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Title: The Yellow Book
An Illustrated Quarterly. Vol. 1, April 1894
Editor: Henry Harland
Release Date: January 19, 2013 [EBook #41875]
Language: English
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THE YELLOW BOOK
An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume I April 1894
[Illustration: Magazine Cover]
London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane
Contents
Letterpress
I. The Death of the Lion By Henry James _Page_ 7
II. Tree-Worship Richard Le Gallienne 57
III. A Defence of Cosmetics Max Beerbohm 65
IV. Daimonizomenos Arthur Christopher Benson 83
V. Irremediable Ella D'Arcy 87
VI. The Frontier }
} William Watson 113
VII. Night on Curbar Edge }
VIII. A Sentimental Cellar George Saintsbury 119
IX. Stella Maris Arthur Symons 129
X. Mercedes }
} Henry Harland 135
XI. A Broken Looking-Glass }
XII. Alere Flammam }
} Edmund Gosse 153
XIII. A Dream of November }
XIV. The Dedication Fred M. Simpson 159
XV. A Lost Masterpiece George Egerton 189
XVI. Reticence in Literature Arthur Waugh 201
XVII. Modern Melodrama Hubert Crackanthorpe 223
XVIII. London }
} John Davidson 233
XIX. Down-a-down }
XX. The Love-Story of Luigi } Richard Garnett, LL.D. 235
Tansillo }
XXI. The Fool's Hour { John Oliver Hobbes } 253
{ and George Moore }
Pictures
I. A Study { By Sir Frederic Leighton,
{ P.R.A. _Frontispiece_
II. L'Education Sentimentale Aubrey Beardsley _Page_ 55
III. Le Puy en Velay Joseph Pennell 63
IV. The Old Oxford Music Hall Walter Sickert 85
V. Portrait of a Gentleman Will Rothenstein 111
VI. The Reflected Faun Laurence Housman 117
VII. Night Piece Aubrey Beardsley 127
VIII. A Study Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A. 133
IX. Portrait of a Lady Will Rothenstein 151
X. Portrait of Mrs. Patrick } Aubrey Beardsley 157
Campbell }
XI. The Head of Minos J. T. Nettleship 187
XII. Portrait of a Lady Charles W. Furse 199
XIII. A Lady Reading Walter Sickert 221
XIV. A Book Plate Aubrey Beardsley 251
XV. A Book Plate R. Anning Bell 251
[Illustration:
The Yellow Book
An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume I April 1894
London: Elkin Mathews
& John Lane
Boston: Copeland &
Day]
Ballantyne Press
London & Edinburgh
A Study
By Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A.
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: A Study]
The Death of the Lion
By Henry James
I
I had simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and it must have begun when
I received my manuscript back from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was my
"chief," as he was called in the office: he had accepted the high
mission of bringing the paper up. This was a weekly periodical, and had
been supposed to be almost past redemption when he took hold of it. It
was Mr. Deedy who had let it down so dreadfully--he was never mentioned
in the office now save in connection with that misdemeanour. Young as I
was I had been in a manner taken over from Mr. Deedy, who had been owner
as well as editor; forming part of a promiscuous lot, mainly plant and
office-furniture, which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and
depression, parted with at a rough valuation. I could account for my
continuity only on the supposition that I had been cheap. I rather
resented the practice of fathering all flatness on my late protector,
who was in his unhonoured grave; but as I had my way to make I found
matter enough for complacency in being on a "staff." At the same time I
was aware that I was exposed to suspicion as a product of the old
lowering system. This made me feel that I was doubly bound to have
ideas, and had doubtless been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr.
Pinhorn that I should lay my lean hands on Neil Paraday. I remember that
he looked at me first as if he had never heard of this celebrity, who
indeed at that moment was by no means in the middle of the heavens; and
even when I had knowingly explained he expressed but little confidence
in the demand for any such matter. When I had reminded him that the
great principle on which we were supposed to work was just to create the
demand we required, he considered a moment and then rejoined: "I see;
you want to write him up."
"Call it that if you like."
"And what's your inducement?"
"Bless my soul--my admiration!"
Mr. Pinhorn pursed up his mouth. "Is there much to be done with him?"
"Whatever there is, we should have it all to ourselves, for he hasn't
been touched."
This argument was effective, and Mr. Pinhorn responded: "Very well,
touch him." Then he added: "But where can you do it?"
"Under the fifth rib!" I laughed.
Mr. Pinhorn stared. "Where's that?"
"You want me to go down and see him?" I inquired, when I had enjoyed his
visible search for this obscure suburb.
"I don't 'want' anything--the proposal's your own. But you must remember
that that's the way we do things _now_," said Mr. Pinhorn, with another
dig at Mr. Deedy.
Unregenerate as I was, I could read the queer implications of this
speech. The present owners superior virtue as well as his deeper craft
spoke in his reference to the late editor as one of that baser sort who
deal in false representations. Mr. Deedy would as soon have sent me to
call on Neil Paraday as he would have published a "holiday-number;" but
such scruples presented themselves as mere ignoble thrift to his
successor, whose own sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells and
whose definition of genius was the art of finding people at home. It was
as if Mr. Deedy had published reports without his young men's having, as
Mr. Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as I
have hinted, and I was not concerned to straighten out the journalistic
morals of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss over the edge of
which it was better not to peer. Really to be there this time moreover
was a vision that made the idea of writing something subtle about Neil
Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as considerate as even Mr.
Deedy could have wished, and yet I should be as present as only Mr.
Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in which
Mr. Paraday lived (which had formed part of my explanation, though I
knew of it only by hearsay) was, I could divine, very much what had made
Mr. Pinhorn bite. It struck him as inconsistent with the success of his
paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. Moreover, was not
an immediate exposure of everything just what the public wanted? Mr.
Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of the promptness
with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool, on her return from her
fiasco in the States. Hadn't we published, while its freshness and
flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own version of that great
international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at this coupling of the
actress and the author, and I confess that after having enlisted Mr.
Pinhorn's sympathies I procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better
than I wished, and I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few
days later I called on Lord Crouchley and carried off in triumph the
most unintelligible statement that had yet appeared of his lordship's
reasons for his change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily
papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down to
Brighton for a chat, as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who
gave me, on the subject of her divorce, many curious particulars that
had not been articulated in court. If ever an article flowed from the
primal fount it was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, however,
I became aware that Neil Paraday's new book was on the point of
appearing, and that its approach had been the ground of my original
appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now annoyed with me for having lost so
many days. He bundled me off--we would at least not lose another. I have
always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable example of the
journalistic instinct. Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke to him,
to create a visible urgency, and no enlightenment could possibly have
reached him. It was a pure case of professional _flair_--he had smelt
the coming glory as an animal smells its distant prey.
II
I may as well say at once that this little record pretends in no degree
to be a picture either of my introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain
proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my narrative allows no space
for these things and in any case a prohibitory sentiment would be
attached to my recollection of so rare an hour. These meagre notes are
essentially private, and if they see the light the insidious forces
that, as my story itself shows, make at present for publicity will
simply have overmastered my precautions. The curtain fell lately enough
on the lamentable drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr.
Paraday's door is a fresh memory of kindness, hospitality, compassion,
and of the wonderful illuminating talk in which the welcome was
conveyed. Some voice of the air had taught me the right moment, the
moment of his life at which an act of unexpected young allegiance might
most come home. He had recently recovered from a long, grave illness. I
had gone to the neighbouring inn for the night, but I spent the evening
in his company, and he insisted the next day on my sleeping under his
roof. I had not an indefinite leave: Mr. Pinhorn supposed us to put our
victims through on the gallop. It was later, in the office, that the
step was elaborated and regulated. I fortified myself however, as my
training had taught me to do, by the conviction that nothing could be
more advantageous for my article than to be written in the very
atmosphere. I said nothing to Mr. Paraday about it, but in the morning,
after my removal from the inn, while he was occupied in his study, as he
had notified me that he should need to be, I committed to paper the
quintessence of my impressions. Then thinking to commend myself to Mr.
Pinhorn by my celerity, I walked out and posted my little packet before
luncheon. Once my paper was written I was free to stay on, and if it was
designed to divert attention from my frivolity in so doing I could
reflect with satisfaction that I had never been so clever. I don't mean
to deny of course that I was aware it was much too good for Mr. Pinhorn;
but I was equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the supreme shrewdness
of recognising from time to time the cases in which an article was not
too bad only because it was too good. There was nothing he loved so much
as to print on the right occasion a thing he hated. I had begun my visit
to Mr. Paraday on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A
copy of it arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the
garden with it immediately after breakfast. I read it from beginning to
end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the rest
of the week and over the Sunday.
That night my manuscript came back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied with a
letter, of which the gist was the desire to know what I meant by sending
him such stuff. That was the meaning of the question, if not exactly its
form, and it made my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake was I
could now only look it in the face and accept it. I knew where I had
failed, but it was exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I had been
sent down there to be personal, and in point of fact I hadn't been
personal at all; what I had sent up to London was merely a little
finicking, feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant
to Mr. Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly
angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket)
approached the object of our arrangement only to be so deucedly distant.
For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and how a miracle--as
pretty as some old miracle of legend--had been wrought on the spot to
save me. There had been a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline
robe, and then, with a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an
angel's having swooped down and caught me to his bosom. He held me only
till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my
manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the
reflections I made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this
anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a
rebuke decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately to send him (it
was the case to say so) the genuine article, the revealing and
reverberating sketch to the promise of which--and of which alone--I owed
my squandered privilege. A week or two later I recast my peccant paper,
and giving it a particular application to Mr. Paraday's new book,
obtained for it the hospitality of another journal, where, I must admit,
Mr. Pinhorn was so far justified that it attracted not the least
attention.
III
I was frankly, at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic, so
that one morning when, in the garden, Neil Paraday had offered to read
me something I quite held my breath as I listened. It was the written
scheme of another book--something he had put aside long ago, before his
illness, and lately taken out again to reconsider. He had been turning
it round when I came down upon him, and it had grown magnificently under
this second hand. Loose, liberal, confident, it might have passed for a
great gossiping, eloquent letter--the overflow into talk of an artist's
amorous plan. The subject I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest
he had yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of fine
maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a mine of gold, a
precious, independent work. I remember rather profanely wondering
whether the ultimate production could possibly be so happy. His reading
of the epistle, at any rate, made me feel as if I were, for the
advantage of posterity, in close correspondence with him--were the
distinguished person to whom it had been affectionately addressed. It
was high distinction simply to be told such things. The idea he now
communicated had all the freshness, the flushed fairness of the
conception untouched and untried: it was Venus rising from the sea,
before the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly
present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last bright
word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks, weighing mounds
of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I became conscious of a
sudden prudent alarm.
"My dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it?" I asked. "It's
infinitely noble, but what time it will take, what patience and
independence, what assured, what perfect conditions it will demand! Oh
for a lone isle in a tepid sea!"
"Isn't this practically a lone isle, and aren't you, as an encircling
medium, tepid enough?" he replied; alluding with a laugh to the wonder
of my young admiration and the narrow limits of his little provincial
home. "Time isn't what I've lacked hitherto: the question hasn't been to
find it, but to use it. Of course my illness made a great hole, but I
daresay there would have been a hole at any rate. The earth we tread has
more pockets than a billiard-table. The great thing is now to keep on my
feet."
"That's exactly what I mean."
Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes--such pleasant eyes as he had--in
which, as I now recall their expression, I seem to have seen a dim
imagination of his fate. He was fifty years old, and his illness had
been cruel, his convalescence slow. "It isn't as if I weren't all
right."
"Oh, if you weren't all right I wouldn't look at you!" I tenderly said.
We had both got up, quickened by the full sound of it all, and he had
lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one, and, with an intenser
smile, by way of answer to my exclamation, he touched it with the flame
of his match. "If I weren't better I shouldn't have thought of _that_!"
He flourished his epistle in his hand.
"I don't want to be discouraging, but that's not true," I returned. "I'm
sure that during the months you lay here in pain you had visitations
sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think of more and more
all the while. That's what makes you, if you will pardon my familiarity,
so respectable. At a time when so many people are spent you come into
your second wind. But, thank God, all the same, you're better! Thank
God, too, you're not, as you were telling me yesterday, 'successful.' If
_you_ weren't a failure, what would be the use of trying? That's my one
reserve on the subject of your recovery--that it makes you 'score,' as
the newspapers say. It looks well in the newspapers, and almost anything
that does that is horrible. 'We are happy to announce that Mr. Paraday,
the celebrated author, is again in the enjoyment of excellent health.'
Somehow I shouldn't like to see it."
"You won't see it; I'm not in the least celebrated--my obscurity
protects me. But couldn't you bear even to see I was dying or dead?" my
companion asked.
"Dead--_passe encore_; there's nothing so safe. One never knows what a
living artist may do--one has mourned so many. However, one must make
the worst of it; you must be as dead as you can."
"Don't I meet that condition in having just published a book?"
"Adequately, let us hope; for the book is verily a masterpiece."
At this moment the parlour-maid appeared in the door that opened into
the garden: Paraday lived at no great cost, and the frisk of petticoats,
with a timorous "Sherry, sir?" was about his modest mahogany. He allowed
half his income to his wife, from whom he had succeeded in separating
without redundancy of legend. I had a general faith in his having
behaved well, and I had once, in London, taken Mrs. Paraday down to
dinner. He now turned to speak to the maid, who offered him, on a tray,
some card or note, while agitated, excited, I wandered to the end of
the garden. The idea of his security became supremely dear to me, and I
asked myself if I were the same young man who had come down a few days
before to scatter him to the four winds. When I retraced my steps he had
gone into the house and the woman (the second London post had come in)
had placed my letters and a newspaper on a bench. I sat down there to
the letters, which were a brief business, and then, without heeding the
address, took the paper from its envelope. It was the journal of highest
renown, _The Empire_ of that morning. It regularly came to Paraday, but
I remembered that neither of us had yet looked at the copy already
delivered. This one had a great mark on the "editorial" page, and,
uncrumpling the wrapper, I saw it to be directed to my host and stamped
with the name of his publishers. I instantly divined that _The Empire_
had spoken of him, and I have not forgotten the odd little shock of the
circumstance. It checked all eagerness and made me drop the paper a
moment. As I sat there, conscious of a palpitation, I think I had a
vision of what was to be. I had also a vision of the letter I would
presently address to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking as it were with Mr. Pinhorn.
Of course, however, the next minute the voice of _The Empire_ was in my
ears.
The article was not, I thanked Heaven, a review; it was a "leader," the
last of three, presenting Neil Paraday to the human race. His new book,
the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two out, and _The
Empire_, already aware of it, fired, as if on the birth of a prince, a
salute of a whole column. The guns had been booming these three hours in
the house without our suspecting them. The big blundering newspaper had
discovered him, and now he was proclaimed and anointed and crowned. His
place was assigned him as publicly as if a fat usher with a wand had
pointed to the topmost chair; he was to pass up and still up, higher
and higher, between the watching faces and the envious sounds--away up
to the daïs and the throne. The article was a date; he had taken rank at
a bound--waked up a national glory. A national glory was needed, and it
was an immense convenience he was there. What all this meant rolled over
me, and I fear I grew a little faint--it meant so much more than I could
say "yea" to on the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different; the
tremendous wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked
down, I suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my
flowers, and had reared itself into the likeness of a temple vast and
bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the house he would come out a
contemporary. That was what had happened--the poor man was to be
squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as if he had been overtaken on
the crest of the hill and brought back to the city. A little more and he
would have dipped down to posterity and escaped.
IV
When he came out it was exactly as if he had been in custody, for beside
him walked a stout man with a big black beard, who, save that he wore
spectacles, might have been a policeman, and in whom at a second glance
I recognised the highest contemporary enterprise.
"This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday, looking, I thought, rather white;
"he wants to publish heaven knows what about me."
I winced as I remembered that this was exactly what I myself had wanted.
"Already?" I exclaimed, with a sort of sense that my friend had fled to
me for protection.
Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his glasses: they suggested the
electric headlights of some monstrous modern ship, and I felt as if
Paraday and I were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw that his
momentum was irresistible. "I was confident that I should be the first
in the field," he declared. "A great interest is naturally felt in Mr.
Paraday's surroundings."
"I hadn't the least idea of it," said Paraday, as if he had been told he
had been snoring.
"I find he has not read the article in _The Empire_," Mr. Morrow
remarked to me. "That's so very interesting--it's something to start
with," he smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, which were
violently new, and to look encouragingly round the little garden. As a
"surrounding" I felt that I myself had already been taken in; I was a
little fish in the stomach of a bigger one. "I represent," our visitor
continued, "a syndicate of influential journals, no less than
thirty-seven, whose public--whose publics, I may say--are in peculiar
sympathy with Mr. Paraday's line of thought. They would greatly
appreciate any expression of his views on the subject of the art he so
brilliantly practises. Besides my connection with the syndicate just
mentioned, I hold a particular commission from _The Tatler_, whose most
prominent department, 'Smatter and Chatter'--I daresay you've often
enjoyed it--attracts such attention. I was honoured only last week, as a
representative of _The Tatler_, with the confidence of Guy Walsingham,
the author of 'Obsessions.' She expressed herself thoroughly pleased
with my sketch of her method; she went so far as to say that I had made
her genius more comprehensible even to herself."
Neil Paraday had dropped upon the garden-bench and sat there, at once
detached and confused; he looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if
with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His movement had been
interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into
a wicker chair that stood hard by, and as Mr. Morrow so settled himself
I felt that he had taken official possession and that there was no
undoing it. One had heard of unfortunate people's having "a man in the
house," and this was just what we had. There was a silence of a moment,
during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible
the presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my
thought, as I was sure Paraday's was doing, performed within the minute
a great distant revolution. I saw just how emphatic I should make my
rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn, and that having come, like Mr. Morrow, to
betray, I must remain as long as possible to save. Not because I had
brought my mind back, but because our visitor's last words were in my
ear, I presently inquired with gloomy irrelevance if Guy Walsingham were
a woman.
"Oh yes, a mere pseudonym; but convenient, you know, for a lady who goes
in for the larger latitude. 'Obsessions, by Miss So-and-So,' would look
a little odd, but men are more naturally indelicate. Have you peeped
into 'Obsessions'?" Mr. Morrow continued sociably to our companion.
Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, as if he had not heard
the question: a manifestation that appeared to suit the cheerful Mr.
Morrow as well as any other. Imperturbably bland, he was a man of
resources--he only needed to be on the spot. He had pocketed the whole
poor place while Paraday and I were woolgathering, and I could imagine
that he had already got his "heads." His system, at any rate, was
justified by the inevitability with which I replied, to save my friend
the trouble: "Dear, no; he hasn't read it. He doesn't read such things!"
I unwarily added.
"Things that are _too_ far over the fence, eh?" I was indeed a godsend
to Mr. Morrow. It was the psychological moment; it determined the
appearance of his notebook, which, however, he at first kept slightly
behind him, as the dentist, approaching his victim, keeps his horrible
forceps. "Mr. Paraday holds with the good old proprieties--I see!" And,
thinking of the thirty-seven influential journals, I found myself, as I
found poor Paraday, helplessly gazing at the promulgation of this
ineptitude. "There's no point on which distinguished views are so
acceptable as on this question--raised perhaps more strikingly than ever
by Guy Walsingham--of the permissibility of the larger latitude. I have
an appointment, precisely in connection with it, next week, with Dora
Forbes, the author of 'The Other Way Round,' which everybody is talking
about. Has Mr. Paraday glanced at 'The Other Way Round'?" Mr. Morrow now
frankly appealed to me. I took upon myself to repudiate the supposition,
while our companion, still silent, got up nervously and walked away. His
visitor paid no heed to his withdrawal; he only opened out the notebook
with a more motherly pat. "Dora Forbes, I gather, takes the ground, the
same as Guy Walsingham's, that the larger latitude has simply got to
come. He holds that it has got to be squarely faced. Of course his sex
makes him a less prejudiced witness. But an authoritative word from Mr.
Paraday--from the point of view of _his_ sex, you know--would go right
round the globe. He takes the line that we _haven't_ got to face it?"
I was bewildered; it sounded somehow as if there were three sexes. My
interlocutor's pencil was poised, my private responsibility great. I
simply sat staring, however, and only found presence of mind to say: "Is
this Miss Forbes a gentleman?"
Mr. Morrow hesitated an instant, smiling: "It wouldn't be
'Miss'--there's a wife!"
"I mean is she a man?"
"The wife?"--Mr. Morrow, for a moment, was as confused as myself. But
when I explained that I alluded to Dora Forbes in person he informed me,
with visible amusement at my being so out of it, that this was the
"pen-name" of an indubitable male--he had a big red moustache. "He only
assumes a feminine personality because the ladies are such popular
favourites. A great deal of interest is felt in this assumption, and
there's every prospect of its being widely imitated." Our host at this
moment joined us again, and Mr. Morrow remarked invitingly that he
should be happy to make a note of any observation the movement in
question, the bid for success under a lady's name, might suggest to Mr.
Paraday. But the poor man, without catching the allusion, excused
himself, pleading that, though he was greatly honoured by his visitor's
interest, he suddenly felt unwell and should have to take leave of
him--have to go and lie down and keep quiet. His young friend might be
trusted to answer for him, but he hoped Mr. Morrow didn't expect great
things even of his young friend. His young friend, at this moment,
looked at Neil Paraday with an anxious eye, greatly wondering if he were
doomed to be ill again; but Paraday's own kind face met his question
reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance intelligible enough: "Oh, I'm
not ill, but I'm scared: get him out of the house as quietly as
possible." Getting newspaper-men out of the house was odd business for
an emissary of Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of it
that I called after him as he left us:
"Read the article in _The Empire_, and you'll soon be all right!"
V
"Delicious my having come down to tell him of it!" Mr. Morrow
ejaculated. "My cab was at the door twenty minutes after _The Empire_
had been laid upon my breakfast-table. Now what have you got for me?" he
continued, dropping again into his chair, from which, however, the next
moment he quickly rose. "I was shown into the drawing-room, but there
must be more to see--his study, his literary sanctum, the little things
he has about, or other domestic objects or features. He wouldn't be
lying down on his study-table? There's a great interest always felt in
the scene of an author's labours. Sometimes we're favoured with very
delightful peeps. Dora Forbes showed me all his table-drawers, and
almost jammed my hand into one into which I made a dash! I don't ask
that of you, but if we could talk things over right there where he sits
I feel as if I should get the keynote."
I had no wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Morrow, I was much too
initiated not to prefer the safety of other ways; but I had a quick
inspiration and I entertained an insurmountable, an almost superstitious
objection to his crossing the threshold of my friend's little lonely,
shabby, consecrated workshop. "No, no--we sha'n't get at his life that
way," I said. "The way to get at his life is to--But wait a moment!" I
broke off and went quickly into the house; then, in three minutes, I
reappeared before Mr. Morrow with the two volumes of Paraday's new book.
"His life's here," I went on, "and I'm so full of this admirable thing
that I can't talk of anything else. The artist's life's his work, and
this is the place to observe him. What he has to tell us he tells us
with _this_ perfection. My dear sir, the best interviewer's the best
reader."
Mr. Morrow good-humouredly protested. "Do you mean to say that no other
source of information should be opened to us?"
"None other till this particular one--by far the most copious--has been
quite exhausted. Have you exhausted it, my dear sir? Had you exhausted
it when you came down here? It seems to me in our time almost wholly
neglected, and something should surely be done to restore its ruined
credit. It's the course to which the artist himself at every step, and
with such pathetic confidence, refers us. This last book of Mr.
Paraday's is full of revelations."
"Revelations?" panted Mr. Morrow, whom I had forced again into his
chair.
"The only kind that count. It tells you with a perfection that seems to
me quite final all the author thinks, for instance, about the advent of
the 'larger latitude.'"
"Where does it do that?" asked Mr. Morrow, who had picked up the second
volume and was insincerely thumbing it.
"Everywhere--in the whole treatment of his case. Extract the opinion,
disengage the answer--those are the real acts of homage."
Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book away. "Ah, but you mustn't
take me for a reviewer."
"Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You came down
to perform a little act of sympathy, and so, I may confide to you, did
I. Let us perform our little act together. These pages overflow with the
testimony we want: let us read them and taste them and interpret them.
You will of course have perceived for yourself that one scarcely does
read Neil Paraday till one reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an
extraordinary quality, and it's only when you expose it confidently to
that test that you really get near his style. Take up your book again
and let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth
chapter. If you feel that you can't do it justice, compose yourself to
attention while I produce for you--I think I can!--this scarcely less
admirable ninth."
Mr. Morrow gave me a straight glance which was as hard as a blow between
the eyes; he had turned rather red and a question had formed itself in
his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as if he had uttered it:
"What sort of a damned fool are _you_?" Then he got up, gathering
together his hat and gloves, buttoning his coat, projecting hungrily all
over the place the big transparency of his mask. It seemed to flare over
Fleet Street and somehow made the actual spot distressingly humble:
there was so little for it to feed on unless he counted the blisters of
our stucco or saw his way to do something with the roses. Even the poor
roses were common kinds. Presently his eyes fell upon the manuscript
from which Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay on the
bench. As my own followed them I saw that it looked promising, looked
pregnant, as if it gently throbbed with the life the reader had given
it. Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod toward it and a vague thrust of his
umbrella. "What's that?"
"Oh, it's a plan--a secret."
"A secret!" There was an instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow made
another movement. I may have been mistaken, but it affected me as the
translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the manuscript, and
this led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab which may very well
have seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and which at any rate left
Mr. Paraday's two admirers very erect, glaring at each other while one
of them held a bundle of papers well behind him. An instant later Mr.
Morrow quitted me abruptly, as if he had really carried something away.
To reassure myself, watching his broad back recede, I only grasped my
manuscript the tighter. He went to the back-door of the house, the one
he had come out from, but on trying the handle he appeared to find it
fastened. So he passed round into the front garden, and, by listening
intently enough, I could presently hear the outer gate close behind him
with a bang. I thought again of the thirty-seven influential journals
and wondered what would be his revenge. I hasten to add that he was
magnanimous: which was just the most dreadful thing he could have been.
_The Tatler_ published a charming, chatty, familiar account of Mr.
Paraday's "Home-life," and on the wings of the thirty-seven influential
journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow's own expression, right round the
globe.
VI
A week later, early in May, my glorified friend came up to town, where,
it may be veraciously recorded, he was the king of the beasts of the
year. No advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation more complete,
no bewilderment more teachable. His book sold but moderately, though the
article in _The Empire_ had done unwonted wonders for it; but he
circulated in person in a manner that the libraries might well have
envied. His formula had been found--he was a "revelation." His momentary
terror had been real, just as mine had been--the overclouding of his
passionate desire to be left to finish his work. He was far from
unsociable, but he had the finest conception of being let alone that I
have ever met. For the time, however, he took his profit where it seemed
most to crowd upon him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries
about the nature of the artist's task. Observation too was a kind of
work and experience a kind of success; London dinners were all material
and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the faintest
conception of what I'm trying for," he said to me, "and not many have
read three pages that I've written; but they're all enthusiastic,
enchanted, devoted." He found himself in truth equally amused and
fatigued; but the fatigue had the merit of being a new sort, and the
phantasmagoric town was perhaps after all less of a battlefield than the
haunted study. He once told me that he had had no personal life to speak
of since his fortieth year, but had had more than was good for him
before. London closed the parenthesis and exhibited him in relations;
one of the most inevitable of these being that in which he found himself
to Mrs. Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless brewer and proprietress of
the universal menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody knows, on
occasions when the crush is great, the animals rub shoulders freely with
the spectators and the lions sit down for whole evenings with the lambs.
It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil Paraday
this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous fun, considered
that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost heraldic
oddity. Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm over her capture, and
nothing could exceed the confused apprehensions it excited in me. I had
an instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to conceal from
her victim, but which I let her perceive with perfect impunity. Paraday
heeded it, but she never did, for her conscience was that of a romping
child. She was a blind, violent force, to which I could attach no more
idea of responsibility than to the hum of a spinning-top. It was
difficult to say what she conduced to but to circulation. She was
constructed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her for our
tractable friend was not to do him to death. He had consented for a
time to be of indiarubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day he
should resume his shape or at least get back into his box. It was
evidently all right, but I should be glad when it was well over. I was
simply nervous--the impression was ineffaceable of the hour when, after
Mr. Morrow's departure, I had found him on the sofa in his study. That
pretext of indisposition had not in the least been meant as a snub to
the envoy of _The Tatler_--he had gone to lie down in very truth. He had
felt a pang of his old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in him
by this forcing open of a new period. His old programme, his old ideal
even had to be changed. Say what one would, success was a complication
and recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious
illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the
gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but it at least required
adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had passed a bargain,
my part of which was that I should make it my business to take care of
him. Let whoever would represent the interest in his presence (I had a
mystical prevision of Mrs. Weeks Wimbush), I should represent the
interest in his work--in other words, in his absence. These two
interests were in their essence opposed; and I doubt, as youth is
fleeting, if I shall ever again know the intensity of joy with which I
felt that in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.
One day, in Sloane Street, I found myself questioning Paraday's
landlord, who had come to the door in answer to my knock. Two vehicles,
a barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the house.
"In the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wimbush."
"And in the dining-room?"
"A young lady, sir--waiting: I think a foreigner."
It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out he
attached a value to these subjugated hours. On which days, however,
didn't the dear man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a crisis, would
have rushed round immediately after her own repast. I went into the
dining-room first, postponing the pleasure of seeing how, upstairs, the
lady of the barouche would, on my arrival, point the moral of my sweet
solicitude. No one took such an interest as herself in his doing only
what was good for him, and she was always on the spot to see that he did
it. She made appointments with him to discuss the best means of
economising his time and protecting his privacy. She further made his
health her special business, and had so much sympathy with my own zeal
for it that she was the author of pleasing fictions on the subject of
what my devotion had led me to give up. I gave up nothing (I don't count
Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had as yet achieved was to
find myself also in the menagerie. I had dashed in to save my friend,
but I had only got domesticated and wedged; so that I could do nothing
for him but exchange with him over people's heads looks of intense but
futile intelligence.
VII
The young lady in the dining-room had a brave face, black hair, blue
eyes, and in her lap a big volume. "I've come for his autograph," she
said, when I had explained to her that I was under bonds to see people
for him when he was occupied. "I've been waiting half an hour, but I'm
prepared to wait all day." I don't know whether it was this that told me
she was American, for the propensity to wait all day is not in general
characteristic of her race. I was enlightened probably not so much by
the spirit of the utterance as by some quality of its sound. At any rate
I saw she had an individual patience and a lovely frock, together with
an expression that played among her pretty features as a breeze among
flowers. Putting her book upon the table, she showed me a massive album,
showily bound and full of autographs of price. The collection of faded
notes, of still more faded "thoughts," of quotations, platitudes,
signatures, represented a formidable purpose.
"Most people apply to Mr. Paraday by letter, you know," I said.
"Yes, but he doesn't answer. I've written three times."
"Very true," I reflected; "the sort of letter you mean goes straight
into the fire."
"How do you know the sort I mean?" my interlocutress asked. She had
blushed and smiled and in a moment she added: "I don't believe he gets
many like them!"
"I'm sure they're beautiful, but he burns without reading." I didn't add
that I had told him he ought to.
"Isn't he then in danger of burning things of importance?"
"He would be, if distinguished men hadn't an infallible nose for a
petition."
She looked at me a moment--her face was sweet and gay. "Do _you_ burn
without reading, too?" she asked; in answer to which I assured her that
if she would trust me with her repository I would see that Mr. Paraday
should write his name in it.
She considered a little. "That's very well, but it wouldn't make me see
him."
"Do you want very much to see him?" It seemed ungracious to catechise so
charming a creature, but somehow I had never yet taken my duty to the
great author so seriously.
"Enough to have come from America for the purpose."
I stared. "All alone?"
"I don't see that that's exactly your business; but if it will make me
more appealing I will confess that I am quite by myself. I had to come
alone or not at all."
She was interesting; I could imagine that she had lost parents, natural
protectors--could conceive even that she had inherited money. I was in a
phase of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to me pure
swagger. As a trick of this frank and delicate girl, however, it became
romantic--a part of the general romance of her freedom, her errand, her
innocence. The confidence of young Americans was notorious, and I
speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have been more
generous than the impulse that had operated here. I foresaw at that
moment that it would make her my peculiar charge, just as circumstances
had made Neil Paraday. She would be another person to look after, and
one's honour would be concerned in guiding her straight. These things
became clearer to me later; at the instant I had scepticism enough to
observe to her, as I turned the pages of her volume, that her net had,
all the same, caught many a big fish. She appeared to have had fruitful
access to the great ones of the earth; there were people moreover whose
signatures she had presumably secured without a personal interview. She
couldn't have waylaid George Washington and Friedrich Schiller and
Hannah More. She met this argument, to my surprise, by throwing up the
album without a pang. It wasn't even her own; she was responsible for
none of its treasures. It belonged to a girl-friend in America, a young
lady in a western city. This young lady had insisted on her bringing it,
to pick up more autographs: she thought they might like to see, in
Europe, in what company they would be. The "girl-friend," the western
city, the immortal names, the curious errand, the idyllic faith, all
made a story as strange to me, and as beguiling, as some tale in the
Arabian Nights. Thus it was that my informant had encumbered herself
with the ponderous tome; but she hastened to assure me that this was the
first time she had brought it out. For her visit to Mr. Paraday it had
simply been a pretext. She didn't really care a straw that he should
write his name; what she did want was to look straight into his face.
I demurred a little. "And why do you require to do that?"
"Because I just love him!" Before I could recover from the agitating
effect of this crystal ring my companion had continued: "Hasn't there
ever been any face that you've wanted to look into?"
How could I tell her so soon how much I appreciated the opportunity of
looking into hers? I could only assent in general to the proposition
that there were certainly for everyone such faces; and I felt that the
crisis demanded all my lucidity, all my wisdom. "Oh, yes, I'm a student
of physiognomy. Do you mean," I pursued, "that you've a passion for Mr.
Paraday's books?"
"They've been everything to me--I know them by heart. They've completely
taken hold of me. There's no author about whom I feel as I do about Neil
Paraday."
"Permit me to remark then," I presently rejoined, "that you're one of
the right sort."
"One of the enthusiasts? Of course I am!"
"Oh, there are enthusiasts who are quite of the wrong. I mean you're one
of those to whom an appeal can be made."
"An appeal?" Her face lighted as if with the chance of some great
sacrifice.
If she was ready for one it was only waiting for her, and in a moment I
mentioned it. "Give up this rigid purpose of seeing him. Go away without
it. That will be far better."
She looked mystified; then she turned visibly pale. "Why, hasn't he any
personal charm?" The girl was terrible and laughable in her bright
directness.
"Ah, that dreadful word 'personal'!" I exclaimed; "we're dying of it,
and you women bring it out with murderous effect. When you encounter a
genius as fine as this idol of ours, let him off the dreary duty of
being a personality as well. Know him only by what's best in him, and
spare him for the same sweet sake."
My young lady continued to look at me in confusion and mistrust, and the
result of her reflection on what I had just said was to make her
suddenly break out: "Look here, sir--what's the matter with him?"
"The matter with him is that, if he doesn't look out, people will eat a
great hole in his life."
She considered a moment. "He hasn't any disfigurement?"
"Nothing to speak of!"
"Do you mean that social engagements interfere with his occupations?"
"That but feebly expresses it."
"So that he can't give himself up to his beautiful imagination?"
"He's badgered, bothered, overwhelmed, on the pretext of being
applauded. People expect him to give them his time, his golden time, who
wouldn't themselves give five shillings for one of his books."
"Five? I'd give five thousand!"
"Give your sympathy--give your forbearance. Two-thirds of those who
approach him only do it to advertise themselves."
"Why, it's too bad!" the girl exclaimed, with the face of an angel.
I followed up my advantage. "There's a lady with him now who's a
terrible complication, and who yet hasn't read, I am sure, ten pages
that he ever wrote."
My visitor's wide eyes grew tenderer. "Then how does she talk----?"
"Without ceasing. I only mention her as a single case. Do you want to
know how to show a superlative consideration? Simply avoid him."
"Avoid him?" she softly wailed.
"Don't force him to have to take account of you; admire him in silence,
cultivate him at a distance and secretly appropriate his message. Do you
want to know," I continued, warming to my idea, "how to perform an act
of homage really sublime?" Then as she hung on my words: "Succeed in
never seeing him!"
"Never?" she pathetically gasped.
"The more you get into his writings the less you'll want to; and you'll
be immensely sustained by the thought of the good you're doing him."
She looked at me without resentment or spite, and at the truth I had put
before her with candour, credulity and pity. I was afterwards happy to
remember that she must have recognised in my face the liveliness of my
interest in herself. "I think I see what you mean."
"Oh, I express it badly; but I should be delighted if you would let me
come to see you--to explain it better."
She made no response to this, and her thoughtful eyes fell on the big
album, on which she presently laid her hands as if to take it away. "I
did use to say out West that they might write a little less for
autographs (to all the great poets, you know) and study the thoughts and
style a little more."
