, amid the +richness and living sap of Nature. The gay spectacle, right +under his old eyes, of growing shoots and budding foliage, of +blossoming and flowering, and the ripening of fruits and crops, +had little by little (such was my theory) unhinged his brains. +More and more his thoughts had come to dwell, not on the +doctrines of the Church in which he had long ago taken orders, +but on the pagan rites which had formed his life-long study, +and which had been the expression of a life not unlike the +agricultural life amid which he now found himself living. So as +his derangement grew upon him in his solitude, he had gradually +transformed, with a maniac's cunning, the Christian services, +and led his little congregation, all unknown to themselves, back +toward their ancestral worship of the Corn-Goddess. At last he +had thrown away all disguise, and had appeared as a hierophant +of Demeter, dressed in a fawn skin, with a crown of poplar +leaves, and pedantically carrying the mystic basket and the +winnowing fan appropriate to these mysteries. The wheaten posset +he offered the shocked communicants belonged to these also, and +the figure of a woman on the altar was of course the holy +Wheatsheaf, whose unveiling was the culminating point in that +famous ritual. + +It is much to be regretted that I could not recover full and +more exact details of that celebration in which this great +scholar had probably embodied his mature knowledge concerning a +subject which has puzzled generations of students. But what +powers of careful observation could one expect from a group of +labourers and small farmers? Some of the things that reached my +ears I refused to believe--the mention of pig's blood for +instance, and especially the talk of certain grosser symbols, +which the choir boys, it was whispered, had carried about the +church in ceremonious procession. Village people have strange +imaginations; and to this event, growing more and more monstrous +as they talked it over, they must themselves have added this +grotesque detail. However, I have written to consult an Oxford +authority on this interesting point, and he has been kind enough +to explain at length that although at the _Haloa_, or winter +festival of the Corn-Goddess, and also at the _Chloeia_, or +festival in early spring, some symbolization of the reproductive +powers of Nature would be proper and appropriate, it would have +been quite out of place at the _Thalysia_, or autumn festival of +thanksgiving. I feel certain that a solecism of this nature--the +introduction into a particular rite of features not sanctioned +by the texts--would have seemed a shocking thing, even to the +unhinged mind of one who had always been so careful a scholar. + + + + +_Tu Quoque Fontium_ + + +Just to sit in the Sun, to bask like an animal in its heat--this +is one of my country recreations. And often I reflect what a +thing after all it is still to be alive and sitting here, above +all the buried people of the world, in the kind and famous +Sunshine. + +Beyond the orchard there is a place where the stream, hurrying out +from under a bridge, makes for itself a quiet pool. A beech-tree +upholds its green light over the blue water; and there, when I +have grown weary of the sun, the great glaring indiscriminating +Sun, I can shade myself and read my book. And listening to this +water's pretty voices I invent for it exquisite epithets, calling +it _silver-clean_ or _moss-margined_ or _nymph-frequented_, and +idly promise to place it among the learned fountains and pools +of the world, making of it a cool green thought for English exiles +in the dust and glare of Eastern deserts. + + + + +_The Spider_ + + +What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? +To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to +a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? + +No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung +on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with +dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the +Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny +Soul. + + + + + +BOOK II + + +_"Thou, Trivia, goddess, aid my song: Through spacious streets +conduct thy bard along."_ + +Gay's _Trivia, or New Art of Walking Streets of London._ + + + + +_L'oiseau Bleu_ + + +What is it, I have more than once asked myself, what is it that +I am looking for in my walks about London? Sometimes it seems to +me as if I were following a Bird, a bright Bird that sings +sweetly as it floats about from one place to another. + +When I find myself however among persons of middle age and settled +principles, see them moving regularly to their offices--what keeps +them going? I ask myself. And I feel ashamed of myself and my Bird. + +There is though a Philosophic Doctrine--I studied it at College, +and I know that many serious people believe it--which maintains +that all men, in spite of appearances and pretensions, all live +alike for Pleasure. This theory certainly brings portly, +respected persons very near to me. Indeed with a sense of low +complicity I have sometimes followed and watched a Bishop. Was +he too on the hunt for Pleasure, solemnly pursuing his Bird? + + + + +_At The Bank_ + + +Entering the Bank in a composed manner, I drew a cheque and +handed it to the cashier through the grating. Then I eyed him +narrowly. Would not that astute official see that I was only +posing as a Real Person? No; he calmly opened a little drawer, +took out some real sovereigns, counted them carefully, and +handed them to me in a brass-tipped shovel. I went away feeling +I had perpetrated a delightful fraud. I had got some of the gold +of the actual world! + +Yet now and then, at the sight of my name on a visiting card, or +of my face photographed in a group among other faces, or when I +see a letter addressed in my hand, or catch the sound of my own +voice, I grow shy in the presence of a mysterious Person who is +myself, is known by my name, and who apparently