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diff --git a/1205-h/1205-h.htm b/1205-h/1205-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8bbff96 --- /dev/null +++ b/1205-h/1205-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2156 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Colour of Life</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Colour of Life, by Alice Meynell</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Colour of Life, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Colour of Life + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 14, 2005 [eBook #1205] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLOUR OF LIFE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1897 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE COLOUR OF LIFE</h1> +<p>Contents:</p> +<p>The Colour of Life<br /> +A Point Of Biography<br /> +Cloud<br /> +Winds of the World<br /> +The Honours of Mortality<br /> +At Monastery Gates<br /> +Rushes and Reeds<br /> +Eleonora Duse<br /> +Donkey Races<br /> +Grass<br /> +A Woman in Grey<br /> +Symmetry and Incident<br /> +The Illusion of Historic Time<br /> +Eyes</p> +<h2>THE COLOUR OF LIFE</h2> +<p>Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. +But the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, +or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed +the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. +Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act +of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not the +manifestation thereof. It is one of the things the value of which +is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. +The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the +covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and +the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.</p> +<p>So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life +is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is +that it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than +earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but +less lucid than the colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold +that is in all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost +elusive. Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; +but under the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of +the London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, +out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of June.</p> +<p>For months together London does not see the colour of life in any +mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, +and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and <i>chapeau</i> <i>melon</i> +of man, and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the +face is subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular +face of the Londoner has soon lost its gold, its white, and the delicacy +of its red and brown. We miss little beauty by the fact that it +is never seen freely in great numbers out-of-doors. You get it +in some quantity when all the heads of a great indoor meeting are turned +at once upon a speaker; but it is only in the open air, needless to +say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in the open air, “clothed +with the sun,” whether the sunshine be golden and direct, or dazzlingly +diffused in grey.</p> +<p>The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out +of all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer +north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke +of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours—all allied to +the hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has +chosen for its boys—and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and +delicate flush between the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. +Clothed now with the sun, he is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars +as he goes to bathe, and the reflection of an early moon is under his +feet.</p> +<p>So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. +They are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, +but only a little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora +Duse. The last and most finished action of her intellect, passion, +and knowledge is, as it were, the flicking away of some insignificant +thing mistaken for art by other actors, some little obstacle to the +way and liberty of Nature.</p> +<p>All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, +and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking +colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, +he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels +and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, +his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening +midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his world again.</p> +<p>It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where +Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the +happily easy way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to +grow in the streets—and no streets could ask for a more charming +finish than your green grass. The gasometer even must fall to +pieces unless it is renewed; but the grass renews itself. There +is nothing so remediable as the work of modern man—“a thought +which is also,” as Mr Pecksniff said, “very soothing.” +And by remediable I mean, of course, destructible. As the bathing +child shuffles off his garments—they are few, and one brace suffices +him—so the land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off +its yellow brick and purple slate, and all the things that collect about +railway stations. A single night almost clears the air of London.</p> +<p>But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery +of Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea-coast. +To have once seen it there should be enough to make a colourist. +O memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared +setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea +had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect—the +dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything +was very definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The +most luminous thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which +did not cease to be white because it was a little golden and a little +rosy in the sunshine. It was still the whitest thing imaginable. +And the next most luminous thing was the little child, also invested +with the sun and the colour of life.</p> +<p>In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that +the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See +the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. +On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. +Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you +consider how generously she was permitted political death. She +was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living +hours; but to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest +interests, social, national, international. The blood wherewith +she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard +in the tribune, was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins.</p> +<p>Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last +and the innermost—the privacy of death—was never allowed +to put obstacles in the way of public action for a public cause. +Women might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe +de Gouges, they claimed a “right to concur in the choice of representatives +for the formation of the laws”; but in her person, too, they were +liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to the Republic. +Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public +and complete amends.</p> +<h2>A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY</h2> +<p>There is hardly a writer now—of the third class probably not +one—who has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty +of Nature; not one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a +modern reference to the manifold death and destruction with which the +air, the branches, the mosses are said to be full.</p> +<p>But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice +of the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and +of the dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where +are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? +Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? +Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent +habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin’s +beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail’s shell; but these +little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for +apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism +which is too slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might +hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle +back at the bird.</p> +<p>But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey +and plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes +violently into other forms, flashes without pause into another flame; +but not all. Amid all the killing there must be much dying. +There are, for instance, few birds of prey left in our more accessible +counties now, and many thousands of birds must die uncaught by a hawk +and unpierced. But if their killing is done so modestly, so then +is their dying also. Short lives have all these wild things, but +there are innumerable flocks of them always alive; they must die, then, +in innumerable flocks. And yet they keep the millions of the dead +out of sight.</p> +<p>Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in +a cold winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine +was so complete, that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and +the earth conspired that February to make known all the secrets; everything +was published. Death was manifest. Editors, when a great +man dies, are not more resolute than was the frost of ’95.</p> +<p>The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised +and forced to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument +which the art and imagination of England combined to raise to his memory +at Oxford.</p> +<p>Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought wrong. +There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of a bird and +in exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a soldier—<i>passe</i> +<i>encore</i>. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. +And the death of the birds is so little characteristic of them that, +as has just been said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, +except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled +to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a +rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. +There is no tale of the game-bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, +but with strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the +trees, and see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been +by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing +like a butcher’s shop in the woods.</p> +<p>But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the +wild world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. +I have turned over scores of “Lives,” not to read them, +but to see whether now and again there might be a “Life” +which was not more emphatically a death. But there never is a +modern biography that has taken the hint of Nature. One and all, +these books have the disproportionate illness, the death out of all +scale.</p> +<p>Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been +rightly his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is +assumed to be news for the first comer. Which of us would suffer +the details of any physical suffering, over and done in our own lives, +to be displayed and described? This is not a confidence we have +a mind to make; and no one is authorised to ask for attention or pity +on our behalf. The story of pain ought not to be told of us, seeing +that by us it would assuredly not be told.</p> +<p>There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more exclusively, +and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and illusions of a +long delirium. When he is in common language not himself, amends +should be made for so bitter a paradox; he should be allowed such solitude +as is possible to the alienated spirit; he should be left to the “not +himself,” and spared the intrusion against which he can so ill +guard that he could hardly have even resented it.</p> +<p>The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door +of Rossetti’s house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. +His mortal illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather +affected objection is taken every now and then to the publication of +some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. +Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What +is not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his +death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told—told +briefly—it was certainly not for marble. Shelley’s +death had no significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It +was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost +of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant +fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill-named +biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is +a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last +chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. +They, of all survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look +upon a death with more composure. To those who loved the dead +closely, this is, for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, +for a year, disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night +by night. They have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some +labyrinth; they have to mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery +in such a mingling of distress and of always incredulous happiness as +is not known even to dreams save in that first year of separation. +But they are not biographers.