"What do they care for the thoughts and style? They didn't even
understand you. I'm not sure," I added, "that I do myself, and I daresay
that you by no means make me out." She had got up to go, and though I
wanted her to succeed in not seeing Neil Paraday I wanted her also,
inconsequently, to remain in the house. I was at any rate far from
desiring to hustle her off. As Mrs. Weeks Wimbush, upstairs, was still
saving our friend in her own way, I asked my young lady to let me
briefly relate, in illustration of my point, the little incident of my
having gone down into the country for a profane purpose and been
converted on the spot to holiness. Sinking again into her chair to
listen, she showed a deep interest in the anecdote. Then, thinking it
over gravely, she exclaimed with her odd intonation:
"Yes, but you do see him!" I had to admit that this was the case; and I
was not so prepared with an effective attenuation as I could have
wished. She eased the situation off, however, by the charming quaintness
with which she finally said: "Well, I wouldn't want him to be lonely!"
This time she rose in earnest, but I persuaded her to let me keep the
album to show to Mr. Paraday. I assured her I would bring it back to her
myself. "Well, you'll find my address somewhere in it, on a paper!" she
sighed resignedly, as she took leave.
VIII
I blush to confess it, but I invited Mr. Paraday that very day to
transcribe into the album one of his most characteristic passages. I
told him how I had got rid of the strange girl who had brought it--her
ominous name was Miss Hurter and she lived at an hotel; quite agreeing
with him moreover as to the wisdom of getting rid with equal promptitude
of the book itself. This was why I carried it to Albemarle Street no
later than on the morrow. I failed to find her at home, but she wrote to
me and I went again: she wanted so much to hear more about Neil Paraday.
I returned repeatedly, I may briefly declare, to supply her with this
information. She had been immensely taken, the more she thought of it,
with that idea of mine about the act of homage: it had ended by filling
her with a generous rapture. She positively desired to do something
sublime for him, though indeed I could see that, as this particular
flight was difficult, she appreciated the fact that my visits kept her
up. I had it on my conscience to keep her up; I neglected nothing that
would contribute to it, and her conception of our cherished author's
independence became at last as fine as his own conception. "Read him,
read him," I constantly repeated; while, seeking him in his works, she
represented herself as convinced that, according to my assurance, this
was the system that had, as she expressed it, weaned her. We read him
together when I could find time, and the generous creature's sacrifice
was fed by our conversation. There were twenty selfish women, about whom
I told her, who stirred her with a beautiful rage. Immediately after my
first visit her sister, Mrs. Milsom, came over from Paris, and the two
ladies began to present, as they called it, their letters. I thanked our
stars that none had been presented to Mr. Paraday. They received
invitations and dined out, and some of these occasions enabled Fanny
Hurter to perform, for consistency's sake, touching feats of submission.
Nothing indeed would now have induced her even to look at the object of
her admiration. Once, hearing his name announced at a party, she
instantly left the room by another door and then straightway quitted
the house. At another time, when I was at the opera with them (Mrs.
Milsom had invited me to their box) I attempted to point Mr. Paraday out
to her in the stalls. On this she asked her sister to change places with
her, and, while that lady devoured the great man through a powerful
glass, presented, all the rest of the evening, her inspired back to the
house. To torment her tenderly I pressed the glass upon her, telling her
how wonderfully near it brought our friend's handsome head. By way of
answer she simply looked at me in grave silence; on which I saw that
tears had gathered in her eyes. These tears, I may remark, produced an
effect on me of which the end is not yet. There was a moment when I felt
it my duty to mention them to Neil Paraday; but I was deterred by the
reflection that there were questions more relevant to his happiness.
These questions indeed, by the end of the season, were reduced to a
single one--the question of reconstituting, so far as might be possible,
the conditions under which he had produced his best work. Such
conditions could never all come back, for there was a new one that took
up too much place; but some perhaps were not beyond recall. I wanted
above all things to see him sit down to the subject of which, on my
making his acquaintance, he had read me that admirable sketch. Something
told me there was no security but in his doing so before the new factor,
as we used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, should render the problem
incalculable. It only half reassured me that the sketch itself was so
copious and so eloquent that even at the worst there would be the making
of a small but complete book, a tiny volume which, for the faithful,
might well become an object of adoration. There would even not be
wanting critics to declare, I foresaw, that the plan was a thing to be
more thankful for than the structure to have been reared on it. My
impatience for the structure, none the less, grew and grew with the
interruptions. He had, on coming up to town, begun to sit for his
portrait to a young painter, Mr. Rumble, whose little game, as we used
to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, was to be the first to perch on the shoulders
of renown. Mr. Rumble's studio was a circus in which the man of the
hour, and still more the woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy
frames almost as electrically as they burst into telegrams and
"specials." He pranced into the exhibitions on their back; he was the
reporter on canvas, the Vandyke up to date, and there was one roaring
year in which Mrs. Bounder and Miss Braby, Guy Walsingham and Dora
Forbes proclaimed in chorus from the same pictured walls that no one had
yet got ahead of him.
Paraday had been promptly caught and saddled, accepting with
characteristic good-humour his confidential hint that to figure in his
show was not so much a consequence as a cause of immortality. From Mrs.
Wimbush to the last "representative" who called to ascertain his twelve
favourite dishes, it was the same ingenuous assumption that he would
rejoice in the repercussion. There were moments when I fancied I might
have had more patience with them if they had not been so fatally
benevolent. I hated, at all events, Mr. Rumble's picture, and had my
bottled resentment ready when, later on, I found my distracted friend
had been stuffed by Mrs. Wimbush into the mouth of another cannon. A
young artist in whom she was intensely interested, and who had no
connection with Mr. Rumble, was to show how far he could shoot him. Poor
Paraday, in return, was naturally to write something somewhere about the
young artist. She played her victims against each other with admirable
ingenuity, and her establishment was a huge machine in which the tiniest
and the biggest wheels went round to the same treadle. I had a scene
with her in which I tried to express that the function of such a man was
to exercise his genius--not to serve as a hoarding for pictorial
posters. The people I was perhaps angriest with were the editors of
magazines who had introduced what they called new features, so aware
were they that the newest feature of all would be to make him grind
their axes by contributing his views on vital topics and taking part in
the periodical prattle about the future of fiction. I made sure that
before I should have done with him there would scarcely be a current
form of words left me to be sick of; but meanwhile I could make surer
still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he drew the water that
irrigated their social flower-beds.
I had a battle with Mrs. Wimbush over the artist she protected, and
another over the question of a certain week, at the end of July, that
Mr. Paraday appeared to have contracted to spend with her in the
country. I protested against this visit; I intimated that he was too
unwell for hospitality without a _nuance_, for caresses without
imagination; I begged he might rather take the time in some restorative
way. A sultry air of promises, of reminders hung over his August, and he
would greatly profit by the interval of rest. He had not told me he was
ill again--that he had had a warning; but I had not heeded this, and I
found his reticence his worst symptom. The only thing he said to me was
that he believed a comfortable attack of something or other would set
him up: it would put out of the question everything but the exemptions
he prized. I am afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr in a very
small cause if I fail to explain that he surrendered himself much more
liberally than I surrendered him. He filled his lungs, for the most
part, with the comedy of his queer fate: the tragedy was in the
spectacles through which I chose to look. He was conscious of
inconvenience, and above all of a great renouncement; but how could he
have heard a mere dirge in the bells of his accession? The sagacity and
the jealousy were mine, and his the impressions and the anecdotes. Of
course, as regards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my encounters, for was
not the state of his health the very reason for his coming to her at
Prestidge? Wasn't it precisely at Prestidge that he was to be coddled,
and wasn't the dear Princess coming to help her to coddle him? The dear
Princess, now on a visit to England, was of a famous foreign house, and,
in her gilded cage, with her retinue of keepers and feeders, was the
most expensive specimen in the good lady's collection. I don't think her
august presence had had to do with Paraday's consenting to go, but it is
not impossible that he had operated as a bait to the illustrious
stranger. The party had been made up for him, Mrs. Wimbush averred, and
everyone was counting on it, the dear Princess most of all. If he was
well enough he was to read them something absolutely fresh, and it was
on that particular prospect the Princess had set her heart. She was so
fond of genius, in _any_ walk of life, and she was so used to it, and
understood it so well; she was the greatest of Mr. Paraday's admirers,
she devoured everything he wrote. And then he read like an angel. Mrs.
Wimbush reminded me that he had again and again given her, Mrs. Wimbush,
the privilege of listening to him.
I looked at her a moment. "What has he read to you?" I crudely inquired.
For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the fraction of a moment she
hesitated and coloured. "Oh, all sorts of things!"
I wondered whether this were a perfect fib or only an imperfect
recollection, and she quite understood my unuttered comment on her
perception of such things. But if she could forget Neil Paraday's
beauties she could of course forget my rudeness, and three days later
she invited me, by telegraph, to join the party at Prestidge. This time
she might indeed have had a story about what I had given up to be near
the master. I addressed from that fine residence several communications
to a young lady in London, a young lady whom, I confess, I quitted with
reluctance and whom the reminder of what she herself could give up was
required to make me quit at all. It adds to the gratitude I owe her on
other grounds that she kindly allows me to transcribe from my letters a
few of the passages in which that hateful sojourn is candidly
commemorated.
IX
"I suppose I ought to enjoy the joke," I wrote, "of what's going on
here, but somehow it doesn't amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary
possesses me and cynicism solicits. I positively feel my own flesh sore
from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full
of people who like him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom his
talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success. I delight in his
nonsense myself; why is it therefore that I grudge these happy folk
their artless satisfaction? Mystery of the human heart--abyss of the
critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can answer that question, and
as my want of gaiety has at last worn out her patience she has given me
a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I am made restless by the selfishness of
the insincere friend--I want to monopolise Paraday in order that he may
push me on. To be intimate with him is a feather in my cap; it gives me
an importance that I couldn't naturally pretend to, and I seek to
deprive him of social refreshment because I fear that meeting more
disinterested people may enlighten him as to my real spirit. All the
disinterested people here are his particular admirers and have been
carefully selected as such. There is supposed to be a copy of his last
book in the house, and in the hall I come upon ladies, in attitudes,
bending gracefully over the first volume. I discreetly avert my eyes,
and when I next look round the precarious joy has been superseded by the
book of life. There is a sociable circle or a confidential couple, and
the relinquished volume lies open on its face, as if it had been dropped
under extreme coercion. Somebody else presently finds it and transfers
it, with its air of momentary desolation, to another piece of furniture.
Every one is asking every one about it all day, and everyone is telling
everyone where they put it last. I'm sure it's rather smudgy about the
twentieth page. I have a strong impression too that the second volume is
lost--has been packed in the bag of some departing guest; and yet
everybody has the impression that somebody else has read to the end. You
see therefore that the beautiful book plays a great part in our
conversation. Why should I take the occasion of such distinguished
honours to say that I begin to see deeper into Gustave Flaubert's
doleful refrain about the hatred of literature? I refer you again to the
perverse constitution of man.
"The Princess is a massive lady with the organisation of an athlete and
the confusion of tongues of a _valet de place_. She contrives to commit
herself extraordinarily little in a great many languages, and is
entertained and conversed with in detachments and relays, like an
institution which goes on from generation to generation or a big
building contracted for under a forfeit. She can't have a personal
taste, any more than, when her husband succeeds, she can have a personal
crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and heavy and plain--made,
in the night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as if I ought
to pay some one a fee for my glimpse of it. She has been told
everything in the world and has never perceived anything, and the echoes
of her education respond awfully to the rash footfall--I mean the casual
remark--in the cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her
wit and says there is nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it
out. He is perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it has a
peculiarly exhausting effect. Every one is beginning--at the end of two
days--to sidle obsequiously away from her, and Mrs. Wimbush pushes him
again and again into the breach. None of the uses I have yet seen him
put to irritate me quite so much. He looks very fagged, and has at last
confessed to me that his condition makes him uneasy--has even promised
me that he will go straight home instead of returning to his final
engagements in town. Last night I had some talk with him about going
to-day, cutting his visit short; so sure am I that he will be better as
soon as he is shut up in his lighthouse. He told me that this is what he
would like to do; reminding me, however, that the first lesson of his
greatness has been precisely that he can't do what he likes. Mrs.
Wimbush would never forgive him if he should leave her before the
Princess has received the last hand. When I say that a violent rupture
with our hostess would be the best thing in the world for him he gives
me to understand that if his reason assents to the proposition his
courage hangs wofully back. He makes no secret of being mortally afraid
of her, and when I ask what harm she can do him that she hasn't already
done he simply repeats: 'I'm afraid, I'm afraid! Don't inquire too
closely,' he said last night; 'only believe that I feel a sort of
terror. It's strange, when she's so kind! At any rate, I would as soon
overturn that piece of priceless Sèvres as tell her that I must go
before my date.' It sounds dreadfully weak, but he has some reason, and
he pays for his imagination, which puts him (I should hate it) in the
place of others and makes him feel, even against himself, their
feelings, their appetites, their motives. He's so beastly intelligent.
Besides, the famous reading is still to come off, and it has been
postponed a day, to allow Guy Walsingham to arrive. It appears that this
eminent lady is staying at a house a few miles off, which means of
course that Mrs. Wimbush has forcibly annexed her. She's to come over in
a day or two--Mrs. Wimbush wants her to hear Mr. Paraday.
"To-day's wet and cold, and several of the company, at the invitation of
the Duke, have driven over to luncheon at Bigwood. I saw poor Paraday
wedge himself, by command, into the little supplementary seat of a
brougham in which the Princess and our hostess were already ensconced.
If the front glass isn't open on his dear old back perhaps he'll
survive. Bigwood, I believe, is very grand and frigid, all marble and
precedence, and I wish him well out of the adventure. I can't tell you
how much more and more _your_ attitude to him, in the midst of all this,
shines out by contrast. I never willingly talk to these people about
him, but see what a comfort I find it to scribble to you! I appreciate
it; it keeps me warm; there are no fires in the house. Mrs. Wimbush goes
by the calendar, the temperature goes by the weather, the weather goes
by God knows what, and the Princess is easily heated. I have nothing but
my acrimony to warm me, and have been out under an umbrella to restore
my circulation. Coming in an hour ago, I found Lady Augusta Minch
rummaging about the hall. When I asked her what she was looking for she
said she had mislaid something that Mr. Paraday had lent her. I
ascertained in a moment that the article in question is a manuscript,
and I have a foreboding that it's the noble morsel he read me six weeks
ago. When I expressed my surprise that he should have passed about
anything so precious (I happen to know it's his only copy--in the most
beautiful hand in all the world) Lady Augusta confessed to me that she
had not had it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush, who had wished to
give her a glimpse of it as a salve for her not being able to stay and
hear it read.
"'Is that the piece he's to read,' I asked, 'when Guy Walsingham
arrives?'
"'It's not for Guy Walsingham they're waiting now, it's for Dora
Forbes,' Lady Augusta said. 'She's coming, I believe, early to-morrow.
Meanwhile Mrs. Wimbush has found out about _him_ and is actively wiring
to him. She says he also must hear him.'
"'You bewilder me a little,' I replied; 'in the age we live in one gets
lost among the genders and the pronouns. The clear thing is that Mrs.
Wimbush doesn't guard such a treasure as jealously as she might.'
"'Poor dear, she has the Princess to guard! Mr. Paraday lent her the
manuscript to look over.'
"'Did she speak as if it were the morning paper?'
"Lady Augusta stared--my irony was lost upon her. 'She didn't have time,
so she gave me a chance first; because unfortunately I go to-morrow to
Bigwood.'
"'And your chance has only proved a chance to lose it?'
"'I haven't lost it. I remember now--it was very stupid of me to have
forgotten. I told my maid to give it to Lord Dorimont--or at least to
his man.'
"'And Lord Dorimont went away directly after luncheon.'
"'Of course he gave it back to my maid--or else his man did,' said Lady
Augusta. 'I daresay it's all right.'
"The conscience of these people is like a summer sea. They haven't time
to 'look over' a priceless composition; they've only time to kick it
about the house. I suggested that the 'man,' fired with a noble
emulation, had perhaps kept the work for his own perusal; and her
ladyship wanted to know whether, if the thing didn't turn up again in
time for the session appointed by our hostess, the author wouldn't have
something else to read that would do just as well. Their questions are
too delightful! I declared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing in the
world can ever do as well as the thing that does best; and at this she
looked a little confused and scared. But I added that if the manuscript
had gone astray our little circle would have the less of an effort of
attention to make. The piece in question was very long--it would keep
them three hours.
"'Three hours! Oh, the Princess will get up!' said Lady Augusta.
"'I thought she was Mr. Paraday's greatest admirer.'
"'I daresay she is--she's so awfully clever. But what's the use of being
a Princess----'
"'If you can't dissemble your love?' I asked, as Lady Augusta was vague.
She said, at any rate, that she would question her maid; and I am hoping
that when I go down to dinner I shall find the manuscript has been
recovered."
X
"It has not been recovered," I wrote early the next day, "and I am
moreover much troubled about our friend. He came back from Bigwood with
a chill and, being allowed to have a fire in his room, lay down a while
before dinner. I tried to send him to bed and indeed thought I had put
him in the way of it; but after I had gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush came up
to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him
under arms and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare
flower she had brought him for his button-hole. He came down to dinner,
but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. To-day he's in great pain,
and the advent of those ladies--I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora
Forbes--doesn't at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for
she has consented to his remaining in bed, so that he may be all right
to-morrow for the _séance_. Guy Walsingham is already on the scene, and
the doctor, for Paraday, also arrived early. I haven't yet seen the
author of 'Obsessions,' but of course I've had a moment by myself with
the doctor. I tried to get him to say that our invalid must go straight
home--I mean to-morrow or next day; but he quite refuses to talk about
the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and the regular administration of
an important remedy are the points he mainly insists on. He returns this
afternoon, and I'm to go back to see the patient at one o'clock, when he
next takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly won't
be able to read--an exertion he was already more than unfit for. Lady
Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring me that her first care would
be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shocking
busybody and doesn't understand my alarm, but she will do what she can,
for she's a good-natured woman. 'So are they all honourable men.' That
was precisely what made her give the thing to Lord Dorimont and made
Lord Dorimont bag it. What use _he_ has for it God only knows. I have
the worst forebodings, but somehow I'm strangely without
passion--desperately calm. As I consider the unconscious, the
well-meaning ravages of our appreciative circle I bow my head in
submission to some great natural, some universal accident; I'm rendered
almost indifferent, in fact quite gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of
immitigable fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace the precious object
and let me have it, through the post, by the time Paraday is well
enough to play his part with it. The last evidence is that her maid did
give it to his lordship's valet. One would think it was some thrilling
number of _The Family Budget_. Mrs. Wimbush, who is aware of the
accident, is much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were
she not for the hour inevitably engrossed with Guy Walsingham."
Later in the day I informed my correspondent, for whom indeed I kept a
sort of diary of the situation, that I had made the acquaintance of this
celebrity and that she was a pretty little girl who wore her hair in
what used to be called a crop. She looked so juvenile and so innocent
that if, as Mr. Morrow had announced, she was resigned to the larger
latitude, her fortitude must have come to her early. I spent most of the
day hovering about Neil Paraday's room, but it was communicated to me
from below that Guy Walsingham, at Prestidge, was a success. Towards
evening I became conscious somehow that her resignation was contagious
and by the time the company separated for the night I was sure that the
larger latitude had been generally accepted. I thought of Dora Forbes
and felt that he had no time to lose. Before dinner I received a
telegram from Lady Augusta Minch. "Lord Dorimont thinks he must have
left bundle in train--inquire." How could I inquire--if I was to take
the word as a command? I was too worried and now too alarmed about Neil
Paraday. The doctor came back, and it was an immense satisfaction to me
to feel that he was wise and interested. He was proud of being called to
so distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that night that my
friend was gravely ill. It was really a relapse, a recrudescence of his
old malady. There could be no question of moving him: we must at any
rate see first, on the spot, what turn his condition would take.
Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On the morrow the
dear man was easier and my spirits rose to such cheerfulness that I
could almost laugh over Lady Augusta's second telegram: "Lord Dorimont's
servant been to station--nothing found. Push inquiries." I did laugh, I
am sure, as I remembered this was the mystic scroll I had scarcely
allowed poor Mr. Morrow to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been:
the thirty-seven influential journals wouldn't have destroyed it, they
would only have printed it. Of course I said nothing to Paraday.
When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I went
downstairs. I should premise that at breakfast the news that our
brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency, and the
Princess graciously remarked that he was only to be commiserated for
missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose social gift
never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with which she accepted
this blemish on her perfection, mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham had
made a very favourable impression on her Imperial Highness. Indeed I
think everyone did so and that, like the money-market or the national
honour, her Imperial Highness was constitutionally sensitive. There was
a certain gladness, a perceptible bustle in the air, however, which I
thought slightly anomalous in a house where a great author lay
critically ill. "_Le roy est mort--vive le roy_": I was reminded that
another great author had already stepped into his shoes. When I came
down again after the nurse had taken possession I found a strange
gentleman hanging about the hall and pacing to and fro by the closed
door of the drawing-room. This personage was florid and bald, he had a
big red moustache and wore showy knickerbockers--characteristics all
that fitted into my conception of the identity of Dora Forbes. In a
moment I saw what had happened: the author of "The Other Way Round" had
just alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to
restrain him from penetrating further. I recognised his scruple when,
pausing to listen at his gesture of caution, I heard a shrill voice
lifted in a prolonged monotonous quaver. The famous reading had begun,
only it was the author of "Obsessions" who now furnished the sacrifice.
The new visitor whispered to me that he judged something was going on
that he oughtn't to interrupt.
"Miss Collop arrived last night," I smiled, "and the Princess has a
thirst for the _inédit_."
Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows. "Miss Collop?"
"Guy Walsingham, your distinguished _confrère_--or shall I say your
formidable rival?"
"Oh!" growled Dora Forbes. Then he added: "Shall I spoil it if I go in?"
"I should think nothing could spoil it!" I ambiguously laughed.
Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma; he gave an irritated crook to
his moustache. "_Shall_ I go in?" he presently asked.
We looked at each other hard a moment; then I expressed something bitter
that was in me, expressed it in an infernal "Yes!" After this I got out
into the air, but not so quickly as not to hear, as the door of the
drawing-room opened, the disconcerted drop of Miss Collop's public
manner: she must have been in the midst of the larger latitude.
Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy Walsingham has just published a
work in which amiable people who are not initiated have been pained to
see the genius of a sister-novelist held up to unmistakable ridicule; so
fresh an exhibition does it seem to them of the dreadful way men have
always treated women. Dora Forbes, it is true, at the present hour, is
immensely pushed by Mrs. Wimbush, and has sat for his portrait to the
young artists she protects, sat for it not only in oils but in
monumental alabaster.
What happened at Prestidge later in the day is of course contemporary
history. If the interruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost a
scandal, what is to be said of that general dispersal of the company
which, under the doctor's rule, began to take place in the evening? His
rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as I was to have at the end.
He decreed in the interest of his patient an absolutely soundless house
and a consequent break-up of the party. Little country practitioner as
he was, he literally packed off the Princess. She departed as promptly
as if a revolution had broken out, and Guy Walsingham emigrated with
her. I was kindly permitted to remain, and this was not denied even to
Mrs. Wimbush. The privilege was withheld indeed from Dora Forbes; so
Mrs. Wimbush kept her latest capture temporarily concealed. This was so
little, however, her usual way of dealing with her eminent friends that
a couple of days of it exhausted her patience, and she went up to town
with him in great publicity. The sudden turn for the worse her afflicted
guest had, after a brief improvement, taken on the third night raised an
obstacle to her seeing him before her retreat; a fortunate circumstance
doubtless, for she was fundamentally disappointed in him. This was not
the kind of performance for which she had invited him to Prestidge, or
invited the Princess. Let me hasten to add that none of the generous
acts which have characterised her patronage of intellectual and other
merit have done so much for her reputation as her lending Neil Paraday
the most beautiful of her numerous homes to die in. He took advantage to
the utmost of the singular favour. Day by day I saw him sink, and I
roamed alone about the empty terraces and gardens. His wife never came
near him, but I scarcely noticed it: as I paced there with rage in my
heart I was too full of another wrong. In the event of his death it
would fall to me perhaps to bring out in some charming form, with notes,
with the tenderest editorial care, that precious heritage of his written
project. But where _was_ that precious heritage, and were both the
author and the book to have been snatched from us? Lady Augusta wrote me
that she had done all she could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had
really been worried to death, was extremely sorry. I couldn't have the
matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted by her
with desiring to aggrandise myself by a public connection with Mr.
Paraday's sweepings. She had signified her willingness to meet the
expense of all advertising, as indeed she was always ready to do. The
last night of the horrible series, the night before he died, I put my
ear closer to his pillow.
"That thing I read you that morning, you know."
"In your garden--that dreadful day? Yes!"
"Won't it do as it is?"
"It would have been a glorious book."
"It _is_ a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured. "Print it as it
stands--beautifully."
"Beautifully!" I passionately promised.
It may be imagined whether, now that he has gone, the promise seems to
me less sacred. I am convinced that if such pages had appeared in his
lifetime the Abbey would hold him to-day. I have kept the advertising in
my own hands, but the manuscript has not been recovered. It's
impossible, and at any rate intolerable, to suppose it can have been
wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some chance blundering hand, some brutal
ignorance has lighted kitchen-fires with it. Every stupid and hideous
accident haunts my meditations. My undiscourageable search for the lost
treasure would make a long chapter. Fortunately I have a devoted
associate in the person of a young lady who has every day a fresh
indignation and a fresh idea and who maintains with intensity that the
prize will still turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I have quite
ceased to believe myself. The only thing for us, at all events, is to go
on seeking and hoping together; and we should be closely united by this
firm tie even were we not at present by another.
L'Education Sentimentale
By Aubrey Beardsley
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: L'Education Sentimentale]
Tree-Worship
By Richard Le Gallienne
Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend.
Thy latticed column jetted up the bright blue air,
Tall as a mast it was, and stronger than a tower;
Three hundred winters had beheld thee mighty there,
Before my little life had lived one little hour.
With rocky foot stern-set like iron in the land,
With leafy rustling crest the morning sows with pearls,
Huge as a minster, half in heaven men saw thee stand,
Thy rugged girth the waists of fifty Eastern girls.
Knotted and warted, slabbed and armoured like the hide
Of tropic elephant; unstormable and steep
As some grim fortress with a princess-pearl inside,
Where savage guardian faces beard the bastioned keep:
So hard a rind, old tree, shielding so soft a heart,
A woman's heart of tender little nestling leaves;
Nor rind so hard but that a touch so soft can part,
And spring's first baby-bud an easy passage cleaves.
I picture thee within with dainty satin sides,
Where all the long day through the sleeping dryad dreams,
But when the moon bends low and taps thee thrice she glides,
Knowing the fairy knock, to bask within her beams.
And all the long night through, for him with eyes and ears,
She sways within thine arms and sings a fairy tune,
Till, startled with the dawn, she softly disappears,
And sleeps and dreams again until the rising moon.
But with the peep of day great bands of heavenly birds
Fill all thy branchy chambers with a thousand flutes,
And with the torrid noon stroll up the weary herds,
To seek thy friendly shade and doze about thy roots;
Till with the setting sun they turn them once more home:
And, ere the moon dawns, for a brief enchanted space,
Weary with million miles, the sore-spent star-beams come,
And moths and bats hold witches' sabbath in the place.
And then I picture thee some bloodstained Holyrood,
Dread haunted palace of the bat and owl, whence steal,
Shrouded all day, lost murdered spirits of the wood,
And fright young happy nests with homeless hoot and squeal.
Some Rizzio nightingale that plained adulterous love
Beneath the boudoir-bough of some fast-married bird,
Some dove that cooed to some one else's lawful dove,
And felt the dagger-beak pierce while his lady heard.
Then, maybe, dangling from thy gloomy gallows boughs,
A human corpse swings, mournful, rattling bones and chains--
His eighteenth century flesh hath fattened nineteenth century cows--
Ghastly Æolian harp fingered of winds and rains.
Poor Rizpah comes to reap each newly-fallen bone
That once thrilled soft, a little limb, within her womb;
And mark yon alchemist, with zodiac-spangled zone,
Wrenching the mandrake root that fattens in the gloom.
So rounds thy day, from maiden morn to haunted night,
From larks and sunlit dreams to owl and gibbering ghost;
A catacomb of dark, a sponge of living light,
To the wide sea of air a green and welcome coast.
I seek a god, old tree: accept my worship, thou!
All other gods have failed me always in my need.
I hang my votive song beneath thy temple bough,
Unto thy strength I cry--Old monster, be my creed!
Give me to clasp this earth with feeding roots like thine,
To mount yon heaven with such star-aspiring head,
Fill full with sap and buds this shrunken life of mine,
And from my boughs O might such stalwart sons be shed!
With loving cheek pressed close against thy horny breast,
I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins;
Tingling with buds, thy great hands open towards the west,
To catch the sweetheart wind that brings the sister rains.
O winds that blow from out the fruitful mouth of God,
O rains that softly fall from his all-loving eyes,
You that bring buds to trees and daisies to the sod,
O God's best Angel of the Spring, in me arise.
Le Puy en Velay
By Joseph Pennell
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Le Puy en Velay]
A Defence of Cosmetics
By Max Beerbohm
Nay, but it is useless to protest. Artifice must queen it once more in
the town, and so, if there be any whose hearts chafe at her return, let
them not say, "We have come into evil times," and be all for resistance,
reformation or angry cavilling. For did the king's sceptre send the sea
retrograde, or the wand of the sorcerer avail to turn the sun from its
old course? And what man or what number of men ever stayed that
reiterated process by which the cities of this world grow, are very
strong, fail and grow again? Indeed, indeed, there is charm in every
period, and only fools and flutterpates do not seek reverently for what
is charming in their own day. No martyrdom, however fine, nor satire,
however splendidly bitter, has changed by a little tittle the known
tendency of things. It is the times that can perfect us, not we the
times, and so let all of us wisely acquiesce. Like the little wired
marionettes, let us acquiesce in the dance.
For behold! The Victorian era comes to its end and the day of sancta
simplicitas is quite ended. The old signs are here and the portents to
warn the seer of life that we are ripe for a new epoch of artifice. Are
not men rattling the dice-box and ladies dipping their fingers in the
rouge-pots? At Rome, in the keenest time of her degringolade, when there
was gambling even in the holy temples, great ladies (does not Lucian
tell us?) did not scruple to squander all they had upon unguents from
Arabia. Nero's mistress and unhappy wife, Poppæa, of shameful memory,
had in her travelling retinue fifteen--or, as some say,
fifty--she-asses, for the sake of their milk, that was thought an
incomparable guard against cosmetics with poison in them. Last century,
too, when life was lived by candle-light, and ethics was but etiquette,
and even art a question of punctilio, women, we know, gave the best
hours of the day to the crafty farding of their faces and the towering
of their coiffures. And men, throwing passion into the wine-bowl to sink
or swim, turned out thought to browse upon the green cloth. Cannot we
even now in our fancy see them, those silent exquisites round the long
table at Brooks', masked, all of them, "lest the countenance should
betray feeling," in quinze masks, through whose eyelets they sat
peeping, peeping, while macao brought them riches or ruin? We can see
them, those silent rascals, sitting there with their cards and their
rouleaux and their wooden money-bowls, long after the dawn had crept up
St. James' and pressed its haggard face against the window of the little
club. Yes, we can raise their ghosts--and, more, we can see manywhere a
devotion to hazard fully as meek as theirs. In England there has been a
wonderful revival of cards. Roulette may rival dead faro in the tale of
her devotees. Her wheel is spinning busily in every house and ere long
it may be that tender parents will be writing to complain of the
compulsory baccarat in our public schools.
In fact, we are all gamblers once more, but our gambling is on a finer
scale than ever it was. We fly from the card-room to the heath, and from
the heath to the City, and from the City to the coast of the
Mediterranean. And just as no one seriously encourages the clergy in its
frantic efforts to lay the spirit of chance, that has thus resurged
among us, so no longer are many faces set against that other great sign
of a more complicated life, the love for cosmetics. No longer is a lady
of fashion blamed if, to escape the outrageous persecution of time, she
fly for sanctuary to the toilet-table; and if a damosel, prying in her
mirror, be sure that with brush and pigment she can trick herself into
more charm, we are not angry. Indeed, why should we ever have been?
Surely it is laudable, this wish to make fair the ugly and overtop
fairness, and no wonder that within the last five years the trade of the
makers of cosmetics has increased immoderately--twentyfold, so one of
these makers has said to me. We need but walk down any modish street and
peer into the little broughams that flit past, or (in Thackeray's
phrase) under the bonnet of any woman we meet, to see over how wide a
kingdom rouge reigns. We men, who, from Juvenal down to that
discourteous painter of whom Lord Chesterfield tells us, have especially
shown a dislike of cosmetics, are quite yielding; and there are, I
fancy, many such husbands as he who, suddenly realising that his wife
was painted, bad her sternly, "Go up and take it all off," and, on her
reappearance, bad her with increasing sternness, "Go up and put it all
on again."
But now that the use of pigments is becoming general, and most women are
not so young as they are painted, it may be asked curiously how the
prejudice ever came into being. Indeed, it is hard to trace folly, for
that it is inconsequent, to its start; and perhaps it savours too much
of reason to suggest that the prejudice was due to the tristful
confusion man has made of soul and surface. Through trusting so keenly
to the detection of the one by keeping watch upon the other, and by
force of the thousand errors following, he has come to think of surface
even as the reverse of soul. He supposes that every clown beneath his
paint and lip-salve is moribund and knows it, (though in verity, I am
told, clowns are as cheerful a class of men as any other), that the
fairer the fruit's rind and the more delectable its bloom, the closer
are packed the ashes within it. The very jargon of the hunting-field
connects cunning with a mask. And so perhaps came man's anger at the
embellishment of women--that lovely mask of enamel with its shadows of
pink and tiny pencilled veins, what must lurk behind it? Of what
treacherous mysteries may it not be the screen? Does not the heathen
lacquer her dark face, and the harlot paint her cheeks, because sorrow
has made them pale?
After all, the old prejudice is a-dying. We need not pry into the secret
of its birth. Rather is this a time of jolliness and glad indulgence.
For the era of rouge is upon us, and as only in an elaborate era can man
by the tangled accrescency of his own pleasures and emotions reach that
refinement which is his highest excellence, and by making himself, so to
say, independent of Nature, come nearest to God, so only in an elaborate
era is woman perfect. Artifice is the strength of the world, and in that
same mask of paint and powder, shadowed with vermeil tinct and most
trimly pencilled, is woman's strength.
For see! We need not look so far back to see woman under the direct
influence of Nature. Early in this century, our grandmothers, sickening
of the odour of faded exotics and spilt wine, came out into the daylight
once more and let the breezes blow around their faces and enter, sharp
and welcome, into their lungs. Artifice they drove forth, and they set
Martin Tupper upon a throne of mahogany to rule over them. A very reign
of terror set in. All things were sacrificed to the fetish Nature. Old
ladies may still be heard to tell how, when they were girls, affectation
was not; and, if we verify their assertion in the light of such literary
authorities as Dickens, we find that it is absolutely true. Women appear
to have been in those days utterly natural in their conduct--flighty,
gushing, blushing, fainting, giggling and shaking their curls. They knew
no reserve in the first days of the Victorian era. No thought was held
too trivial, no emotion too silly, to express. To Nature everything was
sacrificed. Great heavens! And in those barren days what influence was
exerted by women? By men they seem not to have been feared nor loved,
but regarded rather as "dear little creatures" or "wonderful little
beings," and in their relation to life as foolish and ineffectual as the
landscapes they did in water-colour. Yet, if the women of those years
were of no great account, they had a certain charm and they at least had
not begun to trespass upon men's ground; if they touched not thought,
which is theirs by right, at any rate they refrained from action, which
is ours. Far more serious was it when, in the natural trend of time,
they became enamoured of rinking and archery and galloping along the
Brighton Parade. Swiftly they have sped on since then from horror to
horror. The invasion of the tennis-courts and of the golf-links, the
seizure of the tricycle and of the type-writer, were but steps
preliminary in that campaign which is to end with the final victorious
occupation of St. Stephen's. But stay! The horrific pioneers of
womanhood who gad hither and thither and, confounding wisdom with the
device on her shield, shriek for the unbecoming, are doomed. Though they
spin their tricycle-treadles so amazingly fast, they are too late.
Though they scream victory, none follow them. Artifice, that fair exile,
has returned.
Yes, though the pioneers know it not, they are doomed already. For of
the curiosities of history not the least strange is the manner in which
two social movements may be seen to overlap, long after the second has,
in truth, given its deathblow to the first. And, in like manner as one
has seen the limbs of a murdered thing in lively movement, so we need
not doubt that, though the voices of those who cry out for reform be
very terribly shrill, they will soon be hushed. Dear Artifice is with
us. It needed but that we should wait.
