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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1205-h.zip b/1205-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c4388c --- /dev/null +++ b/1205-h.zip 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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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*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1897 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + +Contents: + +The Colour of Life +A Point Of Biography +Cloud +Winds of the World +The Honours of Mortality +At Monastery Gates +Rushes and Reeds +Eleonora Duse +Donkey Races +Grass +A Woman in Grey +Symmetry and Incident +The Illusion of Historic Time +Eyes + + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But the +true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, or of +life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the colour +of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully +visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the act of betrayal +and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not the manifestation +thereof. It is one of the things the value of which is secrecy, one of +the talents that are to be hidden in a napkin. The true colour of life +is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit +and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the +modest colour of the unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life is +outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that it is +white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than earth; red, +but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less lucid than the +colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in all fine colour; +but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. Under Sicilian skies, +indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under the misty blue of the +English zenith, and the warm grey of the London horizon, it is as +delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, out to their utmost, flat as +stars, in the hedges of the end of June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any mass. +The human face does not give much of it, what with features, and beards, +and the shadow of the top-hat and _chapeau melon_ of man, and of the +veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is subject to a thousand +injuries and accidents. The popular face of the Londoner has soon lost +its gold, its white, and the delicacy of its red and brown. We miss +little beauty by the fact that it is never seen freely in great numbers +out-of-doors. You get it in some quantity when all the heads of a great +indoor meeting are turned at once upon a speaker; but it is only in the +open air, needless to say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in +the open air, "clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and +direct, or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of all his +ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer north-west +evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke of eight he +sheds the slough of nameless colours--all allied to the hues of dust, +soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has chosen for its +boys--and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and delicate flush between +the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. Clothed now with the sun, he +is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars as he goes to bathe, and the +reflection of an early moon is under his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. They +are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but only a +little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. The last and +most finished action of her intellect, passion, and knowledge is, as it +were, the flicking away of some insignificant thing mistaken for art by +other actors, some little obstacle to the way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second boot, and +the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the lacking colour +of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even undressed, he still +shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect pure vowels and elastic +syllables from his restoration, his spring, his slenderness, his +brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild rose in the deepening +midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where Nature +has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the happily easy +way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to grow in the +streets--and no streets could ask for a more charming finish than your +green grass. The gasometer even must fall to pieces unless it is +renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is nothing so remediable as +the work of modern man--"a thought which is also," as Mr Pecksniff said, +"very soothing." And by remediable I mean, of course, destructible. As +the bathing child shuffles off his garments--they are few, and one brace +suffices him--so the land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off +its yellow brick and purple slate, and all the things that collect about +railway stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery of +Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea-coast. To +have once seen it there should be enough to make a colourist. O +memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour as it neared +setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the land. The sea had the +dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of that aspect--the dark and +not the opal tints. The sky was also deep. Everything was very +definite, without mystery, and exceedingly simple. The most luminous +thing was the shining white of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be +white because it was a little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. +It was still the whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous +thing was the little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of +life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the +violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious +history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the +scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. +Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you +consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to +spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but +to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, +social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, +according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the +tribune, was exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and the +innermost--the privacy of death--was never allowed to put obstacles in +the way of public action for a public cause. Women might be, and were, +duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de Gouges, they claimed a +"right to concur in the choice of representatives for the formation of +the laws"; but in her person, too, they were liberally allowed to bear +political responsibility to the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was +guillotined. Robespierre thus made her public and complete amends. + + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + +There is hardly a writer now--of the third class probably not one--who +has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of Nature; not +one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a modern reference to +the manifold death and destruction with which the air, the branches, the +mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice of +the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and of the +dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are they--all the +dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their +little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence +concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is +true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a +snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a +kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some +little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, and which a +meaner man might hide or avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you +twinkle back at the bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes violently +into other forms, flashes without pause into another flame; but not all. +Amid all the killing there must be much dying. There are, for instance, +few birds of prey left in our more accessible counties now, and many +thousands of birds must die uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if +their killing is done so modestly, so then is their dying also. Short +lives have all these wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of +them always alive; they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet +they keep the millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so complete, +that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth conspired that +February to make known all the secrets; everything was published. Death +was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, are not more resolute than +was the frost of '95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and forced +to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which the art and +imagination of England combined to raise to his memory at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought wrong. +There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of a bird and in +exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a soldier--_passe_ +_encore_. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. And the death of +the birds is so little characteristic of them that, as has just been +said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, except only in the +case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled to die with +observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a rule. There is no +display of the battlefield in the fields. There is no tale of the game- +bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with strange decorum. You may +pass a fine season under the trees, and see nothing dead except here and +there where a boy has been by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. +There is nothing like a butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the wild +world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have turned over +scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether now and again +there might be a "Life" which was not more emphatically a death. But +there never is a modern biography that has taken the hint of Nature. One +and all, these books have the disproportionate illness, the death out of +all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been rightly +his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is assumed to be news +for the first comer. Which of us would suffer the details of any +physical suffering, over and done in our own lives, to be displayed and +described? This is not a confidence we have a mind to make; and no one +is authorised to ask for attention or pity on our behalf. The story of +pain ought not to be told of us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not +be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more exclusively, +and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and illusions of a long +delirium. When he is in common language not himself, amends should be +made for so bitter a paradox; he should be allowed such solitude as is +possible to the alienated spirit; he should be left to the "not himself," +and spared the intrusion against which he can so ill guard that he could +hardly have even resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door of +Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His mortal +illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather affected +objection is taken every now and then to the publication of some facts +(others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. Nevertheless, +these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is not biography is +the detail of the accident of the manner of his death, the detail of his +cremation. Or if it was to be told--told briefly--it was certainly not +for marble. Shelley's death had no significance, except inasmuch as he +died young. It was a detachable and disconnected incident. Ah, that was +a frost of fancy and of the heart that used it so, dealing with an +insignificant fact, and conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill- +named biographers who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death +is a part of their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last +chapter does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of +all survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, this is, +for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. They +have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they have to +mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a mingling of +distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not known even to +dreams save in that first year of separation. But they are not +biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously secret +because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may surprise +everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The chase goes on +everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase seems to cause no +perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life is undefended, +careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost ceased, to +paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually in that British +School of water-colour art, stippled, of which surrounding nations, it +was agreed, were envious. They must have killed their bird to paint him, +for he is not to be caught dead. A bird is more easily caught alive than +dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily--too easily--caught dead. Minor +artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good sculptor and +a University together modelled their Shelley on his back, unessentially +drowned; and everybody may read about the sick mind of Dante Rossetti. + + + + +CLOUD + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to see the +clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by the rest of +England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not to see the clear +sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in London. You may go +for a week or two at a time, even though you hold your head up as you +walk, and even though you have windows that really open, and yet you +shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled glass +towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They are, +therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other windows were +used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or even knew so much +as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world knows. +Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in search of it; +but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes its way round the +world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, it knows no bonds. The +terrestrial scenery--the tourist's--is a prisoner compared with this. The +tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with +earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for +its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green +flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the +greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or fade +according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to foot, the +luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud permits, that their +own local colour and their own local season are lost and cease, effaced +before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the +cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful +of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate +revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes the foreground +shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the mountain +slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out part of the +view by the rough method of standing in front of it. But its greatest +things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence does it distribute the +sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more mysteries +than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. Thence it +writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or lets the pencils +of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and yet making dark, it +sheds deep colour upon the forest land of Sussex, so that, seen from the +hills, all the country is divided between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the world. Its +own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to improve. It is +always great: above the street, above the suburbs, above the gas-works +and the stucco, above the faces of painted white houses--the painted +surfaces that have been devised as the only things able to vulgarise +light, as they catch it and reflect it grotesquely from their importunate +gloss. This is to be well seen on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above some +little landscape of rather paltry interest--a conventional river heavy +with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, and shrubberies; +and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, as the novelists always +have it, with "autumn tints." High over these rises, in the enormous +scale of the scenery of clouds, what no man expected--an heroic sky. Few +of the things that were ever done upon earth are great enough to be done +under such a heaven. It was surely designed for other days. It is for +an epic world. Your eyes sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the +distances of earth to these, and what are the distances of the clear and +cloudless sky? The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the +round world dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are +unmeasured--you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star +itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, with +conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. Man would +not have known distance veritably without the clouds. There are +mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of the earth are +pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not overpowering by +disproportion, like some futile building fatuously made too big for the +human measure. The cloud in its majestic place composes with a little +Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the futile building, while the +cloud is no mansion for man, and out of reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the custody +of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. The cloud +veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry ray, suddenly +bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a background. Or +when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals him, gentle beyond hope. +It makes peace, constantly, just before sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. There is +a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds are bowled by a +breeze from behind the evening. They are round and brilliant, and come +leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is a frolic and haphazard +sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed about +it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the clouds in +turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes aloft are swept +at once by a single ray, warmed with a single colour. Promontory after +league-long promontory of a stiller Mediterranean in the sky is called +out of mist and grey by the same finger. The cloudland is very great, +but a sunbeam makes all its nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this scenery. +It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of the winter, that +the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for many and many a day no +London eye can see the horizon, or the first threat of the cloud like a +man's hand. There never was a great painter who had not exquisite +horizons, and if Corot and Crome were right, the Londoner loses a great +thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he loses its +shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and rosy head piling +into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the base and the altitude. +The perspective of a cloud is a great part of its design--whether it lies +so that you can look along the immense horizontal distances of its floor, +or whether it rears so upright a pillar that you look up its mountain +steeps in the sky as you look at the rising heights of a mountain that +stands, with you, on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not merely +the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the sun's +treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We talk of +sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet one of the +illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of the most majestic +of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon is the bride, this is +the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most beautiful +of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no name, and no other +cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such heights of blue air. The +shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, comes across the sky with so +influential a flight that no ship going out to sea can be better worth +watching. The dullest thing perhaps in the London streets is that people +take their rain there without knowing anything of the cloud that drops +it. It is merely rain, and means wetness. The shower-cloud there has +limits of time, but no limits of form, and no history whatever. It has +not come from the clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not +shoulder anon the hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly +comes or goes; it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the +path of its retreat. + + + + +WINDS OF THE WORLD + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Nothing of the nature in this seaward Italy would be so beautiful without +the touch of man and of the sea gales. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly arisen, to +devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in illustrated +papers--the enormous production of art in black and white--is assuredly a +confession that the Honours of Mortality are worth working for. Fifty +years ago, men worked for the honours of immortality; these were the +commonplace of their ambition; they declined to attend to the beauty of +things of use that were destined to be broken and worn out, and they +looked forward to surviving themselves by painting bad pictures; so that +what to do with their bad pictures in addition to our own has become the +problem of the nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have +began to learn that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. +Art consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end--destruction; and art shows a +most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," and for +oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap costs +the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the inevitable +that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in the singular +and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is done for so short +a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the acceptance of death, +inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. There is a real circulation of +blood-quick use, brief beauty, abolition, recreation. The honour of the +day is for ever the honour of that day. It goes into the treasury of +things that are honestly and--completely ended and done with. And when +can so happy a thing be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise +would hesitate? To be honourable for one day--one named and dated day, +separate from all other days of the ages--or to be for an unlimited time +tedious? + + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross it, +unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of the +monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see more than +beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her in guest-house +and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin--the first of the +dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone country, and +backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group of buildings in a +cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown habit is this, and +these are the sandals, that come and go by hills of finer, sharper, and +loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an Umbrian sky. Just such a +Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, and from the foot of its final +crucifix you can see the sunrise touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the +encircled lake below is cool with the last of the night. The same order +of friars keep that sub-Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the +Kreuzberg beyond Bonn with the same steep path by the same fourteen +chapels, facing the Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green over +the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing of +smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and languidly +cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; +the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and +lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and +the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady +ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining +people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages +are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates +have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon +their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more +than half the colour--over all the chocolate and all the blue--with which +the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, +simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine +and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense--it is +modern; and the friars look young in another--they are like their +brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists of +yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or "old +world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be by the +excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers work +upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous bee- +farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is gaily hanging +the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and a machine which +slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the yard thereby is +guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the +obscure impulses of a dog's heart--atoned for by long and self-conscious +remorse--he bit the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make +doggerel of him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on +monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among +the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other +valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look at +them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation Army girl +that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come to the place +with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as she was welcome +to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a figure for Bournemouth +pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched the son of the Umbrian +saint--the friar who walks among the Giotto frescoes at Assisi and +between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and has paced the centuries +continually since the coming of the friars. One might have asked of her +the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She and he alike were so habited as to +show the world that their life was aloof from its "idle business." By +some such phrase, at least, the friar would assuredly have attempted to +include her in any spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have +asked of her the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the +Salvation Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making +such a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in Zurbaran's +ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are busy. As a pocket +it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of the local white wine +made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to this house by the West, is +carried in the cowl as a present to the stranger at the gates. The +friars tell how a brother resolved, at Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and +not only to make, but also to toss them. Those who chanced to be in the +room stood prudently aside, and the brother tossed boldly. But that was +the last that was seen of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in _La_ +_Legende des Siecles_ of disappearance as the thing which no creature +is able to achieve: here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by +quite an ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was +an end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get up +gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never grows easy +or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is something to have found +but one act aloof from habit. It is not merely that the friars overcome +the habit of sleep. The subtler point is that they can never acquire the +habit of sacrificing sleep. What art, what literature, or what life but +would gain a secret security by such a point of perpetual freshness and +perpetual initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a +will that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of the +French fields, and the hour of night--_l'ora di notte_--which rings +with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the Adriatic +littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the prayer for the +dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work of +the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it is +principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and strength of +heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, the friars are not +doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a refuge from despair. These +"bearded counsellors of God" keep their cells, read, study, suffer, sing, +hold silence; whereas they might be "operating"--beautiful word!