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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/12278-0.txt b/12278-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..039cea5 --- /dev/null +++ b/12278-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6825 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +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: Confessions of a Young Man + +Author: George Moore + +Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12278] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A...YOUNG MAN + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN + +By GEORGE MOORE. 1886. + +Edited and Annotated by GEORGE MOORE, 1904, + + + + +Clifford's Inn--1904 + + + + + À JACQUES BLANCHE. + + L'âme de l'ancien Égyptien s'éveillait en moi quand mourut ma + jeunesse, et j'étais inspiré de conserver mon passé, son esprit et sa + forme, dans l'art. + + Alors trempant le pinceau dans ma mémoire, j'ai peint ses joues pour + qu'elles prissent l'exacte ressemblance de la vie, et j'ai enveloppé + le mort dans les plus fins linceuls. Rhamenès le second n'a pas reçu + des soins plus pieux! Que ce livre soit aussi durable que sa + pyramide! + + Votre nom, cher ami, je voudrais l'inscrire ici comme épitaphe, car + vous êtes mon plus jeune et mon plus cher ami; et il se trouve en + vous tout ce qui est gracieux et subtil dans ces mornes années qui + s'égouttent dans le vase du vingtième siècle. + + G.M. + + + + +PREFACE TO A NEW EDITION OF "CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN" + + + + +I + + +Dear little book, what shall I say about thee? Belated offspring of +mine, out of print for twenty years, what shall I say in praise of thee? +For twenty years I have only seen thee in French, and in this English +text thou comest to me like an old love, at once a surprise and a +recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I +could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So +for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a +railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed +my station by, and had to hire a carriage and drive across the downs. + +Like a learned Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a +_naïf_ young man, a little vicious in his _naïveté_, who says that his +soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the +world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other +explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new, +more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every +wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself +seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the +style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his +early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig +and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is +true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing +dedication written in the form of an epitaph, an epitaph upon myself, +for it appears that part of me was dead even when I wrote "Confessions +of a Young Man." The youngest have a past, and this epitaph dedication, +printed in capital letters, informs me that I have embalmed my past, +that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem +I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the +railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a +tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for _un peu plus de +toilette_. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the +middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet, +that is a morbidity from which the middle-aged shrink). I would set his +coat collar straighter, I would sweep some specks from it. But can I do +aught for this youth, does he need my supervision? He was himself, that +was his genius; and I sit at gaze. My melancholy is like her's--the +ancient light-o'-love of whom I spoke just now, when she sits by the +fire in the dusk, a miniature of her past self in her hand. + + + + +II + + +This edition has not been printed from old plates, no chicanery of that +kind: it has been printed from new type, and it was brought about by +Walter Pater's evocative letter. (It wasn't, but I like to think that it +was). Off and on, his letter was sought for during many years, hunted +for through all sorts of portfolios and bookcases, but never found until +it appeared miraculously, just as the proof of my Pater article was +being sent back to the printer, the precious letter transpired--shall I +say "transpired?"--through a crack in the old bookcase. + + + BRASENOSE COLLEGE, + + _Mar_. 4. + + MY DEAR, AUDACIOUS MOORE,--Many thanks for the "Confessions" which I + have read with great interest, and admiration for your + originality--your delightful criticisms--your Aristophanic joy, or at + least enjoyment, in life--your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there + are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case + of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or + disagree. What I cannot doubt is the literary faculty displayed. + "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" I feel inclined to say on + finishing your book; "shape" morally, I mean; not in reference to + style. + + You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been + independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing, + both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its + gaiety and good-nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many + things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive, way of + looking at the world. You call it only "realistic." Still! + + With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining + pen.--Very sincerely yours, + + WALTER PATER. + +Remember, reader, that this letter was written by the last great English +writer, by the author of "Imaginary Portraits," the most beautiful of +all prose books. I should like to break off and tell of my delight in +reading "Imaginary Portraits," but I have told my delight elsewhere; go, +seek out what I have said in the pages of the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for +August 1904, for here I am obliged to tell you of myself. I give you +Pater's letter, for I wish you to read this book with reverence; never +forget that Pater's admiration has made this book a sacred book. Never +forget that. + +My special pleasure in these early pages was to find that I thought +about Pater twenty years ago as I think about him now, and shall +certainly think of him till time everlasting, world without end. I have +been accused of changing my likes and dislikes--no one has changed less +than I, and this book is proof of my fidelity to my first ideas; the +ideas I have followed all my life are in this book--dear crescent moon +rising in the south-east above the trees at the end of the village +green. It was in that ugly but well-beloved village on the south coast I +discovered my love of Protestant England. It was on the downs that the +instinct of Protestantism lit up in me. + +But when Zola asked me why I preferred Protestantism to Roman +Catholicism I could not answer him. + +He had promised to write a preface for the French translation of the +"Mummer's Wife"; the translation had to be revised, months and months +passed away, and forgetting all about the "Mummer's Wife," I expressed +my opinion about Zola, which had been changing, a little too +fearlessly, and in view of my revolt he was obliged to break his promise +to write a Preface, and this must have been a great blow, for he was a +man of method, to whom any change of plan was disagreeable and +unnerving. He sent a letter, asking me to come to Medan, he would talk +to me about the "Confessions." Well do I remember going there with dear +Alexis in the May-time, the young corn six inches high in the fields, +and my delight in the lush luxuriance of the l'Oise. That dear morning +is remembered, and the poor master who reproved me a little +sententiously, is dead. He was sorrowful in that dreadful room of his, +fixed up with stained glass and morbid antiquities. He lay on a sofa +lecturing me till breakfast. Then I thought reproof was over, but after +a walk in the garden we went upstairs and he began again, saying he was +not angry. "It is the law of nature," he said, "for children to devour +their parents. I do not complain." I think he was aware he was playing a +part; his sofa was his stage; and he lay there theatrical as Leo XI. or +Beerbohm Tree, saying that the Roman Church was an artistic church, that +its rich externality and ceremonial were pagan. But I think he knew even +then, at the back of his mind, that I was right; that is why he pressed +me to give reasons for my preference. Zola came to hate Catholicism as +much as I, and his hatred was for the same reason as mine; we both +learnt that any religion which robs a man of the right of free-will and +private judgment degrades the soul, renders it lethargic and timid, +takes the edge off the intellect. Zola lived to write "that the Catholic +countries are dead, and the clergy are the worms in the corpses." The +observation is "quelconque"; I should prefer the more interesting +allegation that since the Reformation no born Catholic has written a +book of literary value! He would have had to concede that some converts +have written well; the convert still retains a little of his ancient +freedom, some of the intellectual virility he acquired elsewhere, but +the born Catholic is still-born. But however we may disapprove of +Catholicism, we can still admire the convert. Cardinal Manning was aware +of the advantages of a Protestant bringing up, and he often said that he +was glad he had been born a Protestant. His Eminence was, therefore, of +opinion that the Catholic faith should be reserved, and exclusively, for +converts, and in this he showed his practical sense, for it is easy to +imagine a country prosperous in which all the inhabitants should be +brought up Protestants or agnostics, and in which conversions to Rome +are only permitted after a certain age or in clearly defined +circumstances. There would be something beyond mere practical wisdom in +such law-giving, an exquisite sense of the pathos of human life and its +requirements; scapulars, indulgences and sacraments are needed by the +weak and the ageing, sacraments especially. "They make you believe but +they stupefy you;" these words are Pascal's, the great light of the +Catholic Church. + + + + +III + + +My Protestant sympathies go back very far, further back than these +Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in +versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a +sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things +especially dear to me, my love of France and Protestantism. + + Je t'apporte mon drame, o poète sublime, + Ainsi qu'un écolier au maître sa leçon: + Ce livre avec fierté porte comme écusson + Le sceau qu'en nos esprits ta jeune gloire imprime. + + Accepte, tu verras la foi mêlée au crime, + Se souiller dans le sang sacré de la raison, + Quand surgit, rédempteur du vieux peuple saxon, + Luther à Wittemberg comme Christ à Solime. + + Jamais de la cité le mal entier ne fuit, + Hélas! et son autel y fume dans la nuit; + Mais notre âge a ceci de pareil à l'aurore. + + Que c'est un divin cri du chanteur éternal, + Le tien, qui pour forcer le jour tardif d'éclore + Déchire avec splendeur le voile épars du ciel. + +I find not only my Protestant sympathies in the "Confessions" but a +proud agnosticism, and an exalted individualism which in certain +passages leads the reader to the sundered rocks about the cave of +Zarathoustra. My book was written before I heard that splendid name, +before Zarathoustra was written; and the doctrine, though hardly +formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye +shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions," +"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France--the country as +Pater would say of my instinctive election--and all my prophecies. +Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their +inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so +well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the +Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness despite the journalists +and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor Colvin, he made a mistake, +he should have hopped on to Pater. + +Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no +more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I +might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw. +Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to withdraw +them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may re-write his +confessions. + +A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase +about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has +succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and +if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more +unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface. + +GEORGE MOORE. + + + + +Confessions of a Young Man + + + + +I + + +My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and +form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous +temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am +free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have +acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, +upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth +sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being +moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I +might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archbishop, and +that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of +success would have been mine. I have felt the goad of many impulses, I +have hunted many a trail; when one scent failed another was taken up, +and pursued with the pertinacity of instinct, rather than the fervour of +a reasoned conviction. Sometimes, it is true, there came moments of +weariness, of despondency, but they were not enduring: a word spoken, a +book read, or yielding to the attraction of environment, I was soon off +in another direction, forgetful of past failures. Intricate, indeed, was +the labyrinth of my desires; all lights were followed with the same +ardour, all cries were eagerly responded to: they came from the right, +they came from the left, from every side. But one cry was more +persistent, and as the years passed I learned to follow it with +increasing vigour, and my strayings grew fewer and the way wider. + +I was eleven years old when I first heard and obeyed this cry, or, shall +I say, echo-augury? + +Scene: A great family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, +lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever-recurrent signs--long ranges +of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of +plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two +children. They are smart, with new jackets and neckties; their faces +are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a +little sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children +are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. +Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name! +and she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. +Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred +and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, +it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the +delight of tearing down fruit trees and killing a cat. + +But when we returned home I took the first opportunity of stealing the +novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read +its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called +_The Doctors Wife_--a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, +there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. +Why did I love Shelley? Why was I not attracted to Byron? I cannot say. +Shelley! Oh, that crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must +see it, I must know him. Escaping from the schoolroom, I ransacked the +library, and at last my ardour was rewarded. The book--a small pocket +edition in red boards, no doubt long out of print--opened at the +"Sensitive Plant." Was I disappointed? I think I had expected to +understand better; but I had no difficulty in assuming that I was +satisfied and delighted. And henceforth the little volume never left my +pocket, and I read the dazzling stanzas by the shores of a pale green +Irish lake, comprehending little, and loving a great deal. Byron, too, +was often with me, and these poets were the ripening influence of years +otherwise merely nervous and boisterous. + +And my poets were taken to school, because it pleased me to read "Queen +Mab" and "Cain," amid the priests and ignorance of a hateful Roman +Catholic college. And there my poets saved me from intellectual +savagery; for I was incapable at that time of learning anything. What +determined and incorrigible idleness! I used to gaze fondly on a book, +holding my head between my hands, and allow my thoughts to wander far +into dreams and thin imaginings. Neither Latin, nor Greek, nor French, +nor History, nor English composition could I learn, unless, indeed, my +curiosity or personal interest was excited,--then I made rapid strides +in that branch of knowledge to which my attention was directed. A mind +hitherto dark seemed suddenly to grow clear, and it remained clear and +bright enough so long as passion was in me; but as it died, so the mind +clouded, and recoiled to its original obtuseness. Couldn't and wouldn't +were in my case curiously involved; nor have I in this respect ever been +able to correct my natural temperament. I have always remained powerless +to do anything unless moved by a powerful desire. + +The natural end to such schooldays as mine was expulsion. I was expelled +when I was sixteen, for idleness and general worthlessness. I returned +to a wild country home, where I found my father engaged in training +racehorses. For a nature of such intense vitality as mine, an ambition, +an aspiration of some sort was necessary; and I now, as I have often +done since, accepted the first ideal to hand. In this instance it was +the _stable_. I was given a hunter, I rode to hounds every week, I rode +gallops every morning, I read the racing calendar, stud-book, latest +betting, and looked forward with enthusiasm to the day when I should be +known as a successful steeplechase rider. To ride the winner of the +Liverpool seemed to me a final achievement and glory; and had not +accident intervened, it is very possible that I might have succeeded in +carrying off, if not the meditated honour, something scarcely inferior, +such as--alas! I cannot now recall the name of a race of the necessary +value and importance. About this time my father was elected Member of +Parliament; our home was broken up, and we went to London. But an ideal +set up on its pedestal is not easily displaced, and I persevered in my +love, despite the poor promises London life held out for its ultimate +attainment; and surreptitiously I continued to nourish it with small +bets made in a small tobacconist's. Well do I remember that shop, the +oily-faced, sandy-whiskered proprietor, his betting-book, the cheap +cigars along the counter, the one-eyed nondescript who leaned his +evening away against the counter, and was supposed to know some one who +knew Lord ----'s footman, and the great man often spoken of, but rarely +seen--he who made "a two-'undred pound book on the Derby"; and the +constant coming and going of the cabmen--"Half an ounce of shag, sir." I +was then at a military tutor's in the Euston Road; for, in answer to my +father's question as to what occupation I intended to pursue, I had +consented to enter the army. In my heart I knew that when it came to the +point I should refuse--the idea of military discipline was very +repugnant, and the possibility of an anonymous death on a battle-field +could not be accepted by so self-conscious a youth, by one so full of +his own personality. I said Yes to my father, because the moral courage +to say No was lacking, and I put my trust in the future, as well I +might, for a fair prospect of idleness lay before me, and the chance of +my passing any examination was, indeed, remote. + +In London I made the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked +incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger +than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a +welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His +pictures--Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of +artistic perception, save a certain sentiment for the grand and +noble--filled me with wonderment and awe. "How jolly it would be to be a +painter," I once said, quite involuntarily. "Why, would you like to be a +painter?" he asked abruptly. I laughed, not suspecting that I had the +slightest gift, as indeed was the case, but the idea remained in my +mind, and soon after I began to make sketches in the streets and +theatres. My attempts were not very successful, but they encouraged me +to tell my father that I would go to the military tutor no more, and he +allowed me to enter the Kensington Museum as an Art student. There, of +course, I learned nothing, and, from the point of view of art merely, I +had much better have continued my sketches in the streets; but the +museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that applied +marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in the +galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting and +steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then, looked to +a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than I. +And then the sweet, white peace of antiquity! The great, calm gaze that +is not sadness nor joy, but something that we know not of--which is lost +to the world for ever. + +"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France--France is the +only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of +echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, +that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word +rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang +from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" +Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live +there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not when nor how, but +I knew I should go to France.... + +So my youth ran into manhood, finding its way from rock to rock like a +rivulet, gathering strength at each leap. One day my father was suddenly +called to Ireland. A few days after, a telegram came, and my mother read +that we were required at his bedside. We journeyed over land and sea, +and on a bleak country road, one winter's evening, a man approached us +and I heard him say that all was over, that my father was dead. I loved +my father; I burst into tears; and yet my soul said, "I am glad." The +thought came unbidden, undesired, and I turned aside, shocked at the +sight it afforded of my soul. + +O, my father, I, who love and reverence nothing else, love and reverence +thee; thou art the one pure image in my mind, the one true affection +that life has not broken or soiled; I remember thy voice and thy kind, +happy ways. All I have of worldly goods and native wit I received from +thee--and was it I who was glad? No, it was not I; I had no concern in +the thought that then fell upon me unbidden and undesired; my individual +voice can give you but praise and loving words; and the voice that said +"I am glad" was not my voice, but that of the will to live which we +inherit from elemental dust through countless generations. Terrible and +imperative is the voice of the will to live: let him who is innocent +cast the first stone. + +Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; +that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so +irreparably his. + +My father's death freed me, and I sprang like a loosened bough up to the +light. His death gave me power to create myself, that is to say, to +create a complete and absolute self out of the partial self which was +all that the restraint of home had permitted; this future self, this +ideal George Moore, beckoned me, lured like a ghost; and as I followed +the funeral the question, Would I sacrifice this ghostly self, if by so +doing I should bring my father back? presented itself without +intermission, and I shrank horrified at the answer which I could not +crush out of mind. + +Now my life was like a garden in the emotive torpor of spring; now my +life was like a flower conscious of the light. Money was placed in my +hands, and I divined all it represented. Before me the crystal lake, the +distant mountains, the swaying woods, said but one word, and that word +was--self; not the self that was then mine, but the self on whose +creation I was enthusiastically determined. But I felt like a murderer +when I turned to leave the place which I had so suddenly, and I could +not but think unjustly, become possessed of. And now, as I probe this +poignant psychological moment, I find that, although I perfectly well +realised that all pleasures were then in my reach--women, elegant dress, +theatres, and supper-rooms, I hardly thought at all of them, and much +more of certain drawings from the plaster cast. I would be an artist. +More than ever I was determined to be an artist, and my brain was made +of this desire as I journeyed as fast as railway and steamboat could +take me to London. No further trammels, no further need of being a +soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and France +before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would +feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a +studio. A studio--tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it +is difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul +in these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my +studio was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of +effectually throwing over all restraint, I did not view it at all in +this light. My love of Art was very genuine and deep-rooted; the +tobacconist's betting-book was now as nothing, and a certain Botticelli +in the National Gallery held me in tether. And when I look back and +consider the past, I am forced to admit that I might have grown up in +less fortunate circumstances, for even the studio, with its +dissipations--and they were many--was not unserviceable; it developed +the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to grow and +ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contradistinction to the +University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a formula +which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average human +being. + +Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from +the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read very +nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read +Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin, and Mill. So it will be understood that +Shelley not only gave me my first soul, but led all its first flights. +But I do not think that if Shelley had been no more than a poet, +notwithstanding my very genuine love of verse, he would have gained such +influence in my youthful sympathies; but Shelley dreamed in +metaphysics--very thin dreaming if you will; but just such thin dreaming +as I could follow. Was there or was there not a God? And for many years +I could not dismiss as parcel of the world's folly this question, and I +sought a solution, inclining towards atheism, for it was natural in me +to revere nothing, and to oppose the routine of daily thought. And I was +but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I must decline to +believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against the chimney-piece +in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the household with the news; +but although a religious woman, my mother did not seem in the least +frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry, George, it is so." I was +deeply shocked at her indifference. + +Finding music and atheism in poetry I cared little for novels. Scott +seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too +impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and +_Bleak House_ I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep +impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not +picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for +some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very +small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: +_Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The +History of Civilisation_, were momentous events in my life. But I loved +life better than books, and very curiously my studies and my pleasures +kept pace, stepping together like a pair of well-trained carriage +horses. While I was waiting for my coach to take a party of _tarts_ and +_mashers_ to the Derby, I would read a chapter of Kant, and I often took +the book away with me in my pocket. And I cultivated with care the +acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the +purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, +delighted me. I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to +spend on scent and toilette knick-knacks as much as would keep a poor +man's family in affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the +fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to +shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, +the life of the theatres--that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, +of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes--interested me +beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at +home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I +was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up +the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the +Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected +ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of +dissipations. But there was no need to fear; for I was naturally endowed +with a very clear sense of self-preservation; I neither betted nor +drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point +of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about +four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, and repeating some +verses of Shelley, I thought how I should go to Paris when I was of age, +and study painting. + + + + +II + + +At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes, +books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for +Paris and Art. + +We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past six +in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city. +Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar +bleakness in the streets. The _ménagère_ hurries down the asphalte to +market; a dreadful _garçon de café_, with a napkin tied round his +throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it +seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the +Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées? I asked myself; and feeling +bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my +valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the +study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to +formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and +the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for. + +My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the Beaux Arts--Cabanel's +studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration +for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was +told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on the +master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to speak +to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks until I could +hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot say. I +never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my +language must have been like--like nothing ever heard under God's sky +before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of +the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures +I had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then +in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he +would be glad to have me as a pupil.... + +But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits +only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast; +and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an +effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey +perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the +lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the +room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more. I felt humiliated +at my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy; and +I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the Boulevards, +studying the photographs of the _salon_ pictures, thinking of what my +next move should be. I had never forgotten my father showing me, one day +when he was shaving, three photographs from pictures. They were by an +artist called Sevres. My father liked the slenderer figure, but I liked +the corpulent--the Venus standing at the corner of a wood, pouring wine +into a goblet, while Cupid, from behind her satin-enveloped knees, drew +his bow and shot the doves that flew from glistening poplar trees. The +beauty of this woman, and what her beauty must be in the life of the +painter, had inspired many a reverie, and I had concluded--this +conclusion being of all others most sympathetic to me--that she was his +very beautiful mistress, that they lived in a picturesque pavilion in +the midst of a shady garden full of birds and tall flowers. I had often +imagined her walking there at mid-day, dressed in white muslin with wide +sleeves open to the elbow, scattering grain from a silver plate to the +proud pigeons that strutted about her slippered feet and fluttered to +her dove-like hand. I had dreamed of seeing that woman as I rode +racehorses on wild Irish plains, of being loved by her; in London I had +dreamed of becoming Sevres's pupil. + +What coming and going, what inquiries, what difficulties arose! At last +I was advised to go to the Exposition aux Champs Elysée and seek his +address in the catalogue. I did so, and while the _concierge_ copied out +the address for me, I chased his tame magpie that hopped about one of +the angles of the great building. The reader smiles. I was a childish +boy of one-and-twenty who knew nothing, and to whom the world was +astonishingly new. Doubtless before my soul was given to me it had been +plunged deep in Lethe, and so an almost virgin man I stood in front of a +virgin world. + +Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a +fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake +reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in +the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden +wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked +up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in +muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a +silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it; +and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a +tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close; +and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every +nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her +eyes as I passed. + +Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of +a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his +daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M. +Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now +the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that +the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish +sensualities. + +I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm +on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a +wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We +were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to +smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me +to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the +Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is +that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to +admit even now, saturated though I now am with the æsthetics of +different schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am +writing of my nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional +attractiveness of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender +hips and hands, and I accepted Jules Lefebvre wholly and +unconditionally. He hesitated, however, when I asked to be taken as a +private pupil, but he wrote out the address of a studio where he gave +instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even more to my taste, for I +had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was anxious to see as much +of them as possible. + +The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I +found M. Julien, a typical meridional--the large stomach, the dark eyes, +crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual +mind. We made friends at once--he consciously making use of me, I +unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's +subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to +the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it +was a little tiresome to have to put up with a talkative person, whose +knowledge of the French language had been acquired in three months, but +the dinners were good. No doubt Julien reasoned so; I did not reason at +all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the world was necessary to me. I +had never met such a man before, and all my curiosity was awake. He +spoke of art and literature, of the world and the flesh; he told me of +the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents in his own life; +and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his conversation I +thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the +look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The +world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years +before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out +straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a +distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society +only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and +which was destined to absorb some years of my life. + +In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among +these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were +also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle +and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions +and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of +unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio +conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and +were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did, +that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in +its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye--the gowns, the hair +lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow. +Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who +escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend +who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of +dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with +undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time--a +friendship which permeated and added to my life--I am nevertheless +forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my +special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a +shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to +pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a +moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely +compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my +path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I +pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the +studio; and, to my surprise, for he was fashionably dressed, and my +experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and +well-cut clothes, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were +beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and +large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could +not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his +figure, with all the surroundings--screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was +deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he +was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a +general exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring +_café_ to drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we +stooped under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to +me in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in +So-and-So's studio--the great blonde man, whose Doré-like improvisations +had awakened aspiration in me. + +The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and +then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?" Marshall +thought the following day would suit him better, but I was very +pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with him to +his rooms, and he would show me some pictures--some trifles he had +brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better. We got +into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new superiorities, +in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong, handsome, and +beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than myself, but he could +talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should, for he +was born in Brussels and had lived there all his life, but the accident +of birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He +spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable +restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his +hair curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was +on the tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be +utterly outdone, I alluded to my valet. + +His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained +that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now +living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would +allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of +pictures, which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration +increased to wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which +had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung +by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest +the rest of the studio--the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the +Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red +Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,--a +ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There +were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners +of the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very +little heed to my compliments; and sitting down at the piano, with a +great deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a +waltz. + +"What waltz is that?" I asked. + +"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of the +blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?" + +"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?" + +At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and an English girl +entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words +that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her +sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an +appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the +morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her. + +I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but +now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the +sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was +so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, +and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience +opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my +arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the +Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself; +but now I was taken to strange students' _cafés_, where dinners were +paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a _table d'hôte_ was +held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great +crowds to _Bullier_, the _Château Rouge_, or the _Elysée Montmartre_. +The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the +thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women--we only knew +their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling +through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer +night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing +glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a +magic lantern out of the sky. + +Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons +were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this +street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop" +to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs.... + +"_Madame ----, est-elle chez elle?_" + +"_Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer._" And we +were shown into a handsomely-furnished apartment. A lady would enter +hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French +sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always +commenced _mon cher ami_, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase +_vous avez tort_. The ladies themselves had only just returned from +Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious +lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several +millions of francs against different foreign governments. + +And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years +ago, at the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I +watched this world of Parisian adventurers and lights-o'-love. And this +craving for observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation +of gestures and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes +that mirror forth the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew +and strengthened, to the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me. +With the patience of a cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened, +picking one characteristic phrase out of hours of vain chatter, +interested and amused by an angry or loving glance. Like the midges that +fret the surface of a shadowy stream, these men and women seemed to me; +and though I laughed, danced, and made merry with them, I was not of +them. But with Marshall it was different: they were my amusement, they +were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of this distinction that made +twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it. Why could I not live +without an ever-present and acute consciousness of life? Why could I not +love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in the perfumed +silence of the chamber? + +And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The +general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent +contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced +to one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our +confidences knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain +confidences it is often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read or +felt was the subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that +a flush of colour and a bit of perspective awakens, the blue tints that +the summer sunset lends to a white dress, or the eternal verities, death +and love. But, although I tested every fibre of thought and analysed +every motive, I was very sincere in my friendship and very loyal in my +admiration. Nor did my admiration wane when I discovered that Marshall +was shallow in his appreciations, superficial in his judgments, that his +talents did not pierce below the surface; _il avait si grand air_, there +was fascination in his very bearing, in his large, soft, colourful eyes, +and a go and dash in his dissipations that carried you away. + +To any one observing us at this time it would have seemed that I was but +a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my +tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to +arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his +general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer +and more original nature. I was willing to learn, that was all. There +was much that Marshall could teach me, and I used him without shame, +without stint. I used him as I have used all those with whom I have been +brought into close contact. Search my memory as I will, I cannot recall +a case of man or woman who ever occupied any considerable part of my +thoughts without contributing largely towards my moral or physical +welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had +useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal +fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious, +egoistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and +more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent +services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with +less design than myself. Never have I given a thought to the advantage +that might accrue from being on terms of friendship with this man and +avoiding that one. "Then how do you explain," cries the angry reader, +"that you have never had a friend by whom you did not profit? You must +have had very few friends." On the contrary, I have had many friends, +and of all sorts and kinds--men and women: and, I repeat, none took part +in my life who did not contribute something towards my well-being. It +must, of course, be understood that I make no distinction between mental +and material help; and in my case the one has at all times been adjuvant +to the other. "Pooh, pooh!" again exclaims the reader; "I for one will +not believe that chance has only sent across your way the people who +were required to assist you." Chance! dear reader, is there such a thing +as chance? Do you believe in chance? Do you attach any precise meaning +to the word? Do you employ it at haphazard, allowing it to mean what it +may? Chance! What a field for psychical investigation is at once opened +up; how we may tear to shreds our past lives in search of--what? Of the +Chance that made us. I think, reader, I can throw some light on the +general question, by replying to your taunt: Chance, or the conditions +of life under which we live, sent, of course, thousands of creatures +across my way who were powerless to benefit me; but then an instinct of +which I knew nothing, of which I was not even conscious, withdrew me +from them, and I was attracted to others. Have you not seen a horse +suddenly leave a corner of a field to seek pasturage further away? + +Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my +mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind +asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much +expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same +processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the +case in a well-ordered stomach. Shelley, who fired my youth with +passion, and purified and upbore it for so long, is now to me as +nothing: not a dead or faded thing, but a thing out of which I +personally have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and, +therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. +And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing +line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such +perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of +tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a +spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten +corner of a forgotten room. My old rapture and my youth's delight I can +regain only when I think of that part of Gautier which is now incarnate +in me. + +As I picked up books, so I picked up my friends. I read friends and +books with the same passion, with the same avidity; and as I discarded +my books when I had assimilated as much of them as my system required, +so I discarded my friends when they ceased to be of use to me. I employ +the word "use" in its fullest, not in its limited and twenty-shilling +sense. This parallel of the intellect to the blind unconsciousness of +the lower organs will strike some as a violation of man's best beliefs, +and as saying very little for the particular intellect that can be so +reduced. But I am not sure these people are right. I am inclined to +think that as you ascend the scale of thought to the great minds, these +unaccountable impulses, mysterious resolutions, sudden, but certain +knowings, falling whence or how it is impossible to say, but falling +somehow into the brain, instead of growing rarer, become more and more +frequent; indeed, I think that if the really great man were to confess +to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by +inspirations...inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a +circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we +slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let +general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these +pages if it be understood that brain instincts have always been, and +still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being. + + + + +III + + +But the studio, where I had been working for the last three or four +months so diligently, became wearisome to me, and for two reasons. +First, because it deprived me of many hours of Marshall's company. +Secondly--and the second reason was the graver--because I was beginning +to regard the delineation of a nymph, or youth bathing, etc., as a very +narrow channel to carry off the strong, full tide of a man's thought. +For now thoughts of love and death, and the hopelessness of life, were +in active fermentation within me and sought for utterance with a strange +persistency of appeal. I yearned merely to give direct expression to my +pain. Life was then in its springtide; every thought was new to me, and +it would have seemed a pity to disguise even the simplest emotion in any +garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The +creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose +gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I +hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that +was all,--I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to +select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might +never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct +to me from the outside. + +At the time of which I am writing I lived in an old-fashioned hotel on +the Boulevard, which an enterprising Belgian had lately bought and was +endeavouring to modernise; an old-fashioned hotel, that still clung to +its ancient character in the presence of half a dozen old people, who, +for antediluvian reasons, continue to dine on certain well-specified +days at the _table d'hôte_. Fifteen years have passed away, and these +old people, no doubt, have joined their ancestors; but I can see them +still sitting in that _salle à manger_, the _buffets en vieux chéne,_ +the opulent candelabra _en style d'empire_, the waiter lighting the gas +in the pale Parisian evening. That white-haired man, that tall, thin, +hatchet-faced American, has dined at this _table d'hôte_ for the last +thirty years--he is talkative, vain, foolish, and authoritative. The +clean, neatly-dressed old gentleman who sits by him, looking so much +like a French gentleman, has spent a great part of his life in Spain. +With that piece of news, and its subsequent developments, your +acquaintance with him begins and ends; the eyes, the fan, the mantilla, +how it began, how it was broken off, and how it began again. Opposite +sits another French gentleman, with beard and bristly hair. He spent +twenty years of his life in India, and he talks of his son who has been +out there for the last ten, and who has just returned home. There is the +Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses like a girl of sixteen +and smokes a cigar after dinner,--if there are not too many strangers in +the room. A stranger she calls any one whom she has not seen at least +once before. The little fat, neckless man, with the great bald head, +fringed below the ears with hair, is M. Duval. He is a dramatic author, +the author of a hundred and sixty plays. He does not intrude himself on +your notice, but when you speak to him on literary matters he fixes a +pair of tiny, sloe-like eyes on you, and talks affably of his +collaborateurs. + +I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to +the _café_ after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered +him a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, +inevitable that I should find out that he had not had a play produced +for the last twenty years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty +was about his poor bald head. I thought of the chances of life, he +alluded to the war; and so this unpleasantness was passed over, and we +entered on more genial subjects of conversation. He had written plays +with everybody; his list of collaborateurs was longer than any list of +lady patronesses for an English county ball; there was no literary +kitchen in which he had not helped to dish up. I was at once amazed and +delighted. Had M. Duval written his hundred and sixty plays in the +seclusion of his own rooms, I should have been less surprised; it was +the mystery of the _séances_ of collaboration, the rendezvous, the +discussion, the illustrious company, that overwhelmed me in a rapture of +wonder and respectful admiration. Then came the anecdotes. They were of +all sorts. Here are a few specimens: He, Duval, had written a one-act +piece with Dumas _père_; it had been refused at the Français, and then +it had been about, here, there, and everywhere; finally the _Variétés_ +had asked for some alterations, and _c'était une affaire entendue_. "I +made the alterations one afternoon, and wrote to Dumas, and what do you +think,--by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not +consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the +_Variétés,_ because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the +Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier +and Dejazet. They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and +I was amused and astonished. These _bon-mots_ were followed by an +account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and +Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. +Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning +Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I +suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" +And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I +would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre--rooms +high up on the fifth floor--where, between two pictures, supposed to be +by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had written unactable plays for the +last twenty years, and where he would continue to write unactable plays +until God called him to a world, perhaps, of eternal cantatas, but +where, by all accounts, _l'exposition de la pièce selon la formule de M. +Scribe_ is still unknown. + +How I used to enjoy these conversations! I remember how I used to stand +on the pavement after having bid the old gentleman good-night, +regretting I had not asked for some further explanation regarding _le +mouvement Romantique_, or _la façon de M. Scribe de ménager la +situation_. + +Why not write a comedy? So the thought came. I had never written +anything save a few ill-spelt letters; but no matter. To find a plot was +the first thing. Take Marshall for hero and Alice for heroine, surround +them with the old gentlemen who dined at the _table d'hôte,_ flavour +with the Italian countess who smoked cigars when there were not too many +strangers present. After three weeks of industrious stirring, the +ingredients did begin to simmer into something resembling a plot. Put it +upon paper. Ah! there was my difficulty. I remembered suddenly that I +had read "Cain," "Manfred," "The Cenci," as poems, without ever +thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in +blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. +Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read +him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a +copy? No; the name repelled me--as all popular names repelled me. In +preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy +by M. Dumas _fils_. But strain my imagination as I would, I could not +see the spoken words in their written form. Oh, for a look at the +prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! +At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's +edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, +Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, +which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my +memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might be +imagined. + +No sooner was the last scene written than I started at once for London, +confident I should find no difficulty in getting my play produced. + + + + +IV + + +Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play? +A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me +for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical +managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to +France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with +the sweet and magnetic influence of home. + +How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed +into my eyes!--Paris--public ball-rooms, _cafés_, the models in the +studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien. +Marshall!--my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets +and the endless procession of people coming and going. + +"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." +"Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M. +Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What +number?" "I think it is fifty--four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up; +drive me to the Rue de Douai." + +But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no +address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be +able to obtain news of him there--perhaps find him. But when I pulled +aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet +my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of +dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am +sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps +at the _café_, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very +encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along +_le Passage_, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap +trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of +the Boulevard was our _café_. As I came forward the waiter moved one of +the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had +seen me yesterday he said, "_Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse? +oui...garçon, une demi-tasse_." Presently the conversation turned on +Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "_Il parait qu'il est +plus amoureux que jamais_," Julien replied sardonically. + + + + +V + + +I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in +the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were +large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found +the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen--in a great Louis +XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again, +George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again." + +"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?" + +"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll +have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on +there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there +twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight, +brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am +told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and +the tail is said to be three yards long." + +We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all +delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we +went insolent with patent leather shoes and bright kid gloves and armed +with all the jargon of the school. "_Cette jambe ne porte pas"; "la +nature ne se fait pas comme ça"; "on dessine par les masses; combien de +têtes?" "Sept et demi." "Si j'avais un morceau de craie je mettrais +celle-là dans un; bocal c'est un fœtus_"; in a word, all that the +journals of culture are pleased to term an artistic education. We +indulged in boisterous laughter, exaggerated in the hope of giving as +much pain as possible, and deep down in our souls we knew that we were +lying--at least I did. + +In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art--the +tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau--had been completely lost; +having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of +the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: +further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the +Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and +Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn +begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil +of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned +from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life. +Degas draws not by the masses, but by the character;--his subjects are +shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow +them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins +and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat, +vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the +pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and +rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you +know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you know what she would +say to you if she were to speak. She is as typical of the nineteenth +century as Fragonard's ladies are of the Court of Louis XV. To the right +you see a picture of two shop-girls with bonnets in their hands. So +accurately are the habitual movements of the heads and the hands +observed that you at once realise the years of bonnet-showing and +servile words that these women have lived through. We have seen Degas do +this before--it is a welcome repetition of a familiar note, but it is +not until we turn to the set of nude figures that we find the great +artist revealing any new phase of his talent. The first, in an attitude +which suggests the kneeling Venus, washes her thighs in a tin bath. The +second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of +children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The +naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' +genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the +great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has +rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the +British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the +hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the +sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as +it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in +her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy +shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is +terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted his dwarfs. + +Pissarro exhibited a group of girls gathering apples in a garden--sad +greys and violets beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in +a dream: we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet colour +and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches, +those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled: +that garden is the garden of the peace that life has not for giving, but +which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey. + +Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two +young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are +all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their +ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard +roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are +there--willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces. + +Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the +vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and +colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of +the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a _chef +d'œuvre._ Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that +hillside,--sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue +shadow,--is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in +one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of +the woman on a background of chintz flowers. + +We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced +him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I +wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only _une blague +qu'on nous fait_?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most +exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and +seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"--that _chef d'œuvre_! +the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so +swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look +at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The +perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational +kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway +stations by the same painter,--those rapid sensations of steel and +vapour,--our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at +this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it +round, that's all." Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich +sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an +absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures +as you do in nature, and the child's criticism of a portrait--"Why is +one side of the face black?" is answered. There was a half-length nude +figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! +such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw +nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing. + +For art was not for us then as it is now,--a mere emotion, right or +wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the +grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and _la jambe qui porte_; and we +found all this in Julien's studio. + +A year passed; a year of art and dissipation--one part art, two parts +dissipation. We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of +society's ladder. One evening we would spend at Constant's, Rue de la +Gaieté, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following +evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs +Elysées. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with +equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the +literary _salon_; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in +the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, +I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in +terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to +be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very +thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and +presenting our spotless selves to the _élite_. And we succeeded very +well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making +love to the wrong woman. + +But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not +stave off our craving for art; and about this time there came a very +decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really _grande passion_ +had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him +to turn his thoughts to painting on china as a means of livelihood. And +as this young man always sought extremes he went to Belleville, donned +a blouse, ate garlic with his food, and settled down to live there as a +workman. I had been to see him, and had found him building a wall. And +with sorrow I related his state that evening to Julien in the Café +Veron. He said, after a pause:-- + +"Since you profess so much friendship for him, why do you not do him a +service that cannot be forgotten since the result will always continue? +why don't you save him from the life you describe? If you are not +actually rich you are at least in easy circumstances, and can afford to +give him a _pension_ of three hundred francs a month. I will give him +the use of my studio, which means, as you know, models and teaching; +Marshall has plenty of talent, all he wants is a year's education: in a +year or a year-and-a-half, certainly at the end of two years, he will +begin to make money." + +It is rather a shock to one who is at all concerned with his own genius +to be asked to act as foster-mother to another's. Then three hundred +francs meant a great deal, plainly it meant deprivation of those +superfluities which are so intensely necessary to the delicate and +refined. Julien watched me. This large crafty Southerner knew what was +passing in me; he knew I was realising all the manifold +inconveniences--the duty of looking after Marshall's wants for two +years, and to make the pill easier he said:-- + +"If three hundred francs a month are too heavy for your purse, you might +take an apartment and ask Marshall to come and live with you. You told +me the other day you were tired of hotel life. It would be an advantage +to you to live with him. You want to do something yourself; and the fact +of his being obliged to attend the studio (for I should advise you to +have a strict agreement with him regarding the work he is to do) would +be an extra inducement to you to work hard." + +I always decide at once, reflection does not help me, and a moment after +I said, "Very well, Julien, I will." + +And next day I went with the news to Belleville. Marshall protested he +had no real talent. I protested he had. The agreement was drawn up and +signed. He was to work in the studio eight hours a day; he was to draw +until such time as M. Lefebvre set him to paint; and in proof of his +industry he was to bring me at the end of each week a study from life +and a composition, the subject of which the master gave at the +beginning of each week, and in return I was to take an apartment near +the studio, give him an abode, food, _blanchissage_, etc. Once the +matter was decided, Marshall manifested prodigious energy, and three +days after he told me he had found an apartment in Le Passage des +Panoramas which would suit us perfectly. The plunge had to be taken. I +paid my hotel bill, and sent my taciturn valet to beef, beer and a wife. + +It was unpleasant to have a window opening not to the sky, but to an +unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at +seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the +resolution even of the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all +pleasures for the sake of art--_table d'hôtes_ in the Rue Maubeuge, +French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue +de la Gaieté. + +I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art +for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It +will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so intensely alive to +all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer +in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It +was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter +when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches +like the pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little beyond verbal +expression. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were +striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first +hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true, caught +the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the +quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I +possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing +was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I +possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without +which all is valueless;--I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off +a clever caricature of his school-master or make a _lifelike_ sketch of +his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk. + +The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the +model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time +never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling +hopelessly in the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was +bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and +was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated +by the professors. In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of +education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in +(using the word in its modern, not in its original sense). He showed +himself intensely anxious to learn and to accept all that was said: the +ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose +neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream. He was an +ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the +studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and +anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain. I continued +the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio at eight in the +morning, I measured my drawing, I plumbed it throughout, I sketched in, +having regard to _la jambe qui porte_, I modelled _par les masses_. +During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon, at +night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result. +But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling, +stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible +are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching +void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden +of unachieved desire grew intolerable. + +I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again." +That vow I have kept. + +Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a +blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I +do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my +heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome +by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no +equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home +almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat +still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured +loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of +the medals which he would carry off, of what Lefebvre thought of his +drawing this week, of Boulanger's opinion of his talent. I do not wish +to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me +neither consideration nor pity, he did not even seem to understand that +I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he +flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face--his good looks, his +talents, his popularity. I did not know then how little these studio +successes really meant. + +Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is +rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a +certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed +me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing +enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This +was intolerable. I packed up my portmanteau and left, after having kept +my promise for only ten months. By so doing I involved my friend in +grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future +prospects. It was a dastardly action, but his presence had grown +unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and +in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being +lifted from me. + + + + +VI + + +After three months spent in a sweet seaside resort, where unoccupied men +and ladies whose husbands are abroad happily congregate, I returned to +Paris refreshed. + +Marshall and I were no longer on speaking terms, but I saw him daily, in +a new overcoat, of a cut admirably adapted to his figure, sweeping past +the fans and the jet ornaments of the Passage des Panoramas. The coat +interested me, and I remembered that if I had not broken with him I +should have been able to ask him some essential questions concerning it. +Of such trifles as this the sincerest friendships are made; he was as +necessary to me as I to him, and after some demur on his part a +reconciliation was effected. + +Then I took an _appartement_ in one of the old houses in Rue de la Tour +des Dames, for windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a +dilapidated statue. It was Marshall of course who undertook the task of +furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an imagination +that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree and a +fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our _salon_ was a pretty +resort--English cretonne of a very happy design--vine leaves, dark green +and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched +with this colourful cloth, and the arm-chairs and the couches were to +match. The drawing-room was in cardinal red, hung from the middle of the +ceiling and looped up to give the appearance of a tent; a faun, in +terra-cotta, laughed in the red gloom, and there were Turkish couches +and lamps. In another room you faced an altar, a Buddhist temple, a +statue of the Apollo, and a bust of Shelley. The bedrooms were made +unconventual with cushioned seats and rich canopies; and in picturesque +corners there were censers, great church candlesticks, and palms; then +think of the smell of burning incense and wax and you will have imagined +the sentiment of our apartment in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a +Persian cat, and a python that made a monthly meal off guinea pigs; +Marshall, who did not care for pets, filled his rooms with flowers--he +used to sleep beneath a tree of gardenias in full bloom. We were so, +Henry Marshall and George Moore, when we went to live in 76 Rue de la +Tour des Dames, we hoped for the rest of our lives. He was to paint, I +was to write. + +Before leaving for the seaside I had bought some volumes of Hugo and De +Musset; but in pleasant, sunny Boulogne poetry went flat, and it was not +until I got into my new rooms that I began to read seriously. Books are +like individuals; you know at once if they are going to create a sense +within the sense, to fever, to madden you in blood and brain, or if they +will merely leave you indifferent, or irritable, having unpleasantly +disturbed sweet intimate musings as might a draught from an open window. +Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, +when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, +a voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine +depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above +all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. +Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great +austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. +But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being +in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a +terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." An East of painted +cardboard, tin daggers, and a military band playing the Turkish patrol +in the Palais Royal.... The verse is grand, noble, tremendous; I liked +it, I admired it, but it did not--I repeat the phrase--awake a voice of +conscience within me; and even the structure of the verse was too much +in the style of public buildings to please me. Of "Les Feuilles +d'Automne" and "Les Chants du Crépuscule" I remember nothing. Ten lines, +fifty lines of "Les Légendes des Siècles," and I always think that it is +the greatest poetry I have ever read, but after a few pages the book is +laid down and forgotten. Having composed more verses than any man that +ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses; if you repeat +any passage to a friend across a _café_ table, you are both appalled by +the splendour of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables. + + "Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été + Avait en s'en allant négligemment jeté + Cette faucille d'or dans les champs des étoiles." + +But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the +_ennui_ which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or +Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's +genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a +metaphysical German student. Take another verse-- + + "Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon." + +Without a "like" or an "as," by a mere statement of fact, the picture, +nay more, the impression, is produced. I confess I have a weakness for +the poem which this line concludes--"La fête chez Thérèse"; but +admirable as it is with its picture of mediæval life, there is in it, as +in all Hugo's work, a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my +heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering +coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the +Almighty in a last stanza; but of the two immortalities he evidently +considers his own the most durable; he does not, however, become really +intolerable until he gets on the subject of little children, he sings +their innocence in great bombast, but he is watching them; the poetry +over, the crowd dispersed, he will entice one of them down a byway. + +The first time I read of _une bouche d'ombre_ I was astonished, nor did +the second or third repetition produce a change in my mood of mind; but +sooner or later it was impossible to avoid conviction, that of the two +"the rosy fingers of the dawn," although some three thousand years older +is younger, truer, and more beautiful. Homer's similes can never grow +old; _une bouche d'ombre_ was old the first time it was said. It is the +birthplace and the grave of Hugo's genius. + +Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise +were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had +marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. +Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms +were out of tune with the strain of my aspirations at that moment, and I +did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression +which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of +diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the +commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent +to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense +of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical +outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious +_chevilles--marchait et respirait_, and _Astarté fille de l'onde amère_; +nor does the fact that _amère_ rhymes with _mère_ condone the offence, +although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of +the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit +that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I +read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade à la Lune," that I +could be induced to bend the knee and acknowledge Musset a poet. + +I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,--he was still +my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother-o'-pearl, with starlight at +the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, +not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was +Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it +was sudden. I was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation +of the body above the soul at once conquered and led me captive; this +plain scorn of a world as exemplified in lacerated saints and a +crucified Redeemer opened up to me illimitable prospects of fresh +beliefs, and therefore new joys in things and new revolts against all +that had come to form part and parcel of the commonalty of mankind. Till +now I had not even remotely suspected that a deification of flesh and +fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching had been, while +accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so preserve our +ideal; but now suddenly I saw, with delightful clearness and with +intoxicating conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting +with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place within as +divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an +aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the +elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this +modern world, but the clean pagan nude,--a love of life and beauty, the +broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the +bold fearless gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the +Virgin, and I cried with my master that the blood that flowed upon Mount +Calvary "_ne m'a jamais baigné dans ses flots_." + +I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime +vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so +inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin +refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? +Great was my conversion. None more than I had cherished mystery and +dream: my life until now had been but a mist which revealed as each +cloud wreathed and went out, the red of some strange flower or some tall +peak, blue and snowy and fairylike in lonely moonlight; and now so great +was my conversion that the more brutal the outrage offered to my ancient +ideal, the rarer and keener was my delight. I read almost without fear: +"My dreams were of naked youths riding white horses through mountain +passes, there were no clouds in my dreams, or if there were any, they +were clouds that had been cut out as if in cardboard with scissors." + +I had shaken off all belief in Christianity early in life and had +suffered much. Shelley had replaced faith by reason, but I still +suffered: but here was a new creed which proclaimed the divinity of the +body, and for a long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life +on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite +outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses +moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then +the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of _As You +Like It_, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to +Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's +attire. If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is +forgotten in the rapture and praise of her unmatchable woman's +loveliness. + +But if "Mdlle. de Maupin" was the highest peak, it was not the entire +mountain. The range was long, and each summit offered to the eye a new +and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,--tales as +perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," +"Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, +"Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the +adjective _blanc_ and _blanche_ is repeated with miraculous felicity in +each stanza. And then Contralto,-- + + "Mais seulement il se transpose + Et passant de la forme au son, + Trouve dans la métamorphose + La jeune fille et le garçon." + +_Transpose_,--a word never before used except in musical application, +and now for the first time applied to material form, and with a +beauty-giving touch that Phidias might be proud of. I know not how I +quote; such is my best memory of the stanza, and here, that is more +important than the stanza itself. And that other stanza, "The +Châtelaine and the Page"; and that other, "The Doves"; and that other, +"Romeo and Juliet," and the exquisite cadence of the line ending +"_balcon_." Novelists have often shown how a love passion brings misery, +despair, death and ruin upon a life, but I know of no story of the good +or evil influence awakened by the chance reading of a book, the chain of +consequences so far-reaching, so intensely dramatic. Never shall I open +these books again, but were I to live for a thousand years, their power +in my soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in +humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave +may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. +Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted +progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned +that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the +plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of +the problem that had vexed me so long; I cried, "ave" to it all: lust, +cruelty, slavery, and I would have held down my thumbs in the Colosseum +that a hundred gladiators might die and wash me free of my Christian +soul with their blood. + +The study of Baudelaire hurried the course of the disease.[1] No longer +is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven +face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning +sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better +know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful +flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and +were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your +poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children +of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of +your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful +in your sublime decay, I press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, +far from the rank Parisian garden where I gathered you, are full of you, +even as the sea-shell of the sea, and the sun that sets on this wild +moorland evokes the magical verse:-- + + "Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique + Nous échangerons un éclair unique + Comme un long sanglot tout chargé d'adieux." + +For months I fed on the mad and morbid literature that the enthusiasm +of 1830 called into existence. The gloomy and sterile little pictures of +"Gaspard de la Nuit," or the elaborate criminality, "Les Contes +Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, +pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and +in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the +unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I +never read more than a few pages. + +Like a pike after minnows I pursued the works of Les Jeune France along +the quays and through every _passage_ in Paris. The money spent was +considerable, the waste of time vexatious. One man's solitary work (he +died very young, but he is known to have excelled all in length of his +hair and the redness of his waistcoats) resisted my efforts to capture +it. At last I caught sight of the precious volume in a shop on the Quai +Voltaire. Trembling I asked the price. The man looked at me earnestly +and answered, "A hundred and fifty francs." No doubt it was a great deal +of money, but I paid it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone +before had proved disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had +contributed little towards my intellectual advancement; but this--this +that I had heard about so long--not a queer phrase, not an outrage of +any sort of kind, not even a new blasphemy, it meant nothing to me, that +is to say, nothing but a hundred and fifty francs. Having thus rudely, +and very pikelike, knocked my nose against the bottom--this book was, +most certainly, the bottom of the literature of 1830--I came up to the +surface and began to look around my contemporaries for something to +read. + +I have remarked before on the instinctiveness of my likes and dislikes, +on my susceptibility to the sound of and even to the appearance of a +name upon paper. I was repelled by Leconte de Lisle from the first, and +it was only by a very deliberate outrage to my feelings that I bought +and read "Les Poèmes Antiques," and "Les Poèmes Barbares"; I was +deceived in nothing, all I had anticipated I found--long, desolate +boredom. Leconte de Lisle produces on me the effect of a walk through +the new Law Courts, with a steady but not violent draught sweeping from +end to end. Oh, the vile old professor of rhetoric! and when I saw him +the last time I was in Paris, his head--a declaration of righteousness, +a cross between a Cæsar by Gerome, and an archbishop of a provincial +town, set all my natural antipathy instantly on edge. Hugo is often +pompous, shallow, empty, unreal, but he is at least an artist, and when +he thinks of the artist and forgets the prophet, as in "Les Chansons des +Rues et des Bois," his juggling with the verse is magnificent, superb. + + "Comme un geai sur l'arbre + Le roi se tient fier; + Son cœur est de marbre, + Son ventre est de chair. + + "On a pour sa nuque + Et son front vermeil + Fait une perruque + Avec le soleil. + + "Il règne, il végète + Effroyant zéro; + Sur lui se projette + L'ombre du bourreau. + + "Son trône est une tombe, + Et sur le pavé + Quelque chose en tombe + Qu'on n'a point lavé." + +But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I +cannot think. If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out +and see how that _rude dompteur de syllables_ managed it. But stay, +_son trône est la tombe_; that makes the verse, and the generalisation +would be in the "line" of Hugo. Hugo--how impossible it is to speak of +French literature without referring to him. Let these, however, be +concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, +saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the +rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and +pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is +better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and +incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth--one verse is +better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is +better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never +had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so +not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality +would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, +what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes. + +To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is +it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this +sort, "_des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain_" and such sententious +platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "_Les épidémies de cette +nature passent, et le génie demeure_." + +Theodore de Banville. At first I thought him cold, infected with the +rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim +nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not +seem to touch him, nor did he sing the languors and ardours of animal or +spiritual passion. But there is this: a pure, clear song, an +instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. He sings of the +white lily and the red rose, such knowledge of, such observation of +nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is +trilling magic in every song, and the song as it ascends rings, and all +the air quivers with the ever-widening circle of the echoes, sighing and +dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad +rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way. Banville is not +the poet, he is the bard. The great questions that agitate the mind of +man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he perceives only as +stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words. +Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical. His wit flies out on +clear-cut, swallow-like wings; in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le +Besoin d'aimer," he said: "_Vous avez trouvé un titre assez laid pour +faire reculer les divines étoiles_." I know not what instrument to +compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to +me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys +and he produces Chopin-like fluidities. + +It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it +was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the +couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the +adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, +"_Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine_" that the cæsura received +its final _coup de grâce_. This verse has been probably more imitated +than any other verse in the French language. _Pensivement_ was replaced +by some similar four-syllable adverb, _Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas +de soie, etc_. It was the beginning of the end. + +I read the French poets of the modern school--Coppée, Mendés, Léon Diex, +Verlaine, José Maria Hêrédia, Mallarmé, Richepin, Villiers de l'Isle +Adam. Coppée, as may be imagined, I only was capable of appreciating in +his first manner, when he wrote those exquisite but purely artistic +sonnets "La Tulipe," and "Le Lys." In the latter a room decorated with +daggers, armour, jewellery and china is beautifully described, and it is +only in the last line that the lily, which animates and gives life to +the whole, is introduced. But the exquisite poetic perceptivity Coppée +showed in his modern poems, the certainty with which he raised the +commonest subject, investing it with sufficient dignity for his purpose, +escaped me wholly, and I could not but turn with horror from such poems +as "La Nourrice" and "Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself +to acknowledge the vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not +understand. The fiery glory of José Maria de Hérédia, on the contrary, +filled me with enthusiasm--ruins and sand, shadow and silhouette of +palms and pillars, negroes, crimson, swords, silence, and arabesques. +Like great copper pans go the clangour of the rhymes. + + "Entre le ciel qui brûle et la mer qui moutonne, + Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone, + Tu songes, O guerrière, aux vieux conquistadors; + Et dans l'énervement des nuits chaudes et calmes, + Berçant ta gloire éteinte, O cité, tu t'endors + Sous les palmiers, au long frémissement des palmes." + +Catulle Mendès, a perfect realisation of his name, with his pale hair, +and his fragile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved woman. +He takes you by the arm, by the hand, he leans towards you, his words +are caresses, his fervour is delightful, and to hear him is as sweet as +drinking a smooth perfumed yellow wine. All he says is false--the book +he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he +buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. +An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the +muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing +from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly +voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte +de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as +Gautier, as good as Coppée; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but +he never wrote a line that some one of his brilliant contemporaries +might not have written. He has produced good work of all kinds "et voilà +tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendès. Robert +Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been +substituted for perfumed yellow wine. No more delightful talker than +Mendès, no more accomplished _littérateur_, no more fluent and +translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the _Place +Pigale_, when, on leaving the _café_, he would take me by the arm, and +expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek +sophists. There were for contrast Mallarmé's Tuesday evenings, a few +friends sitting round the hearth, the lamp on the table. I have met none +whose conversation was more fruitful, but with the exception of his +early verses I cannot say I ever enjoyed his poetry frankly. When I knew +him he had published the celebrated "L'Après Midi d'un Faun": the first +poem written in accordance with the theory of symbolism. But when it was +given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange +illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure. +Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the +enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; I am sure +if I were to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties. It bears +the same relation to the author's later work as _Rienzi_ to _The +Walkyrie_. But what is symbolism? Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite +to what you mean. For example, you want to say that music which is the +new art, is replacing the old art, which is poetry. First symbol: a +house in which there is a funeral, the pall extends over the furniture. +The house is poetry, poetry is dead. Second symbol: "_notre vieux +grimoire_," _grimoire_ is the parchment, parchment is used for writing, +therefore, _grimoire_ is the symbol for literature, "_d'où s'exaltent +les milliers_," thousands of what? of letters of course. We have heard a +great deal in England of Browning obscurity. The "Red Cotton Nightcap +Country" is a child at play compared to a sonnet by such a determined +symbolist as Mallarmé, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added +to the infirmities of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation. For +according to M. Ghil and his organ _Les Ecrits pour l'Art,_ it would +appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the +sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the +different instruments. The vowel _u_ corresponds to the colour yellow, +and therefore to the sound of flutes. Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, +first in the field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil +informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in +coupling the sound of the vowel _u_ with the colour green instead of +with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder +and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste +Ingénu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is +dedicated to Mallarmé, "Père et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des +poisons," and other works are to follow:--the six tomes of "Légendes de +Rêves et de Sang," the innumerable tomes of "La Glose," and the single +tome of "La Loi." + +And that man Gustave Kahn, who takes the French language as a violin, +and lets the bow of his emotion run at wild will upon it, producing +strange acute strains, unpremeditated harmonies comparable to nothing +that I know of but some Hungarian rhapsody; verses of seventeen +syllables interwoven with verses of eight, and even nine, masculine +rhymes, seeking strange union with feminine rhymes in the middle of the +line--a music sweet, subtil, and epicene; the half-note, the inflexion, +but not the full tone--as "_se fondre, o souvenir, des lys âcres +délices_." + + Se penchant vers les dahlias, + Des paons cabrent des rosaces lunaires + L'assou pissement des branches vénère + Son pâle visage aux mourants dahlias. + + Elle écoute au loin les brèves musiques + Nuit claire aux ramures d'accords, + Et la lassitude a bercé son corps + Au rhythme odorant des pures musiques. + + Les paons ont dressé la rampe occellée + Pour la descente de ses yeux vers le tapis + De choses et de sens + Qui va vers l'horizon, parure vermiculée + De son corps alangui + En l'âme se tapit + Le flou désir molli de récits et d'encens. + +I laughed at these verbal eccentricities, but they were not without +their effect, and that a demoralising one; for in me they aggravated the +fever of the unknown, and whetted my appetite for the strange, abnormal +and unhealthy in art. Hence all pallidities of thought and desire were +eagerly welcomed, and Verlaine became my poet. Never shall I forget the +first enchantment of "Les Fétes Galantes." Here all is twilight. + +The royal magnificences of the sunset have passed, the solemn beatitude +of the night is at hand but not yet here; the ways are veiled with +shadow, and lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with +blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange +contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid +creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and +fitful light..."_un soir équivoque d'automne_"..."_les belles pendent +rêveuses à nos bras_"...and they whisper "_les mots spéciaux et tout +bas_." + +Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the +soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness +and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step +further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as +faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball +dress, to-morrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, +worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or +unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but +Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an +amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawing from +all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness +more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the +licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every +natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music +native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. +The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or +of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of +an archbishop of Persepolis. + + Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil + Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente + Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente + D'aimer des seins légers et ce gentil babil. + + Il a vaincu la femme belle aucœur subtil + Etalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante; + Il a vaincu l'enfer, il rentre dans sa tente + Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril. + + Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême + Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même. + Et prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel; + + En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole, + Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel, + Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole. + +In English there is no sonnet so beautiful, its beauty cannot be worn +away, it is as inexhaustible as a Greek marble. The hiatus in the last +line was at first a little trying, but I have learned to love it. Not in +Baudelaire nor even in Poe is there more beautiful poetry to be found. +Poe, unread and ill-understood in America and England, here, thou art an +integral part of our artistic life. + +The Island o' Fay, Silence, Eleonore, were the familiar spirits of an +apartment beautiful with Manets and tapestry; Swinburne and Rossetti +were the English poets I read there; and in a golden bondage, I, a unit +in the generation they have enslaved, clanked my fetters and trailed my +golden chain, a set of stories in many various metres, to be called +"Roses of Midnight." One of the characteristics of the volume was that +daylight was banished from its pages. In the sensual lamplight of yellow +boudoirs, or the wild moonlight of centenarian forests, my fantastic +loves lived out their lives, died with the dawn which was supposed to be +an awakening to consciousness of reality. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Surely the phrase is ill considered, hurried "my +convalescence" would express the author's meaning better.] + + + + +VII + + +A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds +softly upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the +fleeting beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces, +all strictly garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal +frame enchased with rubies and a few emeralds. And this _chef d'œuvre_ +of antique workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal +pretty. Fair she is and thin. + +She is a woman of thirty--no,--she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has +written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague +and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But +that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge +of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck +and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he +cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want to say. + +Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a +young man of refined mind--a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day +on his pleasures, and in whose library are found some few volumes of +modern poetry--seeks his ideal in a woman of thirty. + +It is clear that, by the very essence of her being, the young girl may +evoke no ideal but that of home; and home is in his eyes the antithesis +of freedom, desire, aspiration. He longs for mystery, deep and endless, +and he is tempted with a foolish little illusion--white dresses, +water-colour drawings and popular music. He dreams of Pleasure, and he +is offered Duty; for do not think that that sylph-like waist does not +suggest to him a yard of apron string, cries of children, and that most +odious word, "Papa." A young man of refined mind can look through the +glass of the years. + +He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of +thirty at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he +knows that the world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved +and amused, the circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine +faces, they cluster like flowers on this side and that, and they fade +into garden-like spaces of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest +may one day smile upon his knee! and shall he renounce all for that +little creature who has just finished singing and is handing round cups +of tea? Every bachelor contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to +give up all for one, one." + +The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and +uncertain, it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests +nothing; the very essence of the young girl's being is that she should +have nothing to suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to +touch the imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no +story of hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and +ninety-nine cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at +least a pound a day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering +the muslin flower if he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight +every one. Where, then, is the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? +Therefore, I say that if a young man's heart is not set on children, and +tiresome dinner-parties, the young girl presents to him no possible +ideal. But the woman of thirty presents from the outset all that is +necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man. I see her sitting in her +beautiful drawing-room, all designed by, and all belonging to her. Her +chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the long leaves lean +out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses of the +Aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand +piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her +visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy +firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; +August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is +stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations +lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. +These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines +himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, +calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight +sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe +affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its +disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she +has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love +reality would dissolve into a dream, all limitations would open into +boundless infinity. + +The husband he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about +half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, +his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the +_caserne_, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry +him?--a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand +times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is +five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation has passed into middle +age. + +Why did she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great +mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry +space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this +riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the +clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; +and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, she has forgotten. + +The young man shakes hands with the husband; he strives not to look +embarrassed, and he talks of indifferent things--of how well he (the +husband) is looking, of his amusements, his projects; and then he (the +young man of refined mind) tastes of that keen and highly-seasoned +delight--happiness in crime. He knows not the details of her home life, +the husband is merely a dark cloud that fills one side of the picture, +sometimes obliterating the sunlight; a shadowy shape that in certain +moments solidifies and assumes the likeness of a rock-sculptured, +imminent monster, but the shadow and the shape and the threat are +magnetic, and in a sense of danger the fascination is sealed. + +The young man of refined mind is in a ball-room! He leans against the +woodwork in a distant doorway; hardly knowing what to do with himself, +he strives to interest himself in the conversation of a group of men +twice his age. I will not say he is shunned; but neither the matrons nor +the young girls make any advances towards him. The young girls so +sweet--in the oneness of their fresh hair, flowers, dresses, and +glances--are being introduced, are getting up to dance, and the hostess +is looking round for partners. She sees the young man in the doorway, +but she hesitates and goes to some one else, and if you asked her why, +she could not tell you why she avoided him. Presently the woman of +thirty enters. She is in white satin and diamonds. She looks for him--a +circular glance. Calm with possession she passes to a seat, extending +her hand here and there. She dances the eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth +waltz with him. + +Will he induce her to visit his rooms? Will they be like +Marshall's--strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps--or mine, an +old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral +century, my taste; or will it be a library,--two leather library chairs, +a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be +the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of +the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: +her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband's +arms, with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and +lonely shall kneel and adore her. + +And should she _not_ visit his rooms? If the complex and various +accidents of existence should have ruled out her life virtuously; if the +many inflections of sentiment have decided against this last +consummation, then she will wax to the complete, the unfathomable +temptress--the Lilith of old--she will never set him free, and in the +end will be found about his heart "one single golden hair." She shall +haunt his wife's face and words (should he seek to rid himself of her by +marriage), a bitter sweet, a half-welcome enchantment; she shall +consume and destroy the strength and spirit of his life, leaving it +desolation, a barren landscape, burnt and faintly scented with the sea. +Fame and wealth shall slip like sand from him. She may be set aside for +the cadence of a rhyme, for the flowing line of a limb, but when the +passion of art has raged itself out, she shall return to blight the +peace of the worker. + +A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called +nympholepsy--a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal +aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not +extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall +yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their +ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, +and they call it--the woman of thirty. + + + + +VIII + + +A Japanese dressing-gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some +fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and +having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack, my great +python crawling about after a two months' fast. I tie up a guinea-pig to +the _tabouret_, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, +the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the +oscillations...now he strikes; and with what exquisite gourmandise he +lubricates and swallows. + +Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, +that beautiful hymn, the "Vexilla Regis," by Saint Fortunatus, the great +poet of the Middle Ages. And, having turned over the leaves of "Les +Fêtes Galantes," I sit down to write. + +My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying +from thirty to three hundred lines in length. The nature of these +stories is easy to imagine: there was the youth who wandered by night +into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and +old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the +holy man; but he died as he yielded; his arms stiffened by some miracle, +and she was unable to free herself; she died of starvation, as her +bondage loosened in decay. I had increased my difficulties by adopting +as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in +many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I +was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising +crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they +were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art +of telling a story clearly and dramatically, _selon les procédés de M. +Scribe_, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a +hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a +hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, +Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring +_café_, and our conversation turned on _l'exposition de la pièce, +préparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes_, etc. One day, as I sat +waiting for him, I took up the _Voltaire_. It contained an article by M. +Zola. _Naturalisme, la vérité, la science,_ were repeated some +half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you +should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a +novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. +Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, +ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who +has received a violent blow on the head. + +Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying +marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader +who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word +"Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a +train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many +years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the +reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of +the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final +ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led +to the creation of a mental existence. + +And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and +inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the +new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, +and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile +eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any +semblance of life, passionless in all their passion. + +I had read a few chapters of the "Assommoir," as it appeared in _La +République des Lettres_; I had cried, "ridiculous, abominable," only +because it is characteristic of me to instantly form an opinion and +assume at once a violent attitude. But now I bought up the back numbers +of the _Voltaire_, and I looked forward to the weekly exposition of the +new faith with febrile eagerness. The great zeal with which the new +master continued his propaganda, and the marvellous way in which +subjects the most diverse, passing events, political, social, religious, +were caught up and turned into arguments for, or proof of the truth of +naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon +science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on +imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern +life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a +new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb +before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the +ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would +arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious +and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at +each development of the theory of the new art and its universal +applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any +one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an +explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing--as well drink +the dregs of yesterday's champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I +glance through the pages listlessly I say, "Only the simple crude +statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision." + +Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was +to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, +and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little +doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be +for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, +only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the +simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, +sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to +whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had +declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly +naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so +important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible +he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least +condemn. At last the expected article came. It was all that could be +desired by one in my fever of mind. Hugo's claims had been previously +disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed-up +dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had +been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. _Cependant_ +there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry. I +trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough. Coppée had +striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, +_Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel_; he had sought to give utterance +to humble sentiments as in "Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge," the little +grocer _qui cassait le sucre avec mélancolie_; Richepin had boldly and +frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity. +All this was, however, preparatory and tentative. We are waiting for our +poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen +and the comestible glories of the market-places. The subjects are to +hand, the formula alone is wanting. + +The prospect dazzled me; I tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me +to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?--bays, +laurel crown, a distinct _souvenir_ of Parnassus, but there is no modern +equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me +think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." +The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of +Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is +Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible +glories of the market-place shall be mine. _A bas "Les Roses de +Minuit"_! + +I felt the "naturalisation" of the "Roses of Midnight" would prove a +difficult task. I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems +aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and +Ville d'Avray. This book was to be entitled "Poems of 'Flesh and +Blood.'" + +"_Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu_" ...and then? Why, +then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded +streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, +inquires at the _concierge's_ loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, "_Que +c'est haut le cinquième_," and then? Why, the door opens, and she +cries, "_Je t'aime_" + +But it was the idea of the new æstheticism--the new art corresponding to +modern, as ancient art corresponded to ancient life--that captivated me, +that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by +the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed +by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also +by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment +of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new--the +washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the +development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is +broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the +fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its +fulness; it is worked up to _crescendo_, another side issue is +introduced, and again the theme is given forth. And I marvelled greatly +at the lordly, river-like roll of the narrative, sometimes widening out +into lakes and shallowing meres, but never stagnating in fen or +marshlands. The language, too, which I did not then recognise as the +weak point, being little more than a boiling down of Chateaubriand and +Flaubert, spiced with Goncourt, delighted me with its novelty, its +richness, its force. Nor did I then even roughly suspect that the very +qualities which set my admiration in a blaze wilder than wildfire, being +precisely those that had won the victory for the romantic school forty +years before, were very antagonistic to those claimed for the new art; I +was deceived, as was all my generation, by a certain externality, an +outer skin, a nearness, _un approchement_; in a word, by a substitution +of Paris for the distant and exotic backgrounds so beloved of the +romantic school. I did not know then, as I do now, that art is eternal, +that it is only the artist that changes, and that the two great +divisions--the only possible divisions--are: those who have talent, and +those who have no talent. But I do not regret my errors, my follies; it +is not well to know at once of the limitations of life and things. I +should be less than nothing had it not been for my enthusiasms; they +were the saving clause in my life. + +But although I am apt to love too dearly the art of my day, and to the +disparagement of that of other days, I did not fall into the fatal +mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and +on the same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac; I felt +that that vast immemorial mind rose above them all, like a mountain +above the highest tower. + +And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for +mention is made in the wonderful preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal" of +Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it?--woman or man? Should +Wilfred or Mona be the possessor? A new Mdlle. de Maupin, with royal +lily and aureole, cloud-capped mountains, great gulfs of sea-water +flowing up and reflecting as in a mirror the steep cliff's side; the +straight white feet are set thereon, the obscuring weft of flesh is +torn, and the pure, strange soul continues its mystical exhortations. +Then the radiant vision, a white glory, the last outburst and +manifestation, the trumpets of the apocalypse, the colour of heaven, the +closing of this stupendous allegory--Seraphita lying dead in the rays of +the first sun of the nineteenth century. + +I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead +of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Père Goriot, +I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of +his genius--Seraphita. Certain _nuances_ of soul are characteristic of +certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest +of this fervent soul? The instincts of genius are unfathomable? but he +who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, +will aver that instinct led him aright. I have known one, one whom I +used to call Seraphita; Coppée knew her too, and that exquisite volume, +"L'Exilé," so Seraphita-like in the keen blonde passion of its verse, +was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written. +Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season +in Paris? Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs +of sea water, mountain rock, and pine? + +Balzac's genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars: "Melmoth +Reconcilié," "Jesus-Christ en Flandres," "Le Revers d'un Grand Homme," +"La Cousine Bette." I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was +the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal. Of +Pascal's claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge. No man is +greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the +legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the +existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof +of the existence of Jupiter Ammon. "Les Pensées" could appear to me only +as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and +sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself. Still, I +accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment +paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have +shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware +that this last statement will make many cry "fool" and hiss +"Shakespeare"! But I am not putting forward these criticisms +axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and +interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different +developments and the progress of my mind. It might prove a little +tiresome, but it would no doubt "look well," in the sense that going to +church "looks well," if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of +our national bard. I must, however, resist the temptation to "look +well"; a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth +it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any +profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the +great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well +as I could not fail to hear the melody of-- + + "Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly? + Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy." + +Is not such music as this enough? Of course, but I am a sensualist in +literature. I may see perfectly well that this or that book is a work of +genius, but if it doesn't "fetch me," it doesn't concern me, and I +forget its very existence. What leaves me cold to-day will madden me +to-morrow. With me literature is a question of sense, intellectual sense +if you will, but sense all the same, and ruled by the same +caprices--those of the flesh? Now we enter on very subtle distinctions. +No doubt that there is the brain-judgment and the sense-judgment of a +work of art. And it will be noticed that these two forces of +discrimination exist sometimes almost independently of each other, in +rare and radiant instances confounded and blended in one immense and +unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, +thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates +to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. +This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why +should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in +me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one +can understand the other, but there are affinities in literature +corresponding to, and very analogous to, sexual affinities--the same +unreasoned attractions, the same pleasures, the same lassitudes. Those +we have loved most we are most indifferent to. Shelley, Gautier, Zola, +Flaubert, Goncourt! how I have loved you all; and now I could not, would +not, read you again. How womanly, how capricious; but even a capricious +woman is constant, if not faithful to her _amant de cœur_. And so with +me; of those I have loved deeply there is but one that still may thrill +me with the old passion, with the first ecstasy--it is Balzac. Upon that +rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often +from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new æstheticisms, +the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the +symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit +and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the +first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought +that shall make speech beautiful and rememberable. The grandeur and +sublimity of Balzac's thoughts seem to me to rise to the loftiest +heights, and his range is limitless; there is no passion he has not +touched, and what is more marvellous, he has given to each in art a +place equivalent to the place it occupies in nature; his intense and +penetrating sympathy for human life and all that concerns it enabled him +to surround the humblest subjects with awe and crown them with the light +of tragedy. There are some, particularly those who can understand +neither and can read but one, who will object to any comparison being +drawn between the Dramatist and the Novelist; but I confess that I--if +the inherent superiority of verse over prose, which I admit +unhesitatingly, be waived--that I fail, utterly fail to see in what +Shakespeare is greater than Balzac. The range of the poet's thought is +of necessity not so wide, and his concessions must needs be greater than +the novelist's. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to +the vital question--the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is +Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to +Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the +apothecary in the "Cousine Bette," or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine +Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever +conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three +hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his +characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions +are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation +of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in +contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as +epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute +sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer +than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the +poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she +says, "His look frightens me as if he put his hand on my dress"; and +another epigram from the same book, "Woman's virtue is man's greatest +invention." Find me anything in La Rochefoucauld that goes more +incisively to the truth of things. One more; here I can give the exact +words: "_La gloire est le soleil des morts_." It would be easy to +compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all "Maximes" and +"Pensées," even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and +shallow. + +Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading +culminated in the "Comédie Humaine." I no doubt fluttered through some +scores of other books, of prose and verse, sipping a little honey, but +he alone left any important or lasting impression upon my mind. The rest +was like walnuts and wine, an agreeable aftertaste. + +But notwithstanding all this reading I can lay no claim to scholarship +of any kind; for save life I could never learn anything correctly. I am +a student only of ball rooms, bar rooms, streets, and alcoves. I have +read very little; but all I read I can turn to account, and all I read I +remember. To read freely, extensively, has always been my ambition, and +my utter inability to study has always been to me a subject of grave +inquietude,--study as contrasted with a general and haphazard gathering +of ideas taken in flight. But in me the impulse is so original to +frequent the haunts of men that it is irresistible, conversation is the +breath of my nostrils, I watch the movement of life, and my ideas spring +from it uncalled for, as buds from branches. Contact with the world is +in me the generating force; without this what invention I have is thin +and sterile, and it grows thinner rapidly, until it dies away utterly, +as it did in the composition of my unfortunate "Roses of Midnight." + +Men and women, oh the strength of the living faces! conversation, oh the +magic of it! It is a fabulous river of gold where the precious metal is +washed up without stint for all to take, to take as much as he can +carry. Two old ladies discussing the peerage? Much may be learned, it is +gold; poets and wits, then it is fountains whose spray solidifies into +jewels, and every herb and plant is begemmed with the sparkle of the +diamond and the glow of the ruby. + +I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the "Nouvelle +Athènes." What is the "Nouvelle Athènes"? He who would know anything of +my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the +official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French +academy, the _café_. The "Nouvelle Athènes" is a _café_ on the Place +Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was +but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used +to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to +separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we +might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who +used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our +home, live only in a few pictures and a few pages of prose. The same old +story, the vanquished only are victorious; and though unacknowledged, +though unknown, the influence of the "Nouvelle Athènes" is inveterate in +the artistic thought of the nineteenth century. + +How magnetic, intense, and vivid are these memories of youth. With what +strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,--see the white +face of that _café_, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching +up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of +those two streets, and I know what shops are there; I can hear the glass +door of the _café_ grate on the sand as I open it. I can recall the +smell of every hour. In the morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, +the pungent cigarette, coffee and bad cognac; at five o'clock the +fragrant odour of absinthe; and soon after the steaming soup ascends +from the kitchen; and as the evening advances, the mingled smells of +cigarettes, coffee, and weak beer. A partition, rising a few feet or +more over the hats, separates the glass front from the main body of the +_café_. The usual marble tables are there, and it is there we sat and +æstheticised till two o'clock in the morning. But who is that man? he +whose prominent eyes flash with excitement. That is Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam. The last or the supposed last of the great family. He is +telling that girl a story--that fair girl with heavy eyelids, stupid and +sensual. She is, however, genuinely astonished and interested, and he is +striving to play upon her ignorance. Listen to him. "Spain--the night is +fragrant with the sea and the perfume of the orange trees, you know--a +midnight of stars and dreams. Now and then the silence is broken by the +sentries challenging--that is all. But not in Spanish but in French are +the challenges given; the town is in the hands of the French; it is +under martial law. But now an officer passes down a certain garden, a +Spaniard disguised as a French officer; from the balcony the family--one +of the most noble and oldest families Spain can boast of, a thousand +years, long before the conquest of the Moors--watches him. Well +then"--Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is +falling over his face--he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in +the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to "scamp," in +French to _escamoter_. "The family are watching, death if he is caught, +if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague +sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is +seized. Martial law, Spanish conspiracy must be put down. The French +general is a man of iron." (Villiers laughs, a short, hesitating laugh +that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain +way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, +but also the entire family--a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you +cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the +calamity--a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard +alone could--there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting--the utter +extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all +the families in Spain, it is not easy to understand that, no, not easy +here in the 'Nouvelle Athènes'--ha, ha, one must belong to a great +family to understand, ha, ha. + +"The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue +the name--the youngest son--that is all; if he could be saved, the rest +what matter; death is nothing to a Spaniard; the family, the name, a +thousand years of name is everything. The general is, you know, a 'man +of iron.' 'Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, but on one +condition.' To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they +don't know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and +they cry, 'Any conditions.' 'He who is respited must serve as +executioner to the others.' Great is the doom; you understand; but after +all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes +to his youngest son and says, 'I have been a good father to you, my son; +I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never +refused you anything. Now you will not fail us, you will prove yourself +worthy of the great name you bear. Remember your great ancestor who +defeated the Moors, remember.'" (Villiers strives to get in a little +local colour, but his knowledge of Spanish names and history is limited, +and he in a certain sense fails.) "Then the mother comes to her son and +says, 'My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say +you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.' Then the little +sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the +horror-stricken boy.... + +"'He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,' cries the father. +'Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, +strike straight.' The father's head falls into the sawdust, the blood +all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another +brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could +bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your +father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but +he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; +remember your promise to us all,' and her head was struck off." + +"And the son," the girl asks, "what became of him?" + +"He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the +walls of his castle in Granada." + +"And whom did he marry?" + +"He never married." + +Then after a long silence some one said,-- + +"Whose story is that?" + +"Balzac's." + +At that moment the glass door of the _café_ grated upon the sanded +floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially +Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking +that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress--his +clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that +swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, +the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an +idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression--frank +words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear +as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, +bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next +to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is +nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large +necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. +These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their +friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting +'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris,'" says Manet. "Manet is +in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and +be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by +force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas. +Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture +from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the +devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, +there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints +unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently +that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely +what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision +does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from +drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he +has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his +strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the +arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the _café_ is +closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great +moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the +streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm, +speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous, +aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an +unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little +and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows +that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write +another novel, he will say, "What's the good, it would not be read; no +one read the others, and I mightn't do even as well if I tried again." +Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in +the "Nouvelle Athènes." + +Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world: +somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a +forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning +there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they +shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be +forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make +live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and +aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic +soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon +thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall +that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of +the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies +the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and +stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four +sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the +streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the +suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the +accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth +floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand +francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe, +and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and +the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a +refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the +life-size "Venus de Milo." Something extraordinary would be done with +it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head +must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should +be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets. + +Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard +giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion +above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day +earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he +made his _début_ at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of +consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was +immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America. + +I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now--that long sallow face +ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered +with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In +all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I +remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the +glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst +thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be +rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean +accent, "_Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois +orchestres militaires."_ And when I did show thee some poor verses of +mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten +my native language-- + +"My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is +nauseating." + +"So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and +lovers; his best poem...." + +"_C'est vrai, mais il s'agissait d'une charogne et cela relève beaucoup +la chose_." + +I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music +that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which +Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where +the _melody_ was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the +last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with +unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and +that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng +Saur." + +And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something +too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I +think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far +removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd. + +But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though +obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst +live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in +an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and +lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the +clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light +Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a +white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never +before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such +aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting +fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of +the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of +the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and +waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic +convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent +rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our +confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all +base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our +high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the +ideal, the true and living God of all men. + +Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athènes"; you are a little +tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry +out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your +poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to +æstheticise till the _café_ closes; for you the homeless ones are +waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to +your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and +the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover +them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with +plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, +you will find a few sous to give them _lager_ to cool their thirsty +throats. So you have ever lived--a blameless life is yours, no base +thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art and +friends, that is all. + +Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more +fortunate than I have been. + + + + +IX + +THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES + + +Two dominant notes in my character--an original hatred of my native +country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All +the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I +cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to +nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am +instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and +repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I +am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with +them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I +explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family +some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I +love, and with a love that is foolish--mad, limitless; I love them +better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet +Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great +hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and +the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful +southern England, not the north,--there is something Celtic in the +north--southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces--a smock frock +is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so +absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires +of the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to +me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism +is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism +is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese +about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases +to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung +to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The +Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs +limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and +revere Cromwell. + +_Garçon, un bock_! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; +if my books sell I cannot help it--it is an accident. + +But you live by writing. + +Yes, but life is only an accident--art is eternal. + +What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you +won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the _Figaro_. + +He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if +the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who +created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it. + +And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in +the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And that +terrible phrase repeated over and over again--"La Conquête de Paris." +What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris; +no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three +provincials. + +You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of +breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for +the pleasure of undressing them. + + * * * * * + +Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in +favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for +Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_, +and Lefebvre's unswerving fidelity to _le nu_...elegance, refinement, an +echo of ancient Greece: and then,--what do you think? when he had +exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to +Lefebvre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife +and eight children." Is it not monstrous? + +But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole +world in conformity with your æstheticisms...a vain dream, and if +realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are +the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to +such interests as these meet with response...it will be so till the +end of time. + +And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began +two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as +much as you thought they should be. + +Love--but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and +mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, +colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about +her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and +her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, +the _au delà_? But the women one has never seen before, that one will +never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the +baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark +with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or +maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes--the whisper +of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is +delusion, an _au delà_. + +Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching +people the "grammar of art." Education should be confined to clerks, and +it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn +anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, +musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an +unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve +of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct +drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force +it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and +that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good +heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is +better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for +making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does +not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly like +other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of +Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic +education are devoured. After two years they all paint and draw alike, +every one; that vile execution,--they call it execution,--_la pâte, la +peinture au premier coup_. I was over in England last year, and I saw +some portraits by a man called Richmond. They were horrible, but I liked +them because they weren't like painting. Stott and Sargent are clever +fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and +hadn't been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the +trail of the serpent is over all they do--that vile French painting, +_le morceau_, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a +nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. +I liked his little landscapes better...simplified into nothing, into a +couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he +will find a public to understand all that. + +Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a +few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that +democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy--the mass. The +mass can only appreciate simple and _naïve_ emotions, puerile +prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come +over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, +Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International +Exhibition?