Surely, without any of my pleading, women will welcome their great and
amiable protectrix, as by instinct. For (have I not said?) it is upon
her that all their strength, their life almost, depends. Artifice's
first command to them is that they should repose. With bodily activity
their powder will fly, their enamel crack. They are butterflies who must
not flit, if they love their bloom. Now, setting aside the point of view
of passion, from which very many obvious things might be said, (and
probably have been by the minor poets), it is, from the intellectual
point of view, quite necessary that a woman should repose. Hers is the
resupinate sex. On her couch she is a goddess, but so soon as ever she
put her foot to the ground--lo, she is the veriest little sillypop and
quite done for. She cannot rival us in action, but she is our mistress
in the things of the mind. Let her not by second-rate athletics, nor
indeed by any exercise soever of the limbs, spoil the pretty procedure
of her reason. Let her be content to remain the guide, the subtle
suggester of what _we_ must do, the strategist whose soldiers we are,
the little architect whose workmen.
"After all," as a pretty girl once said to me, "women are a sex by
themselves, so to speak," and the sharper the line between their worldly
functions and ours, the better. This greater swiftness and less erring
subtlety of mind, their forte and privilege, justifies the painted mask
that Artifice bids them wear. Behind it their minds can play without
let. They gain the strength of reserve. They become important, as in the
days of the Roman Empire were the Emperor's mistresses, as was the
Pompadour at Versailles, as was our Elizabeth. Yet do not their faces
become lined with thought; beautiful and without meaning are their
faces.
And, truly, of all the good things that will happen with the full
renascence of cosmetics, one of the best is that surface will finally be
severed from soul. That damnable confusion will be solved by the
extinguishing of a prejudice which, as I suggest, itself created. Too
long has the face been degraded from its rank as a thing of beauty to a
mere vulgar index of character or emotion. We had come to troubling
ourselves, not with its charm of colour and line, but with such
questions as whether the lips were sensuous, the eyes full of sadness,
the nose indicative of determination. I have no quarrel with
physiognomy. For my own part, I believe in it. But it has tended to
degrade the face æsthetically, in such wise as the study of cheirosophy
has tended to degrade the hand. And the use of cosmetics, the masking of
the face, will change this. We shall gaze at a woman merely because she
is beautiful, not stare into her face anxiously, as into the face of a
barometer.
How fatal it has been, in how many ways, this confusion of soul and
surface! Wise were the Greeks in making plain masks for their mummers to
play in, and dunces we not to have done the same! Only the other day, an
actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art--next, of
course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of
three--was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a
rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge
from the palm of her right hand, or powder from the palm of her left.
Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the
presentment of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is the voice.
Let the young critics, who seek a cheap reputation for austerity, by
cavilling at "incidental music," set their faces rather against the
attempt to justify inferior dramatic art by the subvention of a quite
alien art like painting, of any art, indeed, whose sphere is only
surface. Let those, again, who sneer, so rightly, at the "painted
anecdotes of the Academy," censure equally the writers who trespass on
painter's ground. It is a proclaimed sin that a painter should concern
himself with a good little girl's affection for a Scotch greyhound, or
the keen enjoyment of their port by elderly gentlemen of the early
'forties. Yet, for a painter to prod the soul with his paint-brush is no
worse than for a novelist to refuse to dip under the surface, and the
fashion of avoiding a psychological study of grief by stating that the
owner's hair turned white in a single night, or of shame by mentioning a
sudden rush of scarlet to the cheeks, is as lamentable as may be. But!
But with the universal use of cosmetics and the consequent secernment of
soul and surface, which, at the risk of irritating a reader, I must
again insist upon, all those old properties that went to bolster up the
ordinary novel--the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined
curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache--aye and
the hectic spot of red on either cheek--will be made spiflicate, as the
puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to
discern. The same spirit that has revived rouge, smote his mouth as it
grinned at the wondrous painter of mist and river, and now sends him
sprawling for the pearls that Meredith dived for in the deep waters of
romance.
Indeed the revival of cosmetics must needs be so splendid an influence,
conjuring boons innumerable, that one inclines almost to mutter against
that inexorable law by which Artifice must perish from time to time.
That such branches of painting as the staining of glass or the
illuminating of manuscripts should fall into disuse seems in comparison,
so likely; these were esoteric arts; they died with the monastic
spirit. But personal appearance is art's very basis. The painting of the
face is the first kind of painting man can have known. To make beautiful
things--is it not an impulse laid upon few? But to make oneself
beautiful is an universal instinct. Strange that the resultant art could
ever perish! So fascinating an art too! So various in its materials from
stimmis, psimythium and fuligo to bismuth and arsenic, so simple in that
its ground and its subject-matter are one, so marvellous in that its
very subject-matter becomes lovely when an artist has selected it! For
surely this is no idle nor fantastic saying. To deny that "making-up" is
an art, on the pretext that the finished work of its exponents depends
for beauty and excellence upon the ground chosen for the work, is
absurd. At the touch of a true artist, the plainest face turns comely.
As subject-matter the face is no more than suggestive, as ground, merely
a loom round which the beatus artifex may spin the threads of any golden
fabric:
"Quae nunc nomen habent operosi signa Maronis
Pondus iners quondam duraque massa fuit.
Multa viros nescire decet; pars maxima rerum
Offendat, si non interiora tegas,"
and, as Ovid would seem to suggest, by pigments any tone may be set
aglow on a woman's cheek, from enamel the features take any form.
Insomuch that surely the advocates of soup-kitchens and free-libraries
and other devices for giving people what providence did not mean them to
receive, should send out pamphlets in the praise of self-embellishment.
For it will place Beauty within easy reach of many who could not
otherwise hope to attain it.
But of course Artifice is rather exacting. In return for the repose she
forces--so wisely!--upon her followers when the sun is high or the moon
is blown across heaven, she demands that they should pay her long homage
at the sun's rising. The initiate may not enter lightly upon her
mysteries. For, if a bad complexion be inexcusable, to be ill-painted is
unforgivable; and when the toilet is laden once more with the fulness of
its elaboration, we shall hear no more of the proper occupation for
women. And think, how sweet an energy, to sit at the mirror of coquetry!
See the dear merits of the toilet as shown upon old vases, or upon the
walls of Roman dwellings, or, rather still, read Böttiger's alluring,
scholarly description of "Morgenscenen im Puttzimmer Einer Reichen
Römerin." Read of Sabina's face as she comes through the curtain of her
bed-chamber to the chamber of her toilet. The slave-girls have long been
chafing their white feet upon the marble floor. They stand, those timid
Greek girls, marshalled in little battalions. Each has her appointed
task, and all kneel in welcome as Sabina stalks, ugly and frowning, to
the toilet chair. Scaphion steps forth from among them, and, dipping a
tiny sponge in a bowl of hot milk, passes it lightly, ever so lightly,
over her mistress' face. The Poppæan pastes melt beneath it like snow. A
cooling lotion is poured over her brow and is fanned with feathers.
Phiale comes after, a clever girl, captured in some sea-skirmish in the
Aegean. In her left hand she holds the ivory box wherein are the phucus
and that white powder, psimythium; in her right a sheaf of slim brushes.
With how sure a touch does she mingle the colours, and in what sweet
proportion blushes and blanches her lady's upturned face. Phiale is the
cleverest of all the slaves. Now Calamis dips her quill in a certain
powder that floats, liquid and sable, in the hollow of her palm.
Standing upon tip-toe and with lips parted, she traces the arch of the
eyebrows. The slaves whisper loudly of their lady's beauty, and two of
them hold up a mirror to her. Yes, the eyebrows are rightly arched. But
why does Psecas abase herself? She is craving leave to powder Sabina's
hair with a fine new powder. It is made of the grated rind of the
cedar-tree, and a Gallic perfumer, whose stall is near the Circus, gave
it to her for a kiss. No lady in Rome knows of it. And so, when four
special slaves have piled up the head-dress, out of a perforated box
this glistening powder is showered. Into every little brown ringlet it
enters, till Sabina's hair seems like a pile of gold coins. Lest the
breezes send it flying, the girls lay the powder with sprinkled attar.
Soon Sabina will start for the Temple of Cybele.
Ah! Such are the lures of the toilet that none will for long hold aloof
from them. Cosmetics are not going to be a mere prosaic remedy for age
or plainness, but all ladies and all young girls will come to love them.
Does not a certain blithe Marquise, whose _lettres intimes_ from the
Court of Louis Seize are less read than their wit would merit, tell us
how she was scandalised to see "_même les toutes jeunes demoiselles
émaillées comme ma tabatière_?" So it shall be with us. Surely the
common prejudice against painting the lily can but be based on mere
ground of economy. That which is already fair is complete, it may be
urged--urged implausibly, for there are not so many lovely things in
this world that we can afford not to know each one of them by heart.
There is only one white lily, and who that has ever seen--as I have--a
lily really well painted could grudge the artist so fair a ground for
his skill? Scarcely do you believe through how many nice metamorphoses a
lily may be passed by him. In like manner, we all know the young girl,
with her simpleness, her goodness, her wayward ignorance. And a very
charming ideal for England must she have been, and a very natural one,
when a young girl sat even on the throne. But no nation can keep its
ideal for ever and it needed none of Mr. Gilbert's delicate satire in
"Utopia" to remind us that she had passed out of our ken with the rest
of the early Victorian era. What writer of plays, as lately asked some
pressman, who had been told off to attend many first nights and knew
what he was talking about, ever dreams of making the young girl the
centre of his theme? Rather he seeks inspiration from the tried and
tired woman of the world, in all her intricate maturity, whilst, by way
of comic relief, he sends the young girl flitting in and out with a
tennis-racket, the poor eidôlon amauron of her former self. The
season of the unsophisticated is gone by, and the young girl's final
extinction beneath the rising tides of cosmetics will leave no gap in
life and will rob art of nothing.
"Tush," I can hear some damned flutterpate exclaim, "girlishness and
innocence are as strong and as permanent as womanhood itself! Why, a few
months past, the whole town went mad over Miss Cissie Loftus! Was not
hers a success of girlish innocence and the absence of rouge? If such
things as these be outmoded, why was she so wildly popular?" Indeed, the
triumph of that clever girl, whose début made London nice even in
August, is but another witness to the truth of my contention. In a very
sophisticated time, simplicity has a new dulcedo. Hers was a success of
contrast. Accustomed to clever malaperts like Miss Lloyd or Miss Reeve,
whose experienced pouts and smiles under the sun-bonnet are a standing
burlesque of innocence and girlishness, Demos was really delighted, for
once and away, to see the real presentment of these things upon his
stage. Coming after all those sly serios, coming so young and mere with
her pink frock and straightly combed hair, Miss Cissie Loftus had the
charm which things of another period often do possess. Besides, just as
we adored her for the abrupt nod with which she was wont at first to
acknowledge the applause, so we were glad for her to come upon the
stage with nothing to tinge the ivory of her cheeks. It seemed so
strange, that neglect of convention. To be behind footlights and not
rouged! Yes, hers was a success of contrast. She was like a daisy in the
window at Solomons'. She was delightful. And yet, such is the force of
convention, that when last I saw her, playing in some burlesque at the
Gaiety, her fringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best
of them. And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having called
her performance "a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spirit of
modernity," let us reflect that the little mimic was not a real
old-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalness
that would seem to have characterised the girl of the early Victorian
days. She had no pretty ways--no smiles nor blushes nor tremors.
Possibly Demos could not have stood a presentment of girlishness
unrestrained.
But with her grave insouciance, Miss Cissie Loftus had much of the
reserve that is one of the factors of feminine perfection, and to most
comes only, as I have said, with artifice. Her features played very,
very slightly. And in truth, this may have been one of the reasons of
her great success. For expression is but too often the ruin of a face;
and, since we cannot as yet so order the circumstances of life that
women shall never be betrayed into "an unbecoming emotion," when the
brunette shall never have cause to blush, and the lady who looks well
with parted lips be kept in a permanent state of surprise, the safest
way by far is to create, by brush and pigments, artificial expressions
for every face.
And this--say you?--will make monotony? You are mistaken, _toto coelo_
mistaken. When your mistress has wearied you with one expression, then
it will need but a few touches of that pencil, a backward sweep of that
brush, and lo, you will be revelling in another. For though, of course,
the painting of the face is, in manner, most like the painting of
canvas, in outcome it is rather akin to the art of music--lasting, like
music's echo, not for very long. So that, no doubt, of the many little
appurtenances of the Reformed Toilet Table, not the least vital will be
a list of the emotions that become its owner, with recipes for
simulating them. According to the colour she wills her hair to be for
the time--black or yellow or, peradventure, burnished red--she will
blush for you, sneer for you, laugh or languish for you. The good
combinations of line and colour are nearly numberless, and by their
means poor restless woman will be able to realise her moods in all their
shades and lights and dappledoms, to live many lives and masquerade
through many moments of joy. No monotony will be. And for us men
matrimony will have lost its sting.
But be it remembered! Though we men will garner these oblique boons, it
is into the hands of women that Artifice gives her pigments. I know, I
know that many men in a certain sect of society have shown a marked
tendency to the use of cosmetics. I speak not of the countless gentlemen
who walk about town in the time of its desertion from August to October,
artificially bronzed, as though they were fresh from the moors or from
the Solent. This, I conceive, is done for purely social reasons and need
not concern me here. Rather do I speak of those who make themselves up,
seemingly with an æsthetic purpose. Doubtless--I wish to be quite
just--there are many who look the better for such embellishment; but, at
the hazard of being thought old-fashioned and prejudiced, I cannot speak
of the custom with anything but strong disapproval. If men are to lie
among the rouge-pots, inevitably it will tend to promote that
amalgamation of the sexes which is one of the chief planks in the
decadent platform and to obtund that piquant contrast between him and
her, which is one of the redeeming features of creation. Besides,
really, men have not the excuse of facial monotony, that holds in the
case of women. Have we not hair upon our chins and upper lips? And can
we not, by diverting the trend of our moustache or by growing our beard
in this way or that, avoid the boredom of looking the same for long? Let
us beware. For if, in violation of unwritten sexual law, men take to
trifling with the paints and brushes that are feminine heritage, it may
be that our great ladies will don false imperials, and the little doner
deck her pretty chin with a Newgate fringe! After all, I think we need
not fear that many men will thus trespass. Most of them are in the City
nowadays, and the great wear and tear of that place would put their use
of rouge--that demands bodily repose from its dependents--quite outside
the range of practical æsthetics.
But that in the world of women they will not neglect this art, so
ripping in itself, in its result so wonderfully beneficent, I am sure
indeed. Much, I have said, is already done for its full renascence. The
spirit of the age has made straight the path of its professors. Fashion
has made Jezebel surrender her monopoly of the rouge-pot. As yet, the
great art of self-embellishment is for us but in its infancy. But if
Englishwomen can bring it to the flower of an excellence so supreme as
never yet has it known, then, though Old England may lose her martial
and commercial supremacy, we patriots will have the satisfaction of
knowing that she has been advanced at one bound to a place in the
councils of æsthetic Europe. And, in sooth, is this hoping too high of
my countrywomen? True that, as the art seems always to have appealed to
the ladies of Athens, and it was not until the waning time of the
Republic that Roman ladies learned to love the practice of it, so Paris,
Athenian in this as in all other things, has been noted hitherto as a
far more vivid centre of the art than London. But it was in Rome, under
the Emperors, that unguentaria reached its zenith, and shall it not be
in London, soon, that unguentaria shall outstrip its Roman perfection?
Surely there must be among us artists as cunning in the use of brush and
puff as any who lived at Versailles. Surely the splendid, impalpable
advance of good taste, as shown in dress and in the decoration of
houses, may justify my hope of the preëminence of Englishwomen in the
cosmetic art. By their innate delicacy of touch they will accomplish
much, and much, of course, by their swift feminine perception. Yet it
were well that they should know something also of the theoretical side
of the craft. Modern authorities upon the mysteries of the toilet are,
it is true, rather few; but among the ancients many a writer would seem
to have been fascinated by them. Archigenes, a man of science at the
Court of Cleopatra, and Criton at the Court of the Emperor Trajan, both
wrote treatises upon cosmetics--doubtless most scholarly treatises that
would have given many a precious hint. It is a pity they are not extant.
From Lucian or from Juvenal, with his bitter picture of a Roman _levée_,
much may be learnt; from the staid pages of Xenophon and Aristophanes'
dear farces. But best of all is that fine book of the Ars Amatoria that
Ovid has set aside for the consideration of dyes, perfumes and pomades.
Written by an artist who knew the allurements of the toilet and
understood its philosophy, it remains without rival as a treatise upon
Artifice. It is more than a poem, it is a manual; and if there be left
in England any lady who cannot read Latin in the original, she will do
well to procure a discreet translation. In the Bodleian Library there is
treasured the only known copy of a very poignant and delightful
rendering of this one book of Ovid's masterpiece. It was made by a
certain Wye Waltonstall, who lived in the days of Elizabeth, and, seeing
that he dedicated it to "the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Great
Britain," I am sure that the gallant writer, could he know of our great
renascence of cosmetics, would wish his little work to be placed once
more within their reach. "Inasmuch as to you, ladyes and gentlewomen,"
so he writes in his queer little dedication, "my booke of pigments doth
first addresse itself, that it may kisse your hands and afterward have
the lines thereof in reading sweetened by the odour of your breath,
while the dead letters formed into words by your divided lips may
receive new life by your passionate expression, and the words marryed in
that Ruby coloured temple may thus happily united, multiply your
contentment." It is rather sad to think that, at this crisis in the
history of pigments, the Vertuous Ladyes and Gentlewomen cannot read the
libellus of Wye Waltonstall, who did so dearly love pigments.
But since the days when these great critics wrote their treatises, with
what gifts innumerable has Artifice been loaded by Science! Many little
partitions must be added to the narthecium before it can comprehend all
the new cosmetics that have been quietly devised since classical days,
and will make the modern toilet chalks away more splendid in its
possibilities. A pity that no one has devoted himself to the compiling
of a new list; but doubtless all the newest devices are known to the
admirable unguentarians of Bond Street, who will impart them to their
clients. Our thanks, too, should be given to Science for ridding us of
the old danger that was latent in the use of cosmetics. Nowadays they
cannot, being purged of any poisonous element, do harm to the skin that
they make beautiful. There need be no more sowing the seeds of
destruction in the furrows of time, no martyrs to the cause like
Georgina Gunning, that fair dame but infelix, who died, so they relate,
from the effect of a poisonous rouge upon her lips. No, we need have no
fears now. Artifice will claim not another victim from among her
worshippers.
Loveliness shall sit at the toilet, watching her oval face in the oval
mirror. Her smooth fingers shall flit among the paints and powder, to
tip and mingle them, catch up a pencil, clasp a phial, and what not and
what _not_, until the mask of vermeil tinct has been laid aptly, the
enamel quite hardened. And, heavens, how she will charm us and ensorcel
our eyes! Positively rouge will rob us for a time of all our reason; we
shall go mad over masks. Was it not at Capua that they had a whole
street where nothing was sold but dyes and unguents? We must have such a
street, and, to fill our new Seplasia, our Arcade of the Unguents, herbs
and minerals and live creatures shall give of their substance. The white
cliffs of Albion shall be ground to powder for loveliness, and perfumed
by the ghost of many a little violet. The fluffy eider-ducks, that are
swimming round the pond, shall lose their feathers, that the powder-puff
may be moonlike as it passes over loveliness's lovely face. Even the
camels shall become ministers of delight, giving their hair in many
tufts to be stained by the paints in her colour-box, and across her
cheek the swift hare's foot shall fly as of old. The sea shall offer her
the phucus, its scarlet weed. We shall spill the blood of mulberries at
her bidding. And, as in another period of great ecstasy, a dancing
wanton, la belle Aubrey, was crowned upon a church's lighted altar, so
Arsenic, that "green-tress'd goddess," ashamed at length of skulking
between the soup of the unpopular and the test-tubes of the Queen's
analyst, shall be exalted to a place of highest honour upon loveliness's
toilet-table.
All these things shall come to pass. Times of jolliness and glad
indulgence! For Artifice, whom we drove forth, has returned among us,
and, though her eyes are red with crying, she is smiling forgiveness.
She is kind. Let us dance and be glad, and trip the cockawhoop!
Artifice, sweetest exile, is come into her kingdom. Let us dance her a
welcome!
Daimonizomenos
By Arthur Christopher Benson
You were clear as a sandy spring
After a drought, when its waters run
Evenly, sparingly, filtering
Into the eye of the sun.
Love you took with a placid smile,
Pain you bore with a hopeful sigh,
Never a thought of gain or guile
Slept in your wide blue eye.
Suddenly, once, at a trivial word,--
Side by side together we stept,--
Rose a tempest that swayed and stirred;
Over your soul it swept.
Dismal visitants, suddenly,
Pulled the doors in your house of clay;
Out of the windows there stared at me
Something horrible, grey.
The Old Oxford Music Hall
By Walter Sickert
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: The Old Oxford Music Hall]
Irremediable
By Ella D'Arcy
A young man strolled along a country road one August evening after a
long delicious day--a day of that blessed idleness the man of leisure
never knows: one must be a bank clerk forty-nine weeks out of the
fifty-two before one can really appreciate the exquisite enjoyment of
doing nothing for twelve hours at a stretch. Willoughby had spent the
morning lounging about a sunny rickyard; then, when the heat grew
unbearable, he had retreated to an orchard, where, lying on his back in
the long cool grass, he had traced the pattern of the apple-leaves
diapered above him upon the summer sky; now that the heat of the day was
over he had come to roam whither sweet fancy led him, to lean over
gates, view the prospect and meditate upon the pleasures of a well-spent
day. Five such days had already passed over his head, fifteen more
remained to him. Then farewell to freedom and clean country air! Back
again to London and another year's toil.
He came to a gate on the right of the road. Behind it a foot-path
meandered up over a glassy slope. The sheep nibbling on its summit cast
long shadows down the hill almost to his feet. Road and field-path were
equally new to him, but the latter offered greener attractions; he
vaulted lightly over the gate and had so little idea he was taking thus
the first step towards ruin that he began to whistle "White Wings" from
pure joy of life.
The sheep stopped feeding and raised their heads to stare at him from
pale-lashed eyes; first one and then another broke into a startled run,
until there was a sudden woolly stampede of the entire flock. When
Willoughby gained the ridge from which they had just scattered he came
in sight of a woman sitting on a stile at the further end of the field.
As he advanced towards her he saw that she was young and that she was
not what is called "a lady"--of which he was glad: an earlier episode in
his career having indissolubly associated in his mind ideas of feminine
refinement with those of feminine treachery.
He thought it probable this girl would be willing to dispense with the
formalities of an introduction and that he might venture with her on
some pleasant foolish chat.
As she made no movement to let him pass he stood still, and, looking at
her, began to smile.
She returned his gaze from unabashed dark eyes and then laughed, showing
teeth white, sound, and smooth as split hazel-nuts.
"Do you wanter get over?" she remarked familiarly.
"I'm afraid I can't without disturbing you."
"Dontcher think you're much better where you are?" said the girl, on
which Willoughby hazarded:
"You mean to say looking at you? Well, perhaps I am!"
The girl at this laughed again, but nevertheless dropped herself down
into the further field; then, leaning her arms upon the cross-bar, she
informed the young man: "No, I don't wanter spoil your walk. You were
goin' p'raps ter Beacon Point? It's very pretty that wye."
"I was going nowhere in particular," he replied: "just exploring, so to
speak. I'm a stranger in these parts."
"How funny! Imer stranger here too. I only come down larse Friday to
stye with a Naunter mine in Horton. Are you stying in Horton?"
Willoughby told her he was not in Orton, but at Povey Cross Farm out in
the other direction.
"Oh, Mrs. Payne's, ain't it? I've heard aunt speak ovver. She takes
summer boarders, don't chee? I egspec you come from London, heh?"
"And I expect you come from London too?" said Willoughby, recognising
the familiar accent.
"You're as sharp as a needle," cried the girl with her unrestrained
laugh; "so I do. I'm here for a hollerday 'cos I was so done up with the
work and the hot weather. I don't look as though I'd bin ill, do I? But
I was, though: for it was just stifflin' hot up in our workrooms all
larse month, an' tailorin's awful hard work at the bester times."
Willoughby felt a sudden accession of interest in her. Like many
intelligent young men, he had dabbled a little in Socialism and at one
time had wandered among the dispossessed; but since then, had caught up
and held loosely the new doctrine--It is a good and fitting thing that
woman also should earn her bread by the sweat of her brow. Always in
reference to the woman who, fifteen months before, had treated him ill,
he had said to himself that even the breaking of stones in the road
should be considered a more feminine employment than the breaking of
hearts.
He gave way therefore to a movement of friendliness for this working
daughter of the people, and joined her on the other side of the stile in
token of his approval. She, twisting round to face him, leaned now with
her back against the bar, and the sunset fires lent a fleeting glory to
her face. Perhaps she guessed how becoming the light was, for she took
off her hat and let it touch to gold the ends and fringes of her rough
abundant hair. Thus and at this moment she made an agreeable picture, to
which stood as background all the beautiful wooded Southshire view.
"You don't really mean to say you are a tailoress?" said Willoughby with
a sort of eager compassion.
"I do, though! An' I've bin one ever since I was fourteen. Look at my
fingers if you don't b'lieve me."
She put out her right hand, and he took hold of it, as he was expected
to do. The finger-ends were frayed and blackened by needle-pricks, but
the hand itself was plump, moist, and not unshapely. She meanwhile
examined Willoughby's fingers enclosing hers.
"It's easy ter see you've never done no work!" she said, half admiring,
half envious. "I s'pose you're a tip-top swell, ain't you?"
"Oh, yes! I'm a tremendous swell indeed!" said Willoughby ironically. He
thought of his hundred and thirty pounds' salary; and he mentioned his
position in the British and Colonial Banking house, without shedding
much illumination on her mind; for she insisted:
"Well, anyhow, you're a gentleman. I've often wished I was a lady. It
must be so nice ter wear fine clo'es an' never have ter do any work all
day long."
Willoughby thought it innocent of the girl to say this; it reminded him
of his own notion as a child--that kings and queens put on their crowns
the first thing on rising in the morning. His cordiality rose another
degree.
"If being a gentleman means having nothing to do," said he, smiling, "I
can certainly lay no claim to the title. Life isn't all beer and
skittles with me, any more than it is with you. Which is the better
reason for enjoying the present moment, don't you think? Suppose, now,
like a kind little girl, you were to show me the way to Beacon Point,
which you say is so pretty?"
She required no further persuasion. As he walked beside her through the
upland fields where the dusk was beginning to fall, and the white
evening moths to emerge from their daytime hiding-places, she asked him
many personal questions, most of which he thought fit to parry. Taking
no offence thereat, she told him, instead, much concerning herself and
her family. Thus he learned her name was Esther Stables, that she and
her people lived Whitechapel way; that her father was seldom sober, and
her mother always ill; and that the aunt with whom she was staying kept
the post-office and general shop in Orton village. He learned, too, that
Esther was discontented with life in general; that, though she hated
being at home, she found the country dreadfully dull; and that,
consequently, she was extremely glad to have made his acquaintance. But
what he chiefly realised when they parted was that he had spent a couple
of pleasant hours talking nonsense with a girl who was natural,
simple-minded, and entirely free from that repellently protective
atmosphere with which a woman of the "classes" so carefully surrounds
herself. He and Esther had "made friends" with the ease and rapidity of
children before they have learned the dread meaning of "etiquette," and
they said good-night, not without some talk of meeting each other again.
Obliged to breakfast at a quarter to eight in town, Willoughby was
always luxuriously late when in the country, where he took his meals
also in leisurely fashion, often reading from a book propped up on the
table before him. But the morning after his meeting with Esther Stables
found him less disposed to read than usual. Her image obtruded itself
upon the printed page, and at length grew so importunate he came to the
conclusion the only way to lay it was to confront it with the girl
herself.
Wanting some tobacco, he saw a good reason for going into Orton. Esther
had told him he could get tobacco and everything else at her aunt's. He
found the post-office to be one of the first houses in the widely spaced
village-street. In front of the cottage was a small garden ablaze with
old-fashioned flowers; and in a larger garden at one side were
apple-trees, raspberry and currant bushes, and six thatched beehives on
a bench. The bowed windows of the little shop were partly screened by
sunblinds; nevertheless the lower panes still displayed a heterogeneous
collection of goods--lemons, hanks of yarn, white linen buttons upon
blue cards, sugar cones, churchwarden pipes, and tobacco jars. A
letter-box opened its narrow mouth low down in one wall, and over the
door swung the sign, "Stamps and money-order office," in black letters
on white enamelled iron.
The interior of the shop was cool and dark. A second glass-door at the
back permitted Willoughby to see into a small sitting-room, and out
again through a low and square-paned window to the sunny landscape
beyond. Silhouetted against the light were the heads of two women: the
rough young head of yesterday's Esther, the lean outline and bugled cap
of Esther's aunt.
It was the latter who at the jingling of the door-bell rose from her
work and came forward to serve the customer; but the girl, with much
mute meaning in her eyes and a finger laid upon her smiling mouth,
followed behind. Her aunt heard her footfall. "What do you want here,
Esther?" she said with thin disapproval; "get back to your sewing."
Esther gave the young man a signal seen only by him and slipped out into
the side-garden, where he found her when his purchases were made. She
leaned over the privet-hedge to intercept him as he passed.
"Aunt's an awful ole maid," she remarked apologetically; "I b'lieve
she'd never let me say a word to enny one if she could help it."
"So you got home all right last night?" Willoughby inquired; "what did
your aunt say to you?"
"Oh, she arst me where I'd been, and I tolder a lotter lies!" Then, with
woman's intuition, perceiving that this speech jarred, Esther made haste
to add, "She's so dreadful hard on me! I dursn't tell her I'd been with
a gentleman or she'd never have let me out alone again."
"And at present I suppose you'll be found somewhere about that same
stile every evening?" said Willoughby foolishly, for he really did not
much care whether he met her again or not. Now he was actually in her
company he was surprised at himself for having given her a whole
morning's thought; yet the eagerness of her answer flattered him, too.
"To-night I can't come, worse luck! It's Thursday, and the shops here
close of a Thursday at five. I'll havter keep aunt company. But
to-morrer?--I can be there to-morrer. You'll come, say?"
"Esther!" cried a vexed voice, and the precise, right-minded aunt
emerged through the row of raspberry-bushes; "whatever are you thinking
about, delayin' the gentleman in this fashion?" She was full of rustic
and official civility for "the gentleman," but indignant with her niece.
"I don't want none of your London manners down here," Willoughby heard
her say as she marched the girl off.
He himself was not sorry to be released from Esther's too friendly eyes,
and he spent an agreeable evening over a book, and this time managed to
forget her completely.
Though he remembered her first thing next morning, it was to smile
wisely and determine he would not meet her again. Yet by dinner-time the
day seemed long; why, after all, should he not meet her? By tea-time
prudence triumphed anew--no, he would not go. Then he drank his tea
hastily and set off for the stile.
Esther was waiting for him. Expectation had given an additional colour
to her cheeks, and her red-brown hair showed here and there a beautiful
glint of gold. He could not help admiring the vigorous way in which it
waved and twisted, or the little curls which grew at the nape of her
neck, tight and close as those of a young lamb's fleece. Her neck here
was admirable, too, in its smooth creaminess; and when her eyes lighted
up with such evident pleasure at his coming, how avoid the conviction
she was a good and nice girl after all?
He proposed they should go down into the little copse on the right,
where they would be less disturbed by the occasional passerby. Here,
seated on a felled tree-trunk, Willoughby began that bantering silly
meaningless form of conversation known among the "classes" as flirting.
He had but the wish to make himself agreeable, and to while away the
time. Esther, however, misunderstood him.
Willoughby's hand lay palm downwards on his knee, and she noticing a
ring which he wore on his little finger, took hold of it.
"What a funny ring!" she said; "let's look?"
To disembarrass himself of her touch he pulled the ring off and gave it
her to examine.
"What's that ugly dark green stone?" she asked.
"It's called a sardonyx."
"What's it for?" she said, turning it about.
"It's a signet ring, to seal letters with."
"An' there's a sorter king's head scratched on it, an' some writin' too,
only I carn't make it out?"
"It isn't the head of a king, although it wears a crown," Willoughby
explained, "but the head and bust of a Saracen against whom my ancestor
of many hundred years ago went to fight in the Holy Land. And the words
cut round it are the motto of our house, 'Vertue vaunceth,' which means
virtue prevails."
Willoughby may have displayed some slight accession of dignity in giving
this bit of family history, for Esther fell into uncontrolled laughter,
at which he was much displeased. And when the girl made as though she
would put the ring on her own finger, asking, "Shall I keep it?" he
coloured up with sudden annoyance.
"It was only my fun!" said Esther hastily, and gave him the ring back,
but his cordiality was gone. He felt no inclination to renew the
idle-word pastime, said it was time to go back, and, swinging his cane
vexedly, struck off the heads of the flowers and the weeds as he went.
Esther walked by his side in complete silence, a phenomenon of which he
presently became conscious. He felt rather ashamed of having shown
temper.
"Well, here's your way home," said he with an effort at friendliness.
"Good-bye, we've had a nice evening anyhow. It was pleasant down there
in the woods, eh?"
He was astonished to see her eyes soften with tears, and to hear the
real emotion in her voice as she answered, "It was just heaven down
there with you until you turned so funny-like. What had I done to make
you cross? Say you forgive me, do!"
"Silly child!" said Willoughby, completely mollified, "I'm not the least
angry. There! good-bye!" and like a fool he kissed her.
He anathematised his folly in the white light of next morning, and,
remembering the kiss he had given her, repented it very sincerely. He
had an uncomfortable suspicion she had not received it in the same
spirit in which it had been bestowed, but, attaching more serious
meaning to it, would build expectations thereon which must be left
unfulfilled. It were best indeed not to meet her again; for he
acknowledged to himself that, though he only half liked, and even
slightly feared, her, there was a certain attraction about her--was it
in her dark unflinching eyes or in her very red lips?--which might lead
him into greater follies still.
Thus it came about that for two successive evenings Esther waited for
him in vain, and on the third evening he said to himself with a grudging
relief that by this time she had probably transferred her affections to
some one else.
It was Saturday, the second Saturday since he left town. He spent the
day about the farm, contemplated the pigs, inspected the feeding of the
stock, and assisted at the afternoon milking. Then at evening, with a
refilled pipe, he went for a long lean over the west gate, while he
traced fantastic pictures and wove romances in the glories of the sunset
clouds.
He watched the colours glow from gold to scarlet, change to crimson,
sink at last to sad purple reefs and isles, when the sudden
consciousness of some one being near him made him turn round. There
stood Esther, and her eyes were full of eagerness and anger.
"Why have you never been to the stile again?" she asked him. "You
promised to come faithful, and you never came. Why have you not kep your
promise? Why?--why?" she persisted, stamping her foot because Willoughby
remained silent.
What could he say! Tell her she had no business to follow him like this;
or own, what was, unfortunately, the truth, he was just a little glad to
see her?
"P'raps you don't care to see me?" she said. "Well, why did you kiss me,
then?"
Why, indeed! thought Willoughby, marvelling at his own idiotcy, and
yet--such is the inconsistency of man--not wholly without the desire to
kiss her again. And while he looked at her she suddenly flung herself
down on the hedge-bank at his feet and burst into tears. She did not
cover up her face, but simply pressed one cheek down upon the grass
while the water poured from her eyes with astonishing abundance.
Willoughby saw the dry earth turn dark and moist as it drank the tears
in. This, his first experience of Esther's powers of weeping, distressed
him horribly; never in his life before had he seen anyone weep like
that; he should not have believed such a thing possible, and he was
alarmed, too, lest she should be noticed from the house. He opened the
gate; "Esther!" he begged, "don't cry. Come out here, like a dear girl,
and let us talk sensibly."
Because she stumbled, unable to see her way through wet eyes, he gave
her his hand, and they found themselves in a field of corn, walking
along the narrow grass-path that skirted it, in the shadow of the
hedgerow.
"What is there to cry about because you have not seen me for two days?"
he began; "why, Esther, we are only strangers, after all. When we have
been at home a week or two we shall scarcely remember each other's
names."
Esther sobbed at intervals, but her tears had ceased. "It's fine for you
to talk of home," she said to this. "You've got something that is a
home, I s'pose? But me! my home's like hell, with nothing but
quarrellin' and cursin', and father who beats us whether sober or drunk.
Yes!" she repeated shrewdly, seeing the lively disgust on Willoughby's
face, "he beat me, all ill as I was, jus' before I come away. I could
show you the bruises on my arms still. And now to go back there after
knowin' you! It'll be worse than ever. I can't endure it and I won't!
I'll put an end to it or myself somehow, I swear!"
"But, my poor Esther, how can I help it, what can I do?" said
Willoughby. He was greatly moved, full of wrath with her father, with
all the world which makes women suffer. He had suffered himself at the
hands of a woman, and severely, but this, instead of hardening his
heart, had only rendered it the more supple. And yet he had a vivid
perception of the peril in which he stood. An interior voice urged him
to break away, to seek safety in flight even at the cost of appearing
cruel or ridiculous; so, coming to a point in the field where an
elm-bole jutted out across the path, he saw with relief he could now
withdraw his hand from the girl's, since they must walk singly to skirt
round it.
Esther took a step in advance, stopped and suddenly turned to face him;
she held out her two hands and her face was very near his own.