--upon +the Stock Exchange, or painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or +reluctantly jostling other men for places. They might be among the +involuntary busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is +a discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the superfluous +activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly renounced by the +dwellers within such walls as these. The output--again a beautiful +word--of the age is lessened by this abstention. None the less hopes the +stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once again upon those monastery +gates. + + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another growth +that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned to winter +than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east wind, more than +the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, rushes, canes, and reeds +were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On them the nimble winds played +their dry music. They were part of the winter. It looked through them +and spoke through them. They were spears and javelins in array to the +sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those that +stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour of his +light look through--low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They belong +to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the river, +beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes perilous +footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low lands, the sign +of streams. They grow tall between you and the near horizon of flat +lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; and near them grow +flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness of +the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the distinction of +its points, its needles, and its resolute right lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need the +sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and +betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. +Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a +mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their +sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in +the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses +many ways in one warm gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a +thousand reasons for their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, +are swept into a single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of +the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds in +England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed +(except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has in +fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, +rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not +conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a gipsy +people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is rather a +gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if he is a man of +sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior doubts. His property, he +says, goes right down to the centre of the earth, in the shape of a +wedge; how high up it goes into the air it would be difficult to say, and +obviously the shape of the wedge must be continued in the direction of +increase. We may therefore proclaim his right to the clouds and their +cargo. It is true that as his ground game is apt to go upon his +neighbour's land to be shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his +showers elsewhere. But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed +country-house sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But +he who tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes should +happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his--he had the +pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for a time. But the +bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very thorough landowner, but +a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would endure this sort of thing no +longer, and went out armed and had a long acre of sedges scythed to +death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and upon +margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a road. No +wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and their primroses +are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and then, though, one has a +kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds of trees--the Corot trees. +Standing at a distance from the more ornamental trees, from those of +fuller foliage, and from all the indeciduous shrubs and the conifers +(manifest property, every one), two or three translucent aspens, with +which the very sun and the breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes +seemed to wear a certain look--an extra-territorial look, let us call it. +They are suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not say +so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, are in +spirit almost as extraterritorial as the rushes. In proof of this he +very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. The view is +better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are in his ground +right enough, there is a something about their heads--. But the reason +he gives for wishing them away is merely that they are "thin." A man +does not always say everything. + + + + +ELEONORA DUSE + + +The Italian woman is very near to Nature; so is true drama. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Nowhere else does the perfect technical habit lapse, and nowhere at all +does the habit of acting exist with her. + +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. + +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 _ennui_, as in the earlier scenes of _Divorcons_; 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. + +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 _a bouche fermee_, +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. + +When _la femme de Claude_ 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. + +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 _La Dame aux Camelias_, +for instance; taking for ill-breeding, in her Marguerite, that which is +Italian merely and simple. Whether, again, Cyprienne, in _Divorcons_, +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. + +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 +_mondaine_ 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. + +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. + + + + +DONKEY RACES + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _tempo_ 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. + + + + +GRASS + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.) + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +A WOMAN IN GREY + + +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. + +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. + +And yet Shakespeare confessed the participation of man and woman in their +common heritage. It is Cassius who speaks: + + "Have you not love enough to bear with me + When that rash humour which my mother gave me + Makes me forgetful?" + +And Brutus who replies: + + "Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth + When you are over-earnest with your Brutus + He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so." + +Dryden confessed it also in his praises of Anne Killigrew: + + "If by traduction came thy mind, + Our wonder is the less to find + A soul so charming from a stock so good. + Thy father was transfused into thy blood." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Thou art my warrior," said Volumnia. "I holp to frame thee." + +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. + + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the art +of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of accident, +it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of accidental value, +and not of integral necessity. The virtual discovery of Japanese art, +during the later years of the second French Empire, caused Europe to +relearn how expedient, how delicate, and how lovely Incident may look +when Symmetry has grown vulgar. The lesson was most welcome. Japan has +had her full influence. European art has learnt the value of position +and the tact of the unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her +characteristic art) content with her own conventions; she is local, +provincial, alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world +that has Greek art in its own history--Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been touched by +Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained the +noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, too, +symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of phase +and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong in a +complete melody--of symmetry in its most delicate and lively and least +stationary form--balance; whereas the _leit_-_motif_ is isolated. In +domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make a familiar +antithesis--the very commonplace of rival methods of art. But the same +antithesis exists in less obvious forms. The poets have sought +"irregular" metres. Incident hovers, in the very act of choosing its +right place, in the most modern of modern portraits. In these we have, +if not the Japanese suppression of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese +exaggeration of major emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. +The smile, the figure, the drapery--not yet settled from the arranging +touch of a hand, and showing its mark--the restless and unstationary +foot, and the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In passing, +a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture and the aspect +of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; whether still or in +motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have the alertness and +expectancy of flight in all their flocks of leaves, while the oaks and +elms are gathered in their station. All this is not Japanese, but from +such accident is Japanese art inspired, with its good luck of +perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counter-change +for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the distinction +between this motive and that of the Japanese. The Japanese motives may +be defined as uniqueness and position. And these were not known as +motives of decoration before the study of Japanese decoration. Repetition +and counter-change, of course, have their place in Japanese ornament, as +in the diaper patterns for which these people have so singular an +invention, but here, too, uniqueness and position are the principal +inspiration. And it is quite worth while, and much to the present +purpose, to call attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese +diaper patterns, which is _interruption_. Repetition there must +necessarily be in these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which +is, to the Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and the +avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese design of +this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, you have a +curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though a separate +intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. Such renewed +consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness in design has more +peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of Japanese lines, in their +curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary to say that a line, in all +other schools of art, is long or short according to its place and +purpose; but only the Japanese designer so contrives his patterns that +the line is always short; and many repeating designs are entirely +composed of this various and variously-occurring brevity, this prankish +avoidance of the goal. Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the +unit of their repeating patterns, by another simple device--that of +numbers. They make a small difference in the number of curves and of +lines. A great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it +would look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one side +and six on another would be something else than a mere variation, and +variety would be lost by the use of them. The Japanese decorator will +vary three in this place by two in that, and a sense of the defeat of +symmetry is immediately produced. With more violent means the idea of +symmetry would have been neither suggested nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in Japanese +compositions, complete designs in which there is no point of symmetry. It +is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. There is no sense of lack +of equilibrium, because place is, most subtly, made to have the effect of +giving or of subtracting value. A small thing is arranged to reply to a +large one, for the small thing is placed at the precise distance that +makes it a (Japanese) equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other +countries) the scales commonly in use are furnished with only a single +weight that increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it +nearer or farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many +ounces when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it +hangs from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a Japanese +composition. Its place is its significance and its value. Such an art +of position implies a great art of intervals. The Japanese chooses a few +things and leaves the space between them free, as free as the pauses or +silences in music. But as time, not silence, is the subject, or +material, of contrast in musical pauses, so it is the measurement of +space--that is, collocation--that makes the value of empty intervals. The +space between this form and that, in a Japanese composition, is valuable +because it is just so wide and no more. And this, again, is only another +way of saying that position is the principle of this apparently wilful +art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped to +justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending +Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral +support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind of +shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator's +knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the +spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. +Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written his signs so +freely had not the Japanese so freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, +the transitory and destructible material of Japanese art has done as much +as the multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer--the black and white artist--to working +for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of its daily life +by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means of paper, printed. +But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a destructive people, paper with +us means short life, quick abolition, transformation, re-appearance, a +very circulation of life. This is our present way of surviving +ourselves--the new version of that feat of life. Time was when to +survive yourself meant to secure, for a time indefinitely longer than the +life of man, such dull form as you had given to your work; to intrude +upon posterity. To survive yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into +daily oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper does +not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to them a +different condition of ornament from that with which they adorned old +lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For the transitory +material they keep the more purely pictorial art of landscape. What of +Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far reduced to a monotonous +convention to merit the serious study of races that have produced Cotman +and Corot. Japanese landscape-drawing reduces things seen to such +fewness as must have made the art insuperably tedious to any people less +fresh-spirited and more inclined to take themselves seriously than these +Orientals. A preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little +closer attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape--it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive--a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, and the +flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions of a people +intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to define by that +phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? Upon such search these +people are avowedly intent, even though they show themselves capable of +exquisite appreciation of the form of a normal bird and of the habit of +growth of a normal flower. They are not in search of the perpetual +slight novelty which was Aristotle's ideal of the language poetic ("a +little wildly, or with the flower of the mind," says Emerson of the way +of a poet's speech)--and such novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of +the pinion, that keeps verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are +intent upon is perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields +has eyes less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in +the path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure in +fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque strangeness +he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to his garden. The +art of such a people is not liberal art, not the art of peace, and not +the art of humanity. Look at the curls and curves whereby this people +conventionally signify wave or cloud. All these curls have an attitude +which is like that of a figure slightly malformed, and not like that of a +human body that is perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or +niggling labour. Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard +to say; they have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where +the upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and--especially in gold embroideries--is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, while +the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads take by +nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no other +art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The Japanese have +generally evaded even the local beauty of their own race for the sake of +perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is remote from our sympathy and +admiration; and it is quite possible that we might miss it in pictorial +presentation, and that the Japanese artist may have intended human beauty +where we do not recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is +certainly not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate dignity, +even--to be very generous--has been admired by the Japanese artist, and +is represented here and there occasionally, in the figure of warrior or +mousme. But even with this exception the habit of Japanese +figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, and crooked. It is +curious to observe that the search for slight deformity is so constant as +to make use, for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective +foreshortening. With us it is to the youngest child only that there +would appear to be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently +forward, would seem to have his head "beneath his shoulders." The +European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, +but--unused to the same effect "in the flat"--he thinks it prodigiously +humorous in a drawing. But so only when he is quite young. The Japanese +keeps, apparently, his sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but +not perhaps altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened +figure should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it than +the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion of +ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not precisely +scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous models. He +makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no need to +insist upon the ignoble character of those that are intentional +caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek decoration, and +would be glad to forget it, with the intention of learning that art +afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. But whatever may be +the phases of the arts, there is the abiding principle of symmetry in the +body of man, that goes erect, like an upright soul. Its balance is +equal. Exterior human symmetry is surely a curious physiological fact +where there is no symmetry interiorly. For the centres of life and +movement within the body are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is +Greek without and Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the +skeleton and of the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a +principle. It controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human +action. Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite +incidents--inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of +sleep--the symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that +symmetry complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because this +hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and that the +sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal +heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are +inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, +and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, +fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art. The order of +inflection that is not infraction has been explained in a most +authoritative sentence of criticism of literature, a sentence that should +save the world the trouble of some of its futile, violent, and weak +experiments: "Law, the rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, +"should be the poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been +the subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the _modulus_ of whose verse has been most +variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with feelings and +passions which are the inflections of moral law in their theme. Law puts +a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon law. +Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language is a +continual _slight_ novelty. In the highest poetry, like that of Milton, +these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all +chime together in praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That perpetual +proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of life. Symmetry is +a profound, if disregarded because perpetually inflected, condition of +human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may settle or +be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it has an obvious +life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides the obvious law and +the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as the symmetry of the form +of man, and life occult like his unequal heart. And this seems to be the +nobler and the more perdurable relation. + + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become conscious of +something more than a change in his sense of the present and in his +apprehension of the future. He must be aware of no less a thing than the +destruction of the past. Its events and empires stand where they did, +and the mere relation of time is as it was. But that which has fallen +together, has fallen in, has fallen close, and lies in a little heap, is +the past itself--time--the fact of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are no +more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit of +measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing of +paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He had +thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the states, +the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the measure which +he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. His first ten years +had given him the illusion of a most august scale and measure. It was +then that he conceived Antiquity. But now! Is it to a decade of ten +such little years as these now in his hand--ten of his mature years--that +men give the dignity of a century? They call it an age; but what if life +shows now so small that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a most +noble rod to measure it by--he has his own ten years. He attributes an +overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers distance. He, and +he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. He creates more than +mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting into the extremities of the +past. He assigns the Parthenon to a hill of ages, and the temples of +Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having conceived +old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the mystery to the mind +of the man. The man perceives at last all the illusion, but he cannot +forget what was his conviction when he was a child. He had once a +persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for nothing. The enormous +undeception that comes upon him still leaves spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive shocks. It +is as though one strained level eyes towards the horizon, and then were +bidden to shorten his sight and to close his search within a poor half +acre before his face. Now, it is that he suddenly perceives the hitherto +remote, remote youth of his own parents to have been something familiarly +near, so measured by his new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila +that is displaced. Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. +There needs no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world--our contemporary world--is not very mysterious. We +perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we now consider, jolted +the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that he +was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, for +instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for the child +to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own magnificent +measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus they belong to him +as he is now--a man; and not to him as he was once--a child. It was +quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten years' rule along the path +from our time to theirs; that path must be skipped by the nimble yard in +the man's present possession. Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for +the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the illusion +of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself Antiquity--to +every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of childhood cannot make +Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; but the beginning +of every life is older than Abraham. _There_ is the abyss of time. Let +a man turn to his own childhood--no further--if he would renew his sense +of remoteness, and of the mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes; +but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension +not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive +apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real apprehension +when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no +historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and +unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is why +it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at that present +age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would be nowhere. But +he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every one was seven years +old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" history is taught in the only +ancient days. So, for a time, the world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges the +sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great illusion is over +and history is re-measured, and all fancy and flight caught back and +chastised, the enlarged sense remains enlarged. The man remains capable +of great spaces of time. He will not find them in Egypt, it is true, but +he finds them within, he contains them, he is aware of them. History has +fallen together, but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, +stretches beyond and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years that +are the treasury of preceptions--the first. The great disillusion shall +never shorten those years, nor set nearer together the days that made +them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far apart" is wonderful. The +past of childhood is not single, is not motionless, nor fixed in one +point; it has summits a world away one from the other. Year from year +differs as the antiquity of Mexico from the antiquity of Chaldea. And +the man of thirty-five knows for ever afterwards what is flight, even +though he finds no great historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious childhood, +which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. Many other +moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten years. Hours of +weariness are long--not with a mysterious length, but with a mere length +of protraction, so that the things called minutes and half-hours by the +elderly may be something else to their apparent contemporaries, the +children. The ancient moment is not merely one of these--it is a space +not of long, but of immeasurable, time. It is the moment of going to +sleep. The man knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has +long ceased to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough +margin of dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He +knows that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those +hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced child who +passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and the thing he +meets there is principally the yet further conception of illimitable +time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She sings +absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may mean to +waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell of the +beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of them all +his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech can well +express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is beset +with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere +adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further +back--it is already so far. That is, it looks as remote to the memory of +a man of thirty as to that of a man of seventy. What are a mere forty +years of added later life in the contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + + +EYES + + +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. + +So with Charlotte Bronte. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLOUR OF LIFE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1205.txt or 1205.