</p> +<p>If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously +secret because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may +surprise everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. +The chase goes on everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual +chase seems to cause no perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. +Life is undefended, careless, nimble and noisy.</p> +<p>It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost ceased, +to paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually in +that British School of water-colour art, stippled, of which surrounding +nations, it was agreed, were envious. They must have killed their +bird to paint him, for he is not to be caught dead. A bird is +more easily caught alive than dead.</p> +<p>A poet, on the contrary, is easily—too easily—caught +dead. Minor artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but +a good sculptor and a University together modelled their Shelley on +his back, unessentially drowned; and everybody may read about the sick +mind of Dante Rossetti.</p> +<h2>CLOUD</h2> +<p>During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not +to see the clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by +the rest of England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. +Not to see the clear sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But +not so in London. You may go for a week or two at a time, even +though you hold your head up as you walk, and even though you have windows +that really open, and yet you shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, +the fragment of a form.</p> +<p>Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled +glass towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They +are, therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other windows +were used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or even knew +so much as whether there were a sky.</p> +<p>But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world +knows. Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men +go in search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them. +It goes its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no +weariness, it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery—the +tourist’s—is a prisoner compared with this. The tourist’s +scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth’s maiden, with +earth’s diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. +And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. +The mere green flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; +for the greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring +and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the +shadows of a cloud.</p> +<p>The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or +fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, +the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that +their own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, +effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud.</p> +<p>The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. +It is the cloud that, holding the sun’s rays in a sheaf as a giant +holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme +edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and +makes the foreground shine.</p> +<p>Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain +slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the +view by the rough method of standing in front of it. But its greatest +things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence does it distribute +the sun.</p> +<p>Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more mysteries +than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. Thence +it writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or lets the +pencils of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and yet +making dark, it sheds deep colour upon the forest land of Sussex, so +that, seen from the hills, all the country is divided between grave +blue and graver sunlight.</p> +<p>And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the world. +Its own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to improve. +It is always great: above the street, above the suburbs, above the gas-works +and the stucco, above the faces of painted white houses—the painted +surfaces that have been devised as the only things able to vulgarise +light, as they catch it and reflect it grotesquely from their importunate +gloss. This is to be well seen on a sunny evening in Regent Street.</p> +<p>Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above +some little landscape of rather paltry interest—a conventional +river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, +and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as +the novelists always have it, with “autumn tints.” +High over these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, +what no man expected—an heroic sky. Few of the things that +were ever done upon earth are great enough to be done under such a heaven. +It was surely designed for other days. It is for an epic world. +Your eyes sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the distances +of earth to these, and what are the distances of the clear and cloudless +sky? The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the round +world dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are unmeasured—you +rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star itself is immeasurable.</p> +<p>But in the sky of “sunny Alps” of clouds the sight goes +farther, with conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. +Man would not have known distance veritably without the clouds. +There are mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of +the earth are pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are +not overpowering by disproportion, like some futile building fatuously +made too big for the human measure. The cloud in its majestic +place composes with a little Perugino tree. For you stand or stray +in the futile building, while the cloud is no mansion for man, and out +of reach of his limitations.</p> +<p>The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the +custody of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. +The cloud veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry ray, +suddenly bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a background. +Or when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals him, gentle beyond +hope. It makes peace, constantly, just before sunset.</p> +<p>It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. +There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are +bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and +brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This +is a frolic and haphazard sky.</p> +<p>All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed +about it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the +clouds in turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes +aloft are swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. +Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in +the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same finger. The +cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents +sudden with light.</p> +<p>All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this +scenery. It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part +of the winter, that the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And +for many and many a day no London eye can see the horizon, or the first +threat of the cloud like a man’s hand. There never was a +great painter who had not exquisite horizons, and if Corot and Crome +were right, the Londoner loses a great thing.</p> +<p>He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he loses +its shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and rosy +head piling into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the base and +the altitude. The perspective of a cloud is a great part of its +design—whether it lies so that you can look along the immense +horizontal distances of its floor, or whether it rears so upright a +pillar that you look up its mountain steeps in the sky as you look at +the rising heights of a mountain that stands, with you, on the earth.</p> +<p>The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not +merely the guardian of the sun’s rays and their director. +It is the sun’s treasurer; it holds the light that the world has +lost. We talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, +which is yet one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining +cloud is one of the most majestic of all secondary lights. If +the reflecting moon is the bride, this is the friend of the bridegroom.</p> +<p>Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most beautiful +of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no name, and +no other cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such heights of blue +air. The shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, comes across +the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can +be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London +streets is that people take their rain there without knowing anything +of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. +The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no limits of form, and +no history whatever. It has not come from the clear edge of the +plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the hill to the north. +The rain, for this city, hardly comes or goes; it does but begin and +stop. No one looks after it on the path of its retreat.</p> +<h2>WINDS OF THE WORLD</h2> +<p>Every wind is, or ought to be, a poet; but one is classic and converts +everything in his day co-unity; another is a modern man, whose words +clothe his thoughts, as the modern critics used to say prettily in the +early sixties, and therefore are separable. This wind, again, +has a style, and that wind a mere manner. Nay, there are breezes +from the east-south-east, for example, that have hardly even a manner. +You can hardly name them unless you look at the weather vane. +So they do not convince you by voice or colour of breath; you place +their origin and assign them a history according as the hesitating arrow +points on the top of yonder ill-designed London spire.</p> +<p>The most certain and most conquering of all is the south-west wind. +You do not look to the weather-vane to decide what shall be the style +of your greeting to his morning. There is no arbitrary rule of +courtesy between you and him, and you need no arrow to point to his +distinctions, and to indicate to you the right manner of treating such +a visitant.</p> +<p>He prepares the dawn. While it is still dark the air is warned +of his presence, and before the window was opened he was already in +the room. His sun—for the sun is his—rises in a south-west +mood, with a bloom on the blue, the grey, or the gold. When the +south-west is cold, the cold is his own cold—round, blunt, full, +and gradual in its very strength. It is a fresh cold, that comes +with an approach, and does not challenge you in the manner of an unauthorised +stranger, but instantly gets your leave, and even a welcome to your +house of life. He follows your breath in at your throat, and your +eyes are open to let him in, even when he is cold. Your blood +cools, but does not hide from him.</p> +<p>He has a splendid way with his sky. In his flight, which is +that, not of a bird, but of a flock of birds, he flies high and low +at once: high with his higher clouds, that keep long in the sight of +man, seeming to move slowly; and low with the coloured clouds that breast +the hills and are near to the tree-tops. These the south-west +wind tosses up from his soft horizon, round and successive. They +are tinted somewhat like ripe clover-fields, or like hay-fields just +before the cutting, when all the grass is in flower, and they are, oftener +than all other clouds, in shadow. These low-lying flocks are swift +and brief; the wind casts them before him, from the western verge to +the eastern.</p> +<p>Corot has painted so many south-west winds that one might question +whether he ever painted, in his later manner at least, any others. +His skies are thus in the act of flight, with lower clouds outrunning +the higher, the farther vapours moving like a fleet out at sea, and +the nearer like dolphins. In his “Classical Landscape: Italy,” +the master has indeed for once a sky that seems at anchor, or at least +that moves with “no pace perceived.” The vibrating +wings are folded, and Corot’s wind, that flew through so many +springs, summers, and Septembers for him (he was seldom a painter of +very late autumn), that was mingled with so many aspen-leaves, that +strewed his forests with wood for the gatherer, and blew the broken +lights into the glades, is charmed into stillness, and the sky into +another kind of immortality. Nor are the trees in this antique +landscape the trees so long intimate with Corot’s south-west wind, +so often entangled with his uncertain twilights. They are as quiet +as the cloud, and such as the long and wild breezes of Romance have +never shaken or enlaced.