--The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided +by a _plébiscite_, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming +majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of +the _Petit Journal_. Don't talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters; +they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people +could understand _Hamlet_, the people would not read the _Petit +Journal_; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not +look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last +hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is +the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still +good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will +always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem. +But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend +for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to +exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five thousand, ten +thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not +ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I +was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were +putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. +Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not +find out; no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no +one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more +republican you are the worse it will be. + +The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the +plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to +rise against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, +and all the rest--stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by +machinery; they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were +painted by the hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the +demand, and a china in which there was always something more or less +pretty, was turned out; but now thousands, millions of plates are made +more than we want, and there is a commercial crisis; the thing is +inevitable. I say the great and the reasonable revolution will be when +mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the machinery and restores the +handicrafts. + +Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and +outcries; he is not an artist. _Il me fait l'effet_ of an old woman +shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of +it with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote +novels, history, plays, they collected _bric-à-brac_--they wrote about +their _bric-à-brac_; they painted in water-colours, they etched--they +wrote about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will +settling that the _bric-à-brac_ is to be sold at their death, and the +proceeds applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I +forget which it is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; +they kept a diary, they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, +_radotage de vieille femme_; nothing must escape, not the slightest +word; it might be that very word that might confer on them immortality; +everything they heard, or said, must be of value, of inestimable value. +A real artist does not trouble himself about immortality, about +everything he hears, feels and says; he treats ideas and sensations as +so much clay wherewith to create. + +And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written +about, prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for +articles; it all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is +puerile. + +And Daudet? + +Oh, Daudet, _c'est de la bouillabaisse_. + +Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people +have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute +inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of +artistic work. Whistler's art is classical; he thinks of nature, but he +does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and +the best of it is he says so. He knows it well enough! Any one who knows +him must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is +an exact science." And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks +nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his +pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions. I +admire his work; I am showing how he is misunderstood, even by those who +think they understand. Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic +of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any +other?--Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., +with a view to rendering his _idea_. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he +ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever see Duret +with a lady's opera cloak?--I am sure he never did. Is Duret in the +habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No, he is a _littérateur_ who +is always in men's society, rarely in ladies'. But these facts mattered +nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to Manet. Whistler took +Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme--in a +word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the +model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw; I am merely +contending that Whistler's art is not modern art, but classic art--yes, +and severely classical, far more classical than Titian's or +Velasquez;--from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek +dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than +Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. +Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand that the artistic +stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If +a man is really an artist he will remember what is necessary, forget +what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt his artistic +digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches, inchoate and +wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis. + +I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned. +What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the +same peasant, the same _sabot_, the same sentiment. You must admit that +it is somewhat stereotyped. + +What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But +that does not prevent it from being always beautiful. + +People talk of Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What +he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent +execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in +the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of +touch--marvellous! + +French translation is the only translation; in England you still +continue to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used +to do the same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of +two things--if the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse +for that of the original;--I don't want his verse, I want the +original;--if he is a bad poet; he gives us bad verse, which is +intolerable. Where the original poet put an effect of cæsura, the +translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the original poet puts an +effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of cæsura. Take +Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the original as +our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take Bayard +Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one with an +ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the +original did not exist? The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful, +but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They +are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of +a "splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he +had read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not +different from Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir +Theodore Martin, is doggerel. + +But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you +could into prose? + +I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your +mind away from that of the original. + + * * * * * + +But if you don't know the original? The rhythm of the original can be +suggested in prose judiciously used; even if it isn't, your mind is at +least free, whereas the English rhythm must destroy the sensation of +something foreign. There is no translation except a word-for-word +translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's translation of +Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke that is +untranslatable is explained in a note. + + * * * * * + +But that is the way young ladies translate--word for word! + + * * * * * + +No; 'tis just what they don't do; they think they are translating word +for word, but they aren't. All the proper names, no matter how +unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose +versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;--I don't know what a +verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. +Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very +good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a +note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "_Quand le cheval est +sellé il faut le monter_;" in French there is a proverb: "_Quand le vin +est tiré il faut le boire_." Well, a translator who would translate +_quand le cheval_, etc., by _quand le vin_, etc., is an ass, and does +not know his business. In translation only a strictly classical language +should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should +be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the +illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into +English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless +language, something--what shall I say?--the style of a modern Addison. + + * * * * * + +What, don't you know the story about Mendès?--when _Chose_ wanted to +marry his sister? _Chose's_ mother, it appears, went to live with a +priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was broken-hearted; +and he went to Mendès, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make +a clean breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great +deal of beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know +Mendès, you can see him smiling a little; and looking at _Chose_ with +that white cameo face of his he said, + +"_Avec quel meillur homme voulez-vous que votre mère se mit? vous +n'avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment religieux._" + +Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration, +long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again. + +How to be happy!--not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the +_Nouvelle Athènes_, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the _bourgeois_ +over there, not to do anything that would awake a too intense +consciousness of life,--to live in a sleepy country side, to have a +garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every +evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out +to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the +tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from +church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, +who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;--and to think +there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of +the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The +philanthropist is the Nero of modern times. + + + + +X + +EXTRACT FROM A LETTER + + +"Why did you not send a letter? We have all been writing to you for the +last six months, but no answer--none. Had you written one word I would +have saved all. The poor _concierge_ was in despair; she said the +_propriétaire_ would wait if you had only said when you were coming +back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done. Three +quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an +auction had to be called. It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid +men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against +the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne.... And all the +while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the +face--'the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,' 'the fan widespread across +the bosom' (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the +mistress of that little paradise of tapestry. She seemed to resent the +intrusion. I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes 'deep set +in crimson shadow' to fill with tears. But nothing altered her great +dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained +impenetrable.... + +"I was there the night before the sale. I looked through the books, +taking notes of those I intended to buy--those which we used to read +together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in +_terre cuite_, that laughed amid the frosty _boulingrins_. I found a +large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed. You should not be +so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their +letters. + +"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did +not wish to be recognised; the _concierge_ of course knew me, but she +can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she +to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred +francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the +auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from +the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table +waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the _marchands +de meubles_ in the _quartier_, came upstairs, spitting and talking +coarsely--their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled +the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese +dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was +a humorist, answered, 'If there are any ladies' men present, we shall +have some spirited bidding.' The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it +and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the +miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many +other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare--the organ +that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which +we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave +you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not +give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put +matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. +I don't know why, _un caprice de femme_. No one but you would have ever +thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that +delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation +with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out +all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm +moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the +bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy +darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the +heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted +something: '_les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants_.' +It was horrid of you: but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the +wrong way. Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the +servants set the other out with little tables? That supper was +fascinating! I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me +wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy +them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose +I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face. +The shoes went with a lot of other things--and oh, to whom? + +"So now that pretty little retreat in the _Rue de la Tour des Dames_ is +ended for ever for you and me. We shall not see the faun in _terre +cuite_ again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the +street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse's hind +legs. I believe it is the steepest street in Paris. And your luncheon +parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what +I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to +that out-of-the-way little street! Men never appreciate the risks women +run for them. But to leave my letters lying about--I cannot forgive +that. When I told Fay she said, 'What can you expect? I warned you +against flirting with boys.' I never did before--never. + +"Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I +read you Browning. You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand +why. I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you +should be here. There are lilacs in the room and the _Mont Valérien_ is +beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into +violet vapour. + +"We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year. Last +year we went to P----, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within +easy distance of a casino. I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out +every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, +and I gave way. There were two young men here, one the Count of B----, +the other the Marquis of G----, one of the best families in France, a +distant cousin of my husband. He has written a book which every one says +is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, _c'est +surtout très Parisien_. He paid me great attentions, and made my husband +wildly jealous. I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it +was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away. We may return there +this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an +excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable. We have decided +nothing as yet. The Duchesse de ---- is giving a costume ball; they say +it is going to be a most wonderful affair. I don't know what money is +not going to be spent upon the cotillion. I have just got home a +fascinating toilette. I am going as a _Pierette_; you know, a short +skirt and a little cap. The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago. I +danced the cotillion with L----, who, as you know, dances divinely; _il +m'a fait la cour_, but it is of course no use, you know that. + +"The other night we went to see the _Maître-de-Forges_, a fascinating +play, and I am reading the book; I don't know which I like the best. I +think the play, but the book is very good too. Now that is what I call a +novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels. But I must not talk +literature, or you will say something stupid. I wish you would not make +foolish remarks about men that _tout-Paris_ considers the cleverest. It +does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at +you behind your back, and that is not nice for me. The _marquise_ was +here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on +her 'days,' so extraordinary were the remarks you made. And by the way, +the _marquise_ has written a book. I have not seen it, but I hear that +it is really too _décolleté_. She is _une femme d'esprit_, but the way +she affiché's herself is too much for any one. She never goes anywhere +now without _le petit_ D----. It is a great pity. + +"And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you +are coming back to Paris. I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that +hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really +_trés Parisien_. Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs +Elysées. You might come back for the Duchesse's ball. I will get an +invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of +running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going +to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things +be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that +Turkish lamp. Yours ----" + +How like her that letter is,--egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not +foolish--narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and +yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity +of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an +inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived +her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely--sincerely?...like a +moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? +Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, +that is quite certain. I never could understand her;--a little brain +that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was +something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought +clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put +into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of +feeling--nervous feeling. I don't know...perhaps.... She has lived her +life...yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do +more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, +little, and merry--a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly +hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had +known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was +very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had +good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far +too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once...once I +did, _enfin_! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm +was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I +know.... I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments +when.... Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely +subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that +was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never +knew if she hated her husband,--one never knew her,--I never knew how +she would receive me. The last time I saw her...that stupid American +would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding +behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. +However, she could not blame me that time--and all the stories she used +to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the +sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got +her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to +think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into +mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois +they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight +hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, +the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room +geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms +and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a +little grotesque no doubt;--the mechanical admiration for all that is +about her, for the general atmosphere; the _Figaro_, that is to say +Albert Wolf, _l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-à-dire, dans le +monde_, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But +with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain +ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain +elevations and depravities,--depravities in the legitimate sense of the +word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace.... + +Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from +my reverie, it was pleasant. + +The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes +that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that +one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer +honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant +letter. My agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained +a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in +me;--so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible +even knowing how I stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey +and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that +morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful +Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the +odious epistle. + +That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I +may not be deprived of my _demi-tasse_ at _Tortoni's_, that I may not be +forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python--monstrous. +And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they +will find pity! + +Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. +The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to +interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak +shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the +strong shall be really strong,--that the strong shall be glorious, +sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, +cry the moderns. + +Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale +socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. +His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He +dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who +hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and +feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way +beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has +drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find +Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee +now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and +more Divine than any man's has been. The chosen people, the garden, the +betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of +Magdalen. The God descending to the harlot! Even the great pagan world +of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and +hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this. + +Come to me, ye who are weak. The Word went forth, the terrible +disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that +they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; +the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, +ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing +every day the end--the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, +that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I +will say it) in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. What fate has been like Thine? +Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, +crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent +bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious +plight, forthward in the world's van the glory and symbol of a man's new +idea--Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame +with Thy light than ever before--Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing +on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming +night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth +century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the +hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face +is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for +sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in +the ruin Thou hast created. + +Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is +the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of +fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of +lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but +for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! +What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under +Pharaoh's lash or Egypt's sun? It was well that they died that I might +have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. +Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the +ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some +sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres' _La Source_? That +the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when +compared with the essential that I should have _La Source_, that +exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with +delight of the painter's holy vision. Nay more, the knowledge that a +wrong was done--that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a +girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal +thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare. Oh, for +the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, +for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to +hear them cry the famous "Ave Caesar," to hold the thumb down, to see +the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned +slaves! Oh, for excess, for crime! I would give many lives to save one +sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, "_A la très-chère, à la très-belle, +qui remplit man cœur de clarté"_ let the first-born in every house in +Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to +decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from +destruction one drawing by Hokusai. Again I say that all we deem sublime +in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if +mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and +fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was +great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England's greatest +son was the personification of injustice--Cromwell. + +But the old world of heroes is over now. The skies above us are dark +with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are +running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing +remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate +Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, +creatures of the ooze and rushes about us--we, the great ship that has +floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain +passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive +blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen +escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary +of tears and effusion, and our refuge--the British Museum--is the wide +sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the +flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is +indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and +how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, +barbarous soul of beauty and of might! + + + + +XI + + +But neither Apollo nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his +exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood +lightly advancing; the other sat in sombre contemplation, calm as a +beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel--the +beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich +autumnal leaves where the jays darted and screamed. The twisted columns +of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, +the python devoured a guinea-pig, the last I gave him; the great white +cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an +abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So +be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, +without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never +return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with +myself; I told my _concierge_ that I would return in a month, and I left +all to be sold, brutally sold by auction, as the letter I read in the +last chapter charmingly and touchingly describes. + +Not even to Marshall did I confide my foreboding that Paris would pass +out of my life, that it would henceforth be with me a beautiful memory, +but never more a practical delight. He and I were no longer living +together; we had parted a second time, but this time without bitterness +of any kind; he had learnt to feel that I wanted to live alone, and had +moved away into the Latin quarter, whither I made occasional +expeditions. I accompanied him once to the old haunts, but various terms +of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest +myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once +done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection +for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would +grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made +friends in the Nouvelle Athènes who interested me passionately, and my +thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had +failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him +to Degas and Manet, but he had spoken of Jules Lefèbvre and Bouguereau, +and generally shown himself incapable of any higher education; he could +not enter where I had entered, and this was alienation. We could no +longer even talk of the same people; when I spoke of a certain +_marquise_, he answered with an indifferent "Do you really think so"? +and proceeded to drag me away from my glitter of satin to the dinginess +of print dresses. It was more than alienation, it was almost separation; +but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to +whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I +turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap--rap--rap! + +"Who's there?" + +"I--George Moore." + +"I've got a model." + +"Never mind your model. Open the door. How are you? what are you +painting?" + +"This; what do you think of it?" + +"It is prettily composed. I think it will come out all right. I am going +to England; come to say good-bye." + +"Going to England! What will you do in England?" + +"I have to go about money matters, very tiresome. I had really begun to +forget there was such a place." + +"But you are not going to stay there?" + +"Oh, no!" + +"You will be just in time to see the Academy." + +The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last +Marshall said, "I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; +there's that model." + +The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very +picture of discontent. + +"Send her away." + +"I asked her to come out to dinner." + +"D--n her.... Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with +you; you shall both dine with me. _Je quitte Paris demain matin, +peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon +ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous +invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela +vous est agrèable_?" + +"_Je veux bien, monsieur_." + +Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was +always so. We dined in a _gargote_, and afterwards we went to a +students' ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing +through a clear sky, and on the pavement's edge Marshall's beautiful, +slim, manly figure, and Marie's exquisite gracefulness. She was +Lefèbvre's Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. +She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained +she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No +one knew why; some said it was love. + +I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large +trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman +as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley's Hotel I met my +agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He +explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and +that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a +solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to +contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, +and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. +The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the +senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of +human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but +among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent +spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify +himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and +language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new +nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, +and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was +a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every +aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of +life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; +I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but +everything seemed far away--a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was +in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I +could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an +Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an +Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will +take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that +any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is +found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are +psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is +the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of +a Frenchman's mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they +stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, +form, and temperament;--two ideas destined to remain irrevocably +separate and distinct. + +I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this +was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more +years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts +with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as +an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was +in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional +_chroniques_ in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember +very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing +with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more +easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did +not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, +I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose +required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is +required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and +also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt +with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English +verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an +attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure. + +Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose +translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes:-- + + We are alone! Listen, a little while, + And hear the reason why your weary smile + And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet, + And how my love of you is more complete + Than any love of any lover. They + Have only been attracted by the gray + Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim + And delicate form, or some such other whim, + The simple pretexts of all lovers;--I + For other reason. Listen whilst I try + To say. I joy to see the sunset slope + Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, + Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm + Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, + In mildly modulated phrases; thus + Your life shall fade like a voluptuous + Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die + Like some soft evening's sad serenity... + I would possess your dying hours; indeed + My love is worthy of the gift, I plead + For them. Although I never loved as yet, + Methinks that I might love you; I would get + From out the knowledge that the time was brief, + That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, + And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm + Beyond all other loves, for now the arm + Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims + You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames + Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet + To see you fading like a violet, + Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange + And costly pleasure, far beyond the range + Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I + Will choose a country spot where fields of rye + And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, + Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, + To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where, + The porch and windows are festooned with fair + Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon + A shady garden where we'll walk alone + In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see + Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, + The garden's length, is far, and you will rest + From time to time, leaning upon my breast + Your languid lily face. Then later still + Unto the sofa by the window-sill + Your wasted body I shall carry, so + That you may drink the last left lingering glow + Of evening, when the air is filled with scent + Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent + The while with many griefs. Like some blue day + That grows more lovely as it fades away, + Gaining that calm serenity and height + Of colour wanted, as the solemn night + Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep + For ever and for ever; I shall weep + A day and night large tears upon your face, + Laying you then beneath a rose-red place + Where I may muse and dedicate and dream + Volumes of poesy of you; and deem + It happiness to know that you are far + From any base desires as that fair star + Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. + Death takes but little, yea, your death has given + Me that deep peace, and that secure possession + Which man may never find in earthly passion. + +And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for +they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my +English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor +poets? + + NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE + + La nuit est pleine de silence, + Et dans une étrange lueur, + Et dans une douce indolence + La lune dort comme une fleur. + + Parmi rochers, dans le sable + Sous les grands pins d'un calme amer + Surgit mon amour périssable, + Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair. + + Je suis ton amant, et la blonde + Gorge tremble sous mon baiser, + Et le feu de l'amour inonde + Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser. + + Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche + Est telle qu'un fruit fait de sang; + Tout passe, mais ta main me touche + Et je me donne en frémissant, + + Tes yeux verts me regardent: j'aime + Le clair de lune de tes yeux, + Et je ne vois dans le ciel même + Que ton corps rare et radieux. + + POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON + + De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs, + D'ombres, d'étoiles ou de pleurs? + De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes + De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes? + + Parcilles aux lis abattus + Elles dorment les rêves tus + Dans la grande fenêtre ovale + Ou s'ouvre la nuit estivale. + +But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient +occupation for a life-time--I realised that fact suddenly--I remember +the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and +these poems were the last efforts of my muse. + + THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST + + As sailors watch from their prison + For the faint grey line of the coasts, + I look to the past re-arisen, + And joys come over in hosts + Like the white sea birds from their roosts. + + I love not the indelicate present, + The future's unknown to our quest, + To-day is the life of the peasant, + But the past is a haven of rest-- + The things of the past are the best. + + The rose of the past is better + Than the rose we ravish to-day, + 'Tis holier, purer, and fitter + To place on the shrine where we pray + For the secret thoughts we obey. + + In the past nothing dies, nothing changes, + In the past all is lovely and still; + No grief nor fate that estranges, + Nor hope that no life can fulfil, + But ethereal shelter from ill. + + The coarser delights of the hour + Tempt, and debauch, and deprave, + And we joy in a flitting flower, + Knowing that nothing can save + Our flesh from the fate of the grave. + + But sooner or later returning + In grief to the well-loved nest, + Our souls filled with infinite yearning, + We cry, there is rest, there is rest + In the past, its joys are the best. + + NOSTALGIA + + Fair were the dreamful days of old, + When in the summer's sleepy shade, + Beneath the beeches on the wold, + The shepherds lay and gently played + Music to maidens, who, afraid, + Drew all together rapturously, + Their white soft hands like white leaves laid, + In the old dear days of Arcady. + + Men were not then as they are now + Haunted and terrified by creeds, + They sought not then, nor cared to know + The end that as a magnet leads, + Nor told with austere fingers beads, + Nor reasoned with their grief and glee, + But rioted in pleasant meads + In the old dear days of Arcady. + + The future may be wrong or right, + The present is a hopeless wrong, + For life and love have lost delight, + And bitter even is our song; + And year by year grey doubt grows strong, + And death is all that seems to dree. + Wherefore with weary hearts we long + For the old dear days of Arcady. + + Envoi. + + Glories and triumphs ne'er shall cease, + But men may sound the heavens and sea, + One thing is lost for aye--the peace + Of the old dear days of Arcady. + +And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, +determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships +of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious +for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. +An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. +So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that +house? Chance, or a friend's recommendation? I forget. It was +uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are +curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The +sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled +with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a +large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed +stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a +small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition +wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. +This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten +shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In +the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy +Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, +and in the afternoon, friends--girls from the theatre--used to come and +see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; +and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L----; she had only +two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except +when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now +looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones. + +She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she +liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or +two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; +we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of +what?--of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of +enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it +was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not +living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I +have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings +which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our +intimacy, and I believe Miss L---- was charged indirectly for her +conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large +sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. +The landlady's parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to +it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence +ascended Mrs S----'s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, +with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs +predominating. + +Emma, I remember you--you are not to be forgotten--up at five o'clock +every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous +children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck +and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours +at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, +running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down +on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those +hands--can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind +word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the +pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts +of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had +sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally +you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were +too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into +the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were +very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and +intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a +real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. +Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely +recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked--well, to +be candid,--you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated +the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers +something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore +that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you +was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw +something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of +yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I +have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of +yours, for it was a sweet face--that sweet, natural goodness that is so +sublime--lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words +convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your +case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen +hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the +slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the +landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know +that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish +between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I +remember when you heard that Miss L---- was going to America, you asked +me, and the question was sublime: "Is she going to travel all night?" +You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you +knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you +went to church, and you said, "No, it makes my eyes bad." I said, "But +you don't read; you can't read." "No, but I have to look at the book." I +asked you if you had heard of God--you hadn't, but when I pressed you +on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not +answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the +landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, +and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of +days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you +answered that you couldn't go to church because it made your eyes bad. +It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London +and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, +except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police--yes, you knew what a +policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an +organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark +kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours +a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why +you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you +"didn't know how Mrs S---- would get on without me." + +This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what +you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not +know how she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point +your intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; +I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take +the children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of +this and he said--Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well +give a mule a holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably +descriptive of you. Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you +are a beast of burden, a drudge too horrible for anything but work; and +I suppose, all things considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen +children did well to work you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out +of your miserable wages. You had no friends; you could not have a friend +unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your +brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I +wondered if he were as awful as you. Poor Emma! I shall never forget +your kind heart and your unfailing good humour; you were born +beautifully good as a rose is born with perfect perfume; you were as +unconscious of your goodness as the rose of its perfume. And you were +taken by this fat landlady as 'Arry takes a rose and sticks it in his +tobacco-reeking coat; and you will be thrown away, shut out of doors +when health fails you, or when, overcome by base usage, you take to +drink. There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and +paid your wages there would be no hope. Those forty pounds even, if they +were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the +idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his +kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his +whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind +words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in +despair, the gin shop and the river would do the rest. Providence is +very wise after all, and your best destiny is your present one. We +cannot add a pain, nor can we take away a pain; we may alter, but we +cannot subtract nor even alleviate. But what truisms are these; who +believes in philanthropy nowadays? + + * * * * * + +"Come in." + +"Oh, it is you, Emma!" + +"Are you going to dine at home to-day, sir?" + +"What can I have?" + +"Well, yer can 'ave a chop or a steak." + +"Anything else?" + +"Yes, yer can 'ave a steak, or a chop, or--" + +"Oh, yes, I know; well then, I'll have a chop. And now tell me, Emma, +how is your young man? I hear you have got one, you went out with him +the other night." + +"Who told yer that?" + +"Ah, never mind; I hear everything." + +"I know, from Miss L----" + +"Well, tell me, how did you meet him, who introduced him?" + +"I met 'im as I was a-coming from the public 'ouse with the beer for +missus' dinner." + +"And what did he say?" + +"He asked me if I was engaged; I said no. And he come round down the +lane that evening." + +"And he took you out?" + +"Yes." + +"And where did you go?" + +"We went for a walk on the Embankment." + +"And when is he coming for you again?" + +"He said he was coming last evening, but he didn't." + +"Why didn't he?" + +"I dunno; I suppose because I haven't time to go out with him. So it +was Miss L---- that told you; well, you do 'ave chats on the stairs. I +suppose you likes talking to 'er." + +"I like talking to everybody, Emma; I like talking to you." + +"Yes, but not as you talks to 'er; I 'ears you jes do 'ave fine times. +She said this morning that she had not seen you for this last two +nights--that you had forgotten 'er, and I was to tell yer." + +"Very well, I'll come out to-night and speak to her." + +"And missus is so wild about it, and she daren't say nothing 'cause she +thinks yer might go." + + * * * * * + +A young man in a house full of women must be almost supernaturally +unpleasant if he does not occupy a great deal of their attention. +Certain at least it is that I was the point of interest in that house; +and I found there that the practice of virtue is not so disagreeable as +many young men think it. The fat landlady hovered round my doors, and I +obtained perfectly fresh eggs by merely keeping her at her distance; the +pretty actress, with whom I used to sympathise with on the stairs at +midnight, loved me better, and our intimacy was more strange and subtle, +because it was pure, and it was not quite unpleasant to know that the +awful servant dreamed of me as she might of a star, or something equally +unattainable; but the landlady's daughter, a nasty girl of fifteen, +annoyed me with her ogling, which was a little revolting, but the rest +was, and I speak quite candidly, not wholly unpleasant. It was not +aristocratic, it is true, but, I repeat, it was not unpleasant, nor do I +believe that any young man, however refined, would have found it +unpleasant. + +But if I was offered a choice between a chop and steak in the evening, +in the morning I had to decide between eggs and bacon and bacon and +eggs. A knocking at the door, "Nine o'clock, sir; 'ot water, sir; what +will you have for breakfast?" "What can I have?" "Anything you like, +sir. You can have bacon and eggs, or--" "Anything else?"--Pause,--"Well, +sir, you can have eggs and bacon, or--" "Well, I'll have eggs and +bacon." + +The streets seemed to me like rat holes, dark and wandering as chance +directed, with just an occasional rift of sky, seen as if through an +occasional crevice, so different from the boulevards widening out into +bright space with fountains and clouds of green foliage. The modes of +life were so essentially opposed. I am thinking now of intellectual +rather than physical comforts. I could put up with even lodging-house +food, but I found it difficult to forego the glitter and artistic +enthusiasm of the _café_. The tavern, I had heard of the tavern. + +Some seventy years ago the Club superseded the Tavern, and since then +all literary intercourse has ceased in London. Literary clubs have been +founded, and their leather arm-chairs have begotten Mr Gosse; but the +tavern gave the world Villon and Marlowe. Nor is this to be wondered at. +What is wanted is enthusiasm and devil-may-careism; and the very aspect +of a tavern is a snort of defiance at the hearth, the leather arm-chairs +are so many salaams to it. I ask, Did anyone ever see a gay club room? +Can any one imagine such a thing? You can't have a club-room without +mahogany tables, you can't have mahogany tables without +magazines--_Longman's_, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the _Nineteenth +Century_, with an article, "The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern +Society," by W. E. Gladstone--a dulness that's a purge to good spirits, +an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that's worth a thousand +a year. You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver +salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have +to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull. + +As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the +husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can +go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is +considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club--out of the +Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays everyone is respectable--jockeys, +betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs Kendal takes her children +to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them +of the joy of respectability. There is only one class left that is not +respectable, and that will succumb before long; how the transformation +will be effected I can't say, but I know an editor or two who would be +glad of an article on the subject. + +Respectability!--a suburban villa, a piano in the drawing-room, and +going home to dinner. Such things are no doubt very excellent, but they +do not promote intensity of feeling, fervour of mind; and as art is in +itself an outcry against the animality of human existence, it would be +well that the life of the artist should be a practical protest against +the so-called decencies of life; and he can best protest by frequenting +a tavern and cutting his club. In the past the artist has always been an +outcast; it is only latterly he has become domesticated, and judging by +results, it is clear that if Bohemianism is not a necessity it is at +least an adjuvant. For if long locks and general dissoluteness were not +an aid and a way to pure thought, why have they been so long his +characteristics? If lovers were not necessary for the development of +poet, novelist, and actress, why have they always had lovers--Sappho, +George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Sara? Mrs Kendal nurses children all +day and strives to play Rosalind at night. What infatuation, what +ridiculous endeavour! To realise the beautiful woodland passion and the +idea of the transformation, a woman must have sinned, for only through +sin may we learn the charm of innocence. To play Rosalind a woman must +have had more than one lover, and if she has been made to wait in the +rain and has been beaten she will have done a great deal to qualify +herself for the part. The ecstatic Sara makes no pretence to virtue, +she introduces her son to an English duchess, and throws over a nation +for the love of Richepin, she can, therefore, say as none other-- + + "Ce n'est plus qu'une ardeur dans mes veines cachée, + C'est Venus tout entière à sa proie attachée." + +Swinburne, when he dodged about London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems +and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he +has contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_, and published an +interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he +continues his plaint about his mother the sea. + +Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national +costumes are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, +and the smock in the southlands, even the Japanese are becoming +christian and respectable; in another quarter of a century silk hats and +pianos will be found in every house in Yeddo. Too true that universal +uniformity is the future of the world; and when Mr Morris speaks of the +democratic art to be when the world is socialistic, I ask, whence will +the unfortunates draw their inspiration? To-day our plight is pitiable +enough--the duke, the jockey-boy, and the artist are exactly alike; +they are dressed by the same tailor, they dine at the same clubs, they +swear the same oaths, they speak equally bad English, they love the same +women. Such a state of things is dreary enough, but what unimaginable +dreariness there will be when there are neither rich nor poor, when all +have been educated, when self-education has ceased. A terrible world to +dream of, worse, far worse, in darkness and hopelessness than Dante's +lowest circle of hell. The spectre of famine, of the plague, of war, +etc., are mild and gracious symbols compared with that menacing figure, +Universal Education, with which we are threatened, which has already +eunuched the genius of the last five-and-twenty years of the nineteenth +century, and produced a limitless abortion in that of future time. +Education, I tremble before thy dreaded name. The cruelties of Nero, of +Caligula, what were they?--a few crunched limbs in the amphitheatre; but +thine, O Education, are the yearning of souls sick of life, of maddening +discontent, of all the fearsome and fathomless sufferings of the mind. +When Goethe said "More light," he said the wickedest and most infamous +words that human lips ever spoke. In old days, when a people became too +highly civilised the barbarians came down from the north and +regenerated that nation with darkness; but now there are no more +barbarians, and sooner or later I am convinced that we shall have to end +the evil by summary edicts--the obstruction no doubt will be severe, the +equivalents of Gladstone and Morley will stop at nothing to defeat the +Bill; but it will nevertheless be carried by patriotic Conservative and +Unionist majorities, and it will be written in the Statute Book that not +more than one child in a hundred shall be taught to read, and no more +than one in ten thousand shall learn the piano. + +Such will be the end of Respectability, but the end is still far +distant. We are now in a period of decadence growing steadily more and +more acute. The old gods are falling about us, there is little left to +raise our hearts and minds to, and amid the wreck and ruin of things +only a snobbery is left to us, thank heaven, deeply graven in the +English heart; the snob is now the ark that floats triumphant over the +democratic wave; the faith of the old world reposes in his breast, and +he shall proclaim it when the waters have subsided. + +In the meanwhile Respectability, having destroyed the Tavern, and +created the Club, continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating +influence on literature. All audacity of thought and expression has been +stamped out, and the conventionalities are rigorously respected. It has +been said a thousand times that an art is only a reflection of a certain +age; quite so, only certain ages are more interesting than others, and +consequently produce better art, just as certain seasons produce better +crops. We heard in the Nouvelle Athènes how the Democratic movement, in +other words, Respectability, in other words, Education, has extinguished +the handicrafts; it was admitted that in the more individual +arts--painting and poetry--men would be always found to sacrifice their +lives for a picture or a poem: but no man is, after all, so immeasurably +superior to the age he lives in as to be able to resist it wholly; he +must draw sustenance from some quarter, and the contemplation of the +past will not suffice. Then the pressure on him from without is as water +upon the diver; and sooner or later he grows fatigued and comes to the +surface to breathe; he is as a flying-fish pursued by sharks below and +cruel birds above; and he neither dives as deep nor flies as high as his +freer and stronger ancestry. A daring spirit in the nineteenth century +would have been but a timid nursery soul indeed in the sixteenth. We +want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace +to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, +and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. +Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort of octopus, and +nowhere are you quite free from one of its horrible suckers. The power +of the villa residence is supreme: art, science, politics, religion, it +has transformed to suit its requirements. The villa goes to the Academy, +the villa goes to the theatre, and therefore the art of to-day is mildly +realistic; not the great realism of idea, but the puny reality of +materialism; not the deep poetry of a Peter de Hogue, but the meanness +of a Frith--not the winged realism of Balzac, but the degrading +naturalism of a coloured photograph. + +To my mind there is no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a +London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls +hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating +digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit and gallery forgetting the +miseries of life in imbecile stories reeking of the sentimentality of +the back stairs. Were other ages as coarse and common as ours? It is +difficult to imagine Elizabethan audiences as not more intelligent than +those that applaud Mr Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that +could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of +literary infamies as _In the Ranks_ and _Harbour Lights_. Artistic +atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the +rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old +crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet +of the musty characters with which they are peopled--the miser in the +old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he +keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. Let all this be +waived. We must not quarrel with the ingredients. The miser and the old +castle are as true, and not one jot more true, than the million events +which go to make up the phenomena of human existence. Not at these +things considered separately do I take umbrage, but at the miserable use +that is made of them, the vulgarity of the complications evolved from +them, and the poverty of beauty in the dialogue. + +Not the thing itself, but the idea of the thing evokes the idea. +Schopenhauer was right; we do not want the thing, but the idea of the +thing. The thing itself is worthless; and the moral writers who +embellish it with pious ornamentation are just as reprehensible as Zola, +who embellishes it with erotic arabesques. You want the idea drawn out +of obscuring matter, and this can best be done by the symbol. The +symbol, or the thing itself, that is the great artistic question. In +earlier ages it was the symbol; a name, a plume, sufficed to evoke the +idea; now we evoke nothing, for we give everything, the imagination of +the spectator is no longer called into play. In Shakespeare's days to +create wealth in a theatre it was only necessary to write upon a board, +"A magnificent apartment in a palace." This was no doubt primitive and +not a little barbarous, but it was better by far than by dint of anxious +archæology to construct the Doge's palace upon the stage. By one rich +pillar, by some projecting balustrade taken in conjunction with a moored +gondola, we should strive to evoke the soul of the city of Veronese: by +the magical and unequalled selection of a subtle and unexpected feature +of a thought or aspect of a landscape, and not by the up-piling of +extraneous detail, are all great poetic effects achieved. + + "By the tideless dolorous inland sea, + In a land of sand, of ruin, and gold." + +And, better example still, + + "Dieu que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois," + +that impeccable, that only line of real poetry Alfred de Vigny ever +wrote. Being a great poet Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously +observed more faithfully than any other poet these principles of art; +and, as is characteristic of the present day, nowhere do we find these +principles so grossly violated as in the representation of his plays. I +had painful proof of this some few nights after my arrival in London. I +had never seen Shakespeare acted, and I went to the Lyceum and there I +saw that exquisite love-song--for _Romeo and Juliet_ is no more than a +love song in dialogue--tricked out in silks and carpets and illuminated +building, a vulgar bawd suited to the gross passion of an ignorant +public. I hated all that with the hatred of a passionate heart, and I +longed for a simple stage, a few simple indications, and the simple +recitation of that story of the sacrifice of the two white souls for the +reconciliation of two great families. My hatred did not reach to the age +of the man who played the boy-lover, but to the offensiveness with +which he thrust his individuality upon me, longing to realise the poet's +divine imagination: and the woman, too, I wished with my whole soul +away, subtle and strange though she was, and I yearned for her part to +be played by a youth as in old time: a youth cunningly disguised, would +be a symbol; and my mind would be free to imagine the divine Juliet of +the poet, whereas I could but dream of the bright eyes and delicate mien +and motion of the woman who had thrust herself between me and it. + +But not with symbol and subtle suggestion has the villa to do, but with +such stolid, intellectual fare as corresponds to its material wants. The +villa has not time to think, the villa is the working bee. The tavern is +the drone. It has no boys to put to school, no neighbours to study, and +is therefore a little more refined, or, should I say? depraved, in its +taste. The villa in one form or other has always existed, and always +will exist so long as our present social system holds together. It is +the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that +does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence +to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising +effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved +impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of +the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I +will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the symbol and +glory of villaism. + +The subject is not unfamiliar to me; I come to it like the son to his +father, like the bird to its nest. (Singularly inappropriate comparison, +but I am in such excellent humour to-day; humour is everything. It is +said that the tiger will sometimes play with the lamb! Let us play.) We +have the villa well in our mind. The father who goes to the city in the +morning, the grown-up girls waiting to be married, the big drawing-room +where they play waltz music, and talk of dancing parties. But waltzes +will not entirely suffice, nor even tennis; the girls must read. Mother +cannot keep a censor (it is as much as she can do to keep a cook, +housemaid and page-boy), besides the expense would be enormous, even if +nothing but shilling and two-shilling novels were purchased. Out of such +circumstances the circulating library was hatched. + +The villa made known its want, and art fell on its knees. Pressure was +put on the publishers, and books were published at 31s. 6d.; the dirty +outside public was got rid of, and the villa paid its yearly +subscription, and had nice large handsome books that none but the +_élite_ could obtain, and with them a sense of being put on a footing of +equality with my Lady This and Lady That, and certainty that nothing +would come into the hands of dear Kate and Mary and Maggie that they +might not read, and all for two guineas a year. English fiction became +pure, and the garlic and assafœtida with which Byron, Fielding and Ben +Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as +critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. +English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, +were no longer procurable. But at this point human nature intervened; +poor human nature! when you pinch it in one place it bulges out in +another, after the fashion of a lady's figure. Human nature has from the +earliest time shown a liking for dirty stories; dirty stories have +formed a substantial part of every literature (I employ the words "dirty +stories" in the circulating library sense); therefore a taste for dirty +stories may be said to be inherent in the human animal. Call it a +disease if you will--an incurable disease--which, if it is driven +inwards, will break out in an unexpected quarter in a new form and with +redoubled virulence. This is exactly what has happened. Actuated by the +most laudable motives, Mudie cut off our rations of dirty stories, and +for forty years we were apparently the most moral people on the face of +the earth. It was confidently asserted that an English woman of sixty +would not read what would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a +maiden of any other nation. But humiliation and sorrow were awaiting +Mudie. True it is that we still continued to subscribe to his library, +true it is that we still continued to go to church, true it is that we +turned our faces away when _Mdlle. de Maupin_ or the _Assommoir_ was +spoken of; to all appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie +might wish us; and no doubt he looked back upon his forty years of +effort with pride; no doubt he beat his manly breast and said, "I have +scorched the evil one out of the villa; the head of the serpent is +crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly, with all the horror of an +earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders of +fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were +poured upon and hung over the land. Through the mighty columns of our +newspapers the terrible lava rolled unceasing, and in the black stream +the villa, with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and disappeared. + +An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that +there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the +coming of the Nirvana. + +I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a +feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be +legitimately put forward in its favour. It seems to me this: the +circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the +circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise +of the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is +more restrained and there is more reflection. The young and unknown +writer is placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is +not forced to employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; +the known writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to +think more of it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; +but all these possible advantages are destroyed and rendered _nil_ by +the veracious censorship exercised by the librarian. + + * * * * * + +There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that +reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;--but +there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, +and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of +Elizabethan England--I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems +to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, +but in the vulgarity of an English hall--I will not say the Pavilion, +which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there--for +preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first +evening there, when I saw for the time a living house--the dissolute +paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the +slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, +the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what +unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all +enjoyed each other's presence; in a word, there was life. Then there +were no cascades of real water, nor London docks, nor offensively rich +furniture, with hotel lifts down which some one will certainly be +thrown, but one scene representing a street; a man comes on--not, mind +you, in a real smock-frock, but in something that suggests one--and +sings of how he came up to London, and was "cleaned out" by thieves. +Simple, you will say; yes, but better than a _fricassée_ of _Faust_, +garnished with hags, imps, and blue flame; better, far better than a +drawing-room set at the St James's, with an exhibition of passion by Mrs +and Mr Kendal; better, a million times better than the cheap popularity +of Wilson Barrett--an elderly man posturing in a low-necked dress to +some poor trull in the gallery; nor is there in the hall any affectation +of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric which reminds you of a +broken-winded barrel-organ playing _a che la morte_, bad enough in +prose, but when set up in blank verse awful and shocking in its more +than natural deformity--but bright quips and cranks fresh from the +back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the +unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a +week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so +curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer +repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare--see, here she comes with +"What cheer, Rea! Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is +welcome and refreshing after the eternal drawing-room and Mrs Kendal's +cumbrous domesticity; it is curious, quaint, perverted, and are not +these the _aions_ and the attributes of art? Now see that perfect +comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because he is working with +living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he evokes the soul, +the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and elegant in +black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand +me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the +spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene +the comedian's eyes--each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, +it is magnetic, it is symbolic, it is art. + +Not art, but a sign, a presentiment of an art, that may grow from the +present seeds, that may rise into some stately and unpremeditated +efflorescence, as the rhapsodist rose to Sophocles, as the miracle play +rose through Peele and Nash to Marlowe, hence to the wondrous summer of +Shakespeare, to die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the +autumn of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic +interludes that in their unexpectedness and naïve naturalness remind me +of the comic passages in Marlowe's _Faustus_, I waited (I admit in vain) +for some beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic +worshipper cry out in his agony:-- + + "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships + And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? + Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. + Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! + Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again. + Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, + And all is dross that is not Helena." + +And then the astonishing change of key:-- + + "I will be Paris, and for love of thee, + Instead of Troy shall Wurtemberg be sacked," etc. + +The hall is at least a protest against the wearisome stories concerning +wills, misers in old castles, lost heirs, and the woeful solutions of +such things--she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years +restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the _ingenue_ +to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs +Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs +Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the +immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so +different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant +change of scene. The music-hall is a protest against the villa, the +circulating library, the club, and for this the "'all" is inexpressibly +dear to me. + +But in the interests of those illiterate institutions called theatres it +is not permissible for several characters to narrate events in which +there is a sequel, by means of dialogue, in a music-hall. If this +vexatious restriction were removed it is possible, if it is not certain, +that while some halls remained faithful to comic songs and jugglers +others would gradually learn to cater for more intellectual and subtle +audiences, and that out of obscurity and disorder new dramatic forms, +coloured and permeated by the thought and feeling of to-day, might be +definitely evolved. It is our only chance of again possessing a dramatic +literature. + + + + +XII + + +It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and +dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. +Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, +came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. +Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything +but an ordinary person. Let this be waived. I was as covered with "fads" +as a distinguished foreigner with stars. Naturalism I wore round my +neck, Romanticism was pinned over the heart, Symbolism I carried like a +toy revolver in my waistcoat pocket, to be used on an emergency. I do +not judge whether I was charlatan or genius, I merely state that I found +all--actors, managers, editors, publishers, docile and ready to listen +to me. The world may be wicked, cruel, and stupid, but it is patient; on +this point I will not be gainsaid, it is patient; I know what I am +talking about; I maintain that the world is patient. If it were not, +what would have happened? I should have been murdered by the editors of +(I will suppress names), torn in pieces by the sub-editors, and +devoured by the office boys. There was no wild theory which I did not +assail them with, there was no strange plan for the instant +extermination of the Philistine, which I did not press upon them, and +(here I must whisper), with a fair amount of success, not complete +success I am glad to say--that would have meant for the editors a change +from their arm-chairs to the benches of the Union and the plank beds of +Holloway. The actress, when she returned home from the theatre, +suggested I had an enemy, a vindictive enemy, who dogged my steps; but +her stage experience led her astray. I had no enemy except myself; or to +put it scientifically, no enemy except the logical consequences of my +past life and education, and these caused me a great and real +inconvenience. French wit was in my brain, French sentiment was in my +heart; of the English soul I knew nothing, and I could not remember old +sympathies, it was like seeking forgotten words, and if I were writing a +short story, I had to return in thought to Montmartre or the Champs +Elysées for my characters. That I should have forgotten so much in ten +years seems incredible, and it will be deemed impossible by many, but +that is because few are aware of how little they know of the details of +life, even of their own, and are incapable of appreciating the influence +of their past upon their present. The visible world is visible only to a +few, the moral world is a closed book to nearly all. I was full of +France, and France had to be got rid of, or pushed out of sight before I +could understand England; I was like a snake striving to slough its +skin. + +Handicapped as I was with dangerous ideas, and an impossible style, +defeat was inevitable. My English was rotten with French idiom; it was +like an ill-built wall overpowered by huge masses of ivy; the weak +foundations had given way beneath the weight of the parasite; and the +ideas I sought to give expression to were green, sour, and immature as +apples in August. + +Therefore before long the leading journal that had printed two poems and +some seven or eight critical articles, ceased to send me books for +review, and I fell back upon obscure society papers. Fortunately it was +not incumbent on me to live by my pen; so I talked, and watched, and +waited till I grew akin to those around me, and my thoughts blended +with, and took root in my environment. I wrote a play or two, I +translated a French opera, which had a run of six nights, I dramatized +a novel, I wrote short stories, and I read a good deal of contemporary +fiction. + +The first book that came under my hand was "A Portrait of a Lady," by +Henry James. Each scene is developed with complete foresight and +certainty of touch. What Mr James wants to do he does. I will admit that +an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss +of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare +gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, +gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but +Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is +one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word +is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never +resolved out of the haze of nebulae. You are on a bowing acquaintance +with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you +know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes. When I +think of "A Portrait of a Lady," with its marvellous crowd of +well-dressed people, it comes back to me precisely as an accurate +memory of a fashionable soirée--the staircase with its ascending +figures, the hostess smiling, the host at a little distance with his +back turned; some one calls him. He turns; I can see his white kid +gloves, the air is sugar sweet with the odour of the gardenias, there is +brilliant light here, there is shadow in the further rooms, the women's +feet pass to and fro beneath the stiff skirts, I call for my hat and +coat, I light a cigar, I stroll up Piccadilly...a very pleasant evening, +I have seen a good many people I knew, I have observed an attitude, and +an earnestness of manner that proved that a heart was beating. + +Mr James might say, "If I have done this, I have done a great deal," and +I would answer, "No doubt you are a man of great talent, great +cultivation and not at all of the common herd; I place you in the very +front rank, not only of novelists but of men of letters." + +I have read nothing of Henry James's that did suggest the manner of a +scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless +sentimentalities? I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts--why +does he not write complicated stories? Why does he not complete his +stories? Let all this be waived. I will ask him only why he always +avoids decisive action? Why does a woman never say "I will"? Why does a +woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a +man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever +accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common +occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite +twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story +begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the +characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing +happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter +of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some +adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I +take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr Lang says, "I like +adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like +sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr Lang says, +"Oh, do you?" as he might to a man who says, "I like port." But Mr James +and I are agreed on essentials, we prefer character-drawing to +adventures. One, two, or even three determining actions are not +antagonistic to character-drawing, the practice of Balzac, and +Flaubert, and Thackeray prove that. Is Mr James of the same mind as the +poet Verlaine-- + + "La nuance, pas la couleur, + Seulement la nuance, + ..... + Tout le reste est littérature." + +In connection with Henry James I had often heard the name of W.D. +Howells. I bought some three or four of his novels. I found them pretty, +very pretty, but nothing more,--a sort of Ashby Sterry done into very +neat prose. He is vulgar, as Henry James is refined; he is more +domestic; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, +mild witticisms, here, there, and everywhere; a couple of young men, one +a little cynical, the other a little over-shadowed by his love, a +strong, bearded man of fifty in the background; in a word, a Tom +Robertson comedy faintly spiced with American. Henry James went to +France and read Tourgueneff. W.D. Howells stayed at home and read Henry +James. Henry James's mind is of a higher cast and temper; I have no +doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral +history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia--he +borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. +Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was +borrowing. Altogether Mr James's instincts are more scholarly. Although +his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the +prudery of the age,--no, not of the age but of librarians,--I cannot but +feel that his concessions, for I suppose I must call them concessions, +are to a certain extent self-imposed, regretfully, perhaps...somewhat in +this fashion--"True, that I live in an age not very favourable to +artistic production, but the art of an age is the spirit of that age; if +I violate the prejudices of the age I shall miss its spirit, and an art +that is not redolent of the spirit of its age is an artificial flower, +perfumeless, or perfumed with the scent of flowers that bloomed three +hundred years ago." Plausible, ingenious, quite in the spirit of Mr +James's mind; I can almost hear him reason so; nor does the argument +displease me, for it is conceived in a scholarly spirit. Now my +conception of W.D. Howells is quite different--I see him the happy +father of a numerous family; the sun is shining, the girls and boys are +playing on the lawn, they come trooping in to high tea, and there is +dancing in the evening. + +My fat landlady lent me a novel by George Meredith,--"Tragic +Comedians"; I was glad to receive it, for my admiration of his poetry, +with which I was slightly acquainted, was very genuine indeed. "Love in +a Valley" is a beautiful poem, and the "Nuptials of Attila," I read it +in the _New Quarterly Review_ years ago, is very present in my mind, and +it is a pleasure to recall its chanting rhythm, and lordly and sombre +refrain--"Make the bed for Attila." I expected, therefore, one of my old +passionate delights from his novels. I was disappointed, painfully +disappointed. But before I say more concerning Mr Meredith, I will admit +at once frankly and fearlessly, that I am not a competent critic, +because emotionally I do not understand him, and all except an emotional +understanding is worthless in art. I do not make this admission because +I am intimidated by the weight and height of the critical authority with +which I am overshadowed, but from a certain sense, of which I am as +distinctly conscious, viz., that the author is, how shall I put it? the +French would say "quelqu'un," that expresses what I would say in +English. I remember, too, that although a man may be able to understand +anything, there must be some modes of thoughts and attitudes of mind +which we are so naturally antagonistic to, so entirely out of sympathy +with, that we are in no true sense critics of them. Such are the +thoughts that come to me when I read Mr George Meredith. I try to +console myself with such reflections, and then I break out and cry +passionately:--jerks, wire splintered wood. In Balzac, which I know by +heart, in Shakespeare, which I have just begun to love, I find words +deeply impregnated with the savour of life; but in George Meredith there +is nothing but crackjaw sentences, empty and unpleasant in the mouth as +sterile nuts. I could select hundreds of phrases which Mr Meredith would +probably call epigrams, and I would defy anyone to say they were wise, +graceful or witty. I do not know any book more tedious than "Tragic +Comedians," more pretentious, more blatant; it struts and screams, +stupid in all its gaud and absurdity as a cockatoo. More than fifty +pages I could not read. How, I asked myself, could the man who wrote the +"Nuptials of Attila" write this? but my soul returned no answer, and I +listened as one in a hollow mountain side. My opinion of George Meredith +never ceases to puzzle me. He is of the north, I am of the south. +Carlyle, Mr Robert Browning, and George Meredith are the three +essentially northern writers; in them there is nothing of Latin +sensuality and subtlety. + +I took up "Rhoda Fleming." I found some exquisite bits of description in +it, but I heartily wished them in verse, they were motives for poems; +and there was some wit. I remember a passage very racy indeed, of +middle-class England. Antony, I think, is the man's name, describes how +he is interrupted at his tea; a paragraph of seven or ten lines with "I +am having my tea, I am at my tea," running through it for refrain. Then +a description of a lodging-house dinner: "a block of bread on a lonely +place, and potatoes that looked as if they had committed suicide in +their own steam." A little ponderous and stilted, but undoubtedly witty. +I read on until I came to a young man who fell from his horse, or had +been thrown from his horse, I never knew which, nor did I feel enough +interest in the matter to make research; the young man was put to bed by +his mother, and once in bed he began to talk!...four, five, six, ten +pages of talk, and such talk! I can offer no opinion why Mr George +Meredith committed them to paper; it is not narrative, it is not witty, +nor is it sentimental, nor is it profound. I read it once; my mind, +astonished at receiving no sensation, cried out like a child at a +milkless breast. I read the pages again...did I understand? Yes, I +understood every sentence, but they conveyed no idea, they awoke no +emotion in me; it was like sand, arid and uncomfortable. The story is +surprisingly commonplace--the people in it are as lacking in subtlety as +those of a Drury Lane melodrama. + +"Diana of the Crossways" I liked better, and had I had absolutely +nothing to do I might have read it to the end. I remember a scene with a +rustic--a rustic who could eat hog a solid hour--that amused me. I +remember the sloppy road in the Weald, and the vague outlines of the +South Downs seen in starlight and mist. But to come to the great +question, the test by which Time will judge us all--the creation of a +human being, of a live thing that we have met with in life before, and +meet for the first time in print, and who abides with us ever after. +Into what shadow has not Diana floated? Where are the magical glimpses +of the soul? Do you remember in "Pères et Enfants," when Tourgueneff is +unveiling the woman's, shall I say, affection, for Bazaroff, or the +interest she feels in him? and exposing at the same time the reasons why +she will never marry him...I wish I had the book by me, I have not seen +it for ten years. + +After striving through many pages to put Lucien, whom you would have +loved, whom I would have loved, that divine representation of all that +is young and desirable in man, before the reader, Balzac puts these +words in his mouth in reply to an impatient question by Vautrin, who +asks him what he wants, what he is sighing for, "_D'être célèbre et +d'être aimè_,"--these are soul-waking words, these are Shakespearean +words. + +Where in "Diana of the Crossways" do we find soul-evoking words like +these? With tiresome repetition we are told that she is beautiful, +divine; but I see her not at all, I don't know if she is dark, tall, or +fair; with tiresome reiteration we are told that she is brilliant, that +her conversation is like a display of fireworks, that the company is +dazzled and overcome; but when she speaks the utterances are grotesque, +and I say that if anyone spoke to me in real life as she does in the +novel, I should not doubt for an instant that I was in the company of a +lunatic. The epigrams are never good, they never come within measurable +distance of La Rochefoucauld, Balzac, or even Gohcourt. The admirers of +Mr Meredith constantly deplore their existence, admitting that they +destroy all illusion of life. "When we have translated half of Mr +Meredith's utterances into possible human speech, then we can enjoy +him," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_. We take our pleasures differently; +mine are spontaneous, and I know nothing about translating the rank +smell of a nettle into the fragrance of a rose, and then enjoying it. + +Mr Meredith's conception of life is crooked, ill-balanced, and out of +tune. What remains?--a certain lustiness. You have seen a big man with +square shoulders and a small head, pushing about in a crowd, he shouts +and works his arms, he seems to be doing a great deal, in reality he is +doing nothing; so Mr Meredith appears to me, and yet I can only think of +him as an artist; his habit is not slatternly, like those of such +literary hodmen as Mr David Christie Murray, Mr Besant, Mr Buchanan. +There is no trace of the crowd about him. I do not question his right of +place, I am out of sympathy with him, that is all; and I regret that it +should be so, for he is one whose love of art is pure and untainted +with commercialism, and if I may praise it for nought else, I can praise +it for this. + +I have noticed that if I buy a book because I am advised, or because I +think I ought, my reading is sure to prove sterile. _Il faut que cela +vienne de moi_, as a woman once said to me, speaking of her caprices; a +quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected quarter. Mr Hardy and Mr +Blackmore I read because I had heard that they were distinguished +novelists; neither touched me, I might just as well have bought a daily +paper; neither like nor dislike, a shrug of the shoulders--that is all. +Hardy seems to me to bear about the same relation to George Eliot as +Jules Breton does to Millet--a vulgarisation never offensive, and +executed with ability. The story of an art is always the same,...a +succession of abortive but ever strengthening efforts, a moment of +supreme concentration, a succession of efforts weakening the final +extinction. George Eliot gathered up all previous attempts, and created +the English peasant; and following her peasants there came an endless +crowd from Devon, Yorkshire, and the Midland Counties, and, as they +came, they faded into the palest shadows until at last they appeared in +red stockings, high heels and were lost in the chorus of opera. Mr Hardy +was the first step down. His work is what dramatic critics would call +good, honest, straightforward work. It is unillumined by a ray of +genius, it is slow and somewhat sodden. It reminds me of an excellent +family coach--one of the old sort hung on C springs--a fat coachman on +the box and a footman whose livery was made for his predecessor. In +criticising Mr Meredith I was out of sympathy with my author, ill at +ease, angry, puzzled; but with Mr Hardy I am on quite different terms, I +am as familiar with him as with the old pair of trousers I put on when I +sit down to write; I know all about his aims, his methods; I know what +has been done in that line, and what can be done. + +I have heard that Mr Hardy is country bred, but I should not have +discovered this from his writings. They read to me more like a report, +yes, a report--a conscientious, well-done report, executed by a +thoroughly efficient writer sent down by one of the daily papers. +Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and +descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm +people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and +literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for +that it is a little too diluted with Mr Hardy's brains, the edges are a +little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at +work filing; on the other hand, it is not synthesized--the magical word +which reveals the past, and through which we divine the future--is not +seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions +do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, +and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, +or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the +works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested +in such things, because Mr Hardy is anxious to show how jolly country he +is. + +Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, +but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of +moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any +violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense. I +say that a practised writer should be able to do this; that they +sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it +for my purpose if I admit that Mr Hardy can do this. In Farmer Oak there +is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, the execution is +trustworthy; he has legs, arms, and a heart; but the vital spark that +should make him of our flesh and of our soul is wanting, it is dead +water that the sunlight never touches. The heroine is still more dim, +she is stuffy, she is like tow; the rich farmer is a figure out of any +melodrama, Sergeant Troy nearly quickens to life; now and then the +clouds are liquescent, but a real ray of light never falls. + +The story-tellers are no doubt right when they insist on the difficulty +of telling a story. A sequence of events--it does not matter how simple +or how complicated--working up to a logical close, or, shall I say, a +close in which there is a sense of rhythm and inevitableness is always +indicative of genius. Shakespeare affords some magnificent examples, +likewise Balzac, likewise George Eliot, likewise Tourgueneff; the +"Œdipus" is, of course, the crowning and final achievement in the music +of sequence and the massy harmonies of fate. But in contemporary +English fiction I marvel, and I am repeatedly struck by the inability of +writers, even of the first-class, to make an organic whole of their +stories. Here, I say, the course is clear, the way is obvious, but no +sooner do we enter on the last chapters than the story begins to show +incipient shiftiness, and soon it doubles back and turns, growing with +every turn weaker like a hare before the hounds. From a certain +directness of construction, from the simple means by which Oak's ruin is +accomplished in the opening chapters, I did not expect that the story +would run hare-hearted in its close, but the moment Troy told his wife +that he never cared for her, I suspected something was wrong; when he +went down to bathe and was carried out by the current I knew the game +was up, and was prepared for anything, even for the final shooting by +the rich farmer, and the marriage with Oak, a conclusion which of course +does not come within the range of literary criticism. + +"Lorna Doone" struck me as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, +swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to +nothing. Mr Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he +can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the +spirit of life I have already said, but "Lorna Doone" reminds me of a +third-rate Italian opera, _La Fille du Régiment_ or _Ernani_; it is +corrupt with all the vices of the school, and it does not contain a +single passage of real fervour or force to make us forget the inherent +defects of the art of which it is a poor specimen. Wagner made the +discovery, not a very wonderful one after all when we think, that an +opera had much better be melody from end to end. The realistic school +following on Wagner's footsteps discovered that a novel had much better +be all narrative--an uninterrupted flow of narrative. Description is +narrative, analysis of character is narrative, dialogue is narrative; +the form is ceaselessly changing, but the melody of narration is never +interrupted. + +But the reading of "Lorna Doone" calls to my mind, and very vividly, an +original artistic principle of which English romance writers are either +strangely ignorant or neglectful, viz., that the sublimation of the +_dramatis personæ_ and the deeds in which they are involved must +correspond, and their relationship should remain unimpaired. Turner's +"Carthage" is Nature transposed and wonderfully modified. Some of the +passages of light and shade--those of the balustrade--are fugues, and +there his art is allied to Bach in sonority and beautiful combination. +Turner knew that a branch hung across the sun looked at separately was +black, but he painted it light to maintain the equipoise of atmosphere. +In the novel the characters are the voice, the deeds are the orchestra. +But the English novelist takes 'Any and 'Arriet, and without question +allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to pass them into the +realms of the supernatural. Such violation of the first principles of +narration is never to be met with in the elder writers. Achilles stands +as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and +poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the +original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man +with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be +cognate and equal, and the melodic balance and blending are what first +separate Homer and Hugo from the fabricators of singular adventures. In +Scott leather jerkins, swords, horses, mountains, and castles harmonise +completely and fully with food, fighting, words, and vision of life; the +chords are simple as Handel's but they are as perfect. Lytton's work, +although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the same fashion, sustained by +a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,--an +admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the +homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of +decomposition. + +The spiritual analysis of Balzac equals the triumphant imagination of +Shakespeare; and by different roads they reach the same height of tragic +awe, but when improbability, which in these days does duty for +imagination, is mixed with the familiar aspects of life, the result is +inchoate and rhythmless folly, I mean the regular and inevitable +alternation and combination of pa and ma, and dear Annie who lives at +Clapham, with the Mountains of the Moon, and the secret of eternal life; +this violation of the first principles of art--that is to say, of the +rhythm of feeling and proportion, is not possible in France. I ask the +reader to recall what was said on the subject of the Club, Tavern, and +Villa. We have a surplus population of more than two million women, the +tradition that chastity is woman's only virtue still survives, the +Tavern and its adjunct Bohemianism have been suppressed, and the Villa +is omnipotent and omnipresent; tennis-playing, church on Sundays, and +suburban hops engender a craving for excitement for the far away, for +the unknown: but the Villa with its tennis-playing, church on Sundays, +and suburban hops will not surrender its own existence, it must take a +part in the heroic deeds that happen in the Mountains of the Moon; it +will have heroism in its own pint pot. Achilles and Merlin must be +replaced by Uncle Jim and an undergraduate: and so the Villa is the only +begotten of Rider Haggard, Hugh Conway, Robert Buchanan, and the author +of "The House on the Marsh." + +I read two books by Mr Christie Murray, "Joseph's Coat" and "Rainbow +Gold," and one by Messrs Besant and Rice,--"The Seamy Side." It is +difficult to criticise such work. It is as suited to the needs of the +Villa as the baker's loaves and the butcher's rounds of beef. I do not +think that any such miserable literature is found in any other country. +In France some three or four men produce works of art, the rest of the +fiction of the country is unknown to men of letters. But "Rainbow +Gold"--to take the best of the three--is not bad as a second-rate French +novel is bad; it is excellent as all that is straightforward is +excellent; and it is surprising to find that work can be so good, and at +the same time so devoid of artistic charm. That such a thing should be +is one of the miracles of the Villa. + +I have heard that Mr Besant is an artist in the "Chaplain of the Fleet" +and other novels, but this is not possible. The artist shows what he is +going to do the moment he puts pen to paper, or brush to canvas; he +improves on his first attempts, that is all; and I found "The Seamy +Side" so very common, that I cannot believe for a moment that its author +or authors could write a line that would interest me. + +Mr Robert Buchanan is a type of artist that every age produces +unfailingly: Catulle Mendès is his counterpart in France,--but the +pallid Portuguese Jew with his Christ-like face, and his fascinating +fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began +with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries +about the dignity of art, and both have--well...Mr Robert Buchanan has +collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the +Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said about which +the better--he has attacked men whose shoe-strings he is unworthy to +tie, and having failed to injure them, he retracted all he said, and +launched forth into slimy benedictions. He took Fielding's masterpiece, +degraded it, and debased it; he wrote to the papers that Fielding was a +genius in spite of his coarseness, thereby inferring that he was a much +greater genius since he had sojourned in this Scotch house of literary +ill-fame. Clarville, the author of "Madame Angot," transformed Madame +Marneff into a virtuous woman, but he did not write to the papers to say +that Balzac owed him a debt of gratitude on that account. + +The star of Miss Braddon has finally set in the obscure regions of +servantgalism; Ouida and Rhoda Broughton continue to rewrite the books +they wrote ten years ago; Mrs Lynn Linton I have not read. The "Story of +an African Farm" was pressed upon me. I found it sincere and youthful, +disjointed but well-written; descriptions of sandhills and ostriches +sandwiched with doubts concerning a future state, and convictions +regarding the moral and physical superiority of women: but of art +nothing; that is to say, art as I understand it,--rhythmical sequence of +events described with rhythmical sequence of phrase. + +I read the "Story of Elizabeth" by Miss Thackeray. It came upon me with +all the fresh and fair naturalness of a garden full of lilacs and blue +sky, and I thought of Hardy, Blackmore, Murray, and Besant as of great +warehouses where everything might be had, and even if the article +required were not in stock it could be supplied in a few days at latest. +These are exquisite little descriptions, full of air, colour, lightness, +grace, the French life seen with such sweet English eyes, the sweet +little descriptions all so gently evocative. "What a tranquil little +kitchen it was, with a glimpse of the courtyard outside, and the cocks +and hens, and the poplar trees waving in the sunshine, and the old woman +sitting in her white cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome +pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the +beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked +out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the +tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men +calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was +standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to +have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom +in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come +the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the +profound greyness of Hegelism, but merely the genial love and reverence +of a beautiful-minded woman. + +Such charms as these necessitate certain defects, I should say +limitations. Vital creation of character is not possible to Miss +Thackeray, but I do not rail against beautiful water-colour indications +of balconies, vases, gardens, fields, and harvesters because they have +not the fervid glow and passionate force of Titian's Ariadne; Miss +Thackeray cannot give us a Maggie Tulliver, and all the many profound +modulations of that Beethoven-like countryside: the pine wood and the +cripple; this aunt's linen presses, and that one's economies; the boy +going forth to conquer the world, the girl remaining at home to conquer +herself; the mighty river holding the fate of all, playing and dallying +with it for a while, and bearing it on at last to final and magnificent +extinction. That sense of the inevitable which the Greek dramatists had +in perfection, which George Eliot had sufficiently, that rhythmical +progression of events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and +the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the background of +austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour +brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is +true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; +it cannot be led up to by any chords no matter how ingenious, the +passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true +end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of +the mother. + +One of the few writers of fiction who seems to me to possess an ear for +the music of events is Miss Margaret Veley. Her first novel, "For +Percival," although diffuse, although it occasionally flowed into +by-channels and lingered in stagnating pools, was informed and held +together, even at ends the most twisted and broken, by that sense of +rhythmic progression which is so dear to me, and which was afterwards so +splendidly developed in "Damocles." Pale, painted with grey and opaline +tints of morning passes the grand figure of Rachel Conway, a victim +chosen for her beauty, and crowned with flowers of sacrifice. She has +not forgotten the face of the maniac, and it comes back to her in its +awful lines and lights when she finds herself rich and loved by the man +whom she loves. The catastrophe is a double one. Now she knows she is +accursed, and that her duty is to trample out her love. Unborn +generations cry to her. The wrath and the lamentation of the chorus of +the Greek singer, the intoning voices of the next-of-kin, the pathetic +responses of voices far in the depths of ante-natal night, these the +modern novelist, playing on an inferior instrument, may suggest, but +cannot give: but here the suggestion is so perfect that we cease to +yearn for the real music, as, reading from a score, we are satisfied +with the flute and bassoons that play so faultlessly in soundless dots. + +There is neither hesitation nor doubt. Rachel Conway puts her dreams +away, she will henceforth walk in a sad and shady path; her interests +are centred in the child of the man she loves, and as she looks for a +last time on the cloud of trees, glorious and waving green in the sunset +that encircles her home, her sorrow swells once again to passion, and, +we know, for the last time. + +The mechanical construction of M. Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the +naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the +action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing +about of a _dénouement_; and I thought of all this as I read +"Disenchantment" by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my +knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for +the _mise en place_, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so +loose, that much of its strength had dribbled away before it had rightly +begun. But the figure of the Irish politician I accept without reserve. +It seems to me grand and mighty in its sorrowfulness. The tall, +dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations +of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the +girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt's hereditary +sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his +acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that +he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his +country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the +disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once +life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what +remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink. The woman cannot +understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent +desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life's +sky. Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful +knot by suicide. + +I aver that Mr R.L. Stevenson never wrote a line that failed to delight +me; but he never wrote a book. You arrive at a strangely just estimate +of a writer's worth by the mere question: "What is he the author of?" +for every writer whose work is destined to live is the author of one +book that outshines the other, and, in popular imagination, epitomises +his talent and position. Ask the same question about Milton, Fielding, +Byron, Carlyle, Thackeray, Zola, Mr Swinburne. + +I think of Mr Stevenson as a consumptive youth weaving garlands of sad +flowers with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, +and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil. His +periods are fresh and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect +realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never +before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every +page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr Stevenson's style +is over-smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in +the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most +gentlemanly young man that ever walked in the Burlington. Mr Stevenson +is competent to understand any thought that might be presented to him, +but if he were to use it, it would instantly become neat, sharp, +ornamental, light, and graceful, and it would lose all its original +richness and harmony. It is not Mr Stevenson's brain that prevents him +from being a thinker, but his style. + +Another thing that strikes me in thinking of Stevenson (I pass over his +direct indebtedness to Edgar Poe, and his constant appropriation of his +methods), is the unsuitableness of the special characteristics of his +talent to the age he lives in. He wastes in his limitations, and his +talent is vented in prettiness of style. In speaking of Mr Henry James, +I said that, although he had conceded much to the foolish, false, and +hypocritical taste of the time, the concessions he made had in little +or nothing impaired his talent. The very opposite seems to me the case +with Mr Stevenson. For if any man living in this end of the century +needed freedom of expression for the distinct development of his genius, +that man is R.L. Stevenson. He who runs may read, and he with any +knowledge of literature will, before I have written the words, have +imagined Mr Stevenson writing in the age of Elizabeth or Anne. + +Turn your platitudes prettily, but write no word that could offend the +chaste mind of the young girl who has spent her morning reading the +Colin Campbell divorce case; so says the age we live in. The penny paper +that may be bought everywhere, that is allowed to lie on every table, +prints seven or eight columns of filth, for no reason except that the +public likes to read filth; the poet and novelist must emasculate and +destroy their work because.... Who shall come forward and make answer? +Oh, vile, filthy, and hypocritical century, I at least scorn you. + +But this is not a course of literature but the story of the artistic +development of me, George Moore; so I will tarry no longer with mere +criticism, but go direct to the book to which I owe the last temple in +my soul--"Marius the Epicurean." Well I remember when I read the +opening lines, and how they came upon me sweetly as the flowing breath +of a bright spring. I knew that I was awakened a fourth time, that a +fourth vision of life was to be given to me. Shelley had revealed to me +the unimagined skies where the spirit sings of light and grace; Gautier +had shown me how extravagantly beautiful is the visible world and how +divine is the rage of the flesh; and with Balzac I had descended circle +by circle into the nether world of the soul, and watched its +afflictions. Then there were minor awakenings. Zola had enchanted me +with decoration and inebriated me with theory; Flaubert had astonished +with the wonderful delicacy and subtlety of his workmanship; Goncourt's +brilliant adjectival effects had captivated me for a time, but all these +impulses were crumbling into dust, these aspirations were etiolated, +sickly as faces grown old in gaslight. + +I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of +natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the +country, the birds flying,--that one making for the sea; the abandoned +boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the +beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the +wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of +temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my +brain, fresh and fair, full of wide temples and studious hours, and the +lurking fragrance of incense; that such a vision of life was possible I +had no suspicion, and it came upon me almost with the same strength, +almost as intensely, as that divine song of the flesh,--Mademoiselle de +Maupin. + +Certainly, in my mind, these books will be always intimately associated; +and when a few adventitious points of difference be forgotten, it is +interesting to note how firm is the alliance, and how cognate and +co-equal the sympathies on which it is based; the same glad worship of +the visible world, and the same incurable belief that the beauty of +material things is sufficient for all the needs of life. Mr Pater can +join hands with Gautier in saying--_je trouve la terre aussi belle que +le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu_. And I +too join issue; I too love the great pagan world, its bloodshed, its +slaves, its injustice, its loathing of all that is feeble. + +But "Marius the Epicurean" was more to me than a mere emotional +influence, precious and rare though that may be, for this book was the +first in English prose I had come across that procured for me any +genuine pleasure in the language itself, in the combination of words for +silver or gold chime, and unconventional cadence, and for all those +lurking half-meanings, and that evanescent suggestion, like the odour of +dead roses, that words retain to the last of other times and elder +usage. Until I read "Marius" the English language (English prose) was to +me what French must be to the majority of English readers. I read for +the sense and that was all; the language itself seemed to me coarse and +plain, and awoke in me neither æsthetic emotion nor even interest. +"Marius" was the stepping-stone that carried me across the channel into +the genius of my own tongue. The translation was not too abrupt; I found +a constant and careful invocation of meaning that was a little aside of +the common comprehension, and also a sweet depravity of ear for +unexpected falls of phrase, and of eye for the less observed depths of +colours, which although new was a sort of sequel to the education I had +chosen, and a continuance of it in a foreign, but not wholly unfamiliar +medium, and so, having saturated myself with Pater, the passage to De +Quincey was easy. He, too, was a Latin in manner and in temper of mind; +but he was truly English, and through him I passed to the study of the +Elizabethan dramatists, the real literature of my race, and washed +myself clean. + + + + +XIII + +THOUGHTS IN A STRAND LODGING + + +Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away--stowed the last +child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows +of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has +ceased to tempt me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the +inducements that occur to her landlady's mind; the actress from the +Savoy has ceased to walk up and down the street with the young man who +accompanies her home from the theatre; she has ceased to linger on the +doorstep talking to him, her key has grated in the lock, she has come +upstairs, we have had our usual midnight conversation on the landing, +she has told me her latest hopes of obtaining a part, she has told me +of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bidden each other +good-night; she has gone up the creaky staircase, and I have returned to +my room, littered with MS. and queer publications!...the night is hot +and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river, and listless and +lonely I open a book, the first book that comes to hand. It is _Le +Journal des Goncourts,_ p. 358, the end of a chapter:-- + +"_It is really curious that it should be the four men the most free from +all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the +most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public +prosecutor: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and ourselves_." + +Goncourt's statement is suggestive, and I leave it uncommented on; but I +would put by its side another naked simple truth. That if in England the +public prosecutor does not seek to over-ride literature the means of +tyranny are not wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the +nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations +entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved +literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, +were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. +Byron and Shelley, and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its +own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw +his book from the reach of a public that was rooting then amid the +garbage of the Yelverton divorce case. I think of these facts and think +of Baudelaire's prose poem, that poem in which he tells how a dog will +run away howling if you hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you +offer him some putrid morsel picked out of some gutter hole, he will +sniff round it joyfully, and will seek to lick your hand for gratitude. +Baudelaire compared that dog to the public. + +When I read Balzac's stories of Vautrin and Lucien de Rubempré, I often +think of Hadrian and the Antinous. I wonder if Balzac thought of +transposing the Roman Emperor and his favourite into modern life. It is +the kind of thing that Balzac would think of. No critic has ever noticed +this. + +Sometimes, at night, when all is still, and I look out on that desolate +river, I think I shall go mad with grief, with wild regret for my +beautiful _appartement_ in _Rue de la Tour des Dames_. How different +the present from the past! I hate with my whole soul this London +lodging, and all that concerns it--Emma, and eggs and bacon, the +lascivious landlady and her lascivious daughter; I am weary of the +sentimental actress who lives upstairs, I swear I will never go out to +talk to her on the landing again. Then there is failure--I can do +nothing, nothing; my novel I know is worthless; my life is a leaf, it +will flutter out of sight. I am weary of everything, and wish I were +back in Paris. I am weary of reading, there is nothing to read, Flaubert +bores me. What nonsense has been talked about him! Impersonal! He is the +most personal writer. But his odious pessimism! How weary I am of it, it +never ceases, it is lugged in _à tout propos_, and the little lyrical +phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. +Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that +beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until +you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable...a new idea, what +can be more insipid--fit for members of parliament. Shall I go to bed? +No. I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarmé's to +read--Mallarmé for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of Mallarmé in +"A Rebours." In hours like these a page of Huysmans is as a dose of +opium, a glass of something exquisite and spirituous. + +"The decadence of a literature irreparably attacked in its organism, +weakened by the age of ideas, overworn by the excess of syntax, sensible +only of the curiosity which fevers sick people, but nevertheless +hastening to explain everything in its decline, desirous of repairing +all the omissions of its youth, to bequeath all the most subtle +souvenirs of its suffering on its deathbed, is incarnate in Mallarmé in +most consummate and absolute fashion.... + +"The poem in prose is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled +by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the +entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous +description of which it suppresses...the adjective placed in such an +ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of +its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream +for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, +affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the +souls of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet. The +novel thus understood, thus condensed into one or two pages, would be a +communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a +spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons +scattered through the universe, a delectation offered to the most +refined, and accessible only to them." + +Huysmans goes to my soul like a gold ornament of Byzantine workmanship: +there is in his style the yearning charm of arches, a sense of ritual, +the passion of the Gothic, of the window. Ah! in this hour of weariness +for one of Mallarmé's prose poems! Stay, I remember I have some numbers +of _La Vogue_, One of the numbers contains, I know, "Forgotten Pages;" I +will translate word for word, preserving the very rhythm, one or two of +these miniature marvels of diction:-- + + + + I + + FORGOTTEN PAGES. + + + "Since Maria left me to go to another star--which? Orion, Altair, or + thou, green Venus?--I have always cherished solitude. What long days + I have passed alone with my cat. By alone, I mean without a material + being, and my cat is a mystical companion--a spirit. I can, + therefore, say that I have passed whole days alone with my cat, and + alone with one of the last authors of the Latin decadence; for since + that white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I have loved + all that the word _fall_ expresses. In such wise that my favourite + season of the year is the last weary days of summer, which + immediately precede autumn, and the hour I choose to walk in is when + the sun rests before disappearing, with rays of yellow copper on the + grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the + literature that my soul demands--a sad voluptuousness--is the dying + poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all + the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer + the infantile Latin of the first Christian poetry. + + "I was reading, therefore, one of those dear poems (whose paint has + more charm for me than the blush of youth), had plunged one hand into + the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel-organ sang languidly and + melancholy beneath my window. It played in the great alley of + poplars, whose leaves appear to me yellow, even in the spring-tide, + since Maria passed there with the tall candles for the last time. The + instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the + violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the + twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly. Now it murmurs + an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, + an air old-fashioned and commonplace. Why do its flourishes go to my + soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad? I listen, imbibing it + slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of + moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing + itself. + + + II + + + "The old Saxony clock, which is slow, and which strikes thirteen amid + its flowers and gods, to whom did it belong? Thinkest that it came + from Saxony by the mail coaches of old time? + + "(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.) + + "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of + gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one + woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked + long enough, I should see a naked phantom. + + "Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things. + + "(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.) + + "Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! + the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs + stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. + Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured + by time? + + "(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty + windows.) + + "Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my + poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are + full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects + displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, + and thou feelest as if thou shouldst use them--a difficult thing + indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action. + + "Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with + attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the + Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, + my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm + child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the + streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture. + + "Thou art abstracted? + + "(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)" + +We, the "ten superior persons scattered through the universe" think +these prose poems the concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the +essential oil of art, others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be +the aberrations of a refined mind, distorted with hatred of the +commonplace; the pit will immediately declare them to be nonsense, and +will return with satisfaction to the last leading article in the daily +paper. + +_J'ai fait mes adieux à ma mère et je viens pour vous faire les miens_ +and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year in +France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not +been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet +sought literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in +England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious +than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading +journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult +to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and +place it for its greater glory in my less remarkable prose:-- + + "_As we gazed on the beauties thus revealed by Good, a spirit of + emulation filled our breasts, and we set to work to get ourselves up + as well as we could_." + +A return to romance! a return to the animal, say I. + +One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense +desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they +have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal +effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they +have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in +their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very +osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration. What Hugo +did for French verse, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans have done +for French prose. No more literary school than the realists has ever +existed, and I do not except even the Elizabethans. And for this reason +our failures are more interesting than the vulgar successes of our +opponents; for when we fall into the sterile and distorted, it is +through our noble and incurable hatred of the commonplace of all that is +popular. + +The healthy school is played out in England; all that could be said has +been said; the successors of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot have +no ideal, and consequently no language; what can be more pudding than +the language of Mr Hardy, and he is typical of a dozen other writers, Mr +Besant, Mr Murray, Mr Crawford? The reason of this heaviness of thought +and expression is that the avenues are closed, no new subject matter is +introduced, the language of English fiction has therefore run stagnant. +But if the realists should catch favour in England the English tongue +may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would +introduce new forms of language would arise. + +"Carmen Sylva!" How easy it is to divine the æstheticism of any one +signing, "Carmen Sylva." + +In youth the genius of Shelly astonished me; but now I find the +stupidity of the ordinary person infinitely more surprising. + +That I may die childless--that when my hour comes I may turn my face to +the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human +life--then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins +shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, +though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held +accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for +ever. + +I realize that this is truth, the one truth, and the whole truth; and +yet the vainest woman that ever looked in a glass never regretted her +youth more than I, or felt the disgrace of middle-age more keenly. She +has her portrait painted, I write these confessions; each hopes to save +something of the past, and escape somehow the ravening waves of time and +float into some haven of remembrance. St Augustine's Confessions are the +story of a God-tortured, mine of an art-tortured, soul. Which subject is +the most living? The first! for man is stupid and still loves his +conscience as a child loves a toy. Now the world plays with "Robert +Elsmere." This book seems to me like a suite of spacious, well +distributed, and well proportioned rooms. Looking round, I say, 'tis a +pity these rooms are only in plaster of Paris. + +"Les Palais Nomades" is a really beautiful book, and it is free from all +the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of great poetry +an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and +parasites of artistic work--ideas. Of all literary qualities the +creation of ideas is the most fugitive. Think of the fate of an author +who puts forward a new idea to-morrow in a book, in a play, in a poem. +The new idea is seized upon, it becomes common property, it is dragged +through newspaper articles, magazine articles, through books, it is +repeated in clubs, drawing-rooms; it is bandied about the corners of +streets; in a week it is wearisome, in a month it is an abomination. Who +has not felt a sickening feeling come over him when he hears such +phrases as "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Shakespeare was +really great when he wrote "Music to hear, why hearest thou music +sadly?" not when he wrote, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." Could he +be freed from his ideas what a poet we should have! Therefore, let those +who have taken firsts at Oxford devote their intolerable leisure to +preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be +excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and +resume our reading of the bard, and the witless foists would confer +happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See +the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are +burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out of +existence. + +Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided +everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea; +and for this I am grateful. Nor is his volume a collection of +miscellaneous verses bound together. He has chosen a certain sequence of +emotions; the circumstances out of which these emotions have sprung are +given in a short prose note. "Les Palais Nomades" is therefore a novel +in essence; description and analysis are eliminated, and only the +moments when life grows lyrical with suffering are recorded; recorded in +many varying metres conforming only to the play of the emotion, for, +unlike many who, having once discovered a tune, apply it promiscuously +to every subject they treat, Kahn adapts his melody to the emotion he is +expressing, with the same propriety and grace as Nature distributes +perfume to her flowers. For an example of magical transition of tone I +turn to _Intermède_. + + "Chère apparence, viens aux couchants illuminés. + Veux-tu mieux des matins albes et calmes? + Les soirs et les matins ont des calmes rosâtres + Les eaux ont des manteaux de cristal irisé + Et des rhythmes de calmes palmes + Et l'air évoque de calmes musiques de pâtres. + + * * * * * + + Viens sous des tendelets aux fleuves souriants + Aux lilas pâlis des nuits d'Orient + Aux glauques étendues à falbalas d'argent + A l'oasis des baisers urgents + Seulement vit le voile aux seuls Orients. + + * * * * * + + Quel que soit le spectacle et quelle que soit la rame + Et quelle que soit la voix qui s'affame et brame, + L'oubli du lointain des jours chatouille et serre, + Le lotos de l'oubli s'est fané dans mes serres, + Cependant tu m'aimais à jamais? + Adieu pour jamais." + +The repetitions of Edgar Poe seem hard and mechanical after this, so +exquisite and evanescent is the rhythm, and the intonations come as +sweetly and suddenly as a gust of perfume; it is as the vibration of a +fairy orchestra, flute and violin disappearing in a silver mist; but the +clouds break, and all the enchantment of a spring garden appears in a +shaft of sudden sunlight. + + "L'éphemère idole, au frisson du printemps, + Sentant des renouveaux éclorent, + Se guèpa de satins si lointains et d'antan: + Rose exilé des flores! + + Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas; + Aux murs, les roses tremières; + La terre étala, pour fêter les las, + Des divans vert lumière; + + Des rires ailés peuplèrent le jardin; + Souriants des caresses brèves, + Des oiseaux joyeaux, jaunes, incarnadins + Vibrèrent aux ciels de rêve." + +But to the devil with literature! Who cares if Gustave Kahn writes well +or badly? I met a chappie yesterday whose views of life coincide with +mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful of champagne +inside you, go to bed when it is light, and get up when you are rested." + +Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is the +young man. The eighteenth century is only woman--see the tapestries, the +delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear +in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, +with the hunters looking round; no servile archæology chills the fancy; +and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of +the eighteenth century. See the Fragonards--the ladies in high-peaked +bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up +they go; you can hear their light false voices amid the summer of the +leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as roses. Masks and arrows are +everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the +Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive +gestures and reluctance--false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and +exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the +Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the +soul of the century--ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not +then sentimental, it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and +the polished floor, and the tapestries with whose delicate tints and +decorations the high hair blends, the foot-stool and the heel and the +calf of the leg that is withdrawn, showing in the shadows of the lace; +see the satin of the bodices, the fan outspread, the wigs so adorably +false, the knee-breeches, the buckles on the shoes, how false; adorable +little comedy, adorably mendacious; and how winsome it is to feast on +these sweet lies, it is indeed delight to us, wearied with the bland +sincerity of newspapers. In the eighteenth century it was the man who +knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who +acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he +who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream +of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth +century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and +profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic +spirit of our age. + +The position of a young man in the nineteenth century is the most +enviable that has ever fallen to the lot of any human creature. He is +the rare bird, and is fêted, flattered, adored. The sweetest words are +addressed to him, the most loving looks are poured upon him. The young +man can do no wrong. Every house is open to him, and the best of +everything is laid before him; girls dispute the right to serve him; +they come to him with cake and wine, they sit circlewise and listen to +him, and when one is fortunate to get him alone she will hang upon his +neck, she will propose to him, and will take his refusal kindly and +without resentment. They will not let him stoop to tie up his shoe lace, +but will rush and simultaneously claim the right to attend on him. To +represent in a novel a girl proposing marriage to a man would be deemed +unnatural, but nothing is more common; there are few young men who have +not received at least a dozen offers, nay, more; it is characteristic, +it has become instinctive for girls to choose, and they prefer men not +to make love to them; and every young man who knows his business avoids +making advances, knowing well that it will only put the girl off. + +In a society so constituted, what a delightful opening there is for a +young man. He would have to waltz perfectly, play tennis fairly, the +latest novel would suffice for literary attainments; billiards, +shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be +considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by +the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action +of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and +must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must +succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, +love draws all things. Our young man would have to be five feet eleven, +or six feet, broad shoulders, light brown hair, deep eyes, soft and +suggestive, broad shoulders, a thin neck, long delicate hands, a high +instep. His nose should be straight, his face oval and small, he must be +clean about the hips, and his movements must be naturally caressing. He +comes into the ball-room, his shoulders well back, he stretches his hand +to the hostess, he looks at her earnestly (it is characteristic of him +to think of the hostess first, he is in her house, the house is +well-furnished, and is suggestive of excellent meats and wines). He can +read through the slim woman whose black hair, a-glitter with diamonds, +contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances +with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad +sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who +is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a +little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a +child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little +blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is +Lady ----." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly," Lovelace has made up +his mind. Then there is a young oldish girl, richly dressed; "I hear her +people have a nice house in a hunting country, I will dance with her, +and take the mother into supper, and, if I can get a moment, will have a +pleasant talk with the father in the evening." + +In manner Lovelace is facile and easy; he never says no, it is always +yes, ask him what you will; but he only does what he has made up his +mind it is his advantage to do. Apparently he is an embodiment of all +that is unselfish, for he knows that after he has helped himself, it is +advisable to help some one else, and thereby make a friend who, on a +future occasion, will be useful to him. Put a violinist into a room +filled with violins, and he will try every one. Lovelace will put each +woman aside so quietly that she is often only half aware that she has +been put aside. Her life is broken; she is content that it should be +broken. The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting +out of love. + +I have noticed that there are times when every second woman likes you. +Is love, then, a magnetism which we sometimes possess and exercise +unconsciously, and sometimes do not possess? + + + + +XIV + + +Now I am full of eager impulses that mourn and howl by turns, striving +for utterance like wind in turret chambers. I hate this infernal +lodging. I feel like a fowl in a coop;--that landlady, those children, +Emma.... The actress will be coming upstairs presently; shall I ask her +into my room? Better let things remain as they are. + +_Conscience_. + +Why intrude a new vexation on her already vexed life? + +_I_. + +Hallo, you startled me! Well, I am surprised. We have not talked +together for a long time. Since when? + +_Conscience_. + +I will spare your feelings. I merely thought I would remind you that you +have passed the rubicon--your thirtieth year. + +_I_. + +It is terrible to think of. My youth gone! + +_Conscience_. + +Then you are ashamed--you repent? + +_I_. + +I am ashamed of nothing--I am a writer; 'tis my profession not to be +ashamed. + +_Conscience_. + +I had forgotten. So you are lost to shame? + +_I_. + +Completely. I will chat with you when you please; even now, at this +hour, about all things--about any of my sins. + +_Conscience_. + +Since we lost sight of each other you have devoted your time to the +gratification of your senses. + +_I_. + +Pardon me, I have devoted quite as much of my time to art. + +_Conscience_. + +You were glad, I remember, when your father died, because his death gave +you unlimited facilities for moulding the partial self which the +restraining influence of home had only permitted, into that complete +and ideal George Moore which you had in mind. I think I quote you +correctly. + +_I_. + +You don't; but never mind. Proceed. + +_Conscience_. + +Then, if you have no objection, we will examine how far you have turned +your opportunities to account. + +_I_. + +You will not deny that I have educated myself and made many friends. + +_Conscience_. + +Friends! your nature is very adaptable--you interest yourself in their +pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your +education--speak not of it; it is but flimsy stuff. + +_I_. + +There I join issue with you. Have I not drawn the intense ego out of the +clouds of semi-consciousness, and realised it? And surely, the rescue +and the individualisation of the ego is the first step. + +_Conscience_, + +To what end? You have nothing to teach, nothing to reveal. I have often +thought of asking you this: since death is the only good, why do you not +embrace death? Of all the world's goods it is the cheapest, and the most +easily obtained. + +_I_. + +We must live since nature has willed it so. My poor conscience, are you +still struggling in the fallacy of free will? + +For at least a hundred thousand years man has rendered this planet +abominable and ridiculous with what he is pleased to call his +intelligence, without, however, having learned that his life is merely +the breaking of the peace of unconsciousness, the drowsy uplifting of +tired eyelids of somnolent nature. How glibly this loquacious ape +chatters of his religion and his moral sense, always failing to see that +both are but allurements and inveiglements! With religion he is induced +to bear his misery, and his sexual appetite is preserved, ignorant, and +vigorous, by means of morals. A scorpion, surrounded by a ring of fire, +will sting itself to death, and man would turn upon life and deny it, +if his reason were complete. Religion and morals are the poker and tongs +with which nature intervenes and scatters the ring of reason. + +_Conscience_ (after a long pause). + +I believe--forgive my ignorance, but I have seen so little of you this +long while--that your boast is that no woman influenced, changed, or +modified your views of life. + +_I_. + +None; my mind is a blank on the subject. Stay! my mother said once, when +I was a boy, "You must not believe them; all their smiles and pretty +ways are only put on. Women like men only for what they can get out of +them." And to these simple words I attribute all the suspicion of +woman's truth which hung over my youth. For years it seemed to me +impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful +and desirable--men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without +revulsion of feeling, could they really desire us? I was absorbed in the +life of woman--the mystery of petticoats, so different from the +staidness of trousers! the rolls of hair entwined with so much art, and +suggesting so much colour and perfume, so different from the bare crop; +the unnaturalness of the waist in stays! plenitude and slenderness of +silk, so different from the stupidity of a black tail-coat; rose feet +passing under the triple ruches of rose, so different from the broad +foot of the male. My love for the life of women was a life within my +life; and oh, how strangely secluded and veiled! A world of calm colour +with phantoms moving, floating past and changing in dim light--an +averted face with abundant hair, the gleam of a perfect bust or the +poise of a neck turning slowly round, the gaze of deep translucid eyes. +I loved women too much to give myself wholly to one. + +_Conscience_. + +Yes, yes; but what real success have you had with women? + +_I_. + +Damn it! you would not seek to draw me into long-winded stories about +women--how it began, how it was broken off, how it began again? I'm not +Casenova. I love women as I love champagne--I drink it and enjoy it; +but an exact account of every bottle drunk would prove flat narrative. + +_Conscience_. + +You have never consulted me about your champagne loves: but you have +asked me if you have ever inspired a real affection, and I told you that +we cannot inspire in others what does not exist in ourselves. You have +never known a nice woman who would have married you? + +_I_. + +Why should I undertake to keep a woman by me for the entire space of her +life, watching her grow fat, grey, wrinkled, and foolish? Think of the +annoyance of perpetually looking after any one, especially a woman! +Besides, marriage is antagonistic to my ideal. You say that no ideal +illumines the pessimist's life, that if you ask him why he exists, he +cannot answer, and that Schopenhauer's arguments against suicide are not +even plausible causistry. True, on this point his reasoning is feeble +and ineffective. But we may easily confute our sensual opponents. We +must say that we do not commit suicide, although we admit it is a +certain anodyne to the poison of life,--an absolute erasure of the wrong +inflicted on us by our parents,--because we hope by noble example and +precept to induce others to refrain from love. We are the saviours of +souls. Other crimes are finite; love alone is infinite. We punish a man +with death for killing his fellow; but a little reflection should make +the dullest understand that the crime of bringing a being into the world +exceeds by a thousand, a millionfold that of putting one out of it. + +Men are to-day as thick as flies in a confectioner's shop; in fifty +years there will be less to eat, but certainly some millions more +mouths. I laugh, I rub my hands! I shall be dead before the red time +comes. I laugh at the religionists who say that God provides for those +He brings into the world. The French Revolution will compare with the +revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a +puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears +on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an +electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago. +Christ, who with his white feet trod out the blood of the ancient world, +and promised Universal Peace, shall go out in a cataclysm of blood. The +neck of mankind shall be opened, and blood shall cover the face of the +earth. + +_Conscience_. + +Your philosophy is on a par with your painting and your poetry; but, +then, I am a conscience, and a conscience is never philosophic--you go +in for "The Philosophy of the Unconscious"? + +_I_. + +No, no, 'tis but a silly vulgarisation. But Schopenhauer, oh, my +Schopenhauer! Say, shall I go about preaching hatred of women? Were I to +call them a short-legged race that was admitted into society only a +hundred and fifty years ago? + +_Conscience_. + +You cannot speak the truth even to me; no, not even at half-past twelve +at night. + +_I_. + +Surely of all hours this is the one in which it is advisable to play you +false? + +_Conscience._ + +You are getting humorous. + +_I_. + +I am getting sleepy. You are a tiresome old thing, a relic of the +ancient world--I mean the mediæval world. You know that I now affect +antiquity? + +_Conscience_. + +You wander helplessly in the road of life until you stumble against a +battery; nerved with the shock you are frantic, and rush along wildly +until the current received is exhausted, and you lapse into +disorganisation. + +_I_. + +If I am sensitive to and absorb the various potentialities of my age, am +I not of necessity a power? + +_Conscience_. + +To be the receptacle of and the medium through which unexplained forces +work, is a very petty office to fulfil. Can you think of nothing higher? +Can you feel nothing original in you, a something that is cognisant of +the end? + +_I_. + +You are surely not going to drop into talking to me of God? + +_Conscience_. + +You will not deny that I at least exist? I am with you now, and +intensely, far more than the dear friend with whom you love to walk in +the quiet evening; the women you have held to your bosom in the perfumed +darkness of the chamber-- + +_I_. + +Pray don't. "The perfumed darkness of the chamber" is very common. I was +suckled on that kind of literature. + +_Conscience_. + +You are rotten to the root. Nothing but a very severe attack of +indigestion would bring you to your senses--or a long lingering illness. + +_I_. + +'Pon my faith, you are growing melodramatic. Neither indigestion nor +illness long drawn out can change me. I have torn you all to pieces +long ago, and you have not now sufficient rags on your back to scare +the rooks in seed-time. + +_Conscience_. + +In destroying me you have destroyed yourself. + +_I_. + +Edgar Poe, pure and simple. Don't pick holes in my originality until you +have mended those in your own. + +_Conscience_. + +I was Poe's inspiration; he is eternal, being of me. But your +inspiration springs from the flesh, and is therefore ephemeral even as +the flesh. + +_I_. + +If you had read Schopenhauer you would know that the flesh is not +ephemeral, but the eternal objectification of the will to live. Siva is +represented, not only with the necklace of skulls, but with the lingam. + +_Conscience_. + +You have failed in all you have attempted, and the figure you have +raised on your father's tomb is merely a sensitive and sensuous +art-cultured being who lives in a dirty lodging and plays in desperate +desperation his last card. You are now writing a novel. The hero is a +wretched creature, something like yourself. Do you think there is a +public in England for that kind of thing? + +_I_. + +Just the great Philistine that you always were! What do you mean by a +"public"? + +_Conscience_. + +I have not a word to say on that account, your one virtue is sobriety. + +_I_. + +A wretched pun.... The mass of mankind run much after the fashion of the +sheep of Panurge, but there are always a few that-- + +_Conscience_. + +A few that are like the Gadarene swine. + +_I_. + +Ah,...were I the precipice, were I the sea in which the pigs might +drown! + +_Conscience_. + +The same old desire of admiration, admiration in its original sense of +wonderment (miratio); you are a true child of the century; you do not +desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that +sense which you only care to stimulate--wonderment. And persecuted by +the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most +hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is +no better than a pimp. + +_I_. + +Then he is not like me; I have never been a pimp, and I don't think I +would be if I could. + +_Conscience_. + +The whole of your moral nature is reflected in Lewis Seymore, even to +the "And I don't think I would be if I could." + +_I_. + +I love the abnormal, and there is certainly something strangely +grotesque in the life of a pimp. But it is nonsense to suggest that +Lewis Seymore is myself;...you know that my original notion was to do +the side of Lucien de Rubrempré that-- + +_Conscience_. + +That Balzac had the genius to leave out. + +_I_. + +Really, if you can only make disagreeable remarks, I think we had better +bring this conversation to a close. + +_Conscience_. + +One word more. You have failed in everything you have attempted, and you +will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles--those +rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring +instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those +who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched +scribbler such as you are, has escaped her vengeance. + +_I_. + +You would have me pull down the black flag and turn myself into an +honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. +You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls +into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the +bright buccaneer drifts, an old derelict, tossed by the waves of ill +fortune, and buffeted by the winds into those dismal bays and dangerous +offings--housekeepers, nurses, and uncomfortable chambers. Such will be +my fate; and since none may avert his fate, none can do better than to +run pluckily the course which he must pursue. + +_Conscience_. + +You might devise a moral ending; one that would conciliate all classes. + +_I_. + +It is easy to see that you are a nineteenth-century conscience. + +_Conscience_. + +I do not hope to find a Saint Augustine in you. + +_I_. + +An idea; one of these days I will write my confessions! Again I tell you +that nothing really matters to me but art. And, knowing this, you +chatter of the unwisdom of my not concluding my novel with some foolish +moral.... Nothing matters to me but art. + +_Conscience_. + +Would you seduce the wretched servant girl if by so doing you could +pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper? + + + + +XV + + +And now, hypocritical reader, I will answer the questions which have +been agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage +of this long narrative of a sinful life.