does exist. Can +it be possible that I am as real as any one else, and that all +of us--the cashier and banker at the Bank, the King on his +throne--all feel ourselves like ghosts and goblins in this +authentic world? + + + + +_Mammon_ + + +Moralists and Church Fathers have named it the root of all Evil, +the begetter of hate and bloodshed, the sure cause of the soul's +damnation. It has been called "trash," "muck," "dunghill +excrement," by grave authors. The love of it is denounced in all +Sacred Writings; we find it reprehended on Chaldean bricks, and +in the earliest papyri. Buddha, Confucius, Christ, set their +faces against it; and they have been followed in more modern +times by beneficed Clergymen, Sunday School Teachers, and the +leaders of the Higher Thought. But have the condemnations of all +the ages done anything to tarnish that bright lustre? Men dig +for it ever deeper into the earth's intestines, travel in search +of it farther and farther to arctic and unpleasant regions. + +In spite of all my moral reading, I must confess that I like to +have some of this gaudy substance in my pocket. Its presence +cheers and comforts me, diffuses a genial warmth through my +body. My eyes rejoice in the shine of it; its clinquant sound is +music in my ears. Since I then am in his paid service, and +reject none of the doles of his bounty, I too dwell in the House +of Mammon. I bow before the Idol, and taste the unhallowed +ecstasy. + +How many Altars have been overthrown, and how many Theologies +and heavenly Dreams have had their bottoms knocked out of them, +while He has sat there, a great God, golden and adorned, and +secure on His unmoved throne? + + + + +_I See the World_ + + +"But you go nowhere, see nothing of the world," my cousins said. +Now though I do go sometimes to the parties to which I am now +and then invited, I find, as a matter of fact, that I get really +much more pleasure by looking in at windows, and have a way of +my own of seeing the World. And of summer evenings, when motors +hurry through the late twilight, and the great houses take on +airs of inscrutable expectation, I go owling out through the +dusk; and wandering toward the West, lose my way in unknown +streets--an unknown City of revels. And when a door opens and a +bediamonded Lady moves to her motor over carpets unrolled by +powdered footmen, I can easily think her some great Courtezan, +or some half-believed Duchess, hurrying to card-tables and lit +candles and strange scenes of joy. I like to see that there are +still splendid people on this flat earth; and at dances, +standing in the street with the crowd, and stirred by the music, +the lights, the rushing sound of voices, I think the Ladies as +beautiful as Stars who move up those lanes of light past our +rows of vagabond faces; the young men look like Lords in novels; +and if (it has once or twice happened) people I know go by me, +they strike me as changed and rapt beyond my sphere. And when on +hot nights windows are left open, and I can look in at Dinner +Parties, as I peer through lace curtains and window-flowers at +the silver, the women's shoulders, the shimmer of their jewels, +and the divine attitudes of their heads as they lean and listen, +I imagine extraordinary intrigues and unheard of wines and +passions. + + + + +_Social Success_ + + +The servant gave me my coat and hat, and in a glow of +self-satisfaction I walked out into the night. "A delightful evening," I +reflected, "the nicest kind of people. What I said about finance and +French philosophy impressed them; and how they laughed when I imitated a +pig squealing." + +But soon after, "God, it's awful," I muttered, "I wish I were dead." + + + + +_Apotheosis_ + + +But Oh, those heavenly moments when I feel this trivial universe +too small to contain my Attributes; when a sense of the divine +Ipseity invades me; when I know that my voice is the voice of +Truth, and my umbrella God's umbrella! + + + + +_The Spring in London_ + + +London seemed last winter like an underground city; as if its +low sky were the roof of a cave, and its murky day a light such +as one reads of in countries beneath the earth. + +And yet the natural sunlight sometimes shone there; white clouds +voyaged in the blue sky; the interminable multitudes of roofs +were washed with silver by the Moon, or cloaked with a mantle of +new-fallen snow. And the coming of Spring to London was to me +not unlike the descent of the maiden-goddess into Death's +Kingdoms, when pink almond blossoms blew about her in the gloom, +and those shadowy people were stirred with faint longings for +meadows and the shepherd's life. Nor was there anything more +virginal and fresh in wood or orchard than the shimmer of young +foliage, which, in May, dimmed with delicate green all the +smoke-blackened London trees. + + + + +_Fashion Plates_ + + +I like loitering at the bookstalls, looking in at the windows of +printshops, and romancing over the pictures I see of shepherdesses +and old-fashioned Beauties. Tall and slim and crowned with plumes +in one period, in another these Ladies become as wide-winged as +butterflies, or float, large, balloon-like visions, down summer +streets. And yet in all shapes they have always (I tell myself) +created thrilling effects of beauty, and waked in the breasts of +modish young men ever the same charming Emotion. + +But then I have questioned this. Is the emotion always precisely +the same? Is it true to say that the human heart remains quite +unchanged beneath all the changing fashions of frills and +ruffles? In this elegant and cruel Sentiment, I rather fancy +that colour and shape do make a difference. I have a notion that +about 1840 was the Zenith, the Meridian Hour, the Golden Age of +the Passion. Those tight-waisted, whiskered Beaux, those +crinolined Beauties, adored one another, I believe, with a +leisure, a refinement, and dismay not quite attainable at other +dates. + + + + +_Mental Vice_ + + +There are certain hackneyed Thoughts