"Don't you care for me one little bit?" she said wistfully, and surely
sudden madness fell upon him. For he kissed her again, he kissed her
many times, and pushed all thoughts of the consequences far from him.
But some of these consequences already called loudly to him as he and
Esther reached the last gate on the road to Orton.
"You know I have only £130 a year?" he told her: "it's no very brilliant
prospect for you to marry me on that."
For he had actually offered her marriage, although such conduct to the
mediocre man must appear incredible or at least uncalled for. But to
Willoughby it seemed the only course possible. How else justify his
kisses, rescue her from her father's brutality, or bring back the smiles
to her face?
As for Esther, sudden exultation had leaped in her heart; then ere
fifty seconds were gone by, she was certain she would never have
consented to anything less.
"O! I'me used to managin'," she told him confidently, and mentally
resolved to buy herself, so soon as she was married, a black feather
boa, such as she had coveted last winter.
Willoughby spent the remaining days of his holiday in thinking out and
planning with Esther the details of his return to London and her own,
the secrecy to be observed, the necessary legal steps to be taken, and
the quiet suburb in which they would set up housekeeping. And, so
successfully did he carry out his arrangements, that within five weeks
from the day on which he had first met Esther Stables he and she came
out one morning from a church in Highbury husband and wife. It was a
mellow September day, the streets were filled with sunshine, and
Willoughby, in reckless high spirits, imagined he saw a reflection of
his own gaiety on the indifferent faces of the passers-by. There being
no one else to perform the office he congratulated himself very warmly,
and Esther's frequent laughter filled in the pauses of the day.
Three months later Willoughby was dining with a friend, and the
hour-hand of the clock nearing ten the host no longer resisted the
guest's growing anxiety to be gone. He arose and exchanged with him good
wishes and good-byes.
"Marriage is evidently a most successful institution," said he, half
jesting, half sincere; "you almost make me inclined to go and get
married myself. Confess now your thoughts have been at home the whole
evening?"
Willoughby thus addressed turned red to the roots of his hair, but did
not deny the soft impeachment.
The other laughed. "And very commendable they should be," he continued,
"since you are scarcely, so to speak, out of your honeymoon."
With a social smile on his lips Willoughby calculated a moment before
replying, "I have been married exactly three months and three days;"
then, after a few words respecting their next meeting, the two shook
hands and parted, the young host to finish the evening with books and
pipe, the young husband to set out on a twenty minutes' walk to his
home.
It was a cold clear December night following a day of rain. A touch of
frost in the air had dried the pavements, and Willoughby's footfall
ringing upon the stones re-echoed down the empty suburban street. Above
his head was a dark remote sky thickly powdered with stars, and as he
turned westward Alpherat hung for a moment "comme le point sur un _i_,"
over the slender spire of St. John's. But he was insensible to the
worlds about him; he was absorbed in his own thoughts, and these, as his
friend had surmised, were entirely with his wife. For Esther's face was
always before his eyes, her voice was always in his ears, she filled the
universe for him; yet only four months ago he had never seen her, had
never heard her name. This was the curious part of it--here in December
he found himself the husband of a girl who was completely dependent upon
him not only for food, clothes, and lodging, but for her present
happiness, her whole future life; and last July he had been scarcely
more than a boy himself, with no greater care on his mind than the
pleasant difficulty of deciding where he should spend his annual three
weeks' holiday.
But it is events, not months or years, which age. Willoughby, who was
only twenty-six, remembered his youth as a sometime companion
irrevocably lost to him; its vague, delightful hopes were now
crystallised into definite ties, and its happy irresponsibility
displaced by a sense of care inseparable perhaps from the most fortunate
of marriages.
As he reached the street in which he lodged his pace involuntarily
slackened. While still some distance off his eye sought out and
distinguished the windows of the room in which Esther awaited him.
Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the yellow
gaslight within. The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had
evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall door either.
In some apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp
he passed, to find comfort in assuring himself it was only ten minutes
after ten. He let himself in with his latch-key, hung up his hat and
overcoat by the sense of touch, and, groping his way upstairs, opened
the door of the first floor sitting-room.
At the table in the centre of the room sat his wife, leaning upon her
elbows, her two hands thrust up into her ruffled hair; spread out before
her was a crumpled yesterday's newspaper, and so interested was she to
all appearance in its contents that she neither spoke nor looked up as
Willoughby entered. Around her were the still uncleared tokens of her
last meal: tea-slops, bread-crumbs, and an eggshell crushed to fragments
upon a plate, which was one of those trifles that set Willoughby's teeth
on edge--whenever his wife ate an egg she persisted in turning the
egg-cup upside down upon the tablecloth, and pounding the shell to
pieces in her plate with her spoon.
The room was repulsive in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the
gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The
fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of "slack," and
a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots,
caked in dry mud, lay on the hearthrug just where they had been thrown
off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no
business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article of
furniture stood crookedly out of its place.
Willoughby took in the whole intolerable picture, and yet spoke with
kindliness. "Well, Esther! I'm not so late, after all. I hope you did
not feel the time dull by yourself?" Then he explained the reason of his
absence. He had met a friend he had not seen for a couple of years, who
had insisted on taking him home to dine.
His wife gave no sign of having heard him; she kept her eyes rivetted on
the paper before her.
"You received my wire, of course," Willoughby went on, "and did not
wait?"
Now she crushed the newspaper up with a passionate movement, and threw
it from her. She raised her head, showing cheeks blazing with anger, and
dark, sullen, unflinching eyes.
"I did wyte then!" she cried. "I wyted till near eight before I got your
old telegraph! I s'pose that's what you call the manners of a
'gentleman,' to keep your wife mewed up here, while you go gallivantin'
off with your fine friends?"
Whenever Esther was angry, which was often, she taunted Willoughby with
being a "gentleman," although this was the precise point about him which
at other times found most favour in her eyes. But to-night she was
envenomed by the idea he had been enjoying himself without her, stung by
fear lest he should have been in company with some other woman.
Willoughby, hearing the taunt, resigned himself to the inevitable.
Nothing that he could do might now avert the breaking storm, all his
words would only be twisted into fresh griefs. But sad experience had
taught him that to take refuge in silence was more fatal still. When
Esther was in such a mood as this it was best to supply the fire with
fuel, that, through the very violence of the conflagration, it might the
sooner burn itself out.
So he said what soothing things he could, and Esther caught them up,
disfigured them, and flung them back at him with scorn. She reproached
him with no longer caring for her; she vituperated the conduct of his
family in never taking the smallest notice of her marriage; and she
detailed the insolence of the landlady, who had told her that morning
she pitied "poor Mr. Willoughby," and had refused to go out and buy
herrings for Esther's early dinner.
Every affront or grievance, real or imaginary, since the day she and
Willoughby had first met, she poured forth with a fluency due to
frequent repetition, for, with the exception of to-day's added injuries,
Willoughby had heard the whole litany many times before.
While she raged and he looked at her, he remembered he had once thought
her pretty. He had seen beauty in her rough brown hair, her strong
colouring, her full red mouth. He fell into musing ... a woman may lack
beauty, he told himself, and yet be loved....
Meantime Esther reached white heats of passion, and the strain could no
longer be sustained. She broke into sobs and began to shed tears with
the facility peculiar to her. In a moment her face was all wet with the
big drops which rolled down her cheeks faster and faster and fell with
audible splashes on to the table, on to her lap, on to the floor. To
this tearful abundance, formerly a surprising spectacle, Willoughby was
now acclimatised; but the remnant of chivalrous feeling not yet
extinguished in his bosom forbade him to sit stolidly by while a woman
wept, without seeking to console her. As on previous occasions, his
peace-overtures were eventually accepted. Esther's tears gradually
ceased to flow, she began to exhibit a sort of compunction, she wished
to be forgiven, and, with the kiss of reconciliation, passed into a
phase of demonstrative affection perhaps more trying to Willoughby's
patience than all that had preceded it. "You don't love me?" she
questioned, "I'm sure you don't love me?" she reiterated; and he
asseverated that he loved her until he loathed himself. Then at last,
only half satisfied, but wearied out with vexation--possibly, too, with
a movement of pity at the sight of his haggard face--she consented to
leave him; only what was he going to do? she asked suspiciously: write
those rubbishing stories of his? Well, he must promise not to stay up
more than half an hour at the latest--only until he had smoked one pipe!
Willoughby promised, as he would have promised anything on earth to
secure to himself a half-hour's peace and solitude. Esther groped for
her slippers, which were kicked off under the table; scratched four or
five matches along the box and threw them away before she succeeded in
lighting her candle; set it down again to contemplate her tear-swollen
reflection in the chimney-glass, and burst out laughing.
"What a fright I do look, to be sure!" she remarked complacently, and
again thrust her two hands up through her disordered curls. Then,
holding the candle at such an angle that the grease ran over on to the
carpet, she gave Willoughby another vehement kiss and trailed out of the
room with an ineffectual attempt to close the door behind her.
Willoughby got up to shut it himself, and wondered why it was that
Esther never did any one mortal thing efficiently or well. Good God! how
irritable he felt! It was impossible to write. He must find an outlet
for his impatience, rend or mend something. He began to straighten the
room, but a wave of disgust came over him before the task was fairly
commenced. What was the use? To-morrow all would be bad as ever. What
was the use of doing anything? He sat down by the table and leaned his
head upon his hands.
* * * * *
The past came back to him in pictures: his boyhood's past first of all.
He saw again the old home, every inch of which was familiar to him as
his own name; he reconstructed in his thought all the old well-known
furniture, and replaced it precisely as it had stood long ago. He passed
again a childish linger over the rough surface of the faded Utrecht
velvet chairs, and smelled again the strong fragrance of the white
lilac-tree, blowing in through the open parlour-window. He savoured anew
the pleasant mental atmosphere produced by the dainty neatness of
cultured women, the companionship of a few good pictures, of a few good
books. Yet this home had been broken up years ago, the dear familiar
things had been scattered far and wide, never to find themselves under
the same roof again; and from those near relatives who still remained to
him he lived now hopelessly estranged.
Then came the past of his first love-dream, when he worshipped at the
feet of Nora Beresford, and, with the wholeheartedness of the true
fanatic, clothed his idol with every imaginable attribute of virtue and
tenderness. To this day there remained a secret shrine in his heart
wherein the Lady of his young ideal was still enthroned, although it was
long since he had come to perceive she had nothing whatever in common
with the Nora of reality. For the real Nora he had no longer any
sentiment: she had passed altogether out of his life and thoughts; and
yet, so permanent is all influence, whether good or evil, that the
effect she wrought upon his character remained. He recognised to-night
that her treatment of him in the past did not count for nothing among
the various factors which had determined his fate.
Now the past of only last year returned, and, strangely enough, this
seemed farther removed from him than all the rest. He had been
particularly strong, well and happy this time last year. Nora was
dismissed from his mind, and he had thrown all his energies into his
work. His tastes were sane and simple, and his dingy, furnished rooms
had become through habit very pleasant to him. In being his own they
were invested with a greater charm than another man's castle. Here he
had smoked and studied, here he had made many a glorious voyage into the
land of books. Many a home-coming, too, rose up before him out of the
dark ungenial streets to a clean blazing fire, a neatly laid cloth, an
evening of ideal enjoyment; many a summer twilight when he mused at the
open window, plunging his gaze deep into the recesses of his neighbour's
lime-tree, where the unseen sparrows chattered with such unflagging
gaiety.
He had always been given to much day-dreaming, and it was in the silence
of his rooms of an evening that he turned his phantasmal adventures into
stories for the magazines; here had come to him many an editorial
refusal, but, here, too, he had received the news of his first
unexpected success. All his happiest memories were embalmed in those
shabby, badly furnished rooms.
Now all was changed. Now might there be no longer any soft indulgence of
the hour's mood. His rooms and everything he owned belonged now to
Esther, too. She had objected to most of his photographs, and had
removed them. She hated books, and were he ever so ill-advised as to
open one in her presence, she immediately began to talk, no matter how
silent or how sullen her previous mood had been. If he read aloud to her
she either yawned despairingly, or was tickled into laughter where there
was no reasonable cause. At first, Willoughby had tried to educate her
and had gone hopefully to the task. It is so natural to think you may
make what you will of the woman who loves you. But Esther had no wish to
improve. She evinced all the self-satisfaction of an illiterate mind. To
her husband's gentle admonitions she replied with brevity that she
thought her way quite as good as his; or, if he didn't approve of her
pronunciation, he might do the other thing, she was too old to go to
school again. He gave up the attempt, and, with humiliation at his
previous fatuity, perceived that it was folly to expect a few weeks of
his companionship could alter or pull up the impressions of years, or
rather of generations.
Yet here he paused to admit a curious thing: it was not only Esther's
bad habits which vexed him, but habits quite unblameworthy in
themselves, and which he never would have noticed in another, irritated
him in her. He disliked her manner of standing, of walking, of sitting
in a chair, of folding her hands. Like a lover he was conscious of her
proximity without seeing her. Like a lover, too, his eyes followed her
every movement, his ear noted every change in her voice. But, then,
instead of being charmed by everything as the lover is, everything
jarred upon him.
What was the meaning of this? To-night the anomaly pressed upon him: he
reviewed his position. Here was he quite a young man, just twenty-six
years of age, married to Esther, and bound to live with her so long as
life should last--twenty, forty, perhaps fifty years more. Every day of
those years to be spent in her society; he and she face to face, soul to
soul; they two alone amid all the whirling, busy, indifferent world. So
near together in semblance, in truth so far apart as regards all that
makes life dear.
Willoughby groaned. From the woman he did not love, whom he had never
loved, he might not again go free; so much he recognised. The feeling he
had once entertained for Esther, strange compound of mistaken chivalry
and flattered vanity, was long since extinct; but what, then, was the
sentiment with which she inspired him? For he was not indifferent to
her--no, never for one instant could he persuade himself he was
indifferent, never for one instant could he banish her from his
thoughts. His mind's eye followed her during his hours of absence as
pertinaciously as his bodily eye dwelt upon her actual presence. She was
the principal object of the universe to him, the centre around which his
wheel of life revolved with an appalling fidelity.
What did it mean? What could it mean? he asked himself with anguish.
And the sweat broke out upon his forehead and his hands grew cold, for
on a sudden the truth lay there like a written word upon the tablecloth
before him. This woman, whom he had taken to himself for better for
worse, inspired him with a passion--intense indeed, all-masterful,
soul-subduing as Love itself--.... But when he understood the terror of
his Hatred, he laid his head upon his arms and wept, not facile tears
like Esther's, but tears wrung out from his agonising, unavailing
regret.
Portrait of a Gentleman
By Will Rothenstein
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Portrait of a Gentleman]
Two Sonnets
By William Watson
I--The Frontier
At the hushed brink of twilight,--when, as though
Some solemn journeying phantom paused to lay
An ominous finger on the awestruck day,
Earth holds her breath till that great presence go,--
A moment comes of visionary glow,
Pendulous 'twixt the gold hour and the grey,
Lovelier than these, more eloquent than they
Of memory, foresight, and life's ebb and flow.
So have I known, in some fair woman's face,
While viewless yet was Time's more gross imprint,
The first, faint, hesitant, elusive hint
Of that invasion of the vandal years
Seem deeper beauty than youth's cloudless grace,
Wake subtler dreams, and touch me nigh to tears.
II--Night on Curbar Edge, Derbyshire
No echo of man's life pursues my ears;
Nothing disputes this Desolation's reign;
Change comes not, this dread temple to profane,
Where time by æons reckons, not by years.
Its patient form one crag, sole-stranded, rears,
Type of whate'er is destined to remain
While yon still host encamped on Night's waste plain
Keeps armèd watch, a million quivering spears.
Hushed are the wild and wing'd lives of the moor;
The sleeping sheep nestle 'neath ruined wall,
Or unhewn stones in random concourse hurled:
Solitude, sleepless, listens at Fate's door;
And there is built and 'stablisht over all
Tremendous Silence, older than the world.
The Reflected Faun
By Laurence Housman
_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._
[Illustration: The Reflected Faun]
A Sentimental Cellar
By George Saintsbury
[It would appear from the reference to a "Queen" that the following
piece was written in or with a view to the reign of Queen Anne,
though an anachronism or two (such as a reference to the '45 and a
quotation from Adam Smith) may be noted. On the other hand, an
occasional mixture of "you" and "thou" seems to argue a date before
Johnson. It must at any rate have been composed for, or in
imitation of the style of, one or other of the eighteenth-century
collections of Essays.]
It chanced the other day that I had a mind to visit my old friend
Falernianus. The maid who opened the door to me showed me into his
study, and apologised for her master's absence by saying that he was in
the cellar. He soon appeared, and I rallied him a little on the gravity
of his occupation. Falernianus, I must tell you, is neither a drunkard
nor a man of fortune. But he has a pretty taste in wine, indulges it
rather in collection than in consumption, and arranges his cellar (or,
as he sometimes calls it, "cellaret") himself, having no butler or other
man-servant. He took my pleasantry very good-humouredly; and when I
asked him further if I might behold this temple of his devotions he
complied at once. "'Tis rather a chantry than a temple, Eugenius," said
he, "but you are very welcome to see it if you please; and if you are
minded to hear a sermon, perhaps I can preach one different from what
you may expect at an Oracle of the Bottle."
We soon reached the cavern, which, indeed, was much less magnificent
than that over which Bacbuc presided; and I perused, not without
interest (for I had often tasted the contents), the various bins in
which bottles of different shapes and sizes were stowed away with a
modest neatness. Falernianus amused himself, and did not go so far as to
weary me, with some tales of luck or disappointment in his purchases, of
the singular improvement of this vintage, and the mortifying conduct of
that. For these wine-lovers are curious in their phrase; and it is not
disgusting to hear them say regretfully that the claret of such and such
a year "has not spoken yet"; or that another was long "under the curse
of the seventies." This last phrase, indeed, had a grandiloquent and
romantic turn which half surprised me from my friend, a humourist with a
special horror of fine speech or writing, and turning sharply I saw a
smile on his lips.
"But," said I, "my Falernianus, your sermon? For I scarce think that
this wine-chat would be dignified by you with such a name."
"You are right, Eugenius," answered he, "but I do not quite know whether
I am wise to disclose even to you the ruling fancy under which I have
formed this little liquid museum, or Baccheum if you prefer it."
"I think you may," said I, "for in the first place we are old enough
friends for such confidences, and in the second I know you to be too
much given to laugh at your own foibles to be greatly afraid of
another's ridicule."
"You say well," he said, "so mark! For if my sermon inflicts what our
toasts call ennui upon you, remember that in the words of their
favourite Molière, 'You have willed it.'
"I do not, Eugenius, pretend to be indifferent to good wine in itself.
But when I called this little cellar of mine just now a museum I did no
dishonour to the daughters of Mnemosyne. For you will observe that wine,
by the fact of its keeping powers and by the other fact of its date
being known, is a sort of calendar made to the hand of whoso would
commemorate, with a festive solemnity, the things that are, as Mr.
Dryden says,
'Hid in the sacred treasure of the past.'
If not the mere juice of the grape (for the merit of the strongest wine
after fifty or sixty years is mostly but itself a memory), strong waters
brewed on the day of a man's birth will keep their fire and gain ever
fresh mellowness though he were to outlive the longest lifetime; and in
these little flasks here, my Eugenius, you will find a cup of Nantz that
was born with me, and that will keep its virtues long after thou and I
have gone to solve the great enigma. Again, thou seest those pints of
red port which nestle together? Within a few days, Eugenius, of the time
when that must was foaming round the Douro peasants, I made mine
entrance at the University. You can imagine with what a mixture of
tender and humorous feelings I quaff them now and then. When their juice
was tunned, what amiable visions, what boyish hopes floated before my
eyes! I was to carry off all that Cam or Isis had of honours or profit,
all that either could give of learning. I was to have my choice of
learned retirement on the one hand, or of ardent struggle at the hoarse
bar on the other, with the prizes of the senate beyond. They were scarce
throwing down their crust when that dream faded; they had scarce become
drinkable by a hasty toper before I saw clearly that metaphysical aid
was wanting, and that a very different fate must be mine. I make no moan
over it, Eugenius, and I puff away like a worse than prostitute as she
is, the demon Envy when she whispers in my ear the names of Titius or
Seius, and adds, 'Had they better parts, or only better stars than you?'
But as they fable that the wine itself throbs with the early movement of
the sap in the vines, so, Eugenius, when I sip that cordial (and truth
'tis a noble vintage) the old hopes, the old follies, the old dreams
waken in me, and I am once more eighteen.
"Look yonder again at those cobwebbed vessels of various shapes that lie
side by side, although of different vineyards, in the peaceful bins.
They all date from a year in which the wheel of fortune brought honest
men to the top in England; and if only for a brief space, as, I am told,
they sing in North Britain, 'the de'il went hame wi' a' the Whigs before
him' (I must tell you, Mr. ----, that Falernianus, though a loyal
subject to our good Queen, is a most malignant Tory, and indeed I have
heard him impeached of Jacobitism by ill-willers). But no more of
politics." He paused a moment and then went on: "I think I see you smile
again, Eugenius, and say to yourself, 'These are but dry-lipped subjects
for so flowing a calendar.' And to tell the truth, my friend, the main
part of my ephemerides of this kind has been filled by the aid of the
goddess who was ever nearest and kindest to Bacchus. In yonder bin lie
phials of the mightiest port that Lusitanian summers ever blackened, and
flasks of sack from the more southern parts of that peninsula, which our
Ben or his son Herrick would have loved. In the same year which saw the
pressing of these generous juices the earth was made more fair by the
birth of Bellamira and Candiope. The blackest purple of the Lusitanian
grape is not so black as the tresses of Candiope's hair, nor doth the
golden glow of the sherris approach in flame the locks of Bellamira; but
if I let the sunlight play through both, Love, with fantastic triumph,
shows me, as the bright motes flicker and flee through the sack, the
tawny eyes of Candiope, and the stain, no longer black or purple, but
rosy red, that floats from the Oportian juice on the white napery,
recalls the velvet blush of Bellamira's cheek."
"And this?" I said, pointing to a bin of Bordeaux near me. "Thou shalt
try it this very day," said Falernianus with a laugh, which I thought
carried off some feelings a little overstrained; "'tis a right pleasant
wine, and they made it in the year when I first saw the lips of Damaris.
The flavour is not unlike theirs, and if it should fluster thine head a
little, and cause thee what men call heartburn, I will not say that the
effects are wholly dissimilar." It is not like Falernianus even to jest
at women, and I turned to another. His face cleared. "Many a year has
passed," he said, "since the grape that bore that juice was gathered,
and even as it was ripening it chanced that I met Lalage and won her.
The wine was always good and the love likewise; but in neither in their
early years was there half the pleasure that there is now. But I weary
you, Eugenius, and perhaps the philosopher speaks truly in saying that
these things are not matters of sympathy, or, as the Scripture saith, a
stranger is not partaker of them. Suffice it to say that these
imprisoned rubies and topazes, amethysts and jacinths, never flash in
the glass, nor collect their deeper body of colour in the flagon,
without bringing a memory with them, that my lips seldom kiss them
without recalling other kisses, my eye never beholds them without seeing
other colours and other forms in 'the sessions of sweet silent thought.'
At the refining of this elixir I assumed the virile gown; when that
nectar was fit for drinking I made my first appearance in the field of
letters; and this again recalls the death of dear friends and the
waning of idle hopes. When I am dead, or if any reverse of fortune makes
me part with this cabinet of quintessence, it will pass to heirs or
purchasers as so much good wine and nothing more. To me it is that and
much more--a casket of magic liquors, a museum, as I have called it, of
glasses like that of Dr. Dee, in which I see again the smile of beauty
and the hope of youth, in which once more I win, lose, possess, conquer,
am defeated; in which I live over again in the recesses of fantasy the
vanished life of the past.
"But it is not often that I preach in this fashion. Let us take a turn
in the garden while they get dinner ready, that you may taste," and he
smiled, "that you may taste--if you dare--the wine that I have likened
to the lips of Damaris."
Night Piece
By Aubrey Beardsley
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Night Piece]
Stella Maris
by Arthur Symons
Why is it I remember yet
You, of all women one has met
In random wayfare, as one meets
The chance romances of the streets,
The Juliet of a night? I know
Your heart holds many a Romeo.
And I, who call to mind your face
In so serene a pausing-place,
Where the bright pure expanse of sea,
The shadowy shore's austerity,
Seems a reproach to you and me,
I too have sought on many a breast
The ecstasy of love's unrest,
I too have had my dreams, and met
(Ah me!) how many a Juliet.
Why is it, then, that I recall
You, neither first nor last of all?
For, surely as I see to-night
The glancing of the lighthouse light,
Against the sky, across the bay,
As turn by turn it falls my way,
So surely do I see your eyes
Out of the empty night arise,
Child, you arise and smile to me
Out of the night, out of the sea,
The Nereid of a moment there,
And is it seaweed in your hair?
O lost and wrecked, how long ago,
Out of the drownèd past, I know,
You come to call me, come to claim
My share of your delicious shame.
Child, I remember, and can tell
One night we loved each other well;
And one night's love, at least or most,
Is not so small a thing to boast.
You were adorable, and I
Adored you to infinity,
That nuptial night too briefly borne
To the oblivion of morn.
Oh, no oblivion! for I feel
Your lips deliriously steal
Along my neck, and fasten there;
I feel the perfume of your hair,
And your soft breast that heaves and dips,
Desiring my desirous lips,
And that ineffable delight
When souls turn bodies, and unite
In the intolerable, the whole
Rapture of the embodied soul.
That joy was ours, we passed it by;
You have forgotten me, and I
Remember you thus strangely, won
An instant from oblivion.
And I, remembering, would declare
That joy, not shame, is ours to share,
Joy that we had the will and power,
In spite of fate, to snatch one hour,
Out of vague nights, and days at strife,
So infinitely full of life.
And 'tis for this I see you rise,
A wraith, with starlight in your eyes,
Here, where the drowsy-minded mood
Is one with Nature's solitude;
For this, for this, you come to me
Out of the night, out of the sea.
A Study
By Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A.
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: A Study]
Two Sketches
By Henry Harland
I--Mercedes
When I was a child some one gave me a family of white mice. I don't
remember how old I was, I think about ten or eleven; but I remember very
clearly the day I received them. It must have been a Thursday, a
half-holiday, for I had come home from school rather early in the
afternoon. Alexandre, dear old ruddy round-faced Alexandre, who opened
the door for me, smiled in a way that seemed to announce, "There's a
surprise in store for you, sir." Then my mother smiled too, a smile, I
thought, of peculiar promise and interest. After I had kissed her she
said, "Come into the dining-room. There's something you will like."
Perhaps I concluded it would be something to eat. Anyhow, all agog with
curiosity, I followed her into the dining-room--and Alexandre followed
_me_, anxious to take part in the rejoicing. In the window stood a big
cage, enclosing the family of white mice.
I remember it as a very big cage indeed; no doubt I should find it
shrunken to quite moderate dimensions if I could see it again. There
were three generations of mice in it: a fat old couple, the founders of
the race, dozing phlegmatically on their laurels in a corner; then a
dozen medium-sized, slender mice, trim and youthful-looking, rushing
irrelevantly hither and thither, with funny inquisitive little faces;
and then a squirming mass of pink things, like caterpillars, that were
really infant mice, newborn. They didn't remain infants long, though. In
a few days they had put on virile togas of white fur, and were
scrambling about the cage and nibbling their food as independently as
their elders. The rapidity with which my mice multiplied and grew to
maturity was a constant source of astonishment to me. It seemed as if
every morning I found a new litter of young mice in the cage--though how
they had effected an entrance through the wire gauze that lined it was a
hopeless puzzle--and these would have become responsible,
self-supporting mice in no time.
My mother told me that somebody had sent me this soul-stirring present
from the country, and I dare say I was made to sit down and write a
letter of thanks. But I'm ashamed to own I can't remember who the giver
was. I have a vague notion that it was a lady, an elderly
maiden-lady--Mademoiselle ... something that began with P--who lived
near Tours, and who used to come to Paris once or twice a year, and
always brought me a box of prunes.
Alexandre carried the cage into my play-room, and set it up against the
wall. I stationed myself in front of it, and remained there all the rest
of the afternoon, gazing in, entranced. To watch their antics, their
comings and goings, their labours and amusements, to study their shrewd,
alert physiognomies, to wonder about their feelings, thoughts,
intentions, to try to divine the meaning of their busy twittering
language--it was such keen, deep delight. Of course I was an
anthropomorphist, and read a great deal of human nature into them;
otherwise it wouldn't have been such fun. I dragged myself reluctantly
away when I was called to dinner. It was hard that evening to apply
myself to my school-books. Before I went to bed I paid them a parting
visit; they were huddled together in their nest of cotton-wool, sleeping
soundly. And I was up at an unheard-of hour next morning, to have a bout
with them before going to school. I found Alexandre, in his nightcap and
long white apron, occupied with the _soins de propreté_, as he said. He
cleaned out the cage, put in fresh food and water, and then, pointing to
the fat old couple, the grandparents, who stopped lazily abed, sitting
up and rubbing their noses together, whilst their juniors scampered
merrily about their affairs, "Tiens! On dirait Monsieur et Madame
Denis," he cried. I felt the appositeness of his allusion; and the old
couple were forthwith officially denominated Monsieur and Madame Denis,
for their resemblance to the hero and heroine of the song--though which
was Monsieur, and which Madame, I'm not sure that I ever clearly knew.
It was a little after this that I was taken for the first time in my
life to the play. I fancy the theatre must have been the Porte St.
Martin; at any rate, it was a theatre in the Boulevard, and towards the
East, for I remember the long drive we had to reach it. And the piece
was _The Count of Monte Cristo_. In my memory the adventure shines, of
course, as a vague blur of light and joy; a child's first visit to the
play, and that play _The Count of Monte Cristo_! It was all the
breath-taking pleasantness of romance made visible, audible, actual. A
vague blur of light and joy, from which only two details separate
themselves. First, the prison scene, and an aged man, with a long white
beard, moving a great stone from the wall; then--the figure of Mercedes.
I went home terribly in love with Mercedes. Surely there are no such
_grandes passions_ in maturer life as those helpless, inarticulate ones
we burn in secret with before our teens; surely we never love again so
violently, desperately, consumedly. Anyhow, I went home terribly in love
with Mercedes. And--do all children lack humour?--I picked out the
prettiest young ladyish-looking mouse in my collection, cut off her
moustaches, adopted her as my especial pet, and called her by the name
of my _dea certè_.
All of my mice by this time had become quite tame. They had plenty to
eat and drink, and a comfortable home, and not a care in the world; and
familiarity with their master had bred assurance; and so they had become
quite tame and shamefully, abominably lazy. Luxury, we are taught, was
ever the mother of sloth. I could put my hand in amongst them, and not
one would bestir himself the littlest bit to escape me. Mercedes and I
were inseparable. I used to take her to school with me every day; she
could be more conveniently and privately transported than a lamb. Each
_lycéen_ had a desk in front of his form, and she would spend the
school-hours in mine, I leaving the lid raised a little, that she might
have light and air. One day, the usher having left the room for a
moment, I put her down on the floor, thereby creating a great excitement
amongst my fellow-pupils, who got up from their places and formed an
eager circle round her. Then suddenly the usher came back, and we all
hurried to our seats, while he, catching sight of Mercedes, cried out,
"A mouse! A white mouse! Who dares to bring a white mouse to the class?"
And he made a dash for her. But she was too quick, too 'cute, for "the
likes of" Monsieur le Pion. She gave a jump, and in the twinkling of an
eye had disappeared up my leg, under my trousers. The usher searched
high and low for her, but she prudently remained in her hiding-place;
and thus her life was saved, for when he had abandoned his ineffectual
chase, he announced, "I should have wrung her neck." I turned pale to
imagine the doom she had escaped as by a hair's breadth. "It is useless
to ask which of you brought her here," he continued. "But mark my
words: if ever I find a mouse again in the class _I will wring her
neck_!" And yet, in private life, this bloodthirsty _pion_ was a quite
gentle, kindly, underfed, underpaid, shabby, struggling fellow, with
literary aspirations, who would not have hurt a fly.
The secrets of a schoolboy's pocket! I once saw a boy surreptitiously
angling in Kensington Gardens, with a string and a bent pin. Presently
he landed a fish, a fish no bigger than your thumb, perhaps, but still a
fish. Alive and wet and flopping as it was, he slipped it into his
pocket. I used to carry Mercedes about in mine. One evening, when I put
in my hand to take her out, I discovered to my bewilderment that she was
not alone. There were four little pink mites of infant mice clinging to
her.
I had enjoyed my visit to the theatre so much that at the _jour de l'an_
my father included a toy-theatre among my presents. It had a real
curtain of green baize, that would roll up and down, and beautiful
coloured scenery that you could shift, and footlights, and a trap-door
in the middle of the stage; and indeed it would have been altogether
perfect, except for the Company. I have since learned that this is not
infrequently the case with theatres. My company consisted of pasteboard
men and women who, as artists, struck me as eminently unsatisfactory.
They couldn't move their arms or legs, and they had such stolid,
uninteresting faces. I don't know how it first occurred to me to turn
them all off, and fill their places with my mice. Mercedes, of course,
was leading lady; Monsieur and Madame Denis were the heavy parents; and
a gentlemanlike young mouse named Leander was _jeune premier_. Then, in
my leisure, they used to act the most tremendous plays. I was
stage-manager, prompter, playwright, chorus, and audience, placing the
theatre before a looking-glass, so that, though my duties kept me
behind, I could peer round the edge, and watch the spectacle as from
the front. I would invent the lines and deliver them, but, that my
illusion might be the more complete, I would change my voice for each
personage. The lines tried hard to be verses; no doubt they were _vers
libres_. At any rate, they were mouth-filling and sonorous. The first
play we attempted, I need hardly say, was _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_,
such version of it as I could reconstruct from memory. That had rather a
long run. Then I dramatised _Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp_, _Paul et
Virginie_, _Quentin Durward_, and _La Dame de Monsoreau_. Mercedes made
a charming Diane, Leander a brilliant and dashing Bussy; Monsieur Denis
was cast for the rôle of Frère Gorenflot; and a long, thin,
cadaverous-looking mouse, Don Quichotte by name, somewhat inadequately
represented Chicot. We began, as you see, with melodrama; presently we
descended to light comedy, playing _Les Mémoires d'un Ane_, _Jean qui
rit_, and other works of the immortal Madame de Ségur. And then at last
we turned a new leaf, and became naturalistic. We had never heard of the
naturalist school, though Monsieur Zola had already published some
volumes of the _Rougon-Macquart_; but ideas are in the air; and we, for
ourselves, discovered the possibilities of naturalism simultaneously, as
it were, with the acknowledged apostle of that form of art. We would
impersonate the characters of our own world--our schoolfellows and
masters, our parents, servants, friends--and carry them through
experiences and situations derived from our impressions of real life.
Perhaps we rather led them a dance; and I dare say those we didn't like
came in for a good deal of retributive justice. It was a little
universe, of which we were the arch-arbiters, our will the final law.
I don't know whether all children lack humour; but I'm sure no grown-up
author-manager can take his business more seriously than I took mine.
Oh, I enjoyed it hugely; the hours I spent at it were enraptured hours;
but it was grim, grim earnest. After a while I began to long for a less
subjective public, a more various audience. I would summon the servants,
range them in chairs at one end of the room, conceal myself behind the
theatre, and spout the play with fervid solemnity. And they would
giggle, and make flippant commentaries, and at my most impassioned
climaxes burst into guffaws. My mice, as has been said, were overfed and
lazy, and I used to have to poke them through their parts with sticks
from the wings; but this was a detail which a superior imagination
should have accepted as one of the conventions of the art. It made the
servants laugh, however; and when I would step to the front in person,
and, with tears in my eyes, beseech them to be sober, they would but
laugh the louder. "Bless you, sir, they're only mice--_ce ne sont que
des souris_," the cook called out on one such occasion. She meant it as
an apology and a consolation, but it was the unkindest cut of all. Only
mice, indeed! To me they had been a young gentleman and lady lost in the
Desert of Sahara, near to die for the want of water, and about to be
attacked, captured, and sold into slavery, by a band of Bedouin Arabs.
Ah, well, the artist must steel himself to meet with indifference or
derision from the public, to be ignored, misunderstood, or jeered at;
and to rely for his real, his legitimate, reward on the pleasure he
finds in his work.
And now there befell a great change in my life. Our home in Paris was
broken up, and we moved to St. Petersburg. It was impossible to take my
mice with us; their cage would have hopelessly complicated our
impedimenta. So we gave them to the children of our concierge. Mercedes,
however, I was resolved I would not part with, and I carried her all the
way to the Russian capital by hand. In my heart I was looking to her to
found another family--she had so frequently become a mother in the
past. But month succeeded month, and she forever disappointed me, and at
last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly;
got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a
preposterous length; and in the end died of a surfeit of _smetana_.
When I returned to Paris, at the age of twenty, to _faire mon droit_ in
the Latin Quarter, I paid a visit to our old house, and discovered the
same old concierge in the _loge_. I asked her about the mice, and she
told me her children had found the care of them such a bother that at
first they had neglected them, and at last allowed them to escape. "They
took to the walls, and for a long time afterwards, Monsieur, the mice of
this neighbourhood were pied. To this day they are of a paler hue than
elsewhere."