[2] Shake not your head, lift +not your finger, exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in +nothing. I know the base and unworthy soul. This is a magical +_tête-à-tête_, such a one as will never happen in your life again; +therefore I say let us put off all customary disguise, let us be frank: +you have been angrily asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you +have been _forced_ to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite +hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it +serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to +show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to +higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the +magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured +something about leaving the world a little better than you found it, and +you went down to dinner and lost consciousness of the world[3] in the +animal enjoyment of your stomach. I hold out my hand to you, I embrace +you, you are my brother, and I say, undeceive yourself, you will leave +the world no better than you found it. The pig that is being slaughtered +as I write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but +you will leave only a putrid carcase fit for nothing but worms. Look +back upon your life, examine it, probe it, weigh it, philosophise on it, +and then say, if you dare, that it has not been a very futile and +foolish affair. Soldier, robber, priest, Atheist, courtesan, virgin, I +care not what you are, if you have not brought children into the world +to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has been. I +hold out my hand to you, we are brothers; but in my heart of hearts I +think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the +world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, +think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the +world better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of +life is to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our +neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is +affording you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my +friend, my brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not +so bad after all. Now to resume. + +The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my +youth will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so +now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on +the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; +and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the +rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided +me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she +ever turned out of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the +most perfect equipoise possible to conceive, and up and down they went +and still go with measured movement, absorbing and assimilating all that +is poured into them without friction or stoppage. This book is a record +of my mental digestions; but it would take another series of confessions +to tell of the dinners I have eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the +suppers! seven dozen of oysters, pâté-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, +salad, and then a walk home in the early morning, a few philosophical +reflections suggested by the appearance of a belated street-sweeper, +then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep. + +I have had the rarest, the finest friends. I have loved my friends; the +rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions; everything +conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do you think +this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you are a +fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle +selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of +life's pie than the seven deadly virtues.[4] If you are a good man you +want a bad one to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to +go out on the spree with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place +your hand upon your heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical +_tête-à-tête_ which will happen never again in your life, admit that you +feel just a little interested in my wickedness,[5] admit that if you +ever thought you would like to know me that it is because I know a good +deal that you probably don't; admit that your mouth waters when you +think of rich and various pleasures that fell to my share in happy +Paris; admit that if this book had been an account of the pious books I +had read, the churches I had been to, and the good works I had done, +that you would not have bought it or borrowed it. Hypocritical reader, +think, had you had courage, health and money to lead a fast life, would +you not have done so? You don't know, no more do I; I have done so, and +I regret nothing except that some infernal farmers and miners will not +pay me what they owe me and enable me to continue the life that was once +mine, and of which I was so bright an ornament. How I hate this +atrocious Strand lodging-house, how I long for my apartment in _Rue de +la Tour des Dames_, with all its charming adjuncts, palms and pastels, +my cat, my python, my friends, blond hair and dark. + +The daily article soon grows monotonous, even when you know it will be +printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas +were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor +was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very +easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on +different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a +dozen. Some were printed in weekly newspapers, some were returned to me. + +There was a publisher in the neighbourhood of the Strand, who used to +frequent a certain bar, and this worthy man conducted his business as he +dressed himself, sloppily; a dear kind soul, quite witless and quite +_h_-less. From long habit he would make a feeble attempt to drive a +bargain, but he was duped generally. If a fashionable author asked two +hundred pounds for a book out of which he would be certain to make +three, it was ten to one that he would allow the chance to drift away +from him; but after having refused a dozen times the work of a Strand +loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would say, "Send it +in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it." There was a +long counter, and the way to be published by Mr B. was to straddle on +the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman behind this +counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read the MS., +looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts and entertained +the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs Macmillan and Messrs Longman with +polite requests to look at my MS., I straddled, played with the cat, +joked with the Irishman, drank with Mr. B., and in the natural order of +things my stories went into the magazine and were paid for. Strange were +the ways of this office; Shakespeare might have sent in prose and +poetry, but he would have gone into the wastepaper basket had he not +previously straddled. For those who were in the "know" this was a matter +of congratulation; straddling, we would cry, "We want no blooming +outsiders coming along interfering with our magazine. And you, Smith, +you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last month and cut me out. +O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of poems as well as +my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try to manage it; +here's the governor." And looking exactly like the unfortunate Mr +Sedley, Mr B. used to slouch in; he would fall into his leather +armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques--the last time I saw +that chair it was standing in the street in the hands of the brokers. + +But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all +means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had +not passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip +through our defences. One hot summer's day, we were all on the counter, +our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered. He must have been +six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr B.'s room, he asked him +to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened. "Wastepaper basket, +wastepaper basket," we shouted. "What an odd-looking fish he is--like a +pike!" said O'Flanagan; "I wonder what his MS. is like." "Very like a +pike," we cried. But O'Flanagan took the MS. home to read, and returned +next morning convinced he had discovered an embryo Dickens. The young +man was asked to call, his book was accepted, and we adjourned to the +bar. + +This young man took rooms in the house next to me on the ground floor. +He had been to Oxford, and to Heidelberg, he drank beer and smoked long +pipes, he talked of nothing but tobacco. Soon, very soon, I began to see +that he thought me a simpleton; he pooh-poohed my belief in Naturalism +and declined to discuss the symbolist question. He curled his long legs +upon the rickety sofa and spoke of the British public as the "B.P.," and +of the magazine as the "mag," and in the office which I had marked down +as my own I saw him installed as a genius. He brought a little man about +five feet three to live with him, and when the two, the long and the +short, went out together, it was like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +setting forth in quest of adventures in the land of Strand. The short +man indulged in none of the loud, rasping affectation of humour that was +so maddening in the long; he was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did +join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the +teeth--dusty and bitter. He kept a pocket-book, in which he held an +account of his reading. Holding the pocket-book between finger and +thumb, he would say, "Last year I read ten plays by Nash, twelve by +Peele, six by Greene, fifteen by Beaumont and Fletcher, and eleven +anonymous plays,--fifty-four in all." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 2: The use of the word sinful here seems liable to +misinterpretation. The phrase should run: "Of a virtuous life, for +remember that my virtues are your vices."] + +[Footnote 3: This should run: "Forgot your hypocrisy."] + +[Footnote 4: Vices, surely? See Footnote 2 above.] + +[Footnote 5: Virtue?] + + + + +XVI + + +Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this +time, attracted into other ways--ways that led into London life, and +were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses +and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever +an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of +whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The +bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his +favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another +friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in +character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept +it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the +impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening +clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house +was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the +cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort +of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I +found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of +titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten +sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous +cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant +champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; +a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and +eternal squandering of money,--money that rose at no discoverable +well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of +whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying +through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I +joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and +about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying +point. + +After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and +theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their +drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night--at +half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or +two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney +sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street +and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we +struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced +writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off +the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our +lagging pens. + +But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a +personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in +a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I +longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame, +brutal and glaring. + +Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the +souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have +known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in +the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes +and murmuring "dreadful young man"--examine your weakly heart, and see +what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what +is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up +natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched +soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails +for--paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done, +especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety. + +"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself. +"Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my +journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, +but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than +when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a +friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is +more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will +hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost +stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one +hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, +Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. +Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in +spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and +it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his +white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I +don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" +and he gives the beggar a shilling. + +We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are +not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable +when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell +you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my +craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,--it +will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, +dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a +man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make +himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your +friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of +course, instantly want to know more about him. + +It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in +hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the +comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; +choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting +to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was +a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can +resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the +mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful +lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did +not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, +as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies +retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through +various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose +and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did +not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred +until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The +beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was +sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into +ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at +last, to bring matters to a head, I said, + +"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity." + +"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool." + +"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me, +and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at +table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad." + +There was a lull, then a moment after he said, + +"I only meant politically." + +"And I only meant socially." + +He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger +tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and +shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked +up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although +I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that +if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and +as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force +on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers +I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by +pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press +would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say +against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and +apples for the journalists. + +I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking, +calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of +the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been +arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to +arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed. + +Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me +perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as +October scatters swallows. + +The first one said, "it was about one or two in the morning?" + +"Later than that, it was about seven." + +"He struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you hit him with a +champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out." + +"I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you don't like +to act for me, say so." + +I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:--"Can I count on you to +act for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply +came. "Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it +over." English people, I said, will have nothing to do with serious +duelling. I must telegraph to Marshall. "Of all importance. Come over at +once and act for me in an affair of honour. Bring the Count with you; +leave him at Boulogne; he knows the colonel of the ----." The next day I +received the following. "Am burying my father; as soon as he is +underground will come." Was there ever such ill-luck?... He won't be +here before the end of the week. These things demand the utmost +promptitude. Three or four days afterwards Emma told me a gentleman was +upstairs taking a bath. "Hollo, Marshall, how are you? Had a good +crossing? The poor old gentleman went off quite suddenly, I suppose?" + +"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay +quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side...wonderful +presence of mind." + +"He left no money?" + +"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the +Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find +out now what a success that picture was. _Je t'assure, je fais +l'ècole_"... + +"_Tu crois ça...on fait l'ècole après vingt ans de travail_." + +When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French. + +"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel." + +No sooner had I begun to tell the story than it dawned upon me that it +was impossible to tell it seriously, for it was fundamentally an absurd +story; and I lacked courage to tell Marshall that I only wished to go +through with the duel in order to become notorious. No one will admit +such a thing as that to his friend, and if I had admitted it Marshall +would not have consented. I suddenly began to get interested in other +things. There was Marshall's painting to talk about. After the theatre +we went home and æstheticised till three in the morning. The duel became +the least important event and Marshall's new picture the greatest. At +breakfast next day the duel seemed more tiresome than ever, but the +gentlemen were coming to meet Marshall. He showed his usual tact in +arranging my affair of honour; a letter was drawn up in which my friend +withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, +etc.--really now I lack energy to explain it any further. + + + + +XVII + + +Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, +"How very base"; but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, +if you are a soldier in Her Majesty's army, for war,--war that would +bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed +for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the +_Gazette_. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical +reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in +telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical +reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical +reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute +you. + +Day passed over day, and my novel seemed an impossible task--defeat +glared at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so +thin,--stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt +unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the +style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down +on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. +Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the +landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered +into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and +lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon +Street temptations, I trudged home to eat a chop. I studied the servant +as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she +would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!" + +I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs, and I never wearied of +talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired, +and she used to ask me about my novel. + +When my troubles lay too heavily upon me, I let her go up to her garret +without a word, and remained at the window wondering if I should ever +escape from Cecil Street, if I should ever be a light in that London, +long, low, misshapen, that dark monumented stream flowing through the +lean bridges. What if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass? +Happiness abides only in the natural affections--in a home and a sweet +wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her +simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, +not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for +her, I am too sullied for her lips. Were I to win her could I be +dutiful, true?... + + + + +XVIII + + +"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, +not the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses +there is reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish +young men who think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is +over for me, I have eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and +drink as I have; do you be young as I was. I have written it! The word +is not worth erasure, if it is not true to-day it will be in two years +hence; farewell! I yield my place, do you be young as I was, do you love +youth as I did; remember you are the most interesting beings under +heaven, for you all sacrifices will be made, you will be fêted and +adored upon the condition of remaining young men. The feast is over for +me, I yield my place, but I will not make this leavetaking more +sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice and +instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly +against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate +yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can +use it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my +place; but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I +would say my last word--were it possible I would be remembered by you as +a young man: but I know too well that the young never realise that the +old were not born old. Farewell." + +I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the +window, and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my +novel. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12278-0.txt or 12278-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/7/12278/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + +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: Confessions of a Young Man + +Author: George Moore + +Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12278] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">CONFESSIONS</a></h1> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">OF A...</a></h1> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">YOUNG MAN</a></h1> + <img src="images/title.png" height="495" width="353" alt="Confessions of a Young Man"> + <br> + <a href="#PREFACE_TO_A_NEW_EDITION_OF_quotCONFESSIONS_OF_A_YOUNG_MANquot"><b>Preface to a New Edition of "Confessions of a Young Man"</b></a><br> + <a href="#IP"><b>I</b></a><br> + <a href="#IIP"><b>II</b></a><br> + <a href="#IIIP"><b>III</b></a><br> + <a href="#Confessions_of_a_Young_Man"><b>Confessions of a Young Man</b></a><br> + <a href="#I"><b>I</b></a><br> + <a href="#II"><b>II</b></a><br> + <a href="#III"><b>III</b></a><br> + <a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a><br> + <a href="#V"><b>V</b></a><br> + <a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a><br> + <a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a><br> + <a href="#VIII"><b>VIII</b></a><br> + <a href="#IX"><b>IX</b></a><br> + <a href="#X"><b>X</b></a><br> + <a href="#XI"><b>XI</b></a><br> + <a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XIII"><b>XIII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XIV"><b>XIV</b></a><br> + <a href="#XV"><b>XV</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVI"><b>XVI</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII</b></a><br> + +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONFESSIONS_"></a><h2>CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN</h2> + +<h2>By GEORGE MOORE. 1886.</h2> + +<h4>Edited and Annotated by GEORGE MOORE, 1904,</h4> + +<div class="blkquot"><p>À JACQUES BLANCHE. + +<p>Clifford's Inn—1904</p> + +<p> L'âme de l'ancien Égyptien s'éveillait en moi quand mourut ma + jeunesse, et j'étais inspiré de conserver mon passé, son esprit et sa + forme, dans l'art.</p> + +<p> Alors trempant le pinceau dans ma mémoire, j'ai peint ses joues pour + qu'elles prissent l'exacte ressemblance de la vie, et j'ai enveloppé + le mort dans les plus fins linceuls. Rhamenès le second n'a pas reçu + des soins plus pieux! Que ce livre soit aussi durable que sa + pyramide!</p> + +<p> Votre nom, cher ami, je voudrais l'inscrire ici comme épitaphe, car + vous êtes mon plus jeune et mon plus cher ami; et il se trouve en + vous tout ce qui est gracieux et subtil dans ces mornes années qui + s'égouttent dans le vase du vingtième siècle.</p> + +<p> G.M.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="PREFACE_TO_A_NEW_EDITION_OF_quotCONFESSIONS_OF_A_YOUNG_MANquot"></a><h2>PREFACE TO A NEW EDITION OF </h2> +<h2>"CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN"</h2 + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IP"></a><h2>I</h2> +<br> + +<p>Dear little book, what shall I say about thee? Belated offspring of +mine, out of print for twenty years, what shall I say in praise of thee? +For twenty years I have only seen thee in French, and in this English +text thou comest to me like an old love, at once a surprise and a +recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I +could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So +for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a +railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed +my station by, and had to hire a carriage and drive across the downs.</p> + +<p>Like a learned Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a +<i>naïf</i> young man, a little vicious in his <i>naïveté</i>, who says that his +soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the +world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other +explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new, +more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every +wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself +seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the +style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his +early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig +and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is +true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing +dedication written in the form of an epitaph, an epitaph upon myself, +for it appears that part of me was dead even when I wrote "Confessions +of a Young Man." The youngest have a past, and this epitaph dedication, +printed in capital letters, informs me that I have embalmed my past, +that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem +I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the +railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a +tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for <i>un peu plus de +toilette</i>. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the +middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet, +that is a morbidity from which the middle-aged shrink). I would set his +coat collar straighter, I would sweep some specks from it. But can I do +aught for this youth, does he need my supervision? He was himself, that +was his genius; and I sit at gaze. My melancholy is like her's—the +ancient light-o'-love of whom I spoke just now, when she sits by the +fire in the dusk, a miniature of her past self in her hand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IIP"></a><h2>II</h2> +<br> + +<p>This edition has not been printed from old plates, no chicanery of that +kind: it has been printed from new type, and it was brought about by +Walter Pater's evocative letter. (It wasn't, but I like to think that it +was). Off and on, his letter was sought for during many years, hunted +for through all sorts of portfolios and bookcases, but never found until +it appeared miraculously, just as the proof of my Pater article was +being sent back to the printer, the precious letter transpired—shall I +say "transpired?"—through a crack in the old bookcase.</p> + + +<div class="blkquot"><p>BRASENOSE COLLEGE, + +<p> <i>Mar</i>. 4.</p> + +<p> MY DEAR, AUDACIOUS MOORE,—Many thanks for the "Confessions" which I + have read with great interest, and admiration for your + originality—your delightful criticisms—your Aristophanic joy, or at + least enjoyment, in life—your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there + are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case + of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or + disagree. What I cannot doubt is the literary faculty displayed. + "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" I feel inclined to say on + finishing your book; "shape" morally, I mean; not in reference to + style.</p> + +<p> You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been + independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing, + both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its + gaiety and good-nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many + things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive, way of + looking at the world. You call it only "realistic." Still!</p> + +<p> With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining + pen.—Very sincerely yours,</p> + +<p> WALTER PATER.</p></div> + +<p>Remember, reader, that this letter was written by the last great English +writer, by the author of "Imaginary Portraits," the most beautiful of +all prose books. I should like to break off and tell of my delight in +reading "Imaginary Portraits," but I have told my delight elsewhere; go, +seek out what I have said in the pages of the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> for +August 1904, for here I am obliged to tell you of myself. I give you +Pater's letter, for I wish you to read this book with reverence; never +forget that Pater's admiration has made this book a sacred book. Never +forget that.</p> + +<p>My special pleasure in these early pages was to find that I thought +about Pater twenty years ago as I think about him now, and shall +certainly think of him till time everlasting, world without end. I have +been accused of changing my likes and dislikes—no one has changed less +than I, and this book is proof of my fidelity to my first ideas; the +ideas I have followed all my life are in this book—dear crescent moon +rising in the south-east above the trees at the end of the village +green. It was in that ugly but well-beloved village on the south coast I +discovered my love of Protestant England. It was on the downs that the +instinct of Protestantism lit up in me.</p> + +<p>But when Zola asked me why I preferred Protestantism to Roman +Catholicism I could not answer him.</p> + +<p>He had promised to write a preface for the French translation of the +"Mummer's Wife"; the translation had to be revised, months and months +passed away, and forgetting all about the "Mummer's Wife," I expressed +my opinion about Zola, which had been changing, a little too +fearlessly, and in view of my revolt he was obliged to break his promise +to write a Preface, and this must have been a great blow, for he was a +man of method, to whom any change of plan was disagreeable and +unnerving. He sent a letter, asking me to come to Medan, he would talk +to me about the "Confessions." Well do I remember going there with dear +Alexis in the May-time, the young corn six inches high in the fields, +and my delight in the lush luxuriance of the l'Oise. That dear morning +is remembered, and the poor master who reproved me a little +sententiously, is dead. He was sorrowful in that dreadful room of his, +fixed up with stained glass and morbid antiquities. He lay on a sofa +lecturing me till breakfast. Then I thought reproof was over, but after +a walk in the garden we went upstairs and he began again, saying he was +not angry. "It is the law of nature," he said, "for children to devour +their parents. I do not complain." I think he was aware he was playing a +part; his sofa was his stage; and he lay there theatrical as Leo XI. or +Beerbohm Tree, saying that the Roman Church was an artistic church, that +its rich externality and ceremonial were pagan. But I think he knew even +then, at the back of his mind, that I was right; that is why he pressed +me to give reasons for my preference. Zola came to hate Catholicism as +much as I, and his hatred was for the same reason as mine; we both +learnt that any religion which robs a man of the right of free-will and +private judgment degrades the soul, renders it lethargic and timid, +takes the edge off the intellect. Zola lived to write "that the Catholic +countries are dead, and the clergy are the worms in the corpses." The +observation is "quelconque"; I should prefer the more interesting +allegation that since the Reformation no born Catholic has written a +book of literary value! He would have had to concede that some converts +have written well; the convert still retains a little of his ancient +freedom, some of the intellectual virility he acquired elsewhere, but +the born Catholic is still-born. But however we may disapprove of +Catholicism, we can still admire the convert. Cardinal Manning was aware +of the advantages of a Protestant bringing up, and he often said that he +was glad he had been born a Protestant. His Eminence was, therefore, of +opinion that the Catholic faith should be reserved, and exclusively, for +converts, and in this he showed his practical sense, for it is easy to +imagine a country prosperous in which all the inhabitants should be +brought up Protestants or agnostics, and in which conversions to Rome +are only permitted after a certain age or in clearly defined +circumstances. There would be something beyond mere practical wisdom in +such law-giving, an exquisite sense of the pathos of human life and its +requirements; scapulars, indulgences and sacraments are needed by the +weak and the ageing, sacraments especially. "They make you believe but +they stupefy you;" these words are Pascal's, the great light of the +Catholic Church.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IIIP"></a><h2>III</h2> +<br> + +<p>My Protestant sympathies go back very far, further back than these +Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in +versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a +sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things +especially dear to me, my love of France and Protestantism.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Je t'apporte mon drame, o poète sublime,</p> +<p class="i2">Ainsi qu'un écolier au maître sa leçon:</p> +<p>Ce livre avec fierté porte comme écusson</p> +<p class="i2">Le sceau qu'en nos esprits ta jeune gloire imprime.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Accepte, tu verras la foi mêlée au crime,</p> +<p class="i2">Se souiller dans le sang sacré de la raison,</p> +<p>Quand surgit, rédempteur du vieux peuple saxon,</p> +<p class="i2">Luther à Wittemberg comme Christ à Solime.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Jamais de la cité le mal entier ne fuit,</p> +<p class="i2">Hélas! et son autel y fume dans la nuit;</p> +<p class="i2">Mais notre âge a ceci de pareil à l'aurore.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Que c'est un divin cri du chanteur éternal,</p> +<p class="i2">Le tien, qui pour forcer le jour tardif d'éclore</p> +<p class="i2">Déchire avec splendeur le voile épars du ciel.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I find not only my Protestant sympathies in the "Confessions" but a +proud agnosticism, and an exalted individualism which in certain +passages leads the reader to the sundered rocks about the cave of +Zarathoustra. My book was written before I heard that splendid name, +before Zarathoustra was written; and the doctrine, though hardly +formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye +shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions," +"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France—the country as +Pater would say of my instinctive election—and all my prophecies. +Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their +inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so +well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the +Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness despite the journalists +and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor Colvin, he made a mistake, +he should have hopped on to Pater.</p> + +<p>Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no +more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I +might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw. +Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to withdraw +them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may re-write his +confessions.</p> + +<p>A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase +about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has +succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and +if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more +unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface.</p> + +<p>GEORGE MOORE.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="Confessions_of_a_Young_Man"></a><h2>Confessions of a Young Man</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="I"></a><h2>I</h2> +<br> + +<p>My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and +form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous +temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am +free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have +acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, +upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth +sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being +moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I +might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archbishop, and +that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of +success would have been mine. I have felt the goad of many impulses, I +have hunted many a trail; when one scent failed another was taken up, +and pursued with the pertinacity of instinct, rather than the fervour of +a reasoned conviction. Sometimes, it is true, there came moments of +weariness, of despondency, but they were not enduring: a word spoken, a +book read, or yielding to the attraction of environment, I was soon off +in another direction, forgetful of past failures. Intricate, indeed, was +the labyrinth of my desires; all lights were followed with the same +ardour, all cries were eagerly responded to: they came from the right, +they came from the left, from every side. But one cry was more +persistent, and as the years passed I learned to follow it with +increasing vigour, and my strayings grew fewer and the way wider.</p> + +<p>I was eleven years old when I first heard and obeyed this cry, or, shall +I say, echo-augury?</p> + +<p>Scene: A great family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, +lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever-recurrent signs—long ranges +of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of +plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two +children. They are smart, with new jackets and neckties; their faces +are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a +little sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children +are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. +Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name! +and she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. +Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred +and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, +it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the +delight of tearing down fruit trees and killing a cat.</p> + +<p>But when we returned home I took the first opportunity of stealing the +novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read +its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called +<i>The Doctors Wife</i>—a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, +there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. +Why did I love Shelley? Why was I not attracted to Byron? I cannot say. +Shelley! Oh, that crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must +see it, I must know him. Escaping from the schoolroom, I ransacked the +library, and at last my ardour was rewarded. The book—a small pocket +edition in red boards, no doubt long out of print—opened at the +"Sensitive Plant." Was I disappointed? I think I had expected to +understand better; but I had no difficulty in assuming that I was +satisfied and delighted. And henceforth the little volume never left my +pocket, and I read the dazzling stanzas by the shores of a pale green +Irish lake, comprehending little, and loving a great deal. Byron, too, +was often with me, and these poets were the ripening influence of years +otherwise merely nervous and boisterous.</p> + +<p>And my poets were taken to school, because it pleased me to read "Queen +Mab" and "Cain," amid the priests and ignorance of a hateful Roman +Catholic college. And there my poets saved me from intellectual +savagery; for I was incapable at that time of learning anything. What +determined and incorrigible idleness! I used to gaze fondly on a book, +holding my head between my hands, and allow my thoughts to wander far +into dreams and thin imaginings. Neither Latin, nor Greek, nor French, +nor History, nor English composition could I learn, unless, indeed, my +curiosity or personal interest was excited,—then I made rapid strides +in that branch of knowledge to which my attention was directed. A mind +hitherto dark seemed suddenly to grow clear, and it remained clear and +bright enough so long as passion was in me; but as it died, so the mind +clouded, and recoiled to its original obtuseness. Couldn't and wouldn't +were in my case curiously involved; nor have I in this respect ever been +able to correct my natural temperament. I have always remained powerless +to do anything unless moved by a powerful desire.</p> + +<p>The natural end to such schooldays as mine was expulsion. I was expelled +when I was sixteen, for idleness and general worthlessness. I returned +to a wild country home, where I found my father engaged in training +racehorses. For a nature of such intense vitality as mine, an ambition, +an aspiration of some sort was necessary; and I now, as I have often +done since, accepted the first ideal to hand. In this instance it was +the <i>stable</i>. I was given a hunter, I rode to hounds every week, I rode +gallops every morning, I read the racing calendar, stud-book, latest +betting, and looked forward with enthusiasm to the day when I should be +known as a successful steeplechase rider. To ride the winner of the +Liverpool seemed to me a final achievement and glory; and had not +accident intervened, it is very possible that I might have succeeded in +carrying off, if not the meditated honour, something scarcely inferior, +such as—alas! I cannot now recall the name of a race of the necessary +value and importance. About this time my father was elected Member of +Parliament; our home was broken up, and we went to London. But an ideal +set up on its pedestal is not easily displaced, and I persevered in my +love, despite the poor promises London life held out for its ultimate +attainment; and surreptitiously I continued to nourish it with small +bets made in a small tobacconist's. Well do I remember that shop, the +oily-faced, sandy-whiskered proprietor, his betting-book, the cheap +cigars along the counter, the one-eyed nondescript who leaned his +evening away against the counter, and was supposed to know some one who +knew Lord ——'s footman, and the great man often spoken of, but rarely +seen—he who made "a two-'undred pound book on the Derby"; and the +constant coming and going of the cabmen—"Half an ounce of shag, sir." I +was then at a military tutor's in the Euston Road; for, in answer to my +father's question as to what occupation I intended to pursue, I had +consented to enter the army. In my heart I knew that when it came to the +point I should refuse—the idea of military discipline was very +repugnant, and the possibility of an anonymous death on a battle-field +could not be accepted by so self-conscious a youth, by one so full of +his own personality. I said Yes to my father, because the moral courage +to say No was lacking, and I put my trust in the future, as well I +might, for a fair prospect of idleness lay before me, and the chance of +my passing any examination was, indeed, remote.</p> + +<p>In London I made the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked +incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger +than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a +welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His +pictures—Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of +artistic perception, save a certain sentiment for the grand and +noble—filled me with wonderment and awe. "How jolly it would be to be a +painter," I once said, quite involuntarily. "Why, would you like to be a +painter?" he asked abruptly. I laughed, not suspecting that I had the +slightest gift, as indeed was the case, but the idea remained in my +mind, and soon after I began to make sketches in the streets and +theatres. My attempts were not very successful, but they encouraged me +to tell my father that I would go to the military tutor no more, and he +allowed me to enter the Kensington Museum as an Art student. There, of +course, I learned nothing, and, from the point of view of art merely, I +had much better have continued my sketches in the streets; but the +museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that applied +marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in the +galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting and +steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then, looked to +a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than I. +And then the sweet, white peace of antiquity! The great, calm gaze that +is not sadness nor joy, but something that we know not of—which is lost +to the world for ever.</p> + +<p>"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France—France is the +only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of +echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, +that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word +rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang +from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" +Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live +there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not when nor how, but +I knew I should go to France....</p> + +<p>So my youth ran into manhood, finding its way from rock to rock like a +rivulet, gathering strength at each leap. One day my father was suddenly +called to Ireland. A few days after, a telegram came, and my mother read +that we were required at his bedside. We journeyed over land and sea, +and on a bleak country road, one winter's evening, a man approached us +and I heard him say that all was over, that my father was dead. I loved +my father; I burst into tears; and yet my soul said, "I am glad." The +thought came unbidden, undesired, and I turned aside, shocked at the +sight it afforded of my soul.</p> + +<p>O, my father, I, who love and reverence nothing else, love and reverence +thee; thou art the one pure image in my mind, the one true affection +that life has not broken or soiled; I remember thy voice and thy kind, +happy ways. All I have of worldly goods and native wit I received from +thee—and was it I who was glad? No, it was not I; I had no concern in +the thought that then fell upon me unbidden and undesired; my individual +voice can give you but praise and loving words; and the voice that said +"I am glad" was not my voice, but that of the will to live which we +inherit from elemental dust through countless generations. Terrible and +imperative is the voice of the will to live: let him who is innocent +cast the first stone.</p> + +<p>Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; +that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so +irreparably his.</p> + +<p>My father's death freed me, and I sprang like a loosened bough up to the +light. His death gave me power to create myself, that is to say, to +create a complete and absolute self out of the partial self which was +all that the restraint of home had permitted; this future self, this +ideal George Moore, beckoned me, lured like a ghost; and as I followed +the funeral the question, Would I sacrifice this ghostly self, if by so +doing I should bring my father back? presented itself without +intermission, and I shrank horrified at the answer which I could not +crush out of mind.</p> + +<p>Now my life was like a garden in the emotive torpor of spring; now my +life was like a flower conscious of the light. Money was placed in my +hands, and I divined all it represented. Before me the crystal lake, the +distant mountains, the swaying woods, said but one word, and that word +was—self; not the self that was then mine, but the self on whose +creation I was enthusiastically determined. But I felt like a murderer +when I turned to leave the place which I had so suddenly, and I could +not but think unjustly, become possessed of. And now, as I probe this +poignant psychological moment, I find that, although I perfectly well +realised that all pleasures were then in my reach—women, elegant dress, +theatres, and supper-rooms, I hardly thought at all of them, and much +more of certain drawings from the plaster cast. I would be an artist. +More than ever I was determined to be an artist, and my brain was made +of this desire as I journeyed as fast as railway and steamboat could +take me to London. No further trammels, no further need of being a +soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and France +before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would +feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a +studio. A studio—tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it +is difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul +in these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my +studio was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of +effectually throwing over all restraint, I did not view it at all in +this light. My love of Art was very genuine and deep-rooted; the +tobacconist's betting-book was now as nothing, and a certain Botticelli +in the National Gallery held me in tether. And when I look back and +consider the past, I am forced to admit that I might have grown up in +less fortunate circumstances, for even the studio, with its +dissipations—and they were many—was not unserviceable; it developed +the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to grow and +ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contradistinction to the +University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a formula +which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average human +being.</p> + +<p>Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from +the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read very +nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read +Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin, and Mill. So it will be understood that +Shelley not only gave me my first soul, but led all its first flights. +But I do not think that if Shelley had been no more than a poet, +notwithstanding my very genuine love of verse, he would have gained such +influence in my youthful sympathies; but Shelley dreamed in +metaphysics—very thin dreaming if you will; but just such thin dreaming +as I could follow. Was there or was there not a God? And for many years +I could not dismiss as parcel of the world's folly this question, and I +sought a solution, inclining towards atheism, for it was natural in me +to revere nothing, and to oppose the routine of daily thought. And I was +but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I must decline to +believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against the chimney-piece +in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the household with the news; +but although a religious woman, my mother did not seem in the least +frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry, George, it is so." I was +deeply shocked at her indifference.</p> + +<p>Finding music and atheism in poetry I cared little for novels. Scott +seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too +impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and +<i>Bleak House</i> I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep +impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not +picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for +some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very +small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: +<i>Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The +History of Civilisation</i>, were momentous events in my life. But I loved +life better than books, and very curiously my studies and my pleasures +kept pace, stepping together like a pair of well-trained carriage +horses. While I was waiting for my coach to take a party of <i>tarts</i> and +<i>mashers</i> to the Derby, I would read a chapter of Kant, and I often took +the book away with me in my pocket. And I cultivated with care the +acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the +purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, +delighted me. I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to +spend on scent and toilette knick-knacks as much as would keep a poor +man's family in affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the +fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to +shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, +the life of the theatres—that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, +of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes—interested me +beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at +home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I +was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up +the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the +Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected +ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of +dissipations. But there was no need to fear; for I was naturally endowed +with a very clear sense of self-preservation; I neither betted nor +drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point +of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about +four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, and repeating some +verses of Shelley, I thought how I should go to Paris when I was of age, +and study painting.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="II"></a><h2>II</h2> +<br> + +<p>At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes, +books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for +Paris and Art.</p> + +<p>We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past six +in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city. +Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar +bleakness in the streets. The <i>ménagère</i> hurries down the asphalte to +market; a dreadful <i>garçon de café</i>, with a napkin tied round his +throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it +seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the +Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées? I asked myself; and feeling +bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my +valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the +study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to +formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and +the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for.</p> + +<p>My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the Beaux Arts—Cabanel's +studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration +for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was +told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on the +master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to speak +to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks until I could +hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot say. I +never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my +language must have been like—like nothing ever heard under God's sky +before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of +the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures +I had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then +in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he +would be glad to have me as a pupil....</p> + +<p>But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits +only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast; +and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an +effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey +perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the +lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the +room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more. I felt humiliated +at my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy; and +I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the Boulevards, +studying the photographs of the <i>salon</i> pictures, thinking of what my +next move should be. I had never forgotten my father showing me, one day +when he was shaving, three photographs from pictures. They were by an +artist called Sevres. My father liked the slenderer figure, but I liked +the corpulent—the Venus standing at the corner of a wood, pouring wine +into a goblet, while Cupid, from behind her satin-enveloped knees, drew +his bow and shot the doves that flew from glistening poplar trees. The +beauty of this woman, and what her beauty must be in the life of the +painter, had inspired many a reverie, and I had concluded—this +conclusion being of all others most sympathetic to me—that she was his +very beautiful mistress, that they lived in a picturesque pavilion in +the midst of a shady garden full of birds and tall flowers. I had often +imagined her walking there at mid-day, dressed in white muslin with wide +sleeves open to the elbow, scattering grain from a silver plate to the +proud pigeons that strutted about her slippered feet and fluttered to +her dove-like hand. I had dreamed of seeing that woman as I rode +racehorses on wild Irish plains, of being loved by her; in London I had +dreamed of becoming Sevres's pupil.</p> + +<p>What coming and going, what inquiries, what difficulties arose! At last +I was advised to go to the Exposition aux Champs Elysée and seek his +address in the catalogue. I did so, and while the <i>concierge</i> copied out +the address for me, I chased his tame magpie that hopped about one of +the angles of the great building. The reader smiles. I was a childish +boy of one-and-twenty who knew nothing, and to whom the world was +astonishingly new. Doubtless before my soul was given to me it had been +plunged deep in Lethe, and so an almost virgin man I stood in front of a +virgin world.</p> + +<p>Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a +fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake +reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in +the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden +wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked +up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in +muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a +silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it; +and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a +tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close; +and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every +nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her +eyes as I passed.</p> + +<p>Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of +a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his +daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M. +Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now +the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that +the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish +sensualities.</p> + +<p>I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm +on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a +wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We +were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to +smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me +to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the +Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is +that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to +admit even now, saturated though I now am with the æsthetics of +different schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am +writing of my nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional +attractiveness of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender +hips and hands, and I accepted Jules Lefebvre wholly and +unconditionally. He hesitated, however, when I asked to be taken as a +private pupil, but he wrote out the address of a studio where he gave +instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even more to my taste, for I +had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was anxious to see as much +of them as possible.</p> + +<p>The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I +found M. Julien, a typical meridional—the large stomach, the dark eyes, +crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual +mind. We made friends at once—he consciously making use of me, I +unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's +subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to +the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it +was a little tiresome to have to put up with a talkative person, whose +knowledge of the French language had been acquired in three months, but +the dinners were good. No doubt Julien reasoned so; I did not reason at +all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the world was necessary to me. I +had never met such a man before, and all my curiosity was awake. He +spoke of art and literature, of the world and the flesh; he told me of +the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents in his own life; +and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his conversation I +thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the +look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The +world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years +before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out +straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a +distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society +only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and +which was destined to absorb some years of my life.</p> + +<p>In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among +these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were +also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle +and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions +and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of +unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio +conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and +were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did, +that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in +its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye—the gowns, the hair +lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow. +Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who +escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend +who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of +dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with +undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time—a +friendship which permeated and added to my life—I am nevertheless +forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my +special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a +shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to +pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a +moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely +compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my +path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I +pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the +studio; and, to my surprise, for he was fashionably dressed, and my +experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and +well-cut clothes, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were +beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and +large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could +not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his +figure, with all the surroundings—screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was +deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he +was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a +general exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring +<i>café</i> to drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we +stooped under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to +me in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in +So-and-So's studio—the great blonde man, whose Doré-like improvisations +had awakened aspiration in me.</p> + +<p>The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and +then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?" Marshall +thought the following day would suit him better, but I was very +pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with him to +his rooms, and he would show me some pictures—some trifles he had +brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better. We got +into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new superiorities, +in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong, handsome, and +beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than myself, but he could +talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should, for he +was born in Brussels and had lived there all his life, but the accident +of birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He +spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable +restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his +hair curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was +on the tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be +utterly outdone, I alluded to my valet.</p> + +<p>His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained +that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now +living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would +allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of +pictures, which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration +increased to wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which +had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung +by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest +the rest of the studio—the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the +Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red +Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,—a +ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There +were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners +of the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very +little heed to my compliments; and sitting down at the piano, with a +great deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a +waltz.</p> + +<p>"What waltz is that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of the +blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?"</p> + +<p>"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?"</p> + +<p>At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and an English girl +entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words +that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her +sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an +appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the +morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her.</p> + +<p>I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but +now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the +sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was +so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, +and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience +opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my +arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the +Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself; +but now I was taken to strange students' <i>cafés</i>, where dinners were +paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a <i>table d'hôte</i> was +held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great +crowds to <i>Bullier</i>, the <i>Château Rouge</i>, or the <i>Elysée Montmartre</i>. +The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the +thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women—we only knew +their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling +through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer +night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing +glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a +magic lantern out of the sky.</p> + +<p>Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons +were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this +street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop" +to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs....</p> + +<p>"<i>Madame ——, est-elle chez elle?</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i>Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer.</i>" And we +were shown into a handsomely-furnished apartment. A lady would enter +hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French +sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always +commenced <i>mon cher ami</i>, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase +<i>vous avez tort</i>. The ladies themselves had only just returned from +Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious +lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several +millions of francs against different foreign governments.</p> + +<p>And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years +ago, at the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I +watched this world of Parisian adventurers and lights-o'-love. And this +craving for observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation +of gestures and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes +that mirror forth the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew +and strengthened, to the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me. +With the patience of a cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened, +picking one characteristic phrase out of hours of vain chatter, +interested and amused by an angry or loving glance. Like the midges that +fret the surface of a shadowy stream, these men and women seemed to me; +and though I laughed, danced, and made merry with them, I was not of +them. But with Marshall it was different: they were my amusement, they +were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of this distinction that made +twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it. Why could I not live +without an ever-present and acute consciousness of life? Why could I not +love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in the perfumed +silence of the chamber?</p> + +<p>And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The +general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent +contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced +to one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our +confidences knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain +confidences it is often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read or +felt was the subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that +a flush of colour and a bit of perspective awakens, the blue tints that +the summer sunset lends to a white dress, or the eternal verities, death +and love. But, although I tested every fibre of thought and analysed +every motive, I was very sincere in my friendship and very loyal in my +admiration. Nor did my admiration wane when I discovered that Marshall +was shallow in his appreciations, superficial in his judgments, that his +talents did not pierce below the surface; <i>il avait si grand air</i>, there +was fascination in his very bearing, in his large, soft, colourful eyes, +and a go and dash in his dissipations that carried you away.</p> + +<p>To any one observing us at this time it would have seemed that I was but +a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my +tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to +arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his +general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer +and more original nature. I was willing to learn, that was all. There +was much that Marshall could teach me, and I used him without shame, +without stint. I used him as I have used all those with whom I have been +brought into close contact. Search my memory as I will, I cannot recall +a case of man or woman who ever occupied any considerable part of my +thoughts without contributing largely towards my moral or physical +welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had +useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal +fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious, +egoistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and +more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent +services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with +less design than myself. Never have I given a thought to the advantage +that might accrue from being on terms of friendship with this man and +avoiding that one. "Then how do you explain," cries the angry reader, +"that you have never had a friend by whom you did not profit? You must +have had very few friends." On the contrary, I have had many friends, +and of all sorts and kinds—men and women: and, I repeat, none took part +in my life who did not contribute something towards my well-being. It +must, of course, be understood that I make no distinction between mental +and material help; and in my case the one has at all times been adjuvant +to the other. "Pooh, pooh!" again exclaims the reader; "I for one will +not believe that chance has only sent across your way the people who +were required to assist you." Chance! dear reader, is there such a thing +as chance? Do you believe in chance? Do you attach any precise meaning +to the word? Do you employ it at haphazard, allowing it to mean what it +may? Chance! What a field for psychical investigation is at once opened +up; how we may tear to shreds our past lives in search of—what? Of the +Chance that made us. I think, reader, I can throw some light on the +general question, by replying to your taunt: Chance, or the conditions +of life under which we live, sent, of course, thousands of creatures +across my way who were powerless to benefit me; but then an instinct of +which I knew nothing, of which I was not even conscious, withdrew me +from them, and I was attracted to others. Have you not seen a horse +suddenly leave a corner of a field to seek pasturage further away?</p> + +<p>Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my +mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind +asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much +expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same +processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the +case in a well-ordered stomach. Shelley, who fired my youth with +passion, and purified and upbore it for so long, is now to me as +nothing: not a dead or faded thing, but a thing out of which I +personally have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and, +therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. +And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing +line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such +perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of +tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a +spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten +corner of a forgotten room. My old rapture and my youth's delight I can +regain only when I think of that part of Gautier which is now incarnate +in me.</p> + +<p>As I picked up books, so I picked up my friends. I read friends and +books with the same passion, with the same avidity; and as I discarded +my books when I had assimilated as much of them as my system required, +so I discarded my friends when they ceased to be of use to me. I employ +the word "use" in its fullest, not in its limited and twenty-shilling +sense. This parallel of the intellect to the blind unconsciousness of +the lower organs will strike some as a violation of man's best beliefs, +and as saying very little for the particular intellect that can be so +reduced. But I am not sure these people are right. I am inclined to +think that as you ascend the scale of thought to the great minds, these +unaccountable impulses, mysterious resolutions, sudden, but certain +knowings, falling whence or how it is impossible to say, but falling +somehow into the brain, instead of growing rarer, become more and more +frequent; indeed, I think that if the really great man were to confess +to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by +inspirations...inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a +circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we +slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let +general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these +pages if it be understood that brain instincts have always been, and +still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="III"></a><h2>III</h2> +<br> + +<p>But the studio, where I had been working for the last three or four +months so diligently, became wearisome to me, and for two reasons. +First, because it deprived me of many hours of Marshall's company. +Secondly—and the second reason was the graver—because I was beginning +to regard the delineation of a nymph, or youth bathing, etc., as a very +narrow channel to carry off the strong, full tide of a man's thought. +For now thoughts of love and death, and the hopelessness of life, were +in active fermentation within me and sought for utterance with a strange +persistency of appeal. I yearned merely to give direct expression to my +pain. Life was then in its springtide; every thought was new to me, and +it would have seemed a pity to disguise even the simplest emotion in any +garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The +creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose +gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I +hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that +was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to +select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might +never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct +to me from the outside.</p> + +<p>At the time of which I am writing I lived in an old-fashioned hotel on +the Boulevard, which an enterprising Belgian had lately bought and was +endeavouring to modernise; an old-fashioned hotel, that still clung to +its ancient character in the presence of half a dozen old people, who, +for antediluvian reasons, continue to dine on certain well-specified +days at the <i>table d'hôte</i>. Fifteen years have passed away, and these +old people, no doubt, have joined their ancestors; but I can see them +still sitting in that <i>salle à manger</i>, the <i>buffets en vieux chéne,</i> +the opulent candelabra <i>en style d'empire</i>, the waiter lighting the gas +in the pale Parisian evening. That white-haired man, that tall, thin, +hatchet-faced American, has dined at this <i>table d'hôte</i> for the last +thirty years—he is talkative, vain, foolish, and authoritative. The +clean, neatly-dressed old gentleman who sits by him, looking so much +like a French gentleman, has spent a great part of his life in Spain. +With that piece of news, and its subsequent developments, your +acquaintance with him begins and ends; the eyes, the fan, the mantilla, +how it began, how it was broken off, and how it began again. Opposite +sits another French gentleman, with beard and bristly hair. He spent +twenty years of his life in India, and he talks of his son who has been +out there for the last ten, and who has just returned home. There is the +Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses like a girl of sixteen +and smokes a cigar after dinner,—if there are not too many strangers in +the room. A stranger she calls any one whom she has not seen at least +once before. The little fat, neckless man, with the great bald head, +fringed below the ears with hair, is M. Duval. He is a dramatic author, +the author of a hundred and sixty plays. He does not intrude himself on +your notice, but when you speak to him on literary matters he fixes a +pair of tiny, sloe-like eyes on you, and talks affably of his +collaborateurs.</p> + +<p>I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to +the <i>café</i> after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered +him a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, +inevitable that I should find out that he had not had a play produced +for the last twenty years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty +was about his poor bald head. I thought of the chances of life, he +alluded to the war; and so this unpleasantness was passed over, and we +entered on more genial subjects of conversation. He had written plays +with everybody; his list of collaborateurs was longer than any list of +lady patronesses for an English county ball; there was no literary +kitchen in which he had not helped to dish up. I was at once amazed and +delighted. Had M. Duval written his hundred and sixty plays in the +seclusion of his own rooms, I should have been less surprised; it was +the mystery of the <i>séances</i> of collaboration, the rendezvous, the +discussion, the illustrious company, that overwhelmed me in a rapture of +wonder and respectful admiration. Then came the anecdotes. They were of +all sorts. Here are a few specimens: He, Duval, had written a one-act +piece with Dumas <i>père</i>; it had been refused at the Français, and then +it had been about, here, there, and everywhere; finally the <i>Variétés</i> +had asked for some alterations, and <i>c'était une affaire entendue</i>. "I +made the alterations one afternoon, and wrote to Dumas, and what do you +think,—by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not +consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the +<i>Variétés,</i> because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the +Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier +and Dejazet. They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and +I was amused and astonished. These <i>bon-mots</i> were followed by an +account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and +Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. +Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning +Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I +suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" +And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I +would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre—rooms +high up on the fifth floor—where, between two pictures, supposed to be +by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had written unactable plays for the +last twenty years, and where he would continue to write unactable plays +until God called him to a world, perhaps, of eternal cantatas, but +where, by all accounts, <i>l'exposition de la pièce selon la formule de M. +Scribe</i> is still unknown.</p> + +<p>How I used to enjoy these conversations! I remember how I used to stand +on the pavement after having bid the old gentleman good-night, +regretting I had not asked for some further explanation regarding <i>le +mouvement Romantique</i>, or <i>la façon de M. Scribe de ménager la +situation</i>.</p> + +<p>Why not write a comedy? So the thought came. I had never written +anything save a few ill-spelt letters; but no matter. To find a plot was +the first thing. Take Marshall for hero and Alice for heroine, surround +them with the old gentlemen who dined at the <i>table d'hôte,</i> flavour +with the Italian countess who smoked cigars when there were not too many +strangers present. After three weeks of industrious stirring, the +ingredients did begin to simmer into something resembling a plot. Put it +upon paper. Ah! there was my difficulty. I remembered suddenly that I +had read "Cain," "Manfred," "The Cenci," as poems, without ever +thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in +blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. +Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read +him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a +copy? No; the name repelled me—as all popular names repelled me. In +preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy +by M. Dumas <i>fils</i>. But strain my imagination as I would, I could not +see the spoken words in their written form. Oh, for a look at the +prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! +At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's +edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, +Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, +which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my +memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might be +imagined.</p> + +<p>No sooner was the last scene written than I started at once for London, +confident I should find no difficulty in getting my play produced.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IV"></a><h2>IV</h2> +<br> + +<p>Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play? +A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me +for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical +managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to +France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with +the sweet and magnetic influence of home.</p> + +<p>How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed +into my eyes!—Paris—public ball-rooms, <i>cafés</i>, the models in the +studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien. +Marshall!—my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets +and the endless procession of people coming and going.</p> + +<p>"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." +"Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M. +Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What +number?" "I think it is fifty-four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up; +drive me to the Rue de Douai."</p> + +<p>But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no +address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be +able to obtain news of him there—perhaps find him. But when I pulled +aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet +my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of +dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am +sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps +at the <i>café</i>, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very +encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along +<i>le Passage</i>, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap +trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of +the Boulevard was our <i>café</i>. As I came forward the waiter moved one of +the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had +seen me yesterday he said, "<i>Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse? +oui...garçon, une demi-tasse</i>." Presently the conversation turned on +Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "<i>Il parait qu'il est +plus amoureux que jamais</i>," Julien replied sardonically.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="V"></a><h2>V</h2> +<br> + +<p>I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in +the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were +large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found +the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen—in a great Louis +XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again, +George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again."</p> + +<p>"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?"</p> + +<p>"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll +have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on +there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there +twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight, +brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am +told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and +the tail is said to be three yards long."</p> + +<p>We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all +delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we +went insolent with patent leather shoes and bright kid gloves and armed +with all the jargon of the school. "<i>Cette jambe ne porte pas"; "la +nature ne se fait pas comme ça"; "on dessine par les masses; combien de +têtes?" "Sept et demi." "Si j'avais un morceau de craie je mettrais +celle-là dans un; bocal c'est un fœtus</i>"; in a word, all that the +journals of culture are pleased to term an artistic education. We +indulged in boisterous laughter, exaggerated in the hope of giving as +much pain as possible, and deep down in our souls we knew that we were +lying—at least I did.</p> + +<p>In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art—the +tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau—had been completely lost; +having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of +the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: +further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the +Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and +Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn +begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil +of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned +from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life. +Degas draws not by the masses, but by the character;—his subjects are +shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow +them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins +and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat, +vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the +pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and +rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you +know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you know what she would +say to you if she were to speak. She is as typical of the nineteenth +century as Fragonard's ladies are of the Court of Louis XV. To the right +you see a picture of two shop-girls with bonnets in their hands. So +accurately are the habitual movements of the heads and the hands +observed that you at once realise the years of bonnet-showing and +servile words that these women have lived through. We have seen Degas do +this before—it is a welcome repetition of a familiar note, but it is +not until we turn to the set of nude figures that we find the great +artist revealing any new phase of his talent. The first, in an attitude +which suggests the kneeling Venus, washes her thighs in a tin bath. The +second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of +children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The +naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' +genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the +great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has +rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the +British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the +hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the +sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as +it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in +her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy +shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is +terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted his dwarfs.</p> + +<p>Pissarro exhibited a group of girls gathering apples in a garden—sad +greys and violets beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in +a dream: we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet colour +and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches, +those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled: +that garden is the garden of the peace that life has not for giving, but +which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey.</p> + +<p>Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two +young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are +all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their +ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard +roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are +there—willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces.</p> + +<p>Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the +vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and +colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of +the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a <i>chef +d'œuvre.</i> Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that +hillside,—sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue +shadow,—is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in +one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of +the woman on a background of chintz flowers.</p> + +<p>We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced +him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I +wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only <i>une blague +qu'on nous fait</i>?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most +exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and +seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"—that <i>chef d'œuvre</i>! +the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so +swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look +at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The +perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational +kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway +stations by the same painter,—those rapid sensations of steel and +vapour,—our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at +this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it +round, that's all." Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich +sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an +absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures +as you do in nature, and the child's criticism of a portrait—"Why is +one side of the face black?" is answered. There was a half-length nude +figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! +such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw +nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing.</p> + +<p>For art was not for us then as it is now,—a mere emotion, right or +wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the +grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and <i>la jambe qui porte</i>; and we +found all this in Julien's studio.</p> + +<p>A year passed; a year of art and dissipation—one part art, two parts +dissipation. We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of +society's ladder. One evening we would spend at Constant's, Rue de la +Gaieté, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following +evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs +Elysées. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with +equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the +literary <i>salon</i>; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in +the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, +I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in +terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to +be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very +thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and +presenting our spotless selves to the <i>élite</i>. And we succeeded very +well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making +love to the wrong woman.</p> + +<p>But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not +stave off our craving for art; and about this time there came a very +decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really <i>grande passion</i> +had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him +to turn his thoughts to painting on china as a means of livelihood. And +as this young man always sought extremes he went to Belleville, donned +a blouse, ate garlic with his food, and settled down to live there as a +workman. I had been to see him, and had found him building a wall. And +with sorrow I related his state that evening to Julien in the Café +Veron. He said, after a pause:—</p> + +<p>"Since you profess so much friendship for him, why do you not do him a +service that cannot be forgotten since the result will always continue? +why don't you save him from the life you describe? If you are not +actually rich you are at least in easy circumstances, and can afford to +give him a <i>pension</i> of three hundred francs a month. I will give him +the use of my studio, which means, as you know, models and teaching; +Marshall has plenty of talent, all he wants is a year's education: in a +year or a year-and-a-half, certainly at the end of two years, he will +begin to make money."</p> + +<p>It is rather a shock to one who is at all concerned with his own genius +to be asked to act as foster-mother to another's. Then three hundred +francs meant a great deal, plainly it meant deprivation of those +superfluities which are so intensely necessary to the delicate and +refined. Julien watched me. This large crafty Southerner knew what was +passing in me; he knew I was realising all the manifold +inconveniences—the duty of looking after Marshall's wants for two +years, and to make the pill easier he said:—</p> + +<p>"If three hundred francs a month are too heavy for your purse, you might +take an apartment and ask Marshall to come and live with you. You told +me the other day you were tired of hotel life. It would be an advantage +to you to live with him. You want to do something yourself; and the fact +of his being obliged to attend the studio (for I should advise you to +have a strict agreement with him regarding the work he is to do) would +be an extra inducement to you to work hard."</p> + +<p>I always decide at once, reflection does not help me, and a moment after +I said, "Very well, Julien, I will."</p> + +<p>And next day I went with the news to Belleville. Marshall protested he +had no real talent. I protested he had. The agreement was drawn up and +signed. He was to work in the studio eight hours a day; he was to draw +until such time as M. Lefebvre set him to paint; and in proof of his +industry he was to bring me at the end of each week a study from life +and a composition, the subject of which the master gave at the +beginning of each week, and in return I was to take an apartment near +the studio, give him an abode, food, <i>blanchissage</i>, etc. Once the +matter was decided, Marshall manifested prodigious energy, and three +days after he told me he had found an apartment in Le Passage des +Panoramas which would suit us perfectly. The plunge had to be taken. I +paid my hotel bill, and sent my taciturn valet to beef, beer and a wife.</p> + +<p>It was unpleasant to have a window opening not to the sky, but to an +unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at +seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the +resolution even of the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all +pleasures for the sake of art—<i>table d'hôtes</i> in the Rue Maubeuge, +French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue +de la Gaieté.</p> + +<p>I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art +for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It +will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so intensely alive to +all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer +in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It +was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter +when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches +like the pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little beyond verbal +expression. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were +striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first +hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true, caught +the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the +quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I +possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing +was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I +possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without +which all is valueless;—I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off +a clever caricature of his school-master or make a <i>lifelike</i> sketch of +his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.</p> + +<p>The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the +model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time +never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling +hopelessly in the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was +bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and +was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated +by the professors. In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of +education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in +(using the word in its modern, not in its original sense). He showed +himself intensely anxious to learn and to accept all that was said: the +ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose +neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream. He was an +ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the +studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and +anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain. I continued +the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio at eight in the +morning, I measured my drawing, I plumbed it throughout, I sketched in, +having regard to <i>la jambe qui porte</i>, I modelled <i>par les masses</i>. +During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon, at +night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result. +But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling, +stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible +are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching +void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden +of unachieved desire grew intolerable.</p> + +<p>I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again." +That vow I have kept.</p> + +<p>Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a +blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I +do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my +heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome +by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no +equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home +almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat +still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured +loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of +the medals which he would carry off, of what Lefebvre thought of his +drawing this week, of Boulanger's opinion of his talent. I do not wish +to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me +neither consideration nor pity, he did not even seem to understand that +I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he +flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face—his good looks, his +talents, his popularity. I did not know then how little these studio +successes really meant.</p> + +<p>Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is +rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a +certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed +me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing +enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This +was intolerable. I packed up my portmanteau and left, after having kept +my promise for only ten months. By so doing I involved my friend in +grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future +prospects. It was a dastardly action, but his presence had grown +unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and +in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being +lifted from me.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VI"></a><h2>VI</h2> +<br> + +<p>After three months spent in a sweet seaside resort, where unoccupied men +and ladies whose husbands are abroad happily congregate, I returned to +Paris refreshed.</p> + +<p>Marshall and I were no longer on speaking terms, but I saw him daily, in +a new overcoat, of a cut admirably adapted to his figure, sweeping past +the fans and the jet ornaments of the Passage des Panoramas. The coat +interested me, and I remembered that if I had not broken with him I +should have been able to ask him some essential questions concerning it. +Of such trifles as this the sincerest friendships are made; he was as +necessary to me as I to him, and after some demur on his part a +reconciliation was effected.</p> + +<p>Then I took an <i>appartement</i> in one of the old houses in Rue de la Tour +des Dames, for windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a +dilapidated statue. It was Marshall of course who undertook the task of +furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an imagination +that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree and a +fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our <i>salon</i> was a pretty +resort—English cretonne of a very happy design—vine leaves, dark green +and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched +with this colourful cloth, and the arm-chairs and the couches were to +match. The drawing-room was in cardinal red, hung from the middle of the +ceiling and looped up to give the appearance of a tent; a faun, in +terra-cotta, laughed in the red gloom, and there were Turkish couches +and lamps. In another room you faced an altar, a Buddhist temple, a +statue of the Apollo, and a bust of Shelley. The bedrooms were made +unconventual with cushioned seats and rich canopies; and in picturesque +corners there were censers, great church candlesticks, and palms; then +think of the smell of burning incense and wax and you will have imagined +the sentiment of our apartment in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a +Persian cat, and a python that made a monthly meal off guinea pigs; +Marshall, who did not care for pets, filled his rooms with flowers—he +used to sleep beneath a tree of gardenias in full bloom. We were so, +Henry Marshall and George Moore, when we went to live in 76 Rue de la +Tour des Dames, we hoped for the rest of our lives. He was to paint, I +was to write.</p> + +<p>Before leaving for the seaside I had bought some volumes of Hugo and De +Musset; but in pleasant, sunny Boulogne poetry went flat, and it was not +until I got into my new rooms that I began to read seriously. Books are +like individuals; you know at once if they are going to create a sense +within the sense, to fever, to madden you in blood and brain, or if they +will merely leave you indifferent, or irritable, having unpleasantly +disturbed sweet intimate musings as might a draught from an open window. +Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, +when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, +a voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine +depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above +all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. +Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great +austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. +But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being +in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a +terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." An East of painted +cardboard, tin daggers, and a military band playing the Turkish patrol +in the Palais Royal.... The verse is grand, noble, tremendous; I liked +it, I admired it, but it did not—I repeat the phrase—awake a voice of +conscience within me; and even the structure of the verse was too much +in the style of public buildings to please me. Of "Les Feuilles +d'Automne" and "Les Chants du Crépuscule" I remember nothing. Ten lines, +fifty lines of "Les Légendes des Siècles," and I always think that it is +the greatest poetry I have ever read, but after a few pages the book is +laid down and forgotten. Having composed more verses than any man that +ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses; if you repeat +any passage to a friend across a <i>café</i> table, you are both appalled by +the splendour of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été</p> +<p>Avait en s'en allant négligemment jeté</p> +<p>Cette faucille d'or dans les champs des étoiles."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the +<i>ennui</i> which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or +Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's +genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a +metaphysical German student. Take another verse—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Without a "like" or an "as," by a mere statement of fact, the picture, +nay more, the impression, is produced. I confess I have a weakness for +the poem which this line concludes—"La fête chez Thérèse"; but +admirable as it is with its picture of mediæval life, there is in it, as +in all Hugo's work, a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my +heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering +coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the +Almighty in a last stanza; but of the two immortalities he evidently +considers his own the most durable; he does not, however, become really +intolerable until he gets on the subject of little children, he sings +their innocence in great bombast, but he is watching them; the poetry +over, the crowd dispersed, he will entice one of them down a byway.</p> + +<p>The first time I read of <i>une bouche d'ombre</i> I was astonished, nor did +the second or third repetition produce a change in my mood of mind; but +sooner or later it was impossible to avoid conviction, that of the two +"the rosy fingers of the dawn," although some three thousand years older +is younger, truer, and more beautiful. Homer's similes can never grow +old; <i>une bouche d'ombre</i> was old the first time it was said. It is the +birthplace and the grave of Hugo's genius.</p> + +<p>Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise +were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had +marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. +Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms +were out of tune with the strain of my aspirations at that moment, and I +did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression +which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of +diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the +commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent +to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense +of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical +outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious +<i>chevilles—marchait et respirait</i>, and <i>Astarté fille de l'onde amère</i>; +nor does the fact that <i>amère</i> rhymes with <i>mère</i> condone the offence, +although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of +the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit +that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I +read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade à la Lune," that I +could be induced to bend the knee and acknowledge Musset a poet.</p> + +<p>I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,—he was still +my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother-o'-pearl, with starlight at +the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, +not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was +Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it +was sudden. I was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation +of the body above the soul at once conquered and led me captive; this +plain scorn of a world as exemplified in lacerated saints and a +crucified Redeemer opened up to me illimitable prospects of fresh +beliefs, and therefore new joys in things and new revolts against all +that had come to form part and parcel of the commonalty of mankind. Till +now I had not even remotely suspected that a deification of flesh and +fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching had been, while +accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so preserve our +ideal; but now suddenly I saw, with delightful clearness and with +intoxicating conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting +with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place within as +divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an +aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the +elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this +modern world, but the clean pagan nude,—a love of life and beauty, the +broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the +bold fearless gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the +Virgin, and I cried with my master that the blood that flowed upon Mount +Calvary "<i>ne m'a jamais baigné dans ses flots</i>."</p> + +<p>I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime +vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so +inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin +refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? +Great was my conversion. None more than I had cherished mystery and +dream: my life until now had been but a mist which revealed as each +cloud wreathed and went out, the red of some strange flower or some tall +peak, blue and snowy and fairylike in lonely moonlight; and now so great +was my conversion that the more brutal the outrage offered to my ancient +ideal, the rarer and keener was my delight. I read almost without fear: +"My dreams were of naked youths riding white horses through mountain +passes, there were no clouds in my dreams, or if there were any, they +were clouds that had been cut out as if in cardboard with scissors."</p> + +<p>I had shaken off all belief in Christianity early in life and had +suffered much. Shelley had replaced faith by reason, but I still +suffered: but here was a new creed which proclaimed the divinity of the +body, and for a long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life +on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite +outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses +moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then +the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of <i>As You +Like It</i>, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to +Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's +attire. If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is +forgotten in the rapture and praise of her unmatchable woman's +loveliness.</p> + +<p>But if "Mdlle. de Maupin" was the highest peak, it was not the entire +mountain. The range was long, and each summit offered to the eye a new +and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,—tales as +perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," +"Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, +"Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the +adjective <i>blanc</i> and <i>blanche</i> is repeated with miraculous felicity in +each stanza. And then Contralto,—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Mais seulement il se transpose</p> +<p class="i2">Et passant de la forme au son,</p> +<p>Trouve dans la métamorphose</p> +<p class="i2">La jeune fille et le garçon."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p><i>Transpose</i>,—a word never before used except in musical application, +and now for the first time applied to material form, and with a +beauty-giving touch that Phidias might be proud of. I know not how I +quote; such is my best memory of the stanza, and here, that is more +important than the stanza itself. And that other stanza, "The +Châtelaine and the Page"; and that other, "The Doves"; and that other, +"Romeo and Juliet," and the exquisite cadence of the line ending +"<i>balcon</i>." Novelists have often shown how a love passion brings misery, +despair, death and ruin upon a life, but I know of no story of the good +or evil influence awakened by the chance reading of a book, the chain of +consequences so far-reaching, so intensely dramatic. Never shall I open +these books again, but were I to live for a thousand years, their power +in my soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in +humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave +may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. +Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted +progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned +that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the +plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of +the problem that had vexed me so long; I cried, "ave" to it all: lust, +cruelty, slavery, and I would have held down my thumbs in the Colosseum +that a hundred gladiators might die and wash me free of my Christian +soul with their blood.</p> + +<p>The study of Baudelaire hurried the course of the disease.<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> No longer +is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven +face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning +sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better +know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful +flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and +were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your +poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children +of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of +your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful +in your sublime decay, I press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, +far from the rank Parisian garden where I gathered you, are full of you, +even as the sea-shell of the sea, and the sun that sets on this wild +moorland evokes the magical verse:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique</p> +<p>Nous échangerons un éclair unique</p> +<p>Comme un long sanglot tout chargé d'adieux."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>For months I fed on the mad and morbid literature that the enthusiasm +of 1830 called into existence. The gloomy and sterile little pictures of +"Gaspard de la Nuit," or the elaborate criminality, "Les Contes +Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, +pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and +in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the +unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I +never read more than a few pages.</p> + +<p>Like a pike after minnows I pursued the works of Les Jeune France along +the quays and through every <i>passage</i> in Paris. The money spent was +considerable, the waste of time vexatious. One man's solitary work (he +died very young, but he is known to have excelled all in length of his +hair and the redness of his waistcoats) resisted my efforts to capture +it. At last I caught sight of the precious volume in a shop on the Quai +Voltaire. Trembling I asked the price. The man looked at me earnestly +and answered, "A hundred and fifty francs." No doubt it was a great deal +of money, but I paid it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone +before had proved disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had +contributed little towards my intellectual advancement; but this—this +that I had heard about so long—not a queer phrase, not an outrage of +any sort of kind, not even a new blasphemy, it meant nothing to me, that +is to say, nothing but a hundred and fifty francs. Having thus rudely, +and very pikelike, knocked my nose against the bottom—this book was, +most certainly, the bottom of the literature of 1830—I came up to the +surface and began to look around my contemporaries for something to +read.</p> + +<p>I have remarked before on the instinctiveness of my likes and dislikes, +on my susceptibility to the sound of and even to the appearance of a +name upon paper. I was repelled by Leconte de Lisle from the first, and +it was only by a very deliberate outrage to my feelings that I bought +and read "Les Poèmes Antiques," and "Les Poèmes Barbares"; I was +deceived in nothing, all I had anticipated I found—long, desolate +boredom. Leconte de Lisle produces on me the effect of a walk through +the new Law Courts, with a steady but not violent draught sweeping from +end to end. Oh, the vile old professor of rhetoric! and when I saw him +the last time I was in Paris, his head—a declaration of righteousness, +a cross between a Cæsar by Gerome, and an archbishop of a provincial +town, set all my natural antipathy instantly on edge. Hugo is often +pompous, shallow, empty, unreal, but he is at least an artist, and when +he thinks of the artist and forgets the prophet, as in "Les Chansons des +Rues et des Bois," his juggling with the verse is magnificent, superb.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Comme un geai sur l'arbre</p> +<p class="i2">Le roi se tient fier;</p> +<p>Son cœur est de marbre,</p> +<p class="i2">Son ventre est de chair.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"On a pour sa nuque</p> +<p class="i2">Et son front vermeil</p> +<p>Fait une perruque</p> +<p class="i2">Avec le soleil.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Il règne, il végète</p> +<p class="i2">Effroyant zéro;</p> +<p>Sur lui se projette</p> +<p class="i2">L'ombre du bourreau.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Son trône est une tombe,</p> +<p class="i2">Et sur le pavé</p> +<p>Quelque chose en tombe</p> +<p class="i1">Qu'on n'a point lavé."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I +cannot think. If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out +and see how that <i>rude dompteur de syllables</i> managed it. But stay, +<i>son trône est la tombe</i>; that makes the verse, and the generalisation +would be in the "line" of Hugo. Hugo—how impossible it is to speak of +French literature without referring to him. Let these, however, be +concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, +saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the +rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and +pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is +better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and +incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is +better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is +better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never +had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so +not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality +would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, +what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes.</p> + +<p>To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is +it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this +sort, "<i>des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain</i>" and such sententious +platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "<i>Les épidémies de cette +nature passent, et le génie demeure</i>."</p> + +<p>Theodore de Banville. At first I thought him cold, infected with the +rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim +nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not +seem to touch him, nor did he sing the languors and ardours of animal or +spiritual passion. But there is this: a pure, clear song, an +instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. He sings of the +white lily and the red rose, such knowledge of, such observation of +nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is +trilling magic in every song, and the song as it ascends rings, and all +the air quivers with the ever-widening circle of the echoes, sighing and +dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad +rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way. Banville is not +the poet, he is the bard. The great questions that agitate the mind of +man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he perceives only as +stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words. +Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical. His wit flies out on +clear-cut, swallow-like wings; in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le +Besoin d'aimer," he said: "<i>Vous avez trouvé un titre assez laid pour +faire reculer les divines étoiles</i>." I know not what instrument to +compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to +me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys +and he produces Chopin-like fluidities.</p> + +<p>It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it +was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the +couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the +adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, +"<i>Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine</i>" that the cæsura received +its final <i>coup de grâce</i>. This verse has been probably more imitated +than any other verse in the French language. <i>Pensivement</i> was replaced +by some similar four-syllable adverb, <i>Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas +de soie, etc</i>. It was the beginning of the end.</p> + +<p>I read the French poets of the modern school—Coppée, Mendés, Léon Diex, +Verlaine, José Maria Hêrédia, Mallarmé, Richepin, Villiers de l'Isle +Adam. Coppée, as may be imagined, I only was capable of appreciating in +his first manner, when he wrote those exquisite but purely artistic +sonnets "La Tulipe," and "Le Lys." In the latter a room decorated with +daggers, armour, jewellery and china is beautifully described, and it is +only in the last line that the lily, which animates and gives life to +the whole, is introduced. But the exquisite poetic perceptivity Coppée +showed in his modern poems, the certainty with which he raised the +commonest subject, investing it with sufficient dignity for his purpose, +escaped me wholly, and I could not but turn with horror from such poems +as "La Nourrice" and "Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself +to acknowledge the vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not +understand. The fiery glory of José Maria de Hérédia, on the contrary, +filled me with enthusiasm—ruins and sand, shadow and silhouette of +palms and pillars, negroes, crimson, swords, silence, and arabesques. +Like great copper pans go the clangour of the rhymes.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Entre le ciel qui brûle et la mer qui moutonne,</p> +<p>Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone,</p> +<p>Tu songes, O guerrière, aux vieux conquistadors;</p> +<p>Et dans l'énervement des nuits chaudes et calmes,</p> +<p>Berçant ta gloire éteinte, O cité, tu t'endors</p> +<p>Sous les palmiers, au long frémissement des palmes."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Catulle Mendès, a perfect realisation of his name, with his pale hair, +and his fragile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved woman. +He takes you by the arm, by the hand, he leans towards you, his words +are caresses, his fervour is delightful, and to hear him is as sweet as +drinking a smooth perfumed yellow wine. All he says is false—the book +he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he +buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. +An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the +muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing +from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly +voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte +de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as +Gautier, as good as Coppée; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but +he never wrote a line that some one of his brilliant contemporaries +might not have written. He has produced good work of all kinds "et voilà +tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendès. Robert +Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been +substituted for perfumed yellow wine. No more delightful talker than +Mendès, no more accomplished <i>littérateur</i>, no more fluent and +translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the <i>Place +Pigale</i>, when, on leaving the <i>café</i>, he would take me by the arm, and +expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek +sophists. There were for contrast Mallarmé's Tuesday evenings, a few +friends sitting round the hearth, the lamp on the table. I have met none +whose conversation was more fruitful, but with the exception of his +early verses I cannot say I ever enjoyed his poetry frankly. When I knew +him he had published the celebrated "L'Après Midi d'un Faun": the first +poem written in accordance with the theory of symbolism. But when it was +given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange +illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure. +Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the +enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; I am sure +if I were to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties. It bears +the same relation to the author's later work as <i>Rienzi</i> to <i>The +Walkyrie</i>. But what is symbolism? Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite +to what you mean. For example, you want to say that music which is the +new art, is replacing the old art, which is poetry. First symbol: a +house in which there is a funeral, the pall extends over the furniture. +The house is poetry, poetry is dead. Second symbol: "<i>notre vieux +grimoire</i>," <i>grimoire</i> is the parchment, parchment is used for writing, +therefore, <i>grimoire</i> is the symbol for literature, "<i>d'où s'exaltent +les milliers</i>," thousands of what? of letters of course. We have heard a +great deal in England of Browning obscurity. The "Red Cotton Nightcap +Country" is a child at play compared to a sonnet by such a determined +symbolist as Mallarmé, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added +to the infirmities of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation. For +according to M. Ghil and his organ <i>Les Ecrits pour l'Art,</i> it would +appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the +sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the +different instruments. The vowel <i>u</i> corresponds to the colour yellow, +and therefore to the sound of flutes. Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, +first in the field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil +informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in +coupling the sound of the vowel <i>u</i> with the colour green instead of +with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder +and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste +Ingénu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is +dedicated to Mallarmé, "Père et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des +poisons," and other works are to follow:—the six tomes of "Légendes de +Rêves et de Sang," the innumerable tomes of "La Glose," and the single +tome of "La Loi."</p> + +<p>And that man Gustave Kahn, who takes the French language as a violin, +and lets the bow of his emotion run at wild will upon it, producing +strange acute strains, unpremeditated harmonies comparable to nothing +that I know of but some Hungarian rhapsody; verses of seventeen +syllables interwoven with verses of eight, and even nine, masculine +rhymes, seeking strange union with feminine rhymes in the middle of the +line—a music sweet, subtil, and epicene; the half-note, the inflexion, +but not the full tone—as "<i>se fondre, o souvenir, des lys âcres +délices</i>."</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Se penchant vers les dahlias,</p> +<p>Des paons cabrent des rosaces lunaires</p> +<p>L'assou pissement des branches vénère</p> +<p>Son pâle visage aux mourants dahlias.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Elle écoute au loin les brèves musiques</p> +<p>Nuit claire aux ramures d'accords,</p> +<p>Et la lassitude a bercé son corps</p> +<p>Au rhythme odorant des pures musiques.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Les paons ont dressé la rampe occellée</p> +<p>Pour la descente de ses yeux vers le tapis</p> +<p class="i2">De choses et de sens</p> +<p>Qui va vers l'horizon, parure vermiculée</p> +<p class="i2">De son corps alangui</p> +<p class="i2">En l'âme se tapit</p> +<p>Le flou désir molli de récits et d'encens.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I laughed at these verbal eccentricities, but they were not without +their effect, and that a demoralising one; for in me they aggravated the +fever of the unknown, and whetted my appetite for the strange, abnormal +and unhealthy in art. Hence all pallidities of thought and desire were +eagerly welcomed, and Verlaine became my poet. Never shall I forget the +first enchantment of "Les Fétes Galantes." Here all is twilight.</p> + +<p>The royal magnificences of the sunset have passed, the solemn beatitude +of the night is at hand but not yet here; the ways are veiled with +shadow, and lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with +blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange +contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid +creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and +fitful light..."<i>un soir équivoque d'automne</i>"..."<i>les belles pendent +rêveuses à nos bras</i>"...and they whisper "<i>les mots spéciaux et tout +bas</i>."</p> + +<p>Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the +soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness +and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step +further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as +faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball +dress, to-morrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, +worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or +unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but +Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an +amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawing from +all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness +more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the +licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every +natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music +native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. +The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or +of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of +an archbishop of Persepolis.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil</p> +<p>Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente</p> +<p>Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente</p> +<p>D'aimer des seins légers et ce gentil babil.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Il a vaincu la femme belle aucœur subtil</p> +<p>Etalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;</p> +<p>Il a vaincu l'enfer, il rentre dans sa tente</p> +<p>Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême</p> +<p>Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même.</p> +<p>Et prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel;</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,</p> +<p>Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel,</p> +<p>Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In English there is no sonnet so beautiful, its beauty cannot be worn +away, it is as inexhaustible as a Greek marble. The hiatus in the last +line was at first a little trying, but I have learned to love it. Not in +Baudelaire nor even in Poe is there more beautiful poetry to be found. +Poe, unread and ill-understood in America and England, here, thou art an +integral part of our artistic life.</p> + +<p>The Island o' Fay, Silence, Eleonore, were the familiar spirits of an +apartment beautiful with Manets and tapestry; Swinburne and Rossetti +were the English poets I read there; and in a golden bondage, I, a unit +in the generation they have enslaved, clanked my fetters and trailed my +golden chain, a set of stories in many various metres, to be called +"Roses of Midnight." One of the characteristics of the volume was that +daylight was banished from its pages. In the sensual lamplight of yellow +boudoirs, or the wild moonlight of centenarian forests, my fantastic +loves lived out their lives, died with the dawn which was supposed to be +an awakening to consciousness of reality.</p> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Surely the phrase is ill considered, hurried "my +convalescence" would express the author's meaning better. + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VII"></a><h2>VII</h2> +<br> + +<p>A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds +softly upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the +fleeting beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces, +all strictly garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal +frame enchased with rubies and a few emeralds. And this <i>chef d'œuvre</i> +of antique workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal +pretty. Fair she is and thin.</p> + +<p>She is a woman of thirty—no,—she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has +written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague +and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But +that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge +of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck +and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he +cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want to say.</p> + +<p>Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a +young man of refined mind—a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day +on his pleasures, and in whose library are found some few volumes of +modern poetry—seeks his ideal in a woman of thirty.</p> + +<p>It is clear that, by the very essence of her being, the young girl may +evoke no ideal but that of home; and home is in his eyes the antithesis +of freedom, desire, aspiration. He longs for mystery, deep and endless, +and he is tempted with a foolish little illusion—white dresses, +water-colour drawings and popular music. He dreams of Pleasure, and he +is offered Duty; for do not think that that sylph-like waist does not +suggest to him a yard of apron string, cries of children, and that most +odious word, "Papa." A young man of refined mind can look through the +glass of the years.</p> + +<p>He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of +thirty at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he +knows that the world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved +and amused, the circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine +faces, they cluster like flowers on this side and that, and they fade +into garden-like spaces of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest +may one day smile upon his knee! and shall he renounce all for that +little creature who has just finished singing and is handing round cups +of tea? Every bachelor contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to +give up all for one, one."</p> + +<p>The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and +uncertain, it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests +nothing; the very essence of the young girl's being is that she should +have nothing to suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to +touch the imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no +story of hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and +ninety-nine cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at +least a pound a day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering +the muslin flower if he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight +every one. Where, then, is the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? +Therefore, I say that if a young man's heart is not set on children, and +tiresome dinner-parties, the young girl presents to him no possible +ideal. But the woman of thirty presents from the outset all that is +necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man. I see her sitting in her +beautiful drawing-room, all designed by, and all belonging to her. Her +chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the long leaves lean +out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses of the +Aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand +piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her +visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy +firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; +August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is +stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations +lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. +These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines +himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, +calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight +sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe +affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its +disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she +has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love +reality would dissolve into a dream, all limitations would open into +boundless infinity.</p> + +<p>The husband he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about +half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, +his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the +<i>caserne</i>, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry +him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand +times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is +five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation has passed into middle +age.</p> + +<p>Why did she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great +mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry +space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this +riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the +clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; +and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, she has forgotten.</p> + +<p>The young man shakes hands with the husband; he strives not to look +embarrassed, and he talks of indifferent things—of how well he (the +husband) is looking, of his amusements, his projects; and then he (the +young man of refined mind) tastes of that keen and highly-seasoned +delight—happiness in crime. He knows not the details of her home life, +the husband is merely a dark cloud that fills one side of the picture, +sometimes obliterating the sunlight; a shadowy shape that in certain +moments solidifies and assumes the likeness of a rock-sculptured, +imminent monster, but the shadow and the shape and the threat are +magnetic, and in a sense of danger the fascination is sealed.</p> + +<p>The young man of refined mind is in a ball-room! He leans against the +woodwork in a distant doorway; hardly knowing what to do with himself, +he strives to interest himself in the conversation of a group of men +twice his age. I will not say he is shunned; but neither the matrons nor +the young girls make any advances towards him. The young girls so +sweet—in the oneness of their fresh hair, flowers, dresses, and +glances—are being introduced, are getting up to dance, and the hostess +is looking round for partners. She sees the young man in the doorway, +but she hesitates and goes to some one else, and if you asked her why, +she could not tell you why she avoided him. Presently the woman of +thirty enters. She is in white satin and diamonds. She looks for him—a +circular glance. Calm with possession she passes to a seat, extending +her hand here and there. She dances the eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth +waltz with him.</p> + +<p>Will he induce her to visit his rooms? Will they be like +Marshall's—strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps—or mine, an +old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral +century, my taste; or will it be a library,—two leather library chairs, +a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be +the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of +the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: +her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband's +arms, with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and +lonely shall kneel and adore her.</p> + +<p>And should she <i>not</i> visit his rooms? If the complex and various +accidents of existence should have ruled out her life virtuously; if the +many inflections of sentiment have decided against this last +consummation, then she will wax to the complete, the unfathomable +temptress—the Lilith of old—she will never set him free, and in the +end will be found about his heart "one single golden hair." She shall +haunt his wife's face and words (should he seek to rid himself of her by +marriage), a bitter sweet, a half-welcome enchantment; she shall +consume and destroy the strength and spirit of his life, leaving it +desolation, a barren landscape, burnt and faintly scented with the sea. +Fame and wealth shall slip like sand from him. She may be set aside for +the cadence of a rhyme, for the flowing line of a limb, but when the +passion of art has raged itself out, she shall return to blight the +peace of the worker.</p> + +<p>A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called +nympholepsy—a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal +aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not +extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall +yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their +ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, +and they call it—the woman of thirty.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VIII"></a><h2>VIII</h2> +<br> + +<p>A Japanese dressing-gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some +fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and +having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack, my great +python crawling about after a two months' fast. I tie up a guinea-pig to +the <i>tabouret</i>, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, +the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the +oscillations...now he strikes; and with what exquisite gourmandise he +lubricates and swallows.</p> + +<p>Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, +that beautiful hymn, the "Vexilla Regis," by Saint Fortunatus, the great +poet of the Middle Ages. And, having turned over the leaves of "Les +Fêtes Galantes," I sit down to write.</p> + +<p>My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying +from thirty to three hundred lines in length. The nature of these +stories is easy to imagine: there was the youth who wandered by night +into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and +old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the +holy man; but he died as he yielded; his arms stiffened by some miracle, +and she was unable to free herself; she died of starvation, as her +bondage loosened in decay. I had increased my difficulties by adopting +as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in +many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I +was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising +crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they +were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art +of telling a story clearly and dramatically, <i>selon les procédés de M. +Scribe</i>, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a +hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a +hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, +Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring +<i>café</i>, and our conversation turned on <i>l'exposition de la pièce, +préparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes</i>, etc. One day, as I sat +waiting for him, I took up the <i>Voltaire</i>. It contained an article by M. +Zola. <i>Naturalisme, la vérité, la science,</i> were repeated some +half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you +should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a +novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. +Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, +ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who +has received a violent blow on the head.</p> + +<p>Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying +marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader +who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word +"Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a +train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many +years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the +reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of +the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final +ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led +to the creation of a mental existence.</p> + +<p>And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and +inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the +new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, +and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile +eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any +semblance of life, passionless in all their passion.</p> + +<p>I had read a few chapters of the "Assommoir," as it appeared in <i>La +République des Lettres</i>; I had cried, "ridiculous, abominable," only +because it is characteristic of me to instantly form an opinion and +assume at once a violent attitude. But now I bought up the back numbers +of the <i>Voltaire</i>, and I looked forward to the weekly exposition of the +new faith with febrile eagerness. The great zeal with which the new +master continued his propaganda, and the marvellous way in which +subjects the most diverse, passing events, political, social, religious, +were caught up and turned into arguments for, or proof of the truth of +naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon +science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on +imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern +life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a +new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb +before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the +ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would +arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious +and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at +each development of the theory of the new art and its universal +applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any +one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an +explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing—as well drink +the dregs of yesterday's champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I +glance through the pages listlessly I say, "Only the simple crude +statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision."</p> + +<p>Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was +to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, +and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little +doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be +for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, +only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the +simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, +sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to +whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had +declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly +naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so +important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible +he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least +condemn. At last the expected article came. It was all that could be +desired by one in my fever of mind. Hugo's claims had been previously +disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed-up +dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had +been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. <i>Cependant</i> +there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry. I +trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough. Coppée had +striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, +<i>Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel</i>; he had sought to give utterance +to humble sentiments as in "Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge," the little +grocer <i>qui cassait le sucre avec mélancolie</i>; Richepin had boldly and +frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity. +All this was, however, preparatory and tentative. We are waiting for our +poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen +and the comestible glories of the market-places. The subjects are to +hand, the formula alone is wanting.</p> + +<p>The prospect dazzled me; I tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me +to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?—bays, +laurel crown, a distinct <i>souvenir</i> of Parnassus, but there is no modern +equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me +think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." +The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of +Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is +Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible +glories of the market-place shall be mine. <i>A bas "Les Roses de +Minuit"</i>!</p> + +<p>I felt the "naturalisation" of the "Roses of Midnight" would prove a +difficult task. I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems +aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and +Ville d'Avray. This book was to be entitled "Poems of 'Flesh and +Blood.'"</p> + +<p>"<i>Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu</i>" ...and then? Why, +then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded +streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, +inquires at the <i>concierge's</i> loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, "<i>Que +c'est haut le cinquième</i>," and then? Why, the door opens, and she +cries, "<i>Je t'aime</i>"</p> + +<p>But it was the idea of the new æstheticism—the new art corresponding to +modern, as ancient art corresponded to ancient life—that captivated me, +that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by +the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed +by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also +by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment +of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new—the +washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the +development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is +broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the +fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its +fulness; it is worked up to <i>crescendo</i>, another side issue is +introduced, and again the theme is given forth. And I marvelled greatly +at the lordly, river-like roll of the narrative, sometimes widening out +into lakes and shallowing meres, but never stagnating in fen or +marshlands. The language, too, which I did not then recognise as the +weak point, being little more than a boiling down of Chateaubriand and +Flaubert, spiced with Goncourt, delighted me with its novelty, its +richness, its force. Nor did I then even roughly suspect that the very +qualities which set my admiration in a blaze wilder than wildfire, being +precisely those that had won the victory for the romantic school forty +years before, were very antagonistic to those claimed for the new art; I +was deceived, as was all my generation, by a certain externality, an +outer skin, a nearness, <i>un approchement</i>; in a word, by a substitution +of Paris for the distant and exotic backgrounds so beloved of the +romantic school. I did not know then, as I do now, that art is eternal, +that it is only the artist that changes, and that the two great +divisions—the only possible divisions—are: those who have talent, and +those who have no talent. But I do not regret my errors, my follies; it +is not well to know at once of the limitations of life and things. I +should be less than nothing had it not been for my enthusiasms; they +were the saving clause in my life.