that will force them-selves +on me; I find my mind, especially in hot weather, infested and +buzzed about by moral Platitudes. "That shows--" I say to +myself, or, "How true it is--" or, "I really ought to have +known!" The sight of a large clock sets me off into musings on +the flight of Time; a steamer on the Thames or lines of +telegraph inevitably suggest the benefits of Civilization, man's +triumph over Nature, the heroism of Inventors, the courage, amid +ridicule and poverty, of Stephenson and Watt. Like faint, rather +unpleasant smells, these thoughts lurk about railway stations. I +can hardly post a letter without marvelling at the excellence +and accuracy of the Postal System. + +Then the pride in the British Constitution and British Freedom, +which comes over me when I see, even in the distance, the Towers +of Westminster Palace--that Mother of Parliaments--it is not +much comfort that this should be chastened, as I walk down the +Embankment, by the sight of Cleopatra's Needle, and the Thought +that it will no doubt witness the Fall of the British, as it has +that of other Empires, remaining to point its Moral, as old as +Egypt, to Antipodeans musing on the dilapidated bridges. + +I am sometimes afraid of finding that there is a moral for +everything; that the whole great frame of the Universe has a key, +like a box; has been contrived and set going by a well-meaning +but humdrum Eighteenth-century Creator. It would be a kind of +Hell, surely, a world in which everything could be at once +explained, shown to be obvious and useful. I am sated with +Lesson and Allegory, weary of monitory ants, industrious bees, +and preaching animals. The benefits of Civilization cloy me. I +have seen enough shining of the didactic Sun. + +So gazing up on hot summer nights at the London stars, I cool my +thoughts with a vision of the giddy, infinite, meaningless waste +of Creation, the blazing Suns, the Planets and frozen Moons, all +crashing blindly forever across the void of space. + + + + +_The Organ of Life_ + + +Almost always In London--in the congregated uproar of streets, +or in the noise that drifts through wails and windows--you can +hear the hackneyed melancholy of street music; a music which +sounds like the actual voice of the human Heart, singing the +lost joys, the regrets, the loveless lives of the people who +blacken the pavements, or jolt along on the busses. + +"Speak to me kindly," the hand-organ implores; "I'm all alone!" +it screams amid the throng; "thy Vows are all broken," it +laments in dingy courtyards, "And light is thy Fame." And of hot +summer afternoons, the Cry for Courage to Remember, or Calmness +to Forget, floats in with the smell of paint and asphalt--faint +and sad--through open office windows. + + + + +_Humiliation_ + + +"My own view is," I began, but no one listened. At the next +pause, "I always say," I remarked, but again the loud talk went +on. Someone told a story. When the laughter had ended, "I often +think--"; but looking round the table I could catch no friendly +or attentive eye. It was humiliating, but more humiliating the +thought that Sophocles and Goethe would have always commanded +attention, while the lack of it would not have troubled Spinoza +or Abraham Lincoln. + + + + +_Green Ivory_ + + +What a bore it is, waking up in the morning always the same +person. I wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big, +bushy eyebrows and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep +Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist. + +I should like to be refined and melancholy, the victim of a +hopeless passion; to love in the old, stilted way, with +impossible Adoration and Despair under the pale-faced Moon. + +I wish I could get up; I wish I were the world's greatest +Violinist. I wish I had lots of silver, and first Editions, and +green ivory. + + + + +_In The Park_ + + +"Yes," I said one afternoon in the Park, as I looked rather +contemptuously at the people of Fashion, moving slow and +well-dressed in the sunshine, "but how about the others, the +Courtiers and Beauties and Dandies of the past? They wore +fine costumes, and glittered for their hour in the summer +air. What has become of them?" I somewhat rhetorically asked. +They were all dead now. Their day was over. They were cold +in their graves. + +And I thought of those severe spirits who, in garrets far from +the Park and Fashion, had scorned the fumes and tinsel of the +noisy World. + +But, good Heavens! these severe spirits were, it occurred to me, +all, as a matter of fact, quite as dead as the others. + + + + +_The Correct_ + + +I am sometimes visited by a suspicion that everything isn't +quite all right with the Righteous; that the Moral Law speaks in +muffled and dubious tones to those who listen most scrupulously +for its dictates. I feel sure I have detected a look of doubt +and misgiving in the eyes of its earnest upholders. + +But there is no such shadow or cloud on the faces in Club +windows, or in the eyes of drivers of four-in-hands, or of +fashionable young men walking down Piccadilly. For these live +by a Rule which has not been drawn down from far-off and +questionable skies, and needs no sanction; what they do is +Correct, and that is all. Correctly dressed from head to foot, +they pass, with correct speech and thoughts and gestures, +correctly across the roundness of the Earth. + + + + +_"Where Do I Come In?"