II--A Broken Looking-Glass
He climbed the three flights of stone stairs, and put his key into the
lock; but before he turned it, he stopped--to rest, to take breath. On
the door his name was painted in big white letters, Mr. Richard Dane. It
is always silent in the Temple at midnight; to-night the silence was
dense, like a fog. It was Sunday night; and on Sunday night, even within
the hushed precincts of the Temple, one is conscious of a deeper hush.
When he had lighted the lamp in his sitting-room, he let himself drop
into an arm-chair before the empty fireplace. He was tired, he was
exhausted. Yet nothing had happened to tire him. He had dined, as he
always dined on Sundays, with the Rodericks, in Cheyne Walk; he had
driven home in a hansom. There was no reason why he should be tired.
But he was tired. A deadly lassitude penetrated his body and his spirit,
like a fluid. He was too tired to go to bed.
"I suppose I am getting old," he thought.
To a second person the matter would have appeared one not of supposition
but of certainty, not of progression but of accomplishment. Getting old
indeed? But he _was_ old. It was an old man, grey and wrinkled and
wasted, who sat there, limp, sunken upon himself, in his easy-chair. In
years, to be sure, he was under sixty; but he looked like a man of
seventy-five.
"I am getting old, I suppose I am getting old."
And vaguely, dully, he contemplated his life, spread out behind him like
a misty landscape, and thought what a failure it had been. What had it
come to? What had it brought him? What had he done or won? Nothing,
nothing. It had brought him nothing but old age, solitude,
disappointment, and, to-night especially, a sense of fatigue and apathy
that weighed upon him like a suffocating blanket. On a table, a yard or
two away, stood a decanter of whisky, with some soda-water bottles and
tumblers; he looked at it with heavy eyes, and he knew that there was
what he needed. A little whisky would strengthen him, revive him, and
make it possible for him to bestir himself and undress and go to bed.
But when he thought of rising and moving to pour the whisky out, he
shrunk from that effort as from an Herculean labour; no--he was too
tired. Then his mind went back to the friends he had left in Chelsea
half an hour ago; it seemed an indefinably long time ago, years and
years ago; they were like blurred phantoms, dimly remembered from a
remote past.
Yes, his life had been a failure; total, miserable, abject. It had come
to nothing; its harvest was a harvest of ashes. If it had been a useful
life, he could have accepted its unhappiness; if it had been a happy
life, he could have forgotten its uselessness; but it had been both
useless and unhappy. He had done nothing for others, he had won nothing
for himself. Oh, but he had tried, he had tried. When he had left Oxford
people expected great things of him; he had expected great things of
himself. He was admitted to be clever, to be gifted; he was ambitious,
he was in earnest. He wished to make a name, he wished to justify his
existence by fruitful work. And he had worked hard. He had put all his
knowledge, all his talent, all his energy, into his work; he had not
spared himself; he had passed laborious days and studious nights. And
what remained to show for it? Three or four volumes upon Political
Economy, that had been read in their day a little, discussed a little,
and then quite forgotten--superseded by the books of newer men. "Pulped,
pulped," he reflected bitterly. Except for a stray dozen of copies
scattered here and there--in the British Museum, in his College library,
on his own bookshelves--his published writings had by this time (he
could not doubt) met with the common fate of unsuccessful literature,
and been "pulped."
"Pulped--pulped; pulped--pulped." The hateful word beat rhythmically
again and again in his tired brain; and for a little while that was all
he was conscious of.
So much for the work of his life. And for the rest? The play? The
living? Oh, he had nothing to recall but failure. It had sufficed that
he should desire a thing, for him to miss it; that he should set his
heart upon a thing, for it to be removed beyond the sphere of his
possible acquisition. It had been so from the beginning; it had been so
always. He sat motionless as a stone, and allowed his thoughts to drift
listlessly hither and thither in the current of memory. Everywhere they
encountered wreckage, derelicts: defeated aspirations, broken hopes.
Languidly he envisaged these. He was too tired to resent, to rebel. He
even found a certain sluggish satisfaction in recognising with what
unvarying harshness destiny had treated him, in resigning himself to the
unmerited.
He caught sight of his hand, lying flat and inert upon the brown leather
arm of his chair. His eyes rested on it, and for the moment he forgot
everything else in a sort of torpid study of it. How white it was, how
thin, how withered; the nails were parched into minute corrugations; the
veins stood out like dark wires; the skin hung loosely on it, and had a
dry lustre: an old man's hand. He gazed at it fixedly, till his eyes
closed and his head fell forward. But he was not sleepy, he was only
tired and weak.
He raised his head with a start, and changed his position. He felt cold;
but to endure the cold was easier than to get up, and put something on,
or go to bed.
How silent the world was; how empty his room. An immense feeling of
solitude, of isolation, fell upon him. He was quite cut off from the
rest of humanity here. If anything should happen to him, if he should
need help of any sort, what could he do? Call out? But who would hear?
At nine in the morning the porter's wife would come with his tea. But if
anything should happen to him in the meantime? There would be nothing
for it but to wait till nine o'clock.
Ah, if he had married, if he had had children, a wife, a home of his
own, instead of these desolate bachelor chambers!
If he had married, indeed! It was his sorrow's crown of sorrow that he
had not married, that he had not been able to marry, that the girl he
had wished to marry wouldn't have him. Failure? Success? He could have
accounted failure in other things a trifle, he could have laughed at
what the world calls failure, if Elinor Lynd had been his wife. But
that was the heart of his misfortune, she wouldn't have him.
He had met her for the first time when he was a lad of twenty, and she a
girl of eighteen. He could see her palpable before him now: her slender
girlish figure, her bright eyes, her laughing mouth, her warm brown hair
curling round her forehead. Oh, how he had loved her. For twelve years
he had waited upon her, wooed her, hoped to win her. But she had always
said, "No--I don't love you. I am very fond of you; I love you as a
friend; we all love you that way--my mother, my father, my sisters. But
I can't marry you." However, she married no one else, she loved no one
else; and for twelve years he was an ever-welcome guest in her father's
house; and she would talk with him, play to him, pity him; and he could
hope. Then she died. He called one day, and they said she was ill. After
that there came a blank in his memory--a gulf, full of blackness and
redness, anguish and confusion; and then a sort of dreadful sudden calm,
when they told him she was dead.
He remembered standing in her room, after the funeral, with her father,
her mother, her sister Elizabeth. He remembered the pale daylight that
filled it, and how orderly and cold and forsaken it all looked. And
there was her bed, the bed she had died in; and there her
dressing-table, with her combs and brushes; and there her writing-desk,
her bookcase. He remembered a row of medicine bottles on the
mantelpiece; he remembered the fierce anger, the hatred of them, as if
they were animate, that had welled up in his heart as he looked at them,
because they had failed to do their work.
"You will wish to have something that was hers, Richard," her mother
said. "What would you like?"
On her dressing-table there was a small looking-glass in an ivory
frame. He asked if he might have that, and carried it away with him. She
had looked into it a thousand times, no doubt; she had done her hair in
it; it had reflected her, enclosed her, contained her. He could almost
persuade himself that something of her must remain in it. To own it was
like owning something of herself. He carried it home with him, hugging
it to his side with a kind of passion.
He had prized it, he prized it still, as his dearest treasure; the
looking-glass in which her face had been reflected a thousand times; the
glass that had contained her, known her; in which something of herself,
he felt, must linger. To handle it, look at it, into it, behind it, was
like holding a mystic communion with her; it gave him an emotion that
was infinitely sweet and bitter, a pain that was dissolved in joy.
The glass lay now, folded in its ivory case, on the chimney-shelf in
front of him. That was its place; he always kept it on his
chimney-shelf; so that he could see it whenever he glanced round his
room. He leaned back in his chair, and looked at it; for a long time his
eyes remained fixed upon it. "If she had married me, she wouldn't have
died. My love, my care, would have healed her. She could not have died."
Monotonously, automatically, the phrase repeated itself over and over
again in his mind, while his eyes remained fixed on the ivory case into
which her looking-glass was folded. It was an effect of his fatigue, no
doubt, that his eyes, once directed upon an object, were slow to leave
it for another; that a phrase once pronounced in his thought had this
tendency to repeat itself over and over again.
But at last he roused himself a little, and leaning forward, put his
hand out and up, to take the glass from the shelf. He wished to hold it,
to touch it and look into it. As he lifted it towards him, it fell open,
the mirror proper being fastened to a leather back, which was glued to
the ivory, and formed a hinge. It fell open; and his grasp had been
insecure; and the jerk as it opened was enough. It slipped from his
fingers, and dropped with a crash upon the hearthstone.
The sound went through him like a physical pain. He sank back into his
chair, and closed his eyes. His heart was beating as after a mighty
physical exertion. He knew vaguely that a calamity had befallen him; he
could vaguely imagine the splinters of shattered glass at his feet. But
his physical prostration was so great as to obliterate, to neutralise,
emotion. He felt very cold. He felt that he was being hurried along with
terrible speed through darkness and cold air. There was the continuous
roar of rapid motion in his ears, a faint, dizzy bewilderment in his
head. He felt that he was trying to catch hold of things, to stop his
progress, but his hands closed upon emptiness; that he was trying to
call out for help, but he could make no sound. On--on--on, he was being
whirled through some immeasurable abyss of space.
* * * * *
"Ah, yes, he's dead, quite dead," the doctor said. "He has been dead
some hours. He must have passed away peacefully sitting here in his
chair."
"Poor gentleman," said the porter's wife. "And a broken looking-glass
beside him. Oh, it's a sure sign, a broken looking-glass."
Portrait of a Lady
By Will Rothenstein
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Portrait of a Lady]
Two Poems
By Edmund Gosse
I--Alere Flammam
To A. C. B.
In ancient Rome, the secret fire,--
An intimate and holy thing,--
Was guarded by a tender choir
Of kindred maidens in a ring;
Deep, deep within the house it lay,
No stranger ever gazed thereon,
But, flickering still by night and day,
The beacon of the house, it shone;
Thro' birth and death, from age to age,
It passed, a quenchless heritage;
And there were hymns of mystic tone
Sung round about the family flame,
Beyond the threshold all unknown,
Fast-welded to an ancient name;
There sacrificed the sire as priest,
Before that altar, none but he,
Alone he spread the solemn feast
For a most secret deity;
He knew the god had once been sire,
And served the same memorial fire.
Ah! so, untouched by windy roar
Of public issues loud and long,
The Poet holds the sacred door,
And guards the glowing coal of song;
Not his to grasp at praise or blame,
Red gold, or crowns beneath the sun,
His only pride to tend the flame
That Homer and that Virgil won,
Retain the rite, preserve the act,
And pass the worship on intact.
Before the shrine at last he falls;
The crowd rush in, a chattering band
But, ere he fades in death, he calls
Another priest to ward the brand;
He, with a gesture of disdain,
Flings back the ringing brazen gate,
Reproves, repressing, the profane,
And feeds the flame in primal state;
Content to toil and fade in turn,
If still the sacred embers burn.
II--A Dream of November
Far, far away, I know not where, I know not how,
The skies are grey, the boughs are bare, bare boughs in flower:
Long lilac silk is softly drawn from bough to bough,
With flowers of milk and buds of fawn, a broidered shower.
Beneath that tent an Empress sits, with slanted eyes,
And wafts of scent from censers flit, a lilac flood;
Around her throne bloom peach and plum in lacquered dyes,
And many a blown chrysanthemum, and many a bud.
She sits and dreams, while bonzes twain strike some rich bell,
Whose music seems a metal rain of radiant dye;
In this strange birth of various blooms, I cannot tell
Which spring from earth, which slipped from looms, which sank from sky.
Beneath her wings of lilac dim, in robes of blue,
The Empress sings a wordless hymn that thrills her bower;
My trance unweaves, and winds, and shreds, and forms anew
Dark bronze, bright leaves, pure silken threads, in triple flower.
Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell
By Aubrey Beardsley
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Portrait of Mrs. Patrick Campbell]
The Dedication
By Fred M. Simpson
PERSONS REPRESENTED
Lucy Rimmerton. Harold Sekbourne
Scene I--The period is 1863
_The sitting-room in_ Lucy Rimmerton's _lodgings. She is seated in front
of the fire making some toast._
_Lucy._ There! I think that will do, although it isn't anything very
great. [_Rises._] What a colour I must have! Harold says I always manage
to toast myself very much better than I do the bread. [_Lights the gas,
and begins arranging some flowers on the table._] His favourite flowers;
I know he will be pleased when he sees them. How strange it is that he
should really care for me!--I, who am so commonplace and ordinary,
hardly pretty either, although he says I am. I always tell him he might
have done so much better than propose to a poor governess without a
penny.--Oh, if only his book proves a success!--a really great
success!--how glorious it will be! Why doesn't the wretched publisher
make haste and bring it out? I believe he is keeping it back on purpose.
What dreadful creatures they are! At first--squabble, squabble,
squabble; squabble about terms, squabble about this, another squabble
about that, and then, when everything is finally arranged, delay, delay,
delay. "You must wait for the publishing season." As though a book were
a young lady whose future might be seriously jeopardised if it made its
_début_ at an unfashionable time.
[_The door opens, and_ Harold _bursts into the room_.]
_Harold._ It's out, it's out; out at last.
_Lucy._ What, the book! Really! Where is it? Do show it to me.
_Harold._ Do you think you deserve it!
_Lucy._ Oh! don't tantalise me. Have you seen it? What is it like!
_Harold._ It is printed, and very much like other books.
_Lucy._ You are horrid. I believe you have it with you. Have you?
_Harold._ And what if I say yes?
_Lucy._ You have. Do let me see it.
_Harold._ And will you be very good if I do!
_Lucy._ I'll be angelic.
_Harold._ Then on that condition only--There! take it gently. [Lucy
_snatches it, and cuts the string_.] I thought you never cut string?
_Lucy._ There is never a never that hasn't an exception.
_Harold._ Not a woman's, certainly.
_Lucy._ Oh! how nice it looks! And to think that it is yours, really and
truly yours. "Grace: a Sketch. By Harold Sekbourne." It's delicious!
[_Holding the book, dances round the room._]
_Harold._ I shall begin to be jealous. You will soon be more in love
with my book than you are with me.
_Lucy._ And why shouldn't I be? Haven't you always said that a man's
work is the best part of him?
_Harold._ If my silly sayings are to be brought up in evidence against
me like this, I shall----
_Lucy._ You shall what?
_Harold._ Take the book back.
_Lucy._ Oh, will you? I should like to see you do it. [_Holds it behind
her._] You have got to get it first.
_Harold._ And what are you going to give me for it?
_Lucy._ Isn't it a presentation copy?
_Harold._ It is the very first to leave the printer's.
_Lucy._ Then you ought not to want any payment.
_Harold._ I do though, all the same. Come--no payment, no book.
_Lucy._ There, there, there!
_Harold._ And there.
_Lucy._ Oh! don't! You'll stifle me. And is this for me; may I really
keep it?
_Harold._ Of course you may; I brought it expressly for you.
_Lucy._ How nice of you! And you'll write my name in it?
_Harold._ I'll write the dedication.
_Lucy._ What do you mean?
_Harold._ You shall see. Pen and ink for the author! A new pen and
virgin ink!
_Lucy._ Your Authorship has but to command to be obeyed.
_Harold._ [_Sitting down, writes._] It is printed in all the other
copies, but this one I have had bound specially for you, with a blank
sheet where the dedication comes, so that in your copy, and yours alone,
I can write it myself. There.
_Lucy._ [_Looks over his shoulder and reads._] "To my Lady Luce." Oh,
Harold, you have dedicated it to me!
_Harold._ Who else could I dedicate it to? although 'tis--
"Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that now
It may immortal be."
_Lucy._ It is good of you.
_Harold._ [_Writes again._] "Harold Sekbourne"--what's to-day?--oh, yes,
"3rd November, 1863."
_Lucy._ And will people know who the "Lady Luce" is?
_Harold._ They will some day. The dedication in my next book shall be
"To my Lady Wife."
_Lucy._ I wonder if I shall ever be that. It seems so long coming.
_Harold._ I don't mind when it is--to-morrow, if you like.
_Lucy._ Don't talk nonsense, although it is my fault for beginning it.
And now sit down--no, here in the arm-chair--and you shall have some
nice tea.
[_She makes and pours out the tea as Harold talks._]
_Harold._ You won't have to wait long if this proves a success: and it
will be one. I know it; I feel it. It isn't only that everybody who has
read it, likes it; it's something else that I can't describe, not even
to you; a feeling inside, that--call it conceit if you like, but it
isn't conceit; it isn't conceit to feel confidence in oneself. Why, look
at the trash, the arrant trash, that succeeds every day; you will say,
perhaps, that it succeeds because it is trash, that trash is what people
want--they certainly get it. But no book that ever had real stuff in it
has failed yet, and I feel that--Ha! ha! the same old feeling mentioned
above. Don't think me an awful prig, Luce. I don't talk to anybody else
as I do to you; and if you only knew what a relief it is to me to let
myself go a bit occasionally, you would excuse everything.
_Lucy._ You have a right to be conceited.
_Harold._ Not yet. I have done nothing yet; but I mean to. [_Takes up
the book._] I wonder what will become of you and your fellows; what will
be your future? Will you one day adorn the shelves of libraries, figure
in catalogues of "Rare books and first editions," and be contended for
by snuffy, long-clothed bibliomaniacs, who will bid one against the
other for the honour of possessing you? Or will you descend to the
tables of secondhand book-stalls marked at a great reduction; or lie in
a heap, with other lumber, outside the shop-front, all this lot sixpence
each, awaiting there, uncared for, unnoticed, and unknown, your ultimate
destination, the dust-hole?
_Lucy._ You are horrid. What an idea!
_Harold._ No, I don't think that will be your end. [_Puts down the
book._] You are not going to the dustbin, you are going to be a success.
No more hack work for me after this. Why, supposing only the first
edition is sold, I more than clear expenses, and if it runs to
two--ten--twenty editions, I shall receive--the amount fairly takes my
breath away. Twentieth thousand; doesn't it sound fine? We shall have
our mansion in Grosvenor Square yet, Luce; and that charming, little old
house we saw the other day up the river--we'll have that, too; so that
we can run down here from Saturday to Monday, to get away from London
fog and nastiness. Yes, I am going to be rich some day--rich--in ten
years' time, if this book gets a fair start and I have anything like
decent luck, I shall be the best known author in England. [_Rises._] The
son of the old bookseller who failed will be able then to repay those
who helped him when he wanted help, and, more delightful thought still,
pay back those with interest who did their best to keep him down, when
they could just as easily have helped him to rise. I am going to have a
success, I feel it. In a few weeks' time I'll bring you a batch of
criticisms that will astonish you. But what is the matter? why so silent
all of a sudden? has my long and conceited tirade disgusted you?
_Lucy._ No, not at all.
_Harold._ Then what is it?
_Lucy._ I was only thinking that--[_hesitates_].
_Harold._ Thinking what? About me:
_Lucy._ Yes, about you and--and also about myself.
_Harold._ That is just as it should be, about us two together.
_Lucy._ Yes, but I was afraid----
_Harold._ [_Smiling._] Afraid! what of?
_Lucy._ Nothing, nothing really. I am ashamed that--let me give you some
more tea.
_Harold._ No, thanks. Come, let me hear, make a clean breast of it.
_Lucy._ I can't, really; you would only laugh at me.
_Harold._ Then why deny me a pleasure, for you know I love to laugh?
_Lucy._ Well, then--if you become famous--and rich----
_Harold._ If I do; well?
_Lucy._ You won't--you won't forget me, will you?
_Harold._ Forget you, what an idea! Why do I want to become famous? why
do I want to become rich? For my own sake? for the sake of the money?
Neither. I want it for your sake, so that you can be rich; so that you
can have everything you can possibly want. I don't mind roughing it a
bit myself, but----
_Lucy._ No more do I: I am sure we might be very happy living even here.
_Harold._ No, thank you; no second pair fronts for me, or, rather, none
for my wife. I want you to forget all about this place, as though it had
never existed; I want you to only remember your giving lessons as a
nightmare which has passed and gone. I want you to take a position in
the world, to go into society----
_Lucy._ But, Harold----
_Harold._ To entertain, receive, lead----
_Lucy._ But I could never lead. I detest receiving. I hate
entertaining----
_Harold._ Except me.
_Lucy._ I often wonder if I do. You are so clever and I----
_Harold._ Such a goose. Whatever put such ideas into your head? Why, you
are actually crying.
_Lucy._ I am not.
_Harold._ Then what is that? [_Puts his finger against her cheek._] What
is that little sparkling drop?
_Lucy._ It must be a tear of joy, then.
_Harold._ Which shall be used to christen the book!
_Lucy._ Oh, don't--there, you have left a mark.
_Harold._ It is your fault. My finger wouldn't have done it by itself.
Are you going to be silly any more?
_Lucy._ No, I am not.
_Harold._ And you are going to love me, believe in me, and trust me?
_Lucy._ I do all three--implicitly.
_Harold._ [_He kisses her._] The seal of the trinity. [_Looks at his
watch._] By jove, I must be going.
_Lucy._ So soon?
_Harold._ Rather; I have to dine in Berkeley Square at eight o'clock, at
Sir Humphrey Mockton's. You would like their house, it's a beauty, a
seventeenth or eighteenth century one, with such a gorgeous old
staircase. He's awfully rich, and just a little bit vulgar--"wool" I
think it was, or "cottons," or some other commodity; but his daughter is
charming--I should say daughters, as there are two of them, so you
needn't be jealous.
_Lucy._ Jealous? of course I am not. Have you known them long?
_Harold._ Oh! some little time. They are awfully keen to see my book. I
am going to take--send them a copy. You see I must be civil to these
people, they know such an awful lot of the right sort; and their
recommendation of a book will have more weight than fifty
advertisements. So good-bye. [_Takes his overcoat._]
_Lucy._ Let me help you. But you are going without noticing my flowers.
_Harold._ I have been admiring them all along, except when I was looking
at you.
_Lucy._ Don't be silly.
_Harold._ They are charming. Sir Humphrey has some orchids just the same
colours; you ought to see them; he has basketsful sent up every week
from his place in Surrey.
_Lucy._ No wonder my poor little chrysanthemums didn't impress you.
_Harold._ What nonsense! I would give more for one little flower from
you, than for the contents of all his conservatories.
_Lucy._ Then you shall have that for nothing.
_Harold._ Don't, it will destroy the bunch.
_Lucy._ What does that matter? they are all yours.
_Harold._ You do your best to spoil me.
_Lucy._ [_Pins the flower into his button-hole._] Don't talk nonsense.
There!
_Harold._ What a swell you have made me look!
_Lucy._ Good-bye; when shall I see you again?
_Harold._ Not until Sunday, I am afraid; I am so busy just now. But I'll
come round early, and, if fine, we'll go and lunch at Richmond, and have
a good walk across the Park afterwards. Would you like it?
_Lucy._ Above all things, but--but don't spend all your money on me.
_Harold._ Bother the money! I am going to be rich. Good-bye till Sunday.
_Lucy._ _Au revoir_; and while you are dining in your grand house, with
lots of grand people, I am going to enjoy a delightful evening here, not
alone, as I shall have your book for company. Good-bye.
Six Months elapse between Scene I. and Scene II.
Scene II--The Scene and Persons are the same
Lucy _is dressed as before; she is seated_. Harold _is in evening dress,
with a flower in his button-hole; he stands by the fireplace_.
_Harold._ Well, all I have to say is, I think you are most unreasonable.
_Lucy._ You have no right to say that.
_Harold._ I have if I think it.
_Lucy._ Well, you have no right to think it.
_Harold._ My thoughts are not my own, I suppose?
_Lucy._ They are so different from what I should have expected you to
have that I almost doubt it.
_Harold._ Better say I have changed at once.
_Lucy._ And so you have.
_Harold._ Who is saying things one has no right to say now?
_Lucy._ I am only saying what I think.
_Harold._ Then if you want to have the right to your own thoughts,
kindly let me have the right to mine. [_Walks to the window._] I can't
prevent people sending me invitations, can I?
_Lucy._ You need not accept them.
_Harold._ And make enemies right and left, I suppose?
_Lucy._ I don't want you to do that, and I don't want either to prevent
your enjoying yourself; but--but, I do want to see you occasionally.
_Harold._ And so you do.
_Lucy._ Yes, very--perhaps I should say I want to see you often.
_Harold._ And so do I you, but I can't be in two places at once. This is
what I mean when I say you are unreasonable. I must go out. If I am to
write, I must study people, character, scenes. I can't do that by
stopping at home: I can't do that by coming here; I know you and I know
your landlady, and there is nobody else in the house, except the slavey
and the cat; and although the slavey may be a very excellent servant and
the cat a most original quadruped, still, I don't want to make elaborate
studies of animals--either four-legged or two. One would imagine, from
the way you talk, that I did nothing except enjoy myself. I only go out
in the evenings.
_Lucy._ Still you might spare a little time, now and then, to come and
see me, if only for half an hour.
_Harold._ What am I doing now? I gave up a dinner-party to come here
to-night.
_Lucy._ Do you know it is exactly a month yesterday since you were here
last?
_Harold._ I can't be always dangling at your apron-strings.
_Lucy._ Harold!
_Harold._ If we are going to be married, we----
_Lucy._ If?
_Harold._ Well, when, if you like it better; we shall see enough of one
another then. I have written to you, it isn't as though I hadn't done
that.
_Lucy._ But that is not the same thing as seeing you; and your letters,
too, have been so scrappy. [Harold _throws himself into the arm-chair_.]
They used to be so different before your book came out.
_Harold._ I had more time then.
_Lucy._ I sometimes wish that it had never been published at all, that
you had never written it, or, at all events, that it had never been such
a success.
_Harold._ That's kind, at all events--deuced kind and considerate!
_Lucy._ It seems to have come between us as a barrier. When I think how
eagerly we looked forward to its appearance, what castles in the air we
built as to how happy we were going to be, and all the things we were
going to do, if it were a success, and now to think that----
_Harold._ [_Jumps up._] Look here, Lucy, I'm damned if--I can't stand
this much longer! Nag, nag, nag! I can't stand it. I am worked off my
head during the day, I am out half the night, and when I come here for a
little quiet, a little rest, its--[_Breaks off suddenly_].
_Lucy._ I am so sorry. If I had thought----
_Harold._ Can't you see that you are driving me mad? I have been here
half an hour, and the whole of the time it has been nothing but
reproaches.
_Lucy._ I don't think they would have affected you so much if you hadn't
felt that you deserved them!
_Harold._ There you go again! I deserve them--[_laughs harshly_]. It is
my fault, I suppose, that it is the season; it is my fault that people
give dinner-parties and balls; it is my fault, I suppose, that you don't
go out as much as I do?
_Lucy._ Certainly not; although, as a matter of fact, I haven't been out
one single evening for the last three--nearly four--months.
_Harold._ That's right; draw comparisons; say I'm a selfish brute.
You'll tell me next that I am tired of you, and----
_Lucy._ Harold! don't, don't--you--you hurt me! Of course I never
thought of such a--[_she rises_]--You are not, are you? I--I couldn't
bear it!
_Harold._ Of course I am not. Don't be so silly. [_He sits._]
_Lucy._ It was silly of me, I confess it. I know you better than that.
Why, it's rank high treason, I deserve to lose my head; and my only
excuse is that thinking such a thing proves I must have lost it already.
Will your majesty deign to pardon?
_Harold._ [_Testily._] Yes, yes, that's all right! There, look out,
you'll crumple my tie.
_Lucy._ I am so sorry! And now tell me all about your grand friends
and----
_Harold._ They are not grand to me. Simply because a person is rich or
has a title, I don't consider them any "grander" than I--by jove, no!
These people are useful to me, or else I shouldn't stand it. They
"patronise" me, put their hand on my shoulder and say, "My dear young
friend, we predict great things for you." The fools, as though a single
one of them was capable even of forming an opinion, much less of
prophesying. They make remarks about me before my face; they talk of,
and pet, me as though I were a poodle. I go through my tricks and they
applaud; and they lean over with an idiotic simper to the dear friend
next to them and say, "Isn't he clever?" as though they had taught me
themselves. Bah! They invite me to their houses, I dine with them once a
week; but if I were to tell them to-morrow that I wanted to marry one of
their daughters, they would kick me out of the room, and consider it a
greater insult than if the proposal had come from their own footman.
_Lucy._ But that doesn't matter, because you don't want to marry one of
them, do you? Was that Miss Mockton with you in the Park last Sunday?
_Harold._ How do you know I was in the Park at all?
_Lucy._ Because I saw you there.
_Harold._ You were spying, I suppose.
_Lucy._ Spying? I don't know what you mean. I went there for a walk
after church.
_Harold._ Alone?
_Lucy._ Of course not, I was with Mrs. Glover.
_Harold._ Your landlady?
_Lucy._ Why not?--Oh! you need not be afraid. I shouldn't have brought
disgrace upon you by obliging you to acknowledge me before your grand
friends. I took good care to keep in the background.
_Harold._ Do you mean to insinuate that I am a snob?
_Lucy._ Be a little kind.
_Harold._ Well, it is your own fault, you insinuate that----
_Lucy._ I was wrong. I apologise, but--but--[_begins to cry_].
_Harold._ There, don't make a scene--don't, there's a good girl. There,
rest your head here. I suppose I am nasty. I didn't mean it, really. You
must make allowances for me. I am worried and bothered. I can't work--at
least I can't do work that satisfies me--and altogether I am not quite
myself. Late hours are playing the very deuce with my nerves. There, let
me kiss away the tears--now give me your promise that you will never be
so foolish again.
_Lucy._ I--I promise. It is silly of me--now I am all right.
_Harold._ Giboulées d'Avril! The sun comes out once more, the shower is
quite over.
_Lucy._ Yes, quite over; you always are so kind. It is my fault
entirely. I--I think my nerves must be a little upset, too.
_Harold._ We shall make a nice couple, shan't we? if we are often going
to behave like this! Now, are you quite calm?
_Lucy._ Yes, quite.
_Harold._ That's right, because I want you to listen patiently for a few
minutes to what I am going to say; it is something I want to talk to you
about very seriously. You won't interrupt me until I have quite
finished, will you?
_Lucy._ What is it? not that--no, I won't.
_Harold._ You know we talked about--I mean it was arranged we should be
married the beginning of July--wasn't it?
_Lucy._ Yes.
_Harold._ Well, I want to know if you would mind very much putting it
off a little--quite a little--only till the autumn? I'll tell you why.
Of course if you _do_ mind very much, I sha'n't press it, but--it's like
this: the scene of my new book is, as you know, laid abroad. I have been
trying to write it, but can't get on with it one little bit. I want some
local colour. I thought I should be able to invent it, I find I can't.
It is hampering and keeping me back terribly. And so--and so I thought
if you didn't mind very much that--that if I were to go to France
for--for six months or so--alone, that--in fact it would be the making
of me. I have never had an opportunity before; it has always been grind,
grind, grind, and if I am prevented from going now, I may never have a
chance again. What do you say?
_Lucy._ But why shouldn't we be married as arranged, and spend our
honeymoon over there?
_Harold._ Because I want to work.
_Lucy._ And would my being there prevent you? You used to say you always
worked so much better when I was----
_Harold._ But you don't understand. This is different. I want to work
_hard_, and no man could do that on his honeymoon--at least I know I
couldn't.
_Lucy._ No, but--And--and till when did you want to put off our--our
marriage? Until your return?
_Harold._ Well, that would depend on circumstances. You don't suppose I
would postpone it for a second, if I could help it; but--Until my
return? I hope sincerely that it can be managed then, but, you see, over
there I shall be spending money all the time, and not earning a sou,
and--and so we _might_ have to wait a little bit longer, just until I
could replenish the locker, until I had published and been paid for my
new book.
_Lucy._ But I have given notice to leave at midsummer.
_Harold._ Has Mrs. Duncan got another governess!
_Lucy._ No, but----
_Harold._ Then you can stop on, can't you! They will surely be only too
delighted to keep you.
_Lucy._ Yes--I can stop on. [_He tries to kiss her._] No, don't; not
now.
_Harold._ And you don't really mind the postponement very much, do you?
_Lucy._ Not if it will assist you.
_Harold._ I thought you would say that, I knew you would. It will assist
me very much. I shouldn't otherwise suggest it. It does seem too bad
though, doesn't it? To have to postpone it after waiting all these
years, and just as it was so near, too. I have a good mind not to go,
after all--only, if I let this chance slip, I may never have another.
Besides, six months is not so very long, is it? And when they are over,
then we won't wait any longer. You will come and see me off, won't you?
It would never do for an engaged man to go away for even six months,
without his lady love coming to see him start.
_Lucy._ Yes, I will come. When do you go?
_Harold._ The end of next week, I expect; perhaps earlier if I can
manage it. But I shall see you before then. We'll go and have dinner
together at our favourite little restaurant. When shall it be! Let me
see, I am engaged on--I can't quite remember what my engagements are.
_Lucy._ I have none.
_Harold._ Then that's settled. Good-bye, Luce; you don't mind very much,
do you? The time will soon pass. You are a little brick to behave as you
have done. [_Going._] It will be Monday or Tuesday next for our dinner,
but I will let you know. Good-bye.
_Lucy._ Good-bye.
Thirty Years elapse between Scene II. and Scene III.
Scene III--Lucy Rimmerton, Agnes Rimmerton (her niece)
_A well-furnished comfortable room in_ Lucy Rimmerton's _house. She is
seated in front of the fire, in an easy-chair, reading. The door opens,
without her noticing it, and_ Agnes _comes in, closes the door gently,
crosses the room, and bends over her_.
_Agnes._ A happy New Year to you, Aunt Luce.
_Lucy._ What! Agnes, is that you? I never heard you come in. I really
think I must be getting deaf.
_Agnes._ What nonsense! I didn't intend you should hear me. I wanted to
wish you a happy New Year first.
_Lucy._ So as to make your Aunt play second fiddle. The same to you,
dear.
_Agnes._ Thank you. [_Warms her hands at the fire._] Oh, it _is_ cold;
not here I mean, but out of doors; the thermometer is down I don't know
how many degrees below freezing.
_Lucy._ It seems to agree with you, at all events. You look as bright
and rosy as though you were the New Year itself come to visit me.
_Agnes._ [_Laughs merrily._] So I ought to. I ran nearly all the way,
except when I slid, to the great horror of an old gentleman who was
busily engaged lecturing some little boys on the enormity of their sins
in making a beautifully long slide in the middle of the pavement.
_Lucy._ And what brought you out so early?
_Agnes._ To see you, of course. Besides, the morning is so lovely it
seemed a sin to remain indoors. I do hope the frost continues all the
holidays.
_Lucy._ It is all very well for you, but it must be terribly trying for
many people--the poor, for instance.
_Agnes._ Yes. [_A pause._] Auntie, you don't know anything, do you,
about how--how poor people live?
_Lucy._ Not so much as I ought to.
_Agnes._ I didn't mean _very_ poor people, not working people. I meant a
person poor like--like I am poor.
_Lucy._ [_Smiling._] Don't you know how you live yourself?
_Agnes._ Of course I do, but--I was thinking of--of a friend of mine, a
governess like myself, who has just got engaged; and I--I was wondering
on how much, or, rather, how little, they could live. But you don't know
of course. You are rich, and----
_Lucy._ But I wasn't always rich. Thirty years ago when I was your
age----
_Agnes._ When you were my age! I like that! why you are not fifty.
_Lucy._ Little flatterer. Fifty-two last birthday.
_Agnes._ Fifty-two! Well, you don't look it, at all events.
_Lucy._ Gross flatterer. When I was your age I was poor and a governess
as you are.
_Agnes._ But I thought that your Aunt Emily left you all her money.
_Lucy._ So she did, or nearly all; but that was afterwards. It isn't
quite thirty years yet since she came back from India, a widow, just
after she had lost her husband and only child. I was very ill at the
time--I almost died; and she, good woman as she was, came and nursed me.
_Agnes._ Of course, I know. I have heard father talk about it. And then
she was taken ill, wasn't she?
_Lucy._ Yes, almost before I was well. It was very unfair that she
should leave everything to me; your father was her nephew, just as I was
her niece, but he wouldn't hear of my sharing it with----
_Agnes._ I should think not indeed! I should be very sorry to think that
my father would ever allow such a thing. Although, at the same time, it
is all very well for you to imagine that you don't share it, but you
_do_. Who pays for Lillie's and May's and George's schooling? Who sent
Alfred to Cambridge, and Frank to----
_Lucy._ Don't, please. What a huge family you are, to be sure.
_Agnes._ And last, but not least, who gave me a chance of going to
Girton? Oh, we are not supposed to know anything about it, I know, but
you see we do. You thought you had arranged it all so beautifully, and
kept everyone of us entirely in the dark, but you haven't one little
bit.
_Lucy._ Nonsense, Agnes, you----
_Agnes._ Oh, you are a huge big fraud, you know you are; I am quite
ashamed of you. [Lucy _is going to speak_.] You are not to be thanked, I
know; and you needn't be afraid, I am not going to do so; but if you
could only hear us when we are talking quietly together, you would find
that a certain person, who shall be nameless, is simply worship----
_Lucy._ Hush! you silly little girl. You don't know what you are saying.