</p> + +<p>But although I am apt to love too dearly the art of my day, and to the +disparagement of that of other days, I did not fall into the fatal +mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and +on the same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac; I felt +that that vast immemorial mind rose above them all, like a mountain +above the highest tower.</p> + +<p>And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for +mention is made in the wonderful preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal" of +Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it?—woman or man? Should +Wilfred or Mona be the possessor? A new Mdlle. de Maupin, with royal +lily and aureole, cloud-capped mountains, great gulfs of sea-water +flowing up and reflecting as in a mirror the steep cliff's side; the +straight white feet are set thereon, the obscuring weft of flesh is +torn, and the pure, strange soul continues its mystical exhortations. +Then the radiant vision, a white glory, the last outburst and +manifestation, the trumpets of the apocalypse, the colour of heaven, the +closing of this stupendous allegory—Seraphita lying dead in the rays of +the first sun of the nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead +of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Père Goriot, +I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of +his genius—Seraphita. Certain <i>nuances</i> of soul are characteristic of +certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest +of this fervent soul? The instincts of genius are unfathomable? but he +who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, +will aver that instinct led him aright. I have known one, one whom I +used to call Seraphita; Coppée knew her too, and that exquisite volume, +"L'Exilé," so Seraphita-like in the keen blonde passion of its verse, +was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written. +Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season +in Paris? Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs +of sea water, mountain rock, and pine?</p> + +<p>Balzac's genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars: "Melmoth +Reconcilié," "Jesus-Christ en Flandres," "Le Revers d'un Grand Homme," +"La Cousine Bette." I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was +the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal. Of +Pascal's claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge. No man is +greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the +legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the +existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof +of the existence of Jupiter Ammon. "Les Pensées" could appear to me only +as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and +sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself. Still, I +accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment +paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have +shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware +that this last statement will make many cry "fool" and hiss +"Shakespeare"! But I am not putting forward these criticisms +axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and +interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different +developments and the progress of my mind. It might prove a little +tiresome, but it would no doubt "look well," in the sense that going to +church "looks well," if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of +our national bard. I must, however, resist the temptation to "look +well"; a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth +it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any +profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the +great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well +as I could not fail to hear the melody of—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly?</p> +<p>Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Is not such music as this enough? Of course, but I am a sensualist in +literature. I may see perfectly well that this or that book is a work of +genius, but if it doesn't "fetch me," it doesn't concern me, and I +forget its very existence. What leaves me cold to-day will madden me +to-morrow. With me literature is a question of sense, intellectual sense +if you will, but sense all the same, and ruled by the same +caprices—those of the flesh? Now we enter on very subtle distinctions. +No doubt that there is the brain-judgment and the sense-judgment of a +work of art. And it will be noticed that these two forces of +discrimination exist sometimes almost independently of each other, in +rare and radiant instances confounded and blended in one immense and +unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, +thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates +to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. +This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why +should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in +me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one +can understand the other, but there are affinities in literature +corresponding to, and very analogous to, sexual affinities—the same +unreasoned attractions, the same pleasures, the same lassitudes. Those +we have loved most we are most indifferent to. Shelley, Gautier, Zola, +Flaubert, Goncourt! how I have loved you all; and now I could not, would +not, read you again. How womanly, how capricious; but even a capricious +woman is constant, if not faithful to her <i>amant de cœur</i>. And so with +me; of those I have loved deeply there is but one that still may thrill +me with the old passion, with the first ecstasy—it is Balzac. Upon that +rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often +from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new æstheticisms, +the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the +symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit +and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the +first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought +that shall make speech beautiful and rememberable. The grandeur and +sublimity of Balzac's thoughts seem to me to rise to the loftiest +heights, and his range is limitless; there is no passion he has not +touched, and what is more marvellous, he has given to each in art a +place equivalent to the place it occupies in nature; his intense and +penetrating sympathy for human life and all that concerns it enabled him +to surround the humblest subjects with awe and crown them with the light +of tragedy. There are some, particularly those who can understand +neither and can read but one, who will object to any comparison being +drawn between the Dramatist and the Novelist; but I confess that I—if +the inherent superiority of verse over prose, which I admit +unhesitatingly, be waived—that I fail, utterly fail to see in what +Shakespeare is greater than Balzac. The range of the poet's thought is +of necessity not so wide, and his concessions must needs be greater than +the novelist's. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to +the vital question—the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is +Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to +Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the +apothecary in the "Cousine Bette," or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine +Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever +conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three +hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his +characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions +are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation +of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in +contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as +epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute +sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer +than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the +poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she +says, "His look frightens me as if he put his hand on my dress"; and +another epigram from the same book, "Woman's virtue is man's greatest +invention." Find me anything in La Rochefoucauld that goes more +incisively to the truth of things. One more; here I can give the exact +words: "<i>La gloire est le soleil des morts</i>." It would be easy to +compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all "Maximes" and +"Pensées," even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and +shallow.</p> + +<p>Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading +culminated in the "Comédie Humaine." I no doubt fluttered through some +scores of other books, of prose and verse, sipping a little honey, but +he alone left any important or lasting impression upon my mind. The rest +was like walnuts and wine, an agreeable aftertaste.</p> + +<p>But notwithstanding all this reading I can lay no claim to scholarship +of any kind; for save life I could never learn anything correctly. I am +a student only of ball rooms, bar rooms, streets, and alcoves. I have +read very little; but all I read I can turn to account, and all I read I +remember. To read freely, extensively, has always been my ambition, and +my utter inability to study has always been to me a subject of grave +inquietude,—study as contrasted with a general and haphazard gathering +of ideas taken in flight. But in me the impulse is so original to +frequent the haunts of men that it is irresistible, conversation is the +breath of my nostrils, I watch the movement of life, and my ideas spring +from it uncalled for, as buds from branches. Contact with the world is +in me the generating force; without this what invention I have is thin +and sterile, and it grows thinner rapidly, until it dies away utterly, +as it did in the composition of my unfortunate "Roses of Midnight."</p> + +<p>Men and women, oh the strength of the living faces! conversation, oh the +magic of it! It is a fabulous river of gold where the precious metal is +washed up without stint for all to take, to take as much as he can +carry. Two old ladies discussing the peerage? Much may be learned, it is +gold; poets and wits, then it is fountains whose spray solidifies into +jewels, and every herb and plant is begemmed with the sparkle of the +diamond and the glow of the ruby.</p> + +<p>I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the "Nouvelle +Athènes." What is the "Nouvelle Athènes"? He who would know anything of +my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the +official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French +academy, the <i>café</i>. The "Nouvelle Athènes" is a <i>café</i> on the Place +Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was +but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used +to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to +separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we +might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who +used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our +home, live only in a few pictures and a few pages of prose. The same old +story, the vanquished only are victorious; and though unacknowledged, +though unknown, the influence of the "Nouvelle Athènes" is inveterate in +the artistic thought of the nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>How magnetic, intense, and vivid are these memories of youth. With what +strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,—see the white +face of that <i>café</i>, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching +up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of +those two streets, and I know what shops are there; I can hear the glass +door of the <i>café</i> grate on the sand as I open it. I can recall the +smell of every hour. In the morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, +the pungent cigarette, coffee and bad cognac; at five o'clock the +fragrant odour of absinthe; and soon after the steaming soup ascends +from the kitchen; and as the evening advances, the mingled smells of +cigarettes, coffee, and weak beer. A partition, rising a few feet or +more over the hats, separates the glass front from the main body of the +<i>café</i>. The usual marble tables are there, and it is there we sat and +æstheticised till two o'clock in the morning. But who is that man? he +whose prominent eyes flash with excitement. That is Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam. The last or the supposed last of the great family. He is +telling that girl a story—that fair girl with heavy eyelids, stupid and +sensual. She is, however, genuinely astonished and interested, and he is +striving to play upon her ignorance. Listen to him. "Spain—the night is +fragrant with the sea and the perfume of the orange trees, you know—a +midnight of stars and dreams. Now and then the silence is broken by the +sentries challenging—that is all. But not in Spanish but in French are +the challenges given; the town is in the hands of the French; it is +under martial law. But now an officer passes down a certain garden, a +Spaniard disguised as a French officer; from the balcony the family—one +of the most noble and oldest families Spain can boast of, a thousand +years, long before the conquest of the Moors—watches him. Well +then"—Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is +falling over his face—he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in +the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to "scamp," in +French to <i>escamoter</i>. "The family are watching, death if he is caught, +if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague +sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is +seized. Martial law, Spanish conspiracy must be put down. The French +general is a man of iron." (Villiers laughs, a short, hesitating laugh +that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain +way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, +but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you +cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the +calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard +alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter +extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all +the families in Spain, it is not easy to understand that, no, not easy +here in the 'Nouvelle Athènes'—ha, ha, one must belong to a great +family to understand, ha, ha.</p> + +<p>"The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue +the name—the youngest son—that is all; if he could be saved, the rest +what matter; death is nothing to a Spaniard; the family, the name, a +thousand years of name is everything. The general is, you know, a 'man +of iron.' 'Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, but on one +condition.' To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they +don't know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and +they cry, 'Any conditions.' 'He who is respited must serve as +executioner to the others.' Great is the doom; you understand; but after +all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes +to his youngest son and says, 'I have been a good father to you, my son; +I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never +refused you anything. Now you will not fail us, you will prove yourself +worthy of the great name you bear. Remember your great ancestor who +defeated the Moors, remember.'" (Villiers strives to get in a little +local colour, but his knowledge of Spanish names and history is limited, +and he in a certain sense fails.) "Then the mother comes to her son and +says, 'My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say +you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.' Then the little +sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the +horror-stricken boy....</p> + +<p>"'He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,' cries the father. +'Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, +strike straight.' The father's head falls into the sawdust, the blood +all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another +brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could +bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your +father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but +he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; +remember your promise to us all,' and her head was struck off."</p> + +<p>"And the son," the girl asks, "what became of him?"</p> + +<p>"He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the +walls of his castle in Granada."</p> + +<p>"And whom did he marry?"</p> + +<p>"He never married."</p> + +<p>Then after a long silence some one said,—</p> + +<p>"Whose story is that?"</p> + +<p>"Balzac's."</p> + +<p>At that moment the glass door of the <i>café</i> grated upon the sanded +floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially +Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking +that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress—his +clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that +swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, +the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an +idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression—frank +words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear +as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, +bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next +to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is +nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large +necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. +These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their +friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting +'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris,'" says Manet. "Manet is +in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and +be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by +force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas. +Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture +from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the +devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, +there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints +unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently +that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely +what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision +does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from +drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he +has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his +strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the +arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the <i>café</i> is +closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great +moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the +streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm, +speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous, +aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an +unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little +and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows +that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write +another novel, he will say, "What's the good, it would not be read; no +one read the others, and I mightn't do even as well if I tried again." +Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in +the "Nouvelle Athènes."</p> + +<p>Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world: +somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a +forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning +there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they +shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be +forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make +live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and +aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic +soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon +thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall +that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of +the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies +the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and +stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four +sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the +streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the +suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the +accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth +floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand +francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe, +and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and +the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a +refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the +life-size "Venus de Milo." Something extraordinary would be done with +it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head +must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should +be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets.</p> + +<p>Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard +giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion +above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day +earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he +made his <i>début</i> at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of +consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was +immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America.</p> + +<p>I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now—that long sallow face +ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered +with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In +all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I +remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the +glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst +thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be +rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean +accent, "<i>Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois +orchestres militaires."</i> And when I did show thee some poor verses of +mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten +my native language—</p> + +<p>"My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is +nauseating."</p> + +<p>"So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and +lovers; his best poem...."</p> + +<p>"<i>C'est vrai, mais il s'agissait d'une charogne et cela relève beaucoup +la chose</i>."</p> + +<p>I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music +that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which +Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where +the <i>melody</i> was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the +last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with +unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and +that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng +Saur."</p> + +<p>And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something +too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I +think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far +removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd.</p> + +<p>But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though +obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst +live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in +an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and +lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the +clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light +Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a +white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never +before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such +aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting +fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of +the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of +the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and +waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic +convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent +rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our +confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all +base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our +high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the +ideal, the true and living God of all men.</p> + +<p>Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athènes"; you are a little +tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry +out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your +poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to +æstheticise till the <i>café</i> closes; for you the homeless ones are +waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to +your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and +the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover +them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with +plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, +you will find a few sous to give them <i>lager</i> to cool their thirsty +throats. So you have ever lived—a blameless life is yours, no base +thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art and +friends, that is all.</p> + +<p>Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more +fortunate than I have been.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IX"></a><h2>IX</h2> + +<p>THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES</p> +<br> + +<p>Two dominant notes in my character—an original hatred of my native +country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All +the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I +cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to +nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am +instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and +repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I +am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with +them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I +explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family +some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I +love, and with a love that is foolish—mad, limitless; I love them +better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet +Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great +hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and +the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful +southern England, not the north,—there is something Celtic in the +north—southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces—a smock frock +is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so +absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires +of the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to +me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism +is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism +is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese +about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases +to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung +to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The +Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs +limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and +revere Cromwell.</p> + +<p><i>Garçon, un bock</i>! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; +if my books sell I cannot help it—it is an accident.</p> + +<p>But you live by writing.</p> + +<p>Yes, but life is only an accident—art is eternal.</p> + +<p>What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you +won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the <i>Figaro</i>.</p> + +<p>He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if +the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who +created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it.</p> + +<p>And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in +the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And that +terrible phrase repeated over and over again—"La Conquête de Paris." +What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris; +no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three +provincials.</p> + +<p>You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of +breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for +the pleasure of undressing them.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in +favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for +Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of <i>Le grand art, le nu</i>, +and Lefebvre's unswerving fidelity to <i>le nu</i>...elegance, refinement, an +echo of ancient Greece: and then,—what do you think? when he had +exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to +Lefebvre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife +and eight children." Is it not monstrous?</p> + +<p>But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole +world in conformity with your æstheticisms...a vain dream, and if +realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are +the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to +such interests as these meet with response...it will be so till the +end of time.</p> + +<p>And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began +two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the <i>Figaro</i> as +much as you thought they should be.</p> + +<p>Love—but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and +mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, +colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife—you know all about +her—who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and +her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, +the <i>au delà</i>? But the women one has never seen before, that one will +never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the +baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark +with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or +maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes—the whisper +of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is +delusion, an <i>au delà</i>.</p> + +<p>Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching +people the "grammar of art." Education should be confined to clerks, and +it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn +anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, +musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an +unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve +of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct +drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force +it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and +that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good +heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is +better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for +making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does +not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly like +other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of +Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic +education are devoured. After two years they all paint and draw alike, +every one; that vile execution,—they call it execution,—<i>la pâte, la +peinture au premier coup</i>. I was over in England last year, and I saw +some portraits by a man called Richmond. They were horrible, but I liked +them because they weren't like painting. Stott and Sargent are clever +fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and +hadn't been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the +trail of the serpent is over all they do—that vile French painting, +<i>le morceau</i>, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a +nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. +I liked his little landscapes better...simplified into nothing, into a +couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he +will find a public to understand all that.</p> + +<p>Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a +few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that +democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy—the mass. The +mass can only appreciate simple and <i>naïve</i> emotions, puerile +prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come +over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, +Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International +Exhibition?—The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided +by a <i>plébiscite</i>, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming +majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of +the <i>Petit Journal</i>. Don't talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters; +they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people +could understand <i>Hamlet</i>, the people would not read the <i>Petit +Journal</i>; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not +look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last +hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is +the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still +good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will +always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem. +But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend +for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to +exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five thousand, ten +thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not +ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I +was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were +putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. +Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not +find out; no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no +one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more +republican you are the worse it will be.</p> + +<p>The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the +plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to +rise against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, +and all the rest—stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by +machinery; they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were +painted by the hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the +demand, and a china in which there was always something more or less +pretty, was turned out; but now thousands, millions of plates are made +more than we want, and there is a commercial crisis; the thing is +inevitable. I say the great and the reasonable revolution will be when +mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the machinery and restores the +handicrafts.</p> + +<p>Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and +outcries; he is not an artist. <i>Il me fait l'effet</i> of an old woman +shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of +it with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote +novels, history, plays, they collected <i>bric-à-brac</i>—they wrote about +their <i>bric-à-brac</i>; they painted in water-colours, they etched—they +wrote about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will +settling that the <i>bric-à-brac</i> is to be sold at their death, and the +proceeds applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I +forget which it is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; +they kept a diary, they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, +<i>radotage de vieille femme</i>; nothing must escape, not the slightest +word; it might be that very word that might confer on them immortality; +everything they heard, or said, must be of value, of inestimable value. +A real artist does not trouble himself about immortality, about +everything he hears, feels and says; he treats ideas and sensations as +so much clay wherewith to create.</p> + +<p>And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written +about, prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for +articles; it all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is +puerile.</p> + +<p>And Daudet?</p> + +<p>Oh, Daudet, <i>c'est de la bouillabaisse</i>.</p> + +<p>Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people +have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute +inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of +artistic work. Whistler's art is classical; he thinks of nature, but he +does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and +the best of it is he says so. He knows it well enough! Any one who knows +him must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is +an exact science." And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks +nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his +pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions. I +admire his work; I am showing how he is misunderstood, even by those who +think they understand. Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic +of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any +other?—Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., +with a view to rendering his <i>idea</i>. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he +ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever see Duret +with a lady's opera cloak?—I am sure he never did. Is Duret in the +habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No, he is a <i>littérateur</i> who +is always in men's society, rarely in ladies'. But these facts mattered +nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to Manet. Whistler took +Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme—in a +word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the +model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw; I am merely +contending that Whistler's art is not modern art, but classic art—yes, +and severely classical, far more classical than Titian's or +Velasquez;—from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek +dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than +Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. +Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand that the artistic +stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If +a man is really an artist he will remember what is necessary, forget +what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt his artistic +digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches, inchoate and +wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis.</p> + +<p>I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned. +What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the +same peasant, the same <i>sabot</i>, the same sentiment. You must admit that +it is somewhat stereotyped.</p> + +<p>What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But +that does not prevent it from being always beautiful.</p> + +<p>People talk of Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What +he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent +execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in +the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of +touch—marvellous!</p> + +<p>French translation is the only translation; in England you still +continue to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used +to do the same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of +two things—if the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse +for that of the original;—I don't want his verse, I want the +original;—if he is a bad poet; he gives us bad verse, which is +intolerable. Where the original poet put an effect of cæsura, the +translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the original poet puts an +effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of cæsura. Take +Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the original as +our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take Bayard +Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one with an +ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the +original did not exist? The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful, +but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They +are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of +a "splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he +had read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not +different from Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir +Theodore Martin, is doggerel.</p> + +<p>But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you +could into prose?</p> + +<p>I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your +mind away from that of the original.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>But if you don't know the original? The rhythm of the original can be +suggested in prose judiciously used; even if it isn't, your mind is at +least free, whereas the English rhythm must destroy the sensation of +something foreign. There is no translation except a word-for-word +translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's translation of +Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke that is +untranslatable is explained in a note.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>But that is the way young ladies translate—word for word!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>No; 'tis just what they don't do; they think they are translating word +for word, but they aren't. All the proper names, no matter how +unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose +versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;—I don't know what a +verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. +Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very +good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a +note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "<i>Quand le cheval est +sellé il faut le monter</i>;" in French there is a proverb: "<i>Quand le vin +est tiré il faut le boire</i>." Well, a translator who would translate +<i>quand le cheval</i>, etc., by <i>quand le vin</i>, etc., is an ass, and does +not know his business. In translation only a strictly classical language +should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should +be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the +illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into +English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless +language, something—what shall I say?—the style of a modern Addison.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>What, don't you know the story about Mendès?—when <i>Chose</i> wanted to +marry his sister? <i>Chose's</i> mother, it appears, went to live with a +priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was broken-hearted; +and he went to Mendès, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make +a clean breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great +deal of beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know +Mendès, you can see him smiling a little; and looking at <i>Chose</i> with +that white cameo face of his he said,</p> + +<p>"<i>Avec quel meillur homme voulez-vous que votre mère se mit? vous +n'avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment religieux.</i>"</p> + +<p>Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration, +long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again.</p> + +<p>How to be happy!—not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the +<i>Nouvelle Athènes</i>, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the <i>bourgeois</i> +over there, not to do anything that would awake a too intense +consciousness of life,—to live in a sleepy country side, to have a +garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every +evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out +to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the +tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from +church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, +who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think +there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of +the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The +philanthropist is the Nero of modern times.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="X"></a><h2>X</h2> + +<p>EXTRACT FROM A LETTER</p> +<br> + +<p>"Why did you not send a letter? We have all been writing to you for the +last six months, but no answer—none. Had you written one word I would +have saved all. The poor <i>concierge</i> was in despair; she said the +<i>propriétaire</i> would wait if you had only said when you were coming +back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done. Three +quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an +auction had to be called. It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid +men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against +the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne.... And all the +while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the +face—'the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,' 'the fan widespread across +the bosom' (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the +mistress of that little paradise of tapestry. She seemed to resent the +intrusion. I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes 'deep set +in crimson shadow' to fill with tears. But nothing altered her great +dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained +impenetrable....</p> + +<p>"I was there the night before the sale. I looked through the books, +taking notes of those I intended to buy—those which we used to read +together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in +<i>terre cuite</i>, that laughed amid the frosty <i>boulingrins</i>. I found a +large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed. You should not be +so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their +letters.</p> + +<p>"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did +not wish to be recognised; the <i>concierge</i> of course knew me, but she +can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she +to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred +francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the +auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from +the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table +waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the <i>marchands +de meubles</i> in the <i>quartier</i>, came upstairs, spitting and talking +coarsely—their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled +the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese +dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was +a humorist, answered, 'If there are any ladies' men present, we shall +have some spirited bidding.' The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it +and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the +miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many +other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare—the organ +that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which +we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave +you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not +give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put +matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. +I don't know why, <i>un caprice de femme</i>. No one but you would have ever +thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that +delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation +with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out +all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm +moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the +bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy +darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the +heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted +something: '<i>les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants</i>.' +It was horrid of you: but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the +wrong way. Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the +servants set the other out with little tables? That supper was +fascinating! I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me +wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy +them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose +I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face. +The shoes went with a lot of other things—and oh, to whom?</p> + +<p>"So now that pretty little retreat in the <i>Rue de la Tour des Dames</i> is +ended for ever for you and me. We shall not see the faun in <i>terre +cuite</i> again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the +street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse's hind +legs. I believe it is the steepest street in Paris. And your luncheon +parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what +I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to +that out-of-the-way little street! Men never appreciate the risks women +run for them. But to leave my letters lying about—I cannot forgive +that. When I told Fay she said, 'What can you expect? I warned you +against flirting with boys.' I never did before—never.</p> + +<p>"Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I +read you Browning. You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand +why. I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you +should be here. There are lilacs in the room and the <i>Mont Valérien</i> is +beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into +violet vapour.</p> + +<p>"We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year. Last +year we went to P——, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within +easy distance of a casino. I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out +every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, +and I gave way. There were two young men here, one the Count of B——, +the other the Marquis of G——, one of the best families in France, a +distant cousin of my husband. He has written a book which every one says +is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, <i>c'est +surtout très Parisien</i>. He paid me great attentions, and made my husband +wildly jealous. I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it +was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away. We may return there +this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an +excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable. We have decided +nothing as yet. The Duchesse de —— is giving a costume ball; they say +it is going to be a most wonderful affair. I don't know what money is +not going to be spent upon the cotillion. I have just got home a +fascinating toilette. I am going as a <i>Pierette</i>; you know, a short +skirt and a little cap. The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago. I +danced the cotillion with L——, who, as you know, dances divinely; <i>il +m'a fait la cour</i>, but it is of course no use, you know that.</p> + +<p>"The other night we went to see the <i>Maître-de-Forges</i>, a fascinating +play, and I am reading the book; I don't know which I like the best. I +think the play, but the book is very good too. Now that is what I call a +novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels. But I must not talk +literature, or you will say something stupid. I wish you would not make +foolish remarks about men that <i>tout-Paris</i> considers the cleverest. It +does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at +you behind your back, and that is not nice for me. The <i>marquise</i> was +here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on +her 'days,' so extraordinary were the remarks you made. And by the way, +the <i>marquise</i> has written a book. I have not seen it, but I hear that +it is really too <i>décolleté</i>. She is <i>une femme d'esprit</i>, but the way +she affiché's herself is too much for any one. She never goes anywhere +now without <i>le petit</i> D——. It is a great pity.</p> + +<p>"And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you +are coming back to Paris. I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that +hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really +<i>trés Parisien</i>. Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs +Elysées. You might come back for the Duchesse's ball. I will get an +invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of +running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going +to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things +be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that +Turkish lamp. Yours ——"</p> + +<p>How like her that letter is,—egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not +foolish—narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and +yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity +of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an +inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived +her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely—sincerely?...like a +moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? +Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, +that is quite certain. I never could understand her;—a little brain +that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was +something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought +clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put +into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of +feeling—nervous feeling. I don't know...perhaps.... She has lived her +life...yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do +more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, +little, and merry—a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly +hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had +known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was +very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had +good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far +too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once...once I +did, <i>enfin</i>! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm +was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I +know.... I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments +when.... Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely +subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that +was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never +knew if she hated her husband,—one never knew her,—I never knew how +she would receive me. The last time I saw her...that stupid American +would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding +behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. +However, she could not blame me that time—and all the stories she used +to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the +sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got +her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to +think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into +mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois +they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight +hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, +the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room +geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms +and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a +little grotesque no doubt;—the mechanical admiration for all that is +about her, for the general atmosphere; the <i>Figaro</i>, that is to say +Albert Wolf, <i>l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-à-dire, dans le +monde</i>, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But +with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain +ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain +elevations and depravities,—depravities in the legitimate sense of the +word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace....</p> + +<p>Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from +my reverie, it was pleasant.</p> + +<p>The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes +that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that +one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer +honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant +letter. My agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained +a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in +me;—so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible +even knowing how I stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey +and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that +morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful +Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the +odious epistle.</p> + +<p>That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I +may not be deprived of my <i>demi-tasse</i> at <i>Tortoni's</i>, that I may not be +forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python—monstrous. +And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they +will find pity!</p> + +<p>Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. +The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to +interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak +shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the +strong shall be really strong,—that the strong shall be glorious, +sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, +cry the moderns.</p> + +<p>Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale +socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. +His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He +dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who +hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and +feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way +beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has +drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find +Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee +now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and +more Divine than any man's has been. The chosen people, the garden, the +betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of +Magdalen. The God descending to the harlot! Even the great pagan world +of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and +hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this.</p> + +<p>Come to me, ye who are weak. The Word went forth, the terrible +disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that +they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; +the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, +ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing +every day the end—the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, +that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I +will say it) in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>. What fate has been like Thine? +Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, +crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent +bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious +plight, forthward in the world's van the glory and symbol of a man's new +idea—Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame +with Thy light than ever before—Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing +on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming +night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth +century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the +hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face +is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for +sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in +the ruin Thou hast created.</p> + +<p>Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is +the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of +fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of +lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but +for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! +What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under +Pharaoh's lash or Egypt's sun? It was well that they died that I might +have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. +Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the +ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some +sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres' <i>La Source</i>? That +the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when +compared with the essential that I should have <i>La Source</i>, that +exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with +delight of the painter's holy vision. Nay more, the knowledge that a +wrong was done—that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a +girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal +thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare. Oh, for +the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, +for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to +hear them cry the famous "Ave Caesar," to hold the thumb down, to see +the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned +slaves! Oh, for excess, for crime! I would give many lives to save one +sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, "<i>A la très-chère, à la très-belle, +qui remplit man cœur de clarté"</i> let the first-born in every house in +Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to +decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from +destruction one drawing by Hokusai. Again I say that all we deem sublime +in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if +mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and +fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was +great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England's greatest +son was the personification of injustice—Cromwell.</p> + +<p>But the old world of heroes is over now. The skies above us are dark +with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are +running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing +remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate +Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, +creatures of the ooze and rushes about us—we, the great ship that has +floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain +passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive +blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen +escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary +of tears and effusion, and our refuge—the British Museum—is the wide +sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the +flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is +indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and +how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, +barbarous soul of beauty and of might!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XI"></a><h2>XI</h2> +<br> + +<p>But neither Apollo nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his +exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood +lightly advancing; the other sat in sombre contemplation, calm as a +beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel—the +beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich +autumnal leaves where the jays darted and screamed. The twisted columns +of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, +the python devoured a guinea-pig, the last I gave him; the great white +cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an +abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So +be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, +without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never +return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with +myself; I told my <i>concierge</i> that I would return in a month, and I left +all to be sold, brutally sold by auction, as the letter I read in the +last chapter charmingly and touchingly describes.</p> + +<p>Not even to Marshall did I confide my foreboding that Paris would pass +out of my life, that it would henceforth be with me a beautiful memory, +but never more a practical delight. He and I were no longer living +together; we had parted a second time, but this time without bitterness +of any kind; he had learnt to feel that I wanted to live alone, and had +moved away into the Latin quarter, whither I made occasional +expeditions. I accompanied him once to the old haunts, but various terms +of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest +myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once +done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection +for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would +grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made +friends in the Nouvelle Athènes who interested me passionately, and my +thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had +failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him +to Degas and Manet, but he had spoken of Jules Lefèbvre and Bouguereau, +and generally shown himself incapable of any higher education; he could +not enter where I had entered, and this was alienation. We could no +longer even talk of the same people; when I spoke of a certain +<i>marquise</i>, he answered with an indifferent "Do you really think so"? +and proceeded to drag me away from my glitter of satin to the dinginess +of print dresses. It was more than alienation, it was almost separation; +but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to +whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I +turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap—rap—rap!</p> + +<p>"Who's there?"</p> + +<p>"I—George Moore."</p> + +<p>"I've got a model."</p> + +<p>"Never mind your model. Open the door. How are you? what are you +painting?"</p> + +<p>"This; what do you think of it?"</p> + +<p>"It is prettily composed. I think it will come out all right. I am going +to England; come to say good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Going to England! What will you do in England?"</p> + +<p>"I have to go about money matters, very tiresome. I had really begun to +forget there was such a place."</p> + +<p>"But you are not going to stay there?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!"</p> + +<p>"You will be just in time to see the Academy."</p> + +<p>The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last +Marshall said, "I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; +there's that model."</p> + +<p>The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very +picture of discontent.</p> + +<p>"Send her away."</p> + +<p>"I asked her to come out to dinner."</p> + +<p>"D—n her.... Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with +you; you shall both dine with me. <i>Je quitte Paris demain matin, +peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon +ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous +invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela +vous est agrèable</i>?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Je veux bien, monsieur</i>."</p> + +<p>Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was +always so. We dined in a <i>gargote</i>, and afterwards we went to a +students' ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing +through a clear sky, and on the pavement's edge Marshall's beautiful, +slim, manly figure, and Marie's exquisite gracefulness. She was +Lefèbvre's Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. +She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained +she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No +one knew why; some said it was love.</p> + +<p>I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large +trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman +as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley's Hotel I met my +agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He +explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and +that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a +solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to +contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, +and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. +The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the +senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of +human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but +among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent +spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify +himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and +language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new +nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, +and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was +a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every +aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of +life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; +I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but +everything seemed far away—a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was +in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I +could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an +Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an +Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will +take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that +any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is +found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are +psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is +the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of +a Frenchman's mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they +stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, +form, and temperament;—two ideas destined to remain irrevocably +separate and distinct.</p> + +<p>I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this +was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more +years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts +with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as +an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was +in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional +<i>chroniques</i> in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember +very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing +with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more +easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did +not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, +I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose +required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is +required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and +also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt +with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English +verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an +attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure.</p> + +<p>Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose +translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>We are alone! Listen, a little while, </p> +<p>And hear the reason why your weary smile </p> +<p>And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet, </p> +<p>And how my love of you is more complete </p> +<p>Than any love of any lover. They </p> +<p>Have only been attracted by the gray </p> +<p>Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim </p> +<p>And delicate form, or some such other whim, </p> +<p>The simple pretexts of all lovers;—I </p> +<p>For other reason. Listen whilst I try </p> +<p>To say. I joy to see the sunset slope </p> +<p>Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, </p> +<p>Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm </p> +<p>Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, </p> +<p>In mildly modulated phrases; thus </p> +<p>Your life shall fade like a voluptuous</p> +<p>Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die </p> +<p>Like some soft evening's sad serenity... </p> +<p>I would possess your dying hours; indeed </p> +<p>My love is worthy of the gift, I plead </p> +<p>For them. Although I never loved as yet, </p> +<p>Methinks that I might love you; I would get </p> +<p>From out the knowledge that the time was brief, </p> +<p>That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, </p> +<p>And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm </p> +<p>Beyond all other loves, for now the arm </p> +<p>Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims </p> +<p>You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames </p> +<p>Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet </p> +<p>To see you fading like a violet, </p> +<p>Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange </p> +<p>And costly pleasure, far beyond the range </p> +<p>Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I </p> +<p>Will choose a country spot where fields of rye </p> +<p>And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, </p> +<p>Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, </p> +<p>To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where, </p> +<p>The porch and windows are festooned with fair </p> +<p>Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon </p> +<p>A shady garden where we'll walk alone </p> +<p>In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see </p> +<p>Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, </p> +<p>The garden's length, is far, and you will rest </p> +<p>From time to time, leaning upon my breast </p> +<p>Your languid lily face. Then later still </p> +<p>Unto the sofa by the window-sill </p> +<p>Your wasted body I shall carry, so </p> +<p>That you may drink the last left lingering glow</p> +<p>Of evening, when the air is filled with scent </p> +<p>Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent </p> +<p>The while with many griefs. Like some blue day </p> +<p>That grows more lovely as it fades away, </p> +<p>Gaining that calm serenity and height </p> +<p>Of colour wanted, as the solemn night </p> +<p>Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep </p> +<p>For ever and for ever; I shall weep </p> +<p>A day and night large tears upon your face, </p> +<p>Laying you then beneath a rose-red place </p> +<p>Where I may muse and dedicate and dream </p> +<p>Volumes of poesy of you; and deem </p> +<p>It happiness to know that you are far </p> +<p>From any base desires as that fair star </p> +<p>Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. </p> +<p>Death takes but little, yea, your death has given </p> +<p>Me that deep peace, and that secure possession </p> +<p>Which man may never find in earthly passion. </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for +they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my +English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor +poets?</p> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>La nuit est pleine de silence,</p> +<p>Et dans une étrange lueur,</p> +<p>Et dans une douce indolence</p> +<p>La lune dort comme une fleur.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Parmi rochers, dans le sable</p> +<p>Sous les grands pins d'un calme amer</p> +<p>Surgit mon amour périssable,</p> +<p>Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Je suis ton amant, et la blonde</p> +<p>Gorge tremble sous mon baiser,</p> +<p>Et le feu de l'amour inonde</p> +<p>Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche</p> +<p>Est telle qu'un fruit fait de sang;</p> +<p>Tout passe, mais ta main me touche</p> +<p>Et je me donne en frémissant,</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Tes yeux verts me regardent: j'aime</p> +<p>Le clair de lune de tes yeux,</p> +<p>Et je ne vois dans le ciel même</p> +<p>Que ton corps rare et radieux.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON </span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs,</p> +<p>D'ombres, d'étoiles ou de pleurs?</p> +<p>De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes</p> +<p>De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes?</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Parcilles aux lis abattus</p> +<p>Elles dorment les rêves tus</p> +<p>Dans la grande fenêtre ovale</p> +<p>Ou s'ouvre la nuit estivale.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient +occupation for a life-time—I realised that fact suddenly—I remember +the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and +these poems were the last efforts of my muse.</p> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>As sailors watch from their prison</p> +<p class="i2">For the faint grey line of the coasts,</p> +<p>I look to the past re-arisen,</p> +<p class="i2">And joys come over in hosts</p> +<p>Like the white sea birds from their roosts.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I love not the indelicate present,</p> +<p class="i2">The future's unknown to our quest,</p> +<p>To-day is the life of the peasant,</p> +<p class="i2">But the past is a haven of rest—</p> +<p>The things of the past are the best.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The rose of the past is better</p> +<p class="i2">Than the rose we ravish to-day,</p> +<p>'Tis holier, purer, and fitter</p> +<p class="i2">To place on the shrine where we pray</p> +<p>For the secret thoughts we obey.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In the past nothing dies, nothing changes,</p> +<p class="i2">In the past all is lovely and still;</p> +<p>No grief nor fate that estranges,</p> +<p class="i2">Nor hope that no life can fulfil,</p> +<p>But ethereal shelter from ill.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The coarser delights of the hour</p> +<p class="i2">Tempt, and debauch, and deprave,</p> +<p>And we joy in a flitting flower,</p> +<p class="i2">Knowing that nothing can save</p> +<p>Our flesh from the fate of the grave.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But sooner or later returning</p> +<p class="i2">In grief to the well-loved nest,</p> +<p>Our souls filled with infinite yearning,</p> +<p class="i2">We cry, there is rest, there is rest</p> +<p>In the past, its joys are the best.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">NOSTALGIA</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Fair were the dreamful days of old,</p> +<p class="i2">When in the summer's sleepy shade,</p> +<p>Beneath the beeches on the wold,</p> +<p class="i2">The shepherds lay and gently played</p> +<p>Music to maidens, who, afraid,</p> +<p class="i2">Drew all together rapturously,</p> +<p>Their white soft hands like white leaves laid,</p> +<p class="i2">In the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Men were not then as they are now</p> +<p class="i2">Haunted and terrified by creeds,</p> +<p>They sought not then, nor cared to know</p> +<p class="i2">The end that as a magnet leads,</p> +<p>Nor told with austere fingers beads,</p> +<p class="i2">Nor reasoned with their grief and glee,</p> +<p>But rioted in pleasant meads</p> +<p class="i2">In the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The future may be wrong or right,</p> +<p class="i2">The present is a hopeless wrong,</p> +<p>For life and love have lost delight,</p> +<p class="i2">And bitter even is our song;</p> +<p>And year by year grey doubt grows strong,</p> +<p class="i2">And death is all that seems to dree.</p> +<p>Wherefore with weary hearts we long</p> +<p class="i2">For the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">ENVOI.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Glories and triumphs ne'er shall cease,</p> +<p class="i2">But men may sound the heavens and sea,</p> +<p>One thing is lost for aye—the peace</p> +<p class="i2">Of the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, +determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships +of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious +for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. +An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. +So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that +house? Chance, or a friend's recommendation? I forget. It was +uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are +curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The +sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled +with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a +large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed +stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a +small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition +wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. +This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten +shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In +the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy +Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, +and in the afternoon, friends—girls from the theatre—used to come and +see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; +and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L——; she had only +two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except +when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now +looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones.</p> + +<p>She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she +liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or +two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; +we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of +what?—of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of +enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it +was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not +living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I +have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings +which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our +intimacy, and I believe Miss L—— was charged indirectly for her +conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large +sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. +The landlady's parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to +it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence +ascended Mrs S——'s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, +with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs +predominating.</p> + +<p>Emma, I remember you—you are not to be forgotten—up at five o'clock +every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous +children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck +and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours +at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, +running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down +on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those +hands—can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind +word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the +pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts +of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had +sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally +you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were +too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into +the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were +very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and +intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a +real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. +Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely +recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked—well, to +be candid,—you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated +the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers +something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore +that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you +was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw +something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of +yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I +have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of +yours, for it was a sweet face—that sweet, natural goodness that is so +sublime—lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words +convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your +case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen +hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the +slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the +landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know +that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish +between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I +remember when you heard that Miss L—— was going to America, you asked +me, and the question was sublime: "Is she going to travel all night?" +You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you +knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you +went to church, and you said, "No, it makes my eyes bad." I said, "But +you don't read; you can't read." "No, but I have to look at the book." I +asked you if you had heard of God—you hadn't, but when I pressed you +on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not +answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the +landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, +and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of +days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you +answered that you couldn't go to church because it made your eyes bad. +It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London +and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, +except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police—yes, you knew what a +policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an +organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark +kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours +a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why +you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you +"didn't know how Mrs S—— would get on without me."</p> + +<p>This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what +you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not +know how she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point +your intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; +I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take +the children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of +this and he said—Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well +give a mule a holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably +descriptive of you. Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you +are a beast of burden, a drudge too horrible for anything but work; and +I suppose, all things considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen +children did well to work you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out +of your miserable wages. You had no friends; you could not have a friend +unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your +brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I +wondered if he were as awful as you. Poor Emma! I shall never forget +your kind heart and your unfailing good humour; you were born +beautifully good as a rose is born with perfect perfume; you were as +unconscious of your goodness as the rose of its perfume. And you were +taken by this fat landlady as 'Arry takes a rose and sticks it in his +tobacco-reeking coat; and you will be thrown away, shut out of doors +when health fails you, or when, overcome by base usage, you take to +drink. There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and +paid your wages there would be no hope. Those forty pounds even, if they +were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the +idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his +kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his +whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind +words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in +despair, the gin shop and the river would do the rest. Providence is +very wise after all, and your best destiny is your present one. We +cannot add a pain, nor can we take away a pain; we may alter, but we +cannot subtract nor even alleviate. But what truisms are these; who +believes in philanthropy nowadays?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>"Come in."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is you, Emma!"</p> + +<p>"Are you going to dine at home to-day, sir?"</p> + +<p>"What can I have?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yer can 'ave a chop or a steak."</p> + +<p>"Anything else?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yer can 'ave a steak, or a chop, or—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I know; well then, I'll have a chop. And now tell me, Emma, +how is your young man? I hear you have got one, you went out with him +the other night."</p> + +<p>"Who told yer that?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, never mind; I hear everything."</p> + +<p>"I know, from Miss L——"</p> + +<p>"Well, tell me, how did you meet him, who introduced him?"</p> + +<p>"I met 'im as I was a-coming from the public 'ouse with the beer for +missus' dinner."</p> + +<p>"And what did he say?"</p> + +<p>"He asked me if I was engaged; I said no. And he come round down the +lane that evening."</p> + +<p>"And he took you out?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And where did you go?"</p> + +<p>"We went for a walk on the Embankment."</p> + +<p>"And when is he coming for you again?"</p> + +<p>"He said he was coming last evening, but he didn't."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't he?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno; I suppose because I haven't time to go out with him. So it +was Miss L—— that told you; well, you do 'ave chats on the stairs. I +suppose you likes talking to 'er."</p> + +<p>"I like talking to everybody, Emma; I like talking to you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but not as you talks to 'er; I 'ears you jes do 'ave fine times. +She said this morning that she had not seen you for this last two +nights—that you had forgotten 'er, and I was to tell yer."</p> + +<p>"Very well, I'll come out to-night and speak to her."</p> + +<p>"And missus is so wild about it, and she daren't say nothing 'cause she +thinks yer might go."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>A young man in a house full of women must be almost supernaturally +unpleasant if he does not occupy a great deal of their attention. +Certain at least it is that I was the point of interest in that house; +and I found there that the practice of virtue is not so disagreeable as +many young men think it. The fat landlady hovered round my doors, and I +obtained perfectly fresh eggs by merely keeping her at her distance; the +pretty actress, with whom I used to sympathise with on the stairs at +midnight, loved me better, and our intimacy was more strange and subtle, +because it was pure, and it was not quite unpleasant to know that the +awful servant dreamed of me as she might of a star, or something equally +unattainable; but the landlady's daughter, a nasty girl of fifteen, +annoyed me with her ogling, which was a little revolting, but the rest +was, and I speak quite candidly, not wholly unpleasant. It was not +aristocratic, it is true, but, I repeat, it was not unpleasant, nor do I +believe that any young man, however refined, would have found it +unpleasant.</p> + +<p>But if I was offered a choice between a chop and steak in the evening, +in the morning I had to decide between eggs and bacon and bacon and +eggs. A knocking at the door, "Nine o'clock, sir; 'ot water, sir; what +will you have for breakfast?" "What can I have?" "Anything you like, +sir. You can have bacon and eggs, or—" "Anything else?"—Pause,—"Well, +sir, you can have eggs and bacon, or—" "Well, I'll have eggs and +bacon."</p> + +<p>The streets seemed to me like rat holes, dark and wandering as chance +directed, with just an occasional rift of sky, seen as if through an +occasional crevice, so different from the boulevards widening out into +bright space with fountains and clouds of green foliage. The modes of +life were so essentially opposed. I am thinking now of intellectual +rather than physical comforts. I could put up with even lodging-house +food, but I found it difficult to forego the glitter and artistic +enthusiasm of the <i>café</i>. The tavern, I had heard of the tavern.</p> + +<p>Some seventy years ago the Club superseded the Tavern, and since then +all literary intercourse has ceased in London. Literary clubs have been +founded, and their leather arm-chairs have begotten Mr Gosse; but the +tavern gave the world Villon and Marlowe. Nor is this to be wondered at. +What is wanted is enthusiasm and devil-may-careism; and the very aspect +of a tavern is a snort of defiance at the hearth, the leather arm-chairs +are so many salaams to it. I ask, Did anyone ever see a gay club room? +Can any one imagine such a thing? You can't have a club-room without +mahogany tables, you can't have mahogany tables without +magazines—<i>Longman's</i>, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the <i>Nineteenth +Century</i>, with an article, "The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern +Society," by W. E. Gladstone—a dulness that's a purge to good spirits, +an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that's worth a thousand +a year. You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver +salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have +to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull.</p> + +<p>As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the +husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can +go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is +considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club—out of the +Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays everyone is respectable—jockeys, +betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs Kendal takes her children +to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them +of the joy of respectability. There is only one class left that is not +respectable, and that will succumb before long; how the transformation +will be effected I can't say, but I know an editor or two who would be +glad of an article on the subject.</p> + +<p>Respectability!—a suburban villa, a piano in the drawing-room, and +going home to dinner. Such things are no doubt very excellent, but they +do not promote intensity of feeling, fervour of mind; and as art is in +itself an outcry against the animality of human existence, it would be +well that the life of the artist should be a practical protest against +the so-called decencies of life; and he can best protest by frequenting +a tavern and cutting his club. In the past the artist has always been an +outcast; it is only latterly he has become domesticated, and judging by +results, it is clear that if Bohemianism is not a necessity it is at +least an adjuvant. For if long locks and general dissoluteness were not +an aid and a way to pure thought, why have they been so long his +characteristics? If lovers were not necessary for the development of +poet, novelist, and actress, why have they always had lovers—Sappho, +George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Sara? Mrs Kendal nurses children all +day and strives to play Rosalind at night. What infatuation, what +ridiculous endeavour! To realise the beautiful woodland passion and the +idea of the transformation, a woman must have sinned, for only through +sin may we learn the charm of innocence. To play Rosalind a woman must +have had more than one lover, and if she has been made to wait in the +rain and has been beaten she will have done a great deal to qualify +herself for the part. The ecstatic Sara makes no pretence to virtue, +she introduces her son to an English duchess, and throws over a nation +for the love of Richepin, she can, therefore, say as none other—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Ce n'est plus qu'une ardeur dans mes veines cachée,</p> +<p>C'est Venus tout entière à sa proie attachée."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Swinburne, when he dodged about London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems +and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he +has contributed to the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and published an +interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he +continues his plaint about his mother the sea.</p> + +<p>Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national +costumes are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, +and the smock in the southlands, even the Japanese are becoming +christian and respectable; in another quarter of a century silk hats and +pianos will be found in every house in Yeddo. Too true that universal +uniformity is the future of the world; and when Mr Morris speaks of the +democratic art to be when the world is socialistic, I ask, whence will +the unfortunates draw their inspiration? To-day our plight is pitiable +enough—the duke, the jockey-boy, and the artist are exactly alike; +they are dressed by the same tailor, they dine at the same clubs, they +swear the same oaths, they speak equally bad English, they love the same +women. Such a state of things is dreary enough, but what unimaginable +dreariness there will be when there are neither rich nor poor, when all +have been educated, when self-education has ceased. A terrible world to +dream of, worse, far worse, in darkness and hopelessness than Dante's +lowest circle of hell. The spectre of famine, of the plague, of war, +etc., are mild and gracious symbols compared with that menacing figure, +Universal Education, with which we are threatened, which has already +eunuched the genius of the last five-and-twenty years of the nineteenth +century, and produced a limitless abortion in that of future time. +Education, I tremble before thy dreaded name. The cruelties of Nero, of +Caligula, what were they?—a few crunched limbs in the amphitheatre; but +thine, O Education, are the yearning of souls sick of life, of maddening +discontent, of all the fearsome and fathomless sufferings of the mind. +When Goethe said "More light," he said the wickedest and most infamous +words that human lips ever spoke. In old days, when a people became too +highly civilised the barbarians came down from the north and +regenerated that nation with darkness; but now there are no more +barbarians, and sooner or later I am convinced that we shall have to end +the evil by summary edicts—the obstruction no doubt will be severe, the +equivalents of Gladstone and Morley will stop at nothing to defeat the +Bill; but it will nevertheless be carried by patriotic Conservative and +Unionist majorities, and it will be written in the Statute Book that not +more than one child in a hundred shall be taught to read, and no more +than one in ten thousand shall learn the piano.</p> + +<p>Such will be the end of Respectability, but the end is still far +distant. We are now in a period of decadence growing steadily more and +more acute. The old gods are falling about us, there is little left to +raise our hearts and minds to, and amid the wreck and ruin of things +only a snobbery is left to us, thank heaven, deeply graven in the +English heart; the snob is now the ark that floats triumphant over the +democratic wave; the faith of the old world reposes in his breast, and +he shall proclaim it when the waters have subsided.</p> + +<p>In the meanwhile Respectability, having destroyed the Tavern, and +created the Club, continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating +influence on literature. All audacity of thought and expression has been +stamped out, and the conventionalities are rigorously respected. It has +been said a thousand times that an art is only a reflection of a certain +age; quite so, only certain ages are more interesting than others, and +consequently produce better art, just as certain seasons produce better +crops. We heard in the Nouvelle Athènes how the Democratic movement, in +other words, Respectability, in other words, Education, has extinguished +the handicrafts; it was admitted that in the more individual +arts—painting and poetry—men would be always found to sacrifice their +lives for a picture or a poem: but no man is, after all, so immeasurably +superior to the age he lives in as to be able to resist it wholly; he +must draw sustenance from some quarter, and the contemplation of the +past will not suffice. Then the pressure on him from without is as water +upon the diver; and sooner or later he grows fatigued and comes to the +surface to breathe; he is as a flying-fish pursued by sharks below and +cruel birds above; and he neither dives as deep nor flies as high as his +freer and stronger ancestry. A daring spirit in the nineteenth century +would have been but a timid nursery soul indeed in the sixteenth. We +want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace +to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, +and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. +Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort of octopus, and +nowhere are you quite free from one of its horrible suckers. The power +of the villa residence is supreme: art, science, politics, religion, it +has transformed to suit its requirements. The villa goes to the Academy, +the villa goes to the theatre, and therefore the art of to-day is mildly +realistic; not the great realism of idea, but the puny reality of +materialism; not the deep poetry of a Peter de Hogue, but the meanness +of a Frith—not the winged realism of Balzac, but the degrading +naturalism of a coloured photograph.</p> + +<p>To my mind there is no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a +London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls +hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating +digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit and gallery forgetting the +miseries of life in imbecile stories reeking of the sentimentality of +the back stairs. Were other ages as coarse and common as ours? It is +difficult to imagine Elizabethan audiences as not more intelligent than +those that applaud Mr Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that +could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of +literary infamies as <i>In the Ranks</i> and <i>Harbour Lights</i>. Artistic +atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the +rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old +crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet +of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the +old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he +keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. Let all this be +waived. We must not quarrel with the ingredients. The miser and the old +castle are as true, and not one jot more true, than the million events +which go to make up the phenomena of human existence. Not at these +things considered separately do I take umbrage, but at the miserable use +that is made of them, the vulgarity of the complications evolved from +them, and the poverty of beauty in the dialogue.</p> + +<p>Not the thing itself, but the idea of the thing evokes the idea. +Schopenhauer was right; we do not want the thing, but the idea of the +thing. The thing itself is worthless; and the moral writers who +embellish it with pious ornamentation are just as reprehensible as Zola, +who embellishes it with erotic arabesques. You want the idea drawn out +of obscuring matter, and this can best be done by the symbol. The +symbol, or the thing itself, that is the great artistic question. In +earlier ages it was the symbol; a name, a plume, sufficed to evoke the +idea; now we evoke nothing, for we give everything, the imagination of +the spectator is no longer called into play. In Shakespeare's days to +create wealth in a theatre it was only necessary to write upon a board, +"A magnificent apartment in a palace." This was no doubt primitive and +not a little barbarous, but it was better by far than by dint of anxious +archæology to construct the Doge's palace upon the stage. By one rich +pillar, by some projecting balustrade taken in conjunction with a moored +gondola, we should strive to evoke the soul of the city of Veronese: by +the magical and unequalled selection of a subtle and unexpected feature +of a thought or aspect of a landscape, and not by the up-piling of +extraneous detail, are all great poetic effects achieved.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"By the tideless dolorous inland sea,</p> +<p>In a land of sand, of ruin, and gold."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And, better example still,</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Dieu que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois,"</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>that impeccable, that only line of real poetry Alfred de Vigny ever +wrote. Being a great poet Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously +observed more faithfully than any other poet these principles of art; +and, as is characteristic of the present day, nowhere do we find these +principles so grossly violated as in the representation of his plays. I +had painful proof of this some few nights after my arrival in London. I +had never seen Shakespeare acted, and I went to the Lyceum and there I +saw that exquisite love-song—for <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> is no more than a +love song in dialogue—tricked out in silks and carpets and illuminated +building, a vulgar bawd suited to the gross passion of an ignorant +public. I hated all that with the hatred of a passionate heart, and I +longed for a simple stage, a few simple indications, and the simple +recitation of that story of the sacrifice of the two white souls for the +reconciliation of two great families. My hatred did not reach to the age +of the man who played the boy-lover, but to the offensiveness with +which he thrust his individuality upon me, longing to realise the poet's +divine imagination: and the woman, too, I wished with my whole soul +away, subtle and strange though she was, and I yearned for her part to +be played by a youth as in old time: a youth cunningly disguised, would +be a symbol; and my mind would be free to imagine the divine Juliet of +the poet, whereas I could but dream of the bright eyes and delicate mien +and motion of the woman who had thrust herself between me and it.</p> + +<p>But not with symbol and subtle suggestion has the villa to do, but with +such stolid, intellectual fare as corresponds to its material wants. The +villa has not time to think, the villa is the working bee. The tavern is +the drone. It has no boys to put to school, no neighbours to study, and +is therefore a little more refined, or, should I say? depraved, in its +taste. The villa in one form or other has always existed, and always +will exist so long as our present social system holds together. It is +the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that +does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence +to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising +effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved +impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of +the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I +will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the symbol and +glory of villaism.</p> + +<p>The subject is not unfamiliar to me; I come to it like the son to his +father, like the bird to its nest. (Singularly inappropriate comparison, +but I am in such excellent humour to-day; humour is everything. It is +said that the tiger will sometimes play with the lamb! Let us play.) We +have the villa well in our mind. The father who goes to the city in the +morning, the grown-up girls waiting to be married, the big drawing-room +where they play waltz music, and talk of dancing parties. But waltzes +will not entirely suffice, nor even tennis; the girls must read. Mother +cannot keep a censor (it is as much as she can do to keep a cook, +housemaid and page-boy), besides the expense would be enormous, even if +nothing but shilling and two-shilling novels were purchased. Out of such +circumstances the circulating library was hatched.</p> + +<p>The villa made known its want, and art fell on its knees. Pressure was +put on the publishers, and books were published at 31s. 6d.; the dirty +outside public was got rid of, and the villa paid its yearly +subscription, and had nice large handsome books that none but the +<i>élite</i> could obtain, and with them a sense of being put on a footing of +equality with my Lady This and Lady That, and certainty that nothing +would come into the hands of dear Kate and Mary and Maggie that they +might not read, and all for two guineas a year. English fiction became +pure, and the garlic and assafœtida with which Byron, Fielding and Ben +Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as +critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. +English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, +were no longer procurable. But at this point human nature intervened; +poor human nature! when you pinch it in one place it bulges out in +another, after the fashion of a lady's figure. Human nature has from the +earliest time shown a liking for dirty stories; dirty stories have +formed a substantial part of every literature (I employ the words "dirty +stories" in the circulating library sense); therefore a taste for dirty +stories may be said to be inherent in the human animal. Call it a +disease if you will—an incurable disease—which, if it is driven +inwards, will break out in an unexpected quarter in a new form and with +redoubled virulence. This is exactly what has happened. Actuated by the +most laudable motives, Mudie cut off our rations of dirty stories, and +for forty years we were apparently the most moral people on the face of +the earth. It was confidently asserted that an English woman of sixty +would not read what would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a +maiden of any other nation. But humiliation and sorrow were awaiting +Mudie. True it is that we still continued to subscribe to his library, +true it is that we still continued to go to church, true it is that we +turned our faces away when <i>Mdlle. de Maupin</i> or the <i>Assommoir</i> was +spoken of; to all appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie +might wish us; and no doubt he looked back upon his forty years of +effort with pride; no doubt he beat his manly breast and said, "I have +scorched the evil one out of the villa; the head of the serpent is +crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly, with all the horror of an +earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders of +fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were +poured upon and hung over the land. Through the mighty columns of our +newspapers the terrible lava rolled unceasing, and in the black stream +the villa, with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and disappeared.</p> + +<p>An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that +there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the +coming of the Nirvana.</p> + +<p>I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a +feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be +legitimately put forward in its favour. It seems to me this: the +circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the +circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise +of the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is +more restrained and there is more reflection. The young and unknown +writer is placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is +not forced to employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; +the known writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to +think more of it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; +but all these possible advantages are destroyed and rendered <i>nil</i> by +the veracious censorship exercised by the librarian.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that +reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;—but +there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, +and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of +Elizabethan England—I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems +to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, +but in the vulgarity of an English hall—I will not say the Pavilion, +which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for +preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first +evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—the dissolute +paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the +slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, +the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what +unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all +enjoyed each other's presence; in a word, there was life. Then there +were no cascades of real water, nor London docks, nor offensively rich +furniture, with hotel lifts down which some one will certainly be +thrown, but one scene representing a street; a man comes on—not, mind +you, in a real smock-frock, but in something that suggests one—and +sings of how he came up to London, and was "cleaned out" by thieves. +Simple, you will say; yes, but better than a <i>fricassée</i> of <i>Faust</i>, +garnished with hags, imps, and blue flame; better, far better than a +drawing-room set at the St James's, with an exhibition of passion by Mrs +and Mr Kendal; better, a million times better than the cheap popularity +of Wilson Barrett—an elderly man posturing in a low-necked dress to +some poor trull in the gallery; nor is there in the hall any affectation +of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric which reminds you of a +broken-winded barrel-organ playing <i>a che la morte</i>, bad enough in +prose, but when set up in blank verse awful and shocking in its more +than natural deformity—but bright quips and cranks fresh from the +back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the +unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a +week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so +curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer +repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare—see, here she comes with +"What cheer, Rea! Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is +welcome and refreshing after the eternal drawing-room and Mrs Kendal's +cumbrous domesticity; it is curious, quaint, perverted, and are not +these the <i>aions</i> and the attributes of art? Now see that perfect +comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because he is working with +living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he evokes the soul, +the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and elegant in +black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand +me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the +spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene +the comedian's eyes—each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, +it is magnetic, it is symbolic, it is art.</p> + +<p>Not art, but a sign, a presentiment of an art, that may grow from the +present seeds, that may rise into some stately and unpremeditated +efflorescence, as the rhapsodist rose to Sophocles, as the miracle play +rose through Peele and Nash to Marlowe, hence to the wondrous summer of +Shakespeare, to die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the +autumn of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic +interludes that in their unexpectedness and naïve naturalness remind me +of the comic passages in Marlowe's <i>Faustus</i>, I waited (I admit in vain) +for some beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic +worshipper cry out in his agony:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships</p> +<p>And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?</p> +<p>Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.</p> +<p>Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!</p> +<p>Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again.</p> +<p>Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,</p> +<p>And all is dross that is not Helena."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And then the astonishing change of key:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"I will be Paris, and for love of thee,</p> +<p>Instead of Troy shall Wurtemberg be sacked," etc.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The hall is at least a protest against the wearisome stories concerning +wills, misers in old castles, lost heirs, and the woeful solutions of +such things—she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years +restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the <i>ingenue</i> +to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs +Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs +Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the +immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so +different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant +change of scene. The music-hall is a protest against the villa, the +circulating library, the club, and for this the "'all" is inexpressibly +dear to me.</p> + +<p>But in the interests of those illiterate institutions called theatres it +is not permissible for several characters to narrate events in which +there is a sequel, by means of dialogue, in a music-hall. If this +vexatious restriction were removed it is possible, if it is not certain, +that while some halls remained faithful to comic songs and jugglers +others would gradually learn to cater for more intellectual and subtle +audiences, and that out of obscurity and disorder new dramatic forms, +coloured and permeated by the thought and feeling of to-day, might be +definitely evolved. It is our only chance of again possessing a dramatic +literature.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XII"></a><h2>XII</h2> +<br> + +<p>It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and +dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. +Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, +came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. +Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything +but an ordinary person. Let this be waived. I was as covered with "fads" +as a distinguished foreigner with stars. Naturalism I wore round my +neck, Romanticism was pinned over the heart, Symbolism I carried like a +toy revolver in my waistcoat pocket, to be used on an emergency. I do +not judge whether I was charlatan or genius, I merely state that I found +all—actors, managers, editors, publishers, docile and ready to listen +to me. The world may be wicked, cruel, and stupid, but it is patient; on +this point I will not be gainsaid, it is patient; I know what I am +talking about; I maintain that the world is patient. If it were not, +what would have happened? I should have been murdered by the editors of +(I will suppress names), torn in pieces by the sub-editors, and +devoured by the office boys. There was no wild theory which I did not +assail them with, there was no strange plan for the instant +extermination of the Philistine, which I did not press upon them, and +(here I must whisper), with a fair amount of success, not complete +success I am glad to say—that would have meant for the editors a change +from their arm-chairs to the benches of the Union and the plank beds of +Holloway. The actress, when she returned home from the theatre, +suggested I had an enemy, a vindictive enemy, who dogged my steps; but +her stage experience led her astray. I had no enemy except myself; or to +put it scientifically, no enemy except the logical consequences of my +past life and education, and these caused me a great and real +inconvenience. French wit was in my brain, French sentiment was in my +heart; of the English soul I knew nothing, and I could not remember old +sympathies, it was like seeking forgotten words, and if I were writing a +short story, I had to return in thought to Montmartre or the Champs +Elysées for my characters. That I should have forgotten so much in ten +years seems incredible, and it will be deemed impossible by many, but +that is because few are aware of how little they know of the details of +life, even of their own, and are incapable of appreciating the influence +of their past upon their present. The visible world is visible only to a +few, the moral world is a closed book to nearly all. I was full of +France, and France had to be got rid of, or pushed out of sight before I +could understand England; I was like a snake striving to slough its +skin.</p> + +<p>Handicapped as I was with dangerous ideas, and an impossible style, +defeat was inevitable. My English was rotten with French idiom; it was +like an ill-built wall overpowered by huge masses of ivy; the weak +foundations had given way beneath the weight of the parasite; and the +ideas I sought to give expression to were green, sour, and immature as +apples in August.</p> + +<p>Therefore before long the leading journal that had printed two poems and +some seven or eight critical articles, ceased to send me books for +review, and I fell back upon obscure society papers. Fortunately it was +not incumbent on me to live by my pen; so I talked, and watched, and +waited till I grew akin to those around me, and my thoughts blended +with, and took root in my environment. I wrote a play or two, I +translated a French opera, which had a run of six nights, I dramatized +a novel, I wrote short stories, and I read a good deal of contemporary +fiction.</p> + +<p>The first book that came under my hand was "A Portrait of a Lady," by +Henry James. Each scene is developed with complete foresight and +certainty of touch. What Mr James wants to do he does. I will admit that +an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss +of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare +gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, +gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but +Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is +one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word +is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never +resolved out of the haze of nebulae. You are on a bowing acquaintance +with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you +know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes. When I +think of "A Portrait of a Lady," with its marvellous crowd of +well-dressed people, it comes back to me precisely as an accurate +memory of a fashionable soirée—the staircase with its ascending +figures, the hostess smiling, the host at a little distance with his +back turned; some one calls him. He turns; I can see his white kid +gloves, the air is sugar sweet with the odour of the gardenias, there is +brilliant light here, there is shadow in the further rooms, the women's +feet pass to and fro beneath the stiff skirts, I call for my hat and +coat, I light a cigar, I stroll up Piccadilly...a very pleasant evening, +I have seen a good many people I knew, I have observed an attitude, and +an earnestness of manner that proved that a heart was beating.</p> + +<p>Mr James might say, "If I have done this, I have done a great deal," and +I would answer, "No doubt you are a man of great talent, great +cultivation and not at all of the common herd; I place you in the very +front rank, not only of novelists but of men of letters."</p> + +<p>I have read nothing of Henry James's that did suggest the manner of a +scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless +sentimentalities? I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts—why +does he not write complicated stories? Why does he not complete his +stories? Let all this be waived. I will ask him only why he always +avoids decisive action? Why does a woman never say "I will"? Why does a +woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a +man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever +accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common +occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite +twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story +begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the +characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing +happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter +of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some +adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I +take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr Lang says, "I like +adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like +sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr Lang says, +"Oh, do you?" as he might to a man who says, "I like port." But Mr James +and I are agreed on essentials, we prefer character-drawing to +adventures. One, two, or even three determining actions are not +antagonistic to character-drawing, the practice of Balzac, and +Flaubert, and Thackeray prove that. Is Mr James of the same mind as the +poet Verlaine—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"La nuance, pas la couleur,</p> +<p>Seulement la nuance,</p> +<p>.....</p> +<p>Tout le reste est littérature."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In connection with Henry James I had often heard the name of W.D. +Howells. I bought some three or four of his novels. I found them pretty, +very pretty, but nothing more,—a sort of Ashby Sterry done into very +neat prose. He is vulgar, as Henry James is refined; he is more +domestic; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, +mild witticisms, here, there, and everywhere; a couple of young men, one +a little cynical, the other a little over-shadowed by his love, a +strong, bearded man of fifty in the background; in a word, a Tom +Robertson comedy faintly spiced with American. Henry James went to +France and read Tourgueneff. W.D. Howells stayed at home and read Henry +James. Henry James's mind is of a higher cast and temper; I have no +doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral +history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia—he +borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. +Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was +borrowing. Altogether Mr James's instincts are more scholarly. Although +his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the +prudery of the age,—no, not of the age but of librarians,—I cannot but +feel that his concessions, for I suppose I must call them concessions, +are to a certain extent self-imposed, regretfully, perhaps...somewhat in +this fashion—"True, that I live in an age not very favourable to +artistic production, but the art of an age is the spirit of that age; if +I violate the prejudices of the age I shall miss its spirit, and an art +that is not redolent of the spirit of its age is an artificial flower, +perfumeless, or perfumed with the scent of flowers that bloomed three +hundred years ago." Plausible, ingenious, quite in the spirit of Mr +James's mind; I can almost hear him reason so; nor does the argument +displease me, for it is conceived in a scholarly spirit. Now my +conception of W.D. Howells is quite different—I see him the happy +father of a numerous family; the sun is shining, the girls and boys are +playing on the lawn, they come trooping in to high tea, and there is +dancing in the evening.</p> + +<p>My fat landlady lent me a novel by George Meredith,—"Tragic +Comedians"; I was glad to receive it, for my admiration of his poetry, +with which I was slightly acquainted, was very genuine indeed. "Love in +a Valley" is a beautiful poem, and the "Nuptials of Attila," I read it +in the <i>New Quarterly Review</i> years ago, is very present in my mind, and +it is a pleasure to recall its chanting rhythm, and lordly and sombre +refrain—"Make the bed for Attila." I expected, therefore, one of my old +passionate delights from his novels. I was disappointed, painfully +disappointed. But before I say more concerning Mr Meredith, I will admit +at once frankly and fearlessly, that I am not a competent critic, +because emotionally I do not understand him, and all except an emotional +understanding is worthless in art. I do not make this admission because +I am intimidated by the weight and height of the critical authority with +which I am overshadowed, but from a certain sense, of which I am as +distinctly conscious, viz., that the author is, how shall I put it? the +French would say "quelqu'un," that expresses what I would say in +English. I remember, too, that although a man may be able to understand +anything, there must be some modes of thoughts and attitudes of mind +which we are so naturally antagonistic to, so entirely out of sympathy +with, that we are in no true sense critics of them. Such are the +thoughts that come to me when I read Mr George Meredith. I try to +console myself with such reflections, and then I break out and cry +passionately:—jerks, wire splintered wood. In Balzac, which I know by +heart, in Shakespeare, which I have just begun to love, I find words +deeply impregnated with the savour of life; but in George Meredith there +is nothing but crackjaw sentences, empty and unpleasant in the mouth as +sterile nuts. I could select hundreds of phrases which Mr Meredith would +probably call epigrams, and I would defy anyone to say they were wise, +graceful or witty. I do not know any book more tedious than "Tragic +Comedians," more pretentious, more blatant; it struts and screams, +stupid in all its gaud and absurdity as a cockatoo. More than fifty +pages I could not read. How, I asked myself, could the man who wrote the +"Nuptials of Attila" write this? but my soul returned no answer, and I +listened as one in a hollow mountain side. My opinion of George Meredith +never ceases to puzzle me. He is of the north, I am of the south. +Carlyle, Mr Robert Browning, and George Meredith are the three +essentially northern writers; in them there is nothing of Latin +sensuality and subtlety.</p> + +<p>I took up "Rhoda Fleming." I found some exquisite bits of description in +it, but I heartily wished them in verse, they were motives for poems; +and there was some wit. I remember a passage very racy indeed, of +middle-class England. Antony, I think, is the man's name, describes how +he is interrupted at his tea; a paragraph of seven or ten lines with "I +am having my tea, I am at my tea," running through it for refrain. Then +a description of a lodging-house dinner: "a block of bread on a lonely +place, and potatoes that looked as if they had committed suicide in +their own steam." A little ponderous and stilted, but undoubtedly witty. +I read on until I came to a young man who fell from his horse, or had +been thrown from his horse, I never knew which, nor did I feel enough +interest in the matter to make research; the young man was put to bed by +his mother, and once in bed he began to talk!...four, five, six, ten +pages of talk, and such talk! I can offer no opinion why Mr George +Meredith committed them to paper; it is not narrative, it is not witty, +nor is it sentimental, nor is it profound. I read it once; my mind, +astonished at receiving no sensation, cried out like a child at a +milkless breast. I read the pages again...did I understand? Yes, I +understood every sentence, but they conveyed no idea, they awoke no +emotion in me; it was like sand, arid and uncomfortable. The story is +surprisingly commonplace—the people in it are as lacking in subtlety as +those of a Drury Lane melodrama.</p> + +<p>"Diana of the Crossways" I liked better, and had I had absolutely +nothing to do I might have read it to the end. I remember a scene with a +rustic—a rustic who could eat hog a solid hour—that amused me. I +remember the sloppy road in the Weald, and the vague outlines of the +South Downs seen in starlight and mist. But to come to the great +question, the test by which Time will judge us all—the creation of a +human being, of a live thing that we have met with in life before, and +meet for the first time in print, and who abides with us ever after. +Into what shadow has not Diana floated? Where are the magical glimpses +of the soul? Do you remember in "Pères et Enfants," when Tourgueneff is +unveiling the woman's, shall I say, affection, for Bazaroff, or the +interest she feels in him? and exposing at the same time the reasons why +she will never marry him...I wish I had the book by me, I have not seen +it for ten years.</p> + +<p>After striving through many pages to put Lucien, whom you would have +loved, whom I would have loved, that divine representation of all that +is young and desirable in man, before the reader, Balzac puts these +words in his mouth in reply to an impatient question by Vautrin, who +asks him what he wants, what he is sighing for, "<i>D'être célèbre et +d'être aimè</i>,"—these are soul-waking words, these are Shakespearean +words.</p> + +<p>Where in "Diana of the Crossways" do we find soul-evoking words like +these? With tiresome repetition we are told that she is beautiful, +divine; but I see her not at all, I don't know if she is dark, tall, or +fair; with tiresome reiteration we are told that she is brilliant, that +her conversation is like a display of fireworks, that the company is +dazzled and overcome; but when she speaks the utterances are grotesque, +and I say that if anyone spoke to me in real life as she does in the +novel, I should not doubt for an instant that I was in the company of a +lunatic. The epigrams are never good, they never come within measurable +distance of La Rochefoucauld, Balzac, or even Gohcourt. The admirers of +Mr Meredith constantly deplore their existence, admitting that they +destroy all illusion of life. "When we have translated half of Mr +Meredith's utterances into possible human speech, then we can enjoy +him," says the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>. We take our pleasures differently; +mine are spontaneous, and I know nothing about translating the rank +smell of a nettle into the fragrance of a rose, and then enjoying it.</p> + +<p>Mr Meredith's conception of life is crooked, ill-balanced, and out of +tune. What remains?—a certain lustiness. You have seen a big man with +square shoulders and a small head, pushing about in a crowd, he shouts +and works his arms, he seems to be doing a great deal, in reality he is +doing nothing; so Mr Meredith appears to me, and yet I can only think of +him as an artist; his habit is not slatternly, like those of such +literary hodmen as Mr David Christie Murray, Mr Besant, Mr Buchanan. +There is no trace of the crowd about him. I do not question his right of +place, I am out of sympathy with him, that is all; and I regret that it +should be so, for he is one whose love of art is pure and untainted +with commercialism, and if I may praise it for nought else, I can praise +it for this.</p> + +<p>I have noticed that if I buy a book because I am advised, or because I +think I ought, my reading is sure to prove sterile. <i>Il faut que cela +vienne de moi</i>, as a woman once said to me, speaking of her caprices; a +quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected quarter. Mr Hardy and Mr +Blackmore I read because I had heard that they were distinguished +novelists; neither touched me, I might just as well have bought a daily +paper; neither like nor dislike, a shrug of the shoulders—that is all. +Hardy seems to me to bear about the same relation to George Eliot as +Jules Breton does to Millet—a vulgarisation never offensive, and +executed with ability. The story of an art is always the same,...a +succession of abortive but ever strengthening efforts, a moment of +supreme concentration, a succession of efforts weakening the final +extinction. George Eliot gathered up all previous attempts, and created +the English peasant; and following her peasants there came an endless +crowd from Devon, Yorkshire, and the Midland Counties, and, as they +came, they faded into the palest shadows until at last they appeared in +red stockings, high heels and were lost in the chorus of opera. Mr Hardy +was the first step down. His work is what dramatic critics would call +good, honest, straightforward work. It is unillumined by a ray of +genius, it is slow and somewhat sodden. It reminds me of an excellent +family coach—one of the old sort hung on C springs—a fat coachman on +the box and a footman whose livery was made for his predecessor. In +criticising Mr Meredith I was out of sympathy with my author, ill at +ease, angry, puzzled; but with Mr Hardy I am on quite different terms, I +am as familiar with him as with the old pair of trousers I put on when I +sit down to write; I know all about his aims, his methods; I know what +has been done in that line, and what can be done.</p> + +<p>I have heard that Mr Hardy is country bred, but I should not have +discovered this from his writings. They read to me more like a report, +yes, a report—a conscientious, well-done report, executed by a +thoroughly efficient writer sent down by one of the daily papers. +Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and +descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm +people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and +literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for +that it is a little too diluted with Mr Hardy's brains, the edges are a +little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at +work filing; on the other hand, it is not synthesized—the magical word +which reveals the past, and through which we divine the future—is not +seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions +do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, +and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, +or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the +works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested +in such things, because Mr Hardy is anxious to show how jolly country he +is.</p> + +<p>Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, +but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of +moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any +violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense. I +say that a practised writer should be able to do this; that they +sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it +for my purpose if I admit that Mr Hardy can do this. In Farmer Oak there +is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, the execution is +trustworthy; he has legs, arms, and a heart; but the vital spark that +should make him of our flesh and of our soul is wanting, it is dead +water that the sunlight never touches. The heroine is still more dim, +she is stuffy, she is like tow; the rich farmer is a figure out of any +melodrama, Sergeant Troy nearly quickens to life; now and then the +clouds are liquescent, but a real ray of light never falls.</p> + +<p>The story-tellers are no doubt right when they insist on the difficulty +of telling a story. A sequence of events—it does not matter how simple +or how complicated—working up to a logical close, or, shall I say, a +close in which there is a sense of rhythm and inevitableness is always +indicative of genius. Shakespeare affords some magnificent examples, +likewise Balzac, likewise George Eliot, likewise Tourgueneff; the +"Œdipus" is, of course, the crowning and final achievement in the music +of sequence and the massy harmonies of fate. But in contemporary +English fiction I marvel, and I am repeatedly struck by the inability of +writers, even of the first-class, to make an organic whole of their +stories. Here, I say, the course is clear, the way is obvious, but no +sooner do we enter on the last chapters than the story begins to show +incipient shiftiness, and soon it doubles back and turns, growing with +every turn weaker like a hare before the hounds. From a certain +directness of construction, from the simple means by which Oak's ruin is +accomplished in the opening chapters, I did not expect that the story +would run hare-hearted in its close, but the moment Troy told his wife +that he never cared for her, I suspected something was wrong; when he +went down to bathe and was carried out by the current I knew the game +was up, and was prepared for anything, even for the final shooting by +the rich farmer, and the marriage with Oak, a conclusion which of course +does not come within the range of literary criticism.</p> + +<p>"Lorna Doone" struck me as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, +swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to +nothing. Mr Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he +can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the +spirit of life I have already said, but "Lorna Doone" reminds me of a +third-rate Italian opera, <i>La Fille du Régiment</i> or <i>Ernani</i>; it is +corrupt with all the vices of the school, and it does not contain a +single passage of real fervour or force to make us forget the inherent +defects of the art of which it is a poor specimen. Wagner made the +discovery, not a very wonderful one after all when we think, that an +opera had much better be melody from end to end. The realistic school +following on Wagner's footsteps discovered that a novel had much better +be all narrative—an uninterrupted flow of narrative. Description is +narrative, analysis of character is narrative, dialogue is narrative; +the form is ceaselessly changing, but the melody of narration is never +interrupted.</p> + +<p>But the reading of "Lorna Doone" calls to my mind, and very vividly, an +original artistic principle of which English romance writers are either +strangely ignorant or neglectful, viz., that the sublimation of the +<i>dramatis personæ</i> and the deeds in which they are involved must +correspond, and their relationship should remain unimpaired. Turner's +"Carthage" is Nature transposed and wonderfully modified. Some of the +passages of light and shade—those of the balustrade—are fugues, and +there his art is allied to Bach in sonority and beautiful combination. +Turner knew that a branch hung across the sun looked at separately was +black, but he painted it light to maintain the equipoise of atmosphere. +In the novel the characters are the voice, the deeds are the orchestra. +But the English novelist takes 'Any and 'Arriet, and without question +allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to pass them into the +realms of the supernatural. Such violation of the first principles of +narration is never to be met with in the elder writers. Achilles stands +as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and +poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the +original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man +with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be +cognate and equal, and the melodic balance and blending are what first +separate Homer and Hugo from the fabricators of singular adventures. In +Scott leather jerkins, swords, horses, mountains, and castles harmonise +completely and fully with food, fighting, words, and vision of life; the +chords are simple as Handel's but they are as perfect. Lytton's work, +although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the same fashion, sustained by +a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,—an +admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the +homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of +decomposition.</p> + +<p>The spiritual analysis of Balzac equals the triumphant imagination of +Shakespeare; and by different roads they reach the same height of tragic +awe, but when improbability, which in these days does duty for +imagination, is mixed with the familiar aspects of life, the result is +inchoate and rhythmless folly, I mean the regular and inevitable +alternation and combination of pa and ma, and dear Annie who lives at +Clapham, with the Mountains of the Moon, and the secret of eternal life; +this violation of the first principles of art—that is to say, of the +rhythm of feeling and proportion, is not possible in France. I ask the +reader to recall what was said on the subject of the Club, Tavern, and +Villa. We have a surplus population of more than two million women, the +tradition that chastity is woman's only virtue still survives, the +Tavern and its adjunct Bohemianism have been suppressed, and the Villa +is omnipotent and omnipresent; tennis-playing, church on Sundays, and +suburban hops engender a craving for excitement for the far away, for +the unknown: but the Villa with its tennis-playing, church on Sundays, +and suburban hops will not surrender its own existence, it must take a +part in the heroic deeds that happen in the Mountains of the Moon; it +will have heroism in its own pint pot. Achilles and Merlin must be +replaced by Uncle Jim and an undergraduate: and so the Villa is the only +begotten of Rider Haggard, Hugh Conway, Robert Buchanan, and the author +of "The House on the Marsh."</p> + +<p>I read two books by Mr Christie Murray, "Joseph's Coat" and "Rainbow +Gold," and one by Messrs Besant and Rice,—"The Seamy Side." It is +difficult to criticise such work. It is as suited to the needs of the +Villa as the baker's loaves and the butcher's rounds of beef. I do not +think that any such miserable literature is found in any other country. +In France some three or four men produce works of art, the rest of the +fiction of the country is unknown to men of letters. But "Rainbow +Gold"—to take the best of the three—is not bad as a second-rate French +novel is bad; it is excellent as all that is straightforward is +excellent; and it is surprising to find that work can be so good, and at +the same time so devoid of artistic charm. That such a thing should be +is one of the miracles of the Villa.</p> + +<p>I have heard that Mr Besant is an artist in the "Chaplain of the Fleet" +and other novels, but this is not possible. The artist shows what he is +going to do the moment he puts pen to paper, or brush to canvas; he +improves on his first attempts, that is all; and I found "The Seamy +Side" so very common, that I cannot believe for a moment that its author +or authors could write a line that would interest me.</p> + +<p>Mr Robert Buchanan is a type of artist that every age produces +unfailingly: Catulle Mendès is his counterpart in France,—but the +pallid Portuguese Jew with his Christ-like face, and his fascinating +fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began +with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries +about the dignity of art, and both have—well...Mr Robert Buchanan has +collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the +Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said about which +the better—he has attacked men whose shoe-strings he is unworthy to +tie, and having failed to injure them, he retracted all he said, and +launched forth into slimy benedictions. He took Fielding's masterpiece, +degraded it, and debased it; he wrote to the papers that Fielding was a +genius in spite of his coarseness, thereby inferring that he was a much +greater genius since he had sojourned in this Scotch house of literary +ill-fame. Clarville, the author of "Madame Angot," transformed Madame +Marneff into a virtuous woman, but he did not write to the papers to say +that Balzac owed him a debt of gratitude on that account.</p> + +<p>The star of Miss Braddon has finally set in the obscure regions of +servantgalism; Ouida and Rhoda Broughton continue to rewrite the books +they wrote ten years ago; Mrs Lynn Linton I have not read. The "Story of +an African Farm" was pressed upon me. I found it sincere and youthful, +disjointed but well-written; descriptions of sandhills and ostriches +sandwiched with doubts concerning a future state, and convictions +regarding the moral and physical superiority of women: but of art +nothing; that is to say, art as I understand it,—rhythmical sequence of +events described with rhythmical sequence of phrase.</p> + +<p>I read the "Story of Elizabeth" by Miss Thackeray. It came upon me with +all the fresh and fair naturalness of a garden full of lilacs and blue +sky, and I thought of Hardy, Blackmore, Murray, and Besant as of great +warehouses where everything might be had, and even if the article +required were not in stock it could be supplied in a few days at latest. +These are exquisite little descriptions, full of air, colour, lightness, +grace, the French life seen with such sweet English eyes, the sweet +little descriptions all so gently evocative. "What a tranquil little +kitchen it was, with a glimpse of the courtyard outside, and the cocks +and hens, and the poplar trees waving in the sunshine, and the old woman +sitting in her white cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome +pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the +beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked +out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the +tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men +calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was +standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to +have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom +in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come +the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the +profound greyness of Hegelism, but merely the genial love and reverence +of a beautiful-minded woman.</p> + +<p>Such charms as these necessitate certain defects, I should say +limitations. Vital creation of character is not possible to Miss +Thackeray, but I do not rail against beautiful water-colour indications +of balconies, vases, gardens, fields, and harvesters because they have +not the fervid glow and passionate force of Titian's Ariadne; Miss +Thackeray cannot give us a Maggie Tulliver, and all the many profound +modulations of that Beethoven-like countryside: the pine wood and the +cripple; this aunt's linen presses, and that one's economies; the boy +going forth to conquer the world, the girl remaining at home to conquer +herself; the mighty river holding the fate of all, playing and dallying +with it for a while, and bearing it on at last to final and magnificent +extinction. That sense of the inevitable which the Greek dramatists had +in perfection, which George Eliot had sufficiently, that rhythmical +progression of events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and +the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the background of +austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour +brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is +true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; +it cannot be led up to by any chords no matter how ingenious, the +passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true +end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of +the mother.</p> + +<p>One of the few writers of fiction who seems to me to possess an ear for +the music of events is Miss Margaret Veley. Her first novel, "For +Percival," although diffuse, although it occasionally flowed into +by-channels and lingered in stagnating pools, was informed and held +together, even at ends the most twisted and broken, by that sense of +rhythmic progression which is so dear to me, and which was afterwards so +splendidly developed in "Damocles." Pale, painted with grey and opaline +tints of morning passes the grand figure of Rachel Conway, a victim +chosen for her beauty, and crowned with flowers of sacrifice. She has +not forgotten the face of the maniac, and it comes back to her in its +awful lines and lights when she finds herself rich and loved by the man +whom she loves. The catastrophe is a double one. Now she knows she is +accursed, and that her duty is to trample out her love. Unborn +generations cry to her. The wrath and the lamentation of the chorus of +the Greek singer, the intoning voices of the next-of-kin, the pathetic +responses of voices far in the depths of ante-natal night, these the +modern novelist, playing on an inferior instrument, may suggest, but +cannot give: but here the suggestion is so perfect that we cease to +yearn for the real music, as, reading from a score, we are satisfied +with the flute and bassoons that play so faultlessly in soundless dots.</p> + +<p>There is neither hesitation nor doubt. Rachel Conway puts her dreams +away, she will henceforth walk in a sad and shady path; her interests +are centred in the child of the man she loves, and as she looks for a +last time on the cloud of trees, glorious and waving green in the sunset +that encircles her home, her sorrow swells once again to passion, and, +we know, for the last time.</p> + +<p>The mechanical construction of M. Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the +naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the +action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing +about of a <i>dénouement</i>; and I thought of all this as I read +"Disenchantment" by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my +knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for +the <i>mise en place</i>, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so +loose, that much of its strength had dribbled away before it had rightly +begun. But the figure of the Irish politician I accept without reserve. +It seems to me grand and mighty in its sorrowfulness. The tall, +dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations +of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the +girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt's hereditary +sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his +acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that +he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his +country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the +disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once +life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what +remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink. The woman cannot +understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent +desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life's +sky. Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful +knot by suicide.</p> + +<p>I aver that Mr R.L. Stevenson never wrote a line that failed to delight +me; but he never wrote a book. You arrive at a strangely just estimate +of a writer's worth by the mere question: "What is he the author of?" +for every writer whose work is destined to live is the author of one +book that outshines the other, and, in popular imagination, epitomises +his talent and position. Ask the same question about Milton, Fielding, +Byron, Carlyle, Thackeray, Zola, Mr Swinburne.</p> + +<p>I think of Mr Stevenson as a consumptive youth weaving garlands of sad +flowers with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, +and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil. His +periods are fresh and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect +realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never +before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every +page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr Stevenson's style +is over-smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in +the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most +gentlemanly young man that ever walked in the Burlington. Mr Stevenson +is competent to understand any thought that might be presented to him, +but if he were to use it, it would instantly become neat, sharp, +ornamental, light, and graceful, and it would lose all its original +richness and harmony. It is not Mr Stevenson's brain that prevents him +from being a thinker, but his style.</p> + +<p>Another thing that strikes me in thinking of Stevenson (I pass over his +direct indebtedness to Edgar Poe, and his constant appropriation of his +methods), is the unsuitableness of the special characteristics of his +talent to the age he lives in. He wastes in his limitations, and his +talent is vented in prettiness of style. In speaking of Mr Henry James, +I said that, although he had conceded much to the foolish, false, and +hypocritical taste of the time, the concessions he made had in little +or nothing impaired his talent. The very opposite seems to me the case +with Mr Stevenson. For if any man living in this end of the century +needed freedom of expression for the distinct development of his genius, +that man is R.L. Stevenson. He who runs may read, and he with any +knowledge of literature will, before I have written the words, have +imagined Mr Stevenson writing in the age of Elizabeth or Anne.</p> + +<p>Turn your platitudes prettily, but write no word that could offend the +chaste mind of the young girl who has spent her morning reading the +Colin Campbell divorce case; so says the age we live in. The penny paper +that may be bought everywhere, that is allowed to lie on every table, +prints seven or eight columns of filth, for no reason except that the +public likes to read filth; the poet and novelist must emasculate and +destroy their work because.... Who shall come forward and make answer? +Oh, vile, filthy, and hypocritical century, I at least scorn you.</p> + +<p>But this is not a course of literature but the story of the artistic +development of me, George Moore; so I will tarry no longer with mere +criticism, but go direct to the book to which I owe the last temple in +my soul—"Marius the Epicurean." Well I remember when I read the +opening lines, and how they came upon me sweetly as the flowing breath +of a bright spring. I knew that I was awakened a fourth time, that a +fourth vision of life was to be given to me. Shelley had revealed to me +the unimagined skies where the spirit sings of light and grace; Gautier +had shown me how extravagantly beautiful is the visible world and how +divine is the rage of the flesh; and with Balzac I had descended circle +by circle into the nether world of the soul, and watched its +afflictions. Then there were minor awakenings. Zola had enchanted me +with decoration and inebriated me with theory; Flaubert had astonished +with the wonderful delicacy and subtlety of his workmanship; Goncourt's +brilliant adjectival effects had captivated me for a time, but all these +impulses were crumbling into dust, these aspirations were etiolated, +sickly as faces grown old in gaslight.</p> + +<p>I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of +natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the +country, the birds flying,—that one making for the sea; the abandoned +boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the +beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the +wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of +temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my +brain, fresh and fair, full of wide temples and studious hours, and the +lurking fragrance of incense; that such a vision of life was possible I +had no suspicion, and it came upon me almost with the same strength, +almost as intensely, as that divine song of the flesh,—Mademoiselle de +Maupin.</p> + +<p>Certainly, in my mind, these books will be always intimately associated; +and when a few adventitious points of difference be forgotten, it is +interesting to note how firm is the alliance, and how cognate and +co-equal the sympathies on which it is based; the same glad worship of +the visible world, and the same incurable belief that the beauty of +material things is sufficient for all the needs of life. Mr Pater can +join hands with Gautier in saying—<i>je trouve la terre aussi belle que +le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu</i>. And I +too join issue; I too love the great pagan world, its bloodshed, its +slaves, its injustice, its loathing of all that is feeble.</p> + +<p>But "Marius the Epicurean" was more to me than a mere emotional +influence, precious and rare though that may be, for this book was the +first in English prose I had come across that procured for me any +genuine pleasure in the language itself, in the combination of words for +silver or gold chime, and unconventional cadence, and for all those +lurking half-meanings, and that evanescent suggestion, like the odour of +dead roses, that words retain to the last of other times and elder +usage. Until I read "Marius" the English language (English prose) was to +me what French must be to the majority of English readers. I read for +the sense and that was all; the language itself seemed to me coarse and +plain, and awoke in me neither æsthetic emotion nor even interest. +"Marius" was the stepping-stone that carried me across the channel into +the genius of my own tongue. The translation was not too abrupt; I found +a constant and careful invocation of meaning that was a little aside of +the common comprehension, and also a sweet depravity of ear for +unexpected falls of phrase, and of eye for the less observed depths of +colours, which although new was a sort of sequel to the education I had +chosen, and a continuance of it in a foreign, but not wholly unfamiliar +medium, and so, having saturated myself with Pater, the passage to De +Quincey was easy. He, too, was a Latin in manner and in temper of mind; +but he was truly English, and through him I passed to the study of the +Elizabethan dramatists, the real literature of my race, and washed +myself clean.