_ + + +When I read in the _Times_ about India and all its problems and +populations; when I look at the letters in large type of +important personages, and find myself face to face with the +Questions, Movements, and great Activities of the Age, "Where do +I come in?" I ask myself uneasily. + +Then in the great _Times_-reflected world I find the corner +where I play my humble but necessary part. For I am one of the +unpraised, unrewarded millions without whom Statistics would be +a bankrupt science. It is we who are born, who marry, who die, +in constant ratios; who regularly lose so many umbrellas, post +just so many unaddressed letters every year. And there are +enthusiasts among us who, without the least thought of their own +convenience, allow omnibuses to run over them; or throw +themselves month by month, in fixed numbers, from the London +bridges. + + + + +_Microbes_ + + +But how Is one to keep free from those mental microbes that +worm-eat people's brains--those Theories and Diets and Enthusiasms +and infectious Doctrines that we are always liable to catch from +what seem the most innocuous contacts? People go about laden with +germs; they breathe creeds and convictions on you whenever they +open their mouths. Books and newspapers are simply creeping with +them--the monthly Reviews seem to have room for nothing else. +Wherewithal then shall a young man cleanse his way; and how shall +he keep his mind immune to Theosophical speculations, and novel +schemes of Salvation? + +Can he ever be sure that he won't be suddenly struck down by the +fever of Funeral, or of Spelling Reform, or take to his bed with +a new Sex Theory? + +But is this struggle for a healthy mind in a maggoty universe +really after all worth it? Are there not soporific dreams and +sweet deliriums more soothing than Reason? If Transmigration can +make clear the dark Problem of Evil; if Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy can +free us from the dominion of Death; if the belief that Bacon +wrote Shakespeare gives a peace that the world cannot give, why +pedantically reject such kindly solace? Why not be led with the +others by still waters, and be made to lie down in green +pastures? + + + + +_The Quest_ + + +"We walk alone in the world," the Moralist, at the end of his +essay on Ideal Friendship, writes somewhat sadly, "Friends such +as we desire are dreams and fables," Yet we never quite give up +the hope of finding them. But what awful things happen to us? +what snubs, what set-downs we experience, what shames and +disillusions. We can never really tell what these new unknown +persons may do to us. Sometimes they seem nice, and then begin +to talk like gramophones. Sometimes they grab at us with moist +hands, or breathe hotly on our necks, or make awful confidences, +or drench us from sentimental slop-pails. And too often, among +the thoughts in the loveliest heads, we come on nests of woolly +caterpillars. + +And yet we brush our hats, pull on our gloves, and go out and +ring door-bells. + + + + +_The Kaleidoscope_ + + +I find in my mind, in its miscellany of ideas and musings, a +curious collection of little landscapes and pictures, shining +and fading for no reason. Sometimes they are views in no way +remarkable-the corner of a road, a heap of stones, an old gate. +But there are many charming pictures, too: as I read, between my +eyes and book, the Moon sheds down on harvest fields her chill +of silver; I see autumnal avenues, with the leaves falling, or +swept in heaps; and storms blow among my thoughts, with the rain +beating forever on the fields. Then Winter's upward glare of +snow appears; or the pink and delicate green of Spring in the +windy sunshine; or cornfields and green waters, and youths +bathing in Summer's golden heats. + +And as I walk about, certain places haunt me: a cathedral rises +above a dark blue foreign town, the colour of ivory in the +sunset light; now I find myself in a French garden full of +lilacs and bees, and shut-in sunshine, with the Mediterranean +lounging and washing outside its walls; now in a little college +library, with busts, and the green reflected light of Oxford +lawns--and again I hear the bells, reminding me of the familiar +Oxford hours. + + + + +_Oxford Street_ + + +One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of +vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I +was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted +shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had +faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods +displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share +in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious +faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London +traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant +and sad--into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which +sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, +blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, +the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace +beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. _Om Mani +padme hum_--I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the +pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus. + +Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked +that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was +enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the +Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that +turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and sorrow, and anger. + + + + +_Beauty_ + + +Among all the ugly mugs of the world we see now and then a face +made after the divine pattern. Then, a wonderful thing happens +to us; the Blue Bird sings, the golden Splendour shines, and for +a queer moment everything seems meaningless save our impulse to +follow those fair forms, to follow them to the clear Paradises +they promise. + +Plato assures us that these moments are not (as we are apt to +think them) mere blurs and delusions of the senses, but divine +revelations; that in a lovely face we see imaged, as in a +mirror, the Absolute Beauty--; it is Reality, flashing on us in +the cave where we dwell amid shadows and darkness. Therefore we +should follow these fair forms, and their shining footsteps will +lead us upward to the highest heaven of Wisdom. The Poets, too, +keep chanting this great doctrine of Beauty in grave notes to +their golden strings. Its music floats up through the skies so +sweet, so strange, that the very Angels seem to lean from their +stars