You have nothing to thank me for whatsoever.
_Agnes._ Haven't we just? I know better.
_Lucy._ Young people always do. So you see I do know something of how
"the poor" live.
_Agnes._ Yes, but you were never married.
_Lucy._ No, dear.
_Agnes._ That is what I want to----Why weren't you married? Oh, I know
I have no business to ask such a question: it is fearfully rude I know,
but I have wondered so often. You are lovely now, and you must have been
beautiful when you were a girl.
_Lucy._ No, I wasn't--I was barely pretty.
_Agnes._ I can't believe that.
_Lucy._ And I am not going to accept your description of me now as a
true one; although I confess I am vain enough--even in my present old
age--to look in the glass occasionally, and say to myself: "You are
better-looking now than you ever were."
_Agnes._ Well, at all events you were always an angel.
_Lucy._ And men don't like angels; besides--I was poor.
_Agnes._ You were not poor when you got Aunt Emily's money.
_Lucy._ No, but then it was too----I mean I then had no wish to marry.
_Agnes._ You mean you determined to sacrifice yourself for us, that is
what you mean.
_Lucy._ I must have possessed a very prophetic soul then, or been gifted
with second sight, as none of you, except Reginald, were born. But to
come back to your friend, Agnes; has she no money?
_Agnes._ No, none.
_Lucy._ Nor he?
_Agnes._ Not a penny.
_Lucy._ And they want to get married?
_Agnes._ Yes.
_Lucy._ And are afraid they haven't enough.
_Agnes._ They certainly haven't.
_Lucy._ Then why don't they apply to some friend or relative who has
more than enough; say, to--an aunt, for instance.
_Agnes._ Auntie!
_Lucy._ And what is his name?
_Agnes._ Geo----Mr. Reddell.
_Lucy._ And hers is?
_Agnes._ Oh, I never intended to tell you. I didn't mean to say a word.
_Lucy._ When did it happen?
_Agnes._ Three days ago. That is to say, he proposed to me then, but of
course it has been going on for a long time. I could see that he--at
least I thought I could see. But I can hardly realise it yet. It seems
all so strange. And I _did_ intend telling you, I felt I _must_ tell
somebody, although George doesn't want it known yet, because, as I told
you, he--and so I haven't said a word to father yet; but I must
soon--and you won't say anything, will you? and--and oh, I am silly.
_Lucy._ There, have your cry out, it will do you good. Now tell me about
Mr. Reddell. What is he?
_Agnes._ He is a writer--an author. Don't you remember I showed you a
story of his a little time ago?
_Lucy._ I thought I knew the name.
_Agnes._ And you said you liked it; I was so pleased.
_Lucy._ Yes, I did. I thought it clever and----
_Agnes._ He _is_ clever; and I do so want you to know him. He wants to
know you, too. You will try to like him, won't you, for my sake?
_Lucy._ I have no doubt I shall.
_Agnes._ He is just bringing out a book. Some of the stories have been
published before; the one you read was one, and if that proves a success
then it will be all right; we shall be able to get married and----
_Lucy._ Wait a minute, Agnes. How long have you known him?
_Agnes._ Over a year--nearly two years.
_Lucy._ And do you really know him well? Are you quite certain you can
trust him?
_Agnes._ What a question! How can you doubt it? You wouldn't for a
minute if you knew him.
_Lucy._ I ought not to, knowing you, you mean. And supposing this book
is a success. May it not spoil him--make him conceited?
_Agnes._ All the better if it does. He is not conceited enough, and so I
always tell him.
_Lucy._ But may it not make him worldly? May he not, after a time,
regret his proposal to you if he sees a chance of making a more
advantageous----
_Agnes._ Impossible. What a dreadful opinion you must have of mankind.
You don't think it really, I know. I have never heard you say or hint
anything nasty about anybody before.
_Lucy._ I only do it for your own good, my dear. I once knew a man--just
such another as you describe Mr. Reddell to be. He was an author, too,
and--and when I knew him his first book was also just about to appear.
He was engaged to be married to--to quite a nice girl too, although she
was never so pretty as you are.
_Agnes._ Who is the flatterer now?
_Lucy._ The book was published. It was a great success. He became quite
the lion of the season--it is many years ago now. The wedding-day was
definitely fixed. Two months before the date he suggested a
postponement--for six months.
_Agnes._ How horrible!
_Lucy._ And just about the time originally fixed upon for the wedding
she received a letter from him--he was abroad at the time--suggesting
that their engagement had better be broken off.
_Agnes._ Oh, the brute! the big brute! But she didn't consent, did she?
_Lucy._ Of course. The man she had loved was dead. The new person she
was indifferent to.
_Agnes._ But how--but you don't suggest that Mr. Reddell could behave
like that? he couldn't. He wouldn't, I feel certain. But there must
surely have been something else; I can't believe that any man would
behave so utterly unfeelingly--so brutally. They say there are always
two sides to every story. Mayn't there have been some reason that you
knew nothing about? Mayn't she have done something? She must have been a
little bit to blame, too, and this side of the story you never heard.
_Lucy._ Yes--it is possible.
_Agnes._ I can't think that any man would deliberately behave so like a
cad as you say he did.
_Lucy._ It may have been her fault. I used to think it might be--just a
little, as you say.
_Agnes._ Well, it sha'n't be mine at all events. I won't give any
cause--besides even if I did----Oh, no, it is utterly impossible to
imagine such a thing!
_Lucy._ I hope it is, for your sake.
_Agnes._ Of course it is; of that I am quite certain. And you don't
think it is very wrong of me to--to----
_Lucy._ To say Yes to a man you love. No, my dear, that can never be
wrong, although it may be foolish.
_Agnes._ From a worldly point of view, perhaps; but I should never have
thought that you----
_Lucy._ I didn't mean that. But love seems to grow so quickly when you
once allow it to do so, that it is sometimes wiser to----but never mind,
bring him to see me, and--and may you be happy. [_A long pause._]
_Agnes._ You are crying now, Auntie! You have nothing----
_Lucy._ Haven't I? What, not at the chance of losing you? So this is
what brought you out so early this morning and occasioned your bright,
rosy cheeks? You didn't only come to see me.
_Agnes._ To see you and talk to you, yes, that was all. No, by-the-by,
it wasn't all. Have you seen a paper this morning? No? I thought it
would interest you so I brought it round. It is bad news, not good news;
your favourite author is dead.
_Lucy._ I am afraid my favourite authors have been dead very many years.
_Agnes._ I should say the author of your favourite book.
_Lucy._ You mean----
_Agnes._ Sir Harold Sekbourne. [Lucy _leans back in her chair_.] He died
last night. Here it is; here is the paragraph. [_Reads._] "We regret to
announce the death of Sir Harold Sekbourne, the well-known novelist,
which occurred at his town house, in Prince's Gate, late last evening."
Shall I read it to you?
_Lucy._ No--no, give me the paper. And--and, Agnes, do you mind going
down to Franklin's room, and telling her that receipt you promised her?
_Agnes._ For the Japanese custard? Of course I will; I quite forgot all
about it. There it is. [_Gives her the paper, indicating the paragraph
with her finger, then goes out._]
_Lucy._ [_Sits staring at the paper for a few seconds, then reads
slowly._] "Sir Harold had been slightly indisposed for some weeks, but
no anxiety was felt until two days ago, when a change for the worse set
in, and despite all the care, attention, and skill of Drs. Thornton and
Douglas, who hardly left his bedside, he never rallied, and passed
peacefully away, at the early age of fifty-eight, at the time above
mentioned. It is now thirty years ago since the deceased baronet
published his first book, 'Grace: a Sketch,' which had such an immediate
and great success. This was followed nearly a year afterwards by 'Alain
Treven,' the scene of which is laid in Brittany; and from that time
until his death his pen was never idle. His last work, 'The Incoming
Tide,' has just been published in book form, it having appeared in the
pages of _The Illustrated Courier_ during the last year. Despite the
rare power of his later works, disclosing thoroughly, as they do, his
scholarly knowledge, his masterly construction, vivid imagination, and
his keen insight into character and details of every-day life, they none
of them can, for exquisite freshness and rare delicacy of execution,
compare with his first publication, 'Grace: a Sketch.' We have before
us, as we write, a first edition of this delightful story, with its
curiously sentimental dedication 'To my Lady Luce,' which in the
subsequent editions was omitted. A baronetcy was conferred on Sir Harold
by her Majesty two years ago, at the personal instigation, it is said,
of the Prime Minister, who is one of his greatest admirers, but the
title is now extinct, as Sir Harold leaves no son. He married in June,
1866, a daughter of the late Sir Humphrey Mockton, who survives him. His
two daughters are both married--one to Lord Duncan, eldest son of the
Earl of Andstar; the other to Sir Reginald de Laver. His loss will be
greatly felt, not only in the literary world, but wherever the English
tongue is spoken and read."
[Lucy _goes to the bookcase, takes out a book, and opens it_. Agnes
_comes in_.]
_Agnes._ Franklin is silly. I had to repeat the directions three times,
and even now I doubt if she understands them properly. [_Comes behind_
Lucy _and looks over her shoulder_.] Why, I never knew you had a first
edition. [Lucy _starts and closes the book, then opens it again_.] May I
look at it? But this is written; the ink is quite faded. "To my Lady
Luce. Harold Sekbourne, 3rd November, 1863." What a strong handwriting
it is! Luce! how strange that the name should be the same as---- [_Looks
suddenly at_ Lucy.] Oh, Auntie, forgive me. I never dreamt----I am so
sorry.
The Head of Minos
By J. T. Nettleship
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: The Head of Minos]
A Lost Masterpiece
A City Mood, Aug. '93
By George Egerton
I regret it, but what am I to do? It was not my fault--I can only regret
it. It was thus it happened to me.
I had come to town straight from a hillside cottage in a lonely
ploughland, with the smell of the turf in my nostrils, and the swish of
the scythes in my ears; the scythes that flashed in the meadows where
the upland hay, drought-parched, stretched thirstily up to the clouds
that mustered upon the mountain-tops, and marched mockingly away, and
held no rain.
The desire to mix with the crowd, to lay my ear once more to the heart
of the world and listen to its life-throbs, had grown too strong for me;
and so I had come back--but the sights and sounds of my late life clung
to me--it is singular how the most opposite things often fill one with
associative memory.
That _gamin_ of the bird-tribe, the Cockney sparrow, recalled the
swallows that built in the tumble-down shed; and I could almost see the
gleam of their white bellies, as they circled in ever narrowing sweeps
and clove the air with forked wings, uttering a shrill note, with a
querulous grace-note in front of it.
The freshness of the country still lurked in me, unconsciously
influencing my attitude towards the city.
One forenoon business drove me citywards, and following an inclination
that always impels me to water-ways rather than roadways, I elected to
go by river steamer.
I left home in a glad mood, disposed to view the whole world with kindly
eyes. I was filled with a happy-go-lucky _insouciance_ that made walking
the pavements a loafing in Elysian fields. The coarser touches of
street-life, the oddities of accent, the idiosyncrasies of that most
eccentric of city-dwellers, the Londoner, did not jar as at other
times--rather added a zest to enjoyment; impressions crowded in too
quickly to admit of analysis, I was simply an interested spectator of a
varied panorama.
I was conscious, too, of a peculiar dual action of brain and senses,
for, though keenly alive to every unimportant detail of the life about
me, I was yet able to follow a process by which delicate inner threads
were being spun into a fanciful web that had nothing to do with my outer
self.
At Chelsea I boarded a river steamer bound for London Bridge. The river
was wrapped in a delicate grey haze with a golden subtone, like a
beautiful bright thought struggling for utterance through a mist of
obscure words. It glowed through the turbid waters under the arches, so
that I feared to see a face or a hand wave through its dull amber--for I
always think of drowned creatures washing wearily in its murky
depths--it lit up the great warehouses, and warmed the brickwork of the
monster chimneys in the background. No detail escaped my outer eyes--not
the hideous green of the velveteen in the sleeves of the woman on my
left, nor the supercilious giggle of the young ladies on my right, who
made audible remarks about my personal appearance.
But what cared I? Was I not happy, absurdly happy?--because all the
while my inner eyes saw undercurrents of beauty and pathos, quaint
contrasts, whimsical details that tickled my sense of humour
deliciously. The elf that lurks in some inner cell was very busy, now
throwing out tender mimosa-like threads of creative fancy, now recording
fleeting impressions with delicate sure brushwork for future use;
touching a hundred vagrant things with the magic of imagination, making
a running comment on the scenes we passed.
The warehouses told a tale of an up-to-date Soll und Haben, one of my
very own, one that would thrust old Freytag out of the book-mart. The
tall chimneys ceased to be giraffic throats belching soot and smoke over
the blackening city. They were obelisks rearing granite heads
heavenwards! Joints in the bricks, weather-stains? You are mistaken;
they were hieroglyphics, setting down for posterity a tragic epic of man
the conqueror, and fire his slave; and how they strangled beauty in the
grip of gain. A theme for a Whitman!
And so it talks and I listen with my inner ear--and yet nothing outward
escapes me--the slackening of the boat--the stepping on and off of
folk--the lowering of the funnel--the name "Stanley" on the little tug,
with its self-sufficient puff-puff, fussing by with a line of grimy
barges in tow; freight-laden, for the water washes over them--and on the
last a woman sits suckling her baby, and a terrier with badly cropped
ears yaps at us as we pass....
And as this English river scene flashes by, lines of association form
angles in my brain; and the point of each is a dot of light that expands
into a background for forgotten canal scenes, with green-grey water, and
leaning balconies, and strange crafts--Canaletti and Guardi seen long
ago in picture galleries....
A delicate featured youth with gold-laced cap, scrapes a prelude on a
thin-toned violin, and his companion thrums an accompaniment on a harp.
I don't know what they play, some tuneful thing with an undernote of
sadness and sentiment running through its commonplace--likely a
music-hall ditty; for a lad with a cheap silk hat, and the hateful
expression of knowingness that makes him a type of his kind, grins
appreciatively and hums the words.
I turn from him to the harp. It is the wreck of a handsome instrument,
its gold is tarnished, its white is smirched, its stucco rose-wreaths
sadly battered. It has the air of an antique beauty in dirty ball
finery; and is it fancy, or does not a shamed wail lurk in the tone of
its strings?
The whimsical idea occurs to me that it has once belonged to a lady with
drooping ringlets and an embroidered spencer; and that she touched its
chords to the words of a song by Thomas Haynes Baily, and that Miss La
Creevy transferred them both to ivory.
The youth played mechanically, without a trace of emotion; whilst the
harpist, whose nose is a study in purples and whose bloodshot eyes have
the glassy brightness of drink, felt every touch of beauty in the poor
little tune, and drew it tenderly forth.
They added the musical note to my joyous mood; the poetry of the city
dovetailed harmoniously with country scenes too recent to be treated as
memories--and I stepped off the boat with the melody vibrating through
the city sounds.
I swung from place to place in happy, lightsome mood, glad as a fairy
prince in quest of adventures. The air of the city was exhilarating
ether--and all mankind my brethren--in fact I felt effusively
affectionate.
I smiled at a pretty anaemic city girl, and only remembered that she was
a stranger when she flashed back an indignant look of affected affront.
But what cared I? Not a jot! I could afford to say pityingly: "Go thy
way, little city maid, get thee to thy typing."
And all the while that these outward insignificant things occupied me, I
knew that a precious little pearl of a thought was evolving slowly out
of the inner chaos.
It was such an unique little gem, with the lustre of a tear, and the
light of moonlight and streamlight and love smiles reflected in its pure
sheen--and, best of all, it was all my own--a priceless possession, not
to be bartered for the Jagersfontein diamond--a city childling with the
prepotency of the country working in it--and I revelled in its fresh
charm and dainty strength; it seemed original, it was so frankly
natural.
And as I dodged through the great waggons laden with wares from outer
continents, I listened and watched it forming inside, until my soul
became filled with the light of its brightness; and a wild elation
possessed me at the thought of this darling brain-child, this offspring
of my fancy, this rare little creation, perhaps embryo of genius that
was my very own.
I smiled benevolently at the passers-by, with their harassed business
faces, and shiny black bags bulging with the weight of common every-day
documents, as I thought of the treat I would give them later on; the
delicate feast I held in store for them, when I would transfer this
dainty elusive birthling of my brain to paper for their benefit.
It would make them dream of moonlit lanes and sweethearting; reveal to
them the golden threads in the sober city woof; creep in close and
whisper good cheer, and smooth out tired creases in heart and brain; a
draught from the fountain of Jouvence could work no greater miracle than
the tale I had to unfold.
Aye, they might pass me by now, not even give me the inside of the
pavement, I would not blame them for it!--but later on, later on, they
would flock to thank me. They just didn't realise, poor money-grubbers!
How could they? But later on.... I grew perfectly radiant at the thought
of what I would do for poor humanity, and absurdly self-satisfied as the
conviction grew upon me that this would prove a work of genius--no mere
glimmer of the spiritual afflatus--but a solid chunk of genius.
Meanwhile I took a 'bus and paid my penny. I leant back and chuckled to
myself as each fresh thought-atom added to the precious quality of my
pearl. Pearl? Not one any longer--a whole quarrelet of pearls, Oriental
pearls of the greatest price! Ah, how happy I was as I fondled my
conceit!
It was near Chancery Lane that a foreign element cropped up and
disturbed the rich flow of my fancy.
I happened to glance at the side-walk. A woman, a little woman, was
hurrying along in a most remarkable way. It annoyed me, for I could not
help wondering why she was in such a desperate hurry. Bother the jade!
what business had she to thrust herself on my observation like that, and
tangle the threads of a web of genius, undoubted genius?
I closed my eyes to avoid seeing her; I could see her through the lids.
She had square shoulders and a high bust, and a white gauze tie, like a
snowy feather in the breast of a pouter pigeon.
We stop--I look again--aye, there she is! Her black eyes stare boldly
through her kohol-tinted lids, her face has a violet tint. She grips her
gloves in one hand, her white-handled umbrella in the other, handle up,
like a knobkerrie.
She has great feet, too, in pointed shoes, and the heels are under her
insteps; and as we outdistance her I fancy I can hear their decisive
tap-tap above the thousand sounds of the street.
I breathe a sigh of relief as I return to my pearl--my pearl that is to
bring _me_ kudos and make countless thousands rejoice. It is dimmed a
little, I must nurse it tenderly.
Jerk, jerk, jangle--stop.--Bother the bell! We pull up to drop some
passengers, the idiots! and, as I live, she overtakes us! How the men
and women cede her the middle of the pavement! How her figure dominates
it, and her great feet emphasise her ridiculous haste! Why should she
disturb me? My nerves are quivering pitifully; the sweet inner light is
waning, I am in mortal dread of losing my little masterpiece. Thank
heaven, we are off again....
"Charing Cross, Army and Navy, V'toria!"--Stop!
Of course, naturally! Here she comes, elbows out, umbrella waving! How
the steel in her bonnet glistens! She recalls something, what is
it?--what is it? A-ah! I have it!--a strident voice, on the deck of a
steamer in the glorious bay of Rio, singing:
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,
Le seul pompier...."
and _la mióla_ snaps her fingers gaily and trills her _r's_; and the
Corcovado is outlined clearly on the purple background as if bending to
listen; and the palms and the mosque-like buildings, and the fair islets
bathed in the witchery of moonlight, and the star-gems twinned in the
lap of the bay, intoxicate as a dream of the East.
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,
Le seul pompier...."
What in the world is a _pompier_? What connection has the word with this
creature who is murdering, deliberately murdering, a delicate creation
of my brain, begotten by the fusion of country and town?
"Je suis le vr-r-rai pompier,..."
I am convinced _pompier_ expresses her in some subtle way--absurd word!
I look back at her, I criticise her, I anathematise her, I _hate_ her!
What is she hurrying for? We can't escape her--always we stop and let
her overtake us with her elbowing gait, and tight skirt shortened to
show her great splay feet--ugh!
My brain is void, all is dark within; the flowers are faded, the music
stilled; the lovely illusive little being has flown, and yet she pounds
along untiringly.
Is she a feminine presentment of the wandering Jew, a living embodiment
of the ghoul-like spirit that haunts the city and murders fancy?
What business had she, I ask, to come and thrust her white-handled
umbrella into the delicate network of my nerves and untune their
harmony?
Does she realise what she has done? She has trampled a rare little
mind-being unto death, destroyed a precious literary gem. Aye, one that,
for aught I know, might have worked a revolution in modern thought;
added a new human document to the archives of man; been the keystone to
psychic investigations; solved problems that lurk in the depths of our
natures and tantalise us with elusive gleams of truth; heralded in,
perchance, the new era; when such simple problems as Home Rule,
Bimetallism, or the Woman Question will be mere themes for schoolboard
compositions--who can tell?
Well, it was not my fault.--No one regrets it more, no one--but what
could I do?
Blame her, woman of the great feet and dominating gait, and waving
umbrella-handle!--blame her! I can only regret it--regret it!
Portrait of a Lady
By Charles W. Furse
_Reproduced by the Swan Electric Engraving Company_
[Illustration: Portrait of a Lady]
Reticence in Literature
By Arthur Waugh
_He never spoke out._ Upon these four words, gathered by chance from a
private letter, Matthew Arnold, with that super-subtle ingenuity which
loved to take the word and play upon it and make it of innumerable
colours, has constructed, as one may conjecture some antediluvian wonder
from its smallest fragment, a full, complete, and intimate picture of
the poet Thomas Gray. _He never spoke out._ Here, we are told, lies the
secret of Gray's limitation as much in life as in literature: so
sensitive was he in private life, so modest in public, that the thoughts
that arose in him never got full utterance, the possibilities of his
genius were never fulfilled; and we, in our turn, are left the poorer
for that nervous delicacy which has proved the bane of the poet, living
and dead alike. It is a singularly characteristic essay--this paper on
Gray, showing the writer's logical talent at once in its strongest and
its weakest capacities, and a complete study of Arnold's method might
well, I think, be founded upon its thirty pages. But in the present
instance I have recurred to that recurring phrase, _He never spoke out_,
not to discuss Matthew Arnold's estimate of Gray, nor, indeed, to
consider Gray's relation to his age; but merely to point out, what the
turn of Arnold's argument did not require him to consider, namely, the
extraordinarily un-English aspect of this reticence in Gray, a
reticence alien without doubt to the English character, but still more
alien to English literature. Reticence is not a national
characteristic--far otherwise. The phrase "national characteristic" is,
I know well, a cant phrase, and, as such, full of the dangers of abuse.
Historical and ethnographical criticism, proceeding on popular lines,
has tried from time to time to fix certain tendencies to certain races,
and to argue from individuals to generalities with a freedom that every
law of induction belies. And so we have come to endow the Frenchman,
universally and without exception, with politeness, the Indian, equally
universally, with cunning, the American with the commercial talent, the
German with the educational, and so forth. Generalisations of this kind
must, of course, be accepted with limitations. But it is not too much,
perhaps, to say that the Englishman has always prided himself upon his
frankness. He is always for speaking out; and it is this faculty of
outspokenness that he is anxious to attribute to those characters which
he sets up in the market-places of his religion and his literature, as
those whom he chiefly delights to honour. The demigods of our national
verse, the heroes of our national fiction, are brow-bound, above all
other laurels, with this glorious freedom of free speech and open
manners, and we have come to regard this broad, untrammelled virtue of
ours, as all individual virtues _will_ be regarded with the revolution
of the cycle of provinciality, as a guerdon above question or control.
We have become inclined to forget that every good thing has, as
Aristotle pointed out so long ago, its corresponding evil, and that the
corruption of the best is always worst of all. Frankness is so great a
boon, we say: we can forgive anything to the man who has the courage of
his convictions, the fearlessness of freedom--the man, in a word, who
speaks out.
But we have to distinguish, I think, at the outset between a national
virtue in the rough and the artificial or acquired fashion in which we
put that virtue into use. It is obvious that, though many things are
possible to us, which are good in themselves, many things are
inexpedient, when considered relatively to our environment. Count
Tolstoi may preach his gospel of non-resistance till the beauty of his
holiness seems almost Christ-like; but every man who goes forth to his
work and to his labour knows that the habitual turning of the right
cheek to the smiter of the left, the universal gift of the cloak to the
beggar of our coat, is subversive of all political economy, and no
slight incentive to immorality as well. In the same way, it will be
clear, that this national virtue of ours, this wholesome, sincere
outspokenness, is only possible within certain limits, set by custom and
expediency, and it is probably a fact that there was never a truly wise
man yet but tempered his natural freedom of speech by an acquired habit
of reticence. The man who never speaks out may be morose; the man who is
always speaking out is a most undesirable acquaintance.
Now, I suppose everyone is prepared to admit with Matthew Arnold that
the literature of an age (we are not now speaking of poetry alone, be it
understood, but of literature as a whole), that this literature must, in
so far as it is truly representative of, and therefore truly valuable
to, the time in which it is produced, reflect and criticise the manners,
tastes, development, the life, in fact, of the age for whose service it
was devised. We have, of course, critical literature probing the past:
we have philosophical literature prophesying the future; but the truly
representative literature of every age is the creative, which shows its
people its natural face in a glass, and leaves to posterity the record
of the manner of man it found. In one sense, indeed, creative literature
must inevitably be critical as well, critical in that it employs the
double methods of analysis and synthesis, dissecting motives and
tendencies first, and then from this examination building up a type, a
sample of the representative man and woman of its epoch. The truest
fiction of any given century, yes, and the truest poetry, too (though
the impressionist may deny it), must be a criticism of life, must
reflect its surroundings. Men pass, and fashions change; but in the
literature of their day their characters, their tendencies, remain
crystallised for all time: and what we know of the England of Chaucer
and Shakespeare, we know wholly and absolutely in the truly
representative, truly creative, because truly critical literature which
they have left to those that come after.
It is, then, the privilege, it is more, it is the duty of the man of
letters to speak out, to be fearless, to be frank, to give no ear to the
puritans of his hour, to have no care for the objections of prudery; the
life that he lives is the life he must depict, if his work is to be of
any lasting value. He must be frank, but he must be something more. He
must remember--hourly and momently he must remember--that his virtue,
step by step, inch by inch, imperceptibly melts into the vice which
stands at its pole; and that (to employ Aristotelian phraseology for the
moment) there is a sort of middle point, a centre of equilibrium, to
pass which is to disturb and overset the entire fabric of his labours.
Midway between liberty and license, in literature as in morals, stands
the pivot of good taste, the centre-point of art. The natural
inclination of frankness, the inclination of the virtue in the rough, is
to blunder on resolutely with an indomitable and damning sincerity, till
all is said that can be said, and art is lost in photography. The
inclination of frankness, restrained by and tutored to the limitations
of art and beauty, is to speak so much as is in accordance with the
moral idea: and then, at the point where ideas melt into mere report,
mere journalistic detail, to feel intuitively the restraining, the
saving influence of reticence. In every age there has been some point
(its exact position has varied, it is true, but the point has always
been there) at which speech stopped short; and the literature which has
most faithfully reflected the manners of that age, the literature, in
fine, which has survived its little hour of popularity, and has lived
and is still living, has inevitably, invariably, and without exception
been the literature which stayed its hand and voice at the point at
which the taste of the age, the age's conception of art, set up its
statue of reticence, with her finger to her lips, and the inscription
about her feet: "So far shalt thou go, and no further."
We have now, it seems, arrived at one consideration, which must always
limit the liberty of frankness, namely, the standard of contemporary
taste. The modesty that hesitates to align itself with that standard is
a shortcoming, the audacity that rushes beyond is a violence to the
unchanging law of literature. But the single consideration is
insufficient. If we are content with the criterion of contemporary taste
alone, our standard of judgment becomes purely historical: we are left,
so to speak, with a sliding scale which readjusts itself to every new
epoch: we have no permanent and universal test to apply to the
literature of different ages: in a word, comparative criticism is
impossible. We feel at once that we need, besides the shifting standard
of contemporary taste, some fixed unit of judgment that never varies,
some foot-rule that applies with equal infallibility to the literature
of early Greece and to the literature of later France; and such an unit,
such a foot-rule, can only be found in the final test of all art, the
necessity of the moral idea. We must, in distinguishing the thing that
may be said fairly and artistically from the thing whose utterance is
inadmissible, we must in such a decision control our judgment by two
standards--the one, the shifting standard of contemporary taste: the
other, the permanent standard of artistic justification, the presence of
the moral idea. With these two elements in action, we ought, I think, to
be able to estimate with tolerable fairness the amount of reticence in
any age which ceases to be a shortcoming, the amount of frankness which
begins to be a violence in the literature of the period. We ought, with
these two elements in motion, to be able to employ a scheme of
comparative criticism which will prevent us from encouraging that
retarding and dangerous doctrine that what was expedient and
justifiable, for instance, in the dramatists of the Restoration is
expedient and justifiable in the playwrights of our own Victorian era;
we ought, too, to be able to arrive instinctively at a sense of the
limits of art, and to appreciate the point at which frankness becomes a
violence, in that it has degenerated into mere brawling, animated
neither by purpose nor idea. Let us, then, consider these two standards
of taste and art separately: and first, let us give a brief attention to
the contemporary standard.
We may, I think, take it as a rough working axiom that the point of
reticence in literature, judged by a contemporary standard, should be
settled by the point of reticence in the conversation of the taste and
culture of the age. Literature is, after all, simply the ordered,
careful exposition of the thought of its period, seeking the best matter
of the time, and setting it forth in the best possible manner; and it is
surely clear that what is written in excess of what is spoken (in excess
I mean on the side of license) is a violence to, a misrepresentation of,
the period to whose service the literature is devoted. The course of the
highest thought of the time should be the course of its literature, the
limit of the most delicate taste of the time the limit of literary
expression: whatever falls below that standard is a shortcoming,
whatever exceeds it a violence. Obviously the standard varies immensely
with the period. It would be tedious, nor is it necessary to our
purpose, to make a long historical research into the development of
taste; but a few striking examples may help us to appreciate its
variations.
To begin with a very early stage of literature, we find among the
Heracleidae of Herodotus a stage of contemporary taste which is the
result of pure brutality. It is clear that literature adjusted to the
frankness of the uxorious pleasantries of Candaules and Gyges would
justifiably assume a degree of license which, reasonable enough in its
environment, would be absolutely impossible, directly the influences of
civilisation began to make themselves felt. The age is one of
unrestrained brutality, and the literature which represented it would,
without violence to the contemporary taste, be brutal too. To pass at a
bound to the Rome of Juvenal is again to be transported to an age of
national sensuality: the escapades of Messalina are the inevitable
outcome of a national taste that is swamped and left putrescent by
limitless self-indulgence; and the literature which represented this
taste would, without violence, be lascivious and polluted to its depth.
In continuing, with a still wider sweep, to the England of Shakespeare,
we find a new development of taste altogether. Brutality is softened,
licentiousness is restrained, immorality no longer stalks abroad
shouting its coarse phrases at every wayfarer who passes the Mermaid or
the Globe. But, even among types of purity, reticence is little known.
The innuendoes are whispered under the breath, but when once the voice
is lowered, it matters little what is said. Rosalind and Celia enjoy
their little _doubles entendres_ together. Hero's wedding morning is an
occasion for delicate hints of experiences to come. Hamlet plies the
coarsest suggestions upon Ophelia in the intervals of a theatrical
performance. The language reflects the taste: we feel no violence here.
To take but one more instance, let us end with Sheridan. By his time
speech had been refined by sentiment, and the most graceful compliments
glide, without effort, from the lips of the adept courtier. But even
still, in the drawing-rooms of fashion, delicate morsels of scandal are
discussed by his fine ladies with a freedom which is absolutely unknown
to the Mayfair of the last half-century, where innuendo might be
conveyed by the eye and suggested by the smile, but would never, so
reticent has taste become, find the frank emphatic utterance which
brought no blush to the cheek of Mrs. Candour and Lady Sneerwell. In the
passage of time reticence has become more and more pronounced; and
literature, moving, as it must, with the age, has assumed in its normal
and wholesome form the degree of silence which it finds about it.
The standard of taste in literature, then, so far as it responds to
contemporary judgment, should be regulated by the normal taste of the
hale and cultured man of its age: it should steer a middle course
between the prudery of the manse, which is for hiding everything vital,
and the effrontery of the pot-house, which makes for ribaldry and
bawdry; and the more it approximates to the exact equilibrium of its
period, the more thoroughly does it become representative of the best
taste of its time, the more certain is it of permanent recognition. The
literature of shortcoming and the literature of violence have their
reward:
"They have their day, and cease to be";
the literature which reflects the hale and wholesome frankness of its
age can be read, with pleasure and profit, long after its openness of
speech and outlook has ceased to reproduce the surrounding life. The
environment is ephemeral, but the literature is immortal. But why is the
literature immortal? Why is it that a play like _Pericles_, for
instance, full as it is of scenes which revolt the moral taste, has
lived and is a classic forever, while innumerable contemporary pieces of
no less genius (for _Pericles_ is no masterpiece) have passed into
oblivion? Why is it that the impurity of _Pericles_ strikes the reader
scarcely at all, while the memory dwells upon its beauties and forgets
its foulness in recollection of its refinement? The reason is not far to
seek. _Pericles_ is not only free of offence when judged by the taste of
its age, it is no less blameless when we subject it to the test by which
all literature is judged at last; it conforms to the standard of art; it
is permeated by the moral idea. The standard of art--the presence of the
idea--the two expressions are, I believe, synonymous. It is easy enough
to babble of the beauty of things considered apart from their meaning,
it is easy enough to dilate on the satisfaction of art in itself, but
all these phrases are merely collocations of terms, empty and
meaningless. A thing can only be artistic by virtue of the idea it
suggests to us; when the idea is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable, the
object that suggests it is coarse, ungainly, unspeakable; art and ethics
must always be allied in that the merit of the art is dependent on the
merit of the idea it prompts.
Perhaps I shall show my meaning more clearly by an example from the more
tangible art of painting; and let me take as an instance an artist who
has produced pictures at once the most revolting and most moral of any
in the history of English art. I mean Hogarth. We are all familiar with
his coarsenesses; all these have we known from our youth up. But it is
only the schoolboy who searches the Bible for its indecent passages;
when we are become men, we put away such childish satisfactions. Then
we begin to appreciate the idea which underlies the subject: we feel
that Hogarth--
"Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart"--
was, even in his grossest moments, profoundly moral, entirely sane,
because he never dallied lasciviously with his subject, because he did
not put forth vice with the pleasing semblance of virtue, because, like
all hale and wholesome critics of life, he condemned excess, and
pictured it merely to portray the worthlessness, the weariness, the
dissatisfaction of lust and license. Art, we say, claims every subject
for her own; life is open to her ken; she may fairly gather her subjects
where she will. Most true. But there is all the difference in the world
between drawing life as we find it, sternly and relentlessly, surveying
it all the while from outside with the calm, unflinching gaze of
criticism, and, on the other hand, yielding ourselves to the warmth and
colour of its excesses, losing our judgment in the ecstasies of the joy
of life, becoming, in a word, effeminate.
The man lives by ideas; the woman by sensations; and while the man
remains an artist so long as he holds true to his own view of life, the
woman becomes one as soon as she throws off the habit of her sex, and
learns to rely upon her judgment, and not upon her senses. It is only
when we regard life with the untrammelled view of the impartial
spectator, when we pierce below the substance for its animating idea,
that we approximate to the artistic temperament. It is unmanly, it is
effeminate, it is inartistic to gloat over pleasure, to revel in
immoderation, to become passion's slave; and literature demands as much
calmness of judgment, as much reticence, as life itself. The man who
loses reticence loses self-respect, and the man who has no respect for
himself will scarcely find others to venerate him. After all, the world
generally takes us at our own valuation.
We have now, I trust, arrived (though, it may be, by a rather circuitous
journey) at something like a definite and reasonable law for the
exercise of reticence; it only remains to consider by what test we shall
most easily discover the presence or absence of the animating moral idea
which we have found indispensable to art. It seems to me that three
questions will generally suffice. Does the work, we should ask
ourselves, make for that standard of taste which is normal to
wholesomeness and sanity of judgment? Does it, or does it not, encourage
us to such a line of life as is recommended, all question of tenet and
creed apart, by the experience of the age, as the life best calculated
to promote individual and general good? And does it encourage to this
life in language and by example so chosen as not to offend the
susceptibilities of that ordinarily strong and unaffected taste which,
after all, varies very little with the changes of the period and
development? When creative literature satisfies these three
requirements--when it is sane, equable, and well spoken, then it is safe
to say it conforms to the moral idea, and is consonant with art. By its
sanity it eludes the risk of effeminate demonstration; by its choice of
language it avoids brutality; and between these two poles, it may be
affirmed without fear of question, true taste will and must be found to
lie.
These general considerations, already too far prolonged, become of
immediate interest to us as soon as we attempt to apply them to the
literature of our own half-century, and I propose concluding what I
wished to say on the necessity of reticence by considering, briefly and
without mention of names, that realistic movement in English literature
which, under different titles, and protected by the ægis of various
schools, has proved, without doubt, the most interesting and suggestive
development in the poetry and fiction of our time. During the last
quarter of a century, more particularly, the English man-of-letters has
been indulging, with an entirely new freedom, his national birthright of
outspokenness, and during the last twelve months there have been no
uncertain indications that this freedom of speech is degenerating into
license which some of us cannot but view with regret and apprehension.