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XIII"></a><h2>XIII</h2> + +<p>THOUGHTS IN A STRAND LODGING</p> +<br> + +<p>Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away—stowed the last +child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows +of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has +ceased to tempt me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the +inducements that occur to her landlady's mind; the actress from the +Savoy has ceased to walk up and down the street with the young man who +accompanies her home from the theatre; she has ceased to linger on the +doorstep talking to him, her key has grated in the lock, she has come +upstairs, we have had our usual midnight conversation on the landing, +she has told me her latest hopes of obtaining a part, she has told me +of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bidden each other +good-night; she has gone up the creaky staircase, and I have returned to +my room, littered with MS. and queer publications!...the night is hot +and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river, and listless and +lonely I open a book, the first book that comes to hand. It is <i>Le +Journal des Goncourts,</i> p. 358, the end of a chapter:—</p> + +<p>"<i>It is really curious that it should be the four men the most free from +all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the +most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public +prosecutor: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and ourselves</i>."</p> + +<p>Goncourt's statement is suggestive, and I leave it uncommented on; but I +would put by its side another naked simple truth. That if in England the +public prosecutor does not seek to over-ride literature the means of +tyranny are not wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the +nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations +entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved +literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, +were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. +Byron and Shelley, and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its +own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw +his book from the reach of a public that was rooting then amid the +garbage of the Yelverton divorce case. I think of these facts and think +of Baudelaire's prose poem, that poem in which he tells how a dog will +run away howling if you hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you +offer him some putrid morsel picked out of some gutter hole, he will +sniff round it joyfully, and will seek to lick your hand for gratitude. +Baudelaire compared that dog to the public.</p> + +<p>When I read Balzac's stories of Vautrin and Lucien de Rubempré, I often +think of Hadrian and the Antinous. I wonder if Balzac thought of +transposing the Roman Emperor and his favourite into modern life. It is +the kind of thing that Balzac would think of. No critic has ever noticed +this.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, at night, when all is still, and I look out on that desolate +river, I think I shall go mad with grief, with wild regret for my +beautiful <i>appartement</i> in <i>Rue de la Tour des Dames</i>. How different +the present from the past! I hate with my whole soul this London +lodging, and all that concerns it—Emma, and eggs and bacon, the +lascivious landlady and her lascivious daughter; I am weary of the +sentimental actress who lives upstairs, I swear I will never go out to +talk to her on the landing again. Then there is failure—I can do +nothing, nothing; my novel I know is worthless; my life is a leaf, it +will flutter out of sight. I am weary of everything, and wish I were +back in Paris. I am weary of reading, there is nothing to read, Flaubert +bores me. What nonsense has been talked about him! Impersonal! He is the +most personal writer. But his odious pessimism! How weary I am of it, it +never ceases, it is lugged in <i>à tout propos</i>, and the little lyrical +phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. +Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that +beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until +you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable...a new idea, what +can be more insipid—fit for members of parliament. Shall I go to bed? +No. I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarmé's to +read—Mallarmé for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of Mallarmé in +"A Rebours." In hours like these a page of Huysmans is as a dose of +opium, a glass of something exquisite and spirituous.</p> + +<p>"The decadence of a literature irreparably attacked in its organism, +weakened by the age of ideas, overworn by the excess of syntax, sensible +only of the curiosity which fevers sick people, but nevertheless +hastening to explain everything in its decline, desirous of repairing +all the omissions of its youth, to bequeath all the most subtle +souvenirs of its suffering on its deathbed, is incarnate in Mallarmé in +most consummate and absolute fashion....</p> + +<p>"The poem in prose is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled +by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the +entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous +description of which it suppresses...the adjective placed in such an +ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of +its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream +for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, +affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the +souls of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet. The +novel thus understood, thus condensed into one or two pages, would be a +communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a +spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons +scattered through the universe, a delectation offered to the most +refined, and accessible only to them."</p> + +<p>Huysmans goes to my soul like a gold ornament of Byzantine workmanship: +there is in his style the yearning charm of arches, a sense of ritual, +the passion of the Gothic, of the window. Ah! in this hour of weariness +for one of Mallarmé's prose poems! Stay, I remember I have some numbers +of <i>La Vogue</i>, One of the numbers contains, I know, "Forgotten Pages;" I +will translate word for word, preserving the very rhythm, one or two of +these miniature marvels of diction:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"><p><br> + +<p> I</p> + +<p> FORGOTTEN PAGES.</p> +<br> + +<p> "Since Maria left me to go to another star—which? Orion, Altair, or + thou, green Venus?—I have always cherished solitude. What long days + I have passed alone with my cat. By alone, I mean without a material + being, and my cat is a mystical companion—a spirit. I can, + therefore, say that I have passed whole days alone with my cat, and + alone with one of the last authors of the Latin decadence; for since + that white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I have loved + all that the word <i>fall</i> expresses. In such wise that my favourite + season of the year is the last weary days of summer, which + immediately precede autumn, and the hour I choose to walk in is when + the sun rests before disappearing, with rays of yellow copper on the + grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the + literature that my soul demands—a sad voluptuousness—is the dying + poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all + the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer + the infantile Latin of the first Christian poetry.</p> + +<p> "I was reading, therefore, one of those dear poems (whose paint has + more charm for me than the blush of youth), had plunged one hand into + the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel-organ sang languidly and + melancholy beneath my window. It played in the great alley of + poplars, whose leaves appear to me yellow, even in the spring-tide, + since Maria passed there with the tall candles for the last time. The + instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the + violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the + twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly. Now it murmurs + an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, + an air old-fashioned and commonplace. Why do its flourishes go to my + soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad? I listen, imbibing it + slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of + moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing + itself.</p> +<br> + +<p> II</p> +<br> + +<p> "The old Saxony clock, which is slow, and which strikes thirteen amid + its flowers and gods, to whom did it belong? Thinkest that it came + from Saxony by the mail coaches of old time?</p> + +<p> "(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.)</p> + +<p> "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of + gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one + woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked + long enough, I should see a naked phantom.</p> + +<p> "Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things.</p> + +<p> "(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.)</p> + +<p> "Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! + the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs + stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. + Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured + by time?</p> + +<p> "(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty + windows.)</p> + +<p> "Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my + poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are + full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects + displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, + and thou feelest as if thou shouldst use them—a difficult thing + indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action.</p> + +<p> "Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with + attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the + Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, + my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm + child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the + streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture.</p> + +<p> "Thou art abstracted?</p> + +<p> "(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)"</p></div> + +<p>We, the "ten superior persons scattered through the universe" think +these prose poems the concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the +essential oil of art, others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be +the aberrations of a refined mind, distorted with hatred of the +commonplace; the pit will immediately declare them to be nonsense, and +will return with satisfaction to the last leading article in the daily +paper.</p> + +<p><i>J'ai fait mes adieux à ma mère et je viens pour vous faire les miens</i> +and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year in +France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not +been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet +sought literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in +England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious +than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading +journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult +to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and +place it for its greater glory in my less remarkable prose:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"><p>"<i>As we gazed on the beauties thus revealed by Good, a spirit of + emulation filled our breasts, and we set to work to get ourselves up + as well as we could</i>."</p></div> + +<p>A return to romance! a return to the animal, say I.</p> + +<p>One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense +desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they +have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal +effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they +have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in +their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very +osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration. What Hugo +did for French verse, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans have done +for French prose. No more literary school than the realists has ever +existed, and I do not except even the Elizabethans. And for this reason +our failures are more interesting than the vulgar successes of our +opponents; for when we fall into the sterile and distorted, it is +through our noble and incurable hatred of the commonplace of all that is +popular.</p> + +<p>The healthy school is played out in England; all that could be said has +been said; the successors of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot have +no ideal, and consequently no language; what can be more pudding than +the language of Mr Hardy, and he is typical of a dozen other writers, Mr +Besant, Mr Murray, Mr Crawford? The reason of this heaviness of thought +and expression is that the avenues are closed, no new subject matter is +introduced, the language of English fiction has therefore run stagnant. +But if the realists should catch favour in England the English tongue +may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would +introduce new forms of language would arise.</p> + +<p>"Carmen Sylva!" How easy it is to divine the æstheticism of any one +signing, "Carmen Sylva."</p> + +<p>In youth the genius of Shelly astonished me; but now I find the +stupidity of the ordinary person infinitely more surprising.</p> + +<p>That I may die childless—that when my hour comes I may turn my face to +the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human +life—then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins +shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, +though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held +accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for +ever.</p> + +<p>I realize that this is truth, the one truth, and the whole truth; and +yet the vainest woman that ever looked in a glass never regretted her +youth more than I, or felt the disgrace of middle-age more keenly. She +has her portrait painted, I write these confessions; each hopes to save +something of the past, and escape somehow the ravening waves of time and +float into some haven of remembrance. St Augustine's Confessions are the +story of a God-tortured, mine of an art-tortured, soul. Which subject is +the most living? The first! for man is stupid and still loves his +conscience as a child loves a toy. Now the world plays with "Robert +Elsmere." This book seems to me like a suite of spacious, well +distributed, and well proportioned rooms. Looking round, I say, 'tis a +pity these rooms are only in plaster of Paris.</p> + +<p>"Les Palais Nomades" is a really beautiful book, and it is free from all +the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of great poetry +an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and +parasites of artistic work—ideas. Of all literary qualities the +creation of ideas is the most fugitive. Think of the fate of an author +who puts forward a new idea to-morrow in a book, in a play, in a poem. +The new idea is seized upon, it becomes common property, it is dragged +through newspaper articles, magazine articles, through books, it is +repeated in clubs, drawing-rooms; it is bandied about the corners of +streets; in a week it is wearisome, in a month it is an abomination. Who +has not felt a sickening feeling come over him when he hears such +phrases as "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Shakespeare was +really great when he wrote "Music to hear, why hearest thou music +sadly?" not when he wrote, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." Could he +be freed from his ideas what a poet we should have! Therefore, let those +who have taken firsts at Oxford devote their intolerable leisure to +preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be +excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and +resume our reading of the bard, and the witless foists would confer +happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See +the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are +burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out of +existence.</p> + +<p>Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided +everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea; +and for this I am grateful. Nor is his volume a collection of +miscellaneous verses bound together. He has chosen a certain sequence of +emotions; the circumstances out of which these emotions have sprung are +given in a short prose note. "Les Palais Nomades" is therefore a novel +in essence; description and analysis are eliminated, and only the +moments when life grows lyrical with suffering are recorded; recorded in +many varying metres conforming only to the play of the emotion, for, +unlike many who, having once discovered a tune, apply it promiscuously +to every subject they treat, Kahn adapts his melody to the emotion he is +expressing, with the same propriety and grace as Nature distributes +perfume to her flowers. For an example of magical transition of tone I +turn to <i>Intermède</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Chère apparence, viens aux couchants illuminés.</p> +<p class="i2">Veux-tu mieux des matins albes et calmes?</p> +<p>Les soirs et les matins ont des calmes rosâtres</p> +<p>Les eaux ont des manteaux de cristal irisé</p> +<p class="i2">Et des rhythmes de calmes palmes</p> +<p>Et l'air évoque de calmes musiques de pâtres.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Viens sous des tendelets aux fleuves souriants</p> +<p class="i2">Aux lilas pâlis des nuits d'Orient</p> +<p>Aux glauques étendues à falbalas d'argent</p> +<p class="i2">A l'oasis des baisers urgents</p> +<p>Seulement vit le voile aux seuls Orients.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Quel que soit le spectacle et quelle que soit la rame</p> +<p>Et quelle que soit la voix qui s'affame et brame,</p> +<p>L'oubli du lointain des jours chatouille et serre,</p> +<p>Le lotos de l'oubli s'est fané dans mes serres,</p> +<p class="i4">Cependant tu m'aimais à jamais?</p> +<p class="i8">Adieu pour jamais."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The repetitions of Edgar Poe seem hard and mechanical after this, so +exquisite and evanescent is the rhythm, and the intonations come as +sweetly and suddenly as a gust of perfume; it is as the vibration of a +fairy orchestra, flute and violin disappearing in a silver mist; but the +clouds break, and all the enchantment of a spring garden appears in a +shaft of sudden sunlight.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"L'éphemère idole, au frisson du printemps,</p> +<p class="i2">Sentant des renouveaux éclorent,</p> +<p>Se guèpa de satins si lointains et d'antan:</p> +<p class="i2">Rose exilé des flores!</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas;</p> +<p class="i2">Aux murs, les roses tremières;</p> +<p>La terre étala, pour fêter les las,</p> +<p class="i2">Des divans vert lumière;</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Des rires ailés peuplèrent le jardin;</p> +<p class="i2">Souriants des caresses brèves,</p> +<p>Des oiseaux joyeaux, jaunes, incarnadins</p> +<p class="i2">Vibrèrent aux ciels de rêve."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But to the devil with literature! Who cares if Gustave Kahn writes well +or badly? I met a chappie yesterday whose views of life coincide with +mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful of champagne +inside you, go to bed when it is light, and get up when you are rested."</p> + +<p>Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is the +young man. The eighteenth century is only woman—see the tapestries, the +delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear +in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, +with the hunters looking round; no servile archæology chills the fancy; +and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of +the eighteenth century. See the Fragonards—the ladies in high-peaked +bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up +they go; you can hear their light false voices amid the summer of the +leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as roses. Masks and arrows are +everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the +Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive +gestures and reluctance—false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and +exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the +Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the +soul of the century—ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not +then sentimental, it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and +the polished floor, and the tapestries with whose delicate tints and +decorations the high hair blends, the foot-stool and the heel and the +calf of the leg that is withdrawn, showing in the shadows of the lace; +see the satin of the bodices, the fan outspread, the wigs so adorably +false, the knee-breeches, the buckles on the shoes, how false; adorable +little comedy, adorably mendacious; and how winsome it is to feast on +these sweet lies, it is indeed delight to us, wearied with the bland +sincerity of newspapers. In the eighteenth century it was the man who +knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who +acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he +who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream +of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth +century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and +profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic +spirit of our age.</p> + +<p>The position of a young man in the nineteenth century is the most +enviable that has ever fallen to the lot of any human creature. He is +the rare bird, and is fêted, flattered, adored. The sweetest words are +addressed to him, the most loving looks are poured upon him. The young +man can do no wrong. Every house is open to him, and the best of +everything is laid before him; girls dispute the right to serve him; +they come to him with cake and wine, they sit circlewise and listen to +him, and when one is fortunate to get him alone she will hang upon his +neck, she will propose to him, and will take his refusal kindly and +without resentment. They will not let him stoop to tie up his shoe lace, +but will rush and simultaneously claim the right to attend on him. To +represent in a novel a girl proposing marriage to a man would be deemed +unnatural, but nothing is more common; there are few young men who have +not received at least a dozen offers, nay, more; it is characteristic, +it has become instinctive for girls to choose, and they prefer men not +to make love to them; and every young man who knows his business avoids +making advances, knowing well that it will only put the girl off.</p> + +<p>In a society so constituted, what a delightful opening there is for a +young man. He would have to waltz perfectly, play tennis fairly, the +latest novel would suffice for literary attainments; billiards, +shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be +considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by +the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action +of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and +must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must +succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, +love draws all things. Our young man would have to be five feet eleven, +or six feet, broad shoulders, light brown hair, deep eyes, soft and +suggestive, broad shoulders, a thin neck, long delicate hands, a high +instep. His nose should be straight, his face oval and small, he must be +clean about the hips, and his movements must be naturally caressing. He +comes into the ball-room, his shoulders well back, he stretches his hand +to the hostess, he looks at her earnestly (it is characteristic of him +to think of the hostess first, he is in her house, the house is +well-furnished, and is suggestive of excellent meats and wines). He can +read through the slim woman whose black hair, a-glitter with diamonds, +contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances +with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad +sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who +is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a +little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a +child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little +blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is +Lady ——." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly," Lovelace has made up +his mind. Then there is a young oldish girl, richly dressed; "I hear her +people have a nice house in a hunting country, I will dance with her, +and take the mother into supper, and, if I can get a moment, will have a +pleasant talk with the father in the evening."</p> + +<p>In manner Lovelace is facile and easy; he never says no, it is always +yes, ask him what you will; but he only does what he has made up his +mind it is his advantage to do. Apparently he is an embodiment of all +that is unselfish, for he knows that after he has helped himself, it is +advisable to help some one else, and thereby make a friend who, on a +future occasion, will be useful to him. Put a violinist into a room +filled with violins, and he will try every one. Lovelace will put each +woman aside so quietly that she is often only half aware that she has +been put aside. Her life is broken; she is content that it should be +broken. The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting +out of love.</p> + +<p>I have noticed that there are times when every second woman likes you. +Is love, then, a magnetism which we sometimes possess and exercise +unconsciously, and sometimes do not possess?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XIV"></a><h2>XIV</h2> +<br> + +<p>Now I am full of eager impulses that mourn and howl by turns, striving +for utterance like wind in turret chambers. I hate this infernal +lodging. I feel like a fowl in a coop;—that landlady, those children, +Emma.... The actress will be coming upstairs presently; shall I ask her +into my room? Better let things remain as they are.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Why intrude a new vexation on her already vexed life?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Hallo, you startled me! Well, I am surprised. We have not talked +together for a long time. Since when?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I will spare your feelings. I merely thought I would remind you that you +have passed the rubicon—your thirtieth year.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>It is terrible to think of. My youth gone!</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Then you are ashamed—you repent?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I am ashamed of nothing—I am a writer; 'tis my profession not to be +ashamed.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I had forgotten. So you are lost to shame?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Completely. I will chat with you when you please; even now, at this +hour, about all things—about any of my sins.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Since we lost sight of each other you have devoted your time to the +gratification of your senses.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Pardon me, I have devoted quite as much of my time to art.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You were glad, I remember, when your father died, because his death gave +you unlimited facilities for moulding the partial self which the +restraining influence of home had only permitted, into that complete +and ideal George Moore which you had in mind. I think I quote you +correctly.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You don't; but never mind. Proceed.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Then, if you have no objection, we will examine how far you have turned +your opportunities to account.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You will not deny that I have educated myself and made many friends.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Friends! your nature is very adaptable—you interest yourself in their +pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your +education—speak not of it; it is but flimsy stuff.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>There I join issue with you. Have I not drawn the intense ego out of the +clouds of semi-consciousness, and realised it? And surely, the rescue +and the individualisation of the ego is the first step.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>,</p> + +<p>To what end? You have nothing to teach, nothing to reveal. I have often +thought of asking you this: since death is the only good, why do you not +embrace death? Of all the world's goods it is the cheapest, and the most +easily obtained.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>We must live since nature has willed it so. My poor conscience, are you +still struggling in the fallacy of free will?</p> + +<p>For at least a hundred thousand years man has rendered this planet +abominable and ridiculous with what he is pleased to call his +intelligence, without, however, having learned that his life is merely +the breaking of the peace of unconsciousness, the drowsy uplifting of +tired eyelids of somnolent nature. How glibly this loquacious ape +chatters of his religion and his moral sense, always failing to see that +both are but allurements and inveiglements! With religion he is induced +to bear his misery, and his sexual appetite is preserved, ignorant, and +vigorous, by means of morals. A scorpion, surrounded by a ring of fire, +will sting itself to death, and man would turn upon life and deny it, +if his reason were complete. Religion and morals are the poker and tongs +with which nature intervenes and scatters the ring of reason.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i> (after a long pause).</p> + +<p>I believe—forgive my ignorance, but I have seen so little of you this +long while—that your boast is that no woman influenced, changed, or +modified your views of life.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>None; my mind is a blank on the subject. Stay! my mother said once, when +I was a boy, "You must not believe them; all their smiles and pretty +ways are only put on. Women like men only for what they can get out of +them." And to these simple words I attribute all the suspicion of +woman's truth which hung over my youth. For years it seemed to me +impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful +and desirable—men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without +revulsion of feeling, could they really desire us? I was absorbed in the +life of woman—the mystery of petticoats, so different from the +staidness of trousers! the rolls of hair entwined with so much art, and +suggesting so much colour and perfume, so different from the bare crop; +the unnaturalness of the waist in stays! plenitude and slenderness of +silk, so different from the stupidity of a black tail-coat; rose feet +passing under the triple ruches of rose, so different from the broad +foot of the male. My love for the life of women was a life within my +life; and oh, how strangely secluded and veiled! A world of calm colour +with phantoms moving, floating past and changing in dim light—an +averted face with abundant hair, the gleam of a perfect bust or the +poise of a neck turning slowly round, the gaze of deep translucid eyes. +I loved women too much to give myself wholly to one.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Yes, yes; but what real success have you had with women?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Damn it! you would not seek to draw me into long-winded stories about +women—how it began, how it was broken off, how it began again? I'm not +Casenova. I love women as I love champagne—I drink it and enjoy it; +but an exact account of every bottle drunk would prove flat narrative.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You have never consulted me about your champagne loves: but you have +asked me if you have ever inspired a real affection, and I told you that +we cannot inspire in others what does not exist in ourselves. You have +never known a nice woman who would have married you?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Why should I undertake to keep a woman by me for the entire space of her +life, watching her grow fat, grey, wrinkled, and foolish? Think of the +annoyance of perpetually looking after any one, especially a woman! +Besides, marriage is antagonistic to my ideal. You say that no ideal +illumines the pessimist's life, that if you ask him why he exists, he +cannot answer, and that Schopenhauer's arguments against suicide are not +even plausible causistry. True, on this point his reasoning is feeble +and ineffective. But we may easily confute our sensual opponents. We +must say that we do not commit suicide, although we admit it is a +certain anodyne to the poison of life,—an absolute erasure of the wrong +inflicted on us by our parents,—because we hope by noble example and +precept to induce others to refrain from love. We are the saviours of +souls. Other crimes are finite; love alone is infinite. We punish a man +with death for killing his fellow; but a little reflection should make +the dullest understand that the crime of bringing a being into the world +exceeds by a thousand, a millionfold that of putting one out of it.</p> + +<p>Men are to-day as thick as flies in a confectioner's shop; in fifty +years there will be less to eat, but certainly some millions more +mouths. I laugh, I rub my hands! I shall be dead before the red time +comes. I laugh at the religionists who say that God provides for those +He brings into the world. The French Revolution will compare with the +revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a +puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears +on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an +electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago. +Christ, who with his white feet trod out the blood of the ancient world, +and promised Universal Peace, shall go out in a cataclysm of blood. The +neck of mankind shall be opened, and blood shall cover the face of the +earth.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Your philosophy is on a par with your painting and your poetry; but, +then, I am a conscience, and a conscience is never philosophic—you go +in for "The Philosophy of the Unconscious"?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>No, no, 'tis but a silly vulgarisation. But Schopenhauer, oh, my +Schopenhauer! Say, shall I go about preaching hatred of women? Were I to +call them a short-legged race that was admitted into society only a +hundred and fifty years ago?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You cannot speak the truth even to me; no, not even at half-past twelve +at night.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Surely of all hours this is the one in which it is advisable to play you +false?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience.</i></p> + +<p>You are getting humorous.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I am getting sleepy. You are a tiresome old thing, a relic of the +ancient world—I mean the mediæval world. You know that I now affect +antiquity?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You wander helplessly in the road of life until you stumble against a +battery; nerved with the shock you are frantic, and rush along wildly +until the current received is exhausted, and you lapse into +disorganisation.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>If I am sensitive to and absorb the various potentialities of my age, am +I not of necessity a power?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>To be the receptacle of and the medium through which unexplained forces +work, is a very petty office to fulfil. Can you think of nothing higher? +Can you feel nothing original in you, a something that is cognisant of +the end?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You are surely not going to drop into talking to me of God?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You will not deny that I at least exist? I am with you now, and +intensely, far more than the dear friend with whom you love to walk in +the quiet evening; the women you have held to your bosom in the perfumed +darkness of the chamber—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Pray don't. "The perfumed darkness of the chamber" is very common. I was +suckled on that kind of literature.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You are rotten to the root. Nothing but a very severe attack of +indigestion would bring you to your senses—or a long lingering illness.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>'Pon my faith, you are growing melodramatic. Neither indigestion nor +illness long drawn out can change me. I have torn you all to pieces +long ago, and you have not now sufficient rags on your back to scare +the rooks in seed-time.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>In destroying me you have destroyed yourself.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Edgar Poe, pure and simple. Don't pick holes in my originality until you +have mended those in your own.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I was Poe's inspiration; he is eternal, being of me. But your +inspiration springs from the flesh, and is therefore ephemeral even as +the flesh.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>If you had read Schopenhauer you would know that the flesh is not +ephemeral, but the eternal objectification of the will to live. Siva is +represented, not only with the necklace of skulls, but with the lingam.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You have failed in all you have attempted, and the figure you have +raised on your father's tomb is merely a sensitive and sensuous +art-cultured being who lives in a dirty lodging and plays in desperate +desperation his last card. You are now writing a novel. The hero is a +wretched creature, something like yourself. Do you think there is a +public in England for that kind of thing?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Just the great Philistine that you always were! What do you mean by a +"public"?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I have not a word to say on that account, your one virtue is sobriety.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>A wretched pun.... The mass of mankind run much after the fashion of the +sheep of Panurge, but there are always a few that—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>A few that are like the Gadarene swine.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Ah,...were I the precipice, were I the sea in which the pigs might +drown!</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>The same old desire of admiration, admiration in its original sense of +wonderment (miratio); you are a true child of the century; you do not +desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that +sense which you only care to stimulate—wonderment. And persecuted by +the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most +hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is +no better than a pimp.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Then he is not like me; I have never been a pimp, and I don't think I +would be if I could.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>The whole of your moral nature is reflected in Lewis Seymore, even to +the "And I don't think I would be if I could."</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I love the abnormal, and there is certainly something strangely +grotesque in the life of a pimp. But it is nonsense to suggest that +Lewis Seymore is myself;...you know that my original notion was to do +the side of Lucien de Rubrempré that—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>That Balzac had the genius to leave out.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Really, if you can only make disagreeable remarks, I think we had better +bring this conversation to a close.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>One word more. You have failed in everything you have attempted, and you +will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles—those +rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring +instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those +who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched +scribbler such as you are, has escaped her vengeance.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You would have me pull down the black flag and turn myself into an +honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. +You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls +into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the +bright buccaneer drifts, an old derelict, tossed by the waves of ill +fortune, and buffeted by the winds into those dismal bays and dangerous +offings—housekeepers, nurses, and uncomfortable chambers. Such will be +my fate; and since none may avert his fate, none can do better than to +run pluckily the course which he must pursue.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You might devise a moral ending; one that would conciliate all classes.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>It is easy to see that you are a nineteenth-century conscience.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I do not hope to find a Saint Augustine in you.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>An idea; one of these days I will write my confessions! Again I tell you +that nothing really matters to me but art. And, knowing this, you +chatter of the unwisdom of my not concluding my novel with some foolish +moral.... Nothing matters to me but art.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Would you seduce the wretched servant girl if by so doing you could +pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XV"></a><h2>XV</h2> +<br> + +<p>And now, hypocritical reader, I will answer the questions which have +been agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage +of this long narrative of a sinful life.<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> Shake not your head, lift +not your finger, exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in +nothing. I know the base and unworthy soul. This is a magical +<i>tête-à-tête</i>, such a one as will never happen in your life again; +therefore I say let us put off all customary disguise, let us be frank: +you have been angrily asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you +have been <i>forced</i> to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite +hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it +serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to +show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to +higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the +magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured +something about leaving the world a little better than you found it, and +you went down to dinner and lost consciousness of the world<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> in the +animal enjoyment of your stomach. I hold out my hand to you, I embrace +you, you are my brother, and I say, undeceive yourself, you will leave +the world no better than you found it. The pig that is being slaughtered +as I write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but +you will leave only a putrid carcase fit for nothing but worms. Look +back upon your life, examine it, probe it, weigh it, philosophise on it, +and then say, if you dare, that it has not been a very futile and +foolish affair. Soldier, robber, priest, Atheist, courtesan, virgin, I +care not what you are, if you have not brought children into the world +to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has been. I +hold out my hand to you, we are brothers; but in my heart of hearts I +think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the +world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, +think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the +world better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of +life is to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our +neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is +affording you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my +friend, my brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not +so bad after all. Now to resume.</p> + +<p>The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my +youth will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so +now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on +the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; +and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the +rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided +me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she +ever turned out of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the +most perfect equipoise possible to conceive, and up and down they went +and still go with measured movement, absorbing and assimilating all that +is poured into them without friction or stoppage. This book is a record +of my mental digestions; but it would take another series of confessions +to tell of the dinners I have eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the +suppers! seven dozen of oysters, pâté-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, +salad, and then a walk home in the early morning, a few philosophical +reflections suggested by the appearance of a belated street-sweeper, +then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep.</p> + +<p>I have had the rarest, the finest friends. I have loved my friends; the +rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions; everything +conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do you think +this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you are a +fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle +selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of +life's pie than the seven deadly virtues.<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> If you are a good man you +want a bad one to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to +go out on the spree with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place +your hand upon your heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical +<i>tête-à-tête</i> which will happen never again in your life, admit that you +feel just a little interested in my wickedness,<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> admit that if you +ever thought you would like to know me that it is because I know a good +deal that you probably don't; admit that your mouth waters when you +think of rich and various pleasures that fell to my share in happy +Paris; admit that if this book had been an account of the pious books I +had read, the churches I had been to, and the good works I had done, +that you would not have bought it or borrowed it. Hypocritical reader, +think, had you had courage, health and money to lead a fast life, would +you not have done so? You don't know, no more do I; I have done so, and +I regret nothing except that some infernal farmers and miners will not +pay me what they owe me and enable me to continue the life that was once +mine, and of which I was so bright an ornament. How I hate this +atrocious Strand lodging-house, how I long for my apartment in <i>Rue de +la Tour des Dames</i>, with all its charming adjuncts, palms and pastels, +my cat, my python, my friends, blond hair and dark.</p> + +<p>The daily article soon grows monotonous, even when you know it will be +printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas +were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor +was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very +easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on +different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a +dozen. Some were printed in weekly newspapers, some were returned to me.</p> + +<p>There was a publisher in the neighbourhood of the Strand, who used to +frequent a certain bar, and this worthy man conducted his business as he +dressed himself, sloppily; a dear kind soul, quite witless and quite +<i>h</i>-less. From long habit he would make a feeble attempt to drive a +bargain, but he was duped generally. If a fashionable author asked two +hundred pounds for a book out of which he would be certain to make +three, it was ten to one that he would allow the chance to drift away +from him; but after having refused a dozen times the work of a Strand +loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would say, "Send it +in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it." There was a +long counter, and the way to be published by Mr B. was to straddle on +the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman behind this +counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read the MS., +looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts and entertained +the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs Macmillan and Messrs Longman with +polite requests to look at my MS., I straddled, played with the cat, +joked with the Irishman, drank with Mr. B., and in the natural order of +things my stories went into the magazine and were paid for. Strange were +the ways of this office; Shakespeare might have sent in prose and +poetry, but he would have gone into the wastepaper basket had he not +previously straddled. For those who were in the "know" this was a matter +of congratulation; straddling, we would cry, "We want no blooming +outsiders coming along interfering with our magazine. And you, Smith, +you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last month and cut me out. +O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of poems as well as +my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try to manage it; +here's the governor." And looking exactly like the unfortunate Mr +Sedley, Mr B. used to slouch in; he would fall into his leather +armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques—the last time I saw +that chair it was standing in the street in the hands of the brokers.</p> + +<p>But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all +means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had +not passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip +through our defences. One hot summer's day, we were all on the counter, +our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered. He must have been +six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr B.'s room, he asked him +to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened. "Wastepaper basket, +wastepaper basket," we shouted. "What an odd-looking fish he is—like a +pike!" said O'Flanagan; "I wonder what his MS. is like." "Very like a +pike," we cried. But O'Flanagan took the MS. home to read, and returned +next morning convinced he had discovered an embryo Dickens. The young +man was asked to call, his book was accepted, and we adjourned to the +bar.</p> + +<p>This young man took rooms in the house next to me on the ground floor. +He had been to Oxford, and to Heidelberg, he drank beer and smoked long +pipes, he talked of nothing but tobacco. Soon, very soon, I began to see +that he thought me a simpleton; he pooh-poohed my belief in Naturalism +and declined to discuss the symbolist question. He curled his long legs +upon the rickety sofa and spoke of the British public as the "B.P.," and +of the magazine as the "mag," and in the office which I had marked down +as my own I saw him installed as a genius. He brought a little man about +five feet three to live with him, and when the two, the long and the +short, went out together, it was like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +setting forth in quest of adventures in the land of Strand. The short +man indulged in none of the loud, rasping affectation of humour that was +so maddening in the long; he was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did +join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the +teeth—dusty and bitter. He kept a pocket-book, in which he held an +account of his reading. Holding the pocket-book between finger and +thumb, he would say, "Last year I read ten plays by Nash, twelve by +Peele, six by Greene, fifteen by Beaumont and Fletcher, and eleven +anonymous plays,—fifty-four in all."</p> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> The use of the word sinful here seems liable to +misinterpretation. The phrase should run: "Of a virtuous life, for +remember that my virtues are your vices."</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> This should run: "Forgot your hypocrisy."</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Vices, surely? See Footnote 2 above.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Virtue?</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVI"></a><h2>XVI</h2> +<br> + +<p>Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this +time, attracted into other ways—ways that led into London life, and +were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses +and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever +an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of +whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The +bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his +favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another +friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in +character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept +it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the +impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening +clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house +was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the +cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort +of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I +found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of +titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten +sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous +cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant +champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; +a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and +eternal squandering of money,—money that rose at no discoverable +well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of +whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying +through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I +joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and +about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying +point.</p> + +<p>After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and +theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their +drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night—at +half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or +two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney +sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street +and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we +struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced +writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off +the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our +lagging pens.</p> + +<p>But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a +personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in +a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I +longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame, +brutal and glaring.</p> + +<p>Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the +souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have +known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in +the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes +and murmuring "dreadful young man"—examine your weakly heart, and see +what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what +is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up +natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched +soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails +for—paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done, +especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety.</p> + +<p>"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself. +"Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my +journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, +but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than +when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a +friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is +more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will +hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost +stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one +hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, +Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. +Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in +spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and +it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his +white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I +don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" +and he gives the beggar a shilling.</p> + +<p>We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are +not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable +when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell +you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my +craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—it +will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, +dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a +man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make +himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your +friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of +course, instantly want to know more about him.</p> + +<p>It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in +hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the +comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; +choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting +to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was +a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can +resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the +mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful +lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did +not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, +as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies +retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through +various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose +and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did +not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred +until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The +beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was +sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into +ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at +last, to bring matters to a head, I said,</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity."</p> + +<p>"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool."</p> + +<p>"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me, +and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at +table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad."</p> + +<p>There was a lull, then a moment after he said,</p> + +<p>"I only meant politically."</p> + +<p>"And I only meant socially."</p> + +<p>He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger +tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and +shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked +up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although +I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that +if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and +as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force +on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers +I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by +pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press +would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say +against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and +apples for the journalists.</p> + +<p>I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking, +calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of +the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been +arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to +arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed.</p> + +<p>Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me +perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as +October scatters swallows.</p> + +<p>The first one said, "it was about one or two in the morning?"</p> + +<p>"Later than that, it was about seven."</p> + +<p>"He struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you hit him with a +champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out."</p> + +<p>"I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you don't like +to act for me, say so."</p> + +<p>I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:—"Can I count on you to +act for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply +came. "Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it +over." English people, I said, will have nothing to do with serious +duelling. I must telegraph to Marshall. "Of all importance. Come over at +once and act for me in an affair of honour. Bring the Count with you; +leave him at Boulogne; he knows the colonel of the ——." The next day I +received the following. "Am burying my father; as soon as he is +underground will come." Was there ever such ill-luck?... He won't be +here before the end of the week. These things demand the utmost +promptitude. Three or four days afterwards Emma told me a gentleman was +upstairs taking a bath. "Hollo, Marshall, how are you? Had a good +crossing? The poor old gentleman went off quite suddenly, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay +quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side...wonderful +presence of mind."</p> + +<p>"He left no money?"</p> + +<p>"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the +Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find +out now what a success that picture was. <i>Je t'assure, je fais +l'ècole</i>"...</p> + +<p>"<i>Tu crois ça...on fait l'ècole après vingt ans de travail</i>."</p> + +<p>When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.</p> + +<p>"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel."</p> + +<p>No sooner had I begun to tell the story than it dawned upon me that it +was impossible to tell it seriously, for it was fundamentally an absurd +story; and I lacked courage to tell Marshall that I only wished to go +through with the duel in order to become notorious. No one will admit +such a thing as that to his friend, and if I had admitted it Marshall +would not have consented. I suddenly began to get interested in other +things. There was Marshall's painting to talk about. After the theatre +we went home and æstheticised till three in the morning. The duel became +the least important event and Marshall's new picture the greatest. At +breakfast next day the duel seemed more tiresome than ever, but the +gentlemen were coming to meet Marshall. He showed his usual tact in +arranging my affair of honour; a letter was drawn up in which my friend +withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, +etc.—really now I lack energy to explain it any further.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVII"></a><h2>XVII</h2> +<br> + +<p>Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, +"How very base"; but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, +if you are a soldier in Her Majesty's army, for war,—war that would +bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed +for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the +<i>Gazette</i>. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical +reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in +telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical +reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical +reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute +you.</p> + +<p>Day passed over day, and my novel seemed an impossible task—defeat +glared at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so +thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt +unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the +style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down +on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. +Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the +landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered +into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and +lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon +Street temptations, I trudged home to eat a chop. I studied the servant +as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she +would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!"</p> + +<p>I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs, and I never wearied of +talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired, +and she used to ask me about my novel.</p> + +<p>When my troubles lay too heavily upon me, I let her go up to her garret +without a word, and remained at the window wondering if I should ever +escape from Cecil Street, if I should ever be a light in that London, +long, low, misshapen, that dark monumented stream flowing through the +lean bridges. What if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass? +Happiness abides only in the natural affections—in a home and a sweet +wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her +simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, +not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for +her, I am too sullied for her lips. Were I to win her could I be +dutiful, true?...</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVIII"></a><h2>XVIII</h2> +<br> + +<p>"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, +not the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses +there is reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish +young men who think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is +over for me, I have eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and +drink as I have; do you be young as I was. I have written it! The word +is not worth erasure, if it is not true to-day it will be in two years +hence; farewell! I yield my place, do you be young as I was, do you love +youth as I did; remember you are the most interesting beings under +heaven, for you all sacrifices will be made, you will be fêted and +adored upon the condition of remaining young men. The feast is over for +me, I yield my place, but I will not make this leavetaking more +sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice and +instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly +against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate +yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can +use it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my +place; but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I +would say my last word—were it possible I would be remembered by you as +a young man: but I know too well that the young never realise that the +old were not born old. Farewell."</p> + +<p>I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the +window, and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my +novel.</p> +<br/> +<p> +THE END +</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12278-h.htm or 12278-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/7/12278/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + +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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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6eaa31 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12278 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12278) diff --git a/old/12278-0.txt b/old/12278-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..039cea5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12278-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6825 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +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: Confessions of a Young Man + +Author: George Moore + +Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12278] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A...YOUNG MAN + + + + +CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN + +By GEORGE MOORE. 1886. + +Edited and Annotated by GEORGE MOORE, 1904, + + + + +Clifford's Inn--1904 + + + + + À JACQUES BLANCHE. + + L'âme de l'ancien Égyptien s'éveillait en moi quand mourut ma + jeunesse, et j'étais inspiré de conserver mon passé, son esprit et sa + forme, dans l'art. + + Alors trempant le pinceau dans ma mémoire, j'ai peint ses joues pour + qu'elles prissent l'exacte ressemblance de la vie, et j'ai enveloppé + le mort dans les plus fins linceuls. Rhamenès le second n'a pas reçu + des soins plus pieux! Que ce livre soit aussi durable que sa + pyramide! + + Votre nom, cher ami, je voudrais l'inscrire ici comme épitaphe, car + vous êtes mon plus jeune et mon plus cher ami; et il se trouve en + vous tout ce qui est gracieux et subtil dans ces mornes années qui + s'égouttent dans le vase du vingtième siècle. + + G.M. + + + + +PREFACE TO A NEW EDITION OF "CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN" + + + + +I + + +Dear little book, what shall I say about thee? Belated offspring of +mine, out of print for twenty years, what shall I say in praise of thee? +For twenty years I have only seen thee in French, and in this English +text thou comest to me like an old love, at once a surprise and a +recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I +could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So +for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a +railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed +my station by, and had to hire a carriage and drive across the downs. + +Like a learned Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a +_naïf_ young man, a little vicious in his _naïveté_, who says that his +soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the +world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other +explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new, +more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every +wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself +seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the +style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his +early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig +and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is +true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing +dedication written in the form of an epitaph, an epitaph upon myself, +for it appears that part of me was dead even when I wrote "Confessions +of a Young Man." The youngest have a past, and this epitaph dedication, +printed in capital letters, informs me that I have embalmed my past, +that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem +I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the +railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a +tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for _un peu plus de +toilette_. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the +middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet, +that is a morbidity from which the middle-aged shrink). I would set his +coat collar straighter, I would sweep some specks from it. But can I do +aught for this youth, does he need my supervision? He was himself, that +was his genius; and I sit at gaze. My melancholy is like her's--the +ancient light-o'-love of whom I spoke just now, when she sits by the +fire in the dusk, a miniature of her past self in her hand. + + + + +II + + +This edition has not been printed from old plates, no chicanery of that +kind: it has been printed from new type, and it was brought about by +Walter Pater's evocative letter. (It wasn't, but I like to think that it +was). Off and on, his letter was sought for during many years, hunted +for through all sorts of portfolios and bookcases, but never found until +it appeared miraculously, just as the proof of my Pater article was +being sent back to the printer, the precious letter transpired--shall I +say "transpired?"--through a crack in the old bookcase. + + + BRASENOSE COLLEGE, + + _Mar_. 4. + + MY DEAR, AUDACIOUS MOORE,--Many thanks for the "Confessions" which I + have read with great interest, and admiration for your + originality--your delightful criticisms--your Aristophanic joy, or at + least enjoyment, in life--your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there + are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case + of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or + disagree. What I cannot doubt is the literary faculty displayed. + "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" I feel inclined to say on + finishing your book; "shape" morally, I mean; not in reference to + style. + + You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been + independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing, + both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its + gaiety and good-nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many + things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive, way of + looking at the world. You call it only "realistic." Still! + + With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining + pen.--Very sincerely yours, + + WALTER PATER. + +Remember, reader, that this letter was written by the last great English +writer, by the author of "Imaginary Portraits," the most beautiful of +all prose books. I should like to break off and tell of my delight in +reading "Imaginary Portraits," but I have told my delight elsewhere; go, +seek out what I have said in the pages of the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for +August 1904, for here I am obliged to tell you of myself. I give you +Pater's letter, for I wish you to read this book with reverence; never +forget that Pater's admiration has made this book a sacred book. Never +forget that. + +My special pleasure in these early pages was to find that I thought +about Pater twenty years ago as I think about him now, and shall +certainly think of him till time everlasting, world without end. I have +been accused of changing my likes and dislikes--no one has changed less +than I, and this book is proof of my fidelity to my first ideas; the +ideas I have followed all my life are in this book--dear crescent moon +rising in the south-east above the trees at the end of the village +green. It was in that ugly but well-beloved village on the south coast I +discovered my love of Protestant England. It was on the downs that the +instinct of Protestantism lit up in me. + +But when Zola asked me why I preferred Protestantism to Roman +Catholicism I could not answer him. + +He had promised to write a preface for the French translation of the +"Mummer's Wife"; the translation had to be revised, months and months +passed away, and forgetting all about the "Mummer's Wife," I expressed +my opinion about Zola, which had been changing, a little too +fearlessly, and in view of my revolt he was obliged to break his promise +to write a Preface, and this must have been a great blow, for he was a +man of method, to whom any change of plan was disagreeable and +unnerving. He sent a letter, asking me to come to Medan, he would talk +to me about the "Confessions." Well do I remember going there with dear +Alexis in the May-time, the young corn six inches high in the fields, +and my delight in the lush luxuriance of the l'Oise. That dear morning +is remembered, and the poor master who reproved me a little +sententiously, is dead. He was sorrowful in that dreadful room of his, +fixed up with stained glass and morbid antiquities. He lay on a sofa +lecturing me till breakfast. Then I thought reproof was over, but after +a walk in the garden we went upstairs and he began again, saying he was +not angry. "It is the law of nature," he said, "for children to devour +their parents. I do not complain." I think he was aware he was playing a +part; his sofa was his stage; and he lay there theatrical as Leo XI. or +Beerbohm Tree, saying that the Roman Church was an artistic church, that +its rich externality and ceremonial were pagan. But I think he knew even +then, at the back of his mind, that I was right; that is why he pressed +me to give reasons for my preference. Zola came to hate Catholicism as +much as I, and his hatred was for the same reason as mine; we both +learnt that any religion which robs a man of the right of free-will and +private judgment degrades the soul, renders it lethargic and timid, +takes the edge off the intellect. Zola lived to write "that the Catholic +countries are dead, and the clergy are the worms in the corpses." The +observation is "quelconque"; I should prefer the more interesting +allegation that since the Reformation no born Catholic has written a +book of literary value! He would have had to concede that some converts +have written well; the convert still retains a little of his ancient +freedom, some of the intellectual virility he acquired elsewhere, but +the born Catholic is still-born. But however we may disapprove of +Catholicism, we can still admire the convert. Cardinal Manning was aware +of the advantages of a Protestant bringing up, and he often said that he +was glad he had been born a Protestant. His Eminence was, therefore, of +opinion that the Catholic faith should be reserved, and exclusively, for +converts, and in this he showed his practical sense, for it is easy to +imagine a country prosperous in which all the inhabitants should be +brought up Protestants or agnostics, and in which conversions to Rome +are only permitted after a certain age or in clearly defined +circumstances. There would be something beyond mere practical wisdom in +such law-giving, an exquisite sense of the pathos of human life and its +requirements; scapulars, indulgences and sacraments are needed by the +weak and the ageing, sacraments especially. "They make you believe but +they stupefy you;" these words are Pascal's, the great light of the +Catholic Church. + + + + +III + + +My Protestant sympathies go back very far, further back than these +Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in +versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a +sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things +especially dear to me, my love of France and Protestantism. + + Je t'apporte mon drame, o poète sublime, + Ainsi qu'un écolier au maître sa leçon: + Ce livre avec fierté porte comme écusson + Le sceau qu'en nos esprits ta jeune gloire imprime. + + Accepte, tu verras la foi mêlée au crime, + Se souiller dans le sang sacré de la raison, + Quand surgit, rédempteur du vieux peuple saxon, + Luther à Wittemberg comme Christ à Solime. + + Jamais de la cité le mal entier ne fuit, + Hélas! et son autel y fume dans la nuit; + Mais notre âge a ceci de pareil à l'aurore. + + Que c'est un divin cri du chanteur éternal, + Le tien, qui pour forcer le jour tardif d'éclore + Déchire avec splendeur le voile épars du ciel. + +I find not only my Protestant sympathies in the "Confessions" but a +proud agnosticism, and an exalted individualism which in certain +passages leads the reader to the sundered rocks about the cave of +Zarathoustra. My book was written before I heard that splendid name, +before Zarathoustra was written; and the doctrine, though hardly +formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye +shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions," +"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France--the country as +Pater would say of my instinctive election--and all my prophecies. +Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their +inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so +well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the +Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness despite the journalists +and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor Colvin, he made a mistake, +he should have hopped on to Pater. + +Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no +more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I +might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw. +Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to withdraw +them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may re-write his +confessions. + +A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase +about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has +succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and +if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more +unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface. + +GEORGE MOORE. + + + + +Confessions of a Young Man + + + + +I + + +My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and +form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous +temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am +free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have +acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, +upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth +sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being +moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I +might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archbishop, and +that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of +success would have been mine. I have felt the goad of many impulses, I +have hunted many a trail; when one scent failed another was taken up, +and pursued with the pertinacity of instinct, rather than the fervour of +a reasoned conviction. Sometimes, it is true, there came moments of +weariness, of despondency, but they were not enduring: a word spoken, a +book read, or yielding to the attraction of environment, I was soon off +in another direction, forgetful of past failures. Intricate, indeed, was +the labyrinth of my desires; all lights were followed with the same +ardour, all cries were eagerly responded to: they came from the right, +they came from the left, from every side. But one cry was more +persistent, and as the years passed I learned to follow it with +increasing vigour, and my strayings grew fewer and the way wider. + +I was eleven years old when I first heard and obeyed this cry, or, shall +I say, echo-augury? + +Scene: A great family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, +lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever-recurrent signs--long ranges +of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of +plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two +children. They are smart, with new jackets and neckties; their faces +are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a +little sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children +are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. +Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name! +and she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. +Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred +and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, +it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the +delight of tearing down fruit trees and killing a cat. + +But when we returned home I took the first opportunity of stealing the +novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read +its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called +_The Doctors Wife_--a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, +there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. +Why did I love Shelley? Why was I not attracted to Byron? I cannot say. +Shelley! Oh, that crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must +see it, I must know him. Escaping from the schoolroom, I ransacked the +library, and at last my ardour was rewarded. The book--a small pocket +edition in red boards, no doubt long out of print--opened at the +"Sensitive Plant." Was I disappointed? I think I had expected to +understand better; but I had no difficulty in assuming that I was +satisfied and delighted. And henceforth the little volume never left my +pocket, and I read the dazzling stanzas by the shores of a pale green +Irish lake, comprehending little, and loving a great deal. Byron, too, +was often with me, and these poets were the ripening influence of years +otherwise merely nervous and boisterous. + +And my poets were taken to school, because it pleased me to read "Queen +Mab" and "Cain," amid the priests and ignorance of a hateful Roman +Catholic college. And there my poets saved me from intellectual +savagery; for I was incapable at that time of learning anything. What +determined and incorrigible idleness! I used to gaze fondly on a book, +holding my head between my hands, and allow my thoughts to wander far +into dreams and thin imaginings. Neither Latin, nor Greek, nor French, +nor History, nor English composition could I learn, unless, indeed, my +curiosity or personal interest was excited,--then I made rapid strides +in that branch of knowledge to which my attention was directed. A mind +hitherto dark seemed suddenly to grow clear, and it remained clear and +bright enough so long as passion was in me; but as it died, so the mind +clouded, and recoiled to its original obtuseness. Couldn't and wouldn't +were in my case curiously involved; nor have I in this respect ever been +able to correct my natural temperament. I have always remained powerless +to do anything unless moved by a powerful desire. + +The natural end to such schooldays as mine was expulsion. I was expelled +when I was sixteen, for idleness and general worthlessness. I returned +to a wild country home, where I found my father engaged in training +racehorses. For a nature of such intense vitality as mine, an ambition, +an aspiration of some sort was necessary; and I now, as I have often +done since, accepted the first ideal to hand. In this instance it was +the _stable_. I was given a hunter, I rode to hounds every week, I rode +gallops every morning, I read the racing calendar, stud-book, latest +betting, and looked forward with enthusiasm to the day when I should be +known as a successful steeplechase rider. To ride the winner of the +Liverpool seemed to me a final achievement and glory; and had not +accident intervened, it is very possible that I might have succeeded in +carrying off, if not the meditated honour, something scarcely inferior, +such as--alas! I cannot now recall the name of a race of the necessary +value and importance. About this time my father was elected Member of +Parliament; our home was broken up, and we went to London. But an ideal +set up on its pedestal is not easily displaced, and I persevered in my +love, despite the poor promises London life held out for its ultimate +attainment; and surreptitiously I continued to nourish it with small +bets made in a small tobacconist's. Well do I remember that shop, the +oily-faced, sandy-whiskered proprietor, his betting-book, the cheap +cigars along the counter, the one-eyed nondescript who leaned his +evening away against the counter, and was supposed to know some one who +knew Lord ----'s footman, and the great man often spoken of, but rarely +seen--he who made "a two-'undred pound book on the Derby"; and the +constant coming and going of the cabmen--"Half an ounce of shag, sir." I +was then at a military tutor's in the Euston Road; for, in answer to my +father's question as to what occupation I intended to pursue, I had +consented to enter the army. In my heart I knew that when it came to the +point I should refuse--the idea of military discipline was very +repugnant, and the possibility of an anonymous death on a battle-field +could not be accepted by so self-conscious a youth, by one so full of +his own personality. I said Yes to my father, because the moral courage +to say No was lacking, and I put my trust in the future, as well I +might, for a fair prospect of idleness lay before me, and the chance of +my passing any examination was, indeed, remote. + +In London I made the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked +incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger +than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a +welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His +pictures--Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of +artistic perception, save a certain sentiment for the grand and +noble--filled me with wonderment and awe. "How jolly it would be to be a +painter," I once said, quite involuntarily. "Why, would you like to be a +painter?" he asked abruptly. I laughed, not suspecting that I had the +slightest gift, as indeed was the case, but the idea remained in my +mind, and soon after I began to make sketches in the streets and +theatres. My attempts were not very successful, but they encouraged me +to tell my father that I would go to the military tutor no more, and he +allowed me to enter the Kensington Museum as an Art student. There, of +course, I learned nothing, and, from the point of view of art merely, I +had much better have continued my sketches in the streets; but the +museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that applied +marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in the +galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting and +steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then, looked to +a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than I. +And then the sweet, white peace of antiquity! The great, calm gaze that +is not sadness nor joy, but something that we know not of--which is lost +to the world for ever. + +"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France--France is the +only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of +echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, +that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word +rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang +from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" +Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live +there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not when nor how, but +I knew I should go to France.... + +So my youth ran into manhood, finding its way from rock to rock like a +rivulet, gathering strength at each leap. One day my father was suddenly +called to Ireland. A few days after, a telegram came, and my mother read +that we were required at his bedside. We journeyed over land and sea, +and on a bleak country road, one winter's evening, a man approached us +and I heard him say that all was over, that my father was dead. I loved +my father; I burst into tears; and yet my soul said, "I am glad." The +thought came unbidden, undesired, and I turned aside, shocked at the +sight it afforded of my soul. + +O, my father, I, who love and reverence nothing else, love and reverence +thee; thou art the one pure image in my mind, the one true affection +that life has not broken or soiled; I remember thy voice and thy kind, +happy ways. All I have of worldly goods and native wit I received from +thee--and was it I who was glad? No, it was not I; I had no concern in +the thought that then fell upon me unbidden and undesired; my individual +voice can give you but praise and loving words; and the voice that said +"I am glad" was not my voice, but that of the will to live which we +inherit from elemental dust through countless generations. Terrible and +imperative is the voice of the will to live: let him who is innocent +cast the first stone. + +Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; +that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so +irreparably his. + +My father's death freed me, and I sprang like a loosened bough up to the +light. His death gave me power to create myself, that is to say, to +create a complete and absolute self out of the partial self which was +all that the restraint of home had permitted; this future self, this +ideal George Moore, beckoned me, lured like a ghost; and as I followed +the funeral the question, Would I sacrifice this ghostly self, if by so +doing I should bring my father back? presented itself without +intermission, and I shrank horrified at the answer which I could not +crush out of mind. + +Now my life was like a garden in the emotive torpor of spring; now my +life was like a flower conscious of the light. Money was placed in my +hands, and I divined all it represented. Before me the crystal lake, the +distant mountains, the swaying woods, said but one word, and that word +was--self; not the self that was then mine, but the self on whose +creation I was enthusiastically determined. But I felt like a murderer +when I turned to leave the place which I had so suddenly, and I could +not but think unjustly, become possessed of. And now, as I probe this +poignant psychological moment, I find that, although I perfectly well +realised that all pleasures were then in my reach--women, elegant dress, +theatres, and supper-rooms, I hardly thought at all of them, and much +more of certain drawings from the plaster cast. I would be an artist. +More than ever I was determined to be an artist, and my brain was made +of this desire as I journeyed as fast as railway and steamboat could +take me to London. No further trammels, no further need of being a +soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and France +before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would +feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a +studio. A studio--tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it +is difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul +in these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my +studio was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of +effectually throwing over all restraint, I did not view it at all in +this light. My love of Art was very genuine and deep-rooted; the +tobacconist's betting-book was now as nothing, and a certain Botticelli +in the National Gallery held me in tether. And when I look back and +consider the past, I am forced to admit that I might have grown up in +less fortunate circumstances, for even the studio, with its +dissipations--and they were many--was not unserviceable; it developed +the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to grow and +ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contradistinction to the +University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a formula +which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average human +being. + +Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from +the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read very +nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read +Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin, and Mill. So it will be understood that +Shelley not only gave me my first soul, but led all its first flights. +But I do not think that if Shelley had been no more than a poet, +notwithstanding my very genuine love of verse, he would have gained such +influence in my youthful sympathies; but Shelley dreamed in +metaphysics--very thin dreaming if you will; but just such thin dreaming +as I could follow. Was there or was there not a God? And for many years +I could not dismiss as parcel of the world's folly this question, and I +sought a solution, inclining towards atheism, for it was natural in me +to revere nothing, and to oppose the routine of daily thought. And I was +but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I must decline to +believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against the chimney-piece +in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the household with the news; +but although a religious woman, my mother did not seem in the least +frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry, George, it is so." I was +deeply shocked at her indifference. + +Finding music and atheism in poetry I cared little for novels. Scott +seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too +impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and +_Bleak House_ I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep +impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not +picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for +some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very +small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: +_Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The +History of Civilisation_, were momentous events in my life. But I loved +life better than books, and very curiously my studies and my pleasures +kept pace, stepping together like a pair of well-trained carriage +horses. While I was waiting for my coach to take a party of _tarts_ and +_mashers_ to the Derby, I would read a chapter of Kant, and I often took +the book away with me in my pocket. And I cultivated with care the +acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the +purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, +delighted me. I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to +spend on scent and toilette knick-knacks as much as would keep a poor +man's family in affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the +fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to +shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, +the life of the theatres--that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, +of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes--interested me +beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at +home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I +was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up +the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the +Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected +ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of +dissipations. But there was no need to fear; for I was naturally endowed +with a very clear sense of self-preservation; I neither betted nor +drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point +of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about +four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, and repeating some +verses of Shelley, I thought how I should go to Paris when I was of age, +and study painting. + + + + +II + + +At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes, +books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for +Paris and Art. + +We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past six +in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city. +Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar +bleakness in the streets. The _ménagère_ hurries down the asphalte to +market; a dreadful _garçon de café_, with a napkin tied round his +throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it +seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the +Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées? I asked myself; and feeling +bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my +valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the +study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to +formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and +the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for. + +My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the Beaux Arts--Cabanel's +studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration +for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was +told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on the +master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to speak +to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks until I could +hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot say. I +never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my +language must have been like--like nothing ever heard under God's sky +before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of +the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures +I had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then +in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he +would be glad to have me as a pupil.... + +But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits +only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast; +and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an +effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey +perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the +lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the +room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more. I felt humiliated +at my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy; and +I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the Boulevards, +studying the photographs of the _salon_ pictures, thinking of what my +next move should be. I had never forgotten my father showing me, one day +when he was shaving, three photographs from pictures. They were by an +artist called Sevres. My father liked the slenderer figure, but I liked +the corpulent--the Venus standing at the corner of a wood, pouring wine +into a goblet, while Cupid, from behind her satin-enveloped knees, drew +his bow and shot the doves that flew from glistening poplar trees. The +beauty of this woman, and what her beauty must be in the life of the +painter, had inspired many a reverie, and I had concluded--this +conclusion being of all others most sympathetic to me--that she was his +very beautiful mistress, that they lived in a picturesque pavilion in +the midst of a shady garden full of birds and tall flowers. I had often +imagined her walking there at mid-day, dressed in white muslin with wide +sleeves open to the elbow, scattering grain from a silver plate to the +proud pigeons that strutted about her slippered feet and fluttered to +her dove-like hand. I had dreamed of seeing that woman as I rode +racehorses on wild Irish plains, of being loved by her; in London I had +dreamed of becoming Sevres's pupil. + +What coming and going, what inquiries, what difficulties arose! At last +I was advised to go to the Exposition aux Champs Elysée and seek his +address in the catalogue. I did so, and while the _concierge_ copied out +the address for me, I chased his tame magpie that hopped about one of +the angles of the great building. The reader smiles. I was a childish +boy of one-and-twenty who knew nothing, and to whom the world was +astonishingly new. Doubtless before my soul was given to me it had been +plunged deep in Lethe, and so an almost virgin man I stood in front of a +virgin world. + +Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a +fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake +reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in +the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden +wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked +up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in +muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a +silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it; +and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a +tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close; +and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every +nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her +eyes as I passed. + +Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of +a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his +daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M. +Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now +the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that +the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish +sensualities. + +I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm +on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a +wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We +were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to +smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me +to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the +Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is +that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to +admit even now, saturated though I now am with the æsthetics of +different schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am +writing of my nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional +attractiveness of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender +hips and hands, and I accepted Jules Lefebvre wholly and +unconditionally. He hesitated, however, when I asked to be taken as a +private pupil, but he wrote out the address of a studio where he gave +instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even more to my taste, for I +had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was anxious to see as much +of them as possible. + +The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I +found M. Julien, a typical meridional--the large stomach, the dark eyes, +crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual +mind. We made friends at once--he consciously making use of me, I +unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's +subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to +the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it +was a little tiresome to have to put up with a talkative person, whose +knowledge of the French language had been acquired in three months, but +the dinners were good. No doubt Julien reasoned so; I did not reason at +all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the world was necessary to me. I +had never met such a man before, and all my curiosity was awake. He +spoke of art and literature, of the world and the flesh; he told me of +the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents in his own life; +and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his conversation I +thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the +look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The +world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years +before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out +straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a +distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society +only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and +which was destined to absorb some years of my life. + +In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among +these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were +also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle +and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions +and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of +unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio +conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and +were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did, +that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in +its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye--the gowns, the hair +lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow. +Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who +escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend +who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of +dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with +undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time--a +friendship which permeated and added to my life--I am nevertheless +forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my +special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a +shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to +pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a +moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely +compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my +path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I +pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the +studio; and, to my surprise, for he was fashionably dressed, and my +experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and +well-cut clothes, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were +beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and +large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could +not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his +figure, with all the surroundings--screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was +deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he +was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a +general exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring +_café_ to drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we +stooped under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to +me in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in +So-and-So's studio--the great blonde man, whose Doré-like improvisations +had awakened aspiration in me. + +The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and +then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?" Marshall +thought the following day would suit him better, but I was very +pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with him to +his rooms, and he would show me some pictures--some trifles he had +brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better. We got +into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new superiorities, +in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong, handsome, and +beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than myself, but he could +talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should, for he +was born in Brussels and had lived there all his life, but the accident +of birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He +spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable +restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his +hair curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was +on the tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be +utterly outdone, I alluded to my valet. + +His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained +that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now +living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would +allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of +pictures, which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration +increased to wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which +had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung +by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest +the rest of the studio--the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the +Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red +Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,--a +ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There +were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners +of the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very +little heed to my compliments; and sitting down at the piano, with a +great deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a +waltz. + +"What waltz is that?" I asked. + +"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of the +blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?" + +"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?" + +At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and an English girl +entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words +that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her +sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an +appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the +morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her. + +I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but +now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the +sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was +so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, +and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience +opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my +arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the +Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself; +but now I was taken to strange students' _cafés_, where dinners were +paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a _table d'hôte_ was +held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great +crowds to _Bullier_, the _Château Rouge_, or the _Elysée Montmartre_. +The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the +thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women--we only knew +their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling +through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer +night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing +glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a +magic lantern out of the sky. + +Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons +were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this +street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop" +to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs.... + +"_Madame ----, est-elle chez elle?_" + +"_Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer._" And we +were shown into a handsomely-furnished apartment. A lady would enter +hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French +sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always +commenced _mon cher ami_, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase +_vous avez tort_. The ladies themselves had only just returned from +Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious +lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several +millions of francs against different foreign governments. + +And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years +ago, at the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I +watched this world of Parisian adventurers and lights-o'-love. And this +craving for observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation +of gestures and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes +that mirror forth the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew +and strengthened, to the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me. +With the patience of a cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened, +picking one characteristic phrase out of hours of vain chatter, +interested and amused by an angry or loving glance. Like the midges that +fret the surface of a shadowy stream, these men and women seemed to me; +and though I laughed, danced, and made merry with them, I was not of +them. But with Marshall it was different: they were my amusement, they +were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of this distinction that made +twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it. Why could I not live +without an ever-present and acute consciousness of life? Why could I not +love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in the perfumed +silence of the chamber? + +And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The +general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent +contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced +to one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our +confidences knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain +confidences it is often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read or +felt was the subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that +a flush of colour and a bit of perspective awakens, the blue tints that +the summer sunset lends to a white dress, or the eternal verities, death +and love. But, although I tested every fibre of thought and analysed +every motive, I was very sincere in my friendship and very loyal in my +admiration. Nor did my admiration wane when I discovered that Marshall +was shallow in his appreciations, superficial in his judgments, that his +talents did not pierce below the surface; _il avait si grand air_, there +was fascination in his very bearing, in his large, soft, colourful eyes, +and a go and dash in his dissipations that carried you away. + +To any one observing us at this time it would have seemed that I was but +a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my +tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to +arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his +general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer +and more original nature. I was willing to learn, that was all. There +was much that Marshall could teach me, and I used him without shame, +without stint. I used him as I have used all those with whom I have been +brought into close contact. Search my memory as I will, I cannot recall +a case of man or woman who ever occupied any considerable part of my +thoughts without contributing largely towards my moral or physical +welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had +useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal +fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious, +egoistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and +more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent +services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with +less design than myself. Never have I given a thought to the advantage +that might accrue from being on terms of friendship with this man and +avoiding that one. "Then how do you explain," cries the angry reader, +"that you have never had a friend by whom you did not profit? You must +have had very few friends." On the contrary, I have had many friends, +and of all sorts and kinds--men and women: and, I repeat, none took part +in my life who did not contribute something towards my well-being. It +must, of course, be understood that I make no distinction between mental +and material help; and in my case the one has at all times been adjuvant +to the other. "Pooh, pooh!" again exclaims the reader; "I for one will +not believe that chance has only sent across your way the people who +were required to assist you." Chance! dear reader, is there such a thing +as chance? Do you believe in chance? Do you attach any precise meaning +to the word? Do you employ it at haphazard, allowing it to mean what it +may? Chance! What a field for psychical investigation is at once opened +up; how we may tear to shreds our past lives in search of--what? Of the +Chance that made us. I think, reader, I can throw some light on the +general question, by replying to your taunt: Chance, or the conditions +of life under which we live, sent, of course, thousands of creatures +across my way who were powerless to benefit me; but then an instinct of +which I knew nothing, of which I was not even conscious, withdrew me +from them, and I was attracted to others. Have you not seen a horse +suddenly leave a corner of a field to seek pasturage further away? + +Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my +mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind +asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much +expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same +processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the +case in a well-ordered stomach. Shelley, who fired my youth with +passion, and purified and upbore it for so long, is now to me as +nothing: not a dead or faded thing, but a thing out of which I +personally have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and, +therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. +And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing +line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such +perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of +tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a +spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten +corner of a forgotten room. My old rapture and my youth's delight I can +regain only when I think of that part of Gautier which is now incarnate +in me. + +As I picked up books, so I picked up my friends. I read friends and +books with the same passion, with the same avidity; and as I discarded +my books when I had assimilated as much of them as my system required, +so I discarded my friends when they ceased to be of use to me. I employ +the word "use" in its fullest, not in its limited and twenty-shilling +sense. This parallel of the intellect to the blind unconsciousness of +the lower organs will strike some as a violation of man's best beliefs, +and as saying very little for the particular intellect that can be so +reduced. But I am not sure these people are right. I am inclined to +think that as you ascend the scale of thought to the great minds, these +unaccountable impulses, mysterious resolutions, sudden, but certain +knowings, falling whence or how it is impossible to say, but falling +somehow into the brain, instead of growing rarer, become more and more +frequent; indeed, I think that if the really great man were to confess +to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by +inspirations...inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a +circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we +slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let +general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these +pages if it be understood that brain instincts have always been, and +still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being. + + + + +III + + +But the studio, where I had been working for the last three or four +months so diligently, became wearisome to me, and for two reasons. +First, because it deprived me of many hours of Marshall's company. +Secondly--and the second reason was the graver--because I was beginning +to regard the delineation of a nymph, or youth bathing, etc., as a very +narrow channel to carry off the strong, full tide of a man's thought. +For now thoughts of love and death, and the hopelessness of life, were +in active fermentation within me and sought for utterance with a strange +persistency of appeal. I yearned merely to give direct expression to my +pain. Life was then in its springtide; every thought was new to me, and +it would have seemed a pity to disguise even the simplest emotion in any +garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The +creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose +gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I +hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that +was all,--I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to +select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might +never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct +to me from the outside. + +At the time of which I am writing I lived in an old-fashioned hotel on +the Boulevard, which an enterprising Belgian had lately bought and was +endeavouring to modernise; an old-fashioned hotel, that still clung to +its ancient character in the presence of half a dozen old people, who, +for antediluvian reasons, continue to dine on certain well-specified +days at the _table d'hôte_. Fifteen years have passed away, and these +old people, no doubt, have joined their ancestors; but I can see them +still sitting in that _salle à manger_, the _buffets en vieux chéne,_ +the opulent candelabra _en style d'empire_, the waiter lighting the gas +in the pale Parisian evening. That white-haired man, that tall, thin, +hatchet-faced American, has dined at this _table d'hôte_ for the last +thirty years--he is talkative, vain, foolish, and authoritative. The +clean, neatly-dressed old gentleman who sits by him, looking so much +like a French gentleman, has spent a great part of his life in Spain. +With that piece of news, and its subsequent developments, your +acquaintance with him begins and ends; the eyes, the fan, the mantilla, +how it began, how it was broken off, and how it began again. Opposite +sits another French gentleman, with beard and bristly hair. He spent +twenty years of his life in India, and he talks of his son who has been +out there for the last ten, and who has just returned home. There is the +Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses like a girl of sixteen +and smokes a cigar after dinner,--if there are not too many strangers in +the room. A stranger she calls any one whom she has not seen at least +once before. The little fat, neckless man, with the great bald head, +fringed below the ears with hair, is M. Duval. He is a dramatic author, +the author of a hundred and sixty plays. He does not intrude himself on +your notice, but when you speak to him on literary matters he fixes a +pair of tiny, sloe-like eyes on you, and talks affably of his +collaborateurs. + +I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to +the _café_ after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered +him a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, +inevitable that I should find out that he had not had a play produced +for the last twenty years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty +was about his poor bald head. I thought of the chances of life, he +alluded to the war; and so this unpleasantness was passed over, and we +entered on more genial subjects of conversation. He had written plays +with everybody; his list of collaborateurs was longer than any list of +lady patronesses for an English county ball; there was no literary +kitchen in which he had not helped to dish up. I was at once amazed and +delighted. Had M. Duval written his hundred and sixty plays in the +seclusion of his own rooms, I should have been less surprised; it was +the mystery of the _séances_ of collaboration, the rendezvous, the +discussion, the illustrious company, that overwhelmed me in a rapture of +wonder and respectful admiration. Then came the anecdotes. They were of +all sorts. Here are a few specimens: He, Duval, had written a one-act +piece with Dumas _père_; it had been refused at the Français, and then +it had been about, here, there, and everywhere; finally the _Variétés_ +had asked for some alterations, and _c'était une affaire entendue_. "I +made the alterations one afternoon, and wrote to Dumas, and what do you +think,--by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not +consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the +_Variétés,_ because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the +Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier +and Dejazet. They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and +I was amused and astonished. These _bon-mots_ were followed by an +account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and +Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. +Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning +Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I +suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" +And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I +would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre--rooms +high up on the fifth floor--where, between two pictures, supposed to be +by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had written unactable plays for the +last twenty years, and where he would continue to write unactable plays +until God called him to a world, perhaps, of eternal cantatas, but +where, by all accounts, _l'exposition de la pièce selon la formule de M. +Scribe_ is still unknown. + +How I used to enjoy these conversations! I remember how I used to stand +on the pavement after having bid the old gentleman good-night, +regretting I had not asked for some further explanation regarding _le +mouvement Romantique_, or _la façon de M. Scribe de ménager la +situation_. + +Why not write a comedy? So the thought came. I had never written +anything save a few ill-spelt letters; but no matter. To find a plot was +the first thing. Take Marshall for hero and Alice for heroine, surround +them with the old gentlemen who dined at the _table d'hôte,_ flavour +with the Italian countess who smoked cigars when there were not too many +strangers present. After three weeks of industrious stirring, the +ingredients did begin to simmer into something resembling a plot. Put it +upon paper. Ah! there was my difficulty. I remembered suddenly that I +had read "Cain," "Manfred," "The Cenci," as poems, without ever +thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in +blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. +Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read +him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a +copy? No; the name repelled me--as all popular names repelled me. In +preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy +by M. Dumas _fils_. But strain my imagination as I would, I could not +see the spoken words in their written form. Oh, for a look at the +prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! +At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's +edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, +Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, +which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my +memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might be +imagined. + +No sooner was the last scene written than I started at once for London, +confident I should find no difficulty in getting my play produced. + + + + +IV + + +Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play? +A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me +for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical +managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to +France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with +the sweet and magnetic influence of home. + +How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed +into my eyes!--Paris--public ball-rooms, _cafés_, the models in the +studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien. +Marshall!--my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets +and the endless procession of people coming and going. + +"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." +"Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M. +Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What +number?" "I think it is fifty--four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up; +drive me to the Rue de Douai." + +But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no +address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be +able to obtain news of him there--perhaps find him. But when I pulled +aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet +my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of +dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am +sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps +at the _café_, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very +encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along +_le Passage_, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap +trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of +the Boulevard was our _café_. As I came forward the waiter moved one of +the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had +seen me yesterday he said, "_Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse? +oui...garçon, une demi-tasse_." Presently the conversation turned on +Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "_Il parait qu'il est +plus amoureux que jamais_," Julien replied sardonically. + + + + +V + + +I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in +the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were +large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found +the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen--in a great Louis +XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again, +George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again." + +"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?" + +"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll +have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on +there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there +twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight, +brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am +told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and +the tail is said to be three yards long." + +We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all +delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we +went insolent with patent leather shoes and bright kid gloves and armed +with all the jargon of the school. "_Cette jambe ne porte pas"; "la +nature ne se fait pas comme ça"; "on dessine par les masses; combien de +têtes?" "Sept et demi." "Si j'avais un morceau de craie je mettrais +celle-là dans un; bocal c'est un fœtus_"; in a word, all that the +journals of culture are pleased to term an artistic education. We +indulged in boisterous laughter, exaggerated in the hope of giving as +much pain as possible, and deep down in our souls we knew that we were +lying--at least I did. + +In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art--the +tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau--had been completely lost; +having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of +the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: +further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the +Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and +Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn +begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil +of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned +from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life. +Degas draws not by the masses, but by the character;--his subjects are +shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow +them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins +and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat, +vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the +pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and +rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you +know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you know what she would +say to you if she were to speak. She is as typical of the nineteenth +century as Fragonard's ladies are of the Court of Louis XV. To the right +you see a picture of two shop-girls with bonnets in their hands. So +accurately are the habitual movements of the heads and the hands +observed that you at once realise the years of bonnet-showing and +servile words that these women have lived through. We have seen Degas do +this before--it is a welcome repetition of a familiar note, but it is +not until we turn to the set of nude figures that we find the great +artist revealing any new phase of his talent. The first, in an attitude +which suggests the kneeling Venus, washes her thighs in a tin bath. The +second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of +children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The +naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' +genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the +great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has +rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the +British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the +hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the +sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as +it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in +her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy +shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is +terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted his dwarfs. + +Pissarro exhibited a group of girls gathering apples in a garden--sad +greys and violets beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in +a dream: we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet colour +and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches, +those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled: +that garden is the garden of the peace that life has not for giving, but +which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey. + +Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two +young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are +all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their +ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard +roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are +there--willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces. + +Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the +vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and +colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of +the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a _chef +d'œuvre._ Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that +hillside,--sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue +shadow,--is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in +one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of +the woman on a background of chintz flowers. + +We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced +him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I +wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only _une blague +qu'on nous fait_?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most +exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and +seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"--that _chef d'œuvre_! +the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so +swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look +at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The +perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational +kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway +stations by the same painter,--those rapid sensations of steel and +vapour,--our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at +this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it +round, that's all." Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich +sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an +absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures +as you do in nature, and the child's criticism of a portrait--"Why is +one side of the face black?" is answered. There was a half-length nude +figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! +such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw +nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing. + +For art was not for us then as it is now,--a mere emotion, right or +wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the +grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and _la jambe qui porte_; and we +found all this in Julien's studio. + +A year passed; a year of art and dissipation--one part art, two parts +dissipation. We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of +society's ladder. One evening we would spend at Constant's, Rue de la +Gaieté, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following +evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs +Elysées. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with +equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the +literary _salon_; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in +the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, +I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in +terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to +be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very +thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and +presenting our spotless selves to the _élite_. And we succeeded very +well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making +love to the wrong woman. + +But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not +stave off our craving for art; and about this time there came a very +decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really _grande passion_ +had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him +to turn his thoughts to painting on china as a means of livelihood. And +as this young man always sought extremes he went to Belleville, donned +a blouse, ate garlic with his food, and settled down to live there as a +workman. I had been to see him, and had found him building a wall. And +with sorrow I related his state that evening to Julien in the Café +Veron. He said, after a pause:-- + +"Since you profess so much friendship for him, why do you not do him a +service that cannot be forgotten since the result will always continue? +why don't you save him from the life you describe? If you are not +actually rich you are at least in easy circumstances, and can afford to +give him a _pension_ of three hundred francs a month. I will give him +the use of my studio, which means, as you know, models and teaching; +Marshall has plenty of talent, all he wants is a year's education: in a +year or a year-and-a-half, certainly at the end of two years, he will +begin to make money." + +It is rather a shock to one who is at all concerned with his own genius +to be asked to act as foster-mother to another's. Then three hundred +francs meant a great deal, plainly it meant deprivation of those +superfluities which are so intensely necessary to the delicate and +refined. Julien watched me. This large crafty Southerner knew what was +passing in me; he knew I was realising all the manifold +inconveniences--the duty of looking after Marshall's wants for two +years, and to make the pill easier he said:-- + +"If three hundred francs a month are too heavy for your purse, you might +take an apartment and ask Marshall to come and live with you. You told +me the other day you were tired of hotel life. It would be an advantage +to you to live with him. You want to do something yourself; and the fact +of his being obliged to attend the studio (for I should advise you to +have a strict agreement with him regarding the work he is to do) would +be an extra inducement to you to work hard." + +I always decide at once, reflection does not help me, and a moment after +I said, "Very well, Julien, I will." + +And next day I went with the news to Belleville. Marshall protested he +had no real talent. I protested he had. The agreement was drawn up and +signed. He was to work in the studio eight hours a day; he was to draw +until such time as M. Lefebvre set him to paint; and in proof of his +industry he was to bring me at the end of each week a study from life +and a composition, the subject of which the master gave at the +beginning of each week, and in return I was to take an apartment near +the studio, give him an abode, food, _blanchissage_, etc. Once the +matter was decided, Marshall manifested prodigious energy, and three +days after he told me he had found an apartment in Le Passage des +Panoramas which would suit us perfectly. The plunge had to be taken. I +paid my hotel bill, and sent my taciturn valet to beef, beer and a wife. + +It was unpleasant to have a window opening not to the sky, but to an +unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at +seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the +resolution even of the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all +pleasures for the sake of art--_table d'hôtes_ in the Rue Maubeuge, +French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue +de la Gaieté. + +I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art +for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It +will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so intensely alive to +all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer +in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It +was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter +when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches +like the pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little beyond verbal +expression. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were +striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first +hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true, caught +the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the +quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I +possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing +was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I +possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without +which all is valueless;--I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off +a clever caricature of his school-master or make a _lifelike_ sketch of +his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk. + +The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the +model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time +never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling +hopelessly in the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was +bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and +was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated +by the professors. In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of +education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in +(using the word in its modern, not in its original sense). He showed +himself intensely anxious to learn and to accept all that was said: the +ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose +neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream. He was an +ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the +studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and +anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain. I continued +the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio at eight in the +morning, I measured my drawing, I plumbed it throughout, I sketched in, +having regard to _la jambe qui porte_, I modelled _par les masses_. +During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon, at +night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result. +But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling, +stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible +are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching +void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden +of unachieved desire grew intolerable. + +I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again." +That vow I have kept. + +Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a +blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I +do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my +heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome +by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no +equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home +almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat +still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured +loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of +the medals which he would carry off, of what Lefebvre thought of his +drawing this week, of Boulanger's opinion of his talent. I do not wish +to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me +neither consideration nor pity, he did not even seem to understand that +I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he +flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face--his good looks, his +talents, his popularity. I did not know then how little these studio +successes really meant. + +Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is +rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a +certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed +me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing +enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This +was intolerable. I packed up my portmanteau and left, after having kept +my promise for only ten months. By so doing I involved my friend in +grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future +prospects. It was a dastardly action, but his presence had grown +unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and +in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being +lifted from me. + + + + +VI + + +After three months spent in a sweet seaside resort, where unoccupied men +and ladies whose husbands are abroad happily congregate, I returned to +Paris refreshed. + +Marshall and I were no longer on speaking terms, but I saw him daily, in +a new overcoat, of a cut admirably adapted to his figure, sweeping past +the fans and the jet ornaments of the Passage des Panoramas. The coat +interested me, and I remembered that if I had not broken with him I +should have been able to ask him some essential questions concerning it. +Of such trifles as this the sincerest friendships are made; he was as +necessary to me as I to him, and after some demur on his part a +reconciliation was effected. + +Then I took an _appartement_ in one of the old houses in Rue de la Tour +des Dames, for windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a +dilapidated statue. It was Marshall of course who undertook the task of +furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an imagination +that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree and a +fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our _salon_ was a pretty +resort--English cretonne of a very happy design--vine leaves, dark green +and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched +with this colourful cloth, and the arm-chairs and the couches were to +match. The drawing-room was in cardinal red, hung from the middle of the +ceiling and looped up to give the appearance of a tent; a faun, in +terra-cotta, laughed in the red gloom, and there were Turkish couches +and lamps. In another room you faced an altar, a Buddhist temple, a +statue of the Apollo, and a bust of Shelley. The bedrooms were made +unconventual with cushioned seats and rich canopies; and in picturesque +corners there were censers, great church candlesticks, and palms; then +think of the smell of burning incense and wax and you will have imagined +the sentiment of our apartment in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a +Persian cat, and a python that made a monthly meal off guinea pigs; +Marshall, who did not care for pets, filled his rooms with flowers--he +used to sleep beneath a tree of gardenias in full bloom. We were so, +Henry Marshall and George Moore, when we went to live in 76 Rue de la +Tour des Dames, we hoped for the rest of our lives. He was to paint, I +was to write. + +Before leaving for the seaside I had bought some volumes of Hugo and De +Musset; but in pleasant, sunny Boulogne poetry went flat, and it was not +until I got into my new rooms that I began to read seriously. Books are +like individuals; you know at once if they are going to create a sense +within the sense, to fever, to madden you in blood and brain, or if they +will merely leave you indifferent, or irritable, having unpleasantly +disturbed sweet intimate musings as might a draught from an open window. +Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, +when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, +a voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine +depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above +all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. +Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great +austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. +But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being +in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a +terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." An East of painted +cardboard, tin daggers, and a military band playing the Turkish patrol +in the Palais Royal.... The verse is grand, noble, tremendous; I liked +it, I admired it, but it did not--I repeat the phrase--awake a voice of +conscience within me; and even the structure of the verse was too much +in the style of public buildings to please me. Of "Les Feuilles +d'Automne" and "Les Chants du Crépuscule" I remember nothing. Ten lines, +fifty lines of "Les Légendes des Siècles," and I always think that it is +the greatest poetry I have ever read, but after a few pages the book is +laid down and forgotten. Having composed more verses than any man that +ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses; if you repeat +any passage to a friend across a _café_ table, you are both appalled by +the splendour of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables. + + "Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été + Avait en s'en allant négligemment jeté + Cette faucille d'or dans les champs des étoiles." + +But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the +_ennui_ which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or +Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's +genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a +metaphysical German student. Take another verse-- + + "Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon." + +Without a "like" or an "as," by a mere statement of fact, the picture, +nay more, the impression, is produced. I confess I have a weakness for +the poem which this line concludes--"La fête chez Thérèse"; but +admirable as it is with its picture of mediæval life, there is in it, as +in all Hugo's work, a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my +heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering +coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the +Almighty in a last stanza; but of the two immortalities he evidently +considers his own the most durable; he does not, however, become really +intolerable until he gets on the subject of little children, he sings +their innocence in great bombast, but he is watching them; the poetry +over, the crowd dispersed, he will entice one of them down a byway. + +The first time I read of _une bouche d'ombre_ I was astonished, nor did +the second or third repetition produce a change in my mood of mind; but +sooner or later it was impossible to avoid conviction, that of the two +"the rosy fingers of the dawn," although some three thousand years older +is younger, truer, and more beautiful. Homer's similes can never grow +old; _une bouche d'ombre_ was old the first time it was said. It is the +birthplace and the grave of Hugo's genius. + +Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise +were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had +marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. +Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms +were out of tune with the strain of my aspirations at that moment, and I +did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression +which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of +diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the +commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent +to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense +of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical +outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious +_chevilles--marchait et respirait_, and _Astarté fille de l'onde amère_; +nor does the fact that _amère_ rhymes with _mère_ condone the offence, +although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of +the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit +that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I +read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade à la Lune," that I +could be induced to bend the knee and acknowledge Musset a poet. + +I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,--he was still +my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother-o'-pearl, with starlight at +the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, +not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was +Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it +was sudden. I was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation +of the body above the soul at once conquered and led me captive; this +plain scorn of a world as exemplified in lacerated saints and a +crucified Redeemer opened up to me illimitable prospects of fresh +beliefs, and therefore new joys in things and new revolts against all +that had come to form part and parcel of the commonalty of mankind. Till +now I had not even remotely suspected that a deification of flesh and +fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching had been, while +accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so preserve our +ideal; but now suddenly I saw, with delightful clearness and with +intoxicating conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting +with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place within as +divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an +aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the +elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this +modern world, but the clean pagan nude,--a love of life and beauty, the +broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the +bold fearless gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the +Virgin, and I cried with my master that the blood that flowed upon Mount +Calvary "_ne m'a jamais baigné dans ses flots_." + +I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime +vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so +inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin +refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? +Great was my conversion. None more than I had cherished mystery and +dream: my life until now had been but a mist which revealed as each +cloud wreathed and went out, the red of some strange flower or some tall +peak, blue and snowy and fairylike in lonely moonlight; and now so great +was my conversion that the more brutal the outrage offered to my ancient +ideal, the rarer and keener was my delight. I read almost without fear: +"My dreams were of naked youths riding white horses through mountain +passes, there were no clouds in my dreams, or if there were any, they +were clouds that had been cut out as if in cardboard with scissors." + +I had shaken off all belief in Christianity early in life and had +suffered much. Shelley had replaced faith by reason, but I still +suffered: but here was a new creed which proclaimed the divinity of the +body, and for a long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life +on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite +outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses +moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then +the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of _As You +Like It_, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to +Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's +attire. If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is +forgotten in the rapture and praise of her unmatchable woman's +loveliness. + +But if "Mdlle. de Maupin" was the highest peak, it was not the entire +mountain. The range was long, and each summit offered to the eye a new +and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,--tales as +perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," +"Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, +"Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the +adjective _blanc_ and _blanche_ is repeated with miraculous felicity in +each stanza. And then Contralto,-- + + "Mais seulement il se transpose + Et passant de la forme au son, + Trouve dans la métamorphose + La jeune fille et le garçon." + +_Transpose_,--a word never before used except in musical application, +and now for the first time applied to material form, and with a +beauty-giving touch that Phidias might be proud of. I know not how I +quote; such is my best memory of the stanza, and here, that is more +important than the stanza itself. And that other stanza, "The +Châtelaine and the Page"; and that other, "The Doves"; and that other, +"Romeo and Juliet," and the exquisite cadence of the line ending +"_balcon_." Novelists have often shown how a love passion brings misery, +despair, death and ruin upon a life, but I know of no story of the good +or evil influence awakened by the chance reading of a book, the chain of +consequences so far-reaching, so intensely dramatic. Never shall I open +these books again, but were I to live for a thousand years, their power +in my soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in +humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave +may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. +Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted +progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned +that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the +plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of +the problem that had vexed me so long; I cried, "ave" to it all: lust, +cruelty, slavery, and I would have held down my thumbs in the Colosseum +that a hundred gladiators might die and wash me free of my Christian +soul with their blood. + +The study of Baudelaire hurried the course of the disease.