to listen. + +But, O Plato, O Shelley, O Angels of Heaven, what scrapes you do +get us into! + + + + +_The Power of Words_ + + +I thanked the club porter who helped me into my coat, and +stepped out lightly into the vastness and freshness of the +Night. And as I walked along my eyes were dazzling with the +glare I had left; I still seemed to hear the sound of my speech, +and the applause and laughter. + +And when I looked up at the Stars, the great Stars that bore +me company, streaming over the dark houses as I moved, I felt +that I was the Lord of Life; the mystery and disquieting +meaninglessness of existence--the existence of other people, +and of my own, were solved for me now. As for the Earth, +hurrying beneath my feet, how bright was its journey; how +shining the goal toward which it went swinging--you might +really say leaping--through the sky. + +"I must tell the Human Race of this!" I heard my voice; saw my +prophetic gestures, as I expounded the ultimate meaning of +existence to the white, rapt faces of Humanity. Only to find the +words--that troubled me; were there then no words to describe +this Vision--divine--intoxicating? + +And then the Word struck me; the Word people would use. I +stopped in the street; my Soul was silenced like a bell that +snarls at a jarring touch. I stood there awhile and meditated on +language, its perfidious meanness, the inadequacy, the ignominy +of our vocabulary, and how Moralists have spoiled our words by +distilling into them, as into little vials of poison, all their +hatred of human joy. Away with that police-force of brutal words +which bursts in on our best moments and arrests our finest +feelings! This music within me, large, like the song of the +stars--like a Glory of Angels singing--"No one has any right to +say I am drunk!" I shouted. + + + + +_Self-Analysis_ + + +"Yes, aren't they odd, the thoughts that float through one's +mind for no reason? But why not be frank--I suppose the best of +us are shocked at times by the things we find ourselves +thinking. Don't you agree," I went on, not noticing (until it +was too late) that all other conversation had ceased, and the +whole dinner-party was listening, "don't you agree that the +oddest of all are the improper thoughts that come into one's +head--the unspeakable words I mean, and Obscenities?" When I +remember that remark, I hasten to enlarge my mind with ampler +considerations. I think of Space, and the unimportance in its +unmeasured vastness, of our toy solar system; I lose myself in +speculations on the lapse of Time, reflecting how at the best +our human life on this minute and perishing planet is as brief +as a dream. + + + + +_The Voice of the World_ + + +"And what are you doing now?" The question of these school +contemporaries of mine, and their greeting the other day in +Piccadilly (I remember how shabby I felt as I stood talking +to them)--for a day or two that question haunted me. And +behind their well-bred voices I seemed to hear the voice of +Schoolmasters and Tutors, of the Professional Classes, and +indeed of all the world. What, as a plain matter of fact, was I +doing, how did I spend my days? The life-days which I knew were +numbered, and which were described in sermons and on tombstones +as so irrevocable, so melancholy-brief. + +I decided to change my life. I too would be somebody in my time +and age; my contemporaries should treat me as an important person. +I began thinking of my endeavours, my studies by the midnight +lamp, my risings at dawn for stolen hours of self-improvement. + +But alas, the day, the little day, was enough just then. It +somehow seemed enough, just to be alive in the Spring, with the +young green of the trees, the smell of smoke in the sunshine; I +loved the old shops and books, the uproar darkening and +brightening in the shabby daylight. Just a run of good-looking +faces--and I was always looking for faces--would keep me amused. +And London was but a dim-lit stage on which I could play in +fancy any part I liked. I woke up in the morning like Byron to +find myself famous; I was drawn like Chatham to St. Paul's, amid +the cheers of the Nation, and sternly exclaimed with Cromwell, +"Take away that bauble," as I sauntered past the Houses of +Parliament. + + + + +_And Anyhow_ + + +And anyhow, soon, so soon (in only seven million years or +thereabouts the Encyclopaedia said) this Earth would grow cold, +all human activities end, and the last wretched mortals freeze +to death in the dim rays of the dying Sun. + + + + +_Drawbacks_ + + +I should be all right.... If it weren't for these sudden +visitations of Happiness, these downpourings of Heaven's blue, +little invasions of Paradise, or waftings to the Happy Islands, +or whatever you may call these disconcerting Moments, I should +be like everybody else, and as blameless a rate-payer as any in +our Row. + + + + +_Talk_ + + +Once in a while, when doors are closed and curtains drawn on a +group of free spirits, the miracle happens, and Good Talk +begins. 'Tis a sudden illumination--the glow, it may be of +sanctified candles, or, more likely, the blaze around a cauldron +of gossip. + +Is there an ecstasy or any intoxication like it? Oh? to talk, to +talk people into monsters, to talk one's self out of one's +clothes, to talk God from His heaven, and turn everything in the +world into a bright tissue of phrases! + +These Pentecosts and outpourings of the spirit can only occur +very rarely, or the Universe itself would be soon talked out of +existence. + + + + +_The Church of England_ + + +I have my Anglican moments; and as I sat there that Sunday +afternoon, in the Palladian interior of the London Church, and +listened to the unexpressive voices chanting the correct service, +I felt a comfortable assurance that we were in no danger of +being betrayed into any unseemly manifestations of religious +fervour. We had not gathered together at that performance +to abase ourselves with furious hosannas before any dark +Creator of an