The writers and the critics of contemporary literature have, it would
seem, alike lost their heads; they have gone out into the byways and
hedges in search of the new thing, and have brought into the study and
subjected to the microscope mean objects of the roadside, whose analysis
may be of value to science but is absolutely foreign to art. The age of
brutality, pure and simple, is dead with us, it is true; but the age of
effeminacy appears, if one is to judge by recent evidence, to be growing
to its dawn. The day that follows will, if it fulfils the promise of its
morning, be very serious and very detrimental to our future literature.
Every great productive period of literature has been the result of some
internal or external revulsion of feeling, some current of ideas. This
is a commonplace. The greatest periods of production have been those
when the national mind has been directed to some vast movement of
emancipation--the discovery of new countries, the defeat of old enemies,
the opening of fresh possibilities. Literature is best stimulated by
stirrings like these. Now, the last quarter of a century in English
history has been singularly sterile of important improvements. There has
been no very inspiring acquisition to territory or to knowledge: there
has been, in consequence, no marked influx of new ideas. The mind has
been thrown back upon itself; lacking stimulus without, it has sought
inspiration within, and the most characteristic literature of the time
has been introspective. Following one course, it has betaken itself to
that intimately analytical fiction which we associate primarily with
America; it has sifted motives and probed psychology, with the result
that it has proved an exceedingly clever, exact, and scientific, but
scarcely stimulating, or progressive school of literature. Following
another course, it has sought for subject-matter in the discussion of
passions and sensations, common, doubtless, to every age of mankind,
interesting and necessary, too, in their way, but passions and
sensations hitherto dissociated with literature, hitherto, perhaps,
scarcely realised to their depth and intensity. It is in this
development that the new school of realism has gone furthest; and it is
in this direction that the literature of the future seems likely to
follow. It is, therefore, not without value to consider for a moment
whither this new frankness is leading us, and how far its freedom is
reconciled to that standard of necessary reticence which I have tried to
indicate in these pages.
This present tendency to literary frankness had its origin, I think, no
less than twenty-eight years ago. It was then that the dovecotes of
English taste were tremulously fluttered by the coming of a new poet,
whose naked outspokenness startled his readers into indignation.
Literature, which had retrograded into a melancholy sameness, found
itself convulsed by a sudden access of passion, which was probably
without parallel since the age of the silver poets of Rome. This new
singer scrupled not to revel in sensations which for years had remained
unmentioned upon the printed page; he even chose for his subjects
refinements of lust, which the commonly healthy Englishman believed to
have become extinct with the time of Juvenal. Here was an innovation
which was absolutely alien to the standard of contemporary taste--an
innovation, I believe, that was equally opposed to that final moderation
without which literature is lifeless.
Let us listen for one moment:
"By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
Through the kisses that blossom and bud,
By the lips intertwisted and bitten
Till the foam has a savour of blood,
By the pulse as it rises and falters,
By the hands as they slacken and strain,
I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
Our Lady of Pain.
As of old when the world's heart was lighter,
Through thy garments the grace of thee glows,
The white wealth of thy body made whiter
By the blushes of amorous blows,
And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
And branded by kisses that bruise;
When all shall be gone that now lingers,
Ah, what shall we lose?
Thou wert fair in thy fearless old fashion,
And thy limbs are as melodies yet,
And move to the music of passion
With lithe and lascivious regret.
What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
For creeds that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue,
Our Lady of Pain."
This was twenty-eight years ago; and still the poetry lives. At first
sight it would seem as though the desirable reticence, upon which we
have been insisting, were as yet unnecessary to immortality. A quarter
of a century has passed, it might be argued, and the verse is as fresh
to-day and as widely recognised as it was in its morning: is not this a
proof that art asks for no moderation? I believe not. It is true that
the poetry lives, that we all recognise, at some period of our lives,
the grasp and tenacity of its influence; that, even when the days come
in which we say we have no pleasure in it, we still turn to it at times
for something we do not find elsewhere. But the thing we seek is not the
matter, but the manner. The poetry is living, not by reason of its
unrestrained frankness, but in spite of it, for the sake of something
else. That sweet singer who charmed and shocked the audiences of 1866,
charms us, if he shocks us not now, by virtue of the one new thing that
he imported into English poetry, the unique and as yet imperishable
faculty of musical possibilities hitherto unattained. There is no such
music in all the range of English verse, seek where you will, as there
is in him. But the perfection of the one talent, its care, its
elaboration, have resulted in a corresponding decay of those other
faculties by which alone, in the long run, poetry can live. Open him
where you will, there is in his poetry neither construction nor
proportion; no development, no sustained dramatic power. Open him where
you will, you acquire as much sense of his meaning and purpose from any
two isolated stanzas as from the study of a whole poem. There remains in
your ears, when you have ceased from reading, the echo only of a
beautiful voice, chanting, as it were, the melodies of some outland
tongue.
Is this the sort of poetry that will survive the trouble of the ages? It
cannot survive. The time will come (it must) when some newer singer
discovers melodies as yet unknown, melodies which surpass in their
modulations and varieties those poems and ballads of twenty-eight years
ago; and, when we have found the new note, what will be left of the
earlier singer, to which we shall of necessity return? A message? No.
Philosophy? No. A new vision of life? No. A criticism of contemporary
existence? Assuredly not. There remains the melody alone; and this, when
once it is surpassed, will charm us little enough. We shall forget it
then. Art brings in her revenges, and this will be of them.
But the new movement did not stop here. If, in the poet we have been
discussing, we have found the voice among us that corresponds to the
decadent voices of the failing Roman Republic, there has reached us from
France another utterance, which I should be inclined to liken to the
outspoken brutality of Restoration drama. Taste no longer fails on the
ground of a delicate, weakly dalliance, it begins to see its own
limitations, and springs to the opposite pole. It will now be virile,
full of the sap of life, strong, robust, and muscular. It will hurry us
out into the fields, will show us the coarser passions of the common
farm-hand; at any expense it will paint the life it finds around it; it
will at least be consonant with that standard of want of taste which it
falsely believes to be contemporary. We get a realistic fiction abroad,
and we begin to copy it at home. We will trace the life of the
travelling actor, follow him into the vulgar, sordid surroundings which
he chooses for the palace of his love, be it a pottery-shed or the
ill-furnished lodging-room with its black horsehair sofa--we will draw
them all, and be faithful to the lives we live. Is that the sort of
literature that will survive the trouble of the ages? It cannot survive.
We are no longer untrue to our time, perhaps, if we are to seek for the
heart of that time in the lowest and meanest of its representatives; but
we are untrue to art, untrue to the record of our literary past, when we
are content to turn for our own inspiration to anything but the best
line of thought, the highest school of life, through which we are
moving. This grosser realism is no more representative of its time than
were the elaborate pastiches of classical degradation; it is as though
one should repeople Eden with creatures imagined from a study of the
serpent's head. In the history of literature this movement, too, will
with the lapse of time pass unrecognised; it has mourned unceasingly to
an age which did not lack for innocent piping and dancing in its
market-places.
The two developments of realism of which we have been speaking seem to
me to typify the two excesses into which frankness is inclined to fall;
on the one hand, the excess prompted by effeminacy--that is to say, by
the want of restraints which starts from enervated sensation; and on the
other, the excess which results from a certain brutal virility, which
proceeds from coarse familiarity with indulgence. The one whispers, the
other shouts; the one is the language of the courtesan, the other of the
bargee. What we miss in both alike is that true frankness which springs
from the artistic and moral temperament; the episodes are no part of a
whole in unity with itself; the impression they leave upon the reader is
not the impression of Hogarth's pictures; in one form they employ all
their art to render vice attractive, in the other, with absolutely no
art at all, they merely reproduce, with the fidelity of the kodak,
scenes and situations the existence of which we all acknowledge, while
taste prefers to forget them.
But the latest development of literary frankness is, I think, the most
insidious and fraught with the greatest danger to art. A new school has
arisen which combines the characteristics of effeminacy and brutality.
In its effeminate aspect it plays with the subtler emotions of sensual
pleasure, on its brutal side it has developed into that class of fiction
which for want of a better word I must call chirurgical. In poetry it
deals with very much the same passions as those which we have traced in
the verse to which allusion has been made above; but, instead of leaving
these refinements of lust to the haunts to which they are fitted, it has
introdduced them into the domestic chamber, and permeated marriage with
the ardours of promiscuous intercourse. In fiction it infects its
heroines with acquired diseases of names unmentionable, and has debased
the beauty of maternity by analysis of the process of gestation. Surely
the inartistic temperament can scarcely abuse literature further. I own
I can conceive nothing less beautiful.
It was said of a great poet by a little critic that he wheeled his
nuptial couch into the area; but these small poets and smaller novelists
bring out their sick into the thoroughfare, and stop the traffic while
they give us a clinical lecture upon their sufferings. We are told that
this is a part of the revolt of woman, and certainly our women-writers
are chiefly to blame. It is out of date, no doubt, to clamour for
modesty; but the woman who describes the sensations of childbirth does
so, it is to be presumed--not as the writer of advice to a wife--but as
an artist producing literature for art's sake. And so one may fairly ask
her: How is art served by all this? What has she told us that we did not
all know, or could not learn from medical manuals? and what impression
has she left us over and above the memory of her unpalatable details?
And our poets, who know no rhyme for "rest" but that "breast" whose
snowinesses and softnesses they are for ever describing with every
accent of indulgence, whose eyes are all for frills, if not for garters,
what have they sung that was not sung with far greater beauty and
sincerity in the days when frills and garters were alluded to with the
open frankness that cried shame on him who evil thought. The one
extremity, it seems to me, offends against the standard of contemporary
taste; ("people," as Hedda Gabler said, "do not say such things now");
the other extremity rebels against that universal standard of good taste
that has from the days of Milo distinguished between the naked and the
nude. We are losing the distinction now; the cry for realism, naked and
unashamed, is borne in upon us from every side:
"Rip your brother's vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them
stare."
But there was an Emperor once (we know the story) who went forth among
his people naked. It was said that he wore fairy clothes, and that only
the unwise could fail to see them. At last a little child raised its
voice from the crowd! "Why, he has nothing on," it said. And so these
writers of ours go out from day to day, girded on, they would have us
believe, with the garments of art; and fashion has lacked the courage to
cry out with the little child: "They have nothing on." No robe of art,
no texture of skill, they whirl before us in a bacchanalian dance naked
and unashamed. But the time will come, it must, when the voices of the
multitude will take up the cry of the child, and the revellers will
hurry to their houses in dismay. Without dignity, without
self-restraint, without the morality of art, literature has never
survived; they are the few who rose superior to the baser levels of
their time, who stand unimpugned among the immortals now. And that
mortal who would put on immortality must first assume that habit of
reticence, that garb of humility by which true greatness is best known.
To endure restraint--_that_ is to be strong.
A Lady Reading
By Walter Sickert
_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._
[Illustration: A Lady Reading]
Modern Melodrama
By Hubert Crackanthorpe
The pink shade of a single lamp supplied an air of subdued mystery; the
fire burned red and still; in place of door and windows hung curtains,
obscure, formless; the furniture, dainty, but sparse, stood detached and
incoördinate like the furniture of a stage-scene; the atmosphere was
heavy with heat, and a scent of stale tobacco; some cut flowers, half
withered, tissue-paper still wrapping their stalks, lay on a gilt,
cane-bottomed chair.
"Will you give me a sheet of paper, please?"
He had crossed the room, to seat himself before the principal table. He
wore a fur-lined overcoat, and he was tall, and broad, and bald; a sleek
face, made grave by gold-rimmed spectacles.
The other man was in evening dress; his back leaning against the
mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets: he was moodily scraping the
hearthrug with his toe. Clean-shaved; stolid and coarsely regular
features; black, shiny hair, flattened on to his head; under-sized eyes,
moist and glistening; the tint of his face uniform, the tint of
discoloured ivory; he looked a man who ate well and lived hard.
"Certainly, sir, certainly," and he started to hurry about the room.
"Daisy," he exclaimed roughly, a moment later, "where the deuce do you
keep the note-paper?"
"I don't know if there is any, but the girl always has some." She spoke
in a slow tone--insolent and fatigued.
A couple of bed-pillows were supporting her head, and a scarlet plush
cloak, trimmed with white down, was covering her feet, as she lay curled
on the sofa. The fire-light glinted on the metallic gold of her hair,
which clashed with the black of her eyebrows; and the full, blue eyes,
wide-set, contradicted the hard line of her vivid-red lips. She drummed
her fingers on the sofa-edge, nervously.
"Never mind," said the bald man shortly, producing a notebook from his
breast-pocket, and tearing a leaf from it.
He wrote, and the other two stayed silent; the man returned to the
hearthrug, lifting his coat-tails under his arms; the girl went on
drumming the sofa-edge.
"There," sliding back his chair, and looking from the one to the other,
evidently uncertain which of the two he should address. "Here is the
prescription. Get it made up to-night, a table-spoonful at a time, in a
wine-glassful of water at lunch-time, at dinner-time and before going to
bed. Go on with the port wine twice a day, and (to the girl,
deliberately and distinctly) you _must_ keep quite quiet; avoid all sort
of excitement--that is extremely important. Of course you must on no
account go out at night. Go to bed early, take regular meals, and keep
always warm."
"I say," broke in the girl, "tell us, it isn't bad--dangerous, I mean?"
"Dangerous!--no, not if you do what I tell you."
He glanced at his watch, and rose, buttoning his coat.
"Good-evening," he said gravely.
At first she paid no heed; she was vacantly staring before her: then,
suddenly conscious that he was waiting, she looked up at him.
"Good-night, doctor."
She held out her hand, and he took it.
"I'll get all right, won't I?" she asked, still looking up at him.
"All right--of course you will--of course. But remember you must do what
I tell you."
The other man handed him his hat and umbrella, opened the door for him,
and it closed behind them.
* * * * *
The girl remained quiet, sharply blinking her eyes, her whole expression
eager, intense.
A murmer of voices, a muffled tread of footsteps descending the
stairs--the gentle shutting of a door--stillness.
She raised herself on her elbow, listening; the cloak slipped
noiselessly to the floor. Quickly her arm shot out to the bell-rope: she
pulled it violently; waited, expectant; and pulled again.
A slatternly figure appeared--a woman of middle-age--her arms, bared to
the elbows, smeared with dirt; a grimy apron over her knees.
"What's up?--I was smashin' coal," she explained.
"Come here," hoarsely whispered the girl--"here--no--nearer--quite
close. Where's he gone?"
"Gone? 'oo?"
"That man that was here."
"I s'ppose 'ee's in the downstairs room. I ain't 'eard the front door
slam."
"And Dick, where's he?"
"They're both in there together, I s'ppose."
"I want you to go down--quietly--without making a noise--listen at the
door--come up, and tell me what they're saying."
"What? down there?" jerking her thumb over her shoulder.
"Yes, of course--at once," answered the girl, impatiently.
"And if they catches me--a nice fool I looks. No, I'm jest blowed if I
do!" she concluded. "Whatever's up?"
"You must," the girl broke out excitedly. "I tell you, you must."
"Must--must--an' if I do, what am I goin' to git out of it?" She paused,
reflecting; then added: "Look 'ere--I tell yer what--I'll do it for half
a quid, there?"
"Yes--yes--all right--only make haste."
"An' 'ow d' I know as I'll git it?" she objected doggedly. "It's a jolly
risk, yer know."
The girl sprang up, flushed and feverish.
"Quick--or he'll be gone. I don't know where it is--but you shall have
it--I promise--quick--please go--quick."
The other hesitated, her lips pressed together; turned, and went out.
And the girl, catching at her breath, clutched a chair.
* * * * *
A flame flickered up in the fire, buzzing spasmodically. A creak
outside. She had come up. But the curtains did not move. Why didn't she
come in? She was going past. The girl hastened across the room, the
intensity of the impulse lending her strength.
"Come--come in," she gasped. "Quick--I'm slipping."
She struck at the wall; but with the flat of her hand, for there was no
grip. The woman bursting in, caught her, and led her back to the sofa.
"There, there, dearie," tucking the cloak round her feet. "Lift up the
piller, my 'ands are that mucky. Will yer 'ave anythin'?"
She shook her head. "It's gone," she muttered. "Now--tell me."
"Tell yer?--tell yer what! Why--why--there ain't jest nothin' to tell
yer."
"What were they saying? Quick."
"I didn't 'ear nothin'. They was talking about some ballet-woman."
The girl began to cry, feebly, helplessly, like a child in pain.
"You might tell me, Liz. You might tell me. I've been a good sort to
you."
"That yer 'ave. I knows yer 'ave, dearie. There, there, don't yer take
on like that. Yer'll only make yerself bad again."
"Tell me--tell me," she wailed. "I've been a good sort to you, Liz."
"Well, they wasn't talkin' of no ballet-woman--that's straight," the
woman blurted out savagely.
"What did he say?--tell me." Her voice was weaker now.
"I can't tell yer--don't yer ask me--for God's sake, don't yer ask me."
With a low crooning the girl cried again.
"Oh! for God's sake, don't yer take on like that--it's awful--I can't
stand it. There, dearie, stop that cryin' an' I'll tell yer--I will
indeed. It was jest this way--I slips my shoes off, an' I goes down as
careful--jest as careful as a cat--an' when I gets to the door I
crouches myself down, listenin' as 'ard as ever I could. The first
things as I 'ears was Mr. Dick speakin' thick-like--like as if 'ee'd bin
drinkin'--an t'other chap 'ee says somethin' about lungs, using some
long word--I missed that--there was a van or somethin' rackettin' on the
road. Then 'ee says 'gallopin', gallopin',' jest like as 'ee was talkin'
of a 'orse. An' Mr. Dick, 'ee says, 'ain't there no chance--no'ow?' and
'ee give a sort of a grunt. I was awful sorry for 'im, that I was, 'ee
must 'ave been crool bad, 'ee's mostly so quiet-like, ain't 'ee? An', in
a minute, ee sort o' groans out somethin', an' t'other chap 'es answer
'im quite cool-like, that 'ee don't properly know; but, anyways, it 'ud
be over afore the end of February. There I've done it. Oh! dearie, it's
awful, awful, that's jest what it is. An' I 'ad no intention to tell
yer--not a blessed word--that I didn't--may God strike me blind if I
did! Some'ow it all come out, seein' yer chokin' that 'ard an' feelin'
at the wall there. Yer 'ad no right to ask me to do it--'ow was I to
know 'ee was a doctor?"
She put the two corners of her apron to her eyes, gurgling loudly.
"Look 'ere, don't yer b'lieve a word of it--I don't--I tell yer they're
a 'umbuggin' lot, them doctors, all together. I know it. Yer take my
word for that--yer'll git all right again. Yer'll be as well as I am,
afore yer've done--Oh, Lord!--it's jest awful--I feel that upset--I'd
like to cut my tongue out, for 'avin' told yer--but I jest couldn't 'elp
myself." She was retreating towards the door, wiping her eyes, and
snorting out loud sobs--"An', don't you offer me that half quid--I
couldn't take it of yer--that I couldn't."
* * * * *
She shivered, sat up, and dragged the cloak tight round her shoulders.
In her desire to get warm she forgot what had happened. She extended the
palms of her hands towards the grate: the grate was delicious. A smoking
lump of coal clattered on to the fender: she lifted the tongs, but the
sickening remembrance arrested her. The things in the room were
receding, dancing round: the fire was growing taller and taller. The
woollen scarf chafed her skin: she wrenched it off. Then hope, keen and
bitter, shot up, hurting her. "How could he know? Of course he couldn't
know. She'd been a lot better this last fortnight--the other doctor said
so--she didn't believe it--she didn't care----Anyway, it would be over
before the end of February!"
Suddenly the crooning wail started again: next, spasms of weeping, harsh
and gasping.
By-and-by she understood that she was crying noisily, and that she was
alone in the room; like a light in a wind, the sobbing fit ceased.
"Let me live--let me live--I'll be straight--I'll go to church--I'll do
anything! Take it away--it hurts--I can't bear it!"
Once more the sound of her own voice in the empty room calmed her. But
the tension of emotion slackened, only to tighten again: immediately she
was jeering at herself. What was she wasting her breath for? What had
Jesus ever done for her? She'd had her fling, and it was no thanks to
Him.
"'Dy-sy--Dy-sy----'"
From the street below, boisterous and loud, the refrain came up. And, as
the footsteps tramped away, the words reached her once more, indistinct
in the distance:
"'I'm jest cryzy, all for the love o' you.'"
She felt frightened. It was like a thing in a play. It was as if some
one was there, in the room--hiding--watching her.
Then a coughing fit started, racking her. In the middle, she struggled
to cry for help; she thought she was going to suffocate.
Afterwards she sank back, limp, tired, and sleepy.
The end of February--she was going to die--it was important,
exciting--what would it be like? Everybody else died. Midge had died in
the summer--but that was worry and going the pace. And they said that
Annie Evans was going off too. Damn it! she wasn't going to be
chicken-hearted. She'd face it. She'd had a jolly time. She'd be game
till the end. Hell-fire--that was all stuff and nonsense--she knew that.
It would be just nothing--like a sleep. Not even painful: she'd be just
shut down in a coffin, and she wouldn't know that they were doing it.
Ah! but they might do it before she was quite dead! It had happened
sometimes. And she wouldn't be able to get out. The lid would be nailed,
and there would be earth on the top. And if she called, no one would
hear.
Ugh! what a fit of the blues she was getting! It was beastly, being
alone. Why the devil didn't Dick come back?
That noise, what was that?
Bah! only some one in the street. What a fool she was!
She winced again as the fierce feeling of revolt swept through her, the
wild longing to fight. It was damned rough--four months! A year, six
months even, was a long time. The pain grew acute, different from
anything she had felt before.
"Good Lord! what am I maundering on about? Four months--I'll go out with
a fizzle like a firework. Why the devil doesn't Dick come?--or Liz--or
somebody? What do they leave me alone like this for?"
She dragged at the bell-rope.
* * * * *
He came in, white and blear-eyed.
"Whatever have you been doing all this time?" she began angrily.
"I've been chatting with the doctor." He was pretending to read a
newspaper: there was something funny about his voice.
"It's ripping. He says you'll soon be fit again, as long as you don't
get colds, or that sort of thing. Yes, he says you'll soon be fit
again"--a quick, crackling noise--he had gripped the newspaper in his
fist.
She looked at him, surprised, in spite of herself. She would never have
thought he'd have done it like that. He was a good sort, after all.
But--she didn't know why--she broke out furiously:
"You infernal liar!--I know. I shall be done for by the end of
February--ha! ha!"
Seizing a vase of flowers, she flung it into the grate. The crash and
the shrivelling of the leaves in the flames brought her an instant's
relief. Then she said quietly:
"There--I've made an idiot of myself; but" (weakly) "I didn't know--I
didn't know--I thought it was different."
He hesitated, embarrassed by his own emotion. Presently he went up to
her and put his hands round her cheeks.
"No," she said, "that's no good, I don't want that. Get me something to
drink. I feel bad."
He hurried to the cupboard and fumbled with the cork of a champagne
bottle. It flew out with a bang. She started violently.
"You clumsy fool!" she exclaimed.
She drank off the wine at a gulp.
"Daisy," he began.
She was staring stonily at the empty glass.
"Daisy," he repeated.
She tapped her toe against the fender-rail.
At this sign, he went on:
"How did you know?"
"I sent Liz to listen," she answered mechanically.
He looked about him, helpless.
"I think I'll smoke," he said feebly.
She made no answer.
"Here, put the glass down," she said.
He obeyed.
He lit a cigarette over the lamp, sat down opposite her, puffing dense
clouds of smoke.
And, for a long while, neither spoke.
"Is that doctor a good man?"
"I don't know. People say so," he answered.
Two Songs
By John Davidson
I--London
Athwart the sky a lowly sigh
From west to east the sweet wind carried;
The sun stood still on Primrose Hill;
His light in all the city tarried:
The clouds on viewless columns bloomed
Like smouldering lilies unconsumed.
"Oh, sweetheart, see, how shadowy,
Of some occult magician's rearing,
Or swung in space of Heaven's grace,
Dissolving, dimly reappearing,
Afloat upon ethereal tides
St. Paul above the city rides!"
A rumour broke through the thin smoke
Enwreathing Abbey, Tower, and Palace,
The parks, the squares, the thoroughfares,
The million-peopled lanes and alleys,
An ever-muttering prisoned storm,
The heart of London beating warm.
II-Down-a-down
Foxes peeped from out their dens,
Day grew pale and olden;
Blackbirds, willow-warblers, wrens,
Staunched their voices golden.
High, oh high, from the opal sky,
Shouting against the dark,
"Why, why, why must the day go by?"
Fell a passionate lark.
But the cuckoos beat their brazen gongs,
Sounding, sounding so;
And the nightingales poured in starry songs
A galaxy below.
Slowly tolling the vesper bell
Ushered the stately night.
Down-a-down in a hawthorn dell
A boy and a girl and love's delight.
The Love-Story of Luigi Tansillo
By Richard Garnett
Now that my wings are spread to my desire,
The more vast height withdraws the dwindling land,
Wider to wind these pinions I expand,
And earth disdain, and higher mount and higher
Nor of the fate of Icarus inquire,
Or cautious droop, or sway to either hand;
Dead I shall fall, full well I understand;
But who lives gloriously as I expire?
Yet hear I my own heart that pleading cries,
Stay, madman! Whither art thou bound? Descend!
Ruin is ready Rashness to chastise.
But I, Fear not, though this indeed the end;
Cleave we the clouds, and praise our destinies,
If noble fall on noble flight attend.
The above sonnet, one of the finest in Italian literature, is already
known to many English readers in another translation by the late Mr. J.
Addington Symonds, which originally appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_,
and is prefixed to his translation of the sonnets of Michael Angelo and
Campanella (London, 1878), under the title of "The Philosopher's
Flight." In his preface Mr. Symonds says: "The sonnet prefixed as a
proem to the whole book is generally attributed to Giordano Bruno, in
whose Dialogue in the 'Eroici Furori' it occurs. There seems, however,
good reason to suppose that it was really written by Tansillo, who
recites it in that dialogue. Whoever may have been its author, it
expresses in noble and impassioned verse the sense of danger, the
audacity, and the exultation of those pioneers of modern thought, for
whom philosophy was a voyage of discovery into untravelled regions." Mr.
Symonds's knowledge of Italian literature was so extensive that he must
have had ground for stating that the sonnet is generally attributed to
Giordano Bruno; as it certainly is by De Sanctis, though it is printed
as Tansillo's in all editions of his works, imperfect as these were
before the appearance of Signor Fiorentino's in 1882. It is,
nevertheless, remarkable that he should add: "_There seems good reason
to suppose_ that it was really written by Tansillo," as if there could
be a shadow of doubt on the matter. "Eroici Furori" is professedly a
series of dialogues between Luigi Tansillo the Neapolitan poet, who had
died about twenty years before their composition, and Cicero, but is in
reality little more than a monologue, for Tansillo does nearly all the
talking, and Cicero receives his instructions with singular docility.
The reason of Tansillo's selection for so great an honour was
undoubtedly that, although born at Venosa, he belonged by descent to
Nola, Bruno's own city. In making such free use of Tansillo's poetry as
he has done throughout these dialogues, Bruno was far from the least
idea of pillaging his distinguished countryman. In introducing the four
sonnets he has borrowed (for there are three besides that already
quoted) he is always careful to make Tansillo speak of them as his own
compositions, which he never does when Bruno's own verses are put into
his mouth. If a particle of doubt could remain, it would be dispelled by
the fact that this sonnet, with other poems by Tansillo, including the
three other sonnets introduced into Bruno's dialogue, is published under
his name in the "Rime di diversi illustri Signori Napoletani," edited by
Lodovico Dolce at Venice, in 1555, when Bruno was about seven years old!
Mr. Symonds's interpretation of the sonnet also is erroneous--in so far,
at least, as that the meaning assigned by him never entered into the
head of the author. It is certainly fully susceptible of such an
exposition. But Tansillo, no philosopher, but a cavalier, the active
part of whose life was mainly spent in naval expeditions against the
Turks, no more thought with Mr. Symonds of "the pioneers of modern
philosophy," than he thought with Bruno of "arising and freeing himself
from the body and sensual cognition." On the contrary, the sonnet is a
love-sonnet, and depicts with extraordinary grandeur the elation of
spirit, combined with a sense of peril, consequent upon the poet having
conceived a passion for a lady greatly his superior in rank. The proof
of this is to be found in the fact that the sonnet is one of a series,
unequivocally celebrating an earthly passion; and especially in the
sonnet immediately preceding it in Dolce's collection, manifestly
written at the same time and referring to the same circumstance, in
which the poet ascribes his Icarian flight, not to the influence of
Philosophy, but of Love:
Love fits me forth with wings, which so dilate,
Sped skyward at the call of daring thought,
I high and higher soar, with purpose fraught
Soon to lay smiting hand on Heaven's gate.
Yet altitude so vast might well abate
My confidence, if Love not succour brought,
Pledging my fame not jeopardised in aught,
And promising renown as ruin great.
If he whom like audacity inspired,
Falling gave name immortal to the flood,
As sunny flame his waxen pinion fired;
Then of thee too it shall be understood,
No meaner prize than Heaven thy soul required,
And firmer than thy life thy courage stood.
The meaning of the two sonnets is fully recognised by Muratori, who
prints them together in his treatise, "Della perfetta poesia," and adds:
"_volea dire costui che s'era imbarcato in un'amor troppo alto, e
s'andava facendo coraggio_."
This is surely one of the most remarkable instances possible to adduce
of the infinite significance of true poetry, and its capacity for
inspiring ideas and suggesting interpretations of which the poet never
dreamed, but which are nevertheless fairly deducible from his
expressions.
It is now a matter of considerable interest to ascertain the identity of
this lady of rank, who could inspire a passion at once so exalted and so
perilous. The point has been investigated by Tansillo's editor, Signor
F. Fiorentino, who has done so much to rescue his unpublished
compositions from oblivion, and his view must be pronounced perfectly
satisfactory. She was Maria d'Aragona, Marchioness del Vasto, whose
husband, the Marquis del Vasto, a celebrated general of Spanish descent,
famous as Charles the Fifth's right hand in his successful expedition
against Tunis, and at one time governor of the Milanese, was as
remarkable for his jealousy as the lady, grand-daughter of a King of
Naples, was for her pride and haughtiness. Fiorentino proves his case by
showing how well all personal allusions in Tansillo's poems, so far as
they can be traced, agree with the circumstances of the Marchioness, and
in particular that the latter is represented as at one time residing on
the island of Ischia, where del Vasto was accustomed to deposit his
wife for security, when absent on his campaigns. He is apparently not
aware that the object of Tansillo's affection had already been
identified with a member of the house of Aragon by Faria e Sousa, the
Portuguese editor of Camoëns, who, in his commentary on Camoëns's
sixty-ninth sonnet, gives an interminable catalogue of ladies celebrated
by enamoured poets, and says, "Tansillo sang Donna Isabel de Aragon."
This lady, however, the niece of the Marchioness del Vasto, was a little
girl in Tansillo's time, and is only mentioned by him as inconsolable
for the death of a favourite dwarf.
The sentiment, therefore, of the two sonnets of Tansillo which we have
quoted, is sufficiently justified by the exalted station of the lady who
had inspired his passion, and the risk he ran from the power and
jealousy of her husband. It seems certain, however, that the Marquis had
on his part no ground for apprehension. Maria d'Aragona does not seem to
have had much heart to bestow upon anyone, and would, in any case, have
disdained to bestow what heart she had upon a poor gentleman and
retainer of Don Garcia de Toledo, son of the Viceroy of Naples. She
would think that she honoured him beyond his deserts by accepting his
poetical homage. Tansillo, on his part, says in one of his sonnets that
his devotion is purely platonic; it might have been more ardent, he
hints, but he is dazzled by the splendour of the light he contemplates,
and intimidated by the richness of the band by which he is led. So it
may have been at first, but as time wore on the poet naturally craved
some proof that his lady was not entirely indifferent to him, and did
not tolerate him merely for the sake of his verses. This, in the nature
of things, could not be given; and the poet's raptures pass into doubt
and suspicion, thence into despairing resignation; thence into
resentment and open hostility, terminating in a cold reconciliation,
leaving him free to marry a much humbler but probably a more
affectionate person, to whom he addresses no impassioned sonnets, but
whom he instructs in a very elegant poem ("La Balia") how to bring up
her infant children. These varying affections are depicted with extreme
liveliness in a series of sonnets, of which we propose to offer some
translated specimens. The order will not be that of the editions of
Tansillo, where the pieces are distributed at random, but the probable
order of composition, as indicated by the nature of the feeling
expressed. It is, of course, impossible to give more than a few
examples, though most deserve to be reproduced. Tansillo had the
advantage over most Italian poets of his time of being in love with a
real woman; hence, though possibly inferior in style and diction to such
artists in rhyme as Bembo or Molza, he greatly surpasses them in all the
qualities that discriminate poetry from the accomplishment of verse.
The first sonnet which we shall give is still all fire and rapture:--
I
Lady, the heart that entered through your eyes
Returneth not. Well may he make delay,
For if the very windows that display
Your spirit, sparkle in such wondrous wise,
Of her enthroned within this Paradise
What shall be deemed? If heart for ever stay,
Small wonder, dazzled by more radiant day
Than gazers from without can recognise.
Glory of sun and moon and silver star
In firmament above, are these not sign
Of things within more excellent by far?
Rejoice then in thy kingdom, heart of mine,
While Love and Fortune favourable are,
Nor thou yet exiled for default of thine.
Although, however, Tansillo's heart might well remain with its lady,
Tansillo's person was necessitated to join the frequent maritime
expeditions of the great nobleman to whom he was attached, Don Garcia de
Toledo, against the Turks. The constant free-booting of the Turkish and
Barbary rovers kept the Mediterranean in a state of commotion comparable
to that of the Spanish Main in the succeeding age, and these
expeditions, whose picturesque history remains to be written, were no
doubt very interesting; though from a philosophical point of view it is
impossible not to sympathise with the humane and generous poet when he
inquires:--
Che il Turco nasca turco, e 'l Moro moro,
È giusta causa questa, ond'altri ed io
Dobbiam incrudelir nel sangue loro?
With such feelings it may well be believed that in his enforced absence
he was thinking at least as much of love as of war, and that the
following sonnet is as truthful as it is an animated picture of his
feelings:--
II
No length of banishment did e'er remove
My heart from you, nor if by Fortune sped
I roam the azure waters, or the Red,
E'er with the body shall the spirit rove:
If by each drop of every wave we clove,
Or by Sun's light or Moon's encompassèd,
Another Venus were engenderèd,
And each were pregnant with another Love:
And thus new shapes of Love where'er we went
Started to life at every stroke of oar,
And each were cradled in an amorous thought;
Not more than now this spirit should adore;
That none the less doth constantly lament
It cannot worship as it would and ought.
Before long, however, the pangs of separation overcome this elation of
spirit, while he is not yet afraid of being forgotten:--
III
Like lightning shining forth from east to west,
Hurled are the happy hours from morn to night,
And leave the spirit steeped in undelight
In like proportion as themselves were blest.
Slow move sad hours, by thousand curbs opprest,
Wherewith the churlish Fates delay their flight;
Those, impulses of Mercury incite,
These lag at the Saturnian star's behest.
While thou wert near, ere separation's grief
Smote me, like steeds contending in the race,
My days and nights with equal speed did run:
Now broken either wheel, not swift the pace
Of summer's night though summer's moon be brief;
Or wintry days for brevity of sun.
IV
Now that the Sun hath borne with him the day,
And haled dark Night from prison subterrene,
Come forth, fair Moon, and, robed in light serene,
With thy own loveliness the world array.
Heaven's spheres, slow wheeled on their majestic way,
Invoke as they revolve thy orb unseen,
And all the pageant of the starry scene,
Wronged by thy absence, chides at thy delay.
Shades even as splendours, earth and heaven both
Smile at the apparition of thy face,
And my own gloom no longer seems so loth;
Yet, while my eye regards thee, thought doth trace
Another's image; if in vows be troth,
I am not yet estranged from Love's embrace.
Continual separation, however, and the absence of any marked token that
he is borne in memory, necessarily prey more and more on the sensitive
spirit of the poet. During the first part, her husband's tenure of
office as Governor of the Milanese, the Marchioness, as already
mentioned, took up her residence in the island of Ischia, where she
received her adorer's eloquent aspirations for her welfare--heartfelt,
but so worded as to convey a reproach:
V
That this fair isle with all delight abound,
Clad be it ever in sky's smile serene,
No thundering billow boom from deeps marine,
And calm with Neptune and his folk be found.
Fast may all winds by Æolus be bound,
Save faintest breath of lispings Zephyrene;
And be the odorous earth with glowing green
Of gladsome herbs, bright flowers, quaint foliage crowned.
All ire, all tempest, all misfortune be
Heaped on my head, lest aught thy pleasure stain,
Nor this disturbed by any thought of me,
So scourged with ills' innumerable train,
New grief new tear begetteth not, as sea
Chafes not the more for deluge of the rain.