[1] No longer +is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven +face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning +sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better +know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful +flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and +were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your +poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children +of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of +your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful +in your sublime decay, I press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, +far from the rank Parisian garden where I gathered you, are full of you, +even as the sea-shell of the sea, and the sun that sets on this wild +moorland evokes the magical verse:-- + + "Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique + Nous échangerons un éclair unique + Comme un long sanglot tout chargé d'adieux." + +For months I fed on the mad and morbid literature that the enthusiasm +of 1830 called into existence. The gloomy and sterile little pictures of +"Gaspard de la Nuit," or the elaborate criminality, "Les Contes +Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, +pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and +in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the +unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I +never read more than a few pages. + +Like a pike after minnows I pursued the works of Les Jeune France along +the quays and through every _passage_ in Paris. The money spent was +considerable, the waste of time vexatious. One man's solitary work (he +died very young, but he is known to have excelled all in length of his +hair and the redness of his waistcoats) resisted my efforts to capture +it. At last I caught sight of the precious volume in a shop on the Quai +Voltaire. Trembling I asked the price. The man looked at me earnestly +and answered, "A hundred and fifty francs." No doubt it was a great deal +of money, but I paid it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone +before had proved disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had +contributed little towards my intellectual advancement; but this--this +that I had heard about so long--not a queer phrase, not an outrage of +any sort of kind, not even a new blasphemy, it meant nothing to me, that +is to say, nothing but a hundred and fifty francs. Having thus rudely, +and very pikelike, knocked my nose against the bottom--this book was, +most certainly, the bottom of the literature of 1830--I came up to the +surface and began to look around my contemporaries for something to +read. + +I have remarked before on the instinctiveness of my likes and dislikes, +on my susceptibility to the sound of and even to the appearance of a +name upon paper. I was repelled by Leconte de Lisle from the first, and +it was only by a very deliberate outrage to my feelings that I bought +and read "Les Poèmes Antiques," and "Les Poèmes Barbares"; I was +deceived in nothing, all I had anticipated I found--long, desolate +boredom. Leconte de Lisle produces on me the effect of a walk through +the new Law Courts, with a steady but not violent draught sweeping from +end to end. Oh, the vile old professor of rhetoric! and when I saw him +the last time I was in Paris, his head--a declaration of righteousness, +a cross between a Cæsar by Gerome, and an archbishop of a provincial +town, set all my natural antipathy instantly on edge. Hugo is often +pompous, shallow, empty, unreal, but he is at least an artist, and when +he thinks of the artist and forgets the prophet, as in "Les Chansons des +Rues et des Bois," his juggling with the verse is magnificent, superb. + + "Comme un geai sur l'arbre + Le roi se tient fier; + Son cœur est de marbre, + Son ventre est de chair. + + "On a pour sa nuque + Et son front vermeil + Fait une perruque + Avec le soleil. + + "Il règne, il végète + Effroyant zéro; + Sur lui se projette + L'ombre du bourreau. + + "Son trône est une tombe, + Et sur le pavé + Quelque chose en tombe + Qu'on n'a point lavé." + +But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I +cannot think. If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out +and see how that _rude dompteur de syllables_ managed it. But stay, +_son trône est la tombe_; that makes the verse, and the generalisation +would be in the "line" of Hugo. Hugo--how impossible it is to speak of +French literature without referring to him. Let these, however, be +concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, +saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the +rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and +pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is +better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and +incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth--one verse is +better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is +better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never +had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so +not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality +would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, +what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes. + +To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is +it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this +sort, "_des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain_" and such sententious +platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "_Les épidémies de cette +nature passent, et le génie demeure_." + +Theodore de Banville. At first I thought him cold, infected with the +rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim +nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not +seem to touch him, nor did he sing the languors and ardours of animal or +spiritual passion. But there is this: a pure, clear song, an +instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. He sings of the +white lily and the red rose, such knowledge of, such observation of +nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is +trilling magic in every song, and the song as it ascends rings, and all +the air quivers with the ever-widening circle of the echoes, sighing and +dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad +rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way. Banville is not +the poet, he is the bard. The great questions that agitate the mind of +man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he perceives only as +stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words. +Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical. His wit flies out on +clear-cut, swallow-like wings; in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le +Besoin d'aimer," he said: "_Vous avez trouvé un titre assez laid pour +faire reculer les divines étoiles_." I know not what instrument to +compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to +me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys +and he produces Chopin-like fluidities. + +It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it +was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the +couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the +adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, +"_Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine_" that the cæsura received +its final _coup de grâce_. This verse has been probably more imitated +than any other verse in the French language. _Pensivement_ was replaced +by some similar four-syllable adverb, _Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas +de soie, etc_. It was the beginning of the end. + +I read the French poets of the modern school--Coppée, Mendés, Léon Diex, +Verlaine, José Maria Hêrédia, Mallarmé, Richepin, Villiers de l'Isle +Adam. Coppée, as may be imagined, I only was capable of appreciating in +his first manner, when he wrote those exquisite but purely artistic +sonnets "La Tulipe," and "Le Lys." In the latter a room decorated with +daggers, armour, jewellery and china is beautifully described, and it is +only in the last line that the lily, which animates and gives life to +the whole, is introduced. But the exquisite poetic perceptivity Coppée +showed in his modern poems, the certainty with which he raised the +commonest subject, investing it with sufficient dignity for his purpose, +escaped me wholly, and I could not but turn with horror from such poems +as "La Nourrice" and "Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself +to acknowledge the vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not +understand. The fiery glory of José Maria de Hérédia, on the contrary, +filled me with enthusiasm--ruins and sand, shadow and silhouette of +palms and pillars, negroes, crimson, swords, silence, and arabesques. +Like great copper pans go the clangour of the rhymes. + + "Entre le ciel qui brûle et la mer qui moutonne, + Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone, + Tu songes, O guerrière, aux vieux conquistadors; + Et dans l'énervement des nuits chaudes et calmes, + Berçant ta gloire éteinte, O cité, tu t'endors + Sous les palmiers, au long frémissement des palmes." + +Catulle Mendès, a perfect realisation of his name, with his pale hair, +and his fragile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved woman. +He takes you by the arm, by the hand, he leans towards you, his words +are caresses, his fervour is delightful, and to hear him is as sweet as +drinking a smooth perfumed yellow wine. All he says is false--the book +he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he +buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. +An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the +muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing +from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly +voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte +de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as +Gautier, as good as Coppée; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but +he never wrote a line that some one of his brilliant contemporaries +might not have written. He has produced good work of all kinds "et voilà +tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendès. Robert +Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been +substituted for perfumed yellow wine. No more delightful talker than +Mendès, no more accomplished _littérateur_, no more fluent and +translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the _Place +Pigale_, when, on leaving the _café_, he would take me by the arm, and +expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek +sophists. There were for contrast Mallarmé's Tuesday evenings, a few +friends sitting round the hearth, the lamp on the table. I have met none +whose conversation was more fruitful, but with the exception of his +early verses I cannot say I ever enjoyed his poetry frankly. When I knew +him he had published the celebrated "L'Après Midi d'un Faun": the first +poem written in accordance with the theory of symbolism. But when it was +given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange +illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure. +Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the +enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; I am sure +if I were to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties. It bears +the same relation to the author's later work as _Rienzi_ to _The +Walkyrie_. But what is symbolism? Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite +to what you mean. For example, you want to say that music which is the +new art, is replacing the old art, which is poetry. First symbol: a +house in which there is a funeral, the pall extends over the furniture. +The house is poetry, poetry is dead. Second symbol: "_notre vieux +grimoire_," _grimoire_ is the parchment, parchment is used for writing, +therefore, _grimoire_ is the symbol for literature, "_d'où s'exaltent +les milliers_," thousands of what? of letters of course. We have heard a +great deal in England of Browning obscurity. The "Red Cotton Nightcap +Country" is a child at play compared to a sonnet by such a determined +symbolist as Mallarmé, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added +to the infirmities of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation. For +according to M. Ghil and his organ _Les Ecrits pour l'Art,_ it would +appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the +sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the +different instruments. The vowel _u_ corresponds to the colour yellow, +and therefore to the sound of flutes. Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, +first in the field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil +informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in +coupling the sound of the vowel _u_ with the colour green instead of +with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder +and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste +Ingénu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is +dedicated to Mallarmé, "Père et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des +poisons," and other works are to follow:--the six tomes of "Légendes de +Rêves et de Sang," the innumerable tomes of "La Glose," and the single +tome of "La Loi." + +And that man Gustave Kahn, who takes the French language as a violin, +and lets the bow of his emotion run at wild will upon it, producing +strange acute strains, unpremeditated harmonies comparable to nothing +that I know of but some Hungarian rhapsody; verses of seventeen +syllables interwoven with verses of eight, and even nine, masculine +rhymes, seeking strange union with feminine rhymes in the middle of the +line--a music sweet, subtil, and epicene; the half-note, the inflexion, +but not the full tone--as "_se fondre, o souvenir, des lys âcres +délices_." + + Se penchant vers les dahlias, + Des paons cabrent des rosaces lunaires + L'assou pissement des branches vénère + Son pâle visage aux mourants dahlias. + + Elle écoute au loin les brèves musiques + Nuit claire aux ramures d'accords, + Et la lassitude a bercé son corps + Au rhythme odorant des pures musiques. + + Les paons ont dressé la rampe occellée + Pour la descente de ses yeux vers le tapis + De choses et de sens + Qui va vers l'horizon, parure vermiculée + De son corps alangui + En l'âme se tapit + Le flou désir molli de récits et d'encens. + +I laughed at these verbal eccentricities, but they were not without +their effect, and that a demoralising one; for in me they aggravated the +fever of the unknown, and whetted my appetite for the strange, abnormal +and unhealthy in art. Hence all pallidities of thought and desire were +eagerly welcomed, and Verlaine became my poet. Never shall I forget the +first enchantment of "Les Fétes Galantes." Here all is twilight. + +The royal magnificences of the sunset have passed, the solemn beatitude +of the night is at hand but not yet here; the ways are veiled with +shadow, and lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with +blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange +contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid +creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and +fitful light..."_un soir équivoque d'automne_"..."_les belles pendent +rêveuses à nos bras_"...and they whisper "_les mots spéciaux et tout +bas_." + +Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the +soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness +and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step +further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as +faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball +dress, to-morrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, +worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or +unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but +Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an +amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawing from +all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness +more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the +licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every +natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music +native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. +The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or +of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of +an archbishop of Persepolis. + + Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil + Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente + Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente + D'aimer des seins légers et ce gentil babil. + + Il a vaincu la femme belle aucœur subtil + Etalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante; + Il a vaincu l'enfer, il rentre dans sa tente + Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril. + + Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême + Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même. + Et prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel; + + En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole, + Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel, + Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole. + +In English there is no sonnet so beautiful, its beauty cannot be worn +away, it is as inexhaustible as a Greek marble. The hiatus in the last +line was at first a little trying, but I have learned to love it. Not in +Baudelaire nor even in Poe is there more beautiful poetry to be found. +Poe, unread and ill-understood in America and England, here, thou art an +integral part of our artistic life. + +The Island o' Fay, Silence, Eleonore, were the familiar spirits of an +apartment beautiful with Manets and tapestry; Swinburne and Rossetti +were the English poets I read there; and in a golden bondage, I, a unit +in the generation they have enslaved, clanked my fetters and trailed my +golden chain, a set of stories in many various metres, to be called +"Roses of Midnight." One of the characteristics of the volume was that +daylight was banished from its pages. In the sensual lamplight of yellow +boudoirs, or the wild moonlight of centenarian forests, my fantastic +loves lived out their lives, died with the dawn which was supposed to be +an awakening to consciousness of reality. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Surely the phrase is ill considered, hurried "my +convalescence" would express the author's meaning better.] + + + + +VII + + +A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds +softly upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the +fleeting beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces, +all strictly garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal +frame enchased with rubies and a few emeralds. And this _chef d'œuvre_ +of antique workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal +pretty. Fair she is and thin. + +She is a woman of thirty--no,--she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has +written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague +and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But +that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge +of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck +and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he +cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want to say. + +Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a +young man of refined mind--a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day +on his pleasures, and in whose library are found some few volumes of +modern poetry--seeks his ideal in a woman of thirty. + +It is clear that, by the very essence of her being, the young girl may +evoke no ideal but that of home; and home is in his eyes the antithesis +of freedom, desire, aspiration. He longs for mystery, deep and endless, +and he is tempted with a foolish little illusion--white dresses, +water-colour drawings and popular music. He dreams of Pleasure, and he +is offered Duty; for do not think that that sylph-like waist does not +suggest to him a yard of apron string, cries of children, and that most +odious word, "Papa." A young man of refined mind can look through the +glass of the years. + +He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of +thirty at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he +knows that the world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved +and amused, the circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine +faces, they cluster like flowers on this side and that, and they fade +into garden-like spaces of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest +may one day smile upon his knee! and shall he renounce all for that +little creature who has just finished singing and is handing round cups +of tea? Every bachelor contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to +give up all for one, one." + +The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and +uncertain, it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests +nothing; the very essence of the young girl's being is that she should +have nothing to suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to +touch the imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no +story of hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and +ninety-nine cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at +least a pound a day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering +the muslin flower if he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight +every one. Where, then, is the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? +Therefore, I say that if a young man's heart is not set on children, and +tiresome dinner-parties, the young girl presents to him no possible +ideal. But the woman of thirty presents from the outset all that is +necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man. I see her sitting in her +beautiful drawing-room, all designed by, and all belonging to her. Her +chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the long leaves lean +out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses of the +Aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand +piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her +visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy +firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; +August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is +stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations +lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. +These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines +himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, +calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight +sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe +affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its +disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she +has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love +reality would dissolve into a dream, all limitations would open into +boundless infinity. + +The husband he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about +half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, +his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the +_caserne_, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry +him?--a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand +times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is +five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation has passed into middle +age. + +Why did she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great +mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry +space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this +riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the +clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; +and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, she has forgotten. + +The young man shakes hands with the husband; he strives not to look +embarrassed, and he talks of indifferent things--of how well he (the +husband) is looking, of his amusements, his projects; and then he (the +young man of refined mind) tastes of that keen and highly-seasoned +delight--happiness in crime. He knows not the details of her home life, +the husband is merely a dark cloud that fills one side of the picture, +sometimes obliterating the sunlight; a shadowy shape that in certain +moments solidifies and assumes the likeness of a rock-sculptured, +imminent monster, but the shadow and the shape and the threat are +magnetic, and in a sense of danger the fascination is sealed. + +The young man of refined mind is in a ball-room! He leans against the +woodwork in a distant doorway; hardly knowing what to do with himself, +he strives to interest himself in the conversation of a group of men +twice his age. I will not say he is shunned; but neither the matrons nor +the young girls make any advances towards him. The young girls so +sweet--in the oneness of their fresh hair, flowers, dresses, and +glances--are being introduced, are getting up to dance, and the hostess +is looking round for partners. She sees the young man in the doorway, +but she hesitates and goes to some one else, and if you asked her why, +she could not tell you why she avoided him. Presently the woman of +thirty enters. She is in white satin and diamonds. She looks for him--a +circular glance. Calm with possession she passes to a seat, extending +her hand here and there. She dances the eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth +waltz with him. + +Will he induce her to visit his rooms? Will they be like +Marshall's--strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps--or mine, an +old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral +century, my taste; or will it be a library,--two leather library chairs, +a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be +the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of +the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: +her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband's +arms, with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and +lonely shall kneel and adore her. + +And should she _not_ visit his rooms? If the complex and various +accidents of existence should have ruled out her life virtuously; if the +many inflections of sentiment have decided against this last +consummation, then she will wax to the complete, the unfathomable +temptress--the Lilith of old--she will never set him free, and in the +end will be found about his heart "one single golden hair." She shall +haunt his wife's face and words (should he seek to rid himself of her by +marriage), a bitter sweet, a half-welcome enchantment; she shall +consume and destroy the strength and spirit of his life, leaving it +desolation, a barren landscape, burnt and faintly scented with the sea. +Fame and wealth shall slip like sand from him. She may be set aside for +the cadence of a rhyme, for the flowing line of a limb, but when the +passion of art has raged itself out, she shall return to blight the +peace of the worker. + +A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called +nympholepsy--a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal +aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not +extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall +yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their +ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, +and they call it--the woman of thirty. + + + + +VIII + + +A Japanese dressing-gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some +fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and +having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack, my great +python crawling about after a two months' fast. I tie up a guinea-pig to +the _tabouret_, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, +the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the +oscillations...now he strikes; and with what exquisite gourmandise he +lubricates and swallows. + +Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, +that beautiful hymn, the "Vexilla Regis," by Saint Fortunatus, the great +poet of the Middle Ages. And, having turned over the leaves of "Les +Fêtes Galantes," I sit down to write. + +My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying +from thirty to three hundred lines in length. The nature of these +stories is easy to imagine: there was the youth who wandered by night +into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and +old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the +holy man; but he died as he yielded; his arms stiffened by some miracle, +and she was unable to free herself; she died of starvation, as her +bondage loosened in decay. I had increased my difficulties by adopting +as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in +many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I +was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising +crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they +were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art +of telling a story clearly and dramatically, _selon les procédés de M. +Scribe_, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a +hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a +hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, +Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring +_café_, and our conversation turned on _l'exposition de la pièce, +préparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes_, etc. One day, as I sat +waiting for him, I took up the _Voltaire_. It contained an article by M. +Zola. _Naturalisme, la vérité, la science,_ were repeated some +half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you +should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a +novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. +Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, +ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who +has received a violent blow on the head. + +Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying +marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader +who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word +"Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a +train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many +years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the +reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of +the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final +ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led +to the creation of a mental existence. + +And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and +inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the +new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, +and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile +eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any +semblance of life, passionless in all their passion. + +I had read a few chapters of the "Assommoir," as it appeared in _La +République des Lettres_; I had cried, "ridiculous, abominable," only +because it is characteristic of me to instantly form an opinion and +assume at once a violent attitude. But now I bought up the back numbers +of the _Voltaire_, and I looked forward to the weekly exposition of the +new faith with febrile eagerness. The great zeal with which the new +master continued his propaganda, and the marvellous way in which +subjects the most diverse, passing events, political, social, religious, +were caught up and turned into arguments for, or proof of the truth of +naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon +science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on +imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern +life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a +new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb +before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the +ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would +arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious +and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at +each development of the theory of the new art and its universal +applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any +one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an +explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing--as well drink +the dregs of yesterday's champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I +glance through the pages listlessly I say, "Only the simple crude +statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision." + +Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was +to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, +and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little +doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be +for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, +only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the +simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, +sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to +whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had +declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly +naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so +important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible +he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least +condemn. At last the expected article came. It was all that could be +desired by one in my fever of mind. Hugo's claims had been previously +disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed-up +dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had +been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. _Cependant_ +there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry. I +trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough. Coppée had +striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, +_Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel_; he had sought to give utterance +to humble sentiments as in "Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge," the little +grocer _qui cassait le sucre avec mélancolie_; Richepin had boldly and +frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity. +All this was, however, preparatory and tentative. We are waiting for our +poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen +and the comestible glories of the market-places. The subjects are to +hand, the formula alone is wanting. + +The prospect dazzled me; I tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me +to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?--bays, +laurel crown, a distinct _souvenir_ of Parnassus, but there is no modern +equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me +think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." +The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of +Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is +Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible +glories of the market-place shall be mine. _A bas "Les Roses de +Minuit"_! + +I felt the "naturalisation" of the "Roses of Midnight" would prove a +difficult task. I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems +aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and +Ville d'Avray. This book was to be entitled "Poems of 'Flesh and +Blood.'" + +"_Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu_" ...and then? Why, +then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded +streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, +inquires at the _concierge's_ loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, "_Que +c'est haut le cinquième_," and then? Why, the door opens, and she +cries, "_Je t'aime_" + +But it was the idea of the new æstheticism--the new art corresponding to +modern, as ancient art corresponded to ancient life--that captivated me, +that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by +the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed +by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also +by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment +of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new--the +washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the +development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is +broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the +fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its +fulness; it is worked up to _crescendo_, another side issue is +introduced, and again the theme is given forth. And I marvelled greatly +at the lordly, river-like roll of the narrative, sometimes widening out +into lakes and shallowing meres, but never stagnating in fen or +marshlands. The language, too, which I did not then recognise as the +weak point, being little more than a boiling down of Chateaubriand and +Flaubert, spiced with Goncourt, delighted me with its novelty, its +richness, its force. Nor did I then even roughly suspect that the very +qualities which set my admiration in a blaze wilder than wildfire, being +precisely those that had won the victory for the romantic school forty +years before, were very antagonistic to those claimed for the new art; I +was deceived, as was all my generation, by a certain externality, an +outer skin, a nearness, _un approchement_; in a word, by a substitution +of Paris for the distant and exotic backgrounds so beloved of the +romantic school. I did not know then, as I do now, that art is eternal, +that it is only the artist that changes, and that the two great +divisions--the only possible divisions--are: those who have talent, and +those who have no talent. But I do not regret my errors, my follies; it +is not well to know at once of the limitations of life and things. I +should be less than nothing had it not been for my enthusiasms; they +were the saving clause in my life. + +But although I am apt to love too dearly the art of my day, and to the +disparagement of that of other days, I did not fall into the fatal +mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and +on the same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac; I felt +that that vast immemorial mind rose above them all, like a mountain +above the highest tower. + +And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for +mention is made in the wonderful preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal" of +Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it?--woman or man? Should +Wilfred or Mona be the possessor? A new Mdlle. de Maupin, with royal +lily and aureole, cloud-capped mountains, great gulfs of sea-water +flowing up and reflecting as in a mirror the steep cliff's side; the +straight white feet are set thereon, the obscuring weft of flesh is +torn, and the pure, strange soul continues its mystical exhortations. +Then the radiant vision, a white glory, the last outburst and +manifestation, the trumpets of the apocalypse, the colour of heaven, the +closing of this stupendous allegory--Seraphita lying dead in the rays of +the first sun of the nineteenth century. + +I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead +of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Père Goriot, +I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of +his genius--Seraphita. Certain _nuances_ of soul are characteristic of +certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest +of this fervent soul? The instincts of genius are unfathomable? but he +who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, +will aver that instinct led him aright. I have known one, one whom I +used to call Seraphita; Coppée knew her too, and that exquisite volume, +"L'Exilé," so Seraphita-like in the keen blonde passion of its verse, +was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written. +Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season +in Paris? Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs +of sea water, mountain rock, and pine? + +Balzac's genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars: "Melmoth +Reconcilié," "Jesus-Christ en Flandres," "Le Revers d'un Grand Homme," +"La Cousine Bette." I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was +the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal. Of +Pascal's claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge. No man is +greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the +legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the +existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof +of the existence of Jupiter Ammon. "Les Pensées" could appear to me only +as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and +sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself. Still, I +accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment +paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have +shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware +that this last statement will make many cry "fool" and hiss +"Shakespeare"! But I am not putting forward these criticisms +axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and +interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different +developments and the progress of my mind. It might prove a little +tiresome, but it would no doubt "look well," in the sense that going to +church "looks well," if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of +our national bard. I must, however, resist the temptation to "look +well"; a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth +it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any +profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the +great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well +as I could not fail to hear the melody of-- + + "Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly? + Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy." + +Is not such music as this enough? Of course, but I am a sensualist in +literature. I may see perfectly well that this or that book is a work of +genius, but if it doesn't "fetch me," it doesn't concern me, and I +forget its very existence. What leaves me cold to-day will madden me +to-morrow. With me literature is a question of sense, intellectual sense +if you will, but sense all the same, and ruled by the same +caprices--those of the flesh? Now we enter on very subtle distinctions. +No doubt that there is the brain-judgment and the sense-judgment of a +work of art. And it will be noticed that these two forces of +discrimination exist sometimes almost independently of each other, in +rare and radiant instances confounded and blended in one immense and +unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, +thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates +to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. +This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why +should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in +me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one +can understand the other, but there are affinities in literature +corresponding to, and very analogous to, sexual affinities--the same +unreasoned attractions, the same pleasures, the same lassitudes. Those +we have loved most we are most indifferent to. Shelley, Gautier, Zola, +Flaubert, Goncourt! how I have loved you all; and now I could not, would +not, read you again. How womanly, how capricious; but even a capricious +woman is constant, if not faithful to her _amant de cœur_. And so with +me; of those I have loved deeply there is but one that still may thrill +me with the old passion, with the first ecstasy--it is Balzac. Upon that +rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often +from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new æstheticisms, +the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the +symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit +and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the +first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought +that shall make speech beautiful and rememberable. The grandeur and +sublimity of Balzac's thoughts seem to me to rise to the loftiest +heights, and his range is limitless; there is no passion he has not +touched, and what is more marvellous, he has given to each in art a +place equivalent to the place it occupies in nature; his intense and +penetrating sympathy for human life and all that concerns it enabled him +to surround the humblest subjects with awe and crown them with the light +of tragedy. There are some, particularly those who can understand +neither and can read but one, who will object to any comparison being +drawn between the Dramatist and the Novelist; but I confess that I--if +the inherent superiority of verse over prose, which I admit +unhesitatingly, be waived--that I fail, utterly fail to see in what +Shakespeare is greater than Balzac. The range of the poet's thought is +of necessity not so wide, and his concessions must needs be greater than +the novelist's. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to +the vital question--the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is +Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to +Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the +apothecary in the "Cousine Bette," or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine +Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever +conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three +hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his +characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions +are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation +of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in +contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as +epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute +sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer +than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the +poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she +says, "His look frightens me as if he put his hand on my dress"; and +another epigram from the same book, "Woman's virtue is man's greatest +invention." Find me anything in La Rochefoucauld that goes more +incisively to the truth of things. One more; here I can give the exact +words: "_La gloire est le soleil des morts_." It would be easy to +compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all "Maximes" and +"Pensées," even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and +shallow. + +Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading +culminated in the "Comédie Humaine." I no doubt fluttered through some +scores of other books, of prose and verse, sipping a little honey, but +he alone left any important or lasting impression upon my mind. The rest +was like walnuts and wine, an agreeable aftertaste. + +But notwithstanding all this reading I can lay no claim to scholarship +of any kind; for save life I could never learn anything correctly. I am +a student only of ball rooms, bar rooms, streets, and alcoves. I have +read very little; but all I read I can turn to account, and all I read I +remember. To read freely, extensively, has always been my ambition, and +my utter inability to study has always been to me a subject of grave +inquietude,--study as contrasted with a general and haphazard gathering +of ideas taken in flight. But in me the impulse is so original to +frequent the haunts of men that it is irresistible, conversation is the +breath of my nostrils, I watch the movement of life, and my ideas spring +from it uncalled for, as buds from branches. Contact with the world is +in me the generating force; without this what invention I have is thin +and sterile, and it grows thinner rapidly, until it dies away utterly, +as it did in the composition of my unfortunate "Roses of Midnight." + +Men and women, oh the strength of the living faces! conversation, oh the +magic of it! It is a fabulous river of gold where the precious metal is +washed up without stint for all to take, to take as much as he can +carry. Two old ladies discussing the peerage? Much may be learned, it is +gold; poets and wits, then it is fountains whose spray solidifies into +jewels, and every herb and plant is begemmed with the sparkle of the +diamond and the glow of the ruby. + +I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the "Nouvelle +Athènes." What is the "Nouvelle Athènes"? He who would know anything of +my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the +official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French +academy, the _café_. The "Nouvelle Athènes" is a _café_ on the Place +Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was +but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used +to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to +separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we +might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who +used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our +home, live only in a few pictures and a few pages of prose. The same old +story, the vanquished only are victorious; and though unacknowledged, +though unknown, the influence of the "Nouvelle Athènes" is inveterate in +the artistic thought of the nineteenth century. + +How magnetic, intense, and vivid are these memories of youth. With what +strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,--see the white +face of that _café_, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching +up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of +those two streets, and I know what shops are there; I can hear the glass +door of the _café_ grate on the sand as I open it. I can recall the +smell of every hour. In the morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, +the pungent cigarette, coffee and bad cognac; at five o'clock the +fragrant odour of absinthe; and soon after the steaming soup ascends +from the kitchen; and as the evening advances, the mingled smells of +cigarettes, coffee, and weak beer. A partition, rising a few feet or +more over the hats, separates the glass front from the main body of the +_café_. The usual marble tables are there, and it is there we sat and +æstheticised till two o'clock in the morning. But who is that man? he +whose prominent eyes flash with excitement. That is Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam. The last or the supposed last of the great family. He is +telling that girl a story--that fair girl with heavy eyelids, stupid and +sensual. She is, however, genuinely astonished and interested, and he is +striving to play upon her ignorance. Listen to him. "Spain--the night is +fragrant with the sea and the perfume of the orange trees, you know--a +midnight of stars and dreams. Now and then the silence is broken by the +sentries challenging--that is all. But not in Spanish but in French are +the challenges given; the town is in the hands of the French; it is +under martial law. But now an officer passes down a certain garden, a +Spaniard disguised as a French officer; from the balcony the family--one +of the most noble and oldest families Spain can boast of, a thousand +years, long before the conquest of the Moors--watches him. Well +then"--Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is +falling over his face--he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in +the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to "scamp," in +French to _escamoter_. "The family are watching, death if he is caught, +if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague +sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is +seized. Martial law, Spanish conspiracy must be put down. The French +general is a man of iron." (Villiers laughs, a short, hesitating laugh +that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain +way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, +but also the entire family--a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you +cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the +calamity--a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard +alone could--there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting--the utter +extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all +the families in Spain, it is not easy to understand that, no, not easy +here in the 'Nouvelle Athènes'--ha, ha, one must belong to a great +family to understand, ha, ha. + +"The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue +the name--the youngest son--that is all; if he could be saved, the rest +what matter; death is nothing to a Spaniard; the family, the name, a +thousand years of name is everything. The general is, you know, a 'man +of iron.' 'Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, but on one +condition.' To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they +don't know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and +they cry, 'Any conditions.' 'He who is respited must serve as +executioner to the others.' Great is the doom; you understand; but after +all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes +to his youngest son and says, 'I have been a good father to you, my son; +I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never +refused you anything. Now you will not fail us, you will prove yourself +worthy of the great name you bear. Remember your great ancestor who +defeated the Moors, remember.'" (Villiers strives to get in a little +local colour, but his knowledge of Spanish names and history is limited, +and he in a certain sense fails.) "Then the mother comes to her son and +says, 'My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say +you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.' Then the little +sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the +horror-stricken boy.... + +"'He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,' cries the father. +'Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, +strike straight.' The father's head falls into the sawdust, the blood +all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another +brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could +bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your +father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but +he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; +remember your promise to us all,' and her head was struck off." + +"And the son," the girl asks, "what became of him?" + +"He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the +walls of his castle in Granada." + +"And whom did he marry?" + +"He never married." + +Then after a long silence some one said,-- + +"Whose story is that?" + +"Balzac's." + +At that moment the glass door of the _café_ grated upon the sanded +floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially +Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking +that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress--his +clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that +swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, +the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an +idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression--frank +words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear +as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, +bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next +to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is +nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large +necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. +These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their +friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting +'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris,'" says Manet. "Manet is +in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and +be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by +force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas. +Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture +from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the +devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, +there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints +unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently +that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely +what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision +does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from +drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he +has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his +strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the +arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the _café_ is +closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great +moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the +streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm, +speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous, +aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an +unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little +and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows +that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write +another novel, he will say, "What's the good, it would not be read; no +one read the others, and I mightn't do even as well if I tried again." +Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in +the "Nouvelle Athènes." + +Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world: +somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a +forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning +there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they +shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be +forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make +live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and +aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic +soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon +thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall +that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of +the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies +the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and +stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four +sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the +streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the +suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the +accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth +floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand +francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe, +and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and +the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a +refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the +life-size "Venus de Milo." Something extraordinary would be done with +it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head +must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should +be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets. + +Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard +giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion +above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day +earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he +made his _début_ at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of +consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was +immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America. + +I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now--that long sallow face +ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered +with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In +all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I +remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the +glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst +thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be +rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean +accent, "_Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois +orchestres militaires."_ And when I did show thee some poor verses of +mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten +my native language-- + +"My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is +nauseating." + +"So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and +lovers; his best poem...." + +"_C'est vrai, mais il s'agissait d'une charogne et cela relève beaucoup +la chose_." + +I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music +that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which +Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where +the _melody_ was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the +last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with +unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and +that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng +Saur." + +And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something +too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I +think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far +removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd. + +But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though +obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst +live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in +an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and +lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the +clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light +Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a +white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never +before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such +aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting +fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of +the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of +the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and +waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic +convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent +rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our +confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all +base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our +high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the +ideal, the true and living God of all men. + +Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athènes"; you are a little +tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry +out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your +poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to +æstheticise till the _café_ closes; for you the homeless ones are +waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to +your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and +the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover +them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with +plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, +you will find a few sous to give them _lager_ to cool their thirsty +throats. So you have ever lived--a blameless life is yours, no base +thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art and +friends, that is all. + +Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more +fortunate than I have been. + + + + +IX + +THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES + + +Two dominant notes in my character--an original hatred of my native +country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All +the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I +cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to +nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am +instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and +repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I +am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with +them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I +explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family +some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I +love, and with a love that is foolish--mad, limitless; I love them +better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet +Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great +hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and +the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful +southern England, not the north,--there is something Celtic in the +north--southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces--a smock frock +is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so +absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires +of the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to +me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism +is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism +is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese +about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases +to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung +to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The +Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs +limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and +revere Cromwell. + +_Garçon, un bock_! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; +if my books sell I cannot help it--it is an accident. + +But you live by writing. + +Yes, but life is only an accident--art is eternal. + +What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you +won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the _Figaro_. + +He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if +the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who +created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it. + +And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in +the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And that +terrible phrase repeated over and over again--"La Conquête de Paris." +What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris; +no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three +provincials. + +You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of +breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for +the pleasure of undressing them. + + * * * * * + +Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in +favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for +Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_, +and Lefebvre's unswerving fidelity to _le nu_...elegance, refinement, an +echo of ancient Greece: and then,--what do you think? when he had +exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to +Lefebvre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife +and eight children." Is it not monstrous? + +But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole +world in conformity with your æstheticisms...a vain dream, and if +realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are +the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to +such interests as these meet with response...it will be so till the +end of time. + +And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began +two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as +much as you thought they should be. + +Love--but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and +mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, +colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about +her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and +her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, +the _au delà_? But the women one has never seen before, that one will +never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the +baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark +with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or +maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes--the whisper +of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is +delusion, an _au delà_. + +Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching +people the "grammar of art." Education should be confined to clerks, and +it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn +anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, +musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an +unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve +of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct +drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force +it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and +that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good +heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is +better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for +making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does +not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly like +other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of +Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic +education are devoured. After two years they all paint and draw alike, +every one; that vile execution,--they call it execution,--_la pâte, la +peinture au premier coup_. I was over in England last year, and I saw +some portraits by a man called Richmond. They were horrible, but I liked +them because they weren't like painting. Stott and Sargent are clever +fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and +hadn't been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the +trail of the serpent is over all they do--that vile French painting, +_le morceau_, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a +nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. +I liked his little landscapes better...simplified into nothing, into a +couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he +will find a public to understand all that. + +Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a +few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that +democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy--the mass. The +mass can only appreciate simple and _naïve_ emotions, puerile +prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come +over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, +Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International +Exhibition?--The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided +by a _plébiscite_, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming +majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of +the _Petit Journal_. Don't talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters; +they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people +could understand _Hamlet_, the people would not read the _Petit +Journal_; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not +look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last +hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is +the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still +good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will +always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem. +But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend +for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to +exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five thousand, ten +thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not +ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I +was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were +putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. +Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not +find out; no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no +one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more +republican you are the worse it will be. + +The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the +plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to +rise against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, +and all the rest--stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by +machinery; they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were +painted by the hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the +demand, and a china in which there was always something more or less +pretty, was turned out; but now thousands, millions of plates are made +more than we want, and there is a commercial crisis; the thing is +inevitable. I say the great and the reasonable revolution will be when +mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the machinery and restores the +handicrafts. + +Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and +outcries; he is not an artist. _Il me fait l'effet_ of an old woman +shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of +it with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote +novels, history, plays, they collected _bric-à-brac_--they wrote about +their _bric-à-brac_; they painted in water-colours, they etched--they +wrote about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will +settling that the _bric-à-brac_ is to be sold at their death, and the +proceeds applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I +forget which it is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; +they kept a diary, they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, +_radotage de vieille femme_; nothing must escape, not the slightest +word; it might be that very word that might confer on them immortality; +everything they heard, or said, must be of value, of inestimable value. +A real artist does not trouble himself about immortality, about +everything he hears, feels and says; he treats ideas and sensations as +so much clay wherewith to create. + +And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written +about, prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for +articles; it all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is +puerile. + +And Daudet? + +Oh, Daudet, _c'est de la bouillabaisse_. + +Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people +have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute +inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of +artistic work. Whistler's art is classical; he thinks of nature, but he +does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and +the best of it is he says so. He knows it well enough! Any one who knows +him must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is +an exact science." And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks +nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his +pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions. I +admire his work; I am showing how he is misunderstood, even by those who +think they understand. Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic +of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any +other?--Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., +with a view to rendering his _idea_. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he +ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever see Duret +with a lady's opera cloak?--I am sure he never did. Is Duret in the +habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No, he is a _littérateur_ who +is always in men's society, rarely in ladies'. But these facts mattered +nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to Manet. Whistler took +Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme--in a +word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the +model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw; I am merely +contending that Whistler's art is not modern art, but classic art--yes, +and severely classical, far more classical than Titian's or +Velasquez;--from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek +dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than +Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. +Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand that the artistic +stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If +a man is really an artist he will remember what is necessary, forget +what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt his artistic +digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches, inchoate and +wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis. + +I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned. +What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the +same peasant, the same _sabot_, the same sentiment. You must admit that +it is somewhat stereotyped. + +What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But +that does not prevent it from being always beautiful. + +People talk of Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What +he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent +execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in +the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of +touch--marvellous! + +French translation is the only translation; in England you still +continue to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used +to do the same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of +two things--if the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse +for that of the original;--I don't want his verse, I want the +original;--if he is a bad poet; he gives us bad verse, which is +intolerable. Where the original poet put an effect of cæsura, the +translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the original poet puts an +effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of cæsura. Take +Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the original as +our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take Bayard +Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one with an +ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the +original did not exist? The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful, +but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They +are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of +a "splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he +had read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not +different from Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir +Theodore Martin, is doggerel. + +But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you +could into prose? + +I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your +mind away from that of the original. + + * * * * * + +But if you don't know the original? The rhythm of the original can be +suggested in prose judiciously used; even if it isn't, your mind is at +least free, whereas the English rhythm must destroy the sensation of +something foreign. There is no translation except a word-for-word +translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's translation of +Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke that is +untranslatable is explained in a note. + + * * * * * + +But that is the way young ladies translate--word for word! + + * * * * * + +No; 'tis just what they don't do; they think they are translating word +for word, but they aren't. All the proper names, no matter how +unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose +versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;--I don't know what a +verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. +Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very +good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a +note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "_Quand le cheval est +sellé il faut le monter_;" in French there is a proverb: "_Quand le vin +est tiré il faut le boire_." Well, a translator who would translate +_quand le cheval_, etc., by _quand le vin_, etc., is an ass, and does +not know his business. In translation only a strictly classical language +should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should +be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the +illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into +English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless +language, something--what shall I say?--the style of a modern Addison. + + * * * * * + +What, don't you know the story about Mendès?--when _Chose_ wanted to +marry his sister? _Chose's_ mother, it appears, went to live with a +priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was broken-hearted; +and he went to Mendès, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make +a clean breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great +deal of beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know +Mendès, you can see him smiling a little; and looking at _Chose_ with +that white cameo face of his he said, + +"_Avec quel meillur homme voulez-vous que votre mère se mit? vous +n'avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment religieux._" + +Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration, +long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again. + +How to be happy!--not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the +_Nouvelle Athènes_, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the _bourgeois_ +over there, not to do anything that would awake a too intense +consciousness of life,--to live in a sleepy country side, to have a +garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every +evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out +to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the +tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from +church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, +who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;--and to think +there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of +the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The +philanthropist is the Nero of modern times. + + + + +X + +EXTRACT FROM A LETTER + + +"Why did you not send a letter? We have all been writing to you for the +last six months, but no answer--none. Had you written one word I would +have saved all. The poor _concierge_ was in despair; she said the +_propriétaire_ would wait if you had only said when you were coming +back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done. Three +quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an +auction had to be called. It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid +men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against +the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne.... And all the +while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the +face--'the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,' 'the fan widespread across +the bosom' (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the +mistress of that little paradise of tapestry. She seemed to resent the +intrusion. I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes 'deep set +in crimson shadow' to fill with tears. But nothing altered her great +dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained +impenetrable.... + +"I was there the night before the sale. I looked through the books, +taking notes of those I intended to buy--those which we used to read +together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in +_terre cuite_, that laughed amid the frosty _boulingrins_. I found a +large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed. You should not be +so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their +letters. + +"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did +not wish to be recognised; the _concierge_ of course knew me, but she +can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she +to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred +francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the +auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from +the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table +waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the _marchands +de meubles_ in the _quartier_, came upstairs, spitting and talking +coarsely--their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled +the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese +dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was +a humorist, answered, 'If there are any ladies' men present, we shall +have some spirited bidding.' The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it +and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the +miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many +other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare--the organ +that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which +we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave +you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not +give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put +matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. +I don't know why, _un caprice de femme_. No one but you would have ever +thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that +delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation +with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out +all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm +moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the +bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy +darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the +heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted +something: '_les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants_.' +It was horrid of you: but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the +wrong way. Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the +servants set the other out with little tables? That supper was +fascinating! I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me +wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy +them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose +I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face. +The shoes went with a lot of other things--and oh, to whom? + +"So now that pretty little retreat in the _Rue de la Tour des Dames_ is +ended for ever for you and me. We shall not see the faun in _terre +cuite_ again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the +street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse's hind +legs. I believe it is the steepest street in Paris. And your luncheon +parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what +I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to +that out-of-the-way little street! Men never appreciate the risks women +run for them. But to leave my letters lying about--I cannot forgive +that. When I told Fay she said, 'What can you expect? I warned you +against flirting with boys.' I never did before--never. + +"Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I +read you Browning. You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand +why. I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you +should be here. There are lilacs in the room and the _Mont Valérien_ is +beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into +violet vapour. + +"We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year. Last +year we went to P----, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within +easy distance of a casino. I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out +every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, +and I gave way. There were two young men here, one the Count of B----, +the other the Marquis of G----, one of the best families in France, a +distant cousin of my husband. He has written a book which every one says +is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, _c'est +surtout très Parisien_. He paid me great attentions, and made my husband +wildly jealous. I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it +was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away. We may return there +this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an +excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable. We have decided +nothing as yet. The Duchesse de ---- is giving a costume ball; they say +it is going to be a most wonderful affair. I don't know what money is +not going to be spent upon the cotillion. I have just got home a +fascinating toilette. I am going as a _Pierette_; you know, a short +skirt and a little cap. The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago. I +danced the cotillion with L----, who, as you know, dances divinely; _il +m'a fait la cour_, but it is of course no use, you know that. + +"The other night we went to see the _Maître-de-Forges_, a fascinating +play, and I am reading the book; I don't know which I like the best. I +think the play, but the book is very good too. Now that is what I call a +novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels. But I must not talk +literature, or you will say something stupid. I wish you would not make +foolish remarks about men that _tout-Paris_ considers the cleverest. It +does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at +you behind your back, and that is not nice for me. The _marquise_ was +here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on +her 'days,' so extraordinary were the remarks you made. And by the way, +the _marquise_ has written a book. I have not seen it, but I hear that +it is really too _décolleté_. She is _une femme d'esprit_, but the way +she affiché's herself is too much for any one. She never goes anywhere +now without _le petit_ D----. It is a great pity. + +"And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you +are coming back to Paris. I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that +hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really +_trés Parisien_. Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs +Elysées. You might come back for the Duchesse's ball. I will get an +invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of +running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going +to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things +be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that +Turkish lamp. Yours ----" + +How like her that letter is,--egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not +foolish--narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and +yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity +of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an +inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived +her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely--sincerely?...like a +moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? +Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, +that is quite certain. I never could understand her;--a little brain +that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was +something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought +clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put +into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of +feeling--nervous feeling. I don't know...perhaps.... She has lived her +life...yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do +more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, +little, and merry--a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly +hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had +known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was +very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had +good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far +too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once...once I +did, _enfin_! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm +was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I +know.... I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments +when.... Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely +subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that +was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never +knew if she hated her husband,--one never knew her,--I never knew how +she would receive me. The last time I saw her...that stupid American +would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding +behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. +However, she could not blame me that time--and all the stories she used +to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the +sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got +her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to +think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into +mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois +they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight +hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, +the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room +geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms +and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a +little grotesque no doubt;--the mechanical admiration for all that is +about her, for the general atmosphere; the _Figaro_, that is to say +Albert Wolf, _l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-à-dire, dans le +monde_, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But +with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain +ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain +elevations and depravities,--depravities in the legitimate sense of the +word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace.... + +Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from +my reverie, it was pleasant. + +The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes +that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that +one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer +honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant +letter. My agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained +a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in +me;--so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible +even knowing how I stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey +and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that +morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful +Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the +odious epistle. + +That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I +may not be deprived of my _demi-tasse_ at _Tortoni's_, that I may not be +forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python--monstrous. +And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they +will find pity! + +Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. +The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to +interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak +shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the +strong shall be really strong,--that the strong shall be glorious, +sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, +cry the moderns. + +Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale +socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. +His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He +dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who +hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and +feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way +beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has +drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find +Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee +now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and +more Divine than any man's has been. The chosen people, the garden, the +betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of +Magdalen. The God descending to the harlot! Even the great pagan world +of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and +hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this. + +Come to me, ye who are weak. The Word went forth, the terrible +disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that +they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; +the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, +ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing +every day the end--the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, +that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I +will say it) in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. What fate has been like Thine? +Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, +crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent +bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious +plight, forthward in the world's van the glory and symbol of a man's new +idea--Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame +with Thy light than ever before--Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing +on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming +night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth +century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the +hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face +is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for +sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in +the ruin Thou hast created. + +Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is +the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of +fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of +lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but +for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! +What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under +Pharaoh's lash or Egypt's sun? It was well that they died that I might +have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. +Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the +ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some +sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres' _La Source_? That +the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when +compared with the essential that I should have _La Source_, that +exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with +delight of the painter's holy vision. Nay more, the knowledge that a +wrong was done--that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a +girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal +thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare. Oh, for +the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, +for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to +hear them cry the famous "Ave Caesar," to hold the thumb down, to see +the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned +slaves! Oh, for excess, for crime! I would give many lives to save one +sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, "_A la très-chère, à la très-belle, +qui remplit man cœur de clarté"_ let the first-born in every house in +Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to +decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from +destruction one drawing by Hokusai. Again I say that all we deem sublime +in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if +mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and +fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was +great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England's greatest +son was the personification of injustice--Cromwell. + +But the old world of heroes is over now. The skies above us are dark +with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are +running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing +remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate +Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, +creatures of the ooze and rushes about us--we, the great ship that has +floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain +passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive +blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen +escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary +of tears and effusion, and our refuge--the British Museum--is the wide +sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the +flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is +indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and +how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, +barbarous soul of beauty and of might! + + + + +XI + + +But neither Apollo nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his +exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood +lightly advancing; the other sat in sombre contemplation, calm as a +beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel--the +beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich +autumnal leaves where the jays darted and screamed. The twisted columns +of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, +the python devoured a guinea-pig, the last I gave him; the great white +cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an +abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So +be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, +without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never +return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with +myself; I told my _concierge_ that I would return in a month, and I left +all to be sold, brutally sold by auction, as the letter I read in the +last chapter charmingly and touchingly describes. + +Not even to Marshall did I confide my foreboding that Paris would pass +out of my life, that it would henceforth be with me a beautiful memory, +but never more a practical delight. He and I were no longer living +together; we had parted a second time, but this time without bitterness +of any kind; he had learnt to feel that I wanted to live alone, and had +moved away into the Latin quarter, whither I made occasional +expeditions. I accompanied him once to the old haunts, but various terms +of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest +myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once +done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection +for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would +grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made +friends in the Nouvelle Athènes who interested me passionately, and my +thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had +failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him +to Degas and Manet, but he had spoken of Jules Lefèbvre and Bouguereau, +and generally shown himself incapable of any higher education; he could +not enter where I had entered, and this was alienation. We could no +longer even talk of the same people; when I spoke of a certain +_marquise_, he answered with an indifferent "Do you really think so"? +and proceeded to drag me away from my glitter of satin to the dinginess +of print dresses. It was more than alienation, it was almost separation; +but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to +whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I +turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap--rap--rap! + +"Who's there?" + +"I--George Moore." + +"I've got a model." + +"Never mind your model. Open the door. How are you? what are you +painting?" + +"This; what do you think of it?" + +"It is prettily composed. I think it will come out all right. I am going +to England; come to say good-bye." + +"Going to England! What will you do in England?" + +"I have to go about money matters, very tiresome. I had really begun to +forget there was such a place." + +"But you are not going to stay there?" + +"Oh, no!" + +"You will be just in time to see the Academy." + +The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last +Marshall said, "I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; +there's that model." + +The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very +picture of discontent. + +"Send her away." + +"I asked her to come out to dinner." + +"D--n her.... Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with +you; you shall both dine with me. _Je quitte Paris demain matin, +peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon +ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous +invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela +vous est agrèable_?" + +"_Je veux bien, monsieur_." + +Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was +always so. We dined in a _gargote_, and afterwards we went to a +students' ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing +through a clear sky, and on the pavement's edge Marshall's beautiful, +slim, manly figure, and Marie's exquisite gracefulness. She was +Lefèbvre's Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. +She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained +she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No +one knew why; some said it was love. + +I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large +trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman +as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley's Hotel I met my +agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He +explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and +that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a +solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to +contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, +and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. +The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the +senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of +human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but +among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent +spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify +himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and +language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new +nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, +and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was +a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every +aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of +life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; +I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but +everything seemed far away--a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was +in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I +could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an +Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an +Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will +take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that +any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is +found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are +psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is +the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of +a Frenchman's mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they +stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, +form, and temperament;--two ideas destined to remain irrevocably +separate and distinct. + +I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this +was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more +years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts +with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as +an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was +in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional +_chroniques_ in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember +very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing +with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more +easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did +not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, +I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose +required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is +required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and +also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt +with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English +verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an +attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure. + +Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose +translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes:-- + + We are alone! Listen, a little while, + And hear the reason why your weary smile + And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet, + And how my love of you is more complete + Than any love of any lover. They + Have only been attracted by the gray + Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim + And delicate form, or some such other whim, + The simple pretexts of all lovers;--I + For other reason. Listen whilst I try + To say. I joy to see the sunset slope + Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, + Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm + Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, + In mildly modulated phrases; thus + Your life shall fade like a voluptuous + Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die + Like some soft evening's sad serenity... + I would possess your dying hours; indeed + My love is worthy of the gift, I plead + For them. Although I never loved as yet, + Methinks that I might love you; I would get + From out the knowledge that the time was brief, + That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, + And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm + Beyond all other loves, for now the arm + Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims + You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames + Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet + To see you fading like a violet, + Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange + And costly pleasure, far beyond the range + Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I + Will choose a country spot where fields of rye + And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, + Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, + To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where, + The porch and windows are festooned with fair + Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon + A shady garden where we'll walk alone + In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see + Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, + The garden's length, is far, and you will rest + From time to time, leaning upon my breast + Your languid lily face. Then later still + Unto the sofa by the window-sill + Your wasted body I shall carry, so + That you may drink the last left lingering glow + Of evening, when the air is filled with scent + Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent + The while with many griefs. Like some blue day + That grows more lovely as it fades away, + Gaining that calm serenity and height + Of colour wanted, as the solemn night + Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep + For ever and for ever; I shall weep + A day and night large tears upon your face, + Laying you then beneath a rose-red place + Where I may muse and dedicate and dream + Volumes of poesy of you; and deem + It happiness to know that you are far + From any base desires as that fair star + Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. + Death takes but little, yea, your death has given + Me that deep peace, and that secure possession + Which man may never find in earthly passion. + +And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for +they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my +English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor +poets? + + NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE + + La nuit est pleine de silence, + Et dans une étrange lueur, + Et dans une douce indolence + La lune dort comme une fleur. + + Parmi rochers, dans le sable + Sous les grands pins d'un calme amer + Surgit mon amour périssable, + Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair. + + Je suis ton amant, et la blonde + Gorge tremble sous mon baiser, + Et le feu de l'amour inonde + Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser. + + Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche + Est telle qu'un fruit fait de sang; + Tout passe, mais ta main me touche + Et je me donne en frémissant, + + Tes yeux verts me regardent: j'aime + Le clair de lune de tes yeux, + Et je ne vois dans le ciel même + Que ton corps rare et radieux. + + POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON + + De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs, + D'ombres, d'étoiles ou de pleurs? + De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes + De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes? + + Parcilles aux lis abattus + Elles dorment les rêves tus + Dans la grande fenêtre ovale + Ou s'ouvre la nuit estivale. + +But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient +occupation for a life-time--I realised that fact suddenly--I remember +the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and +these poems were the last efforts of my muse. + + THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST + + As sailors watch from their prison + For the faint grey line of the coasts, + I look to the past re-arisen, + And joys come over in hosts + Like the white sea birds from their roosts. + + I love not the indelicate present, + The future's unknown to our quest, + To-day is the life of the peasant, + But the past is a haven of rest-- + The things of the past are the best. + + The rose of the past is better + Than the rose we ravish to-day, + 'Tis holier, purer, and fitter + To place on the shrine where we pray + For the secret thoughts we obey. + + In the past nothing dies, nothing changes, + In the past all is lovely and still; + No grief nor fate that estranges, + Nor hope that no life can fulfil, + But ethereal shelter from ill. + + The coarser delights of the hour + Tempt, and debauch, and deprave, + And we joy in a flitting flower, + Knowing that nothing can save + Our flesh from the fate of the grave. + + But sooner or later returning + In grief to the well-loved nest, + Our souls filled with infinite yearning, + We cry, there is rest, there is rest + In the past, its joys are the best. + + NOSTALGIA + + Fair were the dreamful days of old, + When in the summer's sleepy shade, + Beneath the beeches on the wold, + The shepherds lay and gently played + Music to maidens, who, afraid, + Drew all together rapturously, + Their white soft hands like white leaves laid, + In the old dear days of Arcady. + + Men were not then as they are now + Haunted and terrified by creeds, + They sought not then, nor cared to know + The end that as a magnet leads, + Nor told with austere fingers beads, + Nor reasoned with their grief and glee, + But rioted in pleasant meads + In the old dear days of Arcady. + + The future may be wrong or right, + The present is a hopeless wrong, + For life and love have lost delight, + And bitter even is our song; + And year by year grey doubt grows strong, + And death is all that seems to dree. + Wherefore with weary hearts we long + For the old dear days of Arcady. + + Envoi. + + Glories and triumphs ne'er shall cease, + But men may sound the heavens and sea, + One thing is lost for aye--the peace + Of the old dear days of Arcady. + +And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, +determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships +of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious +for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. +An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. +So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that +house? Chance, or a friend's recommendation? I forget. It was +uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are +curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The +sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled +with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a +large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed +stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a +small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition +wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. +This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten +shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In +the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy +Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, +and in the afternoon, friends--girls from the theatre--used to come and +see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; +and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L----; she had only +two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except +when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now +looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones. + +She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she +liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or +two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; +we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of +what?--of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of +enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it +was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not +living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I +have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings +which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our +intimacy, and I believe Miss L---- was charged indirectly for her +conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large +sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. +The landlady's parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to +it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence +ascended Mrs S----'s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, +with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs +predominating. + +Emma, I remember you--you are not to be forgotten--up at five o'clock +every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous +children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck +and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours +at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, +running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down +on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those +hands--can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind +word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the +pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts +of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had +sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally +you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were +too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into +the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were +very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and +intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a +real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. +Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely +recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked--well, to +be candid,--you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated +the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers +something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore +that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you +was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw +something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of +yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I +have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of +yours, for it was a sweet face--that sweet, natural goodness that is so +sublime--lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words +convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your +case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen +hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the +slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the +landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know +that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish +between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I +remember when you heard that Miss L---- was going to America, you asked +me, and the question was sublime: "Is she going to travel all night?" +You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you +knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you +went to church, and you said, "No, it makes my eyes bad." I said, "But +you don't read; you can't read." "No, but I have to look at the book." I +asked you if you had heard of God--you hadn't, but when I pressed you +on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not +answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the +landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, +and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of +days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you +answered that you couldn't go to church because it made your eyes bad. +It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London +and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, +except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police--yes, you knew what a +policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an +organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark +kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours +a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why +you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you +"didn't know how Mrs S---- would get on without me." + +This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what +you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not +know how she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point +your intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; +I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take +the children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of +this and he said--Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well +give a mule a holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably +descriptive of you. Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you +are a beast of burden, a drudge too horrible for anything but work; and +I suppose, all things considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen +children did well to work you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out +of your miserable wages. You had no friends; you could not have a friend +unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your +brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I +wondered if he were as awful as you. Poor Emma! I shall never forget +your kind heart and your unfailing good humour; you were born +beautifully good as a rose is born with perfect perfume; you were as +unconscious of your goodness as the rose of its perfume. And you were +taken by this fat landlady as 'Arry takes a rose and sticks it in his +tobacco-reeking coat; and you will be thrown away, shut out of doors +when health fails you, or when, overcome by base usage, you take to +drink. There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and +paid your wages there would be no hope. Those forty pounds even, if they +were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the +idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his +kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his +whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind +words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in +despair, the gin shop and the river would do the rest. Providence is +very wise after all, and your best destiny is your present one. We +cannot add a pain, nor can we take away a pain; we may alter, but we +cannot subtract nor even alleviate. But what truisms are these; who +believes in philanthropy nowadays? + + * * * * * + +"Come in." + +"Oh, it is you, Emma!" + +"Are you going to dine at home to-day, sir?" + +"What can I have?" + +"Well, yer can 'ave a chop or a steak." + +"Anything else?" + +"Yes, yer can 'ave a steak, or a chop, or--" + +"Oh, yes, I know; well then, I'll have a chop. And now tell me, Emma, +how is your young man? I hear you have got one, you went out with him +the other night." + +"Who told yer that?" + +"Ah, never mind; I hear everything." + +"I know, from Miss L----" + +"Well, tell me, how did you meet him, who introduced him?" + +"I met 'im as I was a-coming from the public 'ouse with the beer for +missus' dinner." + +"And what did he say?" + +"He asked me if I was engaged; I said no. And he come round down the +lane that evening." + +"And he took you out?" + +"Yes." + +"And where did you go?" + +"We went for a walk on the Embankment." + +"And when is he coming for you again?" + +"He said he was coming last evening, but he didn't." + +"Why didn't he?" + +"I dunno; I suppose because I haven't time to go out with him. So it +was Miss L---- that told you; well, you do 'ave chats on the stairs. I +suppose you likes talking to 'er." + +"I like talking to everybody, Emma; I like talking to you." + +"Yes, but not as you talks to 'er; I 'ears you jes do 'ave fine times. +She said this morning that she had not seen you for this last two +nights--that you had forgotten 'er, and I was to tell yer." + +"Very well, I'll come out to-night and speak to her." + +"And missus is so wild about it, and she daren't say nothing 'cause she +thinks yer might go." + + * * * * * + +A young man in a house full of women must be almost supernaturally +unpleasant if he does not occupy a great deal of their attention. +Certain at least it is that I was the point of interest in that house; +and I found there that the practice of virtue is not so disagreeable as +many young men think it. The fat landlady hovered round my doors, and I +obtained perfectly fresh eggs by merely keeping her at her distance; the +pretty actress, with whom I used to sympathise with on the stairs at +midnight, loved me better, and our intimacy was more strange and subtle, +because it was pure, and it was not quite unpleasant to know that the +awful servant dreamed of me as she might of a star, or something equally +unattainable; but the landlady's daughter, a nasty girl of fifteen, +annoyed me with her ogling, which was a little revolting, but the rest +was, and I speak quite candidly, not wholly unpleasant. It was not +aristocratic, it is true, but, I repeat, it was not unpleasant, nor do I +believe that any young man, however refined, would have found it +unpleasant. + +But if I was offered a choice between a chop and steak in the evening, +in the morning I had to decide between eggs and bacon and bacon and +eggs. A knocking at the door, "Nine o'clock, sir; 'ot water, sir; what +will you have for breakfast?" "What can I have?" "Anything you like, +sir. You can have bacon and eggs, or--" "Anything else?"--Pause,--"Well, +sir, you can have eggs and bacon, or--" "Well, I'll have eggs and +bacon." + +The streets seemed to me like rat holes, dark and wandering as chance +directed, with just an occasional rift of sky, seen as if through an +occasional crevice, so different from the boulevards widening out into +bright space with fountains and clouds of green foliage. The modes of +life were so essentially opposed. I am thinking now of intellectual +rather than physical comforts. I could put up with even lodging-house +food, but I found it difficult to forego the glitter and artistic +enthusiasm of the _café_. The tavern, I had heard of the tavern. + +Some seventy years ago the Club superseded the Tavern, and since then +all literary intercourse has ceased in London. Literary clubs have been +founded, and their leather arm-chairs have begotten Mr Gosse; but the +tavern gave the world Villon and Marlowe. Nor is this to be wondered at. +What is wanted is enthusiasm and devil-may-careism; and the very aspect +of a tavern is a snort of defiance at the hearth, the leather arm-chairs +are so many salaams to it. I ask, Did anyone ever see a gay club room? +Can any one imagine such a thing? You can't have a club-room without +mahogany tables, you can't have mahogany tables without +magazines--_Longman's_, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the _Nineteenth +Century_, with an article, "The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern +Society," by W. E. Gladstone--a dulness that's a purge to good spirits, +an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that's worth a thousand +a year. You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver +salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have +to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull. + +As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the +husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can +go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is +considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club--out of the +Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays everyone is respectable--jockeys, +betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs Kendal takes her children +to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them +of the joy of respectability. There is only one class left that is not +respectable, and that will succumb before long; how the transformation +will be effected I can't say, but I know an editor or two who would be +glad of an article on the subject. + +Respectability!--a suburban villa, a piano in the drawing-room, and +going home to dinner. Such things are no doubt very excellent, but they +do not promote intensity of feeling, fervour of mind; and as art is in +itself an outcry against the animality of human existence, it would be +well that the life of the artist should be a practical protest against +the so-called decencies of life; and he can best protest by frequenting +a tavern and cutting his club. In the past the artist has always been an +outcast; it is only latterly he has become domesticated, and judging by +results, it is clear that if Bohemianism is not a necessity it is at +least an adjuvant. For if long locks and general dissoluteness were not +an aid and a way to pure thought, why have they been so long his +characteristics? If lovers were not necessary for the development of +poet, novelist, and actress, why have they always had lovers--Sappho, +George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Sara? Mrs Kendal nurses children all +day and strives to play Rosalind at night. What infatuation, what +ridiculous endeavour! To realise the beautiful woodland passion and the +idea of the transformation, a woman must have sinned, for only through +sin may we learn the charm of innocence. To play Rosalind a woman must +have had more than one lover, and if she has been made to wait in the +rain and has been beaten she will have done a great deal to qualify +herself for the part. The ecstatic Sara makes no pretence to virtue, +she introduces her son to an English duchess, and throws over a nation +for the love of Richepin, she can, therefore, say as none other-- + + "Ce n'est plus qu'une ardeur dans mes veines cachée, + C'est Venus tout entière à sa proie attachée." + +Swinburne, when he dodged about London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems +and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he +has contributed to the _Nineteenth Century_, and published an +interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he +continues his plaint about his mother the sea. + +Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national +costumes are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, +and the smock in the southlands, even the Japanese are becoming +christian and respectable; in another quarter of a century silk hats and +pianos will be found in every house in Yeddo. Too true that universal +uniformity is the future of the world; and when Mr Morris speaks of the +democratic art to be when the world is socialistic, I ask, whence will +the unfortunates draw their inspiration? To-day our plight is pitiable +enough--the duke, the jockey-boy, and the artist are exactly alike; +they are dressed by the same tailor, they dine at the same clubs, they +swear the same oaths, they speak equally bad English, they love the same +women. Such a state of things is dreary enough, but what unimaginable +dreariness there will be when there are neither rich nor poor, when all +have been educated, when self-education has ceased. A terrible world to +dream of, worse, far worse, in darkness and hopelessness than Dante's +lowest circle of hell. The spectre of famine, of the plague, of war, +etc., are mild and gracious symbols compared with that menacing figure, +Universal Education, with which we are threatened, which has already +eunuched the genius of the last five-and-twenty years of the nineteenth +century, and produced a limitless abortion in that of future time. +Education, I tremble before thy dreaded name. The cruelties of Nero, of +Caligula, what were they?--a few crunched limbs in the amphitheatre; but +thine, O Education, are the yearning of souls sick of life, of maddening +discontent, of all the fearsome and fathomless sufferings of the mind. +When Goethe said "More light," he said the wickedest and most infamous +words that human lips ever spoke. In old days, when a people became too +highly civilised the barbarians came down from the north and +regenerated that nation with darkness; but now there are no more +barbarians, and sooner or later I am convinced that we shall have to end +the evil by summary edicts--the obstruction no doubt will be severe, the +equivalents of Gladstone and Morley will stop at nothing to defeat the +Bill; but it will nevertheless be carried by patriotic Conservative and +Unionist majorities, and it will be written in the Statute Book that not +more than one child in a hundred shall be taught to read, and no more +than one in ten thousand shall learn the piano. + +Such will be the end of Respectability, but the end is still far +distant. We are now in a period of decadence growing steadily more and +more acute. The old gods are falling about us, there is little left to +raise our hearts and minds to, and amid the wreck and ruin of things +only a snobbery is left to us, thank heaven, deeply graven in the +English heart; the snob is now the ark that floats triumphant over the +democratic wave; the faith of the old world reposes in his breast, and +he shall proclaim it when the waters have subsided. + +In the meanwhile Respectability, having destroyed the Tavern, and +created the Club, continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating +influence on literature. All audacity of thought and expression has been +stamped out, and the conventionalities are rigorously respected. It has +been said a thousand times that an art is only a reflection of a certain +age; quite so, only certain ages are more interesting than others, and +consequently produce better art, just as certain seasons produce better +crops. We heard in the Nouvelle Athènes how the Democratic movement, in +other words, Respectability, in other words, Education, has extinguished +the handicrafts; it was admitted that in the more individual +arts--painting and poetry--men would be always found to sacrifice their +lives for a picture or a poem: but no man is, after all, so immeasurably +superior to the age he lives in as to be able to resist it wholly; he +must draw sustenance from some quarter, and the contemplation of the +past will not suffice. Then the pressure on him from without is as water +upon the diver; and sooner or later he grows fatigued and comes to the +surface to breathe; he is as a flying-fish pursued by sharks below and +cruel birds above; and he neither dives as deep nor flies as high as his +freer and stronger ancestry. A daring spirit in the nineteenth century +would have been but a timid nursery soul indeed in the sixteenth. We +want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace +to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, +and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. +Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort of octopus, and +nowhere are you quite free from one of its horrible suckers. The power +of the villa residence is supreme: art, science, politics, religion, it +has transformed to suit its requirements. The villa goes to the Academy, +the villa goes to the theatre, and therefore the art of to-day is mildly +realistic; not the great realism of idea, but the puny reality of +materialism; not the deep poetry of a Peter de Hogue, but the meanness +of a Frith--not the winged realism of Balzac, but the degrading +naturalism of a coloured photograph. + +To my mind there is no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a +London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls +hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating +digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit and gallery forgetting the +miseries of life in imbecile stories reeking of the sentimentality of +the back stairs. Were other ages as coarse and common as ours? It is +difficult to imagine Elizabethan audiences as not more intelligent than +those that applaud Mr Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that +could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of +literary infamies as _In the Ranks_ and _Harbour Lights_. Artistic +atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the +rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old +crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet +of the musty characters with which they are peopled--the miser in the +old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he +keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. Let all this be +waived. We must not quarrel with the ingredients. The miser and the old +castle are as true, and not one jot more true, than the million events +which go to make up the phenomena of human existence. Not at these +things considered separately do I take umbrage, but at the miserable use +that is made of them, the vulgarity of the complications evolved from +them, and the poverty of beauty in the dialogue. + +Not the thing itself, but the idea of the thing evokes the idea. +Schopenhauer was right; we do not want the thing, but the idea of the +thing. The thing itself is worthless; and the moral writers who +embellish it with pious ornamentation are just as reprehensible as Zola, +who embellishes it with erotic arabesques. You want the idea drawn out +of obscuring matter, and this can best be done by the symbol. The +symbol, or the thing itself, that is the great artistic question. In +earlier ages it was the symbol; a name, a plume, sufficed to evoke the +idea; now we evoke nothing, for we give everything, the imagination of +the spectator is no longer called into play. In Shakespeare's days to +create wealth in a theatre it was only necessary to write upon a board, +"A magnificent apartment in a palace." This was no doubt primitive and +not a little barbarous, but it was better by far than by dint of anxious +archæology to construct the Doge's palace upon the stage. By one rich +pillar, by some projecting balustrade taken in conjunction with a moored +gondola, we should strive to evoke the soul of the city of Veronese: by +the magical and unequalled selection of a subtle and unexpected feature +of a thought or aspect of a landscape, and not by the up-piling of +extraneous detail, are all great poetic effects achieved. + + "By the tideless dolorous inland sea, + In a land of sand, of ruin, and gold." + +And, better example still, + + "Dieu que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois," + +that impeccable, that only line of real poetry Alfred de Vigny ever +wrote. Being a great poet Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously +observed more faithfully than any other poet these principles of art; +and, as is characteristic of the present day, nowhere do we find these +principles so grossly violated as in the representation of his plays. I +had painful proof of this some few nights after my arrival in London. I +had never seen Shakespeare acted, and I went to the Lyceum and there I +saw that exquisite love-song--for _Romeo and Juliet_ is no more than a +love song in dialogue--tricked out in silks and carpets and illuminated +building, a vulgar bawd suited to the gross passion of an ignorant +public. I hated all that with the hatred of a passionate heart, and I +longed for a simple stage, a few simple indications, and the simple +recitation of that story of the sacrifice of the two white souls for the +reconciliation of two great families. My hatred did not reach to the age +of the man who played the boy-lover, but to the offensiveness with +which he thrust his individuality upon me, longing to realise the poet's +divine imagination: and the woman, too, I wished with my whole soul +away, subtle and strange though she was, and I yearned for her part to +be played by a youth as in old time: a youth cunningly disguised, would +be a symbol; and my mind would be free to imagine the divine Juliet of +the poet, whereas I could but dream of the bright eyes and delicate mien +and motion of the woman who had thrust herself between me and it. + +But not with symbol and subtle suggestion has the villa to do, but with +such stolid, intellectual fare as corresponds to its material wants. The +villa has not time to think, the villa is the working bee. The tavern is +the drone. It has no boys to put to school, no neighbours to study, and +is therefore a little more refined, or, should I say? depraved, in its +taste. The villa in one form or other has always existed, and always +will exist so long as our present social system holds together. It is +the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that +does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence +to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising +effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved +impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of +the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I +will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the symbol and +glory of villaism. + +The subject is not unfamiliar to me; I come to it like the son to his +father, like the bird to its nest. (Singularly inappropriate comparison, +but I am in such excellent humour to-day; humour is everything. It is +said that the tiger will sometimes play with the lamb! Let us play.) We +have the villa well in our mind. The father who goes to the city in the +morning, the grown-up girls waiting to be married, the big drawing-room +where they play waltz music, and talk of dancing parties. But waltzes +will not entirely suffice, nor even tennis; the girls must read. Mother +cannot keep a censor (it is as much as she can do to keep a cook, +housemaid and page-boy), besides the expense would be enormous, even if +nothing but shilling and two-shilling novels were purchased. Out of such +circumstances the circulating library was hatched. + +The villa made known its want, and art fell on its knees. Pressure was +put on the publishers, and books were published at 31s. 6d.; the dirty +outside public was got rid of, and the villa paid its yearly +subscription, and had nice large handsome books that none but the +_élite_ could obtain, and with them a sense of being put on a footing of +equality with my Lady This and Lady That, and certainty that nothing +would come into the hands of dear Kate and Mary and Maggie that they +might not read, and all for two guineas a year. English fiction became +pure, and the garlic and assafœtida with which Byron, Fielding and Ben +Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as +critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. +English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, +were no longer procurable. But at this point human nature intervened; +poor human nature! when you pinch it in one place it bulges out in +another, after the fashion of a lady's figure. Human nature has from the +earliest time shown a liking for dirty stories; dirty stories have +formed a substantial part of every literature (I employ the words "dirty +stories" in the circulating library sense); therefore a taste for dirty +stories may be said to be inherent in the human animal. Call it a +disease if you will--an incurable disease--which, if it is driven +inwards, will break out in an unexpected quarter in a new form and with +redoubled virulence. This is exactly what has happened. Actuated by the +most laudable motives, Mudie cut off our rations of dirty stories, and +for forty years we were apparently the most moral people on the face of +the earth. It was confidently asserted that an English woman of sixty +would not read what would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a +maiden of any other nation. But humiliation and sorrow were awaiting +Mudie. True it is that we still continued to subscribe to his library, +true it is that we still continued to go to church, true it is that we +turned our faces away when _Mdlle. de Maupin_ or the _Assommoir_ was +spoken of; to all appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie +might wish us; and no doubt he looked back upon his forty years of +effort with pride; no doubt he beat his manly breast and said, "I have +scorched the evil one out of the villa; the head of the serpent is +crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly, with all the horror of an +earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders of +fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were +poured upon and hung over the land. Through the mighty columns of our +newspapers the terrible lava rolled unceasing, and in the black stream +the villa, with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and disappeared. + +An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that +there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the +coming of the Nirvana. + +I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a +feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be +legitimately put forward in its favour. It seems to me this: the +circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the +circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise +of the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is +more restrained and there is more reflection. The young and unknown +writer is placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is +not forced to employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; +the known writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to +think more of it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; +but all these possible advantages are destroyed and rendered _nil_ by +the veracious censorship exercised by the librarian. + + * * * * * + +There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that +reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;--but +there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, +and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of +Elizabethan England--I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems +to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, +but in the vulgarity of an English hall--I will not say the Pavilion, +which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there--for +preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first +evening there, when I saw for the time a living house--the dissolute +paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the +slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, +the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what +unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all +enjoyed each other's presence; in a word, there was life. Then there +were no cascades of real water, nor London docks, nor offensively rich +furniture, with hotel lifts down which some one will certainly be +thrown, but one scene representing a street; a man comes on--not, mind +you, in a real smock-frock, but in something that suggests one--and +sings of how he came up to London, and was "cleaned out" by thieves. +Simple, you will say; yes, but better than a _fricassée_ of _Faust_, +garnished with hags, imps, and blue flame; better, far better than a +drawing-room set at the St James's, with an exhibition of passion by Mrs +and Mr Kendal; better, a million times better than the cheap popularity +of Wilson Barrett--an elderly man posturing in a low-necked dress to +some poor trull in the gallery; nor is there in the hall any affectation +of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric which reminds you of a +broken-winded barrel-organ playing _a che la morte_, bad enough in +prose, but when set up in blank verse awful and shocking in its more +than natural deformity--but bright quips and cranks fresh from the +back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the +unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a +week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so +curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer +repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare--see, here she comes with +"What cheer, Rea! Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is +welcome and refreshing after the eternal drawing-room and Mrs Kendal's +cumbrous domesticity; it is curious, quaint, perverted, and are not +these the _aions_ and the attributes of art? Now see that perfect +comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because he is working with +living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he evokes the soul, +the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and elegant in +black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand +me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the +spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene +the comedian's eyes--each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, +it is magnetic, it is symbolic, it is art. + +Not art, but a sign, a presentiment of an art, that may grow from the +present seeds, that may rise into some stately and unpremeditated +efflorescence, as the rhapsodist rose to Sophocles, as the miracle play +rose through Peele and Nash to Marlowe, hence to the wondrous summer of +Shakespeare, to die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the +autumn of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic +interludes that in their unexpectedness and naïve naturalness remind me +of the comic passages in Marlowe's _Faustus_, I waited (I admit in vain) +for some beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic +worshipper cry out in his agony:-- + + "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships + And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? + Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. + Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! + Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again. + Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, + And all is dross that is not Helena." + +And then the astonishing change of key:-- + + "I will be Paris, and for love of thee, + Instead of Troy shall Wurtemberg be sacked," etc. + +The hall is at least a protest against the wearisome stories concerning +wills, misers in old castles, lost heirs, and the woeful solutions of +such things--she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years +restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the _ingenue_ +to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs +Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs +Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the +immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so +different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant +change of scene. The music-hall is a protest against the villa, the +circulating library, the club, and for this the "'all" is inexpressibly +dear to me. + +But in the interests of those illiterate institutions called theatres it +is not permissible for several characters to narrate events in which +there is a sequel, by means of dialogue, in a music-hall. If this +vexatious restriction were removed it is possible, if it is not certain, +that while some halls remained faithful to comic songs and jugglers +others would gradually learn to cater for more intellectual and subtle +audiences, and that out of obscurity and disorder new dramatic forms, +coloured and permeated by the thought and feeling of to-day, might be +definitely evolved. It is our only chance of again possessing a dramatic +literature. + + + + +XII + + +It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and +dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. +Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, +came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. +Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything +but an ordinary person. Let this be waived. I was as covered with "fads" +as a distinguished foreigner with stars. Naturalism I wore round my +neck, Romanticism was pinned over the heart, Symbolism I carried like a +toy revolver in my waistcoat pocket, to be used on an emergency. I do +not judge whether I was charlatan or genius, I merely state that I found +all--actors, managers, editors, publishers, docile and ready to listen +to me. The world may be wicked, cruel, and stupid, but it is patient; on +this point I will not be gainsaid, it is patient; I know what I am +talking about; I maintain that the world is patient. If it were not, +what would have happened? I should have been murdered by the editors of +(I will suppress names), torn in pieces by the sub-editors, and +devoured by the office boys. There was no wild theory which I did not +assail them with, there was no strange plan for the instant +extermination of the Philistine, which I did not press upon them, and +(here I must whisper), with a fair amount of success, not complete +success I am glad to say--that would have meant for the editors a change +from their arm-chairs to the benches of the Union and the plank beds of +Holloway. The actress, when she returned home from the theatre, +suggested I had an enemy, a vindictive enemy, who dogged my steps; but +her stage experience led her astray. I had no enemy except myself; or to +put it scientifically, no enemy except the logical consequences of my +past life and education, and these caused me a great and real +inconvenience. French wit was in my brain, French sentiment was in my +heart; of the English soul I knew nothing, and I could not remember old +sympathies, it was like seeking forgotten words, and if I were writing a +short story, I had to return in thought to Montmartre or the Champs +Elysées for my characters. That I should have forgotten so much in ten +years seems incredible, and it will be deemed impossible by many, but +that is because few are aware of how little they know of the details of +life, even of their own, and are incapable of appreciating the influence +of their past upon their present. The visible world is visible only to a +few, the moral world is a closed book to nearly all. I was full of +France, and France had to be got rid of, or pushed out of sight before I +could understand England; I was like a snake striving to slough its +skin. + +Handicapped as I was with dangerous ideas, and an impossible style, +defeat was inevitable. My English was rotten with French idiom; it was +like an ill-built wall overpowered by huge masses of ivy; the weak +foundations had given way beneath the weight of the parasite; and the +ideas I sought to give expression to were green, sour, and immature as +apples in August. + +Therefore before long the leading journal that had printed two poems and +some seven or eight critical articles, ceased to send me books for +review, and I fell back upon obscure society papers. Fortunately it was +not incumbent on me to live by my pen; so I talked, and watched, and +waited till I grew akin to those around me, and my thoughts blended +with, and took root in my environment. I wrote a play or two, I +translated a French opera, which had a run of six nights, I dramatized +a novel, I wrote short stories, and I read a good deal of contemporary +fiction. + +The first book that came under my hand was "A Portrait of a Lady," by +Henry James. Each scene is developed with complete foresight and +certainty of touch. What Mr James wants to do he does. I will admit that +an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss +of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare +gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, +gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but +Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is +one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word +is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never +resolved out of the haze of nebulae. You are on a bowing acquaintance +with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you +know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes. When I +think of "A Portrait of a Lady," with its marvellous crowd of +well-dressed people, it comes back to me precisely as an accurate +memory of a fashionable soirée--the staircase with its ascending +figures, the hostess smiling, the host at a little distance with his +back turned; some one calls him. He turns; I can see his white kid +gloves, the air is sugar sweet with the odour of the gardenias, there is +brilliant light here, there is shadow in the further rooms, the women's +feet pass to and fro beneath the stiff skirts, I call for my hat and +coat, I light a cigar, I stroll up Piccadilly...a very pleasant evening, +I have seen a good many people I knew, I have observed an attitude, and +an earnestness of manner that proved that a heart was beating. + +Mr James might say, "If I have done this, I have done a great deal," and +I would answer, "No doubt you are a man of great talent, great +cultivation and not at all of the common herd; I place you in the very +front rank, not only of novelists but of men of letters." + +I have read nothing of Henry James's that did suggest the manner of a +scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless +sentimentalities? I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts--why +does he not write complicated stories? Why does he not complete his +stories? Let all this be waived. I will ask him only why he always +avoids decisive action? Why does a woman never say "I will"? Why does a +woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a +man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever +accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common +occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite +twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story +begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the +characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing +happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter +of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some +adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I +take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr Lang says, "I like +adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like +sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr Lang says, +"Oh, do you?" as he might to a man who says, "I like port." But Mr James +and I are agreed on essentials, we prefer character-drawing to +adventures. One, two, or even three determining actions are not +antagonistic to character-drawing, the practice of Balzac, and +Flaubert, and Thackeray prove that. Is Mr James of the same mind as the +poet Verlaine-- + + "La nuance, pas la couleur, + Seulement la nuance, + ..... + Tout le reste est littérature." + +In connection with Henry James I had often heard the name of W.D. +Howells. I bought some three or four of his novels. I found them pretty, +very pretty, but nothing more,--a sort of Ashby Sterry done into very +neat prose. He is vulgar, as Henry James is refined; he is more +domestic; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, +mild witticisms, here, there, and everywhere; a couple of young men, one +a little cynical, the other a little over-shadowed by his love, a +strong, bearded man of fifty in the background; in a word, a Tom +Robertson comedy faintly spiced with American. Henry James went to +France and read Tourgueneff. W.D. Howells stayed at home and read Henry +James. Henry James's mind is of a higher cast and temper; I have no +doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral +history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia--he +borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. +Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was +borrowing. Altogether Mr James's instincts are more scholarly. Although +his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the +prudery of the age,--no, not of the age but of librarians,--I cannot but +feel that his concessions, for I suppose I must call them concessions, +are to a certain extent self-imposed, regretfully, perhaps...somewhat in +this fashion--"True, that I live in an age not very favourable to +artistic production, but the art of an age is the spirit of that age; if +I violate the prejudices of the age I shall miss its spirit, and an art +that is not redolent of the spirit of its age is an artificial flower, +perfumeless, or perfumed with the scent of flowers that bloomed three +hundred years ago." Plausible, ingenious, quite in the spirit of Mr +James's mind; I can almost hear him reason so; nor does the argument +displease me, for it is conceived in a scholarly spirit. Now my +conception of W.D. Howells is quite different--I see him the happy +father of a numerous family; the sun is shining, the girls and boys are +playing on the lawn, they come trooping in to high tea, and there is +dancing in the evening. + +My fat landlady lent me a novel by George Meredith,--"Tragic +Comedians"; I was glad to receive it, for my admiration of his poetry, +with which I was slightly acquainted, was very genuine indeed. "Love in +a Valley" is a beautiful poem, and the "Nuptials of Attila," I read it +in the _New Quarterly Review_ years ago, is very present in my mind, and +it is a pleasure to recall its chanting rhythm, and lordly and sombre +refrain--"Make the bed for Attila." I expected, therefore, one of my old +passionate delights from his novels. I was disappointed, painfully +disappointed. But before I say more concerning Mr Meredith, I will admit +at once frankly and fearlessly, that I am not a competent critic, +because emotionally I do not understand him, and all except an emotional +understanding is worthless in art. I do not make this admission because +I am intimidated by the weight and height of the critical authority with +which I am overshadowed, but from a certain sense, of which I am as +distinctly conscious, viz., that the author is, how shall I put it? the +French would say "quelqu'un," that expresses what I would say in +English. I remember, too, that although a man may be able to understand +anything, there must be some modes of thoughts and attitudes of mind +which we are so naturally antagonistic to, so entirely out of sympathy +with, that we are in no true sense critics of them. Such are the +thoughts that come to me when I read Mr George Meredith. I try to +console myself with such reflections, and then I break out and cry +passionately:--jerks, wire splintered wood. In Balzac, which I know by +heart, in Shakespeare, which I have just begun to love, I find words +deeply impregnated with the savour of life; but in George Meredith there +is nothing but crackjaw sentences, empty and unpleasant in the mouth as +sterile nuts. I could select hundreds of phrases which Mr Meredith would +probably call epigrams, and I would defy anyone to say they were wise, +graceful or witty. I do not know any book more tedious than "Tragic +Comedians," more pretentious, more blatant; it struts and screams, +stupid in all its gaud and absurdity as a cockatoo. More than fifty +pages I could not read. How, I asked myself, could the man who wrote the +"Nuptials of Attila" write this? but my soul returned no answer, and I +listened as one in a hollow mountain side. My opinion of George Meredith +never ceases to puzzle me. He is of the north, I am of the south. +Carlyle, Mr Robert Browning, and George Meredith are the three +essentially northern writers; in them there is nothing of Latin +sensuality and subtlety. + +I took up "Rhoda Fleming." I found some exquisite bits of description in +it, but I heartily wished them in verse, they were motives for poems; +and there was some wit. I remember a passage very racy indeed, of +middle-class England. Antony, I think, is the man's name, describes how +he is interrupted at his tea; a paragraph of seven or ten lines with "I +am having my tea, I am at my tea," running through it for refrain. Then +a description of a lodging-house dinner: "a block of bread on a lonely +place, and potatoes that looked as if they had committed suicide in +their own steam." A little ponderous and stilted, but undoubtedly witty. +I read on until I came to a young man who fell from his horse, or had +been thrown from his horse, I never knew which, nor did I feel enough +interest in the matter to make research; the young man was put to bed by +his mother, and once in bed he began to talk!...four, five, six, ten +pages of talk, and such talk! I can offer no opinion why Mr George +Meredith committed them to paper; it is not narrative, it is not witty, +nor is it sentimental, nor is it profound. I read it once; my mind, +astonished at receiving no sensation, cried out like a child at a +milkless breast. I read the pages again...did I understand? Yes, I +understood every sentence, but they conveyed no idea, they awoke no +emotion in me; it was like sand, arid and uncomfortable. The story is +surprisingly commonplace--the people in it are as lacking in subtlety as +those of a Drury Lane melodrama. + +"Diana of the Crossways" I liked better, and had I had absolutely +nothing to do I might have read it to the end. I remember a scene with a +rustic--a rustic who could eat hog a solid hour--that amused me. I +remember the sloppy road in the Weald, and the vague outlines of the +South Downs seen in starlight and mist. But to come to the great +question, the test by which Time will judge us all--the creation of a +human being, of a live thing that we have met with in life before, and +meet for the first time in print, and who abides with us ever after. +Into what shadow has not Diana floated? Where are the magical glimpses +of the soul? Do you remember in "Pères et Enfants," when Tourgueneff is +unveiling the woman's, shall I say, affection, for Bazaroff, or the +interest she feels in him? and exposing at the same time the reasons why +she will never marry him...I wish I had the book by me, I have not seen +it for ten years. + +After striving through many pages to put Lucien, whom you would have +loved, whom I would have loved, that divine representation of all that +is young and desirable in man, before the reader, Balzac puts these +words in his mouth in reply to an impatient question by Vautrin, who +asks him what he wants, what he is sighing for, "_D'être célèbre et +d'être aimè_,"--these are soul-waking words, these are Shakespearean +words. + +Where in "Diana of the Crossways" do we find soul-evoking words like +these? With tiresome repetition we are told that she is beautiful, +divine; but I see her not at all, I don't know if she is dark, tall, or +fair; with tiresome reiteration we are told that she is brilliant, that +her conversation is like a display of fireworks, that the company is +dazzled and overcome; but when she speaks the utterances are grotesque, +and I say that if anyone spoke to me in real life as she does in the +novel, I should not doubt for an instant that I was in the company of a +lunatic. The epigrams are never good, they never come within measurable +distance of La Rochefoucauld, Balzac, or even Gohcourt. The admirers of +Mr Meredith constantly deplore their existence, admitting that they +destroy all illusion of life. "When we have translated half of Mr +Meredith's utterances into possible human speech, then we can enjoy +him," says the _Pall Mall Gazette_. We take our pleasures differently; +mine are spontaneous, and I know nothing about translating the rank +smell of a nettle into the fragrance of a rose, and then enjoying it. + +Mr Meredith's conception of life is crooked, ill-balanced, and out of +tune. What remains?