</p> +<p>Upon all our islands this south-west wind is the sea wind. +But elsewhere there are sea winds that are not from the south-west. +They, too, none the less, are conquerors. They, too, are always +strong, compelling winds that take possession of the light, the shadow, +the sun, moon, and stars, and constrain them all alike to feel the sea. +Not a field, not a hillside, on a sea-wind day, but shines with some +soft sea-lights. The moon’s little boat tosses on a sea-wind +night.</p> +<p>The south-west wind takes the high Italian coasts. He gathers +the ilex woods together and throngs them close, as a sheep-dog gathers +the sheep. They crowd for shelter, and a great wall, leaning inland +also, with its strong base to the sea, receives them. It is blank +and sunny, and the trees within are sunny and dark, serried, and their +tops swept and flattened by months of sea-storms. On the farther +side there are gardens—gardens that have in their midst those +quietest things in all the world and most windless, box-hedges and ponds. +The gardens take shelter behind the scared and hurried ilex woods, and +the sea-wind spares them and breaks upon the mountain. But the +garden also is his, and his wild warm days have filled it with orange-trees +and roses, and have given all the abundant charm to its gay neglect, +to its grass-grown terraces, and to all its lapsed, forsaken, and forgotten +dainties.</p> +<p>Nothing of the nature in this seaward Italy would be so beautiful +without the touch of man and of the sea gales.</p> +<p>When the south-west wind brings his rain he brings it with the majestic +onset announced by his breath. And when the light follows, it +comes from his own doorway in the verge. His are the opened evenings +after a day shut down with cloud. He fills the air with innumerable +particles of moisture that scatter and bestow the sun. There are +no other days like his, of so universal a harmony, so generous.</p> +<p>The north wind has his own landscape, too; but the east wind never. +The aspect which he gives to the day is not all his own. The sunshine +is sweet in spite of him. The clouds go under his whip, but they +have kinder greys than should be the colours of his cold. Not +on an east-wind day are these races in heaven, for the clouds are all +far off. His rain is angry, and it flies against the sunset. +The world is not one in his reign, but rather there is a perpetual revolt +or difference. The lights and shadows are not all his. The +waxing and waning hours are disaffected. He has not a great style, +and does not convince the day.</p> +<p>All the four winds are brave, and not the less brave because, on +their way through town, they are betrayed for a moment into taking part +in any paltriness that may be there. On their way from the Steppes +to the Atlantic they play havoc with the nerves of very insignificant +people. A part, as it were, of every gale that starts in the far +north-east finds its goal in the breath of a reluctant citizen.</p> +<p>You will meet a wind of the world nimble and eager in a sorry street. +But these are only accidents of the way—the winds go free again. +Those that do not go free, but close their course, are those that are +breathed by the nostrils of living creatures. A great flock of +those wild birds come to a final pause in London, and fan the fires +of life with those wings in the act of folding. In the blood and +breath of a child close the influences of continent and sea.</p> +<h2>THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY</h2> +<p>The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, +to devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated +papers—the enormous production of art in black and white—is +assuredly a confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working +for. Fifty years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; +these were the commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend +to the beauty of things of use that were destined to be broken and worn +out, and they looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad +pictures; so that what to do with their bad pictures in addition to +our own has become the problem of the nation and of the householder +alike. To-day men have began to learn that their sons will be +grateful to them for few bequests. Art consents at last to work +upon the tissue and the china that are doomed to the natural and necessary +end—destruction; and art shows a most dignified alacrity to do +her best, daily, for the “process,” and for oblivion.</p> +<p>Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap +costs the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the inevitable +that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in the singular +and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is done for so +short a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the acceptance +of death, inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. There is a +real circulation of blood-quick use, brief beauty, abolition, recreation. +The honour of the day is for ever the honour of that day. It goes +into the treasury of things that are honestly and—completely ended +and done with. And when can so happy a thing be said of a lifeless +oil-painting? Who of the wise would hesitate? To be honourable +for one day—one named and dated day, separate from all other days +of the ages—or to be for an unlimited time tedious?</p> +<h2>AT MONASTERY GATES</h2> +<p>No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross +it, unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of the +monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see more than +beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her in guest-house +and garden.</p> +<p>The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin—the first +of the dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, +and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings +in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is +this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, +sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. +Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot +of its final crucifix you can see the sunrise touch the top of Monte +Rosa, while the encircled lake below is cool with the last of the night. +The same order of friars keep that sub-Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same +have set the Kreuzberg beyond Bonn with the same steep path by the same +fourteen chapels, facing the Seven Mountains and the Rhine.</p> +<p>Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green +over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing +of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and +languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed +with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the +lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the +upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius +and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered +about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very +poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in +the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having +dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all +thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly +would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over +all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of +the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, +or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine and +the bright grey of an English sky.</p> +<p>The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense—it +is modern; and the friars look young in another—they are like +their brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists +of yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, “quaint,” +or “old world.” No such weary adjectives are spoken +here, unless it be by the excursionists.</p> +<p>With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers +work upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous +bee-farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is +gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and +a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the +yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was +that under one of the obscure impulses of a dog’s heart—atoned +for by long and self-conscious remorse—he bit the poet; and tried, +says one of the friars, to make doggerel of him. The poet, too, +lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery ground, in a seclusion +which the tidings of the sequence of his editions hardly reaches. +There is no disturbing renown to be got among the cabins of the Flintshire +hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other valleys, his light +figure flits at nightfall, like a moth.</p> +<p>To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of intelligence +and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at them without +obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl that +you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place +with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome +to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth +pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian saint—the +friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and between the +cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries continually +since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her the +kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited +as to show the world that their life was aloof from its “idle +business.” By some such phrase, at least, the friar would +assuredly have attempted to include her in any spiritual honours ascribed +to him. Or one might have asked of her the condescension of forbearance. +“Only fancy,” said the Salvation Army girl, watching the +friar out of sight, “only fancy making such a fool of one’s +self!”</p> +<p>The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran’s +ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As +a pocket it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the +local white wine made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this +house by the West, is carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger +at the gates. The friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, +to make pancakes, and not only to make, but also to toss them. +Those who chanced to be in the room stood prudently aside, and the brother +tossed boldly. But that was the last that was seen of his handiwork. +Victor Hugo sings in <i>La</i> <i>Légende</i> <i>des</i> <i>Siècles</i> +of disappearance as the thing which no creature is able to achieve: +here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by quite an ordinary +and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was an end +of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the spectators. +It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to meditate and +drew his cowl about his head that the accident was explained.</p> +<p>Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who +get up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one +never grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It +is something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is +not merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler +point is that they can never acquire the habit of sacrificing sleep. +What art, what literature, or what life but would gain a secret security +by such a point of perpetual freshness and perpetual initiative? +It is not possible to get up at midnight without a will that is new +night by night. So should the writer’s work be done, and, +with an intention perpetually unique, the poet’s.</p> +<p>The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the “Angelus” +of the French fields, and the hour of night—<i>l’ora</i> +<i>di</i> <i>notte</i>—which rings with so melancholy a note from +the village belfries on the Adriatic littoral, when the latest light +is passing. It is the prayer for the dead: “Out of the depths +have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.”</p> +<p>The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to +the sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central +work of the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because +it is principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect +and strength of heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! +True, the friars are not doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as +a refuge from despair. These “bearded counsellors of God” +keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing, hold silence; whereas they +might be “operating”—beautiful word!—upon the +Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or +reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among +the involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof +is a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the +superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced +by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output—again +a beautiful word—of the age is lessened by this abstention. +None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once +again upon those monastery gates.</p> +<h2>RUSHES AND REEDS</h2> +<p>Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another +growth that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned +to winter than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east +wind, more than the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, +rushes, canes, and reeds were the appropriate lyre of the cold. +On them the nimble winds played their dry music. They were part +of the winter. It looked through them and spoke through them. +They were spears and javelins in array to the sound of the drums of +the north.