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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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Prepared by: +David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + + + +Contents: + +The Colour of Life +A Point Of Biography +Cloud +Winds of the World +The Honours of Mortality +At Monastery Gates +Rushes and Reeds +Eleonora Duse +Donkey Races +Grass +A Woman in Grey +Symmetry and Incident +The Illusion of Historic Time +Eyes + + + +THE COLOUR OF LIFE + + + +Red has been praised for its nobility as the colour of life. But +the true colour of life is not red. Red is the colour of violence, +or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed +the colour of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. +Once fully visible, red is the colour of life violated, and in the +act of betrayal and of waste. Red is the secret of life, and not +the manifestation thereof. It is one of the things the value of +which is secrecy, one of the talents that are to be hidden in a +napkin. The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the +colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the +living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the +unpublished blood. + +So bright, so light, so soft, so mingled, the gentle colour of life +is outdone by all the colours of the world. Its very beauty is that +it is white, but less white than milk; brown, but less brown than +earth; red, but less red than sunset or dawn. It is lucid, but less +lucid than the colour of lilies. It has the hint of gold that is in +all fine colour; but in our latitudes the hint is almost elusive. +Under Sicilian skies, indeed, it is deeper than old ivory; but under +the misty blue of the English zenith, and the warm grey of the +London horizon, it is as delicately flushed as the paler wild roses, +out to their utmost, flat as stars, in the hedges of the end of +June. + +For months together London does not see the colour of life in any +mass. The human face does not give much of it, what with features, +and beards, and the shadow of the top-hat and chapeau melon of man, +and of the veils of woman. Besides, the colour of the face is +subject to a thousand injuries and accidents. The popular face of +the Londoner has soon lost its gold, its white, and the delicacy of +its red and brown. We miss little beauty by the fact that it is +never seen freely in great numbers out-of-doors. You get it in some +quantity when all the heads of a great indoor meeting are turned at +once upon a speaker; but it is only in the open air, needless to +say, that the colour of life is in perfection, in the open air, +"clothed with the sun," whether the sunshine be golden and direct, +or dazzlingly diffused in grey. + +The little figure of the London boy it is that has restored to the +landscape the human colour of life. He is allowed to come out of +all his ignominies, and to take the late colour of the midsummer +north-west evening, on the borders of the Serpentine. At the stroke +of eight he sheds the slough of nameless colours - all allied to the +hues of dust, soot, and fog, which are the colours the world has +chosen for its boys - and he makes, in his hundreds, a bright and +delicate flush between the grey-blue water and the grey-blue sky. +Clothed now with the sun, he is crowned by-and-by with twelve stars +as he goes to bathe, and the reflection of an early moon is under +his feet. + +So little stands between a gamin and all the dignities of Nature. +They are so quickly restored. There seems to be nothing to do, but +only a little thing to undo. It is like the art of Eleonora Duse. +The last and most finished action of her intellect, passion, and +knowledge is, as it were, the flicking away of some insignificant +thing mistaken for art by other actors, some little obstacle to the +way and liberty of Nature. + +All the squalor is gone in a moment, kicked off with the second +boot, and the child goes shouting to complete the landscape with the +lacking colour of life. You are inclined to wonder that, even +undressed, he still shouts with a Cockney accent. You half expect +pure vowels and elastic syllables from his restoration, his spring, +his slenderness, his brightness, and his glow. Old ivory and wild +rose in the deepening midsummer sun, he gives his colours to his +world again. + +It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, where +Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. It is always to do, by the +happily easy way of doing nothing. The grass is always ready to +grow in the streets - and no streets could ask for a more charming +finish than your green grass. The gasometer even must fall to +pieces unless it is renewed; but the grass renews itself. There is +nothing so remediable as the work of modern man - "a thought which +is also," as Mr Pecksniff said, "very soothing." And by remediable +I mean, of course, destructible. As the bathing child shuffles off +his garments - they are few, and one brace suffices him - so the +land might always, in reasonable time, shuffle off its yellow brick +and purple slate, and all the things that collect about railway +stations. A single night almost clears the air of London. + +But if the colour of life looks so well in the rather sham scenery +of Hyde Park, it looks brilliant and grave indeed on a real sea- +coast. To have once seen it there should be enough to make a +colourist. O memorable little picture! The sun was gaining colour +as it neared setting, and it set not over the sea, but over the +land. The sea had the dark and rather stern, but not cold, blue of +that aspect - the dark and not the opal tints. The sky was also +deep. Everything was very definite, without mystery, and +exceedingly simple. The most luminous thing was the shining white +of an edge of foam, which did not cease to be white because it was a +little golden and a little rosy in the sunshine. It was still the +whitest thing imaginable. And the next most luminous thing was the +little child, also invested with the sun and the colour of life. + +In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that +the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the +curious history of the political rights of woman under the +Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the +fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that +seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted +political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the +obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was +granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, +international. The blood wherewith she should, according to +Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was +exposed in the public sight unsheltered by her veins. + +Against this there was no modesty. Of all privacies, the last and +the innermost - the privacy of death - was never allowed to put +obstacles in the way of public action for a public cause. Women +might be, and were, duly suppressed when, by the mouth of Olympe de +Gouges, they claimed a "right to concur in the choice of +representatives for the formation of the laws"; but in her person, +too, they were liberally allowed to bear political responsibility to +the Republic. Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Robespierre thus +made her public and complete amends. + + + +A POINT OF BIOGRAPHY + + + +There is hardly a writer now - of the third class probably not one - +who has not something sharp and sad to say about the cruelty of +Nature; not one who is able to attempt May in the woods without a +modern reference to the manifold death and destruction with which +the air, the branches, the mosses are said to be full. + +But no one has paused in the course of these phrases to take notice +of the curious and conspicuous fact of the suppression of death and +of the dead throughout this landscape of manifest life. Where are +they - all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do +they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is +the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? +You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may +hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, +as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a +well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too +slight for direct mention, and which a meaner man might hide or +avoid. Unless you are very modern indeed, you twinkle back at the +bird. + +But otherwise there is nothing visible of the havoc and the prey and +plunder. It is certain that much of the visible life passes +violently into other forms, flashes without pause into another +flame; but not all. Amid all the killing there must be much dying. +There are, for instance, few birds of prey left in our more +accessible counties now, and many thousands of birds must die +uncaught by a hawk and unpierced. But if their killing is done so +modestly, so then is their dying also. Short lives have all these +wild things, but there are innumerable flocks of them always alive; +they must die, then, in innumerable flocks. And yet they keep the +millions of the dead out of sight. + +Now and then, indeed, they may be betrayed. It happened in a cold +winter. The late frosts were so sudden, and the famine was so +complete, that the birds were taken unawares. The sky and the earth +conspired that February to make known all the secrets; everything +was published. Death was manifest. Editors, when a great man dies, +are not more resolute than was the frost of `95. + +The birds were obliged to die in public. They were surprised and +forced to do thus. They became like Shelley in the monument which +the art and imagination of England combined to raise to his memory +at Oxford. + +Frost was surely at work in both cases, and in both it wrought +wrong. There is a similarity of unreason in betraying the death of +a bird and in exhibiting the death of Shelley. The death of a +soldier - passe encore. But the death of Shelley was not his goal. +And the death of the birds is so little characteristic of them that, +as has just been said, no one in the world is aware of their dying, +except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled +to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a +rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. There +is no tale of the game-bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with +strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the trees, and +see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been by, or a +man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There is nothing like a +butcher's shop in the woods. + +But the biographers have always had other ways than those of the +wild world. They will not have a man to die out of sight. I have +turned over scores of "Lives," not to read them, but to see whether +now and again there might be a "Life" which was not more +emphatically a death. But there never is a modern biography that +has taken the hint of Nature. One and all, these books have the +disproportionate illness, the death out of all scale. + +Even more wanton than the disclosure of a death is that of a mortal +illness. If the man had recovered, his illness would have been +rightly his own secret. But because he did not recover, it is +assumed to be news for the first comer. Which of us would suffer +the details of any physical suffering, over and done in our own +lives, to be displayed and described? This is not a confidence we +have a mind to make; and no one is authorised to ask for attention +or pity on our behalf. The story of pain ought not to be told of +us, seeing that by us it would assuredly not be told. + +There is only one other thing that concerns a man still more +exclusively, and that is his own mental illness, or the dreams and +illusions of a long delirium. When he is in common language not +himself, amends should be made for so bitter a paradox; he should be +allowed such solitude as is possible to the alienated spirit; he +should be left to the "not himself," and spared the intrusion +against which he can so ill guard that he could hardly have even +resented it. + +The double helplessness of delusion and death should keep the door +of Rossetti's house, for example, and refuse him to the reader. His +mortal illness had nothing to do with his poetry. Some rather +affected objection is taken every now and then to the publication of +some facts (others being already well known) in the life of Shelley. +Nevertheless, these are all, properly speaking, biography. What is +not biography is the detail of the accident of the manner of his +death, the detail of his cremation. Or if it was to be told - told +briefly - it was certainly not for marble. Shelley's death had no +significance, except inasmuch as he died young. It was a detachable +and disconnected incident. Ah, that was a frost of fancy and of the +heart that used it so, dealing with an insignificant fact, and +conferring a futile immortality. Those are ill-named biographers +who seem to think that a betrayal of the ways of death is a part of +their ordinary duty, and that if material enough for a last chapter +does not lie to their hand they are to search it out. They, of all +survivors, are called upon, in honour and reason, to look upon a +death with more composure. To those who loved the dead closely, +this is, for a time, impossible. To them death becomes, for a year, +disproportionate. Their dreams are fixed upon it night by night. +They have, in those dreams, to find the dead in some labyrinth; they +have to mourn his dying and to welcome his recovery in such a +mingling of distress and of always incredulous happiness as is not +known even to dreams save in that first year of separation. But +they are not biographers. + +If death is the privacy of the woods, it is the more conspicuously +secret because it is their only privacy. You may watch or may +surprise everything else. The nest is retired, not hidden. The +chase goes on everywhere. It is wonderful how the perpetual chase +seems to cause no perpetual fear. The songs are all audible. Life +is undefended, careless, nimble and noisy. + +It is a happy thing that minor artists have ceased, or almost +ceased, to paint dead birds. Time was when they did it continually +in that British School of water-colour art, stippled, of which +surrounding nations, it was agreed, were envious. They must have +killed their bird to paint him, for he is not to be caught dead. A +bird is more easily caught alive than dead. + +A poet, on the contrary, is easily - too easily - caught dead. +Minor artists now seldom stipple the bird on its back, but a good +sculptor and a University together modelled their Shelley on his +back, unessentially drowned; and everybody may read about the sick +mind of Dante Rossetti. + + + +CLOUD + + + +During a part of the year London does not see the clouds. Not to +see the clear sky might seem her chief loss, but that is shared by +the rest of England, and is, besides, but a slight privation. Not +to see the clear sky is, elsewhere, to see the cloud. But not so in +London. You may go for a week or two at a time, even though you +hold your head up as you walk, and even though you have windows that +really open, and yet you shall see no cloud, or but a single edge, +the fragment of a form. + +Guillotine windows never wholly open, but are filled with a doubled +glass towards the sky when you open them towards the street. They +are, therefore, a sure sign that for all the years when no other +windows were used in London, nobody there cared much for the sky, or +even knew so much as whether there were a sky. + +But the privation of cloud is indeed a graver loss than the world +knows. Terrestrial scenery is much, but it is not all. Men go in +search of it; but the celestial scenery journeys to them. It goes +its way round the world. It has no nation, it costs no weariness, +it knows no bonds. The terrestrial scenery - the tourist's - is a +prisoner compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, +but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it +is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends +upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own +sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must +wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are +inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a +cloud. + +The cloud controls the light, and the mountains on earth appear or +fade according to its passage; they wear so simply, from head to +foot, the luminous grey or the emphatic purple, as the cloud +permits, that their own local colour and their own local season are +lost and cease, effaced before the all-important mood of the cloud. + +The sea has no mood except that of the sky and of its winds. It is +the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a +handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge +with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and +makes the foreground shine. + +Every one knows the manifest work of the cloud when it descends and +partakes in the landscape obviously, lies half-way across the +mountain slope, stoops to rain heavily upon the lake, and blots out +part of the view by the rough method of standing in front of it. +But its greatest things are done from its own place, aloft. Thence +does it distribute the sun. + +Thence does it lock away between the hills and valleys more +mysteries than a poet conceals, but, like him, not by interception. +Thence it writes out and cancels all the tracery of Monte Rosa, or +lets the pencils of the sun renew them. Thence, hiding nothing, and +yet making dark, it sheds deep colour upon the forest land of +Sussex, so that, seen from the hills, all the country is divided +between grave blue and graver sunlight. + +And all this is but its influence, its secondary work upon the +world. Its own beauty is unaltered when it has no earthly beauty to +improve. It is always great: above the street, above the suburbs, +above the gas-works and the stucco, above the faces of painted white +houses - the painted surfaces that have been devised as the only +things able to vulgarise light, as they catch it and reflect it +grotesquely from their importunate gloss. This is to be well seen +on a sunny evening in Regent Street. + +Even here the cloud is not so victorious as when it towers above +some little landscape of rather paltry interest - a conventional +river heavy with water, gardens with their