The "quaint foliage" is in the original "Arab leaves," _arabe frondi_,
an interesting proof of the cultivation of exotic plants at the period.
The lady rejoins her husband at Milan, and Tansillo, landing on the
Campanian coast, lately devastated by earthquakes and eruptions, finds
everywhere the image of his own bosom, and rejoices at the opportunity
which yawning rifts and chasms of earth afford for an appeal to the
infernal powers:--
VI
Wild precipice and earthquake-riven wall;
Bare jagged lava naked to the sky;
Whence densely struggles up and slow floats by
Heaven's murky shroud of smoke funereal;
Horror whereby the silent groves enthral;
Black weedy pit and rifted cavity;
Bleak loneliness whose drear sterility
Doth prowling creatures of the wild appal:
Like one distraught who doth his woe deplore,
Bereft of sense by thousand miseries,
As passion prompts, companioned or alone;
Your desert so I rove; if as before
Heaven deaf continue, through these crevices,
My cry shall pierce to the Avernian throne.
The poet's melancholy deepens, and he enters upon the stage of dismal
and hopeless resignation to the inevitable:
VII
As one who on uneasy couch bewails
Besetting sickness and Time's tardy course,
Proving if drug, or gem, or charm have force
To conquer the dire evil that assails:
But when at last no remedy prevails,
And bankrupt Art stands empty of resource,
Beholds Death in the face, and scorns recourse
To skill whose impotence in nought avails.
So I, who long have borne in trust unspent
That distance, indignation, reason, strife
With Fate would heal my malady, repent,
Frustrate all hopes wherewith my soul was rife,
And yield unto my destiny, content
To languish for the little left of life.
A lower depth still has to be reached ere the period of salutary and
defiant reaction:--
VIII
So mightily abound the hosts of Pain,
Whom sentries of my bosom Love hath made,
No space is left to enter or evade,
And inwardly expire sighs born in vain,
If any pleasure mingle with the train,
By the first glimpse of my poor heart dismayed,
Instant he dies, or else, in bondage stayed,
Pines languishing, or flies that drear domain.
Pale semblances of terror keep the keys,
Of frowning portals they for none displace
Save messengers of novel miseries:
All thoughts they scare that wear a gladsome face;
And, were they anything but Miseries,
Themselves would hasten from the gloomy place.
Slighted love easily passes from rejection into rebellion, and we shall
see that such was the case with Tansillo. The following sonnet denotes
an intermediate stage, when resignation is almost renunciation, but has
not yet become revolt:--
IX
Cease thy accustomed strain, my mournful lute;
New music find, fit for my lot forlorn;
Henceforth be Wrath and Grief resounded, torn
The strings that anciently did Love salute,
Not on my own weak wing irresolute
But on Love's plumes I trusted to be borne,
Chanting him far as that remotest bourne
Whence strength Herculean reft Hesperian fruit.
To such ambition was my spirit wrought
By gracious guerdon Love came offering
When free in air my thought was bold to range:
But otherwhere now dwells another's thought,
And Wrath has plucked Love's feather from my wing,
And hope, style, theme, I all alike must change.
This, however, is not a point at which continuance is possible, the mind
must go either backward or forward. The lover for a time persuades
himself that he has broken his mistress's yoke, and that his infatuation
is entirely a thing of the past. But the poet, like the lady, protests
too much:--
X
If Love was miser of my liberty,
Lo, Scorn is bounteous and benevolent,
Such scope permitting, that, my fetter rent,
Not lengthened by my hand, I wander free.
The eyes that yielded tears continually
Have now with Lethe's drops my fire besprent,
And more behold, Illusion's glamour spent,
Than fabled Argus with his century.
The tyrant of my spirit, left forlorn
As vassal thoughts forsake him, doth remove,
And back unto her throne is Reason borne,
And I my metamorphosis approve,
And, old strains tuning to new keys, of Scorn
Will sing as anciently I sang of Love.
Several solutions of this situation are conceivable. Tansillo's is that
which was perhaps that most likely in the case of an emotional nature,
where the feelings are more powerful than the will. He simply surrenders
at discretion, retracts everything disparaging that he has said of the
lady (taking care, however, not to burn the peccant verses, which are
much too good to be lightly parted with), and professes himself her
humble slave upon her own terms:--
XI
All bitter words I spoke of you while yet
My heart was sore, and every virgin scroll
Blackened with ire, now past from my control,
These would I now recall; for 'tis most fit
My style should change, now Reason doth reknit,
Ties Passion sundered, and again make whole;
Be then Oblivion's prey whate'er my soul
Hath wrongly of thee thought, spoke, sung, or writ.
Not, Lady, that impeachment of thy fame
With tongue or pen I ever did design;
But that, if unto these shall reach my name,
Ages to come may study in my line
How year by year more streamed and towered my flame,
And how I living was and dying thine.
There is no reason to doubt the perfect sincerity of these lines at the
period of their composition; but Tansillo's mistress had apparently
resolved that his attachment should not henceforth have the diet even of
a chameleon; and it is small wonder to find him shortly afterwards a
tender husband and father, lamenting the death of an infant son in
strains of extreme pathos, and instructing his wife on certain details
of domestic economy in which she might have been supposed to be better
versed than himself. His marriage took place in 1550, and in one of his
sonnets he says that his unhappy attachment had endured sixteen years,
which, allowing for a decent interval between the Romeo and the
Benedict, would date its commencement at 1532 or 1533.
Maria d'Aragona died on November 9, 1568, and Tansillo, whose services
had been rewarded by a judicial appointment in the kingdom of Naples,
followed her to the tomb on December 1. If her death is really the
subject of the two poems in terza rima which appear to deplore it, he
certainly lost no time in bewailing her, but the interval is so brief,
and the poems are so weak, that they may have been composed on some
other occasion. With respect to the latter consideration, however, it
must be remembered that he was himself, in all probability, suffering
from disabling sickness, having made his will on November 29. It is also
worthy of note that the first sonnets composed by Petrarch upon the
death of Laura are in general much inferior in depth of tenderness to
those written years after the event. "In Memoriam" is another proof that
the adequate poetical expression of grief, unlike that of life, requires
time and study. Tansillo, then, may not have been so completely
disillusioned as his editor thinks. If the poems do not relate to Maria
d'Aragona, we have no clue to the ultimate nature of his feelings
towards her.
A generally fair estimate of Tansillo's rank as a poet is given in
Ginguéné's "History of Italian Literature," vol. ix., pp. 340-343. It
can scarcely be admitted that his boldness and fertility of imagination
transported him beyond the limits of lyric poetry--for this is hardly
possible--but it is true that they sometimes transcended the limits of
good taste, and that the germs may be found in him of the extravagance
which so disfigured Italian poetry in the seventeenth century. On the
other hand, he has the inestimable advantage over most Italian poets of
his day of writing of genuine passion from genuine experience. Hence a
truth and vigour preferable even to the exquisite elegance of his
countryman, Angelo di Costanzo, and much more so to the mere amatory
exercises of other contemporaries. After Michael Angelo he stands
farther aloof than any contemporary from Petrarch, a merit in an age
when the study of Petrarch had degenerated into slavish imitation. His
faults as a lyrist are absent from his didactic poems, which are models
of taste and elegance. His one unpardonable sin is want of patriotism;
he is the dependant and panegyrist of the foreign conqueror, and seems
equally unconscious of the past glories, the actual degradation, or the
prospective regeneration of Italy. Born a Spanish subject, his ideal of
loyalty was entirely misplaced, and he must not be severely censured for
what he could hardly avoid. But Italy lost a Tyrtæus in him.
A Book Plate for
J. L. Propert, Esq.
By Aubrey Beardsley
A Book Plate for
Major-General Gosset
By R. Anning Bell
_Reproduced by Messrs. Carl Hentschel & Co._
[Illustration: Book Plate for J. L. Propert]
[Illustration: Book Plate for Major-General Gosset]
The Fool's Hour
The First Act of a Comedy
By John Oliver Hobbes
and George Moore
CHARACTERS OF THE COMEDY
Lord Doldrummond
Cyril, _his Son_ (Viscount Aprile)
Sir Digby Soame
Charles Mandeville, _a tenor_
Mr. Banish, _a banker_
The Hon. Arthur Featherleigh
Mr. Samuel Benjamin, _a money-lender_
Lady Doldrummond
Julia, _an heiress_
The Hon. Mrs. Howard de Trappe, _her mother, a widow_
Sarah Sparrow, _an American prima donna_
Act I
Scene--_The Library in_ Lord Doldrummond's _house at Brighton. The scene
represents a richly-furnished but somewhat oppressive room. The chairs
and tables are all narrow, the lamp-shades stiff, the windows have
double glasses._ Lord Doldrummond, _a man of middle-age, handsome, but
with a dejected, browbeaten air, sits with a rug over his knees, reading
"The Church Times." The_ Butler _announces_ "Sir Digby Soame." Sir Digby
_is thin and elderly; has an easy smile and a sharp eye; dresses well;
has two manners--the abrupt with men, the suave with women; smiles into
his beard over his own witticisms._
_Lord Dol._ Ah, Soame, so you are here at last?
_Soame._ [_Looking at his watch._] I am pretty punctual, only a few
minutes late.
_Lord Dol._ I am worried, anxious, irritable, and that has made the time
seem long.
_Soame._ Worried, anxious? And what about? Are you not well? Have you
found that regularity of life ruins the constitution?
_Lord Dol._ No, my dear Soame, no. But I am willing to own that the
existence which my wife enjoys, and which I have learnt to endure, would
not suit everyone.
_Soame._ I am glad to find you more tolerant. You used to hold the very
harshest and most crude opinions. I remember when we were boys, I could
never persuade you to accept the admirable doctrine that a reformed rake
makes the best husband!
_Lord Dol._ [_Timidly._] Repentance does not require so large an income
as folly! This may explain that paradox. You know, in my way, I, too,
am something of a philosopher! I married very young, whereas you entered
the Diplomatic Service and resolved to remain single: you wished to
study women. I have lived with one for five-and-twenty years. [_Sighs._]
_Soame._ Oh, I admit at once that yours is the greater achievement and
was the more daring ambition.
_Lord Dol._ I know all I wish to know about women, but men puzzle me
extremely. So I have sent for you. I want your advice. It is Cyril who
is the cause of my uneasiness. I am afraid that he is not happy.
_Soame._ Cyril not happy? What is he unhappy about? You have never
refused him anything?
_Lord Dol._ Never! No man has had a kinder father! When he is
unreasonable I merely say "You are a fool, but please yourself!" No man
has had a kinder father!
_Soame._ Does he complain?
_Lord Dol._ He has hinted that his home is uncongenial--yet we have an
excellent cook! Ah, thank heaven every night and morning, my dear Digby,
that you are a bachelor. Praying for sinners and breeding them would
seem the whole duty of man. I was no sooner born than my parents were
filled with uneasiness lest I should not live to marry and beget an heir
of my own. Now I have an heir, his mother will never know peace until
she has found him a wife!
_Soame._ And will you permit Lady Doldrummond to use the same method
with Cyril which your mother adopted with such appalling results in your
own case?
_Lord Dol._ It does not seem my place to interfere, and love-affairs are
not a fit subject of conversation between father and son!
_Soame._ But what does Cyril say to the matrimonial prospect?
_Lord Dol._ He seems melancholy and eats nothing but oranges. Yes, Cyril
is a source of great uneasiness.
_Soame._ Does Lady Doldrummond share this uneasiness?
_Lord Dol._ My wife would regard a second thought on any subject as a
most dangerous form of temptation. She insists that Cyril has everything
which a young man could desire, and when he complains that the house is
dull, she takes him for a drive!
_Soame._ But _you_ understand him?
_Lord Dol._ I think I do. If I were young again----
_Soame._ Ah, you regret! I always said you would regret it if you did
not take your fling! The pleasures we imagine are so much more alluring,
so much more dangerous, than those we experience. I suppose you
recognise in Cyril the rascal you might have been, and feel that you
have missed your vocation?
_Lord Dol._ [_Meekly._] I was never unruly, my dear Soame. We all have
our moments, I own, yet--well, perhaps Cyril has inherited the tastes
which I possessed at his age, but lacked the courage to obey.
_Soame._ And so you wish me to advise you how to deal with him! Is he in
love? I have constantly observed that when young men find their homes
unsympathetic, it is because some particular lady does not form a member
of the household. It is usually a lady, too, who would not be considered
a convenient addition to any mother's visiting-list!
_Lord Dol._ Lady Doldrummond has taught him that women are the scourges
of creation. You, perhaps, do not share that view!
_Soame._ Certainly not. I would teach him to regard them as the reward,
the compensation, the sole delight of this dreariest of all possible
worlds.
_Lord Dol._ [_Uneasily._] Reward! Compensation! Delight! I beg you will
not go so far as that. What notion would be more upsetting? Pray do not
use such extreme terms!
_Soame._ Ha! ha! But tell me, Doldrummond, is it true that your wife
insists on his retiring at eleven and rising at eight? I hear that she
allows him nothing stronger than ginger ale and lemon; that she selects
his friends, makes his engagements, and superintends his amusements?
Should he marry, I am told she will even undertake the office of best
man!
_Lord Dol._ Poor soul! she means well; and if devotion could make the
boy a saint he would have been in heaven before he was out of his long
clothes. As it is, I fear that nothing can save him.
_Soame._ Save him? You speak as though you suspected that he was not
such a saint as his mother thinks him.
_Lord Dol._ I suspect nothing. I only know that my boy is unhappy. You
might speak to him, and draw him out if occasion should offer--but do
not say a word about this to Lady Doldrummond.
[_Enter_ Lady Doldrummond.--_She is a tall, slight, but not angular
woman. Her hair is brown, and brushed back from her temples in the
simplest possible fashion. Self-satisfaction (of a gentle and ladylike
sort) and eminent contentment with her lot are the only writings on her
smooth, almost girlish countenance. She has a prim tenderness and charm
of manner which soften her rather cutting voice._]
_Lady Dol._ What! Cyril not here? How do you do, Sir Digby? I am looking
for my tiresome boy. I promised to take him to pay some calls this
afternoon, and as he may have to talk I must tell him what to say. He
has no idea of making himself pleasant to women, and is the shyest
creature in the world!
_Soame._ You have always been so careful to shield him from all
responsibility, Lady Doldrummond. Who knows what eloquence, what
decision, what energy he might display, if you did not possess these
gifts in so pre-eminent a degree as to make any exertion on his part
unnecessary, and perhaps disrespectful.
_Lady Dol._ Ah! mothers are going out of fashion. Even Cyril
occasionally shows a certain impatience when I venture to correct him.
As if I would hurt anyone's feelings unless from a sense of duty! And
pray, where is the pleasure of having a son if you may not direct his
life?
_Lord Dol._ Cyril might ask, where is the pleasure of having parents if
you may not disobey them.
_Lady Dol._ [_To_ Soame.] When Herbert is alone with me he never makes
flippant remarks of this kind. [_To_ Lord Doldrummond.] I wonder that
you like to give your friends such a wrong impression of your character.
[_Turning to_ Sir Digby.] But I think I see your drift, Sir Digby. You
wish to remind me that Cyril is now at an age when I must naturally
desire to see him established in a home of his own.
_Soame._ You have caught my meaning. As he is now two-and-twenty, I
think he should be allowed more freedom than may have been expedient
when he was--say, six months old.
_Lady Dol._ I quite agree with you, and I trust you will convince
Herbert that women understand young men far better than their fathers
ever could. I have found the very wife for Cyril, and I hope I may soon
have the pleasure of welcoming her as a daughter.
_Soame._ A wife! Good heavens! I was suggesting that the boy had more
liberty. Marriage is the prison of all emotions, and I should be very
sorry to ask any young girl to be a man's gaol-keeper.
_Lord Dol._ Sir Digby is right.
_Lady Dol._ The presence of a third person has the strangest effect on
Herbert's moral vision. As I have trained my son with a care and
tenderness rarely bestowed nowadays even on a girl, I think I may show
some resentment when I am asked to believe him a being with the
instincts of a ruffian and the philosophy of a middle-aged bachelor. No,
Sir Digby, Cyril is not _my_ child if he does not make his home and his
family the happiest in the world!
_Soame._ Yes?
_Lady Dol._ He has no taste for cards, horses, brandy, or actresses. We
read together, walk together, and drive together. In the evening, if he
is too tired to engage in conversation, I play the piano while he dozes.
Lately he has taken a particular interest in Mozart's classic light
opera. Any interest of that kind is so elevating, and I know of nothing
more agreeable than a musical husband.
_Lord Dol._ You see she is resolved on his marriage, and she has had
Julia de Trappe on a visit with us for the last five weeks in the hope
of bringing matters to a crisis.
_Lady Dol._ And why not? Our marriage was arranged for us, and what idle
fancies of our own could have led to such perfect contentment?
[Lord Doldrummund _avoids her eyes_.]
_Soame._ Julia de Trappe? She must be the daughter of that Mrs. Howard
de Trappe who gives large At Homes in a small house, and who spends her
time hunting for old lovers and new servants.
_Lady Dol._ I own that dear Julia has been allowed to meet men and women
who are not fit companions for a young girl, no matter how interesting
they may be to the general public. Only yesterday she told me she was
well acquainted with Mr. Mandeville, the tenor. Mrs. de Trappe, it
seems, frequently invites him to dinner. Still, Julia herself is very
sensible, and the family is of extraordinary antiquity.
_Soame._ But the mother? If she has not been in the divorce court, it is
through no fault of her own.
_Lady Dol._ [_Biting her lip._] Mrs. de Trappe is vain and silly, I
admit; but as she has at last decided to marry Mr. Banish, the banker, I
am hoping she will live in his house at Hampstead, and think a little
more about her immortal soul.
_Soame._ Does Cyril seem at all interested in Miss Julia?
_Lady Dol._ Cyril has great elegance of mind, and is not very strong in
the expression of his feelings one way or the other. But I may say that
a deep attachment exists between them.
_Soame._ A man must have sound wisdom before he can appreciate
innocence. But I have no desire to be discouraging, and I hope I may
soon have the pleasure of congratulating you all on the wedding.
Good-bye.
_Lord Dol._ What! Must you go?
_Soame._ Yes. But [_aside to_ Lord Dol.] I shall bear in mind what you
say. I will do my best. I have an engagement in town to-night.
[_Chuckles._] An amusing one.
_Lord Dol._ [_With envy._] Where?
_Soame._ At the Parnassus.
_Lady Dol._ [_With a supercilious smile._] And what is the Parnassus?
_Soame._ A theatre much favoured by young men who wish to be thought
wicked, and by young ladies who _are._ Good-bye, good-bye. [_Shakes
hands with_ Lord _and_ Lady Doldrummond _and goes out_.]
_Lady Dol._ Thank goodness, he is gone! What a terrible example for
Cyril. I was on thorns every second lest he should come in. Soame has
just those meretricious attractions which appeal to youth and
inexperience. That you should encourage such an acquaintance, and even
discuss before him such an intimate matter as my hope with regard to
Julia, is, perhaps, more painful than astonishing.
_Lord Dol._ They are both too young to marry. Let them enjoy life while
they may.
_Lady Dol._ _Enjoy_ life? What a degrading suggestion! I have often
observed that there is a lurking taste for the vicious in every
Doldrummond. [_Picking up_ Cyril's _miniature from the table_.] Cyril is
pure Bedingfield: my second self!
[_The Butler announces_ Mrs. De Trappe, Mr. Arthur Featherleigh, Mr.
Banish. Mrs. de Trappe _is a pretty woman with big eyes and a small
waist; she has a trick of biting her under-lip, and looking shocked, as
it were, at her own audacity. Her manner is a little effusive, but
always well-bred. She does not seem affected, and has something artless,
confiding, and pathetic._ Mr. Featherleigh _has a nervous laugh and a
gentlemanly appearance; otherwise inscrutable_. Mr. Banish _is old,
well-preserved, rather pompous, and evidently mistakes deportment for
dignity_.]
_Mrs. de Trappe._ [_Kissing_ Lady Dol. _on each cheek_.] Dear Edith, I
knew we should surprise you. But Mr. Banish and I are house-hunting, and
I thought I must run in and see you and Julia, if only for a second. I
felt sure you would not mind my bringing Arthur [_indicating_
Featherleigh.] He is so lonely at the prospect of my marriage that Mr.
Banish and I have promised to keep him always with us. We have known
each other so long. How should we spend our evenings without him? James
admits they would be tedious, don't you, James? [_Indicating_ Banish.]
_Banish._ Certainly, my dear.
_Lady Dol._ [_Stiffly._] I can well understand that you have learned to
regard Mr. Featherleigh as your own son. And as we advance in years, it
is so pleasant to have young people about us.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ [_After a slight pause._] How odd that it should never
have struck me in that light before! I have always thought of Arthur as
the trustee, as it were, of my poor fatherless Julia [_To_ Banish.] Have
I not often said so, James?
_Banish._ [_Dryly._] Often. In fact I have always thought that Julia
would never lack a father whilst Arthur was alive. But I admit that he
is a little young for the responsibility.
_Feather._ [_Unmoved._] Do not forget, Violet, that our train leaves in
fifty-five minutes.
_Lord Dol._ [_Catching a desperate glance from_ Lady Doldrummond.] Then
I shall have time to show you the Russian poodles which the Duke of
Camdem brought me from Japan.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ [_Peevishly._] Yes, please take them away. [_Waving
her hand in the direction of_ Banish _and_ Featherleigh.] Edith and I
have many secrets to discuss. Of course she will tell you [_to_ Lord
Dol.] everything I have said when we are gone, and I shall tell Arthur
and James all she has said as we go home. But it is so amusing to think
ourselves mysterious for twenty minutes. [_As the men go out laughing,
she turns to_ Lady Doldrummond _with a sigh_.] Ah, Edith, when I pause
in all these gaieties and say to myself, Violet, you are about to marry
a second husband, I cannot feel sufficiently thankful that it is not the
third.
_Lady Dol._ The third?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ To face the possibility of a third honeymoon, a third
disappointment, and a third funeral would tax my courage to the utmost!
And I am not strong.
_Lady Dol._ I am shocked to see you so despondent. Surely you anticipate
every happiness with Mr. Banish?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Oh, yes. He has money, and Arthur thinks him a very
worthy sort of person. He is a little dull, but then middle-class people
are always so gross in their air when they attempt to be lively or
amusing; so long as they are grave I can bear them well enough, but I
know of nothing so unpleasant as the sight of a banker laughing. As
Arthur says, City men and butlers should always be serious.
_Lady Dol._ Do you think that the world will quite understand--Arthur?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ What do you mean, Edith? A woman must have an adviser.
Arthur was my late husband's friend, and he is my future husband's
friend. Surely that should be enough to satisfy the most exacting.
_Lady Dol._ But why marry at all? why not remain as you are?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ How unreasonable you are, Edith! How often have you
urged me to marry Mr. Banish, and now that it is all arranged and Arthur
is satisfied, you begin to object.
_Lady Dol._ I thought that you liked Mr. Banish better.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Better than Arthur? No, I am not so unkind as that,
nor would James wish it. I am marrying because I am poor. My husband, as
you know, left nearly all his money to Julia, and I feel the injustice
so acutely that the absurd settlement he made on me is spent upon
doctor's bills alone. If it were not for Arthur and one or two other
kind friends who send me game and other little things from time to time,
I could not exist at all. [_Draws off her gloves, displays a diamond
ring on each finger, and wipes her eyes with a point-lace
pocket-handkerchief._] And when I think of all that I endured with De
Trappe! How often have I been roused from a sound sleep to see the room
illuminated and De Trappe, rolled up in flannel, sitting by the fire
reading "Lead, kindly Light." What an existence! But now tell me about
Julia. I hope she does not give you much trouble.
_Lady Dol._ I only hope that I may keep her always with me.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ How she must have improved! When she is at home I find
her so depressing. And she does not appeal to men in the least.
_Lady Dol._ I could wish that all young girls were as modest.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Oh, I daresay Julia has all the qualities we like to
see in some other woman's daughter. But if you were her mother and had
to find her a husband, you would regard her virtues in another light.
Fortunately she has eight thousand a year, so she may be able to find
somebody. Still, even money does not tempt men as it once did. A girl
must have an extraordinary charm. She is so jealous of me. I cannot keep
her out of the drawing-room when I have got callers, especially when Mr.
Mandeville is there.
_Lady Dol._ I have heard of Mr. Mandeville. He is an actor, a singer.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ A lovely tenor voice. All the women are in love with
him, except me. I would not listen to him. And now they say he is going
to marry Sarah Sparrow--a great mistake. I should like to know who would
care about him or his singing, once he is married.
_Lady Dol._ And who is Sarah Sparrow?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Don't you know? She is the last great success. She has
two notes: B flat and the lower G--the orchestra plays the rest. You
must go to the Parnassus and hear her. To-night is the dress rehearsal
of the new piece.
_Lady Dol._ And do you receive Miss Sparrow?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ No, women take up too much time. They say, too, that
she is frantically jealous because Mandeville used to come and practise
in my boudoir. He says no one can accompany him as I do!
_Lady Dol._ I hope Cyril does not meet Mr. Mandeville when he goes to
your house.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Let me see. I believe I introduced them. At any rate,
I know I saw them at luncheon together last week.
_Lady Dol._ At luncheon together! Cyril and this person who sings? What
could my boy and Mr. Mandeville have in common?
_Mrs. de Trappe._ They both appear to admire Sarah Sparrow very much.
And I cannot find what men see in her. She is not tall and her figure is
most innocent; you would say she was still in pinafores. As for her
prettiness, I admit she has fine eyes, but of course she blackens them.
I think the great attraction is her atrocious temper. One never knows
whom she will stab next.
_Lady Dol._ [_Half to herself._] Last week Cyril came in after midnight.
He refused to answer my questions.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ You seem absent-minded, my dear Edith. [_Pause._] I
must be going now. Where are Arthur and James? We have not a moment to
lose. We are going to choose wedding presents. James is going to choose
Arthur's and Arthur is going to choose James's, so there can be no
jealousy. It was I who thought of that way out of the difficulty. One
does one's best to be nice to them, and then something happens and
upsets all one's plans. Where is Cyril?
_Lady Dol._ I am afraid Cyril is not at home.
_Mrs. de Trappe._ Then I shall not see him. Tell him I am angry, and
give my love to Julia. I hope she does not disturb you when you are in
the drawing-room and have visitors. So difficult to keep a grown-up girl
out of the drawing-room. Where can those men be? [_Enter_ Lord
Doldrummond, Mr. Featherleigh, _and_ Mr. Banish.] Ah! here they are.
Now, come along; we haven't a moment to lose. Good-bye, Edith.
[_Exeunt_ (_after wishing their adieux_) Mrs. de Trappe, Mr.
Featherleigh, _and_ Mr. Banish, Lord Doldrummond _following them_.]
_Lady Dol._ [_Stands alone in the middle of the room, repeating._] Cyril
and--Sarah Sparrow! My son and Sarah Sparrow! And he has met her through
the one woman for whom I have been wrong enough to forget my prejudices.
What a punishment!
[Julia _enters cautiously. She is so unusually beautiful that she barely
escapes the terrible charge of sublimity. But there is a certain
peevishness in her expression which adds a comfortable smack of human
nature to her classic features._]
_Julia._ I thought mamma would never go. I have been hiding in your
boudoir ever since I heard she was here.
_Lady Dol._ Was Cyril with you?
_Julia._ Oh, no; he has gone out for a walk.
_Lady Dol._ Tell me, dearest, have you and Cyril had any disagreement
lately? Is there any misunderstanding?
_Julia._ Oh, no. [_Sighs._]
_Lady Dol._ I remember quite well that before I married Herbert he often
suffered from the oddest moods of depression. Several times he entreated
me to break off the engagement. His affection was so reverential that he
feared he was not worthy of me. I assure you I had the greatest
difficulty in overcoming his scruples, and persuading him that whatever
his faults were I could help him to subdue them.
_Julia._ But Cyril and I are not engaged. It is all so uncertain, so
humiliating.
_Lady Dol._ Men take these things for granted. If the truth were known,
I daresay he already regards you as his wife.
_Julia._ [_With an inspired air._] Perhaps that is why he treats me so
unkindly. I have often thought that if he were my husband he could not
be more disagreeable! He has not a word for me when I speak to him. He
does not hear. Oh, Lady Doldrummond, I know what is the matter. He is in
love, but I am not the one. You are all wrong.
_Lady Dol._ No, no, no. He loves you; I am sure of it. Only be patient
with him and it will come all right. Hush! is that his step? Stay here,
darling, and I will go into my room and write letters. [_Exit, brushing
the tears from her eyes._]
[Butler _ushers in_ Mr. Mandeville. _Neither of them perceive Julia, who
has gone to the window._]
_Butler._ His Lordship will be down in half an hour, sir. He is now
having his hair brushed.
_Julia._ [_In surprise as she looks round._] Mr. Mandeville! [_Pause._]
I hardly expected to meet you here.
_Mandeville._ And why, may I ask?
Julia. You know what Lady Doldrummond is. How did you overcome her
scruples?
_Mandeville._ Is my reputation then so very bad?
_Julia._ You--you are supposed to be rather dangerous. You sing on the
stage, and have a tenor voice.
_Mandeville._ Is that enough to make a man dangerous?
_Julia._ How can _I_ tell? But mamma said you were invincible. You
admire mamma, of course. [_Sighs._]
_Mandeville._ A charming woman, Mrs. de Trappe. A very interesting
woman; so sympathetic.
_Julia._ But she said she would not listen to you.
_Mandeville._ Did she say that? [_A slight pause._] I hope you will not
be angry when I own that I do not especially _admire_ your mother. A
quarter of a century ago she may have had considerable attractions,
but--are you offended?
_Julia._ Offended? Oh, no. Only it seems strange. I thought that all men
admired mamma. [_Pause._] You have not told me yet how you made Lady
Doldrummond's acquaintance.
_Mandeville._ I am here at Lord Aprile's invitation. He has decided that
he feels no further need of Lady Doldrummond's apron-strings.
_Julia._ Oh, Mr. Mandeville, are you teaching him to be wicked?
_Mandeville._ But you will agree with me that a young man cannot make
his mother a kind of scribbling diary?
_Julia._ Still, if he spends his time well, there does not seem to be
any reason why he should refuse to say where he dines when he is not at
home.
_Mandeville._ Lady Doldrummond holds such peculiar ideas; she would find
immorality in a sofa-cushion. If she were to know that Cyril is coming
with me to the dress rehearsal of our new piece!
_Julia._ It would break her heart. And Lord Doldrummond would be
indignant. Mamma says his own morals are so excellent!
_Mandeville._ Is he an invalid?
_Julia._ Certainly not. Why do you ask?
_Mandeville._ Whenever I hear of a charming husband I always think that
he _must_ be an invalid. But as for morals, there can be no harm in
taking Cyril to a dress rehearsal. If you do not wish him to go,
however, I can easily say that the manager does not care to have
strangers present. [_Pause._] Afterwards there is to be a ball at Miss
Sparrow's.
_Julia._ Is Cyril going there, too?
_Mandeville._ I believe that he has an invitation, but I will persuade
him to refuse it, if you would prefer him to remain at home.
_Julia._ You are very kind, Mr. Mandeville, but it is a matter of
indifference to me where Lord Aprile goes.
_Mandeville._ Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned this to you?
_Julia._ [_Annoyed._] It does not make the least difference. In fact, I
am delighted to think that you are taking Cyril out into the world. He
is wretched in this house. [_With heroism._] I am glad to think that he
knows anyone so interesting and clever and beautiful as Sarah Sparrow. I
suppose she would be considered beautiful?
_Mandeville._ [_With a profound glance._] One can forget her--sometimes.
_Julia._ [_Looking down._] Perhaps--when I am as old as she is--I shall
be prettier than I am at present.
_Mandeville._ You always said you liked my voice. We never see anything
of each other now. I once thought that--well--that you might like me
better. Are you sure you are not angry with me because I am taking Cyril
to this rehearsal?
_Julia._ Quite sure. Why should I care where Cyril goes? I only wish
that I, too, might go to the theatre to-night. What part do you play?
And what do you sing? A serenade?
_Mandeville._ [_Astounded._] Yes. How on earth did you guess that? The
costume is, of course, picturesque, and that is the great thing in an
opera. A few men can sing--after a fashion--but to find the right
clothes to sing _in_--that shows the true artist.
_Julia._ And Sarah; does she look _her_ part?
_Mandeville._ Well, I do not like to say anything against her, but she
is not quite the person I should cast for la Marquise de la Perdrigonde.
Ah! if you were on the stage, Miss de Trappe! You have just the
exquisite charm, the grace, the majesty of bearing which, in the opinion
of those who have never been to Court, is the peculiar distinction of
women accustomed to the highest society.
_Julia._ Oh, I should like to be an actress!
_Mandeville._ No! no! I spoke selfishly--if you only acted with _me_, it
would be different; but--but I could not bear to see another man making
love to you--another man holding your hand and singing into your
eyes--and--and----Oh, this is madness. You must not listen to me.
_Julia._ I am not--angry, but--you must never again say things which you
do not mean. If I thought you were untruthful it would make me so--so
miserable. Always tell me the truth. [_Holds out her hand._]
_Mandeville._ You are very beautiful!
[_She drops her eyes, smiles, and wanders unconsciously to the mirror._]
[Lady Doldrummond _suddenly enters from the boudoir, and_ Cyril _from
the middle door_. Cyril _is handsome, but his features have that
delicacy and his expression that pensiveness which promise artistic
longings and domestic disappointment_.]
_Cyril._ [_Cordially and in a state of suppressed excitement._] Oh,
mother, this is my friend Mandeville. You have heard me mention him?
_Lady Dol._ I do not remember, but----
_Cyril._ When I promised to go out with you this afternoon, I forgot
that I had another engagement. Mandeville has been kind enough to call
for me.
_Lady Dol._ Another engagement, Cyril?
[Lord Doldrummond _enters and comes down, anxiously looking from one to
the other_.]
_Cyril._ Father, this is my friend Mandeville. We have arranged to go up
to town this afternoon.
_Lady Dol._ [_Calmly._] What time shall I send the carriage to the
station for you? The last train usually arrives about----
_Cyril._ I shall not return to-night. I intend to stay in town.
Mandeville will put me up.
_Lord Dol._ And where are you going?
_Mandeville._ He is coming to our dress rehearsal of the "Dandy and the
Dancer."
_Cyril._ At the Parnassus. [Lord _and_ Lady Doldrummond _exchange
horrified glances_.] I daresay you have never heard of the place, but it
amuses me to go there, and I must learn life for myself. I am
two-and-twenty, and it is not extraordinary that I should wish to be my
own master. I intend to have chambers of my own in town.
_Lady Dol._ Surely you have every liberty in this house?
_Lord Dol._ If you leave us, you will leave the rooms in which your
mother has spent every hour of her life, since the day you were born,
planning and improving. Must all her care and thought go for nothing?
The silk hangings in your bedroom she worked with her own hands. There
is not so much as a pen-wiper in your quarter of the house which she did
not choose with the idea of giving you one more token of her affection.
_Cyril._ I am not ungrateful, but I cannot see much of the world through
my mother's embroidery. As you say, I have every comfort here. I may
gorge at your expense and snore on your pillows and bully your servants.
I can do everything, in fact, but live. Dear mother, be reasonable.
[_Tries to kiss her. She remains quite frigid._]
[Footman _enters_.]
_Footman._ The dog-cart is at the door, my lord.
_Cyril._ You think it well over and you will see that I am perfectly
right. Come on, Mandeville, we shall miss the train. Make haste: there
is no time to be polite. [_He goes out, dragging_ Mandeville _after him,
and ignoring_ Julia.]
_Lord Dol._ Was that my son? I am ashamed of him! To desert us in this
rude, insolent, heartless manner. If I had whipped him more and loved
him less, he would not have been leaving me to lodge with a God knows
who. I disown him! The fool!
_Lady Dol._ If you have anything to say, blame _me_! Cyril has the
noblest heart in the world; _I_ am the fool.
_Curtain._
Transcriber's Notes:
Words in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Greek words have been transliterated.
Punctuation was standardized. Words in dialect, obsolete or alternative
spellings were not changed. The following were corrected:
missing 'f' added to 'of' ... implications of his speech ...
'allution' to 'allusion' ... without catching the allusion ...
'needed' to 'heeded' ... I had not heeded this ...
'undiscouragable' to 'undiscourageable' ... My undiscourageable search ...
'snggest' to 'suggest' ... reason to suggest that ...
'gasp' to 'grasp' ... his grasp had been insecure; ...
'deing' to 'being' ... he was being whirled through ...
'geos' to 'goes' ... then goes out._] ...
'Gardi' to 'Guardi' ... Canaletti and Guardi seen long ago ...
'waning' to 'waving' ... elbows out, umbrella waving,...
'allign' to 'align' ... that hesitates to align itself ...
'poem' to 'poet' ... upon the poet having conceived a passion ...
'requiees' to 'requires' ... requires time and study....
'upsettting' to 'upsetting' ... would be more upsetting?...
missing 'l' added to 'small' ... in a small house ...
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