untamed Universe, no Deity of freaks and miracles +and sinister hocus-pocus; but to pay our duty to a highly +respected Anglican First Cause--undemonstrative, gentlemanly +and conscientious--whom, without loss of self-respect, we +could sincerely and decorously praise. + + + + +_Misgiving_ + + +We were talking of people, and a name familiar to us all was +mentioned. We paused and looked at each other; then soon, by +means of anecdotes and clever touches, that personality was +reconstructed, and seemed to appear before us, large, pink, and +life-like, and gave a comic sketch of itself with appropriate +poses. + +"Of course," I said to myself, "this sort of thing never happens +to me." For the notion was quite unthinkable, the notion I mean +of my own dear image, called up like this without my knowledge, +to turn my discreet way of life into a cake-walk. + + + + +_Sanctuaries_ + + +She said, "How small the world is after all!" + +I thought of China, of a holy mountain in the West of China, +full of legends and sacred trees and demon-haunted caves. It +is always enveloped in mountain mists; and in that white thick +air I heard the faint sound of bells, and the muffled footsteps +of innumerable pilgrims, and the reiterated mantra, _Nam-Mo, +O-mi-to-Fo_, which they murmur as they climb its slopes. High +up among its temples and monasteries marched processions of +monks, with intoned services, and many prostrations, and lighted +candles that glimmer through the fog. There in their solemn +shrines stood the statues of the Arahats, and there, seated +on his white elephant, loomed immense and dim, the image of +Amitabha, the Lord of the Western Heavens. + +She said "Life is so complicated!" Climbing inaccessible cliffs +of rock and ice, I shut myself within a Tibetan monastery beyond +the Himalayan ramparts. I join with choirs of monks, intoning +their deep sonorous dirges and unintelligible prayers; I beat +drums, I clash cymbals, and blow at dawn from the Lamasery roofs +conches, and loud discordant trumpets. And wandering through +those vast and shadowy halls, as I tend the butter-lamps of the +golden Buddhas, and watch the storms that blow across the barren +mountains, I taste an imaginary bliss, and then pass on to other +scenes and incarnations along the endless road that leads me to +Nirvana. + +"But I do wish you would tell me what you really think?" + +I fled to Africa, into the depths of the dark Ashanti forest. +There, in its gloomiest recesses, where the soil is stained with +the blood of the negroes He has eaten, dwells that monstrous +Deity of human shape and red colour, the great Fetish God, +Sasabonsum. I like Sasabonsum: other Gods are sometimes moved to +pity and forgiveness, but to Him such weakness is unknown. He is +utterly and absolutely implacable; no gifts or prayers, no +holocausts of human victims can appease, or ever, for one +moment, propitiate Him. + + + + +_Symptoms_ + + +"But there are certain people I simply cannot stand. A +dreariness and sense of death come over me when I meet them--I +really find it difficult to breathe when they are in the room, +as if they had pumped all the air out of it. Wouldn't it +be dreadful to produce that effect on people! But they never +seem to be aware of it. I remember once meeting a famous +Bore; I really must tell you about it, it shows the unbelievable +obtuseness of such people." + +I told this and another story or two with great gusto, and talked +on of my experiences and sensations, till suddenly I noticed, in +the appearance of my charming neighbour, something--a slightly +glazed look in her eyes, a just perceptible irregularity in her +breathing--which turned that occasion for me into a kind of +Nightmare. + + + + +_Shadowed_ + + +I sometimes feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of +mine--the Me of my daydreams--who leads a melodramatic life of +his own, quite unrelated to my real existence. So one day I +shadowed him down the street. He loitered along for a while, and +then stood at a shop-window and dressed himself out in a gaudy +tie and yellow waistcoat. Then he bought a great sponge and two +stuffed birds and took them to lodgings, where he led for a +while a shady existence. Next he moved to a big house in +Mayfair, and gave grand dinner-parties, with splendid service +and costly wines. His amorous adventures in this region I pass +over. He soon sold his house and horses, gave up his motors, +dismissed his retinue of servants, and went--saving two young +ladies from being run over on the way--to live a life of heroic +self-sacrifice among the poor. + +I was beginning to feel encouraged about him, when in passing a +fishmonger's, he pointed at a great salmon and said, "I caught +that fish." + + + + +_The Incredible_ + + +"Yes, but they were rather afraid of you." + +"Afraid of _me_?" + +"Yes, so one of them told me afterwards." + +I was fairly jiggered. If my personality can inspire fear or +respect the world must be a simpler place than I had thought it. +Afraid of a shadow, a poor make-believe like me? Are children +more absurdly terrified by a candle in a hollow turnip? Was +Bedlam at full moon ever scared by anything half so silly? + + + + +_Terror_ + + +A pause suddenly fell on our conversation--one of those +uncomfortable lapses when we sit with fixed smiles, searching +our minds for some remark with which to fill up the unseasonable +silence. It was only a moment--"But suppose," I said to myself +with horrible curiosity, "suppose none of us had found a word to +say, and we had gone on sitting in silence?" + +It is the dread of Something happening, Something unknown and +awful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk +from dying out. So travellers at night in an unknown forest keep +their fires ablaze, in fear of Wild Beasts lurking ready in the +darkness to leap upon them. + + + + +_Pathos_ + + +When winter twilight falls on my street with the rain, a sense +of the horrible sadness of life descends upon me. I