little evergreens, walks, +and shrubberies; and thick trees impervious to the light, touched, +as the novelists always have it, with "autumn tints." High over +these rises, in the enormous scale of the scenery of clouds, what no +man expected - an heroic sky. Few of the things that were ever done +upon earth are great enough to be done under such a heaven. It was +surely designed for other days. It is for an epic world. Your eyes +sweep a thousand miles of cloud. What are the distances of earth to +these, and what are the distances of the clear and cloudless sky? +The very horizons of the landscape are near, for the round world +dips so soon; and the distances of the mere clear sky are unmeasured +- you rest upon nothing until you come to a star, and the star +itself is immeasurable. + +But in the sky of "sunny Alps" of clouds the sight goes farther, +with conscious flight, than it could ever have journeyed otherwise. +Man would not have known distance veritably without the clouds. +There are mountains indeed, precipices and deeps, to which those of +the earth are pigmy. Yet the sky-heights, being so far off, are not +overpowering by disproportion, like some futile building fatuously +made too big for the human measure. The cloud in its majestic place +composes with a little Perugino tree. For you stand or stray in the +futile building, while the cloud is no mansion for man, and out of +reach of his limitations. + +The cloud, moreover, controls the sun, not merely by keeping the +custody of his rays, but by becoming the counsellor of his temper. +The cloud veils an angry sun, or, more terribly, lets fly an angry +ray, suddenly bright upon tree and tower, with iron-grey storm for a +background. Or when anger had but threatened, the cloud reveals +him, gentle beyond hope. It makes peace, constantly, just before +sunset. + +It is in the confidence of the winds, and wears their colours. +There is a heavenly game, on south-west wind days, when the clouds +are bowled by a breeze from behind the evening. They are round and +brilliant, and come leaping up from the horizon for hours. This is +a frolic and haphazard sky. + +All unlike this is the sky that has a centre, and stands composed +about it. As the clouds marshalled the earthly mountains, so the +clouds in turn are now ranged. The tops of all the celestial Andes +aloft are swept at once by a single ray, warmed with a single +colour. Promontory after league-long promontory of a stiller +Mediterranean in the sky is called out of mist and grey by the same +finger. The cloudland is very great, but a sunbeam makes all its +nations and continents sudden with light. + +All this is for the untravelled. All the winds bring him this +scenery. It is only in London, for part of the autumn and part of +the winter, that the unnatural smoke-fog comes between. And for +many and many a day no London eye can see the horizon, or the first +threat of the cloud like a man's hand. There never was a great +painter who had not exquisite horizons, and if Corot and Crome were +right, the Londoner loses a great thing. + +He loses the coming of the cloud, and when it is high in air he +loses its shape. A cloud-lover is not content to see a snowy and +rosy head piling into the top of the heavens; he wants to see the +base and the altitude. The perspective of a cloud is a great part +of its design - whether it lies so that you can look along the +immense horizontal distances of its floor, or whether it rears so +upright a pillar that you look up its mountain steeps in the sky as +you look at the rising heights of a mountain that stands, with you, +on the earth. + +The cloud has a name suggesting darkness; nevertheless, it is not +merely the guardian of the sun's rays and their director. It is the +sun's treasurer; it holds the light that the world has lost. We +talk of sunshine and moonshine, but not of cloud-shine, which is yet +one of the illuminations of our skies. A shining cloud is one of +the most majestic of all secondary lights. If the reflecting moon +is the bride, this is the friend of the bridegroom. + +Needless to say, the cloud of a thunderous summer is the most +beautiful of all. It has spaces of a grey for which there is no +name, and no other cloud looks over at a vanishing sun from such +heights of blue air. The shower-cloud, too, with its thin edges, +comes across the sky with so influential a flight that no ship going +out to sea can be better worth watching. The dullest thing perhaps +in the London streets is that people take their rain there without +knowing anything of the cloud that drops it. It is merely rain, and +means wetness. The shower-cloud there has limits of time, but no +limits of form, and no history whatever. It has not come from the +clear edge of the plain to the south, and will not shoulder anon the +hill to the north. The rain, for this city, hardly comes or goes; +it does but begin and stop. No one looks after it on the path of +its retreat. + + + +WINDS OF THE WORLD + + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Nothing of the nature in this seaward Italy would be so beautiful +without the touch of man and of the sea gales. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +THE HONOURS OF MORTALITY + + + +The brilliant talent which has quite lately and quite suddenly +arisen, to devote itself to the use of the day or of the week, in +illustrated papers - the enormous production of art in black and +white - is assuredly a confession that the Honours of Mortality are +worth working for. Fifty years ago, men worked for the honours of +immortality; these were the commonplace of their ambition; they +declined to attend to the beauty of things of use that were destined +to be broken and worn out, and they looked forward to surviving +themselves by painting bad pictures; so that what to do with their +bad pictures in addition to our own has become the problem of the +nation and of the householder alike. To-day men have began to learn +that their sons will be grateful to them for few bequests. Art +consents at last to work upon the tissue and the china that are +doomed to the natural and necessary end - destruction; and art shows +a most dignified alacrity to do her best, daily, for the "process," +and for oblivion. + +Doubtless this abandonment of hopes so large at once and so cheap +costs the artist something; nay, it implies an acceptance of the +inevitable that is not less than heroic. And the reward has been in +the singular and manifest increase of vitality in this work which is +done for so short a life. Fittingly indeed does life reward the +acceptance of death, inasmuch as to die is to have been alive. +There is a real circulation of blood-quick use, brief beauty, +abolition, recreation. The honour of the day is for ever the honour +of that day. It goes into the treasury of things that are honestly +and - completely ended and done with. And when can so happy a thing +be said of a lifeless oil-painting? Who of the wise would hesitate? +To be honourable for one day - one named and dated day, separate +from all other days of the ages - or to be for an unlimited time +tedious? + + + +AT MONASTERY GATES + + + +No woman has ever crossed the inner threshold, or shall ever cross +it, unless a queen, English or foreign, should claim her privilege. +Therefore, if a woman records here the slighter things visible of +the monastic life, it is only because she was not admitted to see +more than beautiful courtesy and friendliness were able to show her +in guest-house and garden. + +The Monastery is of fresh-looking Gothic, by Pugin - the first of +the dynasty: it is reached by the white roads of a limestone +country, and backed by a young plantation, and it gathers its group +of buildings in a cleft high up among the hills of Wales. The brown +habit is this, and these are the sandals, that come and go by hills +of finer, sharper, and loftier line, edging the dusk and dawn of an +Umbrian sky. Just such a Via Crucis climbs the height above Orta, +and from the foot of its final crucifix you can see the sunrise +touch the top of Monte Rosa, while the encircled lake below is cool +with the last of the night. The same order of friars keep that sub- +Alpine Monte Sacro, and the same have set the Kreuzberg beyond Bonn +with the same steep path by the same fourteen chapels, facing the +Seven Mountains and the Rhine. + +Here, in North Wales, remote as the country is, with the wheat green +over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long +wing of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly +and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is +burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, +thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It +leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the +flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. +The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted +agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; +not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some +beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their +edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure +to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over +more than half the colour - over all the chocolate and all the blue +- with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not +wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes +with the slight sunshine and the bright grey of an English sky. + +The grey-stone, grey-roofed monastery looks young in one sense - it +is modern; and the friars look young in another - they are like +their brothers of an earlier time. No one, except the journalists +of yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," +or "old world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it +be by the excursionists. + +With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers +work upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a +prosperous bee-farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass +yesterday, is gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing +press, and a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an +outhouse, and the yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose +single evil deed was that under one of the obscure impulses of a +dog's heart -atoned for by long and self-conscious remorse - he bit +the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make doggerel of +him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery +ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his +editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got +among the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, +from other valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a +moth. + +To the coming and going of the friars, too, the village people have +become well used, and the infrequent excursionists, for lack of +intelligence and of any knowledge that would refer to history, look +at them without obtrusive curiosity. It was only from a Salvation +Army girl that you heard the brutal word of contempt. She had come +to the place with some companions, and with them was trespassing, as +she was welcome to do, within the monastery grounds. She stood, a +figure for Bournemouth pier, in her grotesque bonnet, and watched +the son of the Umbrian saint - the friar who walks among the Giotto +frescoes at Assisi and between the cypresses of Bello Sguardo, and +has paced the centuries continually since the coming of the friars. +One might have asked of her the kindness of a fellow-feeling. She +and he alike were so habited as to show the world that their life +was aloof from its "idle business." By some such phrase, at least, +the friar would assuredly have attempted to include her in any +spiritual honours ascribed to him. Or one might have asked of her +the condescension of forbearance. "Only fancy," said the Salvation +Army girl, watching the friar out of sight, "only fancy making such +a fool of one's self!" + +The great hood of the friars, which is drawn over the head in +Zurbaran's ecstatic picture, is turned to use when the friars are +busy. As a pocket it relieves the over-burdened hands. A bottle of +the local white wine made by the brotherhood at Genoa, and sent to +this house by the West, is carried in the cowl as a present to the +stranger at the gates. The friars tell how a brother resolved, at +Shrovetide, to make pancakes, and not only to make, but also to toss +them. Those who chanced to be in the room stood prudently aside, +and the brother tossed boldly. But that was the last that was seen +of his handiwork. Victor Hugo sings in La Legende des Siecles of +disappearance as the thing which no creature is able to achieve: +here the impossibility seemed to be accomplished by quite an +ordinary and a simple pancake. It was clean gone, and there was an +end of it. Nor could any explanation of this ceasing of a pancake +from the midst of the visible world be so much as divined by the +spectators. It was only when the brother, in church, knelt down to +meditate and drew his cowl about his head that the accident was +explained. + +Every midnight the sweet contralto bells call the community, who get +up gaily to this difficult service. Of all duties this one never +grows easy or familiar, and therefore never habitual. It is +something to have found but one act aloof from habit. It is not +merely that the friars overcome the habit of sleep. The subtler +point is that they can never acquire the habit of sacrificing sleep. +What art, what literature, or what life but would gain a secret +security by such a point of perpetual freshness and perpetual +initiative? It is not possible to get up at midnight without a will +that is new night by night. So should the writer's work be done, +and, with an intention perpetually unique, the poet's. + +The contralto bells have taught these Western hills the "Angelus" of +the French fields, and the hour of night - l'ora di notte - which +rings with so melancholy a note from the village belfries on the +Adriatic littoral, when the latest light is passing. It is the +prayer for the dead: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O +Lord." + +The little flocks of novices, on paschal evenings, are folded to the +sound of that evening prayer. The care of them is the central work +of the monastery, which is placed in so remote a country because it +is principally a place of studies. So much elect intellect and +strength of heart withdrawn from the traffic of the world! True, +the friars are not doing the task which Carlyle set mankind as a +refuge from despair. These "bearded counsellors of God" keep their +cells, read, study, suffer, sing, hold silence; whereas they might +be "operating" - beautiful word! - upon the Stock Exchange, or +painting Academy pictures, or making speeches, or reluctantly +jostling other men for places. They might be among the involuntary +busybodies who are living by futile tasks the need whereof is a +discouraged fiction. There is absolutely no limit to the +superfluous activities, to the art, to the literature, implicitly +renounced by the dwellers within such walls as these. The output - +again a beautiful word - of the age is lessened by this abstention. +None the less hopes the stranger and pilgrim to pause and knock once +again upon those monastery gates. + + + +RUSHES AND REEDS + + + +Taller than the grass and lower than the trees, there is another +growth that feels the implicit spring. It had been more abandoned +to winter than even the short grass shuddering under a wave of east +wind, more than the dumb trees. For the multitudes of sedges, +rushes, canes, and reeds were the appropriate lyre of the cold. On +them the nimble winds played their dry music. They were part of the +winter. It looked through them and spoke through them. They were +spears and javelins in array to the sound of the drums of the north. + +The winter takes fuller possession of these things than of those +that stand solid. The sedges whistle his tune. They let the colour +of his light look through - low-flying arrows and bright bayonets of +winter day. + +The multitudes of all reeds and rushes grow out of bounds. They +belong to the margins of lands, the space between the farms and the +river, beyond the pastures, and where the marsh in flower becomes +perilous footing for the cattle. They are the fringe of the low +lands, the sign of streams. They grow tall between you and the near +horizon of flat lands. They etch their sharp lines upon the sky; +and near them grow flowers of stature, including the lofty yellow +lily. + +Our green country is the better for the grey, soft, cloudy darkness +of the sedge, and our full landscape is the better for the +distinction of its points, its needles, and its resolute right +lines. + +Ours is a summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need +the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy +breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops +knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges +whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, +showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the +silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are +unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm +gale, like the many lovers of a poet who have a thousand reasons for +their love; but the rushes, more strongly tethered, are swept into a +single attitude, again and again, at every renewal of the storm. + +Between the pasture and the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds +in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so +changed (except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, +and has in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape +elsewhere, rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south +are not conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes are a +gipsy people, amongst us, yet out of reach. The landowner, if he is +rather a gross man, believes these races of reeds are his. But if +he is a man of sensibility, depend upon it he has his interior +doubts. His property, he says, goes right down to the centre of the +earth, in the shape of a wedge; how high up it goes into the air it +would be difficult to say, and obviously the shape of the wedge must +be continued in the direction of increase. We may therefore +proclaim his right to the clouds and their cargo. It is true that +as his ground game is apt to go upon his neighbour's land to be +shot, so the clouds may now and then spend his showers elsewhere. +But the great thing is the view. A well-appointed country-house +sees nothing out of the windows that is not its own. But he who +tells you so, and proves it to you by his own view, is certainly +disturbed by an unspoken doubt, if his otherwise contented eyes +should happen to be caught by a region of rushes. The water is his +- he had the pond made; or the river, for a space, and the fish, for +a time. But the bulrushes, the reeds! One wonders whether a very +thorough landowner, but a sensitive one, ever resolved that he would +endure this sort of thing no longer, and went out armed and had a +long acre of sedges scythed to death. + +They are probably outlaws. They are dwellers upon thresholds and +upon margins, as the gipsies make a home upon the green edges of a +road. No wild flowers, however wild, are rebels. The copses and +their primroses are good subjects, the oaks are loyal. Now and +then, though, one has a kind of suspicion of some of the other kinds +of trees - the Corot trees. Standing at a distance from the more +ornamental trees, from those of fuller foliage, and from all the +indeciduous shrubs and the conifers (manifest property, every one), +two or three translucent aspens, with which the very sun and the +breath of earth are entangled, have sometimes seemed to wear a +certain look - an extra-territorial look, let us call it. They are +suspect. One is inclined to shake a doubtful head at them. + +And the landowner feels it. He knows quite well, though he may not +say so, that the Corot trees, though they do not dwell upon margins, +are in spirit almost as extraterritorial as the rushes. In proof of +this he very often cuts them down, out of the view, once for all. +The view is better, as a view, without them. Though their roots are +in his ground right enough, there is a something about their heads - +. But the reason he gives for wishing them away is merely that they +are "thin." A man does not always say everything. + + + +ELEONORA DUSE + + + +The Italian woman is very near to Nature; so is true drama. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Nowhere else does the perfect technical habit lapse, and nowhere at +all does the habit of acting exist with her. + +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. + +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 ennui, as in the earlier scenes of +Divorcons; 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. + +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 e +bouche fermee, 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. + +When la femme de Claude 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. + +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 La Dame aux +Camelias, for instance; taking for ill-breeding, in her Marguerite, +that which is Italian merely and simple. Whether, again, Cyprienne, +in Divorcons, 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. + +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 mondaine 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. + +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. + + + +DONKEY RACES + + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 tempo 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. + + + +GRASS + + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.) + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +A WOMAN IN GREY + + + +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. + +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. + +And yet Shakespeare confessed the participation of man and woman in +their common heritage. It is Cassius who speaks: + + +"Have you not love enough to bear with me +When that rash humour which my mother gave me +Makes me forgetful?" + + +And Brutus who replies: + + +"Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth +When you are over-earnest with your Brutus +He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so." + + +Dryden confessed it also in his praises of Anne Killigrew: + + +"If by traduction came thy mind, +Our wonder is the less to find +A soul so charming from a stock so good. +Thy father was transfused into thy blood." + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"Thou art my warrior," said Volumnia. "I holp to frame thee." + +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. + + + +SYMMETRY AND INCIDENT + + + +The art of Japan has none but an exterior part in the history of the +art of nations. Being in its own methods and attitude the art of +accident, it has, appropriately, an accidental value. It is of +accidental value, and not of integral necessity. The virtual +discovery of Japanese art, during the later years of the second +French Empire, caused Europe to relearn how expedient, how delicate, +and how lovely Incident may look when Symmetry has grown vulgar. +The lesson was most welcome. Japan has had her full influence. +European art has learnt the value of position and the tact of the +unique. But Japan is unlessoned, and (in all her characteristic +art) content with her own conventions; she is local, provincial, +alien, remote, incapable of equal companionship with a world that +has Greek art in its own history - Pericles "to its father." + +Nor is it pictorial art, or decorative art only, that has been +touched by Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had +attained the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but +in music, too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, +the music of phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of +symmetry is strong in a complete melody - of symmetry in its most +delicate and lively and least stationary form - balance; whereas the +leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and +Incident make a familiar antithesis - the very commonplace of rival +methods of art. But the same antithesis exists in less obvious +forms. The poets have sought "irregular" metres. Incident hovers, +in the very act of choosing its right place, in the most modern of +modern portraits. In these we have, if not the Japanese suppression +of minor emphasis, certainly the Japanese exaggeration of major +emphasis; and with this a quickness and buoyancy. The smile, the +figure, the drapery - not yet settled from the arranging touch of a +hand, and showing its mark - the restless and unstationary foot, and +the unity of impulse that has passed everywhere like a single +breeze, all these have a life that greatly transcends the life of +Japanese art, yet has the nimble touch of Japanese incident. In +passing, a charming comparison may be made between such portraiture +and the aspect of an aspen or other tree of light and liberal leaf; +whether still or in motion the aspen and the free-leafed poplar have +the alertness and expectancy of flight in all their flocks of +leaves, while the oaks and elms are gathered in their station. All +this is not Japanese, but from such accident is Japanese art +inspired, with its good luck of perceptiveness. + +What symmetry is to form, that is repetition in the art of ornament. +Greek art and Gothic alike have series, with repetition or counter- +change for their ruling motive. It is hardly necessary to draw the +distinction between this motive and that of the Japanese. The +Japanese motives may be defined as uniqueness and position. And +these were not known as motives of decoration before the study of +Japanese decoration. Repetition and counter-change, of course, have +their place in Japanese ornament, as in the diaper patterns for +which these people have so singular an invention, but here, too, +uniqueness and position are the principal inspiration. And it is +quite worth while, and much to the present purpose, to call +attention to the chief peculiarity of the Japanese diaper patterns, +which is INTERRUPTION. Repetition there must necessarily be in +these, but symmetry is avoided by an interruption which is, to the +Western eye, at least, perpetually and freshly unexpected. The +place of the interruptions of lines, the variation of the place, and +the avoidance of correspondence, are precisely what makes Japanese +design of this class inimitable. Thus, even in a repeating pattern, +you have a curiously successful effect of impulse. It is as though +a separate intention had been formed by the designer at every angle. +Such renewed consciousness does not make for greatness. Greatness +in design has more peace than is found in the gentle abruptness of +Japanese lines, in their curious brevity. It is scarcely necessary +to say that a line, in all other schools of art, is long or short +according to its place and purpose; but only the Japanese designer +so contrives his patterns that the line is always short; and many +repeating designs are entirely composed of this various and +variously-occurring brevity, this prankish avoidance of the goal. +Moreover, the Japanese evade symmetry, in the unit of their +repeating patterns, by another simple device - that of numbers. +They make a small difference in the number of curves and of lines. +A great difference would not make the same effect of variety; it +would look too much like a contrast. For example, three rods on one +side and six on another would be something else than a mere +variation, and variety would be lost by the use of them. The +Japanese decorator will vary three in this place by two in that, and +a sense of the defeat of symmetry is immediately produced. With +more violent means the idea of symmetry would have been neither +suggested nor refuted. + +Leaving mere repeating patterns and diaper designs, you find, in +Japanese compositions, complete designs in which there is no point +of symmetry. It is a balance of suspension and of antithesis. +There is no sense of lack of equilibrium, because place is, most +subtly, made to have the effect of giving or of subtracting value. +A small thing is arranged to reply to a large one, for the small +thing is placed at the precise distance that makes it a (Japanese) +equivalent. In Italy (and perhaps in other countries) the scales +commonly in use are furnished with only a single weight that +increases or diminishes in value according as you slide it nearer or +farther upon a horizontal arm. It is equivalent to so many ounces +when it is close to the upright, and to so many pounds when it hangs +from the farther end of the horizontal rod. Distance plays some +such part with the twig or the bird in the upper corner of a +Japanese composition. Its place is its significance and its value. +Such an art of position implies a great art of intervals. The +Japanese chooses a few things and leaves the space between them +free, as free as the pauses or silences in music. But as time, not +silence, is the subject, or material, of contrast in musical pauses, +so it is the measurement of space - that is, collocation - that +makes the value of empty intervals. The space between this form and +that, in a Japanese composition, is valuable because it is just so +wide and no more. And this, again, is only another way of saying +that position is the principle of this apparently wilful art. + +Moreover, the alien art of Japan, in its pictorial form, has helped +to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly +transcending Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly +accepted moral support from the islands of the Japanese. He too +etches a kind of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the +spectator's knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to +nothing but the spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists +work in ways dissimilar. Nevertheless, the French etcher would +never have written his signs so freely had not the Japanese so +freely drawn his own. Furthermore still, the transitory and +destructible material of Japanese art has done as much as the +multiplication of newspapers, and the discovery of processes, to +reconcile the European designer - the black and white artist - to +working for the day, the day of publication. Japan lives much of +its daily life by means of paper, painted; so does Europe by means +of paper, printed. But as we, unlike those Orientals, are a +destructive people, paper with us means short life, quick abolition, +transformation, re-appearance, a very circulation of life. This is +our present way of surviving ourselves - the new version of that +feat of life. Time was when to survive yourself meant to secure, +for a time indefinitely longer than the life of man, such dull form +as you had given to your work; to intrude upon posterity. To +survive yourself, to-day, is to let your work go into daily +oblivion. + +Now, though the Japanese are not a destructive people, their paper +does not last for ever, and that material has clearly suggested to +them a different condition of ornament from that with which they +adorned old lacquer, fine ivory, or other perdurable things. For +the transitory material they keep the more purely pictorial art of +landscape. What of Japanese landscape? Assuredly it is too far +reduced to a monotonous convention to merit the serious study of +races that have produced Cotman and Corot. Japanese landscape- +drawing reduces things seen to such fewness as must have made the +art insuperably tedious to any people less fresh-spirited and more +inclined to take themselves seriously than these Orientals. A +preoccupied people would never endure it. But a little closer +attention from the Occidental student might find for their evasive +attitude towards landscape - it is an attitude almost traitorously +evasive - a more significant reason. It is that the distances, the +greatness, the winds and the waves of the world, coloured plains, +and the flight of a sky, are all certainly alien to the perceptions +of a people intent upon little deformities. Does it seem harsh to +define by that phrase the curious Japanese search for accidents? +Upon such search these people are avowedly intent, even though they +show themselves capable of