--a certain lustiness. You have seen a big man with +square shoulders and a small head, pushing about in a crowd, he shouts +and works his arms, he seems to be doing a great deal, in reality he is +doing nothing; so Mr Meredith appears to me, and yet I can only think of +him as an artist; his habit is not slatternly, like those of such +literary hodmen as Mr David Christie Murray, Mr Besant, Mr Buchanan. +There is no trace of the crowd about him. I do not question his right of +place, I am out of sympathy with him, that is all; and I regret that it +should be so, for he is one whose love of art is pure and untainted +with commercialism, and if I may praise it for nought else, I can praise +it for this. + +I have noticed that if I buy a book because I am advised, or because I +think I ought, my reading is sure to prove sterile. _Il faut que cela +vienne de moi_, as a woman once said to me, speaking of her caprices; a +quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected quarter. Mr Hardy and Mr +Blackmore I read because I had heard that they were distinguished +novelists; neither touched me, I might just as well have bought a daily +paper; neither like nor dislike, a shrug of the shoulders--that is all. +Hardy seems to me to bear about the same relation to George Eliot as +Jules Breton does to Millet--a vulgarisation never offensive, and +executed with ability. The story of an art is always the same,...a +succession of abortive but ever strengthening efforts, a moment of +supreme concentration, a succession of efforts weakening the final +extinction. George Eliot gathered up all previous attempts, and created +the English peasant; and following her peasants there came an endless +crowd from Devon, Yorkshire, and the Midland Counties, and, as they +came, they faded into the palest shadows until at last they appeared in +red stockings, high heels and were lost in the chorus of opera. Mr Hardy +was the first step down. His work is what dramatic critics would call +good, honest, straightforward work. It is unillumined by a ray of +genius, it is slow and somewhat sodden. It reminds me of an excellent +family coach--one of the old sort hung on C springs--a fat coachman on +the box and a footman whose livery was made for his predecessor. In +criticising Mr Meredith I was out of sympathy with my author, ill at +ease, angry, puzzled; but with Mr Hardy I am on quite different terms, I +am as familiar with him as with the old pair of trousers I put on when I +sit down to write; I know all about his aims, his methods; I know what +has been done in that line, and what can be done. + +I have heard that Mr Hardy is country bred, but I should not have +discovered this from his writings. They read to me more like a report, +yes, a report--a conscientious, well-done report, executed by a +thoroughly efficient writer sent down by one of the daily papers. +Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and +descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm +people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and +literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for +that it is a little too diluted with Mr Hardy's brains, the edges are a +little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at +work filing; on the other hand, it is not synthesized--the magical word +which reveals the past, and through which we divine the future--is not +seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions +do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, +and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, +or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the +works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested +in such things, because Mr Hardy is anxious to show how jolly country he +is. + +Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, +but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of +moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any +violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense. I +say that a practised writer should be able to do this; that they +sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it +for my purpose if I admit that Mr Hardy can do this. In Farmer Oak there +is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, the execution is +trustworthy; he has legs, arms, and a heart; but the vital spark that +should make him of our flesh and of our soul is wanting, it is dead +water that the sunlight never touches. The heroine is still more dim, +she is stuffy, she is like tow; the rich farmer is a figure out of any +melodrama, Sergeant Troy nearly quickens to life; now and then the +clouds are liquescent, but a real ray of light never falls. + +The story-tellers are no doubt right when they insist on the difficulty +of telling a story. A sequence of events--it does not matter how simple +or how complicated--working up to a logical close, or, shall I say, a +close in which there is a sense of rhythm and inevitableness is always +indicative of genius. Shakespeare affords some magnificent examples, +likewise Balzac, likewise George Eliot, likewise Tourgueneff; the +"Œdipus" is, of course, the crowning and final achievement in the music +of sequence and the massy harmonies of fate. But in contemporary +English fiction I marvel, and I am repeatedly struck by the inability of +writers, even of the first-class, to make an organic whole of their +stories. Here, I say, the course is clear, the way is obvious, but no +sooner do we enter on the last chapters than the story begins to show +incipient shiftiness, and soon it doubles back and turns, growing with +every turn weaker like a hare before the hounds. From a certain +directness of construction, from the simple means by which Oak's ruin is +accomplished in the opening chapters, I did not expect that the story +would run hare-hearted in its close, but the moment Troy told his wife +that he never cared for her, I suspected something was wrong; when he +went down to bathe and was carried out by the current I knew the game +was up, and was prepared for anything, even for the final shooting by +the rich farmer, and the marriage with Oak, a conclusion which of course +does not come within the range of literary criticism. + +"Lorna Doone" struck me as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, +swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to +nothing. Mr Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he +can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the +spirit of life I have already said, but "Lorna Doone" reminds me of a +third-rate Italian opera, _La Fille du Régiment_ or _Ernani_; it is +corrupt with all the vices of the school, and it does not contain a +single passage of real fervour or force to make us forget the inherent +defects of the art of which it is a poor specimen. Wagner made the +discovery, not a very wonderful one after all when we think, that an +opera had much better be melody from end to end. The realistic school +following on Wagner's footsteps discovered that a novel had much better +be all narrative--an uninterrupted flow of narrative. Description is +narrative, analysis of character is narrative, dialogue is narrative; +the form is ceaselessly changing, but the melody of narration is never +interrupted. + +But the reading of "Lorna Doone" calls to my mind, and very vividly, an +original artistic principle of which English romance writers are either +strangely ignorant or neglectful, viz., that the sublimation of the +_dramatis personæ_ and the deeds in which they are involved must +correspond, and their relationship should remain unimpaired. Turner's +"Carthage" is Nature transposed and wonderfully modified. Some of the +passages of light and shade--those of the balustrade--are fugues, and +there his art is allied to Bach in sonority and beautiful combination. +Turner knew that a branch hung across the sun looked at separately was +black, but he painted it light to maintain the equipoise of atmosphere. +In the novel the characters are the voice, the deeds are the orchestra. +But the English novelist takes 'Any and 'Arriet, and without question +allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to pass them into the +realms of the supernatural. Such violation of the first principles of +narration is never to be met with in the elder writers. Achilles stands +as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and +poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the +original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man +with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be +cognate and equal, and the melodic balance and blending are what first +separate Homer and Hugo from the fabricators of singular adventures. In +Scott leather jerkins, swords, horses, mountains, and castles harmonise +completely and fully with food, fighting, words, and vision of life; the +chords are simple as Handel's but they are as perfect. Lytton's work, +although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the same fashion, sustained by +a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,--an +admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the +homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of +decomposition. + +The spiritual analysis of Balzac equals the triumphant imagination of +Shakespeare; and by different roads they reach the same height of tragic +awe, but when improbability, which in these days does duty for +imagination, is mixed with the familiar aspects of life, the result is +inchoate and rhythmless folly, I mean the regular and inevitable +alternation and combination of pa and ma, and dear Annie who lives at +Clapham, with the Mountains of the Moon, and the secret of eternal life; +this violation of the first principles of art--that is to say, of the +rhythm of feeling and proportion, is not possible in France. I ask the +reader to recall what was said on the subject of the Club, Tavern, and +Villa. We have a surplus population of more than two million women, the +tradition that chastity is woman's only virtue still survives, the +Tavern and its adjunct Bohemianism have been suppressed, and the Villa +is omnipotent and omnipresent; tennis-playing, church on Sundays, and +suburban hops engender a craving for excitement for the far away, for +the unknown: but the Villa with its tennis-playing, church on Sundays, +and suburban hops will not surrender its own existence, it must take a +part in the heroic deeds that happen in the Mountains of the Moon; it +will have heroism in its own pint pot. Achilles and Merlin must be +replaced by Uncle Jim and an undergraduate: and so the Villa is the only +begotten of Rider Haggard, Hugh Conway, Robert Buchanan, and the author +of "The House on the Marsh." + +I read two books by Mr Christie Murray, "Joseph's Coat" and "Rainbow +Gold," and one by Messrs Besant and Rice,--"The Seamy Side." It is +difficult to criticise such work. It is as suited to the needs of the +Villa as the baker's loaves and the butcher's rounds of beef. I do not +think that any such miserable literature is found in any other country. +In France some three or four men produce works of art, the rest of the +fiction of the country is unknown to men of letters. But "Rainbow +Gold"--to take the best of the three--is not bad as a second-rate French +novel is bad; it is excellent as all that is straightforward is +excellent; and it is surprising to find that work can be so good, and at +the same time so devoid of artistic charm. That such a thing should be +is one of the miracles of the Villa. + +I have heard that Mr Besant is an artist in the "Chaplain of the Fleet" +and other novels, but this is not possible. The artist shows what he is +going to do the moment he puts pen to paper, or brush to canvas; he +improves on his first attempts, that is all; and I found "The Seamy +Side" so very common, that I cannot believe for a moment that its author +or authors could write a line that would interest me. + +Mr Robert Buchanan is a type of artist that every age produces +unfailingly: Catulle Mendès is his counterpart in France,--but the +pallid Portuguese Jew with his Christ-like face, and his fascinating +fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began +with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries +about the dignity of art, and both have--well...Mr Robert Buchanan has +collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the +Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said about which +the better--he has attacked men whose shoe-strings he is unworthy to +tie, and having failed to injure them, he retracted all he said, and +launched forth into slimy benedictions. He took Fielding's masterpiece, +degraded it, and debased it; he wrote to the papers that Fielding was a +genius in spite of his coarseness, thereby inferring that he was a much +greater genius since he had sojourned in this Scotch house of literary +ill-fame. Clarville, the author of "Madame Angot," transformed Madame +Marneff into a virtuous woman, but he did not write to the papers to say +that Balzac owed him a debt of gratitude on that account. + +The star of Miss Braddon has finally set in the obscure regions of +servantgalism; Ouida and Rhoda Broughton continue to rewrite the books +they wrote ten years ago; Mrs Lynn Linton I have not read. The "Story of +an African Farm" was pressed upon me. I found it sincere and youthful, +disjointed but well-written; descriptions of sandhills and ostriches +sandwiched with doubts concerning a future state, and convictions +regarding the moral and physical superiority of women: but of art +nothing; that is to say, art as I understand it,--rhythmical sequence of +events described with rhythmical sequence of phrase. + +I read the "Story of Elizabeth" by Miss Thackeray. It came upon me with +all the fresh and fair naturalness of a garden full of lilacs and blue +sky, and I thought of Hardy, Blackmore, Murray, and Besant as of great +warehouses where everything might be had, and even if the article +required were not in stock it could be supplied in a few days at latest. +These are exquisite little descriptions, full of air, colour, lightness, +grace, the French life seen with such sweet English eyes, the sweet +little descriptions all so gently evocative. "What a tranquil little +kitchen it was, with a glimpse of the courtyard outside, and the cocks +and hens, and the poplar trees waving in the sunshine, and the old woman +sitting in her white cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome +pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the +beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked +out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the +tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men +calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was +standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to +have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom +in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come +the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the +profound greyness of Hegelism, but merely the genial love and reverence +of a beautiful-minded woman. + +Such charms as these necessitate certain defects, I should say +limitations. Vital creation of character is not possible to Miss +Thackeray, but I do not rail against beautiful water-colour indications +of balconies, vases, gardens, fields, and harvesters because they have +not the fervid glow and passionate force of Titian's Ariadne; Miss +Thackeray cannot give us a Maggie Tulliver, and all the many profound +modulations of that Beethoven-like countryside: the pine wood and the +cripple; this aunt's linen presses, and that one's economies; the boy +going forth to conquer the world, the girl remaining at home to conquer +herself; the mighty river holding the fate of all, playing and dallying +with it for a while, and bearing it on at last to final and magnificent +extinction. That sense of the inevitable which the Greek dramatists had +in perfection, which George Eliot had sufficiently, that rhythmical +progression of events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and +the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the background of +austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour +brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is +true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; +it cannot be led up to by any chords no matter how ingenious, the +passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true +end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of +the mother. + +One of the few writers of fiction who seems to me to possess an ear for +the music of events is Miss Margaret Veley. Her first novel, "For +Percival," although diffuse, although it occasionally flowed into +by-channels and lingered in stagnating pools, was informed and held +together, even at ends the most twisted and broken, by that sense of +rhythmic progression which is so dear to me, and which was afterwards so +splendidly developed in "Damocles." Pale, painted with grey and opaline +tints of morning passes the grand figure of Rachel Conway, a victim +chosen for her beauty, and crowned with flowers of sacrifice. She has +not forgotten the face of the maniac, and it comes back to her in its +awful lines and lights when she finds herself rich and loved by the man +whom she loves. The catastrophe is a double one. Now she knows she is +accursed, and that her duty is to trample out her love. Unborn +generations cry to her. The wrath and the lamentation of the chorus of +the Greek singer, the intoning voices of the next-of-kin, the pathetic +responses of voices far in the depths of ante-natal night, these the +modern novelist, playing on an inferior instrument, may suggest, but +cannot give: but here the suggestion is so perfect that we cease to +yearn for the real music, as, reading from a score, we are satisfied +with the flute and bassoons that play so faultlessly in soundless dots. + +There is neither hesitation nor doubt. Rachel Conway puts her dreams +away, she will henceforth walk in a sad and shady path; her interests +are centred in the child of the man she loves, and as she looks for a +last time on the cloud of trees, glorious and waving green in the sunset +that encircles her home, her sorrow swells once again to passion, and, +we know, for the last time. + +The mechanical construction of M. Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the +naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the +action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing +about of a _dénouement_; and I thought of all this as I read +"Disenchantment" by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my +knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for +the _mise en place_, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so +loose, that much of its strength had dribbled away before it had rightly +begun. But the figure of the Irish politician I accept without reserve. +It seems to me grand and mighty in its sorrowfulness. The tall, +dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations +of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the +girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt's hereditary +sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his +acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that +he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his +country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the +disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once +life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what +remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink. The woman cannot +understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent +desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life's +sky. Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful +knot by suicide. + +I aver that Mr R.L. Stevenson never wrote a line that failed to delight +me; but he never wrote a book. You arrive at a strangely just estimate +of a writer's worth by the mere question: "What is he the author of?" +for every writer whose work is destined to live is the author of one +book that outshines the other, and, in popular imagination, epitomises +his talent and position. Ask the same question about Milton, Fielding, +Byron, Carlyle, Thackeray, Zola, Mr Swinburne. + +I think of Mr Stevenson as a consumptive youth weaving garlands of sad +flowers with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, +and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil. His +periods are fresh and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect +realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never +before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every +page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr Stevenson's style +is over-smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in +the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most +gentlemanly young man that ever walked in the Burlington. Mr Stevenson +is competent to understand any thought that might be presented to him, +but if he were to use it, it would instantly become neat, sharp, +ornamental, light, and graceful, and it would lose all its original +richness and harmony. It is not Mr Stevenson's brain that prevents him +from being a thinker, but his style. + +Another thing that strikes me in thinking of Stevenson (I pass over his +direct indebtedness to Edgar Poe, and his constant appropriation of his +methods), is the unsuitableness of the special characteristics of his +talent to the age he lives in. He wastes in his limitations, and his +talent is vented in prettiness of style. In speaking of Mr Henry James, +I said that, although he had conceded much to the foolish, false, and +hypocritical taste of the time, the concessions he made had in little +or nothing impaired his talent. The very opposite seems to me the case +with Mr Stevenson. For if any man living in this end of the century +needed freedom of expression for the distinct development of his genius, +that man is R.L. Stevenson. He who runs may read, and he with any +knowledge of literature will, before I have written the words, have +imagined Mr Stevenson writing in the age of Elizabeth or Anne. + +Turn your platitudes prettily, but write no word that could offend the +chaste mind of the young girl who has spent her morning reading the +Colin Campbell divorce case; so says the age we live in. The penny paper +that may be bought everywhere, that is allowed to lie on every table, +prints seven or eight columns of filth, for no reason except that the +public likes to read filth; the poet and novelist must emasculate and +destroy their work because.... Who shall come forward and make answer? +Oh, vile, filthy, and hypocritical century, I at least scorn you. + +But this is not a course of literature but the story of the artistic +development of me, George Moore; so I will tarry no longer with mere +criticism, but go direct to the book to which I owe the last temple in +my soul--"Marius the Epicurean." Well I remember when I read the +opening lines, and how they came upon me sweetly as the flowing breath +of a bright spring. I knew that I was awakened a fourth time, that a +fourth vision of life was to be given to me. Shelley had revealed to me +the unimagined skies where the spirit sings of light and grace; Gautier +had shown me how extravagantly beautiful is the visible world and how +divine is the rage of the flesh; and with Balzac I had descended circle +by circle into the nether world of the soul, and watched its +afflictions. Then there were minor awakenings. Zola had enchanted me +with decoration and inebriated me with theory; Flaubert had astonished +with the wonderful delicacy and subtlety of his workmanship; Goncourt's +brilliant adjectival effects had captivated me for a time, but all these +impulses were crumbling into dust, these aspirations were etiolated, +sickly as faces grown old in gaslight. + +I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of +natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the +country, the birds flying,--that one making for the sea; the abandoned +boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the +beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the +wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of +temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my +brain, fresh and fair, full of wide temples and studious hours, and the +lurking fragrance of incense; that such a vision of life was possible I +had no suspicion, and it came upon me almost with the same strength, +almost as intensely, as that divine song of the flesh,--Mademoiselle de +Maupin. + +Certainly, in my mind, these books will be always intimately associated; +and when a few adventitious points of difference be forgotten, it is +interesting to note how firm is the alliance, and how cognate and +co-equal the sympathies on which it is based; the same glad worship of +the visible world, and the same incurable belief that the beauty of +material things is sufficient for all the needs of life. Mr Pater can +join hands with Gautier in saying--_je trouve la terre aussi belle que +le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu_. And I +too join issue; I too love the great pagan world, its bloodshed, its +slaves, its injustice, its loathing of all that is feeble. + +But "Marius the Epicurean" was more to me than a mere emotional +influence, precious and rare though that may be, for this book was the +first in English prose I had come across that procured for me any +genuine pleasure in the language itself, in the combination of words for +silver or gold chime, and unconventional cadence, and for all those +lurking half-meanings, and that evanescent suggestion, like the odour of +dead roses, that words retain to the last of other times and elder +usage. Until I read "Marius" the English language (English prose) was to +me what French must be to the majority of English readers. I read for +the sense and that was all; the language itself seemed to me coarse and +plain, and awoke in me neither æsthetic emotion nor even interest. +"Marius" was the stepping-stone that carried me across the channel into +the genius of my own tongue. The translation was not too abrupt; I found +a constant and careful invocation of meaning that was a little aside of +the common comprehension, and also a sweet depravity of ear for +unexpected falls of phrase, and of eye for the less observed depths of +colours, which although new was a sort of sequel to the education I had +chosen, and a continuance of it in a foreign, but not wholly unfamiliar +medium, and so, having saturated myself with Pater, the passage to De +Quincey was easy. He, too, was a Latin in manner and in temper of mind; +but he was truly English, and through him I passed to the study of the +Elizabethan dramatists, the real literature of my race, and washed +myself clean. + + + + +XIII + +THOUGHTS IN A STRAND LODGING + + +Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away--stowed the last +child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows +of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has +ceased to tempt me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the +inducements that occur to her landlady's mind; the actress from the +Savoy has ceased to walk up and down the street with the young man who +accompanies her home from the theatre; she has ceased to linger on the +doorstep talking to him, her key has grated in the lock, she has come +upstairs, we have had our usual midnight conversation on the landing, +she has told me her latest hopes of obtaining a part, she has told me +of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bidden each other +good-night; she has gone up the creaky staircase, and I have returned to +my room, littered with MS. and queer publications!...the night is hot +and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river, and listless and +lonely I open a book, the first book that comes to hand. It is _Le +Journal des Goncourts,_ p. 358, the end of a chapter:-- + +"_It is really curious that it should be the four men the most free from +all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the +most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public +prosecutor: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and ourselves_." + +Goncourt's statement is suggestive, and I leave it uncommented on; but I +would put by its side another naked simple truth. That if in England the +public prosecutor does not seek to over-ride literature the means of +tyranny are not wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the +nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations +entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved +literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, +were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. +Byron and Shelley, and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its +own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw +his book from the reach of a public that was rooting then amid the +garbage of the Yelverton divorce case. I think of these facts and think +of Baudelaire's prose poem, that poem in which he tells how a dog will +run away howling if you hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you +offer him some putrid morsel picked out of some gutter hole, he will +sniff round it joyfully, and will seek to lick your hand for gratitude. +Baudelaire compared that dog to the public. + +When I read Balzac's stories of Vautrin and Lucien de Rubempré, I often +think of Hadrian and the Antinous. I wonder if Balzac thought of +transposing the Roman Emperor and his favourite into modern life. It is +the kind of thing that Balzac would think of. No critic has ever noticed +this. + +Sometimes, at night, when all is still, and I look out on that desolate +river, I think I shall go mad with grief, with wild regret for my +beautiful _appartement_ in _Rue de la Tour des Dames_. How different +the present from the past! I hate with my whole soul this London +lodging, and all that concerns it--Emma, and eggs and bacon, the +lascivious landlady and her lascivious daughter; I am weary of the +sentimental actress who lives upstairs, I swear I will never go out to +talk to her on the landing again. Then there is failure--I can do +nothing, nothing; my novel I know is worthless; my life is a leaf, it +will flutter out of sight. I am weary of everything, and wish I were +back in Paris. I am weary of reading, there is nothing to read, Flaubert +bores me. What nonsense has been talked about him! Impersonal! He is the +most personal writer. But his odious pessimism! How weary I am of it, it +never ceases, it is lugged in _à tout propos_, and the little lyrical +phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. +Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that +beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until +you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable...a new idea, what +can be more insipid--fit for members of parliament. Shall I go to bed? +No. I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarmé's to +read--Mallarmé for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of Mallarmé in +"A Rebours." In hours like these a page of Huysmans is as a dose of +opium, a glass of something exquisite and spirituous. + +"The decadence of a literature irreparably attacked in its organism, +weakened by the age of ideas, overworn by the excess of syntax, sensible +only of the curiosity which fevers sick people, but nevertheless +hastening to explain everything in its decline, desirous of repairing +all the omissions of its youth, to bequeath all the most subtle +souvenirs of its suffering on its deathbed, is incarnate in Mallarmé in +most consummate and absolute fashion.... + +"The poem in prose is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled +by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the +entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous +description of which it suppresses...the adjective placed in such an +ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of +its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream +for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, +affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the +souls of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet. The +novel thus understood, thus condensed into one or two pages, would be a +communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a +spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons +scattered through the universe, a delectation offered to the most +refined, and accessible only to them." + +Huysmans goes to my soul like a gold ornament of Byzantine workmanship: +there is in his style the yearning charm of arches, a sense of ritual, +the passion of the Gothic, of the window. Ah! in this hour of weariness +for one of Mallarmé's prose poems! Stay, I remember I have some numbers +of _La Vogue_, One of the numbers contains, I know, "Forgotten Pages;" I +will translate word for word, preserving the very rhythm, one or two of +these miniature marvels of diction:-- + + + + I + + FORGOTTEN PAGES. + + + "Since Maria left me to go to another star--which? Orion, Altair, or + thou, green Venus?--I have always cherished solitude. What long days + I have passed alone with my cat. By alone, I mean without a material + being, and my cat is a mystical companion--a spirit. I can, + therefore, say that I have passed whole days alone with my cat, and + alone with one of the last authors of the Latin decadence; for since + that white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I have loved + all that the word _fall_ expresses. In such wise that my favourite + season of the year is the last weary days of summer, which + immediately precede autumn, and the hour I choose to walk in is when + the sun rests before disappearing, with rays of yellow copper on the + grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the + literature that my soul demands--a sad voluptuousness--is the dying + poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all + the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer + the infantile Latin of the first Christian poetry. + + "I was reading, therefore, one of those dear poems (whose paint has + more charm for me than the blush of youth), had plunged one hand into + the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel-organ sang languidly and + melancholy beneath my window. It played in the great alley of + poplars, whose leaves appear to me yellow, even in the spring-tide, + since Maria passed there with the tall candles for the last time. The + instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the + violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the + twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly. Now it murmurs + an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, + an air old-fashioned and commonplace. Why do its flourishes go to my + soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad? I listen, imbibing it + slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of + moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing + itself. + + + II + + + "The old Saxony clock, which is slow, and which strikes thirteen amid + its flowers and gods, to whom did it belong? Thinkest that it came + from Saxony by the mail coaches of old time? + + "(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.) + + "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of + gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one + woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked + long enough, I should see a naked phantom. + + "Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things. + + "(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.) + + "Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! + the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs + stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. + Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured + by time? + + "(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty + windows.) + + "Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my + poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are + full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects + displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, + and thou feelest as if thou shouldst use them--a difficult thing + indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action. + + "Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with + attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the + Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, + my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm + child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the + streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture. + + "Thou art abstracted? + + "(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)" + +We, the "ten superior persons scattered through the universe" think +these prose poems the concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the +essential oil of art, others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be +the aberrations of a refined mind, distorted with hatred of the +commonplace; the pit will immediately declare them to be nonsense, and +will return with satisfaction to the last leading article in the daily +paper. + +_J'ai fait mes adieux à ma mère et je viens pour vous faire les miens_ +and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year in +France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not +been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet +sought literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in +England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious +than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading +journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult +to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and +place it for its greater glory in my less remarkable prose:-- + + "_As we gazed on the beauties thus revealed by Good, a spirit of + emulation filled our breasts, and we set to work to get ourselves up + as well as we could_." + +A return to romance! a return to the animal, say I. + +One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense +desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they +have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal +effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they +have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in +their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very +osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration. What Hugo +did for French verse, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans have done +for French prose. No more literary school than the realists has ever +existed, and I do not except even the Elizabethans. And for this reason +our failures are more interesting than the vulgar successes of our +opponents; for when we fall into the sterile and distorted, it is +through our noble and incurable hatred of the commonplace of all that is +popular. + +The healthy school is played out in England; all that could be said has +been said; the successors of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot have +no ideal, and consequently no language; what can be more pudding than +the language of Mr Hardy, and he is typical of a dozen other writers, Mr +Besant, Mr Murray, Mr Crawford? The reason of this heaviness of thought +and expression is that the avenues are closed, no new subject matter is +introduced, the language of English fiction has therefore run stagnant. +But if the realists should catch favour in England the English tongue +may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would +introduce new forms of language would arise. + +"Carmen Sylva!" How easy it is to divine the æstheticism of any one +signing, "Carmen Sylva." + +In youth the genius of Shelly astonished me; but now I find the +stupidity of the ordinary person infinitely more surprising. + +That I may die childless--that when my hour comes I may turn my face to +the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human +life--then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins +shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, +though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held +accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for +ever. + +I realize that this is truth, the one truth, and the whole truth; and +yet the vainest woman that ever looked in a glass never regretted her +youth more than I, or felt the disgrace of middle-age more keenly. She +has her portrait painted, I write these confessions; each hopes to save +something of the past, and escape somehow the ravening waves of time and +float into some haven of remembrance. St Augustine's Confessions are the +story of a God-tortured, mine of an art-tortured, soul. Which subject is +the most living? The first! for man is stupid and still loves his +conscience as a child loves a toy. Now the world plays with "Robert +Elsmere." This book seems to me like a suite of spacious, well +distributed, and well proportioned rooms. Looking round, I say, 'tis a +pity these rooms are only in plaster of Paris. + +"Les Palais Nomades" is a really beautiful book, and it is free from all +the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of great poetry +an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and +parasites of artistic work--ideas. Of all literary qualities the +creation of ideas is the most fugitive. Think of the fate of an author +who puts forward a new idea to-morrow in a book, in a play, in a poem. +The new idea is seized upon, it becomes common property, it is dragged +through newspaper articles, magazine articles, through books, it is +repeated in clubs, drawing-rooms; it is bandied about the corners of +streets; in a week it is wearisome, in a month it is an abomination. Who +has not felt a sickening feeling come over him when he hears such +phrases as "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Shakespeare was +really great when he wrote "Music to hear, why hearest thou music +sadly?" not when he wrote, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." Could he +be freed from his ideas what a poet we should have! Therefore, let those +who have taken firsts at Oxford devote their intolerable leisure to +preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be +excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and +resume our reading of the bard, and the witless foists would confer +happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See +the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are +burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out of +existence. + +Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided +everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea; +and for this I am grateful. Nor is his volume a collection of +miscellaneous verses bound together. He has chosen a certain sequence of +emotions; the circumstances out of which these emotions have sprung are +given in a short prose note. "Les Palais Nomades" is therefore a novel +in essence; description and analysis are eliminated, and only the +moments when life grows lyrical with suffering are recorded; recorded in +many varying metres conforming only to the play of the emotion, for, +unlike many who, having once discovered a tune, apply it promiscuously +to every subject they treat, Kahn adapts his melody to the emotion he is +expressing, with the same propriety and grace as Nature distributes +perfume to her flowers. For an example of magical transition of tone I +turn to _Intermède_. + + "Chère apparence, viens aux couchants illuminés. + Veux-tu mieux des matins albes et calmes? + Les soirs et les matins ont des calmes rosâtres + Les eaux ont des manteaux de cristal irisé + Et des rhythmes de calmes palmes + Et l'air évoque de calmes musiques de pâtres. + + * * * * * + + Viens sous des tendelets aux fleuves souriants + Aux lilas pâlis des nuits d'Orient + Aux glauques étendues à falbalas d'argent + A l'oasis des baisers urgents + Seulement vit le voile aux seuls Orients. + + * * * * * + + Quel que soit le spectacle et quelle que soit la rame + Et quelle que soit la voix qui s'affame et brame, + L'oubli du lointain des jours chatouille et serre, + Le lotos de l'oubli s'est fané dans mes serres, + Cependant tu m'aimais à jamais? + Adieu pour jamais." + +The repetitions of Edgar Poe seem hard and mechanical after this, so +exquisite and evanescent is the rhythm, and the intonations come as +sweetly and suddenly as a gust of perfume; it is as the vibration of a +fairy orchestra, flute and violin disappearing in a silver mist; but the +clouds break, and all the enchantment of a spring garden appears in a +shaft of sudden sunlight. + + "L'éphemère idole, au frisson du printemps, + Sentant des renouveaux éclorent, + Se guèpa de satins si lointains et d'antan: + Rose exilé des flores! + + Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas; + Aux murs, les roses tremières; + La terre étala, pour fêter les las, + Des divans vert lumière; + + Des rires ailés peuplèrent le jardin; + Souriants des caresses brèves, + Des oiseaux joyeaux, jaunes, incarnadins + Vibrèrent aux ciels de rêve." + +But to the devil with literature! Who cares if Gustave Kahn writes well +or badly? I met a chappie yesterday whose views of life coincide with +mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful of champagne +inside you, go to bed when it is light, and get up when you are rested." + +Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is the +young man. The eighteenth century is only woman--see the tapestries, the +delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear +in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, +with the hunters looking round; no servile archæology chills the fancy; +and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of +the eighteenth century. See the Fragonards--the ladies in high-peaked +bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up +they go; you can hear their light false voices amid the summer of the +leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as roses. Masks and arrows are +everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the +Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive +gestures and reluctance--false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and +exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the +Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the +soul of the century--ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not +then sentimental, it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and +the polished floor, and the tapestries with whose delicate tints and +decorations the high hair blends, the foot-stool and the heel and the +calf of the leg that is withdrawn, showing in the shadows of the lace; +see the satin of the bodices, the fan outspread, the wigs so adorably +false, the knee-breeches, the buckles on the shoes, how false; adorable +little comedy, adorably mendacious; and how winsome it is to feast on +these sweet lies, it is indeed delight to us, wearied with the bland +sincerity of newspapers. In the eighteenth century it was the man who +knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who +acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he +who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream +of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth +century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and +profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic +spirit of our age. + +The position of a young man in the nineteenth century is the most +enviable that has ever fallen to the lot of any human creature. He is +the rare bird, and is fêted, flattered, adored. The sweetest words are +addressed to him, the most loving looks are poured upon him. The young +man can do no wrong. Every house is open to him, and the best of +everything is laid before him; girls dispute the right to serve him; +they come to him with cake and wine, they sit circlewise and listen to +him, and when one is fortunate to get him alone she will hang upon his +neck, she will propose to him, and will take his refusal kindly and +without resentment. They will not let him stoop to tie up his shoe lace, +but will rush and simultaneously claim the right to attend on him. To +represent in a novel a girl proposing marriage to a man would be deemed +unnatural, but nothing is more common; there are few young men who have +not received at least a dozen offers, nay, more; it is characteristic, +it has become instinctive for girls to choose, and they prefer men not +to make love to them; and every young man who knows his business avoids +making advances, knowing well that it will only put the girl off. + +In a society so constituted, what a delightful opening there is for a +young man. He would have to waltz perfectly, play tennis fairly, the +latest novel would suffice for literary attainments; billiards, +shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be +considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by +the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action +of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and +must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must +succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, +love draws all things. Our young man would have to be five feet eleven, +or six feet, broad shoulders, light brown hair, deep eyes, soft and +suggestive, broad shoulders, a thin neck, long delicate hands, a high +instep. His nose should be straight, his face oval and small, he must be +clean about the hips, and his movements must be naturally caressing. He +comes into the ball-room, his shoulders well back, he stretches his hand +to the hostess, he looks at her earnestly (it is characteristic of him +to think of the hostess first, he is in her house, the house is +well-furnished, and is suggestive of excellent meats and wines). He can +read through the slim woman whose black hair, a-glitter with diamonds, +contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances +with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad +sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who +is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a +little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a +child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little +blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is +Lady ----." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly," Lovelace has made up +his mind. Then there is a young oldish girl, richly dressed; "I hear her +people have a nice house in a hunting country, I will dance with her, +and take the mother into supper, and, if I can get a moment, will have a +pleasant talk with the father in the evening." + +In manner Lovelace is facile and easy; he never says no, it is always +yes, ask him what you will; but he only does what he has made up his +mind it is his advantage to do. Apparently he is an embodiment of all +that is unselfish, for he knows that after he has helped himself, it is +advisable to help some one else, and thereby make a friend who, on a +future occasion, will be useful to him. Put a violinist into a room +filled with violins, and he will try every one. Lovelace will put each +woman aside so quietly that she is often only half aware that she has +been put aside. Her life is broken; she is content that it should be +broken. The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting +out of love. + +I have noticed that there are times when every second woman likes you. +Is love, then, a magnetism which we sometimes possess and exercise +unconsciously, and sometimes do not possess? + + + + +XIV + + +Now I am full of eager impulses that mourn and howl by turns, striving +for utterance like wind in turret chambers. I hate this infernal +lodging. I feel like a fowl in a coop;--that landlady, those children, +Emma.... The actress will be coming upstairs presently; shall I ask her +into my room? Better let things remain as they are. + +_Conscience_. + +Why intrude a new vexation on her already vexed life? + +_I_. + +Hallo, you startled me! Well, I am surprised. We have not talked +together for a long time. Since when? + +_Conscience_. + +I will spare your feelings. I merely thought I would remind you that you +have passed the rubicon--your thirtieth year. + +_I_. + +It is terrible to think of. My youth gone! + +_Conscience_. + +Then you are ashamed--you repent? + +_I_. + +I am ashamed of nothing--I am a writer; 'tis my profession not to be +ashamed. + +_Conscience_. + +I had forgotten. So you are lost to shame? + +_I_. + +Completely. I will chat with you when you please; even now, at this +hour, about all things--about any of my sins. + +_Conscience_. + +Since we lost sight of each other you have devoted your time to the +gratification of your senses. + +_I_. + +Pardon me, I have devoted quite as much of my time to art. + +_Conscience_. + +You were glad, I remember, when your father died, because his death gave +you unlimited facilities for moulding the partial self which the +restraining influence of home had only permitted, into that complete +and ideal George Moore which you had in mind. I think I quote you +correctly. + +_I_. + +You don't; but never mind. Proceed. + +_Conscience_. + +Then, if you have no objection, we will examine how far you have turned +your opportunities to account. + +_I_. + +You will not deny that I have educated myself and made many friends. + +_Conscience_. + +Friends! your nature is very adaptable--you interest yourself in their +pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your +education--speak not of it; it is but flimsy stuff. + +_I_. + +There I join issue with you. Have I not drawn the intense ego out of the +clouds of semi-consciousness, and realised it? And surely, the rescue +and the individualisation of the ego is the first step. + +_Conscience_, + +To what end? You have nothing to teach, nothing to reveal. I have often +thought of asking you this: since death is the only good, why do you not +embrace death? Of all the world's goods it is the cheapest, and the most +easily obtained. + +_I_. + +We must live since nature has willed it so. My poor conscience, are you +still struggling in the fallacy of free will? + +For at least a hundred thousand years man has rendered this planet +abominable and ridiculous with what he is pleased to call his +intelligence, without, however, having learned that his life is merely +the breaking of the peace of unconsciousness, the drowsy uplifting of +tired eyelids of somnolent nature. How glibly this loquacious ape +chatters of his religion and his moral sense, always failing to see that +both are but allurements and inveiglements! With religion he is induced +to bear his misery, and his sexual appetite is preserved, ignorant, and +vigorous, by means of morals. A scorpion, surrounded by a ring of fire, +will sting itself to death, and man would turn upon life and deny it, +if his reason were complete. Religion and morals are the poker and tongs +with which nature intervenes and scatters the ring of reason. + +_Conscience_ (after a long pause). + +I believe--forgive my ignorance, but I have seen so little of you this +long while--that your boast is that no woman influenced, changed, or +modified your views of life. + +_I_. + +None; my mind is a blank on the subject. Stay! my mother said once, when +I was a boy, "You must not believe them; all their smiles and pretty +ways are only put on. Women like men only for what they can get out of +them." And to these simple words I attribute all the suspicion of +woman's truth which hung over my youth. For years it seemed to me +impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful +and desirable--men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without +revulsion of feeling, could they really desire us? I was absorbed in the +life of woman--the mystery of petticoats, so different from the +staidness of trousers! the rolls of hair entwined with so much art, and +suggesting so much colour and perfume, so different from the bare crop; +the unnaturalness of the waist in stays! plenitude and slenderness of +silk, so different from the stupidity of a black tail-coat; rose feet +passing under the triple ruches of rose, so different from the broad +foot of the male. My love for the life of women was a life within my +life; and oh, how strangely secluded and veiled! A world of calm colour +with phantoms moving, floating past and changing in dim light--an +averted face with abundant hair, the gleam of a perfect bust or the +poise of a neck turning slowly round, the gaze of deep translucid eyes. +I loved women too much to give myself wholly to one. + +_Conscience_. + +Yes, yes; but what real success have you had with women? + +_I_. + +Damn it! you would not seek to draw me into long-winded stories about +women--how it began, how it was broken off, how it began again? I'm not +Casenova. I love women as I love champagne--I drink it and enjoy it; +but an exact account of every bottle drunk would prove flat narrative. + +_Conscience_. + +You have never consulted me about your champagne loves: but you have +asked me if you have ever inspired a real affection, and I told you that +we cannot inspire in others what does not exist in ourselves. You have +never known a nice woman who would have married you? + +_I_. + +Why should I undertake to keep a woman by me for the entire space of her +life, watching her grow fat, grey, wrinkled, and foolish? Think of the +annoyance of perpetually looking after any one, especially a woman! +Besides, marriage is antagonistic to my ideal. You say that no ideal +illumines the pessimist's life, that if you ask him why he exists, he +cannot answer, and that Schopenhauer's arguments against suicide are not +even plausible causistry. True, on this point his reasoning is feeble +and ineffective. But we may easily confute our sensual opponents. We +must say that we do not commit suicide, although we admit it is a +certain anodyne to the poison of life,--an absolute erasure of the wrong +inflicted on us by our parents,--because we hope by noble example and +precept to induce others to refrain from love. We are the saviours of +souls. Other crimes are finite; love alone is infinite. We punish a man +with death for killing his fellow; but a little reflection should make +the dullest understand that the crime of bringing a being into the world +exceeds by a thousand, a millionfold that of putting one out of it. + +Men are to-day as thick as flies in a confectioner's shop; in fifty +years there will be less to eat, but certainly some millions more +mouths. I laugh, I rub my hands! I shall be dead before the red time +comes. I laugh at the religionists who say that God provides for those +He brings into the world. The French Revolution will compare with the +revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a +puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears +on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an +electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago. +Christ, who with his white feet trod out the blood of the ancient world, +and promised Universal Peace, shall go out in a cataclysm of blood. The +neck of mankind shall be opened, and blood shall cover the face of the +earth. + +_Conscience_. + +Your philosophy is on a par with your painting and your poetry; but, +then, I am a conscience, and a conscience is never philosophic--you go +in for "The Philosophy of the Unconscious"? + +_I_. + +No, no, 'tis but a silly vulgarisation. But Schopenhauer, oh, my +Schopenhauer! Say, shall I go about preaching hatred of women? Were I to +call them a short-legged race that was admitted into society only a +hundred and fifty years ago? + +_Conscience_. + +You cannot speak the truth even to me; no, not even at half-past twelve +at night. + +_I_. + +Surely of all hours this is the one in which it is advisable to play you +false? + +_Conscience._ + +You are getting humorous. + +_I_. + +I am getting sleepy. You are a tiresome old thing, a relic of the +ancient world--I mean the mediæval world. You know that I now affect +antiquity? + +_Conscience_. + +You wander helplessly in the road of life until you stumble against a +battery; nerved with the shock you are frantic, and rush along wildly +until the current received is exhausted, and you lapse into +disorganisation. + +_I_. + +If I am sensitive to and absorb the various potentialities of my age, am +I not of necessity a power? + +_Conscience_. + +To be the receptacle of and the medium through which unexplained forces +work, is a very petty office to fulfil. Can you think of nothing higher? +Can you feel nothing original in you, a something that is cognisant of +the end? + +_I_. + +You are surely not going to drop into talking to me of God? + +_Conscience_. + +You will not deny that I at least exist? I am with you now, and +intensely, far more than the dear friend with whom you love to walk in +the quiet evening; the women you have held to your bosom in the perfumed +darkness of the chamber-- + +_I_. + +Pray don't. "The perfumed darkness of the chamber" is very common. I was +suckled on that kind of literature. + +_Conscience_. + +You are rotten to the root. Nothing but a very severe attack of +indigestion would bring you to your senses--or a long lingering illness. + +_I_. + +'Pon my faith, you are growing melodramatic. Neither indigestion nor +illness long drawn out can change me. I have torn you all to pieces +long ago, and you have not now sufficient rags on your back to scare +the rooks in seed-time. + +_Conscience_. + +In destroying me you have destroyed yourself. + +_I_. + +Edgar Poe, pure and simple. Don't pick holes in my originality until you +have mended those in your own. + +_Conscience_. + +I was Poe's inspiration; he is eternal, being of me. But your +inspiration springs from the flesh, and is therefore ephemeral even as +the flesh. + +_I_. + +If you had read Schopenhauer you would know that the flesh is not +ephemeral, but the eternal objectification of the will to live. Siva is +represented, not only with the necklace of skulls, but with the lingam. + +_Conscience_. + +You have failed in all you have attempted, and the figure you have +raised on your father's tomb is merely a sensitive and sensuous +art-cultured being who lives in a dirty lodging and plays in desperate +desperation his last card. You are now writing a novel. The hero is a +wretched creature, something like yourself. Do you think there is a +public in England for that kind of thing? + +_I_. + +Just the great Philistine that you always were! What do you mean by a +"public"? + +_Conscience_. + +I have not a word to say on that account, your one virtue is sobriety. + +_I_. + +A wretched pun.... The mass of mankind run much after the fashion of the +sheep of Panurge, but there are always a few that-- + +_Conscience_. + +A few that are like the Gadarene swine. + +_I_. + +Ah,...were I the precipice, were I the sea in which the pigs might +drown! + +_Conscience_. + +The same old desire of admiration, admiration in its original sense of +wonderment (miratio); you are a true child of the century; you do not +desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that +sense which you only care to stimulate--wonderment. And persecuted by +the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most +hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is +no better than a pimp. + +_I_. + +Then he is not like me; I have never been a pimp, and I don't think I +would be if I could. + +_Conscience_. + +The whole of your moral nature is reflected in Lewis Seymore, even to +the "And I don't think I would be if I could." + +_I_. + +I love the abnormal, and there is certainly something strangely +grotesque in the life of a pimp. But it is nonsense to suggest that +Lewis Seymore is myself;...you know that my original notion was to do +the side of Lucien de Rubrempré that-- + +_Conscience_. + +That Balzac had the genius to leave out. + +_I_. + +Really, if you can only make disagreeable remarks, I think we had better +bring this conversation to a close. + +_Conscience_. + +One word more. You have failed in everything you have attempted, and you +will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles--those +rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring +instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those +who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched +scribbler such as you are, has escaped her vengeance. + +_I_. + +You would have me pull down the black flag and turn myself into an +honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. +You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls +into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the +bright buccaneer drifts, an old derelict, tossed by the waves of ill +fortune, and buffeted by the winds into those dismal bays and dangerous +offings--housekeepers, nurses, and uncomfortable chambers. Such will be +my fate; and since none may avert his fate, none can do better than to +run pluckily the course which he must pursue. + +_Conscience_. + +You might devise a moral ending; one that would conciliate all classes. + +_I_. + +It is easy to see that you are a nineteenth-century conscience. + +_Conscience_. + +I do not hope to find a Saint Augustine in you. + +_I_. + +An idea; one of these days I will write my confessions! Again I tell you +that nothing really matters to me but art. And, knowing this, you +chatter of the unwisdom of my not concluding my novel with some foolish +moral.... Nothing matters to me but art. + +_Conscience_. + +Would you seduce the wretched servant girl if by so doing you could +pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper? + + + + +XV + + +And now, hypocritical reader, I will answer the questions which have +been agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage +of this long narrative of a sinful life.[2] Shake not your head, lift +not your finger, exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in +nothing. I know the base and unworthy soul. This is a magical +_tête-à-tête_, such a one as will never happen in your life again; +therefore I say let us put off all customary disguise, let us be frank: +you have been angrily asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you +have been _forced_ to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite +hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it +serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to +show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to +higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the +magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured +something about leaving the world a little better than you found it, and +you went down to dinner and lost consciousness of the world[3] in the +animal enjoyment of your stomach. I hold out my hand to you, I embrace +you, you are my brother, and I say, undeceive yourself, you will leave +the world no better than you found it. The pig that is being slaughtered +as I write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but +you will leave only a putrid carcase fit for nothing but worms. Look +back upon your life, examine it, probe it, weigh it, philosophise on it, +and then say, if you dare, that it has not been a very futile and +foolish affair. Soldier, robber, priest, Atheist, courtesan, virgin, I +care not what you are, if you have not brought children into the world +to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has been. I +hold out my hand to you, we are brothers; but in my heart of hearts I +think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the +world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, +think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the +world better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of +life is to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our +neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is +affording you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my +friend, my brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not +so bad after all. Now to resume. + +The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my +youth will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so +now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on +the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; +and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the +rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided +me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she +ever turned out of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the +most perfect equipoise possible to conceive, and up and down they went +and still go with measured movement, absorbing and assimilating all that +is poured into them without friction or stoppage. This book is a record +of my mental digestions; but it would take another series of confessions +to tell of the dinners I have eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the +suppers! seven dozen of oysters, pâté-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, +salad, and then a walk home in the early morning, a few philosophical +reflections suggested by the appearance of a belated street-sweeper, +then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep. + +I have had the rarest, the finest friends. I have loved my friends; the +rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions; everything +conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do you think +this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you are a +fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle +selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of +life's pie than the seven deadly virtues.[4] If you are a good man you +want a bad one to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to +go out on the spree with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place +your hand upon your heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical +_tête-à-tête_ which will happen never again in your life, admit that you +feel just a little interested in my wickedness,[5] admit that if you +ever thought you would like to know me that it is because I know a good +deal that you probably don't; admit that your mouth waters when you +think of rich and various pleasures that fell to my share in happy +Paris; admit that if this book had been an account of the pious books I +had read, the churches I had been to, and the good works I had done, +that you would not have bought it or borrowed it. Hypocritical reader, +think, had you had courage, health and money to lead a fast life, would +you not have done so? You don't know, no more do I; I have done so, and +I regret nothing except that some infernal farmers and miners will not +pay me what they owe me and enable me to continue the life that was once +mine, and of which I was so bright an ornament. How I hate this +atrocious Strand lodging-house, how I long for my apartment in _Rue de +la Tour des Dames_, with all its charming adjuncts, palms and pastels, +my cat, my python, my friends, blond hair and dark. + +The daily article soon grows monotonous, even when you know it will be +printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas +were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor +was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very +easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on +different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a +dozen. Some were printed in weekly newspapers, some were returned to me. + +There was a publisher in the neighbourhood of the Strand, who used to +frequent a certain bar, and this worthy man conducted his business as he +dressed himself, sloppily; a dear kind soul, quite witless and quite +_h_-less. From long habit he would make a feeble attempt to drive a +bargain, but he was duped generally. If a fashionable author asked two +hundred pounds for a book out of which he would be certain to make +three, it was ten to one that he would allow the chance to drift away +from him; but after having refused a dozen times the work of a Strand +loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would say, "Send it +in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it." There was a +long counter, and the way to be published by Mr B. was to straddle on +the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman behind this +counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read the MS., +looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts and entertained +the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs Macmillan and Messrs Longman with +polite requests to look at my MS., I straddled, played with the cat, +joked with the Irishman, drank with Mr. B., and in the natural order of +things my stories went into the magazine and were paid for. Strange were +the ways of this office; Shakespeare might have sent in prose and +poetry, but he would have gone into the wastepaper basket had he not +previously straddled. For those who were in the "know" this was a matter +of congratulation; straddling, we would cry, "We want no blooming +outsiders coming along interfering with our magazine. And you, Smith, +you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last month and cut me out. +O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of poems as well as +my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try to manage it; +here's the governor." And looking exactly like the unfortunate Mr +Sedley, Mr B. used to slouch in; he would fall into his leather +armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques--the last time I saw +that chair it was standing in the street in the hands of the brokers. + +But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all +means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had +not passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip +through our defences. One hot summer's day, we were all on the counter, +our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered. He must have been +six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr B.'s room, he asked him +to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened. "Wastepaper basket, +wastepaper basket," we shouted. "What an odd-looking fish he is--like a +pike!" said O'Flanagan; "I wonder what his MS. is like." "Very like a +pike," we cried. But O'Flanagan took the MS. home to read, and returned +next morning convinced he had discovered an embryo Dickens. The young +man was asked to call, his book was accepted, and we adjourned to the +bar. + +This young man took rooms in the house next to me on the ground floor. +He had been to Oxford, and to Heidelberg, he drank beer and smoked long +pipes, he talked of nothing but tobacco. Soon, very soon, I began to see +that he thought me a simpleton; he pooh-poohed my belief in Naturalism +and declined to discuss the symbolist question. He curled his long legs +upon the rickety sofa and spoke of the British public as the "B.P.," and +of the magazine as the "mag," and in the office which I had marked down +as my own I saw him installed as a genius. He brought a little man about +five feet three to live with him, and when the two, the long and the +short, went out together, it was like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +setting forth in quest of adventures in the land of Strand. The short +man indulged in none of the loud, rasping affectation of humour that was +so maddening in the long; he was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did +join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the +teeth--dusty and bitter. He kept a pocket-book, in which he held an +account of his reading. Holding the pocket-book between finger and +thumb, he would say, "Last year I read ten plays by Nash, twelve by +Peele, six by Greene, fifteen by Beaumont and Fletcher, and eleven +anonymous plays,--fifty-four in all." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 2: The use of the word sinful here seems liable to +misinterpretation. The phrase should run: "Of a virtuous life, for +remember that my virtues are your vices."] + +[Footnote 3: This should run: "Forgot your hypocrisy."] + +[Footnote 4: Vices, surely? See Footnote 2 above.] + +[Footnote 5: Virtue?] + + + + +XVI + + +Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this +time, attracted into other ways--ways that led into London life, and +were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses +and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever +an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of +whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The +bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his +favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another +friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in +character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept +it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the +impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening +clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house +was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the +cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort +of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I +found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of +titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten +sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous +cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant +champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; +a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and +eternal squandering of money,--money that rose at no discoverable +well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of +whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying +through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I +joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and +about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying +point. + +After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and +theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their +drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night--at +half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or +two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney +sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street +and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we +struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced +writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off +the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our +lagging pens. + +But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a +personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in +a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I +longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame, +brutal and glaring. + +Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the +souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have +known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in +the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes +and murmuring "dreadful young man"--examine your weakly heart, and see +what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what +is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up +natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched +soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails +for--paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done, +especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety. + +"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself. +"Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my +journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, +but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than +when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a +friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is +more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will +hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost +stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one +hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, +Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. +Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in +spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and +it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his +white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I +don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" +and he gives the beggar a shilling. + +We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are +not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable +when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell +you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my +craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,--it +will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, +dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a +man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make +himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your +friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of +course, instantly want to know more about him. + +It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in +hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the +comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; +choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting +to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was +a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can +resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the +mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful +lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did +not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, +as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies +retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through +various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose +and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did +not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred +until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The +beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was +sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into +ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at +last, to bring matters to a head, I said, + +"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity." + +"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool." + +"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me, +and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at +table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad." + +There was a lull, then a moment after he said, + +"I only meant politically." + +"And I only meant socially." + +He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger +tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and +shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked +up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although +I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that +if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and +as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force +on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers +I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by +pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press +would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say +against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and +apples for the journalists. + +I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking, +calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of +the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been +arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to +arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed. + +Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me +perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as +October scatters swallows. + +The first one said, "it was about one or two in the morning?" + +"Later than that, it was about seven." + +"He struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you hit him with a +champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out." + +"I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you don't like +to act for me, say so." + +I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:--"Can I count on you to +act for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply +came. "Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it +over." English people, I said, will have nothing to do with serious +duelling. I must telegraph to Marshall. "Of all importance. Come over at +once and act for me in an affair of honour. Bring the Count with you; +leave him at Boulogne; he knows the colonel of the ----." The next day I +received the following. "Am burying my father; as soon as he is +underground will come." Was there ever such ill-luck?... He won't be +here before the end of the week. These things demand the utmost +promptitude. Three or four days afterwards Emma told me a gentleman was +upstairs taking a bath. "Hollo, Marshall, how are you? Had a good +crossing? The poor old gentleman went off quite suddenly, I suppose?" + +"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay +quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side...wonderful +presence of mind." + +"He left no money?" + +"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the +Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find +out now what a success that picture was. _Je t'assure, je fais +l'ècole_"... + +"_Tu crois ça...on fait l'ècole après vingt ans de travail_." + +When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French. + +"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel." + +No sooner had I begun to tell the story than it dawned upon me that it +was impossible to tell it seriously, for it was fundamentally an absurd +story; and I lacked courage to tell Marshall that I only wished to go +through with the duel in order to become notorious. No one will admit +such a thing as that to his friend, and if I had admitted it Marshall +would not have consented. I suddenly began to get interested in other +things. There was Marshall's painting to talk about. After the theatre +we went home and æstheticised till three in the morning. The duel became +the least important event and Marshall's new picture the greatest. At +breakfast next day the duel seemed more tiresome than ever, but the +gentlemen were coming to meet Marshall. He showed his usual tact in +arranging my affair of honour; a letter was drawn up in which my friend +withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, +etc.--really now I lack energy to explain it any further. + + + + +XVII + + +Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, +"How very base"; but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, +if you are a soldier in Her Majesty's army, for war,--war that would +bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed +for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the +_Gazette_. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical +reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in +telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical +reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical +reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute +you. + +Day passed over day, and my novel seemed an impossible task--defeat +glared at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so +thin,--stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt +unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the +style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down +on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. +Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the +landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered +into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and +lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon +Street temptations, I trudged home to eat a chop. I studied the servant +as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she +would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!" + +I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs, and I never wearied of +talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired, +and she used to ask me about my novel. + +When my troubles lay too heavily upon me, I let her go up to her garret +without a word, and remained at the window wondering if I should ever +escape from Cecil Street, if I should ever be a light in that London, +long, low, misshapen, that dark monumented stream flowing through the +lean bridges. What if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass? +Happiness abides only in the natural affections--in a home and a sweet +wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her +simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, +not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for +her, I am too sullied for her lips. Were I to win her could I be +dutiful, true?... + + + + +XVIII + + +"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, +not the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses +there is reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish +young men who think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is +over for me, I have eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and +drink as I have; do you be young as I was. I have written it! The word +is not worth erasure, if it is not true to-day it will be in two years +hence; farewell! I yield my place, do you be young as I was, do you love +youth as I did; remember you are the most interesting beings under +heaven, for you all sacrifices will be made, you will be fêted and +adored upon the condition of remaining young men. The feast is over for +me, I yield my place, but I will not make this leavetaking more +sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice and +instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly +against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate +yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can +use it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my +place; but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I +would say my last word--were it possible I would be remembered by you as +a young man: but I know too well that the young never realise that the +old were not born old. Farewell." + +I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the +window, and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my +novel. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12278-0.txt or 12278-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/7/12278/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + +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: Confessions of a Young Man + +Author: George Moore + +Release Date: May 6, 2004 [EBook #12278] + +Language: English with French + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">CONFESSIONS</a></h1> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">OF A...</a></h1> + <h1><a href="#CONFESSIONS_">YOUNG MAN</a></h1> + <img src="images/title.png" height="495" width="353" alt="Confessions of a Young Man"> + <br> + <a href="#PREFACE_TO_A_NEW_EDITION_OF_quotCONFESSIONS_OF_A_YOUNG_MANquot"><b>Preface to a New Edition of "Confessions of a Young Man"</b></a><br> + <a href="#IP"><b>I</b></a><br> + <a href="#IIP"><b>II</b></a><br> + <a href="#IIIP"><b>III</b></a><br> + <a href="#Confessions_of_a_Young_Man"><b>Confessions of a Young Man</b></a><br> + <a href="#I"><b>I</b></a><br> + <a href="#II"><b>II</b></a><br> + <a href="#III"><b>III</b></a><br> + <a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a><br> + <a href="#V"><b>V</b></a><br> + <a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a><br> + <a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a><br> + <a href="#VIII"><b>VIII</b></a><br> + <a href="#IX"><b>IX</b></a><br> + <a href="#X"><b>X</b></a><br> + <a href="#XI"><b>XI</b></a><br> + <a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XIII"><b>XIII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XIV"><b>XIV</b></a><br> + <a href="#XV"><b>XV</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVI"><b>XVI</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a><br> + <a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII</b></a><br> + +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONFESSIONS_"></a><h2>CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN</h2> + +<h2>By GEORGE MOORE. 1886.</h2> + +<h4>Edited and Annotated by GEORGE MOORE, 1904,</h4> + +<div class="blkquot"><p>À JACQUES BLANCHE. + +<p>Clifford's Inn—1904</p> + +<p> L'âme de l'ancien Égyptien s'éveillait en moi quand mourut ma + jeunesse, et j'étais inspiré de conserver mon passé, son esprit et sa + forme, dans l'art.</p> + +<p> Alors trempant le pinceau dans ma mémoire, j'ai peint ses joues pour + qu'elles prissent l'exacte ressemblance de la vie, et j'ai enveloppé + le mort dans les plus fins linceuls. Rhamenès le second n'a pas reçu + des soins plus pieux! Que ce livre soit aussi durable que sa + pyramide!</p> + +<p> Votre nom, cher ami, je voudrais l'inscrire ici comme épitaphe, car + vous êtes mon plus jeune et mon plus cher ami; et il se trouve en + vous tout ce qui est gracieux et subtil dans ces mornes années qui + s'égouttent dans le vase du vingtième siècle.</p> + +<p> G.M.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="PREFACE_TO_A_NEW_EDITION_OF_quotCONFESSIONS_OF_A_YOUNG_MANquot"></a><h2>PREFACE TO A NEW EDITION OF </h2> +<h2>"CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN"</h2 + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IP"></a><h2>I</h2> +<br> + +<p>Dear little book, what shall I say about thee? Belated offspring of +mine, out of print for twenty years, what shall I say in praise of thee? +For twenty years I have only seen thee in French, and in this English +text thou comest to me like an old love, at once a surprise and a +recollection. Dear little book, I would say nothing about thee if I +could help it, but a publisher pleads, and "No" is a churlish word. So +for him I will say that I like thy prattle; that while travelling in a +railway carriage on my way to the country of "Esther Waters," I passed +my station by, and had to hire a carriage and drive across the downs.</p> + +<p>Like a learned Abbé I delighted in the confessions of this young man, a +<i>naïf</i> young man, a little vicious in his <i>naïveté</i>, who says that his +soul must have been dipped in Lethe so deeply that he came into the +world without remembrance of previous existence. He can find no other +explanation for the fact that the world always seems to him more new, +more wonderful than it did to anyone he ever met on his faring; every +wayside acquaintance seemed old to this amazing young man, and himself +seemed to himself the only young thing in the world. Am I imitating the +style of these early writings? A man of letters who would parody his +early style is no better than the ancient light-o'-love who wears a wig +and reddens her cheeks. I must turn to the book to see how far this is +true. The first thing I catch sight of is some French, an astonishing +dedication written in the form of an epitaph, an epitaph upon myself, +for it appears that part of me was dead even when I wrote "Confessions +of a Young Man." The youngest have a past, and this epitaph dedication, +printed in capital letters, informs me that I have embalmed my past, +that I have wrapped the dead in the finest winding-sheet. It would seem +I am a little more difficult to please to-day, for I perceived in the +railway train a certain coarseness in its tissue, and here and there a +tangled thread. I would have wished for more care, for <i>un peu plus de +toilette</i>. There is something pathetic in the loving regard of the +middle-aged man for the young man's coat (I will not say winding-sheet, +that is a morbidity from which the middle-aged shrink). I would set his +coat collar straighter, I would sweep some specks from it. But can I do +aught for this youth, does he need my supervision? He was himself, that +was his genius; and I sit at gaze. My melancholy is like her's—the +ancient light-o'-love of whom I spoke just now, when she sits by the +fire in the dusk, a miniature of her past self in her hand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IIP"></a><h2>II</h2> +<br> + +<p>This edition has not been printed from old plates, no chicanery of that +kind: it has been printed from new type, and it was brought about by +Walter Pater's evocative letter. (It wasn't, but I like to think that it +was). Off and on, his letter was sought for during many years, hunted +for through all sorts of portfolios and bookcases, but never found until +it appeared miraculously, just as the proof of my Pater article was +being sent back to the printer, the precious letter transpired—shall I +say "transpired?"—through a crack in the old bookcase.</p> + + +<div class="blkquot"><p>BRASENOSE COLLEGE, + +<p> <i>Mar</i>. 4.</p> + +<p> MY DEAR, AUDACIOUS MOORE,—Many thanks for the "Confessions" which I + have read with great interest, and admiration for your + originality—your delightful criticisms—your Aristophanic joy, or at + least enjoyment, in life—your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there + are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case + of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or + disagree. What I cannot doubt is the literary faculty displayed. + "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" I feel inclined to say on + finishing your book; "shape" morally, I mean; not in reference to + style.</p> + +<p> You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been + independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing, + both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its + gaiety and good-nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many + things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive, way of + looking at the world. You call it only "realistic." Still!</p> + +<p> With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining + pen.—Very sincerely yours,</p> + +<p> WALTER PATER.</p></div> + +<p>Remember, reader, that this letter was written by the last great English +writer, by the author of "Imaginary Portraits," the most beautiful of +all prose books. I should like to break off and tell of my delight in +reading "Imaginary Portraits," but I have told my delight elsewhere; go, +seek out what I have said in the pages of the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> for +August 1904, for here I am obliged to tell you of myself. I give you +Pater's letter, for I wish you to read this book with reverence; never +forget that Pater's admiration has made this book a sacred book. Never +forget that.</p> + +<p>My special pleasure in these early pages was to find that I thought +about Pater twenty years ago as I think about him now, and shall +certainly think of him till time everlasting, world without end. I have +been accused of changing my likes and dislikes—no one has changed less +than I, and this book is proof of my fidelity to my first ideas; the +ideas I have followed all my life are in this book—dear crescent moon +rising in the south-east above the trees at the end of the village +green. It was in that ugly but well-beloved village on the south coast I +discovered my love of Protestant England. It was on the downs that the +instinct of Protestantism lit up in me.</p> + +<p>But when Zola asked me why I preferred Protestantism to Roman +Catholicism I could not answer him.</p> + +<p>He had promised to write a preface for the French translation of the +"Mummer's Wife"; the translation had to be revised, months and months +passed away, and forgetting all about the "Mummer's Wife," I expressed +my opinion about Zola, which had been changing, a little too +fearlessly, and in view of my revolt he was obliged to break his promise +to write a Preface, and this must have been a great blow, for he was a +man of method, to whom any change of plan was disagreeable and +unnerving. He sent a letter, asking me to come to Medan, he would talk +to me about the "Confessions." Well do I remember going there with dear +Alexis in the May-time, the young corn six inches high in the fields, +and my delight in the lush luxuriance of the l'Oise. That dear morning +is remembered, and the poor master who reproved me a little +sententiously, is dead. He was sorrowful in that dreadful room of his, +fixed up with stained glass and morbid antiquities. He lay on a sofa +lecturing me till breakfast. Then I thought reproof was over, but after +a walk in the garden we went upstairs and he began again, saying he was +not angry. "It is the law of nature," he said, "for children to devour +their parents. I do not complain." I think he was aware he was playing a +part; his sofa was his stage; and he lay there theatrical as Leo XI. or +Beerbohm Tree, saying that the Roman Church was an artistic church, that +its rich externality and ceremonial were pagan. But I think he knew even +then, at the back of his mind, that I was right; that is why he pressed +me to give reasons for my preference. Zola came to hate Catholicism as +much as I, and his hatred was for the same reason as mine; we both +learnt that any religion which robs a man of the right of free-will and +private judgment degrades the soul, renders it lethargic and timid, +takes the edge off the intellect. Zola lived to write "that the Catholic +countries are dead, and the clergy are the worms in the corpses." The +observation is "quelconque"; I should prefer the more interesting +allegation that since the Reformation no born Catholic has written a +book of literary value! He would have had to concede that some converts +have written well; the convert still retains a little of his ancient +freedom, some of the intellectual virility he acquired elsewhere, but +the born Catholic is still-born. But however we may disapprove of +Catholicism, we can still admire the convert. Cardinal Manning was aware +of the advantages of a Protestant bringing up, and he often said that he +was glad he had been born a Protestant. His Eminence was, therefore, of +opinion that the Catholic faith should be reserved, and exclusively, for +converts, and in this he showed his practical sense, for it is easy to +imagine a country prosperous in which all the inhabitants should be +brought up Protestants or agnostics, and in which conversions to Rome +are only permitted after a certain age or in clearly defined +circumstances. There would be something beyond mere practical wisdom in +such law-giving, an exquisite sense of the pathos of human life and its +requirements; scapulars, indulgences and sacraments are needed by the +weak and the ageing, sacraments especially. "They make you believe but +they stupefy you;" these words are Pascal's, the great light of the +Catholic Church.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IIIP"></a><h2>III</h2> +<br> + +<p>My Protestant sympathies go back very far, further back than these +Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in +versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a +sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things +especially dear to me, my love of France and Protestantism.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Je t'apporte mon drame, o poète sublime,</p> +<p class="i2">Ainsi qu'un écolier au maître sa leçon:</p> +<p>Ce livre avec fierté porte comme écusson</p> +<p class="i2">Le sceau qu'en nos esprits ta jeune gloire imprime.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Accepte, tu verras la foi mêlée au crime,</p> +<p class="i2">Se souiller dans le sang sacré de la raison,</p> +<p>Quand surgit, rédempteur du vieux peuple saxon,</p> +<p class="i2">Luther à Wittemberg comme Christ à Solime.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Jamais de la cité le mal entier ne fuit,</p> +<p class="i2">Hélas! et son autel y fume dans la nuit;</p> +<p class="i2">Mais notre âge a ceci de pareil à l'aurore.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Que c'est un divin cri du chanteur éternal,</p> +<p class="i2">Le tien, qui pour forcer le jour tardif d'éclore</p> +<p class="i2">Déchire avec splendeur le voile épars du ciel.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I find not only my Protestant sympathies in the "Confessions" but a +proud agnosticism, and an exalted individualism which in certain +passages leads the reader to the sundered rocks about the cave of +Zarathoustra. My book was written before I heard that splendid name, +before Zarathoustra was written; and the doctrine, though hardly +formulated, is in the "Confessions," as Darwin is in Wallace. Here ye +shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions," +"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France—the country as +Pater would say of my instinctive election—and all my prophecies. +Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their +inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so +well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the +Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness despite the journalists +and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor Colvin, he made a mistake, +he should have hopped on to Pater.</p> + +<p>Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no +more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I +might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw. +Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to withdraw +them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may re-write his +confessions.</p> + +<p>A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase +about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has +succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and +if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more +unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface.</p> + +<p>GEORGE MOORE.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="Confessions_of_a_Young_Man"></a><h2>Confessions of a Young Man</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="I"></a><h2>I</h2> +<br> + +<p>My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and +form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous +temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am +free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have +acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, +upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth +sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being +moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I +might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archbishop, and +that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of +success would have been mine. I have felt the goad of many impulses, I +have hunted many a trail; when one scent failed another was taken up, +and pursued with the pertinacity of instinct, rather than the fervour of +a reasoned conviction. Sometimes, it is true, there came moments of +weariness, of despondency, but they were not enduring: a word spoken, a +book read, or yielding to the attraction of environment, I was soon off +in another direction, forgetful of past failures. Intricate, indeed, was +the labyrinth of my desires; all lights were followed with the same +ardour, all cries were eagerly responded to: they came from the right, +they came from the left, from every side. But one cry was more +persistent, and as the years passed I learned to follow it with +increasing vigour, and my strayings grew fewer and the way wider.</p> + +<p>I was eleven years old when I first heard and obeyed this cry, or, shall +I say, echo-augury?</p> + +<p>Scene: A great family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, +lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever-recurrent signs—long ranges +of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of +plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two +children. They are smart, with new jackets and neckties; their faces +are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a +little sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children +are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. +Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name! +and she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. +Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred +and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, +it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the +delight of tearing down fruit trees and killing a cat.</p> + +<p>But when we returned home I took the first opportunity of stealing the +novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read +its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called +<i>The Doctors Wife</i>—a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, +there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. +Why did I love Shelley? Why was I not attracted to Byron? I cannot say. +Shelley! Oh, that crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must +see it, I must know him. Escaping from the schoolroom, I ransacked the +library, and at last my ardour was rewarded. The book—a small pocket +edition in red boards, no doubt long out of print—opened at the +"Sensitive Plant." Was I disappointed? I think I had expected to +understand better; but I had no difficulty in assuming that I was +satisfied and delighted. And henceforth the little volume never left my +pocket, and I read the dazzling stanzas by the shores of a pale green +Irish lake, comprehending little, and loving a great deal. Byron, too, +was often with me, and these poets were the ripening influence of years +otherwise merely nervous and boisterous.</p> + +<p>And my poets were taken to school, because it pleased me to read "Queen +Mab" and "Cain," amid the priests and ignorance of a hateful Roman +Catholic college. And there my poets saved me from intellectual +savagery; for I was incapable at that time of learning anything. What +determined and incorrigible idleness! I used to gaze fondly on a book, +holding my head between my hands, and allow my thoughts to wander far +into dreams and thin imaginings. Neither Latin, nor Greek, nor French, +nor History, nor English composition could I learn, unless, indeed, my +curiosity or personal interest was excited,—then I made rapid strides +in that branch of knowledge to which my attention was directed. A mind +hitherto dark seemed suddenly to grow clear, and it remained clear and +bright enough so long as passion was in me; but as it died, so the mind +clouded, and recoiled to its original obtuseness. Couldn't and wouldn't +were in my case curiously involved; nor have I in this respect ever been +able to correct my natural temperament. I have always remained powerless +to do anything unless moved by a powerful desire.</p> + +<p>The natural end to such schooldays as mine was expulsion. I was expelled +when I was sixteen, for idleness and general worthlessness. I returned +to a wild country home, where I found my father engaged in training +racehorses. For a nature of such intense vitality as mine, an ambition, +an aspiration of some sort was necessary; and I now, as I have often +done since, accepted the first ideal to hand. In this instance it was +the <i>stable</i>. I was given a hunter, I rode to hounds every week, I rode +gallops every morning, I read the racing calendar, stud-book, latest +betting, and looked forward with enthusiasm to the day when I should be +known as a successful steeplechase rider. To ride the winner of the +Liverpool seemed to me a final achievement and glory; and had not +accident intervened, it is very possible that I might have succeeded in +carrying off, if not the meditated honour, something scarcely inferior, +such as—alas! I cannot now recall the name of a race of the necessary +value and importance. About this time my father was elected Member of +Parliament; our home was broken up, and we went to London. But an ideal +set up on its pedestal is not easily displaced, and I persevered in my +love, despite the poor promises London life held out for its ultimate +attainment; and surreptitiously I continued to nourish it with small +bets made in a small tobacconist's. Well do I remember that shop, the +oily-faced, sandy-whiskered proprietor, his betting-book, the cheap +cigars along the counter, the one-eyed nondescript who leaned his +evening away against the counter, and was supposed to know some one who +knew Lord ——'s footman, and the great man often spoken of, but rarely +seen—he who made "a two-'undred pound book on the Derby"; and the +constant coming and going of the cabmen—"Half an ounce of shag, sir." I +was then at a military tutor's in the Euston Road; for, in answer to my +father's question as to what occupation I intended to pursue, I had +consented to enter the army. In my heart I knew that when it came to the +point I should refuse—the idea of military discipline was very +repugnant, and the possibility of an anonymous death on a battle-field +could not be accepted by so self-conscious a youth, by one so full of +his own personality. I said Yes to my father, because the moral courage +to say No was lacking, and I put my trust in the future, as well I +might, for a fair prospect of idleness lay before me, and the chance of +my passing any examination was, indeed, remote.</p> + +<p>In London I made the acquaintance of a great blonde man, who talked +incessantly about beautiful women, and painted them sometimes larger +than life, in somnolent attitudes, and luxurious tints. His studio was a +welcome contrast to the spitting and betting of the tobacco shop. His +pictures—Doré-like improvisations, devoid of skill, and, indeed, of +artistic perception, save a certain sentiment for the grand and +noble—filled me with wonderment and awe. "How jolly it would be to be a +painter," I once said, quite involuntarily. "Why, would you like to be a +painter?" he asked abruptly. I laughed, not suspecting that I had the +slightest gift, as indeed was the case, but the idea remained in my +mind, and soon after I began to make sketches in the streets and +theatres. My attempts were not very successful, but they encouraged me +to tell my father that I would go to the military tutor no more, and he +allowed me to enter the Kensington Museum as an Art student. There, of +course, I learned nothing, and, from the point of view of art merely, I +had much better have continued my sketches in the streets; but the +museum was a beautiful and beneficent influence, and one that applied +marvellously well to the besetting danger of the moment; for in the +galleries I met young men who spoke of other things than betting and +steeplechase riding, who, I remember, it was clear to me then, looked to +a higher ideal than mine, breathed a purer atmosphere of thought than I. +And then the sweet, white peace of antiquity! The great, calm gaze that +is not sadness nor joy, but something that we know not of—which is lost +to the world for ever.</p> + +<p>"But if you want to be a painter you must go to France—France is the +only school of Art." I must again call attention to the phenomenon of +echo-augury, that is to say, words heard in an unlooked-for quarter, +that, without any appeal to our reason, impel belief. France! The word +rang in my ears and gleamed in my eyes. France! All my senses sprang +from sleep like a crew when the man on the look-out cries, "Land ahead!" +Instantly I knew I should, that I must, go to France, that I would live +there, that I would become as a Frenchman. I knew not when nor how, but +I knew I should go to France....</p> + +<p>So my youth ran into manhood, finding its way from rock to rock like a +rivulet, gathering strength at each leap. One day my father was suddenly +called to Ireland. A few days after, a telegram came, and my mother read +that we were required at his bedside. We journeyed over land and sea, +and on a bleak country road, one winter's evening, a man approached us +and I heard him say that all was over, that my father was dead. I loved +my father; I burst into tears; and yet my soul said, "I am glad." The +thought came unbidden, undesired, and I turned aside, shocked at the +sight it afforded of my soul.</p> + +<p>O, my father, I, who love and reverence nothing else, love and reverence +thee; thou art the one pure image in my mind, the one true affection +that life has not broken or soiled; I remember thy voice and thy kind, +happy ways. All I have of worldly goods and native wit I received from +thee—and was it I who was glad? No, it was not I; I had no concern in +the thought that then fell upon me unbidden and undesired; my individual +voice can give you but praise and loving words; and the voice that said +"I am glad" was not my voice, but that of the will to live which we +inherit from elemental dust through countless generations. Terrible and +imperative is the voice of the will to live: let him who is innocent +cast the first stone.</p> + +<p>Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; +that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so +irreparably his.</p> + +<p>My father's death freed me, and I sprang like a loosened bough up to the +light. His death gave me power to create myself, that is to say, to +create a complete and absolute self out of the partial self which was +all that the restraint of home had permitted; this future self, this +ideal George Moore, beckoned me, lured like a ghost; and as I followed +the funeral the question, Would I sacrifice this ghostly self, if by so +doing I should bring my father back? presented itself without +intermission, and I shrank horrified at the answer which I could not +crush out of mind.</p> + +<p>Now my life was like a garden in the emotive torpor of spring; now my +life was like a flower conscious of the light. Money was placed in my +hands, and I divined all it represented. Before me the crystal lake, the +distant mountains, the swaying woods, said but one word, and that word +was—self; not the self that was then mine, but the self on whose +creation I was enthusiastically determined. But I felt like a murderer +when I turned to leave the place which I had so suddenly, and I could +not but think unjustly, become possessed of. And now, as I probe this +poignant psychological moment, I find that, although I perfectly well +realised that all pleasures were then in my reach—women, elegant dress, +theatres, and supper-rooms, I hardly thought at all of them, and much +more of certain drawings from the plaster cast. I would be an artist. +More than ever I was determined to be an artist, and my brain was made +of this desire as I journeyed as fast as railway and steamboat could +take me to London. No further trammels, no further need of being a +soldier, of being anything but myself; eighteen, with life and France +before me! But the spirit did not move me yet to leave home. I would +feel the pulse of life at home before I felt it abroad. I would hire a +studio. A studio—tapestries, smoke, models, conversations. But here it +is difficult not to convey a false impression. I fain would show my soul +in these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water; and although my +studio was in truth no more than an amusement, and a means of +effectually throwing over all restraint, I did not view it at all in +this light. My love of Art was very genuine and deep-rooted; the +tobacconist's betting-book was now as nothing, and a certain Botticelli +in the National Gallery held me in tether. And when I look back and +consider the past, I am forced to admit that I might have grown up in +less fortunate circumstances, for even the studio, with its +dissipations—and they were many—was not unserviceable; it developed +the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to grow and +ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contradistinction to the +University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a formula +which has been composed to suit the requirements of the average human +being.</p> + +<p>Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from +the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read very +nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read +Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin, and Mill. So it will be understood that +Shelley not only gave me my first soul, but led all its first flights. +But I do not think that if Shelley had been no more than a poet, +notwithstanding my very genuine love of verse, he would have gained such +influence in my youthful sympathies; but Shelley dreamed in +metaphysics—very thin dreaming if you will; but just such thin dreaming +as I could follow. Was there or was there not a God? And for many years +I could not dismiss as parcel of the world's folly this question, and I +sought a solution, inclining towards atheism, for it was natural in me +to revere nothing, and to oppose the routine of daily thought. And I was +but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I must decline to +believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against the chimney-piece +in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the household with the news; +but although a religious woman, my mother did not seem in the least +frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry, George, it is so." I was +deeply shocked at her indifference.</p> + +<p>Finding music and atheism in poetry I cared little for novels. Scott +seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too +impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and +<i>Bleak House</i> I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep +impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not +picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for +some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very +small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths: +<i>Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The +History of Civilisation</i>, were momentous events in my life. But I loved +life better than books, and very curiously my studies and my pleasures +kept pace, stepping together like a pair of well-trained carriage +horses. While I was waiting for my coach to take a party of <i>tarts</i> and +<i>mashers</i> to the Derby, I would read a chapter of Kant, and I often took +the book away with me in my pocket. And I cultivated with care the +acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the +purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, +delighted me. I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to +spend on scent and toilette knick-knacks as much as would keep a poor +man's family in affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the +fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to +shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above all, +the life of the theatres—that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, +of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes—interested me +beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at +home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I +was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up +the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the +Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and expected +ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of +dissipations. But there was no need to fear; for I was naturally endowed +with a very clear sense of self-preservation; I neither betted nor +drank, nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point +of view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home about +four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, and repeating some +verses of Shelley, I thought how I should go to Paris when I was of age, +and study painting.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="II"></a><h2>II</h2> +<br> + +<p>At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes, +books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for +Paris and Art.</p> + +<p>We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past six +in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city. +Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar +bleakness in the streets. The <i>ménagère</i> hurries down the asphalte to +market; a dreadful <i>garçon de café</i>, with a napkin tied round his +throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it +seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the +Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées? I asked myself; and feeling +bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my +valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the +study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to +formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and +the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for.</p> + +<p>My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the Beaux Arts—Cabanel's +studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration +for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was +told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on the +master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to speak +to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks until I could +hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot say. I +never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my +language must have been like—like nothing ever heard under God's sky +before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of +the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures +I had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then +in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he +would be glad to have me as a pupil....</p> + +<p>But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits +only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast; +and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an +effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey +perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the +lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the +room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more. I felt humiliated +at my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy; and +I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the Boulevards, +studying the photographs of the <i>salon</i> pictures, thinking of what my +next move should be. I had never forgotten my father showing me, one day +when he was shaving, three photographs from pictures. They were by an +artist called Sevres. My father liked the slenderer figure, but I liked +the corpulent—the Venus standing at the corner of a wood, pouring wine +into a goblet, while Cupid, from behind her satin-enveloped knees, drew +his bow and shot the doves that flew from glistening poplar trees. The +beauty of this woman, and what her beauty must be in the life of the +painter, had inspired many a reverie, and I had concluded—this +conclusion being of all others most sympathetic to me—that she was his +very beautiful mistress, that they lived in a picturesque pavilion in +the midst of a shady garden full of birds and tall flowers. I had often +imagined her walking there at mid-day, dressed in white muslin with wide +sleeves open to the elbow, scattering grain from a silver plate to the +proud pigeons that strutted about her slippered feet and fluttered to +her dove-like hand. I had dreamed of seeing that woman as I rode +racehorses on wild Irish plains, of being loved by her; in London I had +dreamed of becoming Sevres's pupil.</p> + +<p>What coming and going, what inquiries, what difficulties arose! At last +I was advised to go to the Exposition aux Champs Elysée and seek his +address in the catalogue. I did so, and while the <i>concierge</i> copied out +the address for me, I chased his tame magpie that hopped about one of +the angles of the great building. The reader smiles. I was a childish +boy of one-and-twenty who knew nothing, and to whom the world was +astonishingly new. Doubtless before my soul was given to me it had been +plunged deep in Lethe, and so an almost virgin man I stood in front of a +virgin world.</p> + +<p>Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a +fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake +reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in +the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden +wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked +up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in +muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a +silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it; +and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a +tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close; +and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every +nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her +eyes as I passed.</p> + +<p>Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of +a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his +daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M. +Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now +the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that +the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish +sensualities.</p> + +<p>I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm +on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a +wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We +were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to +smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me +to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the +Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is +that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to +admit even now, saturated though I now am with the æsthetics of +different schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am +writing of my nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional +attractiveness of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender +hips and hands, and I accepted Jules Lefebvre wholly and +unconditionally. He hesitated, however, when I asked to be taken as a +private pupil, but he wrote out the address of a studio where he gave +instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even more to my taste, for I +had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was anxious to see as much +of them as possible.</p> + +<p>The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I +found M. Julien, a typical meridional—the large stomach, the dark eyes, +crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual +mind. We made friends at once—he consciously making use of me, I +unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's +subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to +the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it +was a little tiresome to have to put up with a talkative person, whose +knowledge of the French language had been acquired in three months, but +the dinners were good. No doubt Julien reasoned so; I did not reason at +all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the world was necessary to me. I +had never met such a man before, and all my curiosity was awake. He +spoke of art and literature, of the world and the flesh; he told me of +the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents in his own life; +and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his conversation I +thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the +look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The +world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years +before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out +straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a +distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society +only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and +which was destined to absorb some years of my life.</p> + +<p>In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among +these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were +also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle +and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions +and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of +unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio +conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and +were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did, +that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in +its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye—the gowns, the hair +lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow. +Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who +escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend +who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of +dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with +undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time—a +friendship which permeated and added to my life—I am nevertheless +forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my +special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a +shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to +pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a +moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely +compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my +path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I +pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the +studio; and, to my surprise, for he was fashionably dressed, and my +experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and +well-cut clothes, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were +beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and +large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could +not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his +figure, with all the surroundings—screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was +deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he +was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a +general exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring +<i>café</i> to drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we +stooped under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to +me in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in +So-and-So's studio—the great blonde man, whose Doré-like improvisations +had awakened aspiration in me.</p> + +<p>The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and +then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?" Marshall +thought the following day would suit him better, but I was very +pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with him to +his rooms, and he would show me some pictures—some trifles he had +brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better. We got +into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new superiorities, +in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong, handsome, and +beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than myself, but he could +talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should, for he +was born in Brussels and had lived there all his life, but the accident +of birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He +spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable +restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his +hair curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was +on the tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be +utterly outdone, I alluded to my valet.</p> + +<p>His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained +that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now +living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would +allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of +pictures, which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration +increased to wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which +had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung +by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest +the rest of the studio—the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the +Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red +Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,—a +ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There +were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners +of the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very +little heed to my compliments; and sitting down at the piano, with a +great deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a +waltz.</p> + +<p>"What waltz is that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of the +blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?"</p> + +<p>"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?"</p> + +<p>At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and an English girl +entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words +that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her +sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an +appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the +morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her.</p> + +<p>I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but +now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the +sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was +so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, +and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience +opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my +arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the +Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself; +but now I was taken to strange students' <i>cafés</i>, where dinners were +paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a <i>table d'hôte</i> was +held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great +crowds to <i>Bullier</i>, the <i>Château Rouge</i>, or the <i>Elysée Montmartre</i>. +The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the +thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women—we only knew +their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling +through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer +night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing +glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a +magic lantern out of the sky.</p> + +<p>Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons +were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this +street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop" +to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs....</p> + +<p>"<i>Madame ——, est-elle chez elle?</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i>Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer.</i>" And we +were shown into a handsomely-furnished apartment. A lady would enter +hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French +sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always +commenced <i>mon cher ami</i>, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase +<i>vous avez tort</i>. The ladies themselves had only just returned from +Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious +lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several +millions of francs against different foreign governments.</p> + +<p>And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years +ago, at the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I +watched this world of Parisian adventurers and lights-o'-love. And this +craving for observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation +of gestures and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes +that mirror forth the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew +and strengthened, to the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me. +With the patience of a cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened, +picking one characteristic phrase out of hours of vain chatter, +interested and amused by an angry or loving glance. Like the midges that +fret the surface of a shadowy stream, these men and women seemed to me; +and though I laughed, danced, and made merry with them, I was not of +them. But with Marshall it was different: they were my amusement, they +were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of this distinction that made +twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it. Why could I not live +without an ever-present and acute consciousness of life? Why could I not +love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in the perfumed +silence of the chamber?</p> + +<p>And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The +general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent +contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced +to one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our +confidences knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain +confidences it is often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read or +felt was the subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that +a flush of colour and a bit of perspective awakens, the blue tints that +the summer sunset lends to a white dress, or the eternal verities, death +and love. But, although I tested every fibre of thought and analysed +every motive, I was very sincere in my friendship and very loyal in my +admiration. Nor did my admiration wane when I discovered that Marshall +was shallow in his appreciations, superficial in his judgments, that his +talents did not pierce below the surface; <i>il avait si grand air</i>, there +was fascination in his very bearing, in his large, soft, colourful eyes, +and a go and dash in his dissipations that carried you away.</p> + +<p>To any one observing us at this time it would have seemed that I was but +a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my +tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to +arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his +general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer +and more original nature. I was willing to learn, that was all. There +was much that Marshall could teach me, and I used him without shame, +without stint. I used him as I have used all those with whom I have been +brought into close contact. Search my memory as I will, I cannot recall +a case of man or woman who ever occupied any considerable part of my +thoughts without contributing largely towards my moral or physical +welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had +useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal +fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious, +egoistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and +more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent +services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with +less design than myself. Never have I given a thought to the advantage +that might accrue from being on terms of friendship with this man and +avoiding that one. "Then how do you explain," cries the angry reader, +"that you have never had a friend by whom you did not profit? You must +have had very few friends." On the contrary, I have had many friends, +and of all sorts and kinds—men and women: and, I repeat, none took part +in my life who did not contribute something towards my well-being. It +must, of course, be understood that I make no distinction between mental +and material help; and in my case the one has at all times been adjuvant +to the other. "Pooh, pooh!" again exclaims the reader; "I for one will +not believe that chance has only sent across your way the people who +were required to assist you." Chance! dear reader, is there such a thing +as chance? Do you believe in chance? Do you attach any precise meaning +to the word? Do you employ it at haphazard, allowing it to mean what it +may? Chance! What a field for psychical investigation is at once opened +up; how we may tear to shreds our past lives in search of—what? Of the +Chance that made us. I think, reader, I can throw some light on the +general question, by replying to your taunt: Chance, or the conditions +of life under which we live, sent, of course, thousands of creatures +across my way who were powerless to benefit me; but then an instinct of +which I knew nothing, of which I was not even conscious, withdrew me +from them, and I was attracted to others. Have you not seen a horse +suddenly leave a corner of a field to seek pasturage further away?</p> + +<p>Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my +mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind +asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much +expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same +processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the +case in a well-ordered stomach. Shelley, who fired my youth with +passion, and purified and upbore it for so long, is now to me as +nothing: not a dead or faded thing, but a thing out of which I +personally have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and, +therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more. +And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing +line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such +perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of +tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a +spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten +corner of a forgotten room. My old rapture and my youth's delight I can +regain only when I think of that part of Gautier which is now incarnate +in me.</p> + +<p>As I picked up books, so I picked up my friends. I read friends and +books with the same passion, with the same avidity; and as I discarded +my books when I had assimilated as much of them as my system required, +so I discarded my friends when they ceased to be of use to me. I employ +the word "use" in its fullest, not in its limited and twenty-shilling +sense. This parallel of the intellect to the blind unconsciousness of +the lower organs will strike some as a violation of man's best beliefs, +and as saying very little for the particular intellect that can be so +reduced. But I am not sure these people are right. I am inclined to +think that as you ascend the scale of thought to the great minds, these +unaccountable impulses, mysterious resolutions, sudden, but certain +knowings, falling whence or how it is impossible to say, but falling +somehow into the brain, instead of growing rarer, become more and more +frequent; indeed, I think that if the really great man were to confess +to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by +inspirations...inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a +circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we +slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let +general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these +pages if it be understood that brain instincts have always been, and +still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="III"></a><h2>III</h2> +<br> + +<p>But the studio, where I had been working for the last three or four +months so diligently, became wearisome to me, and for two reasons. +First, because it deprived me of many hours of Marshall's company. +Secondly—and the second reason was the graver—because I was beginning +to regard the delineation of a nymph, or youth bathing, etc., as a very +narrow channel to carry off the strong, full tide of a man's thought. +For now thoughts of love and death, and the hopelessness of life, were +in active fermentation within me and sought for utterance with a strange +persistency of appeal. I yearned merely to give direct expression to my +pain. Life was then in its springtide; every thought was new to me, and +it would have seemed a pity to disguise even the simplest emotion in any +garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The +creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose +gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I +hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that +was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to +select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might +never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct +to me from the outside.</p> + +<p>At the time of which I am writing I lived in an old-fashioned hotel on +the Boulevard, which an enterprising Belgian had lately bought and was +endeavouring to modernise; an old-fashioned hotel, that still clung to +its ancient character in the presence of half a dozen old people, who, +for antediluvian reasons, continue to dine on certain well-specified +days at the <i>table d'hôte</i>. Fifteen years have passed away, and these +old people, no doubt, have joined their ancestors; but I can see them +still sitting in that <i>salle à manger</i>, the <i>buffets en vieux chéne,</i> +the opulent candelabra <i>en style d'empire</i>, the waiter lighting the gas +in the pale Parisian evening. That white-haired man, that tall, thin, +hatchet-faced American, has dined at this <i>table d'hôte</i> for the last +thirty years—he is talkative, vain, foolish, and authoritative. The +clean, neatly-dressed old gentleman who sits by him, looking so much +like a French gentleman, has spent a great part of his life in Spain. +With that piece of news, and its subsequent developments, your +acquaintance with him begins and ends; the eyes, the fan, the mantilla, +how it began, how it was broken off, and how it began again. Opposite +sits another French gentleman, with beard and bristly hair. He spent +twenty years of his life in India, and he talks of his son who has been +out there for the last ten, and who has just returned home. There is the +Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses like a girl of sixteen +and smokes a cigar after dinner,—if there are not too many strangers in +the room. A stranger she calls any one whom she has not seen at least +once before. The little fat, neckless man, with the great bald head, +fringed below the ears with hair, is M. Duval. He is a dramatic author, +the author of a hundred and sixty plays. He does not intrude himself on +your notice, but when you speak to him on literary matters he fixes a +pair of tiny, sloe-like eyes on you, and talks affably of his +collaborateurs.</p> + +<p>I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to +the <i>café</i> after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered +him a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, +inevitable that I should find out that he had not had a play produced +for the last twenty years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty +was about his poor bald head. I thought of the chances of life, he +alluded to the war; and so this unpleasantness was passed over, and we +entered on more genial subjects of conversation. He had written plays +with everybody; his list of collaborateurs was longer than any list of +lady patronesses for an English county ball; there was no literary +kitchen in which he had not helped to dish up. I was at once amazed and +delighted. Had M. Duval written his hundred and sixty plays in the +seclusion of his own rooms, I should have been less surprised; it was +the mystery of the <i>séances</i> of collaboration, the rendezvous, the +discussion, the illustrious company, that overwhelmed me in a rapture of +wonder and respectful admiration. Then came the anecdotes. They were of +all sorts. Here are a few specimens: He, Duval, had written a one-act +piece with Dumas <i>père</i>; it had been refused at the Français, and then +it had been about, here, there, and everywhere; finally the <i>Variétés</i> +had asked for some alterations, and <i>c'était une affaire entendue</i>. "I +made the alterations one afternoon, and wrote to Dumas, and what do you +think,—by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not +consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the +<i>Variétés,</i> because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the +Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier +and Dejazet. They were as old as the world, but they were new to me, and +I was amused and astonished. These <i>bon-mots</i> were followed by an +account of how Gautier wrote his Sunday feuilleton, and how he and +Balzac had once nearly come to blows. They had agreed to collaborate. +Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning +Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I +suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" +And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I +would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre—rooms +high up on the fifth floor—where, between two pictures, supposed to be +by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had written unactable plays for the +last twenty years, and where he would continue to write unactable plays +until God called him to a world, perhaps, of eternal cantatas, but +where, by all accounts, <i>l'exposition de la pièce selon la formule de M. +Scribe</i> is still unknown.</p> + +<p>How I used to enjoy these conversations! I remember how I used to stand +on the pavement after having bid the old gentleman good-night, +regretting I had not asked for some further explanation regarding <i>le +mouvement Romantique</i>, or <i>la façon de M. Scribe de ménager la +situation</i>.</p> + +<p>Why not write a comedy? So the thought came. I had never written +anything save a few ill-spelt letters; but no matter. To find a plot was +the first thing. Take Marshall for hero and Alice for heroine, surround +them with the old gentlemen who dined at the <i>table d'hôte,</i> flavour +with the Italian countess who smoked cigars when there were not too many +strangers present. After three weeks of industrious stirring, the +ingredients did begin to simmer into something resembling a plot. Put it +upon paper. Ah! there was my difficulty. I remembered suddenly that I +had read "Cain," "Manfred," "The Cenci," as poems, without ever +thinking of how the dialogue looked upon paper; besides, they were in +blank verse. I hadn't a notion how prose dialogue would look upon paper. +Shakespeare I had never opened; no instinctive want had urged me to read +him. He had remained, therefore, unread, unlooked at. Should I buy a +copy? No; the name repelled me—as all popular names repelled me. In +preference I went to the Gymnase, and listened attentively to a comedy +by M. Dumas <i>fils</i>. But strain my imagination as I would, I could not +see the spoken words in their written form. Oh, for a look at the +prompter's copy, the corner of which I could see when I leaned forward! +At last I discovered in Galignani's library a copy of Leigh Hunt's +edition of the old dramatists, and after a month's study of Congreve, +Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, I completed a comedy in three acts, +which I entitled "Worldliness." It was, of course, very bad; but, if my +memory serves me well, I do not think it was nearly so bad as might be +imagined.</p> + +<p>No sooner was the last scene written than I started at once for London, +confident I should find no difficulty in getting my play produced.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IV"></a><h2>IV</h2> +<br> + +<p>Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play? +A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me +for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical +managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to +France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with +the sweet and magnetic influence of home.</p> + +<p>How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed +into my eyes!—Paris—public ball-rooms, <i>cafés</i>, the models in the +studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien. +Marshall!—my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets +and the endless procession of people coming and going.</p> + +<p>"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." +"Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M. +Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What +number?" "I think it is fifty-four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up; +drive me to the Rue de Douai."