think of +drunken old women who drown themselves because nobody loves +them; I think of Napoleon at St. Helena, and of Byron growing +morose and fat in the enervating climate of Italy. + + + + +_Inconstancy_ + + +The rose that one wears and throws away, the friend one forgets, +the music that passes--out of the well-known transitoriness of +mortal things I have made myself a maxim or precept to the +effect that it is foolish to look for one face, or to listen +long for one voice, in a world that is after all, as I know, +full of enchanting voices. + +But all the same, I can never quite forget the enthusiasm with +which, as a boy, I read the praises of Constancy and True Love, +and the unchanged Northern Star. + + + + +_The Poplar_ + + +There is a great tree in Sussex, whose cloud of thin foliage +floats high in the summer air. The thrush sings in it, and +blackbirds, who fill the late, decorative sunshine with a +shimmer of golden sound. There the nightingale finds her green +cloister; and on those branches sometimes, like a great fruit, +hangs the lemon-coloured Moon. In the glare of August, when all +the world is faint with heat, there is always a breeze in those +cool recesses, always a noise, like the noise of water, among +its lightly hung leaves. + +But the owner of this Tree lives in London, reading books. + + + + +_On the Doorstep_ + + +I rang the bell as of old; as of old I gazed at the great +shining Door and waited. But, alas! that flutter and beat of the +wild heart, that delicious doorstep Terror--it was gone; and +with it dear, fantastic, panic-stricken Youth had rung the bell, +flitted round the corner and vanished for ever. + + + + +_Old Clothes_ + + +Shabby old waistcoat, what made the heart beat that you used to +cover? Funny-shaped hat, where are the thoughts that once nested +beneath you? Old shoes, hurrying along what dim paths of the +Past did I wear out your sole-leather? + + + + +_Youth_ + + +Oh dear, this living and eating and growing old; these doubts +and aches in the back, and want of interest in the Moon and +Roses... + +Am I the person who used to wake in the middle of the night and +laugh with the joy of living? Who worried about the existence of +God, and danced with young ladies till long after daybreak? Who +sang "Auld Lang Syne" and howled with sentiment, and more than +once gazed at the summer stars through a blur of great, romantic +tears? + + + + +_Consolation_ + + +The other day, depressed on the Underground, I tried to cheer +myself by thinking over the joys of our human lot. But there +wasn't one of them for which I seemed to care a hang--not +Wine, nor Friendship, nor Eating, nor Making Love, nor the +Consciousness of Virtue. Was it worth while then going up in +a lift into a world that had nothing less trite to offer? + +Then I thought of reading--the nice and subtle happiness of +reading. This was enough, this joy not dulled by Age, this +polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene, life-long +intoxication. + + + + +_Sir Eustace Carr_ + + +When I read the news about Sir Eustace Carr in the morning +paper, I was startled, like everyone else who knew, if only by +name this young man, whose wealth and good looks, whose +adventurous travels and whose brilliant and happy marriage, had +made of him an almost romantic figure. + +Every now and then one hears of some strange happening of this +kind. But they are acts so anomalous, in such startling +contradiction to all our usual ways and accepted notions of life +and its value, that most of us are willing enough to accept the +familiar explanation of insanity, or any other commonplace cause +which may be alleged--financial trouble, or some passionate +entanglement, and the fear of scandal and exposure. And then the +Suicide is forgotten as soon as possible, and his memory +shuffled out of the way as something unpleasant to think of. But +with a curiosity that is perhaps a little morbid, I sometimes +let my thoughts dwell on these cases, wondering whether the dead +man may not have carried to the grave with him the secret of +some strange perplexity, some passion or craving or irresistible +impulse, of which perhaps his intimates, and certainly the +coroner's jury, can have had no inkling. + +I had never met or spoken to Sir Eustace Carr--the worlds we +lived in were very different--but I had read of his explorations +in the East, and of the curious tombs he had discovered--somewhere, +was it not?--in the Nile Valley. Then too it happened (and this +was the main cause of my interest) that at one time I had seen +him more than once, under circumstances that were rather unusual. +And now I began to think of this incident. In away it was nothing, +and yet the impression haunted me that it was somehow connected +with this final act, for which no explanation, beyond that of +sudden mental derangement, had been offered. This explanation did +not seem to me wholly adequate, although it had been accepted, +I believe, both by his friends and the general public--and with +the more apparent reason on account of a strain of eccentricity, +amounting in some cases almost to insanity, which could be traced, +it was said, in his mother's family. + +I found it not difficult to revive with a certain vividness the +memory of those cold and rainy November weeks that I had +happened to spend alone, some years ago, in Venice, and of the +churches which I had so frequently haunted. Especially I +remembered the great dreary church in the piazza near my +lodgings, into which I would often go on my way to my rooms in +the twilight. It was the season when all the Venice churches are +draped in black, and services for the dead are held in them at +dawn and twilight; and when I entered this Baroque interior, +with its twisted columns and volutes and high-piled, hideous +tombs, adorned with skeletons and allegorical figures and angels +blowing trumpets--all so agitated, and yet all so dead and empty +and frigid--I would find the fantastic darkness