</p> +<p>The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those +that stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let +the colour of his light look through—low-flying arrows and bright +bayonets of winter day.</p> +<p>The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. +They belong to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and +the river, beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes +perilous footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low +lands, the sign of streams. They grow tall between you and the +near horizon of flat lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the +sky; and near them grow flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow +lily.</p> +<p>Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness +of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction +of its points, its needles, and its resolute right lines.</p> +<p>Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need +the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, +and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. +Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along +a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver +of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides +turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field +of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers +of a poet who have a thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, +more strongly tethered, are swept into a single attitude, again and +again, at every renewal of the storm.</p> +<p>Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds +in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed +(except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has +in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, +rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not conspicuous; +but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a gipsy people, amongst +us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is rather a gross man, +believes these races of reeds are his. But if he is a man of sensibility, +depend upon it he has his interior doubts. His property, he says, +goes right down to the centre of the earth, in the shape of a wedge; +how high up it goes into the air it would be difficult to say, and obviously +the shape of the wedge must be continued in the direction of increase. +We may therefore proclaim his right to the clouds and their cargo. +It is true that as his ground game is apt to go upon his neighbour’s +land to be shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his showers elsewhere. +But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed country-house +sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But he who +tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly disturbed +by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes should happen +to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his—he +had the pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for a time. +But the bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very thorough +landowner, but a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would endure this +sort of thing no longer, and went out armed and had a long acre of sedges +scythed to death.</p> +<p>They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds +and upon margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of +a road. No wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses +and their primroses are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now +and then, though, one has a kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds +of trees—the Corot trees. Standing at a distance from the +more ornamental trees, from those of fuller foliage, and from all the +indeciduous shrubs and the conifers (manifest property, every one), +two or three translucent aspens, with which the very sun and the breath +of earth are entangled, have sometimes seemed to wear a certain look—an +extra-territorial look, let us call it. They are suspect. +One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them.</p> +<p>And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he +may not say so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon +margins, are in spirit almost as extraterritorial as the rushes. +In proof of this he very often cuts them down, out of the view, once +for all. The view is better, as a view, without them. Though +their roots are in his ground right enough, there is a something about +their heads—. But the reason he gives for wishing them away +is merely that they are “thin.” A man does not always +say everything.</p> +<h2>ELEONORA DUSE</h2> +<p>The Italian woman is very near to Nature; so is true drama.</p> +<p>Acting is not to be judged like some other of the arts, and praised +for a “noble convention.” Painting, indeed, is not +praised amiss with that word; painting is obviously an art that exists +by its convention—the convention is the art. But far otherwise +is it with the art of acting, where there is no representative material; +where, that is, the man is his own material, and there is nothing between. +With the actor the style is the man, in another, a more immediate, and +a more obvious sense than was ever intended by that saying. Therefore +we may allow the critic—and not accuse him of reaction—to +speak of the division between art and Nature in the painting of a landscape, +but we cannot let him say the same things of acting. Acting has +a technique, but no convention.</p> +<p>Once for all, then, to say that acting reaches the point of Nature, +and touches it quick, is to say all. In other arts imitation is +more or less fatuous, illusion more or less vulgar. But acting +is, at its less good, imitation; at its best, illusion; at its worst, +and when it ceases to be an art, convention.</p> +<p>But the idea that acting is conventional has inevitably come about +in England. For it is, in fact, obliged, with us, to defeat and +destroy itself by taking a very full, entire, tedious, and impotent +convention; a complete body of convention; a convention of demonstrativeness—of +voice and manners intended to be expressive, and, in particular, a whole +weak and unimpulsive convention of gesture. The English manners +of real life are so negative and still as to present no visible or audible +drama; and drama is for hearing and for vision. Therefore our +acting (granting that we have any acting, which is granting much) has +to create its little different and complementary world, and to make +the division of “art” from Nature—the division which, +in this one art, is fatal.</p> +<p>This is one simple and sufficient reason why we have no considerable +acting; though we may have more or less interesting and energetic or +graceful conventions that pass for art. But any student of international +character knows well enough that there are also supplementary reasons +of weight. For example, it is bad to make a conventional world +of the stage, but it is doubly bad to make it badly—which, it +must be granted, we do. When we are anything of the kind, we are +intellectual rather than intelligent; whereas outward-streaming intelligence +makes the actor. We are pre-occupied, and therefore never single, +never wholly possessed by the one thing at a time; and so forth.</p> +<p>On the other hand, Italians are expressive. They are so possessed +by the one thing at a time as never to be habitual in any lifeless sense. +They have no habits to overcome by something arbitrary and intentional. +Accordingly, you will find in the open-air theatre of many an Italian +province, away from the high roads, an art of drama that our capital +cannot show, so high is it, so fine, so simple, so complete, so direct, +so momentary and impassioned, so full of singleness and of multitudinous +impulses of passion.</p> +<p>Signora Duse is not different in kind from these unrenowned. +What they are, she is in a greater degree. She goes yet further, +and yet closer. She has an exceptionally large and liberal intelligence. +If lesser actors give themselves entirely to the part, and to the large +moment of the part, she, giving herself, has more to give.</p> +<p>Add to this nature of hers that she stages herself and her acting +with singular knowledge and ease, and has her technique so thoroughly +as to be able to forget it—for this is the one only thing that +is the better for habit, and ought to be habitual. There is but +one passage of her mere technique in which she fails so to slight it. +It is in the long exchange of stove-side talk between Nora and the other +woman of “The Doll’s House.” Signora Duse may +have felt some misgivings as to the effect of a dialogue having so little +symmetry, such half-hearted feeling, and, in a word, so little visible +or audible drama as this. Needless to say, the misgiving is not +apparent; what is too apparent is simply the technique. For instance, +she shifts her position with evident system and notable skill. +The whole conversation becomes a dance of change and counterchange of +place.</p> +<p>Nowhere else does the perfect technical habit lapse, and nowhere +at all does the habit of acting exist with her.</p> +<p>I have spoken of this actress’s nationality and of her womanhood +together. They are inseparable. Nature is the only authentic +art of the stage, and the Italian woman is natural: none other so natural +and so justified by her nature as Eleonora Duse; but all, as far as +their nature goes, natural. Moreover, they are women freer than +other Europeans from the minor vanities. Has any one yet fully +understood how her liberty in this respect gives to the art of Signora +Duse room and action? Her countrywomen have no anxious vanities, +because, for one reason, they are generally “sculpturesque,” +and are very little altered by mere accidents of dress or arrangement. +Such as they are, they are so once for all; whereas, the turn of a curl +makes all the difference with women of less grave physique. Italians +are not uneasy.</p> +<p>Signora Duse has this immunity, but she has a far nobler deliverance +from vanities, in her own peculiar distance and dignity. She lets +her beautiful voice speak, unwatched and unchecked, from the very life +of the moment. It runs up into the high notes of indifference, +or, higher still, into those of <i>ennui</i>, as in the earlier scenes +of <i>Divorçons</i>; or it grows sweet as summer with joy, or +cracks and breaks outright, out of all music, and out of all control. +Passion breaks it so for her.</p> +<p>As for her inarticulate sounds, which are the more intimate and the +truer words of her meaning, they, too, are Italian and natural. +English women, for instance, do not make them. They are sounds +<i>à</i> <i>bouche</i> <i>fermée</i>, at once private +and irrepressible. They are not demonstrations intended for the +ears of others; they are her own. Other actresses, even English, +and even American, know how to make inarticulate cries, with open mouth; +Signora Duse’s noise is not a cry; it is her very thought audible—the +thought of the woman she is playing, who does not at every moment give +exact words to her thought, but does give it significant sound.</p> +<p>When <i>la</i> <i>femme</i> <i>de</i> <i>Claude</i> is trapped by +the man who has come in search of the husband’s secret, and when +she is obliged to sit and listen to her own evil history as he tells +it her, she does not interrupt the telling with the outcries that might +be imagined by a lesser actress, she accompanies it. Her lips +are close, but her throat is vocal. None who heard it can forget +the speech-within-speech of one of these comprehensive noises. +It was when the man spoke, for her further confusion, of the slavery +to which she had reduced her lovers; she followed him, aloof, with a +twang of triumph.</p> +<p>If Parisians say, as they do, that she makes a bad Parisienne, it +is because she can be too nearly a woman untamed. They have accused +her of lack of elegance—in that supper scene of <i>La</i> <i>Dame</i> +<i>aux</i> <i>Camélias</i>, for instance; taking for ill-breeding, +in her Marguerite, that which is Italian merely and simple. Whether, +again, Cyprienne, in <i>Divorçons</i>, can at all be considered +a lady may be a question; but this is quite unquestionable—that +she is rather more a lady, and not less, when Signora Duse makes her +a savage. But really the result is not at all Parisian.</p> +<p>It seems possible that the French sense does not well distinguish, +and has no fine perception of that affinity with the peasant which remains +with the great ladies of the old civilisation of Italy, and has so long +disappeared from those of the younger civilisations of France and England—a +paradox. The peasant’s gravity, directness, and carelessness—a +kind of uncouthness which is neither graceless nor, in any intolerable +English sense, vulgar—are to be found in the unceremonious moments +of every cisalpine woman, however elect her birth and select her conditions. +In Italy the lady is not a creature described by negatives, as an author +who is always right has defined the lady to be in England. Even +in France she is not that, and between the Frenchwoman and the Italian +there are the Alps. In a word, the educated Italian <i>mondaine</i> +is, in the sense (also untranslatable) of singular, insular, and absolutely +British usage, a Native. None the less would she be surprised +to find herself accused of a lack of dignity.</p> +<p>As to intelligence—a little intelligence is sufficiently dramatic, +if it is single. A child doing one thing at a time and doing it +completely, produces to the eye a better impression of mental life than +one receives from—well, from a lecturer.