exquisite appreciation of the form of a +normal bird and of the habit of growth of a normal flower. They are +not in search of the perpetual slight novelty which was Aristotle's +ideal of the language poetic ("a little wildly, or with the flower +of the mind," says Emerson of the way of a poet's speech) - and such +novelty it is, like the frequent pulse of the pinion, that keeps +verse upon the wing; no, what the Japanese are intent upon is +perpetual slight disorder. In Japan the man in the fields has eyes +less for the sky and the crescent moon than for some stone in the +path, of which the asymmetry strikes his curious sense of pleasure +in fortunate accident of form. For love of a little grotesque +strangeness he will load himself with the stone and carry it home to +his garden. The art of such a people is not liberal art, not the +art of peace, and not the art of humanity. Look at the curls and +curves whereby this people conventionally signify wave or cloud. +All these curls have an attitude which is like that of a figure +slightly malformed, and not like that of a human body that is +perfect, dominant, and if bent, bent at no lowly or niggling labour. +Why these curves should be so charming it would be hard to say; they +have an exquisite prankishness of variety, the place where the +upward or downward scrolls curl off from the main wave is delicately +unexpected every time, and - especially in gold embroideries - is +sensitively fit for the material, catching and losing the light, +while the lengths of waving line are such as the long gold threads +take by nature. + +A moment ago this art was declared not human. And, in fact, in no +other art has the figure suffered such crooked handling. The +Japanese have generally evaded even the local beauty of their own +race for the sake of perpetual slight deformity. Their beauty is +remote from our sympathy and admiration; and it is quite possible +that we might miss it in pictorial presentation, and that the +Japanese artist may have intended human beauty where we do not +recognise it. But if it is not easy to recognise, it is certainly +not difficult to guess at. And, accordingly, you are generally +aware that the separate beauty of the race, and its separate +dignity, even - to be very generous - has been admired by the +Japanese artist, and is represented here and there occasionally, in +the figure of warrior or mousme. But even with this exception the +habit of Japanese figure-drawing is evidently grotesque, derisive, +and crooked. It is curious to observe that the search for slight +deformity is so constant as to make use, for its purposes, not of +action only, but of perspective foreshortening. With us it is to +the youngest child only that there would appear to be mirth in the +drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would seem to have +his head "beneath his shoulders." The European child would not see +fun in the living man so presented, but - unused to the same effect +"in the flat" - he thinks it prodigiously humorous in a drawing. +But so only when he is quite young. The Japanese keeps, apparently, +his sense of this kind of humour. It amuses him, but not perhaps +altogether as it amuses the child, that the foreshortened figure +should, in drawing and to the unpractised eye, seem distorted and +dislocated; the simple Oriental appears to find more derision in it +than the simple child. The distortion is not without a suggestion +of ignominy. And, moreover, the Japanese shows derision, but not +precisely scorn. He does not hold himself superior to his hideous +models. He makes free with them on equal terms. He is familiar +with them. + +And if this is the conviction gathered from ordinary drawings, no +need to insist upon the ignoble character of those that are +intentional caricatures. + +Perhaps the time has hardly come for writing anew the praises of +symmetry. The world knows too much of the abuse of Greek +decoration, and would be glad to forget it, with the intention of +learning that art afresh in a future age and of seeing it then anew. +But whatever may be the phases of the arts, there is the abiding +principle of symmetry in the body of man, that goes erect, like an +upright soul. Its balance is equal. Exterior human symmetry is +surely a curious physiological fact where there is no symmetry +interiorly. For the centres of life and movement within the body +are placed with Oriental inequality. Man is Greek without and +Japanese within. But the absolute symmetry of the skeleton and of +the beauty and life that cover it is accurately a principle. It +controls, but not tyrannously, all the life of human action. +Attitude and motion disturb perpetually, with infinite incidents - +inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of sleep - the +symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that symmetry +complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the +battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because +this hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and +that the sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses +the unequal heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and +strength are inflections thereof. All human movement is a variation +upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it +would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless +art. The order of inflection that is not infraction has been +explained in a most authoritative sentence of criticism of +literature, a sentence that should save the world the trouble of +some of its futile, violent, and weak experiments: "Law, the +rectitude of humanity," says Mr Coventry Patmore, "should be the +poet's only subject, as, from time immemorial, it has been the +subject of true art, though many a true artist has done the Muse's +will and knew it not. As all the music of verse arises, not from +infraction but from inflection of the law of the set metre; so the +greatest poets have been those the MODULUS of whose verse has been +most variously and delicately inflected, in correspondence with +feelings and passions which are the inflections of moral law in +their theme. Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds +with a strain upon law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the +quality of poetic language is a continual SLIGHT novelty. In the +highest poetry, like that of Milton, these three modes of +inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all chime together in +praise of the truer order of life." + +And like that order is the order of the figure of man, an order most +beautiful and most secure when it is put to the proof. That +perpetual proof by perpetual inflection is the very condition of +life. Symmetry is a profound, if disregarded because perpetually +inflected, condition of human life. + +The nimble art of Japan is unessential; it may come and go, may +settle or be fanned away. It has life and it is not without law; it +has an obvious life, and a less obvious law. But with Greece abides +the obvious law and the less obvious life: symmetry as apparent as +the symmetry of the form of man, and life occult like his unequal +heart. And this seems to be the nobler and the more perdurable +relation. + + + +THE ILLUSION OF HISTORIC TIME + + + +He who has survived his childhood intelligently must become +conscious of something more than a change in his sense of the +present and in his apprehension of the future. He must be aware of +no less a thing than the destruction of the past. Its events and +empires stand where they did, and the mere relation of time is as it +was. But that which has fallen together, has fallen in, has fallen +close, and lies in a little heap, is the past itself - time - the +fact of antiquity. + +He has grown into a smaller world as he has grown older. There are +no more extremities. Recorded time has no more terrors. The unit +of measure which he holds in his hand has become in his eyes a thing +of paltry length. The discovery draws in the annals of mankind. He +had thought them to be wide. + +For a man has nothing whereby to order and place the floods, the +states, the conquests, and the temples of the past, except only the +measure which he holds. Call that measure a space of ten years. +His first ten years had given him the illusion of a most august +scale and measure. It was then that he conceived Antiquity. But +now! Is it to a decade of ten such little years as these now in his +hand - ten of his mature years - that men give the dignity of a +century? They call it an age; but what if life shows now so small +that the word age has lost its gravity? + +In fact, when a child begins to know that there is a past, he has a +most noble rod to measure it by - he has his own ten years. He +attributes an overwhelming majesty to all recorded time. He confers +distance. He, and he alone, bestows mystery. Remoteness is his. +He creates more than mortal centuries. He sends armies fighting +into the extremities of the past. He assigns the Parthenon to a +hill of ages, and the temples of Upper Egypt to sidereal time. + +If there were no child, there would be nothing old. He, having +conceived old time, communicates a remembrance at least of the +mystery to the mind of the man. The man perceives at last all the +illusion, but he cannot forget what was his conviction when he was a +child. He had once a persuasion of Antiquity. And this is not for +nothing. The enormous undeception that comes upon him still leaves +spaces in his mind. + +But the undeception is rude work. The man receives successive +shocks. It is as though one strained level eyes towards the +horizon, and then were bidden to shorten his sight and to close his +search within a poor half acre before his face. Now, it is that he +suddenly perceives the hitherto remote, remote youth of his own +parents to have been something familiarly near, so measured by his +new standard; again, it is the coming of Attila that is displaced. +Those ten last years of his have corrected the world. There needs +no other rod than that ten years' rod to chastise all the +imaginations of the spirit of man. It makes history skip. + +To have lived through any appreciable part of any century is to hold +thenceforth a mere century cheap enough. But, it may be said, the +mystery of change remains. Nay, it does not. Change that trudges +through our own world - our contemporary world - is not very +mysterious. We perceive its pace; it is a jog-trot. Even so, we +now consider, jolted the changes of the past, with the same hurry. + +The man, therefore, who has intelligently ceased to be a child scans +through a shortened avenue the reaches of the past. He marvels that +he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts, +for instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for +the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own +magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus +they belong to him as he is now - a man; and not to him as he was +once - a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten +years' rule along the path from our time to theirs; that path must +be skipped by the nimble yard in the man's present possession. +Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy. + +What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such +little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the +illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself +Antiquity - to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of +childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of +thirty-five; but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham. +THERE is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood - +no further - if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the +mystery of change. + +For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it +rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an +apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an +illusive apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history - a real +apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If +there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the +renewed and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind. + +And it is of this - merely of this - that "ancient" history seems to +partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is +why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at +that present age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would +be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every +one was seven years old. It is by good fortune that "ancient" +history is taught in the only ancient days. So, for a time, the +world is magical. + +Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning +something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges +the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great +illusion is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and +flight caught back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains +enlarged. The man remains capable of great spaces of time. He will +not find them in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he +contains them, he is aware of them. History has fallen together, +but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, stretches beyond +and passes on the road to eternity. + +He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years +that are the treasury of preceptions - the first. The great +disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together +the days that made them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far +apart" is wonderful. The past of childhood is not single, is not +motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits a world away one +from the other. Year from year differs as the antiquity of Mexico +from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man of thirty-five knows for +ever afterwards what is flight, even though he finds no great +historic distances to prove his wings by. + +There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious +childhood, which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy. +Many other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten +years. Hours of weariness are long - not with a mysterious length, +but with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called +minutes and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their +apparent contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not +merely one of these - it is a space not of long, but of +immeasurable, time. It is the moment of going to sleep. The man +knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased +to find antiquity there. It has become a common enough margin of +dreams to him; and he does not attend to its phantasies. He knows +that he has a frolic spirit in his head which has its way at those +hours, but he is not interested in it. It is the inexperienced +child who passes with simplicity through the marginal country; and +the thing he meets there is principally the yet further conception +of illimitable time. + +His nurse's lullaby is translated into the mysteries of time. She +sings absolutely immemorial words. It matters little what they may +mean to waking ears; to the ears of a child going to sleep they tell +of the beginning of the world. He has fallen asleep to the sound of +them all his life; and "all his life" means more than older speech +can well express. + +Ancient custom is formed in a single spacious year. A child is +beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that +the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to +throw it further back - it is already so far. That is, it looks as +remote to the memory of a man of thirty as to that of a man of +seventy. What are a mere forty years of added later life in the +contemplation of such a distance? Pshaw! + + + +EYES + + + +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. + +So with Charlotte Bronte. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Colour of Life by Alice Meynell + diff --git a/old/clrlf10.zip b/old/clrlf10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..261c20d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/clrlf10.zip |