filled with +glimmering candles, and kneeling figures, and the discordant +noise of chanting. There I would sit, while outside night fell +with the rain on Venice; the palaces and green canals faded into +darkness, and the great bells, swinging against the low sky, +sent the melancholy sound of their voices far over the lagoons. + +It was here, in this church, that I used to see Sir Eustace Carr; +would generally find him in the same corner when I entered, and +would sometimes watch his face, until the ceremonious extinguishing +of the candles, one by one, left us in shadowy night. It was a +handsome and thoughtful face, and I remember more than once +wondering what had brought him to Venice in that unseasonable +month, and why he came so regularly to this monotonous service. +It was as if some spell had drawn him; and now, with my curiosity +newly wakened, I asked myself what had been that spell? I also +must have been affected by it, for I had been there also in his +uncommunicating company. Here, I felt, was perhaps the answer to +my question, the secret of the enigma that puzzled me; and as I +went over my memories of that time, and revived its sombre and +almost sinister fascination, I seemed to see an answer looming +before my imagination. But it was an answer, an hypothesis or +supposition, so fantastic, that my common sense could hardly +accept it. + +For I now saw that the spell which had been on us both at that +time in Venice had been nothing but the spell and tremendous +incantation of the Thought of Death. The dreary city with its +decaying palaces and great tomb-encumbered churches had really +seemed, in those dark and desolate weeks, to be the home and +metropolis of the great King of Terrors; and the services at +dawn and twilight, with their prayers for the Dead, and funereal +candles, had been the chanted ritual of his worship. Now suppose +(such was the notion that held my imagination) suppose this +spell, which I had felt but for a time and dimly, should become to +someone a real obsession, casting its shadow more and more completely +over a life otherwise prosperous and happy, might not this be the +clue to a history like that of Sir Eustace Carr's--not only his +interest in the buried East, his presence at that time in Venice, +but also his unexplained and mysterious end? + +Musing on this half-believed notion, I thought of the great +personages and great nations we read of in ancient history, who +have seemed to live with a kind of morbid pleasure in the shadow +of this great Thought; who have surrounded themselves with +mementoes of Death, and hideous symbols of its power, and who, +like the Egyptians, have found their main interest, not in the +present, but in imaginary explorations of the unknown future; +not on the sunlit surface of this earth, but in the vaults and +dwelling-places of the Dead beneath it. + +Since this preoccupation, this curiosity, this nostalgia, has +exercised so enormous a fascination in the past, I found it not +impossible to imagine some modern favourite of fortune falling a +victim to this malady of the soul; until at last, growing weary +of other satisfactions, he might be drawn to open for himself +the dark portal and join the inhabitants of that dim region, +"Kings and Counsellors of the earth, Princes that had gold, who +filled their houses with silver." This, as I say, was the notion +that haunted me, the link my imagination forged between Sir +Eustace Carr's presence in that dark Venetian church, and his +self-caused death some years later. But whether it is really a +clue to that unexplained mystery, or whether it is nothing more +than a somewhat sinister fancy, of course, I cannot say. + + + + +_The Lord Mayor_ + + +An arctic wind was blowing; it cut through me as I stood there. +The boot-black was finishing his work and complaints. + +"But I should be 'appy, sir, if only I could make four bob a +day," he said. + +I looked down at him; it seemed absurd, the belief of this +crippled, half-frozen creature, that four-shillings would make +him happy. Happiness! the fabled treasure of some far-away +heaven I thought it that afternoon; not to be bought with gold, +not of this earth! + +I said something to this effect. But four shillings a day was +enough for the boot-black. + +"Why," he said, "I should be as 'appy as the Lord Mayor!" + + + + +_The Burden_ + + +I know too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History +and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over +books; believing in geological periods, cave-dwellers, Chinese +Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me. + +Why am I to blame for all that is wrong in the world? I didn't +invent Sin and Hate and Slaughter. Who made it my duty anyhow +to administer the Universe, and keep the planets to their +Copernican courses? My shoulders are bent beneath the weight +of the firmament; I grow weary of propping up, like Atlas, +this vast and erroneous Cosmos. + + + + +_Under An Umbrella_ + + +From under the roof of my umbrella I saw the washed pavement +lapsing beneath my feet, the news-posters lying smeared with +dirt at the crossings, the tracks of the busses in the liquid +mud. On I went through this dreary world of wetness. And +through how many rains and years shall I still hurry down +wet streets--middle-aged, and then, perhaps, very old? And +on what errands? + +Asking myself this cheerless question I fade from your vision, +Reader, into the distance, sloping my umbrella against the wind. + + + +THE END + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Trivia, by Logan Pearsall Smith + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRIVIA *** + +***** This file should be named 8544.txt or 8544.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/4/8544/ + +Produced by Joris Van Dael, Charles Aldarondo, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +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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