</p> +<h2>DONKEY RACES</h2> +<p>English acting had for some time past still been making a feint of +running the race that wins. The retort, the interruption, the +call, the reply, the surprise, had yet kept a spoilt tradition of suddenness +and life. You had, indeed, to wait for an interruption in dialogue—it +is true you had to wait for it; so had the interrupted speaker on the +stage. But when the interruption came, it had still a false air +of vivacity; and the waiting of the interrupted one was so ill done, +with so roving an eye and such an arrest and failure of convention, +such a confession of a blank, as to prove that there remained a kind +of reluctant and inexpert sense of movement. It still seemed as +though the actor and the actress acknowledged some forward tendency.</p> +<p>Not so now. The serious stage is openly the scene of the race +that loses. The donkey race is candidly the model of the talk +in every tragedy that has a chance of popular success. Who shall +be last? The hands of the public are for him, or for her. +A certain actress who has “come to the front of her profession” +holds, for a time, the record of delay. “Come to the front,” +do they say? Surely the front of her profession must have moved +in retreat, to gain upon her tardiness. It must have become the +back of her profession before ever it came up with her.</p> +<p>It should rejoice those who enter for this kind of racing that the +record need never finally be beaten. The possibilities of success +are incalculable. The play has perforce to be finished in a night, +it is true, but the minor characters, the subordinate actors, can be +made to bear the burden of that necessity. The principals, or +those who have come “to the front of their profession,” +have an almost unlimited opportunity and liberty of lagging.</p> +<p>Besides, the competitor in a donkey race is not, let it be borne +in mind, limited to the practice of his own tediousness. Part +of his victory is to be ascribed to his influence upon others. +It may be that a determined actor—a man of more than common strength +of will—may so cause his colleague to get on (let us say “get +on,” for everything in this world is relative); may so, then, +compel the other actor, with whom he is in conversation, to get on, +as to secure his own final triumph by indirect means as well as by direct. +To be plain, for the sake of those unfamiliar with the sports of the +village, the rider in a donkey race may, and does, cudgel the mounts +of his rivals.</p> +<p>Consider, therefore, how encouraging the prospect really is. +The individual actor may fail—in fact, he must. Where two +people ride together on horseback, the married have ever been warned, +one must ride behind. And when two people are speaking slowly +one must needs be the slowest. Comparative success implies the +comparative failure. But where this actor or that actress fails, +the great cause of slowness profits, obviously. The record is +advanced. Pshaw! the word “advanced” comes unadvised +to the pen. It is difficult to remember in what a fatuous theatrical +Royal Presence one is doing this criticism, and how one’s words +should go backwards, without exception, in homage to this symbol of +a throne.</p> +<p>It is not long since there took place upon the principal stage in +London the most important event in donkey-racing ever known until that +first night. A tragedian and a secondary actor of renown had a +duet together. It was in “The Dead Heart.” No +one who heard it can possibly have yet forgotten it. The two men +used echoes of one another’s voice, then outpaused each other. +It was a contest so determined, so unrelaxed, so deadly, so inveterate +that you might have slept between its encounters. You did sleep. +These men were strong men, and knew what they wanted. It is tremendous +to watch the struggle of such resolves. They had their purpose +in their grasp, their teeth were set, their will was iron. They +were foot to foot.</p> +<p>And next morning you saw by the papers that the secondary, but still +renowned, actor, had succeeded in sharing the principal honours of the +piece. So uncommonly well had he done, even for him. Then +you understood that, though you had not known it, the tragedian must +have been beaten in that dialogue. He had suffered himself in +an instant of weakness, to be stimulated; he had for a moment—only +a moment—got on.</p> +<p>That night was influential. We may see its results everywhere, +and especially in Shakespeare. Our tragic stage was always—well, +different, let us say—different from the tragic stage of Italy +and France. It is now quite unlike, and frankly so. The +spoilt tradition of vitality has been explicitly abandoned. The +interrupted one waits, no longer with a roving eye, but with something +almost of dignity, as though he were fulfilling ritual.</p> +<p>Benvolio and Mercutio outlag one another in hunting after the leaping +Romeo. They call without the slightest impetus. One can +imagine how the true Mercutio called—certainly not by rote. +There must have been pauses indeed, brief and short-breath’d pauses +of listening for an answer, between every nickname. But the nicknames +were quick work. At the Lyceum they were quite an effort of memory: +“Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!”</p> +<p>The actress of Juliet, speaking the words of haste, makes her audience +wait to hear them. Nothing more incongruous than Juliet’s +harry of phrase and the actress’s leisure of phrasing. None +act, none speak, as though there were such a thing as impulse in a play. +To drop behind is the only idea of arriving. The nurse ceases +to be absurd, for there is no one readier with a reply than she. +Or, rather, her delays are so altered by exaggeration as to lose touch +with Nature. If it is ill enough to hear haste drawled out, it +is ill, too, to hear slowness out-tarried. The true nurse of Shakespeare +lags with her news because her ignorant wits are easily astray, as lightly +caught as though they were light, which they are not; but the nurse +of the stage is never simply astray: she knows beforehand how long she +means to be, and never, never forgets what kind of race is the race +she is riding. The Juliet of the stage seems to consider that +there is plenty of time for her to discover which is slain—Tybalt +or her husband; she is sure to know some time; it can wait.</p> +<p>A London success, when you know where it lies, is not difficult to +achieve. Of all things that can be gained by men or women about +their business, there is one thing that can be gained without fear of +failure. This is time. To gain time requires so little wit +that, except for competition, every one could be first at the game. +In fact, time gains itself. The actor is really not called upon +to do anything. There is nothing, accordingly, for which our actors +and actresses do not rely upon time. For humour even, when the +humour occurs in tragedy, they appeal to time. They give blanks +to their audiences to be filled up.</p> +<p>It might be possible to have tragedies written from beginning to +end for the service of the present kind of “art.” +But the tragedies we have are not so written. And being what they +are, it is not vivacity that they lose by this length of pause, this +length of phrasing, this illimitable tiresomeness; it is life itself. +For the life of a scene conceived directly is its directness; the life +of a scene created simply is its simplicity. And simplicity, directness, +impetus, emotion, nature fall out of the trailing, loose, long dialogue, +like fish from the loose meshes of a net—they fall out, they drift +off, they are lost.</p> +<p>The universal slowness, moreover, is not good for metre. Even +when an actress speaks her lines as lines, and does not drop into prose +by slipping here and there a syllable, she spoils the <i>tempo</i> by +inordinate length of pronunciation. Verse cannot keep upon the +wing without a certain measure in the movement of the pinion. +Verse is a flight.</p> +<h2>GRASS</h2> +<p>Now and then, at regular intervals of the summer, the Suburb springs +for a time from its mediocrity; but an inattentive eye might not see +why, or might not seize the cause of the bloom and of the new look of +humility and dignity that makes the Road, the Rise, and the Villas seem +suddenly gentle, gay and rather shy.</p> +<p>It is no change in the gardens. These are, as usual, full, +abundant, fragrant, and quite uninteresting, keeping the traditional +secret by which the suburban rose, magnolia, clematis, and all other +flowers grow dull—not in colour, but in spirit—between the +yellow brick house-front and the iron railings. Nor is there anything +altered for the better in the houses themselves.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, the little, common, prosperous road, has bloomed, you +cannot tell how. It is unexpectedly liberal, fresh, and innocent. +The soft garden-winds that rustle its shrubs are, for the moment, genuine.</p> +<p>Another day and all is undone. The Rise is its daily self again—a +road of flowers and foliage that is less pleasant than a fairly well-built +street. And if you happen to find the men at work on the re-transformation, +you become aware of the accident that made all this difference. +It lay in the little border of wayside grass which a row of public servants—men +with spades and a cart—are in the act of tidying up. Their +way of tidying it up is to lay its little corpse all along the suburban +roadside, and then to carry it away to some parochial dust-heap.</p> +<p>But for the vigilance of Vestries, grass would reconcile everything. +When the first heat of the summer was over, a few nights of rain altered +all the colour of the world. It had been the brown and russet +of drought—very beautiful in landscape, but lifeless; it became +a translucent, profound, and eager green. The citizen does not +spend attention on it.</p> +<p>Why, then, is his vestry so alert, so apprehensive, so swift; in +perception so instant, in execution so prompt, so silent in action, +so punctual in destruction? The vestry keeps, as it were, a tryst +with the grass. The “sunny spots of greenery” are +given just time enough to grow and be conspicuous, and the barrow is +there, true to time, and the spade. (To call that spade a spade +hardly seems enough.)</p> +<p>For the gracious grass of the summer has not been content within +enclosures. It has—or would have—cheered up and sweetened +everything. Over asphalte it could not prevail, and it has prettily +yielded to asphalte, taking leave to live and let live. It has +taken the little strip of ground next to the asphalte, between this +and the kerb, and again the refuse of ground between the kerb and the +roadway. The man of business walking to the station with a bag +could have his asphalte all unbroken, and the butcher’s boy in +his cart was not annoyed. The grass seemed to respect everybody’s +views, and to take only what nobody wanted. But these gay and +lowly ways will not escape a vestry.</p> +<p>There is no wall so impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer’s +grass will attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, +to win the purple slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority +of the suburbs it has put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch +of cottages has given it an opportunity. It has perched and alighted +in showers and flocks. It has crept and crawled, and stolen its +hour. It has made haste between the ruts of cart wheels, so they +were not too frequent. It has been stealthy in a good cause, and +bold out of reach. It has been the most defiant runaway, and the +meekest lingerer. It has been universal, ready and potential in +every place, so that the happy country—village and field alike—has +been all grass, with mere exceptions.</p> +<p>And all this the grass does in spite of the ill-treatment it suffers +at the hands, and mowing-machines, and vestries of man. His ideal +of grass is growth that shall never be allowed to come to its flower +and completion. He proves this in his lawns. Not only does +he cut the coming grass-flower off by the stalk, but he does not allow +the mere leaf—the blade—to perfect itself. He will +not have it a “blade” at all; he cuts its top away as never +sword or sabre was shaped. All the beauty of a blade of grass +is that the organic shape has the intention of ending in a point. +Surely no one at all aware of the beauty of lines ought to be ignorant +of the significance and grace of manifest intention, which rules a living +line from its beginning, even though the intention be towards a point +while the first spring of the line is towards an opening curve. +But man does not care for intention; he mows it. Nor does he care +for attitude; he rolls it. In a word, he proves to the grass, +as plainly as deeds can do so, that it is not to his mind. The +rolling, especially, seems to be a violent way of showing that the universal +grass interrupted by the life of the Englishman is not as he would have +it. Besides, when he wishes to deride a city, he calls it grass-grown.</p> +<p>But his suburbs shall not, if he can help it, be grass-grown. +They shall not be like a mere Pisa. Highgate shall not so, nor +Peckham.</p> +<h2>A WOMAN IN GREY</h2> +<p>The mothers of Professors were indulged in the practice of jumping +at conclusions, and were praised for their impatience of the slow process +of reason.</p> +<p>Professors have written of the mental habits of women as though they +accumulated generation by generation upon women, and passed over their +sons. Professors take it for granted, obviously by some process +other than the slow process of reason, that women derive from their +mothers and grandmothers, and men from their fathers and grandfathers. +This, for instance, was written lately: “This power [it matters +not what] would be about equal in the two sexes but for the influence +of heredity, which turns the scale in favour of the woman, as for long +generations the surroundings and conditions of life of the female sex +have developed in her a greater degree of the power in question than +circumstances have required from men.” “Long generations” +of subjection are, strangely enough, held to excuse the timorousness +and the shifts of women to-day. But the world, unknowing, tampers +with the courage of its sons by such a slovenly indulgence. It +tampers with their intelligence by fostering the ignorance of women.</p> +<p>And yet Shakespeare confessed the participation of man and woman +in their common heritage. It is Cassius who speaks:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Have you not love enough to bear with me<br /> +When that rash humour which my mother gave me<br /> +Makes me forgetful?”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And Brutus who replies:</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth<br /> +When you are over-earnest with your Brutus<br /> +He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Dryden confessed it also in his praises of Anne Killigrew:</p> +<blockquote><p>“If by traduction came thy mind,<br /> +Our wonder is the less to find<br /> +A soul so charming from a stock so good.<br /> +Thy father was transfused into thy blood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The winning of Waterloo upon the Eton playgrounds is very well; but +there have been some other, and happily minor, fields that were not +won—that were more or less lost. Where did this loss take +place, if the gains were secured at football? This inquiry is +not quite so cheerful as the other. But while the victories were +once going forward in the playground, the defeats or disasters were +once going forward in some other place, presumably. And this was +surely the place that was not a playground, the place where the future +wives of the football players were sitting still while their future +husbands were playing football.</p> +<p>This is the train of thought that followed the grey figure of a woman +on a bicycle in Oxford Street. She had an enormous and top-heavy +omnibus at her back. All the things on the near side of the street—the +things going her way—were going at different paces, in two streams, +overtaking and being overtaken. The tributary streets shot omnibuses +and carriages, cabs and carts—some to go her own way, some with +an impetus that carried them curving into the other current, and other +some making a straight line right across Oxford Street into the street +opposite. Besides all the unequal movement, there were the stoppings. +It was a delicate tangle to keep from knotting. The nerves of +the mouths of horses bore the whole charge and answered it, as they +do every day.</p> +<p>The woman in grey, quite alone, was immediately dependent on no nerves +but her own, which almost made her machine sensitive. But this +alertness was joined to such perfect composure as no flutter of a moment +disturbed. There was the steadiness of sleep, and a vigilance +more than that of an ordinary waking.</p> +<p>At the same time, the woman was doing what nothing in her youth could +well have prepared her for. She must have passed a childhood unlike +the ordinary girl’s childhood, if her steadiness or her alertness +had ever been educated, if she had been rebuked for cowardice, for the +egoistic distrust of general rules, or for claims of exceptional chances. +Yet here she was, trusting not only herself but a multitude of other +people; taking her equal risk; giving a watchful confidence to averages—that +last, perhaps, her strangest and greatest success.</p> +<p>No exceptions were hers, no appeals, and no forewarnings. She +evidently had not in her mind a single phrase, familiar to women, made +to express no confidence except in accidents, and to proclaim a prudent +foresight of the less probable event. No woman could ride a bicycle +along Oxford Street with any such baggage as that about her.</p> +<p>The woman in grey had a watchful confidence not only in a multitude +of men but in a multitude of things. And it is very hard for any +untrained human being to practise confidence in things in motion—things +full of force, and, what is worse, of forces. Moreover, there +is a supreme difficulty for a mind accustomed to search timorously for +some little place of insignificant rest on any accessible point of stable +equilibrium; and that is the difficulty of holding itself nimbly secure +in an equilibrium that is unstable. Who can deny that women are +generally used to look about for the little stationary repose just described? +Whether in intellectual or in spiritual things, they do not often live +without it.</p> +<p>She, none the less, fled upon unstable equilibrium, escaped upon +it, depended upon it, trusted it, was ’ware of it, was on guard +against it, as she sped amid her crowd her own unstable equilibrium, +her machine’s, that of the judgment, the temper, the skill, the +perception, the strength of men and horses.</p> +<p>She had learnt the difficult peace of suspense. She had learnt +also the lowly and self-denying faith in common chances. She had +learnt to be content with her share—no more—in common security, +and to be pleased with her part in common hope. For all this, +it may be repeated, she could have had but small preparation. +Yet no anxiety was hers, no uneasy distrust and disbelief of that human +thing—an average of life and death.</p> +<p>To this courage the woman in grey had attained with a spring, and +she had seated herself suddenly upon a place of detachment between earth +and air, freed from the principal detentions, weights, and embarrassments +of the usual life of fear. She had made herself, as it were, light, +so as not to dwell either in security or danger, but to pass between +them. She confessed difficulty and peril by her delicate evasions, +and consented to rest in neither. She would not owe safety to +the mere motionlessness of a seat on the solid earth, but she used gravitation +to balance the slight burdens of her wariness and her confidence. +She put aside all the pride and vanity of terror, and leapt into an +unsure condition of liberty and content.</p> +<p>She leapt, too, into a life of moments. No pause was possible +to her as she went, except the vibrating pause of a perpetual change +and of an unflagging flight. A woman, long educated to sit still, +does not suddenly learn to live a momentary life without strong momentary +resolution. She has no light achievement in limiting not only +her foresight, which must become brief, but her memory, which must do +more; for it must rather cease than become brief. Idle memory +wastes time and other things. The moments of the woman in grey +as they dropped by must needs disappear, and be simply forgotten, as +a child forgets. Idle memory, by the way, shortens life, or shortens +the sense of time, by linking the immediate past clingingly to the present. +Here may possibly be found one of the reasons for the length of a child’s +time, and for the brevity of the time that succeeds. The child +lets his moments pass by and quickly become remote through a thousand +little successive oblivions. He has not yet the languid habit +of recall.</p> +<p>“Thou art my warrior,” said Volumnia. “I +holp to frame thee.”</p> +<p>Shall a man inherit his mother’s trick of speaking, or her +habit and attitude, and not suffer something, against his will, from +her bequest of weakness, and something, against his heart, from her +bequest of folly? From the legacies of an unlessoned mind, a woman’s +heirs-male are not cut off in the Common Law of the generations of mankind. +Brutus knew that the valour of Portia was settled upon his sons.</p> +<h2>SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT</h2> +<p>The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of +the art of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the +art of accident, it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It +is of accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual +discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second French +Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how +lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson +was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. European +art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the unique. +But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic art) content +with her own conventions; she is local, provincial, alien, remote, incapable +of equal companionship with a world that has Greek art in its own history—Pericles +“to its father.”</p> +<p>Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched +by Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained +the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, +too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of +phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong +in a complete melody—of symmetry in its most delicate and lively +and least stationary form—balance; whereas the <i>leit</i>-<i>motif</i> +is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make +a familiar antithesis—the very commonplace of rival methods of +art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious forms. +The poets have sought “irregular” metres. Incident +hovers, in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern +of modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression +of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major emphasis; +and with this a quickness and buoyancy. The smile, the figure, +the drapery—not yet settled from the arranging touch of a hand, +and showing its mark—the restless and unstationary foot, and the +unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single breeze, all +these have a life that greatly transcends the life of Japanese art, +yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In passing, a charming +comparison may be made between such portraiture and the aspect of an +aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; whether still or in motion +the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have the alertness and expectancy +of flight in all their flocks of leaves, while the oaks and elms are +gathered in their station. All this is not Japanese, but from +such accident is Japanese art inspired, with its good luck of perceptiveness.</p> +<p>What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counter-change +for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction +between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives +may be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not +known as motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. +Repetition and counter-change, of course, have their place in Japanese +ornament, as in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular +an invention, but here, too, uniqueness and position are the principal +inspiration. And it is quite worth while, and much to the present +purpose, to call attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese +diaper patterns, which is <i>interruption</i>. Repetition there +must necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption +which is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. +The place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, +and the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese +design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, +you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though +a separate intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. +Such renewed consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness +in design has more peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of Japanese +lines, in their curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary to say +that a line, in all other schools of art, is long or short according +to its place and purpose; but only the Japanese designer so contrives +his patterns that the line is always short; and many repeating designs +are entirely composed of this various and variously-occurring brevity, +this prankish avoidance of the goal. Moreover, the Japanese evade +symmetry, in the unit of their repeating patterns, by another simple +device—that of numbers. They make a small difference in +the number of curves and of lines. A great difference would not +make the same effect of variety; it would look too much like a contrast. +For example, three rods on one side and six on another would be something +else than a mere variation, and variety would be lost by the use of +them. The Japanese decorator will vary three in this place by +two in that, and a sense of the defeat of symmetry is immediately produced. +With more violent means the idea of symmetry would have been neither +suggested nor refuted.</p> +<p>Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in +Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point of +symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. +There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most subtly, +made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value. A small +thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small thing is placed +at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese) equivalent. +In Italy (and perhaps in other countries) the scales commonly in use +are furnished with only a single weight that increases or diminishes +in value according as you slide it nearer or farther upon a horizontal +arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces when it is close to the +upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs from the farther end of +the horizontal rod. Distance plays some such part with the twig +or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese composition. Its +place is its significance and its value. Such an art of position +implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few things +and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or silences +in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or material, +of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of space—that +is, collocation—that makes the value of empty intervals. +The space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is +valuable because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, +is only another way of saying that position is the principle of this +apparently wilful art.</p> +<p>Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped +to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending +Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral +support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind +of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator’s +knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the spectator’s +simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. +Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written his signs so +freely had not the Japanese so freely drawn his own. Furthermore +still, the transitory and destructible material of Japanese art has +done as much as the multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery +of processes, to reconcile the European designer—the black and +white artist—to working for the day, the day of publication. +Japan lives much of its daily life by means of paper, painted; so does +Europe by means of paper, printed. But as we, unlike those Orientals, +are a destructive people, paper with us means short life, quick abolition, +transformation, re-appearance, a very circulation of life. This +is our present way of surviving ourselves—the new version of that +feat of life. Time was when to survive yourself meant to secure, +for a time indefinitely longer than the life of man, such dull form +as you had given to your work; to intrude upon posterity. To survive +yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into daily oblivion.</p> +<p>Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper +does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them +a different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned +old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory +material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. +What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to +a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of races that have +produced Cotman and Corot. Japanese landscape-drawing reduces +things seen to such fewness as must have made the art insuperably tedious +to any people less fresh-spirited and more inclined to take themselves +seriously than these Orientals. A preoccupied people would never +endure it. But a little closer attention from the Occidental student +might find for their evasive attitude towards landscape—it is +an attitude almost traitorously evasive—a more significant reason. +It is that the distances, the greatness, the winds and the waves of +the world, coloured plains, and the flight of a sky, are all certainly +alien to the perceptions of a people intent upon little deformities. +Does it seem harsh to define by that phrase the curious Japanese search +for accidents? Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, +even though they show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of +the form of a normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. +They are not in search of the perpetual slight novelty which was Aristotle’s +ideal of the language poetic (“a little wildly, or with the flower +of the mind,” says Emerson of the way of a poet’s speech)—and +such novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of the pinion, that keeps +verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are intent upon is perpetual +slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields has eyes less +for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the path, of +which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in fortunate +accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness he +will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. +The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and +not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby +this people conventionally signify wave or cloud. All these curls +have an attitude which is like that of a figure slightly malformed, +and not like that of a human body that is perfect, dominant, and if +bent, bent at no lowly or niggling labour. Why these curves should +be so charming it would be hard to say; they have an exquisite prankishness +of variety, the place where the upward or downward scrolls curl off +from the main wave is delicately unexpected every time, and—especially +in gold embroideries—is sensitively fit for the material, catching +and losing the light, while the lengths of waving line are such as the +long gold threads take by nature.</p> +<p>A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, +in no other art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. +The Japanese have generally evaded even the local beauty of their own +race for the sake of perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty +is remote from our sympathy and admiration; and it is quite possible +that we might miss it in pictorial presentation, and that the Japanese +artist may have intended human beauty where we do not recognise it. +But if it is not easy to recognise, it is certainly not difficult to +guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally aware that the separate +beauty of the race, and its separate dignity, even—to be very +generous—has been admired by the Japanese artist, and is represented +here and there occasionally, in the figure of warrior or mousmé. +But even with this exception the habit of Japanese figure-drawing is +evidently grotesque, derisive, and crooked. It is curious to observe +that the search for slight deformity is so constant as to make use, +for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective foreshortening. +With us it is to the youngest child only that there would appear to +be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would +seem to have his head “beneath his shoulders.” The +European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, but—unused +to the same effect “in the flat”—he thinks it prodigiously +humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. +The Japanese keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. +It amuses him, but not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that +the foreshortened figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, +seem distorted and dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more +derision in it than the simple child. The distortion is not without +a suggestion of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, +but not precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to +his hideous models. He makes free with them on equal terms. +He is familiar with them.</p> +<p>And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no +need to insist upon the ignoble character of those that are intentional +caricatures.</p> +<p>Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek decoration, +and would be glad to forget it, with the intention of learning that +art afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. But whatever +may be the phases of the arts, there is the abiding principle of symmetry +in the body of man, that goes erect, like an upright soul. Its +balance is equal. Exterior human symmetry is surely a curious +physiological fact where there is no symmetry interiorly. For +the centres of life and movement within the body are placed with Oriental +inequality. Man is Greek without and Japanese within. But +the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of the beauty and life that +cover it is accurately a principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, +all the life of human action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, +with infinite incidents—inequalities of work, war, and pastime, +inequalities of sleep—the symmetry of man. Only in death +and “at attention” is that symmetry complete in attitude. +Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the battle, and its rhythm is not +to be destroyed. All the more because this hand holds the goad +and that the harrow, this the shield and that the sword, because this +hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal heads of children, +is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are inflections thereof. +All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, and without symmetry +it would not be variation; it would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull +and broadcast as lawless art. The order of inflection that is +not infraction has been explained in a most authoritative sentence of +criticism of literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble +of some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: “Law, the +rectitude of humanity,” says Mr Coventry Patmore, “should +be the poet’s only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been +the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse’s +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the greatest +poets have been those the <i>modulus</i> of whose verse has been most +variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with feelings +and passions which are the inflections of moral law in their theme. +Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon +law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language +is a continual <i>slight</i> novelty. In the highest poetry, like +that of Milton, these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, +and moral, all chime together in praise of the truer order of life.”</p> +<p>And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual +proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry +is a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition +of human life.</p> +<p>The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle +or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has +an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides +the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the +symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. +And this seems to be the nobler and the more perdurable relation.</p> +<h2>THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME</h2> +<p>He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious +of something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his +apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing +than the destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand +where they did, and the mere relation of time is as it was. But +that which has fallen together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and +lies in a little heap, is the past itself—time—the fact +of antiquity.</p> +<p>He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There +are no more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. +The unit of measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes +a thing of paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of +mankind. He had thought them to be wide.</p> +<p>For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the +states, the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the +measure which he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. +His first ten years had given him the illusion of a most august scale +and measure. It was then that he conceived Antiquity. But +now! Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in +his hand—ten of his mature years—that men give the dignity +of a century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now +so small that the word age has lost its gravity?</p> +<p>In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has +a most noble rod to measure it by—he has his own ten years. +He attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He +confers distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness +is his. He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends +armies fighting into the extremities of the past. He assigns the +Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to sidereal +time.</p> +<p>If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having +conceived old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the mystery +to the mind of the man. The man perceives at last all the illusion, +but he cannot forget what was his conviction when he was a child. +He had once a persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for nothing. +The enormous undeception that comes upon him still leaves spaces in +his mind.</p> +<p>But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive +shocks. It is as though one strained level eyes towards the horizon, +and then were bidden to shorten his sight and to close his search within +a poor half acre before his face. Now, it is that he suddenly +perceives the hitherto remote, remote youth of his own parents to have +been something familiarly near, so measured by his new standard; again, +it is the coming of Attila that is displaced. Those ten last years +of his have corrected the world. There needs no other rod than +that ten years’ rod to chastise all the imaginations of the spirit +of man. It makes history skip.</p> +<p>To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, +the mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change +that trudges through our own world—our contemporary world—is +not very mysterious. We perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. +Even so, we now consider, jolted the changes of the past, with the same +hurry.</p> +<p>The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels +that he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If +the Argonauts, for instance, had been children, it would have been well +enough for the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with +his own magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. +Thus they belong to him as he is now—a man; and not to him as +he was once—a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child’s +enormous ten years’ rule along the path from our time to theirs; +that path must be skipped by the nimble yard in the man’s present +possession. Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy.</p> +<p>What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle +of such little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created +the illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is +itself Antiquity—to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection +of childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; +but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham. <i>There</i> +is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood—no +further—if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the +mystery of change.</p> +<p>For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it +rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has +an apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; +an illusive apprehension when he is learning “ancient” history—a +real apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. +If there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed +and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind.</p> +<p>And it is of this—merely of this—that “ancient” +history seems to partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman +history, and that is why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of +thirty-five heard, at that present age, for the first time of Romulus. +Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter +of fact, when every one was seven years old. It is by good fortune +that “ancient” history is taught in the only ancient days. +So, for a time, the world is magical.</p> +<p>Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by +learning something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges +the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion +is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught +back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man +remains capable of great spaces of time. He will not find them +in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he contains them, he +is aware of them. History has fallen together, but childhood surrounds +and encompasses history, stretches beyond and passes on the road to +eternity.</p> +<p>He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years +that are the treasury of preceptions—the first. The great +disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together +the days that made them. “Far apart,” I have said, +and that “far apart” is wonderful. The past of childhood +is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits +a world away one from the other. Year from year differs as the +antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man +of thirty-five knows for ever afterwards what is flight, even though +he finds no great historic distances to prove his wings by.</p> +<p>There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious childhood, +which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. Many +other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten years. +Hours of weariness are long—not with a mysterious length, but +with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called minutes +and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their apparent +contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not merely +one of these—it is a space not of long, but of immeasurable, time. +It is the moment of going to sleep. The man knows that borderland, +and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased to find antiquity there. +It has become a common enough margin of dreams to him; and he does not +attend to its phantasies. He knows that he has a frolic spirit +in his head which has its way at those hours, but he is not interested +in it. It is the inexperienced child who passes with simplicity +through the marginal country; and the thing he meets there is principally +the yet further conception of illimitable time.</p> +<p>His nurse’s lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. +She sings absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what +they may mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep +they tell of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep +to the sound of them all his life; and “all his life” means +more than older speech can well express.</p> +<p>Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child +is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, +that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to +throw it further back—it is already so far. That is, it +looks as remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man +of seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in +the contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw!</p> +<h2>EYES</h2> +<p>There is nothing described with so little attention, with such slovenliness, +or so without verification—albeit with so much confidence and +word-painting—as the eyes of the men and women whose faces have +been made memorable by their works. The describer generally takes +the first colour that seems to him probable. The grey eyes of +Coleridge are recorded in a proverbial line, and Procter repeats the +word, in describing from the life. Then Carlyle, who shows more +signs of actual attention, and who caught a trick of Coleridge’s +pronunciation instantly, proving that with his hearing at least he was +not slovenly, says that Coleridge’s eyes were brown—“strange, +brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes.” A Coleridge with +brown eyes is one man, and a Coleridge with grey eyes another—and, +as it were, more responsible. As to Rossetti’s eyes, the +various inattention of his friends has assigned to them, in all the +ready-made phrases, nearly all the colours.</p> +<p>So with Charlotte Brontë. Matthew Arnold seems to have +thought the most probable thing to be said of her eyes was that they +were grey and expressive. Thus, after seeing them, does he describe +them in one of his letters. Whereas Mrs Gaskell, who shows signs +of attention, says that Charlotte’s eyes were a reddish hazel, +made up of “a great variety of tints,” to be discovered +by close looking. Almost all eves that are not brown are, in fact, +of some such mixed colour, generally spotted in, and the effect is vivacious. +All the more if the speckled iris has a dark ring to enclose it.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, the eye of mixed colour has always a definite character, +and the mingling that looks green is quite unlike the mingling that +looks grey; and among the greys there is endless difference. Brown +eyes alone are apart, unlike all others, but having no variety except +in the degrees of their darkness.</p> +<p>The colour of eyes seems to be significant of temperament, but as +regards beauty there is little or nothing to choose among colours. +It is not the eye, but the eyelid, that is important, beautiful, eloquent, +full of secrets. The eye has nothing but its colour, and all colours +are fine within fine eyelids. The eyelid has all the form, all +the drawing, all the breadth and length; the square of great eyes irregularly +wide; the long corners of narrow eyes; the pathetic outward droop; the +delicate contrary suggestion of an upward turn at the outer corner, +which Sir Joshua loved.</p> +<p>It is the blood that is eloquent, and there is no sign of blood in +the eye; but in the eyelid the blood hides itself and shows its signs. +All along its edges are the little muscles, living, that speak not only +the obvious and emphatic things, but what reluctances, what perceptions, +what ambiguities, what half-apprehensions, what doubts, what interceptions! +The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have +expressed all things ever since man was man.</p> +<p>And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which +indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. +It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it +receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, +and the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there +are only curtains; and these show all things by seeming to hide a little +more, a little less. They hide nothing but their own secrets.</p> +<p>But, some may say, the eyes have emotion inasmuch as they betray +it by the waxing and contracting of the pupils. It is, however, +the rarest thing, this opening and narrowing under any influences except +those of darkness and light. It does take place exceptionally; +but I am doubtful whether those who talk of it have ever really been +attentive enough to perceive it. A nervous woman, brown-eyed and +young, who stood to tell the news of her own betrothal, and kept her +manners exceedingly composed as she spoke, had this waxing and closing +of the pupils; it went on all the time like a slow, slow pulse. +But such a thing is not to be seen once a year.</p> +<p>Moreover, it is—though so significant—hardly to be called +expression. It is not articulate. It implies emotion, but +does not define, or describe, or divide it. It is touching, insomuch +as we have knowledge of the perturbed tide of the spirit that must cause +it, but it is not otherwise eloquent. It does not tell us the +quality of the thought, it does not inform and surprise as with intricacies. +It speaks no more explicit or delicate things than does the pulse in +its quickening. It speaks with less division of meanings than +does the taking of the breath, which has impulses and degrees.</p> +<p>No, the eyes do their work, but do it blankly, without communication. +Openings into the being they may be, but the closed cheek is more communicative. +From them the blood of Perdita never did look out. It ebbed and +flowed in her face, her dance, her talk. It was hiding in her +paleness, and cloistered in her reserve, but visible in prison. +It leapt and looked, at a word. It was conscious in the fingers +that reached out flowers. It ran with her. It was silenced +when she hushed her answers to the king. Everywhere it was close +behind the doors—everywhere but in her eyes.</p> +<p>How near at hand was it, then, in the living eyelids that expressed +her in their minute and instant and candid manner! All her withdrawals, +every hesitation, fluttered there. A flock of meanings and intelligences +alighted on those mobile edges.</p> +<p>Think, then, of all the famous eyes in the world, that said so much, +and said it in no other way but only by the little exquisite muscles +of their lids. How were these ever strong enough to bear the burden +of those eyes of Heathcliff’s in “Wuthering Heights”? +“The clouded windows of Hell flashed a moment towards me; the +fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned—” +That mourning fiend, who had wept all night, had no expression, no proof +or sign of himself, except in the edges of the eyelids of the man.</p> +<p>And the eyes of Garrick? Eyelids, again. And the eyes +of Charles Dickens, that were said to contain the life of fifty men? +On the mechanism of the eyelids hung that fifty-fold vitality. +“Bacon had a delicate, lively, hazel eye,” says Aubrey in +his “Lives of Eminent Persons.” But nothing of this +belongs to the eye except the colour. Mere brightness the eyeball +has or has not, but so have many glass beads: the liveliness is the +eyelid’s. “Dr Harvey told me it was like the eie of +a viper.” So intent and narrowed must have been the attitude +of Bacon’s eyelids.</p> +<p>“I never saw such another eye in a human, head,” says +Scott in describing Burns, “though I have seen the most distinguished +men in my time. It was large, and of a dark cast, and glowed (I +say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. +The eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament.” +No eye literally glows; but some eyes are polished a little more, and +reflect. And this is the utmost that can possibly have been true +as to the eyes of Burns. But set within the meanings of impetuous +eyelids the lucidity of the dark eyes seemed broken, moved, directed +into fiery shafts.</p> +<p>See, too, the reproach of little, sharp, grey eyes addressed to Hazlitt. +There are neither large nor small eyes, say physiologists, or the difference +is so small as to be negligeable. But in the eyelids the difference +is great between large and small, and also between the varieties of +largeness. Some have large openings, and some are in themselves +broad and long, serenely covering eyes called small. Some have +far more drawing than others, and interesting foreshortenings and sweeping +curves.</p> +<p>Where else is spirit so evident? And where else is it so spoilt? +There is no vulgarity like the vulgarity of vulgar eyelids. They +have a slang all their own, of an intolerable kind. And eyelids +have looked all the cruel looks that have ever made wounds in innocent +souls meeting them surprised.</p> +<p>But all love and all genius have winged their flight from those slight +and unmeasurable movements, have flickered on the margins of lovely +eyelids quick with thought. Life, spirit, sweetness are there +in a small place; using the finest and the slenderest machinery; expressing +meanings a whole world apart, by a difference of material action so +fine that the sight which appreciates it cannot detect it; expressing +intricacies of intellect; so incarnate in slender and sensitive flesh +that nowhere else in the body of man is flesh so spiritual.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLOUR OF LIFE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1205-h.htm or 1205-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/2/0/1205 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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