</p> + +<p>But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no +address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be +able to obtain news of him there—perhaps find him. But when I pulled +aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet +my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of +dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am +sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps +at the <i>café</i>, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very +encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along +<i>le Passage</i>, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap +trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of +the Boulevard was our <i>café</i>. As I came forward the waiter moved one of +the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had +seen me yesterday he said, "<i>Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse? +oui...garçon, une demi-tasse</i>." Presently the conversation turned on +Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "<i>Il parait qu'il est +plus amoureux que jamais</i>," Julien replied sardonically.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="V"></a><h2>V</h2> +<br> + +<p>I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in +the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were +large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found +the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen—in a great Louis +XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again, +George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again."</p> + +<p>"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?"</p> + +<p>"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll +have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on +there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there +twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight, +brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am +told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and +the tail is said to be three yards long."</p> + +<p>We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all +delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we +went insolent with patent leather shoes and bright kid gloves and armed +with all the jargon of the school. "<i>Cette jambe ne porte pas"; "la +nature ne se fait pas comme ça"; "on dessine par les masses; combien de +têtes?" "Sept et demi." "Si j'avais un morceau de craie je mettrais +celle-là dans un; bocal c'est un fœtus</i>"; in a word, all that the +journals of culture are pleased to term an artistic education. We +indulged in boisterous laughter, exaggerated in the hope of giving as +much pain as possible, and deep down in our souls we knew that we were +lying—at least I did.</p> + +<p>In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art—the +tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau—had been completely lost; +having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of +the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: +further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the +Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and +Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn +begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil +of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned +from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life. +Degas draws not by the masses, but by the character;—his subjects are +shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow +them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins +and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat, +vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the +pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and +rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you +know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you know what she would +say to you if she were to speak. She is as typical of the nineteenth +century as Fragonard's ladies are of the Court of Louis XV. To the right +you see a picture of two shop-girls with bonnets in their hands. So +accurately are the habitual movements of the heads and the hands +observed that you at once realise the years of bonnet-showing and +servile words that these women have lived through. We have seen Degas do +this before—it is a welcome repetition of a familiar note, but it is +not until we turn to the set of nude figures that we find the great +artist revealing any new phase of his talent. The first, in an attitude +which suggests the kneeling Venus, washes her thighs in a tin bath. The +second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of +children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The +naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas' +genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the +great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has +rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the +British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the +hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the +sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as +it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in +her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy +shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is +terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted his dwarfs.</p> + +<p>Pissarro exhibited a group of girls gathering apples in a garden—sad +greys and violets beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in +a dream: we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet colour +and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches, +those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled: +that garden is the garden of the peace that life has not for giving, but +which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey.</p> + +<p>Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two +young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are +all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their +ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard +roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are +there—willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces.</p> + +<p>Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the +vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and +colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of +the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a <i>chef +d'œuvre.</i> Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that +hillside,—sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue +shadow,—is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in +one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of +the woman on a background of chintz flowers.</p> + +<p>We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced +him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I +wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only <i>une blague +qu'on nous fait</i>?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most +exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and +seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"—that <i>chef d'œuvre</i>! +the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so +swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look +at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The +perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational +kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway +stations by the same painter,—those rapid sensations of steel and +vapour,—our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at +this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it +round, that's all." Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich +sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an +absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures +as you do in nature, and the child's criticism of a portrait—"Why is +one side of the face black?" is answered. There was a half-length nude +figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light! +such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw +nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing.</p> + +<p>For art was not for us then as it is now,—a mere emotion, right or +wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the +grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and <i>la jambe qui porte</i>; and we +found all this in Julien's studio.</p> + +<p>A year passed; a year of art and dissipation—one part art, two parts +dissipation. We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of +society's ladder. One evening we would spend at Constant's, Rue de la +Gaieté, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following +evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs +Elysées. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with +equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the +literary <i>salon</i>; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in +the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess, +I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in +terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to +be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very +thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and +presenting our spotless selves to the <i>élite</i>. And we succeeded very +well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making +love to the wrong woman.</p> + +<p>But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not +stave off our craving for art; and about this time there came a very +decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really <i>grande passion</i> +had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him +to turn his thoughts to painting on china as a means of livelihood. And +as this young man always sought extremes he went to Belleville, donned +a blouse, ate garlic with his food, and settled down to live there as a +workman. I had been to see him, and had found him building a wall. And +with sorrow I related his state that evening to Julien in the Café +Veron. He said, after a pause:—</p> + +<p>"Since you profess so much friendship for him, why do you not do him a +service that cannot be forgotten since the result will always continue? +why don't you save him from the life you describe? If you are not +actually rich you are at least in easy circumstances, and can afford to +give him a <i>pension</i> of three hundred francs a month. I will give him +the use of my studio, which means, as you know, models and teaching; +Marshall has plenty of talent, all he wants is a year's education: in a +year or a year-and-a-half, certainly at the end of two years, he will +begin to make money."</p> + +<p>It is rather a shock to one who is at all concerned with his own genius +to be asked to act as foster-mother to another's. Then three hundred +francs meant a great deal, plainly it meant deprivation of those +superfluities which are so intensely necessary to the delicate and +refined. Julien watched me. This large crafty Southerner knew what was +passing in me; he knew I was realising all the manifold +inconveniences—the duty of looking after Marshall's wants for two +years, and to make the pill easier he said:—</p> + +<p>"If three hundred francs a month are too heavy for your purse, you might +take an apartment and ask Marshall to come and live with you. You told +me the other day you were tired of hotel life. It would be an advantage +to you to live with him. You want to do something yourself; and the fact +of his being obliged to attend the studio (for I should advise you to +have a strict agreement with him regarding the work he is to do) would +be an extra inducement to you to work hard."</p> + +<p>I always decide at once, reflection does not help me, and a moment after +I said, "Very well, Julien, I will."</p> + +<p>And next day I went with the news to Belleville. Marshall protested he +had no real talent. I protested he had. The agreement was drawn up and +signed. He was to work in the studio eight hours a day; he was to draw +until such time as M. Lefebvre set him to paint; and in proof of his +industry he was to bring me at the end of each week a study from life +and a composition, the subject of which the master gave at the +beginning of each week, and in return I was to take an apartment near +the studio, give him an abode, food, <i>blanchissage</i>, etc. Once the +matter was decided, Marshall manifested prodigious energy, and three +days after he told me he had found an apartment in Le Passage des +Panoramas which would suit us perfectly. The plunge had to be taken. I +paid my hotel bill, and sent my taciturn valet to beef, beer and a wife.</p> + +<p>It was unpleasant to have a window opening not to the sky, but to an +unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at +seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the +resolution even of the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all +pleasures for the sake of art—<i>table d'hôtes</i> in the Rue Maubeuge, +French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue +de la Gaieté.</p> + +<p>I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art +for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It +will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so intensely alive to +all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer +in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It +was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter +when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches +like the pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little beyond verbal +expression. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were +striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first +hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true, caught +the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the +quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I +possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing +was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I +possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without +which all is valueless;—I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off +a clever caricature of his school-master or make a <i>lifelike</i> sketch of +his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.</p> + +<p>The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the +model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time +never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling +hopelessly in the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was +bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and +was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated +by the professors. In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of +education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in +(using the word in its modern, not in its original sense). He showed +himself intensely anxious to learn and to accept all that was said: the +ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose +neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream. He was an +ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the +studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and +anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain. I continued +the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio at eight in the +morning, I measured my drawing, I plumbed it throughout, I sketched in, +having regard to <i>la jambe qui porte</i>, I modelled <i>par les masses</i>. +During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon, at +night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result. +But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling, +stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible +are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching +void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden +of unachieved desire grew intolerable.</p> + +<p>I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again." +That vow I have kept.</p> + +<p>Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a +blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I +do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my +heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome +by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no +equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home +almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat +still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured +loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of +the medals which he would carry off, of what Lefebvre thought of his +drawing this week, of Boulanger's opinion of his talent. I do not wish +to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me +neither consideration nor pity, he did not even seem to understand that +I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he +flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face—his good looks, his +talents, his popularity. I did not know then how little these studio +successes really meant.</p> + +<p>Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is +rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a +certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed +me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing +enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This +was intolerable. I packed up my portmanteau and left, after having kept +my promise for only ten months. By so doing I involved my friend in +grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future +prospects. It was a dastardly action, but his presence had grown +unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and +in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being +lifted from me.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VI"></a><h2>VI</h2> +<br> + +<p>After three months spent in a sweet seaside resort, where unoccupied men +and ladies whose husbands are abroad happily congregate, I returned to +Paris refreshed.</p> + +<p>Marshall and I were no longer on speaking terms, but I saw him daily, in +a new overcoat, of a cut admirably adapted to his figure, sweeping past +the fans and the jet ornaments of the Passage des Panoramas. The coat +interested me, and I remembered that if I had not broken with him I +should have been able to ask him some essential questions concerning it. +Of such trifles as this the sincerest friendships are made; he was as +necessary to me as I to him, and after some demur on his part a +reconciliation was effected.</p> + +<p>Then I took an <i>appartement</i> in one of the old houses in Rue de la Tour +des Dames, for windows there overlooked a bit of tangled garden with a +dilapidated statue. It was Marshall of course who undertook the task of +furnishing, and he lavished on the rooms the fancies of an imagination +that suggested the collaboration of a courtesan of high degree and a +fifth-rate artist. Nevertheless, our <i>salon</i> was a pretty +resort—English cretonne of a very happy design—vine leaves, dark green +and golden, broken up by many fluttering jays. The walls were stretched +with this colourful cloth, and the arm-chairs and the couches were to +match. The drawing-room was in cardinal red, hung from the middle of the +ceiling and looped up to give the appearance of a tent; a faun, in +terra-cotta, laughed in the red gloom, and there were Turkish couches +and lamps. In another room you faced an altar, a Buddhist temple, a +statue of the Apollo, and a bust of Shelley. The bedrooms were made +unconventual with cushioned seats and rich canopies; and in picturesque +corners there were censers, great church candlesticks, and palms; then +think of the smell of burning incense and wax and you will have imagined +the sentiment of our apartment in Rue de la Tour des Dames. I bought a +Persian cat, and a python that made a monthly meal off guinea pigs; +Marshall, who did not care for pets, filled his rooms with flowers—he +used to sleep beneath a tree of gardenias in full bloom. We were so, +Henry Marshall and George Moore, when we went to live in 76 Rue de la +Tour des Dames, we hoped for the rest of our lives. He was to paint, I +was to write.</p> + +<p>Before leaving for the seaside I had bought some volumes of Hugo and De +Musset; but in pleasant, sunny Boulogne poetry went flat, and it was not +until I got into my new rooms that I began to read seriously. Books are +like individuals; you know at once if they are going to create a sense +within the sense, to fever, to madden you in blood and brain, or if they +will merely leave you indifferent, or irritable, having unpleasantly +disturbed sweet intimate musings as might a draught from an open window. +Many are the reasons for love, but I confess I only love woman or book, +when it is as a voice of conscience, never heard before, heard suddenly, +a voice I am at once endearingly intimate with. This announces feminine +depravities in my affections. I am feminine, morbid, perverse. But above +all perverse, almost everything perverse interests, fascinates me. +Wordsworth is the only simple-minded man I ever loved, if that great +austere mind, chill even as the Cumberland year, can be called simple. +But Hugo is not perverse, nor even personal. Reading him was like being +in church with a strident-voiced preacher shouting from out of a +terribly sonorous pulpit. "Les Orientales...." An East of painted +cardboard, tin daggers, and a military band playing the Turkish patrol +in the Palais Royal.... The verse is grand, noble, tremendous; I liked +it, I admired it, but it did not—I repeat the phrase—awake a voice of +conscience within me; and even the structure of the verse was too much +in the style of public buildings to please me. Of "Les Feuilles +d'Automne" and "Les Chants du Crépuscule" I remember nothing. Ten lines, +fifty lines of "Les Légendes des Siècles," and I always think that it is +the greatest poetry I have ever read, but after a few pages the book is +laid down and forgotten. Having composed more verses than any man that +ever lived, Hugo can only be taken in the smallest doses; if you repeat +any passage to a friend across a <i>café</i> table, you are both appalled by +the splendour of the imagery, by the thunder of the syllables.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été</p> +<p>Avait en s'en allant négligemment jeté</p> +<p>Cette faucille d'or dans les champs des étoiles."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the +<i>ennui</i> which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or +Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's +genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a +metaphysical German student. Take another verse—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Without a "like" or an "as," by a mere statement of fact, the picture, +nay more, the impression, is produced. I confess I have a weakness for +the poem which this line concludes—"La fête chez Thérèse"; but +admirable as it is with its picture of mediæval life, there is in it, as +in all Hugo's work, a sense of fabrication that dries up emotion in my +heart. He shouts and raves over poor humanity, while he is gathering +coppers for himself; he goes in for an all-round patronage of the +Almighty in a last stanza; but of the two immortalities he evidently +considers his own the most durable; he does not, however, become really +intolerable until he gets on the subject of little children, he sings +their innocence in great bombast, but he is watching them; the poetry +over, the crowd dispersed, he will entice one of them down a byway.</p> + +<p>The first time I read of <i>une bouche d'ombre</i> I was astonished, nor did +the second or third repetition produce a change in my mood of mind; but +sooner or later it was impossible to avoid conviction, that of the two +"the rosy fingers of the dawn," although some three thousand years older +is younger, truer, and more beautiful. Homer's similes can never grow +old; <i>une bouche d'ombre</i> was old the first time it was said. It is the +birthplace and the grave of Hugo's genius.</p> + +<p>Of Alfred de Musset I had heard a great deal. Marshall and the Marquise +were in the habit of reading him in moments of relaxation, they had +marked their favourite passages, so he came to me highly recommended. +Nevertheless, I made but little progress in his poetry. His modernisms +were out of tune with the strain of my aspirations at that moment, and I +did not find the unexpected word and the eccentricities of expression +which were, and are still, so dear to me. I am not a purist; an error of +diction is very pardonable if it does not err on the side of the +commonplace; the commonplace, the natural, is constitutionally abhorrent +to me; and I have never been able to read with any very thorough sense +of pleasure even the opening lines of "Rolla," that splendid lyrical +outburst. What I remember of it now are those two odious +<i>chevilles—marchait et respirait</i>, and <i>Astarté fille de l'onde amère</i>; +nor does the fact that <i>amère</i> rhymes with <i>mère</i> condone the offence, +although it proves that even Musset felt that perhaps the richness of +the rhyme might render tolerable the intolerable. And it is to my credit +that the Spanish love songs moved me not at all; and it was not until I +read that magnificently grotesque poem "La Ballade à la Lune," that I +could be induced to bend the knee and acknowledge Musset a poet.</p> + +<p>I still read and spoke of Shelley with a rapture of joy,—he was still +my soul. But this craft, fashioned of mother-o'-pearl, with starlight at +the helm and moonbeams for sails, suddenly ran on a reef and went down, +not out of sight, but out of the agitation of actual life. The reef was +Gautier; I read "Mdlle. de Maupin." The reaction was as violent as it +was sudden. I was weary of spiritual passion, and this great exaltation +of the body above the soul at once conquered and led me captive; this +plain scorn of a world as exemplified in lacerated saints and a +crucified Redeemer opened up to me illimitable prospects of fresh +beliefs, and therefore new joys in things and new revolts against all +that had come to form part and parcel of the commonalty of mankind. Till +now I had not even remotely suspected that a deification of flesh and +fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching had been, while +accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so preserve our +ideal; but now suddenly I saw, with delightful clearness and with +intoxicating conviction, that by looking without shame and accepting +with love the flesh, I might raise it to as high a place within as +divine a light as even the soul had been set in. The ages were as an +aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before the noble nakedness of the +elder gods: not the infamous nudity that sex has preserved in this +modern world, but the clean pagan nude,—a love of life and beauty, the +broad fair breast of a boy, the long flanks, the head thrown back; the +bold fearless gaze of Venus is lovelier than the lowered glance of the +Virgin, and I cried with my master that the blood that flowed upon Mount +Calvary "<i>ne m'a jamais baigné dans ses flots</i>."</p> + +<p>I will not turn to the book to find the exact words of this sublime +vindication, for ten years I have not read the Word that has become so +inexpressibly a part of me; and shall I not refrain as Mdlle. de Maupin +refrained, knowing well that the face of love may not be twice seen? +Great was my conversion. None more than I had cherished mystery and +dream: my life until now had been but a mist which revealed as each +cloud wreathed and went out, the red of some strange flower or some tall +peak, blue and snowy and fairylike in lonely moonlight; and now so great +was my conversion that the more brutal the outrage offered to my ancient +ideal, the rarer and keener was my delight. I read almost without fear: +"My dreams were of naked youths riding white horses through mountain +passes, there were no clouds in my dreams, or if there were any, they +were clouds that had been cut out as if in cardboard with scissors."</p> + +<p>I had shaken off all belief in Christianity early in life and had +suffered much. Shelley had replaced faith by reason, but I still +suffered: but here was a new creed which proclaimed the divinity of the +body, and for a long time the reconstruction of all my theories of life +on a purely pagan basis occupied my whole attention. The exquisite +outlines of the marvellous castle, the romantic woods, the horses +moving, the lovers leaning to each other's faces enchanted me; and then +the indescribably beautiful description of the performance of <i>As You +Like It</i>, and the supreme relief and perfect assuagement it brings to +Rodolph, who then sees Mdlle. de Maupin for the first time in woman's +attire. If she were dangerously beautiful as a man, that beauty is +forgotten in the rapture and praise of her unmatchable woman's +loveliness.</p> + +<p>But if "Mdlle. de Maupin" was the highest peak, it was not the entire +mountain. The range was long, and each summit offered to the eye a new +and delightful prospect. There were the numerous tales,—tales as +perfect as the world has ever seen; "La Morte Amoureuse," "Jettatura," +"Une Nuit de Cléopâtre," etc., and then the very diamonds of the crown, +"Les Emaux et Camées," "La Symphonie en Blanc Majeure," in which the +adjective <i>blanc</i> and <i>blanche</i> is repeated with miraculous felicity in +each stanza. And then Contralto,—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Mais seulement il se transpose</p> +<p class="i2">Et passant de la forme au son,</p> +<p>Trouve dans la métamorphose</p> +<p class="i2">La jeune fille et le garçon."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p><i>Transpose</i>,—a word never before used except in musical application, +and now for the first time applied to material form, and with a +beauty-giving touch that Phidias might be proud of. I know not how I +quote; such is my best memory of the stanza, and here, that is more +important than the stanza itself. And that other stanza, "The +Châtelaine and the Page"; and that other, "The Doves"; and that other, +"Romeo and Juliet," and the exquisite cadence of the line ending +"<i>balcon</i>." Novelists have often shown how a love passion brings misery, +despair, death and ruin upon a life, but I know of no story of the good +or evil influence awakened by the chance reading of a book, the chain of +consequences so far-reaching, so intensely dramatic. Never shall I open +these books again, but were I to live for a thousand years, their power +in my soul would remain unshaken. I am what they made me. Belief in +humanity, pity for the poor, hatred of injustice, all that Shelley gave +may never have been very deep or earnest; but I did love, I did believe. +Gautier destroyed these illusions. He taught me that our boasted +progress is but a pitfall into which the race is falling, and I learned +that the correction of form is the highest ideal, and I accepted the +plain, simple conscience of the pagan world as the perfect solution of +the problem that had vexed me so long; I cried, "ave" to it all: lust, +cruelty, slavery, and I would have held down my thumbs in the Colosseum +that a hundred gladiators might die and wash me free of my Christian +soul with their blood.</p> + +<p>The study of Baudelaire hurried the course of the disease.<a name="FNanchor1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> No longer +is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven +face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning +sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better +know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful +flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and +were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your +poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children +of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of +your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful +in your sublime decay, I press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, +far from the rank Parisian garden where I gathered you, are full of you, +even as the sea-shell of the sea, and the sun that sets on this wild +moorland evokes the magical verse:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique</p> +<p>Nous échangerons un éclair unique</p> +<p>Comme un long sanglot tout chargé d'adieux."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>For months I fed on the mad and morbid literature that the enthusiasm +of 1830 called into existence. The gloomy and sterile little pictures of +"Gaspard de la Nuit," or the elaborate criminality, "Les Contes +Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, +pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and +in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the +unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I +never read more than a few pages.</p> + +<p>Like a pike after minnows I pursued the works of Les Jeune France along +the quays and through every <i>passage</i> in Paris. The money spent was +considerable, the waste of time vexatious. One man's solitary work (he +died very young, but he is known to have excelled all in length of his +hair and the redness of his waistcoats) resisted my efforts to capture +it. At last I caught sight of the precious volume in a shop on the Quai +Voltaire. Trembling I asked the price. The man looked at me earnestly +and answered, "A hundred and fifty francs." No doubt it was a great deal +of money, but I paid it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone +before had proved disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had +contributed little towards my intellectual advancement; but this—this +that I had heard about so long—not a queer phrase, not an outrage of +any sort of kind, not even a new blasphemy, it meant nothing to me, that +is to say, nothing but a hundred and fifty francs. Having thus rudely, +and very pikelike, knocked my nose against the bottom—this book was, +most certainly, the bottom of the literature of 1830—I came up to the +surface and began to look around my contemporaries for something to +read.</p> + +<p>I have remarked before on the instinctiveness of my likes and dislikes, +on my susceptibility to the sound of and even to the appearance of a +name upon paper. I was repelled by Leconte de Lisle from the first, and +it was only by a very deliberate outrage to my feelings that I bought +and read "Les Poèmes Antiques," and "Les Poèmes Barbares"; I was +deceived in nothing, all I had anticipated I found—long, desolate +boredom. Leconte de Lisle produces on me the effect of a walk through +the new Law Courts, with a steady but not violent draught sweeping from +end to end. Oh, the vile old professor of rhetoric! and when I saw him +the last time I was in Paris, his head—a declaration of righteousness, +a cross between a Cæsar by Gerome, and an archbishop of a provincial +town, set all my natural antipathy instantly on edge. Hugo is often +pompous, shallow, empty, unreal, but he is at least an artist, and when +he thinks of the artist and forgets the prophet, as in "Les Chansons des +Rues et des Bois," his juggling with the verse is magnificent, superb.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Comme un geai sur l'arbre</p> +<p class="i2">Le roi se tient fier;</p> +<p>Son cœur est de marbre,</p> +<p class="i2">Son ventre est de chair.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"On a pour sa nuque</p> +<p class="i2">Et son front vermeil</p> +<p>Fait une perruque</p> +<p class="i2">Avec le soleil.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Il règne, il végète</p> +<p class="i2">Effroyant zéro;</p> +<p>Sur lui se projette</p> +<p class="i2">L'ombre du bourreau.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>"Son trône est une tombe,</p> +<p class="i2">Et sur le pavé</p> +<p>Quelque chose en tombe</p> +<p class="i1">Qu'on n'a point lavé."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But how to get the first line of the last stanza into five syllables I +cannot think. If ever I meet with the volume again I will look it out +and see how that <i>rude dompteur de syllables</i> managed it. But stay, +<i>son trône est la tombe</i>; that makes the verse, and the generalisation +would be in the "line" of Hugo. Hugo—how impossible it is to speak of +French literature without referring to him. Let these, however, be +concluding words that he thought he could by saying everything, and, +saying everything twenty times over, for ever render impossible the +rehearsal of another great poet. But a work of art is valuable, and +pleasurable in proportion to its rarity; one beautiful book of verses is +better than twenty books of beautiful verses. This is an absolute and +incontestable truth; a child can burlesque this truth—one verse is +better than the whole poem, a word is better than the line, a letter is +better than the word, but the truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never +had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so +not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality +would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, +what oblivion is secured by the publication of these posthumous volumes.</p> + +<p>To return to the Leconte de Lisle. See his "Discours de Réception." Is +it possible to imagine anything more absurdly arid? Rhetoric of this +sort, "<i>des vers d'or sur une éclume d'airain</i>" and such sententious +platitudes as this (speaking of the realists), "<i>Les épidémies de cette +nature passent, et le génie demeure</i>."</p> + +<p>Theodore de Banville. At first I thought him cold, infected with the +rhetorical ice of the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim +nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not +seem to touch him, nor did he sing the languors and ardours of animal or +spiritual passion. But there is this: a pure, clear song, an +instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. He sings of the +white lily and the red rose, such knowledge of, such observation of +nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is +trilling magic in every song, and the song as it ascends rings, and all +the air quivers with the ever-widening circle of the echoes, sighing and +dying out of the ear until the last faintness is reached, and the glad +rhymes clash and dash forth again on their aerial way. Banville is not +the poet, he is the bard. The great questions that agitate the mind of +man have not troubled him, life, death, and love he perceives only as +stalks whereon he may weave his glittering web of living words. +Whatever his moods may be, he is lyrical. His wit flies out on +clear-cut, swallow-like wings; in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le +Besoin d'aimer," he said: "<i>Vous avez trouvé un titre assez laid pour +faire reculer les divines étoiles</i>." I know not what instrument to +compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to +me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys +and he produces Chopin-like fluidities.</p> + +<p>It is now well known that French verse is not seventy years old. If it +was Hugo who invented French rhyme it was Banville who broke up the +couplet. Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the +adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, +"<i>Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine</i>" that the cæsura received +its final <i>coup de grâce</i>. This verse has been probably more imitated +than any other verse in the French language. <i>Pensivement</i> was replaced +by some similar four-syllable adverb, <i>Elle tirait nonchalamment les bas +de soie, etc</i>. It was the beginning of the end.</p> + +<p>I read the French poets of the modern school—Coppée, Mendés, Léon Diex, +Verlaine, José Maria Hêrédia, Mallarmé, Richepin, Villiers de l'Isle +Adam. Coppée, as may be imagined, I only was capable of appreciating in +his first manner, when he wrote those exquisite but purely artistic +sonnets "La Tulipe," and "Le Lys." In the latter a room decorated with +daggers, armour, jewellery and china is beautifully described, and it is +only in the last line that the lily, which animates and gives life to +the whole, is introduced. But the exquisite poetic perceptivity Coppée +showed in his modern poems, the certainty with which he raised the +commonest subject, investing it with sufficient dignity for his purpose, +escaped me wholly, and I could not but turn with horror from such poems +as "La Nourrice" and "Le Petit Epicier." How anyone could bring himself +to acknowledge the vulgar details of our vulgar age I could not +understand. The fiery glory of José Maria de Hérédia, on the contrary, +filled me with enthusiasm—ruins and sand, shadow and silhouette of +palms and pillars, negroes, crimson, swords, silence, and arabesques. +Like great copper pans go the clangour of the rhymes.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Entre le ciel qui brûle et la mer qui moutonne,</p> +<p>Au somnolent soleil d'un midi monotone,</p> +<p>Tu songes, O guerrière, aux vieux conquistadors;</p> +<p>Et dans l'énervement des nuits chaudes et calmes,</p> +<p>Berçant ta gloire éteinte, O cité, tu t'endors</p> +<p>Sous les palmiers, au long frémissement des palmes."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Catulle Mendès, a perfect realisation of his name, with his pale hair, +and his fragile face illuminated with the idealism of a depraved woman. +He takes you by the arm, by the hand, he leans towards you, his words +are caresses, his fervour is delightful, and to hear him is as sweet as +drinking a smooth perfumed yellow wine. All he says is false—the book +he has just read, the play he is writing, the woman who loves him,...he +buys a packet of bonbons in the streets and eats them, and it is false. +An exquisite artist; physically and spiritually he is art; he is the +muse herself, or rather, he is one of the minions of the muse. Passing +from flower to flower he goes, his whole nature pulsing with butterfly +voluptuousness. He has written poems as good as Hugo, as good as Leconte +de Lisle, as good as Banville, as good as Baudelaire, as good as +Gautier, as good as Coppée; he never wrote an ugly line in his life, but +he never wrote a line that some one of his brilliant contemporaries +might not have written. He has produced good work of all kinds "et voilà +tout." Every generation, every country, has its Catulle Mendès. Robert +Buchanan is ours, only in the adaptation Scotch gruel has been +substituted for perfumed yellow wine. No more delightful talker than +Mendès, no more accomplished <i>littérateur</i>, no more fluent and +translucid critic. I remember the great moonlights of the <i>Place +Pigale</i>, when, on leaving the <i>café</i>, he would take me by the arm, and +expound Hugo's or Zola's last book, thinking as he spoke of the Greek +sophists. There were for contrast Mallarmé's Tuesday evenings, a few +friends sitting round the hearth, the lamp on the table. I have met none +whose conversation was more fruitful, but with the exception of his +early verses I cannot say I ever enjoyed his poetry frankly. When I knew +him he had published the celebrated "L'Après Midi d'un Faun": the first +poem written in accordance with the theory of symbolism. But when it was +given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange +illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure. +Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the +enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; I am sure +if I were to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties. It bears +the same relation to the author's later work as <i>Rienzi</i> to <i>The +Walkyrie</i>. But what is symbolism? Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite +to what you mean. For example, you want to say that music which is the +new art, is replacing the old art, which is poetry. First symbol: a +house in which there is a funeral, the pall extends over the furniture. +The house is poetry, poetry is dead. Second symbol: "<i>notre vieux +grimoire</i>," <i>grimoire</i> is the parchment, parchment is used for writing, +therefore, <i>grimoire</i> is the symbol for literature, "<i>d'où s'exaltent +les milliers</i>," thousands of what? of letters of course. We have heard a +great deal in England of Browning obscurity. The "Red Cotton Nightcap +Country" is a child at play compared to a sonnet by such a determined +symbolist as Mallarmé, or better still his disciple Ghil who has added +to the infirmities of symbolism those of poetic instrumentation. For +according to M. Ghil and his organ <i>Les Ecrits pour l'Art,</i> it would +appear that the syllables of the French language evoke in us the +sensations of different colours; consequently the timbre of the +different instruments. The vowel <i>u</i> corresponds to the colour yellow, +and therefore to the sound of flutes. Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, +first in the field with these pleasant and genial theories; but M. Ghil +informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many things, particularly in +coupling the sound of the vowel <i>u</i> with the colour green instead of +with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this very stupid blunder +and many others; and his instrumentation in his last volume, "Le Geste +Ingénu," may be considered as complete and definitive. The work is +dedicated to Mallarmé, "Père et seigneur des ors, des pierreries, et des +poisons," and other works are to follow:—the six tomes of "Légendes de +Rêves et de Sang," the innumerable tomes of "La Glose," and the single +tome of "La Loi."</p> + +<p>And that man Gustave Kahn, who takes the French language as a violin, +and lets the bow of his emotion run at wild will upon it, producing +strange acute strains, unpremeditated harmonies comparable to nothing +that I know of but some Hungarian rhapsody; verses of seventeen +syllables interwoven with verses of eight, and even nine, masculine +rhymes, seeking strange union with feminine rhymes in the middle of the +line—a music sweet, subtil, and epicene; the half-note, the inflexion, +but not the full tone—as "<i>se fondre, o souvenir, des lys âcres +délices</i>."</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Se penchant vers les dahlias,</p> +<p>Des paons cabrent des rosaces lunaires</p> +<p>L'assou pissement des branches vénère</p> +<p>Son pâle visage aux mourants dahlias.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Elle écoute au loin les brèves musiques</p> +<p>Nuit claire aux ramures d'accords,</p> +<p>Et la lassitude a bercé son corps</p> +<p>Au rhythme odorant des pures musiques.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Les paons ont dressé la rampe occellée</p> +<p>Pour la descente de ses yeux vers le tapis</p> +<p class="i2">De choses et de sens</p> +<p>Qui va vers l'horizon, parure vermiculée</p> +<p class="i2">De son corps alangui</p> +<p class="i2">En l'âme se tapit</p> +<p>Le flou désir molli de récits et d'encens.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>I laughed at these verbal eccentricities, but they were not without +their effect, and that a demoralising one; for in me they aggravated the +fever of the unknown, and whetted my appetite for the strange, abnormal +and unhealthy in art. Hence all pallidities of thought and desire were +eagerly welcomed, and Verlaine became my poet. Never shall I forget the +first enchantment of "Les Fétes Galantes." Here all is twilight.</p> + +<p>The royal magnificences of the sunset have passed, the solemn beatitude +of the night is at hand but not yet here; the ways are veiled with +shadow, and lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with +blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange +contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid +creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and +fitful light..."<i>un soir équivoque d'automne</i>"..."<i>les belles pendent +rêveuses à nos bras</i>"...and they whisper "<i>les mots spéciaux et tout +bas</i>."</p> + +<p>Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the +soul; Baudelaire on a mediæval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness +and truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step +further: hate is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as +faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball +dress, to-morrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, +worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or +unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but +Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an +amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawing from +all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness +more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the +licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every +natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music +native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. +The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or +of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of +an archbishop of Persepolis.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil</p> +<p>Babil et la luxure amusante et sa pente</p> +<p>Vers la chair de garçon vierge que cela tente</p> +<p>D'aimer des seins légers et ce gentil babil.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Il a vaincu la femme belle aucœur subtil</p> +<p>Etalant ces bras frais et sa gorge excitante;</p> +<p>Il a vaincu l'enfer, il rentre dans sa tente</p> +<p>Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Avec la lance qui perça le flanc suprême</p> +<p>Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même.</p> +<p>Et prêtre du très-saint trésor essentiel;</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,</p> +<p>Le vase pur où resplendit le sang réel,</p> +<p>Et, o ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In English there is no sonnet so beautiful, its beauty cannot be worn +away, it is as inexhaustible as a Greek marble. The hiatus in the last +line was at first a little trying, but I have learned to love it. Not in +Baudelaire nor even in Poe is there more beautiful poetry to be found. +Poe, unread and ill-understood in America and England, here, thou art an +integral part of our artistic life.</p> + +<p>The Island o' Fay, Silence, Eleonore, were the familiar spirits of an +apartment beautiful with Manets and tapestry; Swinburne and Rossetti +were the English poets I read there; and in a golden bondage, I, a unit +in the generation they have enslaved, clanked my fetters and trailed my +golden chain, a set of stories in many various metres, to be called +"Roses of Midnight." One of the characteristics of the volume was that +daylight was banished from its pages. In the sensual lamplight of yellow +boudoirs, or the wild moonlight of centenarian forests, my fantastic +loves lived out their lives, died with the dawn which was supposed to be +an awakening to consciousness of reality.</p> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a> Surely the phrase is ill considered, hurried "my +convalescence" would express the author's meaning better. + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VII"></a><h2>VII</h2> +<br> + +<p>A last hour of vivid blue and gold glare; but now the twilight sheds +softly upon the darting jays, and only the little oval frames catch the +fleeting beams. I go to the miniatures. Amid the parliamentary faces, +all strictly garrotted with many-folded handkerchiefs, there is a metal +frame enchased with rubies and a few emeralds. And this <i>chef d'œuvre</i> +of antique workmanship surrounds a sharp, shrewdish, modern face, withal +pretty. Fair she is and thin.</p> + +<p>She is a woman of thirty—no,—she is the woman of thirty. Balzac has +written some admirable pages on this subject; my memory of them is vague +and uncertain, although durable, as all memories of him must be. But +that marvellous story, or rather study, has been blunted in my knowledge +of this tiny face with the fine masses of hair drawn up from the neck +and arranged elaborately on the crown. There is no fear of plagiary; he +cannot have said all; he cannot have said what I want to say.</p> + +<p>Looking at this face so mundane, so intellectually mundane, I see why a +young man of refined mind—a bachelor who spends at least a pound a day +on his pleasures, and in whose library are found some few volumes of +modern poetry—seeks his ideal in a woman of thirty.</p> + +<p>It is clear that, by the very essence of her being, the young girl may +evoke no ideal but that of home; and home is in his eyes the antithesis +of freedom, desire, aspiration. He longs for mystery, deep and endless, +and he is tempted with a foolish little illusion—white dresses, +water-colour drawings and popular music. He dreams of Pleasure, and he +is offered Duty; for do not think that that sylph-like waist does not +suggest to him a yard of apron string, cries of children, and that most +odious word, "Papa." A young man of refined mind can look through the +glass of the years.</p> + +<p>He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of +thirty at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he +knows that the world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved +and amused, the circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine +faces, they cluster like flowers on this side and that, and they fade +into garden-like spaces of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest +may one day smile upon his knee! and shall he renounce all for that +little creature who has just finished singing and is handing round cups +of tea? Every bachelor contemplating marriage says, "I shall have to +give up all for one, one."</p> + +<p>The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and +uncertain, it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests +nothing; the very essence of the young girl's being is that she should +have nothing to suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to +touch the imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no +story of hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and +ninety-nine cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at +least a pound a day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering +the muslin flower if he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight +every one. Where, then, is the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? +Therefore, I say that if a young man's heart is not set on children, and +tiresome dinner-parties, the young girl presents to him no possible +ideal. But the woman of thirty presents from the outset all that is +necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man. I see her sitting in her +beautiful drawing-room, all designed by, and all belonging to her. Her +chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the long leaves lean +out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses of the +Aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand +piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her +visitors have left her, playing Beethoven's sonatas in the dreamy +firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; +August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is +stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations +lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. +These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines +himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, +calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight +sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe +affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its +disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she +has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love +reality would dissolve into a dream, all limitations would open into +boundless infinity.</p> + +<p>The husband he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about +half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, +his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the +<i>caserne</i>, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry +him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand +times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is +five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation has passed into middle +age.</p> + +<p>Why did she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great +mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry +space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this +riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the +clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; +and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, she has forgotten.</p> + +<p>The young man shakes hands with the husband; he strives not to look +embarrassed, and he talks of indifferent things—of how well he (the +husband) is looking, of his amusements, his projects; and then he (the +young man of refined mind) tastes of that keen and highly-seasoned +delight—happiness in crime. He knows not the details of her home life, +the husband is merely a dark cloud that fills one side of the picture, +sometimes obliterating the sunlight; a shadowy shape that in certain +moments solidifies and assumes the likeness of a rock-sculptured, +imminent monster, but the shadow and the shape and the threat are +magnetic, and in a sense of danger the fascination is sealed.</p> + +<p>The young man of refined mind is in a ball-room! He leans against the +woodwork in a distant doorway; hardly knowing what to do with himself, +he strives to interest himself in the conversation of a group of men +twice his age. I will not say he is shunned; but neither the matrons nor +the young girls make any advances towards him. The young girls so +sweet—in the oneness of their fresh hair, flowers, dresses, and +glances—are being introduced, are getting up to dance, and the hostess +is looking round for partners. She sees the young man in the doorway, +but she hesitates and goes to some one else, and if you asked her why, +she could not tell you why she avoided him. Presently the woman of +thirty enters. She is in white satin and diamonds. She looks for him—a +circular glance. Calm with possession she passes to a seat, extending +her hand here and there. She dances the eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth +waltz with him.</p> + +<p>Will he induce her to visit his rooms? Will they be like +Marshall's—strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps—or mine, an +old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral +century, my taste; or will it be a library,—two leather library chairs, +a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be +the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of +the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: +her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband's +arms, with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and +lonely shall kneel and adore her.</p> + +<p>And should she <i>not</i> visit his rooms? If the complex and various +accidents of existence should have ruled out her life virtuously; if the +many inflections of sentiment have decided against this last +consummation, then she will wax to the complete, the unfathomable +temptress—the Lilith of old—she will never set him free, and in the +end will be found about his heart "one single golden hair." She shall +haunt his wife's face and words (should he seek to rid himself of her by +marriage), a bitter sweet, a half-welcome enchantment; she shall +consume and destroy the strength and spirit of his life, leaving it +desolation, a barren landscape, burnt and faintly scented with the sea. +Fame and wealth shall slip like sand from him. She may be set aside for +the cadence of a rhyme, for the flowing line of a limb, but when the +passion of art has raged itself out, she shall return to blight the +peace of the worker.</p> + +<p>A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called +nympholepsy—a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal +aspect, "the breasts of the nymphs in the brake." And the disease is not +extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall +yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their +ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, +and they call it—the woman of thirty.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="VIII"></a><h2>VIII</h2> +<br> + +<p>A Japanese dressing-gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some +fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and +having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack, my great +python crawling about after a two months' fast. I tie up a guinea-pig to +the <i>tabouret</i>, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, +the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the +oscillations...now he strikes; and with what exquisite gourmandise he +lubricates and swallows.</p> + +<p>Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, +that beautiful hymn, the "Vexilla Regis," by Saint Fortunatus, the great +poet of the Middle Ages. And, having turned over the leaves of "Les +Fêtes Galantes," I sit down to write.</p> + +<p>My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying +from thirty to three hundred lines in length. The nature of these +stories is easy to imagine: there was the youth who wandered by night +into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and +old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the +holy man; but he died as he yielded; his arms stiffened by some miracle, +and she was unable to free herself; she died of starvation, as her +bondage loosened in decay. I had increased my difficulties by adopting +as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in +many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I +was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising +crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they +were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art +of telling a story clearly and dramatically, <i>selon les procédés de M. +Scribe</i>, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a +hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a +hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, +Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring +<i>café</i>, and our conversation turned on <i>l'exposition de la pièce, +préparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes</i>, etc. One day, as I sat +waiting for him, I took up the <i>Voltaire</i>. It contained an article by M. +Zola. <i>Naturalisme, la vérité, la science,</i> were repeated some +half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you +should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a +novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. +Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, +ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who +has received a violent blow on the head.</p> + +<p>Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying +marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader +who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word +"Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a +train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many +years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the +reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of +the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final +ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led +to the creation of a mental existence.</p> + +<p>And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and +inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the +new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, +and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile +eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any +semblance of life, passionless in all their passion.</p> + +<p>I had read a few chapters of the "Assommoir," as it appeared in <i>La +République des Lettres</i>; I had cried, "ridiculous, abominable," only +because it is characteristic of me to instantly form an opinion and +assume at once a violent attitude. But now I bought up the back numbers +of the <i>Voltaire</i>, and I looked forward to the weekly exposition of the +new faith with febrile eagerness. The great zeal with which the new +master continued his propaganda, and the marvellous way in which +subjects the most diverse, passing events, political, social, religious, +were caught up and turned into arguments for, or proof of the truth of +naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon +science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on +imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern +life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a +new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb +before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the +ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would +arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious +and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at +each development of the theory of the new art and its universal +applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any +one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an +explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing—as well drink +the dregs of yesterday's champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I +glance through the pages listlessly I say, "Only the simple crude +statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision."</p> + +<p>Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was +to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, +and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little +doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be +for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, +only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the +simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, +sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to +whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had +declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly +naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so +important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible +he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least +condemn. At last the expected article came. It was all that could be +desired by one in my fever of mind. Hugo's claims had been previously +disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed-up +dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had +been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. <i>Cependant</i> +there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry. I +trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough. Coppée had +striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, +<i>Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel</i>; he had sought to give utterance +to humble sentiments as in "Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge," the little +grocer <i>qui cassait le sucre avec mélancolie</i>; Richepin had boldly and +frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity. +All this was, however, preparatory and tentative. We are waiting for our +poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen +and the comestible glories of the market-places. The subjects are to +hand, the formula alone is wanting.</p> + +<p>The prospect dazzled me; I tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me +to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?—bays, +laurel crown, a distinct <i>souvenir</i> of Parnassus, but there is no modern +equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me +think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." +The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of +Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is +Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible +glories of the market-place shall be mine. <i>A bas "Les Roses de +Minuit"</i>!</p> + +<p>I felt the "naturalisation" of the "Roses of Midnight" would prove a +difficult task. I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems +aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and +Ville d'Avray. This book was to be entitled "Poems of 'Flesh and +Blood.'"</p> + +<p>"<i>Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu</i>" ...and then? Why, +then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded +streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, +inquires at the <i>concierge's</i> loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, "<i>Que +c'est haut le cinquième</i>," and then? Why, the door opens, and she +cries, "<i>Je t'aime</i>"</p> + +<p>But it was the idea of the new æstheticism—the new art corresponding to +modern, as ancient art corresponded to ancient life—that captivated me, +that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by +the naturalists. I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed +by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also +by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment +of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new—the +washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the +development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is +broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the +fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its +fulness; it is worked up to <i>crescendo</i>, another side issue is +introduced, and again the theme is given forth. And I marvelled greatly +at the lordly, river-like roll of the narrative, sometimes widening out +into lakes and shallowing meres, but never stagnating in fen or +marshlands. The language, too, which I did not then recognise as the +weak point, being little more than a boiling down of Chateaubriand and +Flaubert, spiced with Goncourt, delighted me with its novelty, its +richness, its force. Nor did I then even roughly suspect that the very +qualities which set my admiration in a blaze wilder than wildfire, being +precisely those that had won the victory for the romantic school forty +years before, were very antagonistic to those claimed for the new art; I +was deceived, as was all my generation, by a certain externality, an +outer skin, a nearness, <i>un approchement</i>; in a word, by a substitution +of Paris for the distant and exotic backgrounds so beloved of the +romantic school. I did not know then, as I do now, that art is eternal, +that it is only the artist that changes, and that the two great +divisions—the only possible divisions—are: those who have talent, and +those who have no talent. But I do not regret my errors, my follies; it +is not well to know at once of the limitations of life and things. I +should be less than nothing had it not been for my enthusiasms; they +were the saving clause in my life.</p> + +<p>But although I am apt to love too dearly the art of my day, and to the +disparagement of that of other days, I did not fall into the fatal +mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and +on the same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac; I felt +that that vast immemorial mind rose above them all, like a mountain +above the highest tower.</p> + +<p>And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for +mention is made in the wonderful preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal" of +Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it?—woman or man? Should +Wilfred or Mona be the possessor? A new Mdlle. de Maupin, with royal +lily and aureole, cloud-capped mountains, great gulfs of sea-water +flowing up and reflecting as in a mirror the steep cliff's side; the +straight white feet are set thereon, the obscuring weft of flesh is +torn, and the pure, strange soul continues its mystical exhortations. +Then the radiant vision, a white glory, the last outburst and +manifestation, the trumpets of the apocalypse, the colour of heaven, the +closing of this stupendous allegory—Seraphita lying dead in the rays of +the first sun of the nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead +of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Père Goriot, +I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of +his genius—Seraphita. Certain <i>nuances</i> of soul are characteristic of +certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest +of this fervent soul? The instincts of genius are unfathomable? but he +who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, +will aver that instinct led him aright. I have known one, one whom I +used to call Seraphita; Coppée knew her too, and that exquisite volume, +"L'Exilé," so Seraphita-like in the keen blonde passion of its verse, +was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written. +Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season +in Paris? Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs +of sea water, mountain rock, and pine?</p> + +<p>Balzac's genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars: "Melmoth +Reconcilié," "Jesus-Christ en Flandres," "Le Revers d'un Grand Homme," +"La Cousine Bette." I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was +the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal. Of +Pascal's claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge. No man is +greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the +legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the +existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof +of the existence of Jupiter Ammon. "Les Pensées" could appear to me only +as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and +sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself. Still, I +accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment +paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have +shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware +that this last statement will make many cry "fool" and hiss +"Shakespeare"! But I am not putting forward these criticisms +axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and +interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different +developments and the progress of my mind. It might prove a little +tiresome, but it would no doubt "look well," in the sense that going to +church "looks well," if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of +our national bard. I must, however, resist the temptation to "look +well"; a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth +it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any +profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the +great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well +as I could not fail to hear the melody of—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly?</p> +<p>Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Is not such music as this enough? Of course, but I am a sensualist in +literature. I may see perfectly well that this or that book is a work of +genius, but if it doesn't "fetch me," it doesn't concern me, and I +forget its very existence. What leaves me cold to-day will madden me +to-morrow. With me literature is a question of sense, intellectual sense +if you will, but sense all the same, and ruled by the same +caprices—those of the flesh? Now we enter on very subtle distinctions. +No doubt that there is the brain-judgment and the sense-judgment of a +work of art. And it will be noticed that these two forces of +discrimination exist sometimes almost independently of each other, in +rare and radiant instances confounded and blended in one immense and +unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, +thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates +to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. +This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why +should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in +me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one +can understand the other, but there are affinities in literature +corresponding to, and very analogous to, sexual affinities—the same +unreasoned attractions, the same pleasures, the same lassitudes. Those +we have loved most we are most indifferent to. Shelley, Gautier, Zola, +Flaubert, Goncourt! how I have loved you all; and now I could not, would +not, read you again. How womanly, how capricious; but even a capricious +woman is constant, if not faithful to her <i>amant de cœur</i>. And so with +me; of those I have loved deeply there is but one that still may thrill +me with the old passion, with the first ecstasy—it is Balzac. Upon that +rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often +from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new æstheticisms, +the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the +symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit +and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the +first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought +that shall make speech beautiful and rememberable. The grandeur and +sublimity of Balzac's thoughts seem to me to rise to the loftiest +heights, and his range is limitless; there is no passion he has not +touched, and what is more marvellous, he has given to each in art a +place equivalent to the place it occupies in nature; his intense and +penetrating sympathy for human life and all that concerns it enabled him +to surround the humblest subjects with awe and crown them with the light +of tragedy. There are some, particularly those who can understand +neither and can read but one, who will object to any comparison being +drawn between the Dramatist and the Novelist; but I confess that I—if +the inherent superiority of verse over prose, which I admit +unhesitatingly, be waived—that I fail, utterly fail to see in what +Shakespeare is greater than Balzac. The range of the poet's thought is +of necessity not so wide, and his concessions must needs be greater than +the novelist's. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to +the vital question—the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is +Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to +Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the +apothecary in the "Cousine Bette," or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine +Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever +conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three +hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his +characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions +are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation +of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in +contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as +epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute +sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer +than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the +poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she +says, "His look frightens me as if he put his hand on my dress"; and +another epigram from the same book, "Woman's virtue is man's greatest +invention." Find me anything in La Rochefoucauld that goes more +incisively to the truth of things. One more; here I can give the exact +words: "<i>La gloire est le soleil des morts</i>." It would be easy to +compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all "Maximes" and +"Pensées," even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and +shallow.</p> + +<p>Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading +culminated in the "Comédie Humaine." I no doubt fluttered through some +scores of other books, of prose and verse, sipping a little honey, but +he alone left any important or lasting impression upon my mind. The rest +was like walnuts and wine, an agreeable aftertaste.</p> + +<p>But notwithstanding all this reading I can lay no claim to scholarship +of any kind; for save life I could never learn anything correctly. I am +a student only of ball rooms, bar rooms, streets, and alcoves. I have +read very little; but all I read I can turn to account, and all I read I +remember. To read freely, extensively, has always been my ambition, and +my utter inability to study has always been to me a subject of grave +inquietude,—study as contrasted with a general and haphazard gathering +of ideas taken in flight. But in me the impulse is so original to +frequent the haunts of men that it is irresistible, conversation is the +breath of my nostrils, I watch the movement of life, and my ideas spring +from it uncalled for, as buds from branches. Contact with the world is +in me the generating force; without this what invention I have is thin +and sterile, and it grows thinner rapidly, until it dies away utterly, +as it did in the composition of my unfortunate "Roses of Midnight."</p> + +<p>Men and women, oh the strength of the living faces! conversation, oh the +magic of it! It is a fabulous river of gold where the precious metal is +washed up without stint for all to take, to take as much as he can +carry. Two old ladies discussing the peerage? Much may be learned, it is +gold; poets and wits, then it is fountains whose spray solidifies into +jewels, and every herb and plant is begemmed with the sparkle of the +diamond and the glow of the ruby.</p> + +<p>I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the "Nouvelle +Athènes." What is the "Nouvelle Athènes"? He who would know anything of +my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the +official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French +academy, the <i>café</i>. The "Nouvelle Athènes" is a <i>café</i> on the Place +Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was +but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used +to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to +separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we +might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who +used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our +home, live only in a few pictures and a few pages of prose. The same old +story, the vanquished only are victorious; and though unacknowledged, +though unknown, the influence of the "Nouvelle Athènes" is inveterate in +the artistic thought of the nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>How magnetic, intense, and vivid are these memories of youth. With what +strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,—see the white +face of that <i>café</i>, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching +up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of +those two streets, and I know what shops are there; I can hear the glass +door of the <i>café</i> grate on the sand as I open it. I can recall the +smell of every hour. In the morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, +the pungent cigarette, coffee and bad cognac; at five o'clock the +fragrant odour of absinthe; and soon after the steaming soup ascends +from the kitchen; and as the evening advances, the mingled smells of +cigarettes, coffee, and weak beer. A partition, rising a few feet or +more over the hats, separates the glass front from the main body of the +<i>café</i>. The usual marble tables are there, and it is there we sat and +æstheticised till two o'clock in the morning. But who is that man? he +whose prominent eyes flash with excitement. That is Villiers de +l'Isle-Adam. The last or the supposed last of the great family. He is +telling that girl a story—that fair girl with heavy eyelids, stupid and +sensual. She is, however, genuinely astonished and interested, and he is +striving to play upon her ignorance. Listen to him. "Spain—the night is +fragrant with the sea and the perfume of the orange trees, you know—a +midnight of stars and dreams. Now and then the silence is broken by the +sentries challenging—that is all. But not in Spanish but in French are +the challenges given; the town is in the hands of the French; it is +under martial law. But now an officer passes down a certain garden, a +Spaniard disguised as a French officer; from the balcony the family—one +of the most noble and oldest families Spain can boast of, a thousand +years, long before the conquest of the Moors—watches him. Well +then"—Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is +falling over his face—he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in +the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to "scamp," in +French to <i>escamoter</i>. "The family are watching, death if he is caught, +if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague +sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is +seized. Martial law, Spanish conspiracy must be put down. The French +general is a man of iron." (Villiers laughs, a short, hesitating laugh +that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain +way), "man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, +but also the entire family—a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you +cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the +calamity—a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard +alone could—there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting—the utter +extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all +the families in Spain, it is not easy to understand that, no, not easy +here in the 'Nouvelle Athènes'—ha, ha, one must belong to a great +family to understand, ha, ha.</p> + +<p>"The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue +the name—the youngest son—that is all; if he could be saved, the rest +what matter; death is nothing to a Spaniard; the family, the name, a +thousand years of name is everything. The general is, you know, a 'man +of iron.' 'Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, but on one +condition.' To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they +don't know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and +they cry, 'Any conditions.' 'He who is respited must serve as +executioner to the others.' Great is the doom; you understand; but after +all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes +to his youngest son and says, 'I have been a good father to you, my son; +I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never +refused you anything. Now you will not fail us, you will prove yourself +worthy of the great name you bear. Remember your great ancestor who +defeated the Moors, remember.'" (Villiers strives to get in a little +local colour, but his knowledge of Spanish names and history is limited, +and he in a certain sense fails.) "Then the mother comes to her son and +says, 'My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say +you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.' Then the little +sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the +horror-stricken boy....</p> + +<p>"'He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,' cries the father. +'Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, +strike straight.' The father's head falls into the sawdust, the blood +all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another +brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could +bear, and the mother had to whisper, 'Remember your promise to your +father, to your dead father.' The mother laid her head on the block, but +he could not strike. 'Be not the first coward of our name, strike; +remember your promise to us all,' and her head was struck off."</p> + +<p>"And the son," the girl asks, "what became of him?"</p> + +<p>"He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the +walls of his castle in Granada."</p> + +<p>"And whom did he marry?"</p> + +<p>"He never married."</p> + +<p>Then after a long silence some one said,—</p> + +<p>"Whose story is that?"</p> + +<p>"Balzac's."</p> + +<p>At that moment the glass door of the <i>café</i> grated upon the sanded +floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially +Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking +that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress—his +clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that +swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, +the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an +idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression—frank +words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear +as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, +bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next +to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is +nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large +necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. +These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their +friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. "Degas was painting +'Semiramis' when I was painting 'Modern Paris,'" says Manet. "Manet is +in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and +be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by +force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar," says Degas. +Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture +from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the +devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, +there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints +unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently +that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely +what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision +does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from +drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he +has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his +strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the +arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the <i>café</i> is +closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great +moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the +streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm, +speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous, +aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an +unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little +and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows +that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write +another novel, he will say, "What's the good, it would not be read; no +one read the others, and I mightn't do even as well if I tried again." +Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in +the "Nouvelle Athènes."</p> + +<p>Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world: +somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a +forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning +there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they +shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be +forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make +live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and +aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic +soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon +thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall +that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of +the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies +the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and +stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four +sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the +streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the +suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the +accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth +floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand +francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe, +and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and +the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a +refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the +life-size "Venus de Milo." Something extraordinary would be done with +it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head +must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should +be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets.</p> + +<p>Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard +giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion +above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day +earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he +made his <i>début</i> at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of +consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil's success. He was +immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America.</p> + +<p>I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now—that long sallow face +ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered +with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In +all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I +remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the +glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst +thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be +rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean +accent, "<i>Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois +orchestres militaires."</i> And when I did show thee some poor verses of +mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten +my native language—</p> + +<p>"My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is +nauseating."</p> + +<p>"So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and +lovers; his best poem...."</p> + +<p>"<i>C'est vrai, mais il s'agissait d'une charogne et cela relève beaucoup +la chose</i>."</p> + +<p>I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, "music +that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which +Liszt would not fail to understand"; also thy settings of sonnets where +the <i>melody</i> was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the +last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with +unbroken melody, of Villon's ballade "Les Dames du Temps Jadis"; and +that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros's "Hareng +Saur."</p> + +<p>And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something +too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I +think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far +removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd.</p> + +<p>But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though +obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst +live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in +an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and +lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the +clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light +Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a +white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never +before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such +aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting +fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of +the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of +the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and +waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic +convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent +rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our +confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all +base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our +high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the +ideal, the true and living God of all men.</p> + +<p>Cabaner, I see you now entering the "Nouvelle Athènes"; you are a little +tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry +out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your +poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to +æstheticise till the <i>café</i> closes; for you the homeless ones are +waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to +your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and +the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover +them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with +plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, +you will find a few sous to give them <i>lager</i> to cool their thirsty +throats. So you have ever lived—a blameless life is yours, no base +thought has ever entered there, not even a woman's love; art and +friends, that is all.</p> + +<p>Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more +fortunate than I have been.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="IX"></a><h2>IX</h2> + +<p>THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES</p> +<br> + +<p>Two dominant notes in my character—an original hatred of my native +country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All +the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I +cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to +nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am +instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and +repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I +am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with +them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I +explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family +some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I +love, and with a love that is foolish—mad, limitless; I love them +better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet +Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great +hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and +the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful +southern England, not the north,—there is something Celtic in the +north—southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces—a smock frock +is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so +absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires +of the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to +me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism +is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism +is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese +about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases +to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung +to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The +Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs +limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and +revere Cromwell.</p> + +<p><i>Garçon, un bock</i>! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; +if my books sell I cannot help it—it is an accident.</p> + +<p>But you live by writing.</p> + +<p>Yes, but life is only an accident—art is eternal.</p> + +<p>What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you +won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the <i>Figaro</i>.</p> + +<p>He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if +the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who +created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it.</p> + +<p>And his last novel "l'Œuvre," how spun out, and for a franc a line in +the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And that +terrible phrase repeated over and over again—"La Conquête de Paris." +What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris; +no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three +provincials.</p> + +<p>You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of +breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for +the pleasure of undressing them.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in +favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for +Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of <i>Le grand art, le nu</i>, +and Lefebvre's unswerving fidelity to <i>le nu</i>...elegance, refinement, an +echo of ancient Greece: and then,—what do you think? when he had +exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to +Lefebvre, he said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife +and eight children." Is it not monstrous?</p> + +<p>But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole +world in conformity with your æstheticisms...a vain dream, and if +realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are +the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to +such interests as these meet with response...it will be so till the +end of time.</p> + +<p>And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began +two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the <i>Figaro</i> as +much as you thought they should be.</p> + +<p>Love—but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and +mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, +colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife—you know all about +her—who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and +her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, +the <i>au delà</i>? But the women one has never seen before, that one will +never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the +baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark +with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or +maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes—the whisper +of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is +delusion, an <i>au delà</i>.</p> + +<p>Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching +people the "grammar of art." Education should be confined to clerks, and +it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn +anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, +musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an +unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve +of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school... "correct +drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force +it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and +that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good +heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is +better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for +making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does +not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly like +other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of +Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic +education are devoured. After two years they all paint and draw alike, +every one; that vile execution,—they call it execution,—<i>la pâte, la +peinture au premier coup</i>. I was over in England last year, and I saw +some portraits by a man called Richmond. They were horrible, but I liked +them because they weren't like painting. Stott and Sargent are clever +fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and +hadn't been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the +trail of the serpent is over all they do—that vile French painting, +<i>le morceau</i>, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a +nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. +I liked his little landscapes better...simplified into nothing, into a +couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he +will find a public to understand all that.</p> + +<p>Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a +few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that +democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy—the mass. The +mass can only appreciate simple and <i>naïve</i> emotions, puerile +prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come +over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, +Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International +Exhibition?—The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided +by a <i>plébiscite</i>, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming +majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of +the <i>Petit Journal</i>. Don't talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters; +they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people +could understand <i>Hamlet</i>, the people would not read the <i>Petit +Journal</i>; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not +look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last +hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is +the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still +good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will +always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem. +But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend +for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to +exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five thousand, ten +thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not +ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I +was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were +putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. +Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not +find out; no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no +one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more +republican you are the worse it will be.</p> + +<p>The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the +plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to +rise against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, +and all the rest—stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by +machinery; they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were +painted by the hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the +demand, and a china in which there was always something more or less +pretty, was turned out; but now thousands, millions of plates are made +more than we want, and there is a commercial crisis; the thing is +inevitable. I say the great and the reasonable revolution will be when +mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the machinery and restores the +handicrafts.</p> + +<p>Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and +outcries; he is not an artist. <i>Il me fait l'effet</i> of an old woman +shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of +it with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote +novels, history, plays, they collected <i>bric-à-brac</i>—they wrote about +their <i>bric-à-brac</i>; they painted in water-colours, they etched—they +wrote about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will +settling that the <i>bric-à-brac</i> is to be sold at their death, and the +proceeds applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I +forget which it is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; +they kept a diary, they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, +<i>radotage de vieille femme</i>; nothing must escape, not the slightest +word; it might be that very word that might confer on them immortality; +everything they heard, or said, must be of value, of inestimable value. +A real artist does not trouble himself about immortality, about +everything he hears, feels and says; he treats ideas and sensations as +so much clay wherewith to create.</p> + +<p>And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written +about, prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for +articles; it all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is +puerile.</p> + +<p>And Daudet?</p> + +<p>Oh, Daudet, <i>c'est de la bouillabaisse</i>.</p> + +<p>Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people +have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute +inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of +artistic work. Whistler's art is classical; he thinks of nature, but he +does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and +the best of it is he says so. He knows it well enough! Any one who knows +him must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is +an exact science." And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks +nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his +pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions. I +admire his work; I am showing how he is misunderstood, even by those who +think they understand. Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic +of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any +other?—Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., +with a view to rendering his <i>idea</i>. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he +ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever see Duret +with a lady's opera cloak?—I am sure he never did. Is Duret in the +habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No, he is a <i>littérateur</i> who +is always in men's society, rarely in ladies'. But these facts mattered +nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to Manet. Whistler took +Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme—in a +word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the +model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw; I am merely +contending that Whistler's art is not modern art, but classic art—yes, +and severely classical, far more classical than Titian's or +Velasquez;—from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek +dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than +Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. +Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand that the artistic +stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If +a man is really an artist he will remember what is necessary, forget +what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt his artistic +digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches, inchoate and +wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis.</p> + +<p>I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned. +What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the +same peasant, the same <i>sabot</i>, the same sentiment. You must admit that +it is somewhat stereotyped.</p> + +<p>What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But +that does not prevent it from being always beautiful.</p> + +<p>People talk of Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What +he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent +execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in +the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of +touch—marvellous!</p> + +<p>French translation is the only translation; in England you still +continue to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used +to do the same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of +two things—if the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse +for that of the original;—I don't want his verse, I want the +original;—if he is a bad poet; he gives us bad verse, which is +intolerable. Where the original poet put an effect of cæsura, the +translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the original poet puts an +effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of cæsura. Take +Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the original as +our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take Bayard +Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one with an +ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the +original did not exist? The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful, +but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They +are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of +a "splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he +had read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not +different from Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir +Theodore Martin, is doggerel.</p> + +<p>But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you +could into prose?</p> + +<p>I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your +mind away from that of the original.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>But if you don't know the original? The rhythm of the original can be +suggested in prose judiciously used; even if it isn't, your mind is at +least free, whereas the English rhythm must destroy the sensation of +something foreign. There is no translation except a word-for-word +translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's translation of +Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke that is +untranslatable is explained in a note.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>But that is the way young ladies translate—word for word!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>No; 'tis just what they don't do; they think they are translating word +for word, but they aren't. All the proper names, no matter how +unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose +versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;—I don't know what a +verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. +Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very +good sense: if it doesn't make sense at all, it must be explained in a +note. For example, there is a proverb in German: "<i>Quand le cheval est +sellé il faut le monter</i>;" in French there is a proverb: "<i>Quand le vin +est tiré il faut le boire</i>." Well, a translator who would translate +<i>quand le cheval</i>, etc., by <i>quand le vin</i>, etc., is an ass, and does +not know his business. In translation only a strictly classical language +should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should +be employed; the translator's aim should be never to dissipate the +illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the "Assommoir" into +English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless +language, something—what shall I say?—the style of a modern Addison.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>What, don't you know the story about Mendès?—when <i>Chose</i> wanted to +marry his sister? <i>Chose's</i> mother, it appears, went to live with a +priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was broken-hearted; +and he went to Mendès, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make +a clean breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great +deal of beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know +Mendès, you can see him smiling a little; and looking at <i>Chose</i> with +that white cameo face of his he said,</p> + +<p>"<i>Avec quel meillur homme voulez-vous que votre mère se mit? vous +n'avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment religieux.</i>"</p> + +<p>Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration, +long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again.</p> + +<p>How to be happy!—not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the +<i>Nouvelle Athènes</i>, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the <i>bourgeois</i> +over there, not to do anything that would awake a too intense +consciousness of life,—to live in a sleepy country side, to have a +garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every +evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out +to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the +tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from +church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, +who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think +there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of +the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The +philanthropist is the Nero of modern times.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="X"></a><h2>X</h2> + +<p>EXTRACT FROM A LETTER</p> +<br> + +<p>"Why did you not send a letter? We have all been writing to you for the +last six months, but no answer—none. Had you written one word I would +have saved all. The poor <i>concierge</i> was in despair; she said the +<i>propriétaire</i> would wait if you had only said when you were coming +back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done. Three +quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an +auction had to be called. It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid +men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against +the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne.... And all the +while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the +face—'the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,' 'the fan widespread across +the bosom' (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the +mistress of that little paradise of tapestry. She seemed to resent the +intrusion. I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes 'deep set +in crimson shadow' to fill with tears. But nothing altered her great +dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained +impenetrable....</p> + +<p>"I was there the night before the sale. I looked through the books, +taking notes of those I intended to buy—those which we used to read +together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in +<i>terre cuite</i>, that laughed amid the frosty <i>boulingrins</i>. I found a +large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed. You should not be +so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their +letters.</p> + +<p>"The sale was announced for one o'clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did +not wish to be recognised; the <i>concierge</i> of course knew me, but she +can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she +to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred +francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the +auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from +the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table +waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the <i>marchands +de meubles</i> in the <i>quartier</i>, came upstairs, spitting and talking +coarsely—their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled +the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese +dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was +a humorist, answered, 'If there are any ladies' men present, we shall +have some spirited bidding.' The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it +and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the +miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many +other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare—the organ +that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which +we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave +you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not +give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put +matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. +I don't know why, <i>un caprice de femme</i>. No one but you would have ever +thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that +delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation +with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out +all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm +moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the +bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy +darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the +heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted +something: '<i>les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants</i>.' +It was horrid of you: but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the +wrong way. Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the +servants set the other out with little tables? That supper was +fascinating! I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me +wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy +them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose +I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face. +The shoes went with a lot of other things—and oh, to whom?</p> + +<p>"So now that pretty little retreat in the <i>Rue de la Tour des Dames</i> is +ended for ever for you and me. We shall not see the faun in <i>terre +cuite</i> again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the +street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse's hind +legs. I believe it is the steepest street in Paris. And your luncheon +parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what +I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to +that out-of-the-way little street! Men never appreciate the risks women +run for them. But to leave my letters lying about—I cannot forgive +that. When I told Fay she said, 'What can you expect? I warned you +against flirting with boys.' I never did before—never.</p> + +<p>"Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I +read you Browning. You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand +why. I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you +should be here. There are lilacs in the room and the <i>Mont Valérien</i> is +beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into +violet vapour.</p> + +<p>"We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year. Last +year we went to P——, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within +easy distance of a casino. I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out +every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, +and I gave way. There were two young men here, one the Count of B——, +the other the Marquis of G——, one of the best families in France, a +distant cousin of my husband. He has written a book which every one says +is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, <i>c'est +surtout très Parisien</i>. He paid me great attentions, and made my husband +wildly jealous. I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it +was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away. We may return there +this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an +excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable. We have decided +nothing as yet. The Duchesse de —— is giving a costume ball; they say +it is going to be a most wonderful affair. I don't know what money is +not going to be spent upon the cotillion. I have just got home a +fascinating toilette. I am going as a <i>Pierette</i>; you know, a short +skirt and a little cap. The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago. I +danced the cotillion with L——, who, as you know, dances divinely; <i>il +m'a fait la cour</i>, but it is of course no use, you know that.</p> + +<p>"The other night we went to see the <i>Maître-de-Forges</i>, a fascinating +play, and I am reading the book; I don't know which I like the best. I +think the play, but the book is very good too. Now that is what I call a +novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels. But I must not talk +literature, or you will say something stupid. I wish you would not make +foolish remarks about men that <i>tout-Paris</i> considers the cleverest. It +does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at +you behind your back, and that is not nice for me. The <i>marquise</i> was +here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on +her 'days,' so extraordinary were the remarks you made. And by the way, +the <i>marquise</i> has written a book. I have not seen it, but I hear that +it is really too <i>décolleté</i>. She is <i>une femme d'esprit</i>, but the way +she affiché's herself is too much for any one. She never goes anywhere +now without <i>le petit</i> D——. It is a great pity.</p> + +<p>"And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you +are coming back to Paris. I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that +hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really +<i>trés Parisien</i>. Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs +Elysées. You might come back for the Duchesse's ball. I will get an +invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of +running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going +to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things +be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that +Turkish lamp. Yours ——"</p> + +<p>How like her that letter is,—egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not +foolish—narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and +yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity +of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an +inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived +her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely—sincerely?...like a +moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? +Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, +that is quite certain. I never could understand her;—a little brain +that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was +something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought +clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put +into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of +feeling—nervous feeling. I don't know...perhaps.... She has lived her +life...yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do +more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, +little, and merry—a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly +hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had +known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was +very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had +good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far +too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once...once I +did, <i>enfin</i>! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm +was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I +know.... I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments +when.... Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely +subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that +was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never +knew if she hated her husband,—one never knew her,—I never knew how +she would receive me. The last time I saw her...that stupid American +would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding +behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. +However, she could not blame me that time—and all the stories she used +to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the +sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got +her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to +think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into +mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois +they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight +hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, +the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room +geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms +and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a +little grotesque no doubt;—the mechanical admiration for all that is +about her, for the general atmosphere; the <i>Figaro</i>, that is to say +Albert Wolf, <i>l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-à-dire, dans le +monde</i>, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But +with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain +ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain +elevations and depravities,—depravities in the legitimate sense of the +word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace....</p> + +<p>Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from +my reverie, it was pleasant.</p> + +<p>The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes +that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that +one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer +honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant +letter. My agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained +a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in +me;—so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible +even knowing how I stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey +and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that +morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful +Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the +odious epistle.</p> + +<p>That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I +may not be deprived of my <i>demi-tasse</i> at <i>Tortoni's</i>, that I may not be +forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python—monstrous. +And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they +will find pity!</p> + +<p>Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. +The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to +interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak +shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the +strong shall be really strong,—that the strong shall be glorious, +sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, +cry the moderns.</p> + +<p>Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale +socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. +His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He +dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who +hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and +feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way +beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has +drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find +Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee +now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and +more Divine than any man's has been. The chosen people, the garden, the +betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of +Magdalen. The God descending to the harlot! Even the great pagan world +of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and +hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this.</p> + +<p>Come to me, ye who are weak. The Word went forth, the terrible +disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that +they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; +the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, +ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing +every day the end—the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, +that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I +will say it) in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>. What fate has been like Thine? +Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, +crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent +bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious +plight, forthward in the world's van the glory and symbol of a man's new +idea—Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame +with Thy light than ever before—Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing +on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming +night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth +century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the +hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face +is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for +sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in +the ruin Thou hast created.</p> + +<p>Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is +the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of +fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of +lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but +for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! +What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under +Pharaoh's lash or Egypt's sun? It was well that they died that I might +have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. +Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the +ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some +sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres' <i>La Source</i>? That +the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when +compared with the essential that I should have <i>La Source</i>, that +exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with +delight of the painter's holy vision. Nay more, the knowledge that a +wrong was done—that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a +girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal +thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare. Oh, for +the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, +for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to +hear them cry the famous "Ave Caesar," to hold the thumb down, to see +the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned +slaves! Oh, for excess, for crime! I would give many lives to save one +sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, "<i>A la très-chère, à la très-belle, +qui remplit man cœur de clarté"</i> let the first-born in every house in +Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to +decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from +destruction one drawing by Hokusai. Again I say that all we deem sublime +in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if +mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and +fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was +great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England's greatest +son was the personification of injustice—Cromwell.</p> + +<p>But the old world of heroes is over now. The skies above us are dark +with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are +running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing +remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate +Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, +creatures of the ooze and rushes about us—we, the great ship that has +floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain +passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive +blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen +escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary +of tears and effusion, and our refuge—the British Museum—is the wide +sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the +flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is +indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and +how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, +barbarous soul of beauty and of might!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XI"></a><h2>XI</h2> +<br> + +<p>But neither Apollo nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his +exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood +lightly advancing; the other sat in sombre contemplation, calm as a +beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel—the +beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich +autumnal leaves where the jays darted and screamed. The twisted columns +of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, +the python devoured a guinea-pig, the last I gave him; the great white +cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an +abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So +be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, +without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never +return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with +myself; I told my <i>concierge</i> that I would return in a month, and I left +all to be sold, brutally sold by auction, as the letter I read in the +last chapter charmingly and touchingly describes.</p> + +<p>Not even to Marshall did I confide my foreboding that Paris would pass +out of my life, that it would henceforth be with me a beautiful memory, +but never more a practical delight. He and I were no longer living +together; we had parted a second time, but this time without bitterness +of any kind; he had learnt to feel that I wanted to live alone, and had +moved away into the Latin quarter, whither I made occasional +expeditions. I accompanied him once to the old haunts, but various terms +of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest +myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once +done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection +for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would +grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made +friends in the Nouvelle Athènes who interested me passionately, and my +thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had +failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him +to Degas and Manet, but he had spoken of Jules Lefèbvre and Bouguereau, +and generally shown himself incapable of any higher education; he could +not enter where I had entered, and this was alienation. We could no +longer even talk of the same people; when I spoke of a certain +<i>marquise</i>, he answered with an indifferent "Do you really think so"? +and proceeded to drag me away from my glitter of satin to the dinginess +of print dresses. It was more than alienation, it was almost separation; +but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to +whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I +turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap—rap—rap!</p> + +<p>"Who's there?"</p> + +<p>"I—George Moore."</p> + +<p>"I've got a model."</p> + +<p>"Never mind your model. Open the door. How are you? what are you +painting?"</p> + +<p>"This; what do you think of it?"</p> + +<p>"It is prettily composed. I think it will come out all right. I am going +to England; come to say good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Going to England! What will you do in England?"</p> + +<p>"I have to go about money matters, very tiresome. I had really begun to +forget there was such a place."</p> + +<p>"But you are not going to stay there?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!"</p> + +<p>"You will be just in time to see the Academy."</p> + +<p>The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last +Marshall said, "I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; +there's that model."</p> + +<p>The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very +picture of discontent.</p> + +<p>"Send her away."</p> + +<p>"I asked her to come out to dinner."</p> + +<p>"D—n her.... Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with +you; you shall both dine with me. <i>Je quitte Paris demain matin, +peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon +ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous +invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela +vous est agrèable</i>?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Je veux bien, monsieur</i>."</p> + +<p>Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was +always so. We dined in a <i>gargote</i>, and afterwards we went to a +students' ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing +through a clear sky, and on the pavement's edge Marshall's beautiful, +slim, manly figure, and Marie's exquisite gracefulness. She was +Lefèbvre's Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. +She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained +she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No +one knew why; some said it was love.</p> + +<p>I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large +trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman +as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley's Hotel I met my +agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He +explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and +that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a +solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to +contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, +and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. +The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the +senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of +human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but +among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent +spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify +himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and +language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new +nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, +and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was +a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every +aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of +life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; +I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but +everything seemed far away—a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was +in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I +could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an +Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an +Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will +take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that +any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is +found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are +psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is +the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of +a Frenchman's mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they +stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, +form, and temperament;—two ideas destined to remain irrevocably +separate and distinct.</p> + +<p>I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this +was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more +years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts +with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as +an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was +in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional +<i>chroniques</i> in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember +very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing +with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more +easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did +not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, +I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose +required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is +required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and +also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt +with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English +verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an +attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure.</p> + +<p>Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose +translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>We are alone! Listen, a little while, </p> +<p>And hear the reason why your weary smile </p> +<p>And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet, </p> +<p>And how my love of you is more complete </p> +<p>Than any love of any lover. They </p> +<p>Have only been attracted by the gray </p> +<p>Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim </p> +<p>And delicate form, or some such other whim, </p> +<p>The simple pretexts of all lovers;—I </p> +<p>For other reason. Listen whilst I try </p> +<p>To say. I joy to see the sunset slope </p> +<p>Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, </p> +<p>Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm </p> +<p>Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, </p> +<p>In mildly modulated phrases; thus </p> +<p>Your life shall fade like a voluptuous</p> +<p>Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die </p> +<p>Like some soft evening's sad serenity... </p> +<p>I would possess your dying hours; indeed </p> +<p>My love is worthy of the gift, I plead </p> +<p>For them. Although I never loved as yet, </p> +<p>Methinks that I might love you; I would get </p> +<p>From out the knowledge that the time was brief, </p> +<p>That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, </p> +<p>And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm </p> +<p>Beyond all other loves, for now the arm </p> +<p>Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims </p> +<p>You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames </p> +<p>Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet </p> +<p>To see you fading like a violet, </p> +<p>Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange </p> +<p>And costly pleasure, far beyond the range </p> +<p>Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I </p> +<p>Will choose a country spot where fields of rye </p> +<p>And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, </p> +<p>Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, </p> +<p>To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where, </p> +<p>The porch and windows are festooned with fair </p> +<p>Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon </p> +<p>A shady garden where we'll walk alone </p> +<p>In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see </p> +<p>Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, </p> +<p>The garden's length, is far, and you will rest </p> +<p>From time to time, leaning upon my breast </p> +<p>Your languid lily face. Then later still </p> +<p>Unto the sofa by the window-sill </p> +<p>Your wasted body I shall carry, so </p> +<p>That you may drink the last left lingering glow</p> +<p>Of evening, when the air is filled with scent </p> +<p>Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent </p> +<p>The while with many griefs. Like some blue day </p> +<p>That grows more lovely as it fades away, </p> +<p>Gaining that calm serenity and height </p> +<p>Of colour wanted, as the solemn night </p> +<p>Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep </p> +<p>For ever and for ever; I shall weep </p> +<p>A day and night large tears upon your face, </p> +<p>Laying you then beneath a rose-red place </p> +<p>Where I may muse and dedicate and dream </p> +<p>Volumes of poesy of you; and deem </p> +<p>It happiness to know that you are far </p> +<p>From any base desires as that fair star </p> +<p>Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. </p> +<p>Death takes but little, yea, your death has given </p> +<p>Me that deep peace, and that secure possession </p> +<p>Which man may never find in earthly passion. </p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for +they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my +English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor +poets?</p> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>La nuit est pleine de silence,</p> +<p>Et dans une étrange lueur,</p> +<p>Et dans une douce indolence</p> +<p>La lune dort comme une fleur.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Parmi rochers, dans le sable</p> +<p>Sous les grands pins d'un calme amer</p> +<p>Surgit mon amour périssable,</p> +<p>Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Je suis ton amant, et la blonde</p> +<p>Gorge tremble sous mon baiser,</p> +<p>Et le feu de l'amour inonde</p> +<p>Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche</p> +<p>Est telle qu'un fruit fait de sang;</p> +<p>Tout passe, mais ta main me touche</p> +<p>Et je me donne en frémissant,</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Tes yeux verts me regardent: j'aime</p> +<p>Le clair de lune de tes yeux,</p> +<p>Et je ne vois dans le ciel même</p> +<p>Que ton corps rare et radieux.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON </span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs,</p> +<p>D'ombres, d'étoiles ou de pleurs?</p> +<p>De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes</p> +<p>De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes?</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Parcilles aux lis abattus</p> +<p>Elles dorment les rêves tus</p> +<p>Dans la grande fenêtre ovale</p> +<p>Ou s'ouvre la nuit estivale.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient +occupation for a life-time—I realised that fact suddenly—I remember +the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and +these poems were the last efforts of my muse.</p> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>As sailors watch from their prison</p> +<p class="i2">For the faint grey line of the coasts,</p> +<p>I look to the past re-arisen,</p> +<p class="i2">And joys come over in hosts</p> +<p>Like the white sea birds from their roosts.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I love not the indelicate present,</p> +<p class="i2">The future's unknown to our quest,</p> +<p>To-day is the life of the peasant,</p> +<p class="i2">But the past is a haven of rest—</p> +<p>The things of the past are the best.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The rose of the past is better</p> +<p class="i2">Than the rose we ravish to-day,</p> +<p>'Tis holier, purer, and fitter</p> +<p class="i2">To place on the shrine where we pray</p> +<p>For the secret thoughts we obey.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In the past nothing dies, nothing changes,</p> +<p class="i2">In the past all is lovely and still;</p> +<p>No grief nor fate that estranges,</p> +<p class="i2">Nor hope that no life can fulfil,</p> +<p>But ethereal shelter from ill.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The coarser delights of the hour</p> +<p class="i2">Tempt, and debauch, and deprave,</p> +<p>And we joy in a flitting flower,</p> +<p class="i2">Knowing that nothing can save</p> +<p>Our flesh from the fate of the grave.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But sooner or later returning</p> +<p class="i2">In grief to the well-loved nest,</p> +<p>Our souls filled with infinite yearning,</p> +<p class="i2">We cry, there is rest, there is rest</p> +<p>In the past, its joys are the best.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<br><span style="margin-left: 2em;">NOSTALGIA</span><br> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Fair were the dreamful days of old,</p> +<p class="i2">When in the summer's sleepy shade,</p> +<p>Beneath the beeches on the wold,</p> +<p class="i2">The shepherds lay and gently played</p> +<p>Music to maidens, who, afraid,</p> +<p class="i2">Drew all together rapturously,</p> +<p>Their white soft hands like white leaves laid,</p> +<p class="i2">In the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Men were not then as they are now</p> +<p class="i2">Haunted and terrified by creeds,</p> +<p>They sought not then, nor cared to know</p> +<p class="i2">The end that as a magnet leads,</p> +<p>Nor told with austere fingers beads,</p> +<p class="i2">Nor reasoned with their grief and glee,</p> +<p>But rioted in pleasant meads</p> +<p class="i2">In the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The future may be wrong or right,</p> +<p class="i2">The present is a hopeless wrong,</p> +<p>For life and love have lost delight,</p> +<p class="i2">And bitter even is our song;</p> +<p>And year by year grey doubt grows strong,</p> +<p class="i2">And death is all that seems to dree.</p> +<p>Wherefore with weary hearts we long</p> +<p class="i2">For the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">ENVOI.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Glories and triumphs ne'er shall cease,</p> +<p class="i2">But men may sound the heavens and sea,</p> +<p>One thing is lost for aye—the peace</p> +<p class="i2">Of the old dear days of Arcady.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, +determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships +of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious +for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. +An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. +So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that +house? Chance, or a friend's recommendation? I forget. It was +uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are +curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The +sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled +with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a +large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed +stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a +small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition +wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. +This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten +shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In +the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy +Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, +and in the afternoon, friends—girls from the theatre—used to come and +see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; +and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L——; she had only +two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except +when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now +looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones.</p> + +<p>She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she +liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or +two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; +we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of +what?—of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of +enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it +was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not +living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I +have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings +which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our +intimacy, and I believe Miss L—— was charged indirectly for her +conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large +sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. +The landlady's parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to +it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence +ascended Mrs S——'s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, +with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs +predominating.</p> + +<p>Emma, I remember you—you are not to be forgotten—up at five o'clock +every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous +children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck +and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours +at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, +running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down +on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those +hands—can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind +word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the +pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts +of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had +sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally +you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were +too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into +the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were +very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and +intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a +real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. +Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely +recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked—well, to +be candid,—you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated +the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers +something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore +that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you +was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw +something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of +yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I +have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of +yours, for it was a sweet face—that sweet, natural goodness that is so +sublime—lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words +convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your +case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen +hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the +slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the +landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know +that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish +between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I +remember when you heard that Miss L—— was going to America, you asked +me, and the question was sublime: "Is she going to travel all night?" +You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you +knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you +went to church, and you said, "No, it makes my eyes bad." I said, "But +you don't read; you can't read." "No, but I have to look at the book." I +asked you if you had heard of God—you hadn't, but when I pressed you +on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not +answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the +landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, +and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of +days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you +answered that you couldn't go to church because it made your eyes bad. +It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London +and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, +except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police—yes, you knew what a +policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an +organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark +kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours +a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why +you did not get your wages or leave if you weren't paid, that you +"didn't know how Mrs S—— would get on without me."</p> + +<p>This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what +you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not +know how she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point +your intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; +I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take +the children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of +this and he said—Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well +give a mule a holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably +descriptive of you. Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you +are a beast of burden, a drudge too horrible for anything but work; and +I suppose, all things considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen +children did well to work you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out +of your miserable wages. You had no friends; you could not have a friend +unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your +brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I +wondered if he were as awful as you. Poor Emma! I shall never forget +your kind heart and your unfailing good humour; you were born +beautifully good as a rose is born with perfect perfume; you were as +unconscious of your goodness as the rose of its perfume. And you were +taken by this fat landlady as 'Arry takes a rose and sticks it in his +tobacco-reeking coat; and you will be thrown away, shut out of doors +when health fails you, or when, overcome by base usage, you take to +drink. There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and +paid your wages there would be no hope. Those forty pounds even, if they +were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the +idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his +kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his +whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind +words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in +despair, the gin shop and the river would do the rest. Providence is +very wise after all, and your best destiny is your present one. We +cannot add a pain, nor can we take away a pain; we may alter, but we +cannot subtract nor even alleviate. But what truisms are these; who +believes in philanthropy nowadays?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>"Come in."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it is you, Emma!"</p> + +<p>"Are you going to dine at home to-day, sir?"</p> + +<p>"What can I have?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yer can 'ave a chop or a steak."</p> + +<p>"Anything else?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yer can 'ave a steak, or a chop, or—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I know; well then, I'll have a chop. And now tell me, Emma, +how is your young man? I hear you have got one, you went out with him +the other night."</p> + +<p>"Who told yer that?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, never mind; I hear everything."</p> + +<p>"I know, from Miss L——"</p> + +<p>"Well, tell me, how did you meet him, who introduced him?"</p> + +<p>"I met 'im as I was a-coming from the public 'ouse with the beer for +missus' dinner."</p> + +<p>"And what did he say?"</p> + +<p>"He asked me if I was engaged; I said no. And he come round down the +lane that evening."</p> + +<p>"And he took you out?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And where did you go?"</p> + +<p>"We went for a walk on the Embankment."</p> + +<p>"And when is he coming for you again?"</p> + +<p>"He said he was coming last evening, but he didn't."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't he?"</p> + +<p>"I dunno; I suppose because I haven't time to go out with him. So it +was Miss L—— that told you; well, you do 'ave chats on the stairs. I +suppose you likes talking to 'er."</p> + +<p>"I like talking to everybody, Emma; I like talking to you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but not as you talks to 'er; I 'ears you jes do 'ave fine times. +She said this morning that she had not seen you for this last two +nights—that you had forgotten 'er, and I was to tell yer."</p> + +<p>"Very well, I'll come out to-night and speak to her."</p> + +<p>"And missus is so wild about it, and she daren't say nothing 'cause she +thinks yer might go."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>A young man in a house full of women must be almost supernaturally +unpleasant if he does not occupy a great deal of their attention. +Certain at least it is that I was the point of interest in that house; +and I found there that the practice of virtue is not so disagreeable as +many young men think it. The fat landlady hovered round my doors, and I +obtained perfectly fresh eggs by merely keeping her at her distance; the +pretty actress, with whom I used to sympathise with on the stairs at +midnight, loved me better, and our intimacy was more strange and subtle, +because it was pure, and it was not quite unpleasant to know that the +awful servant dreamed of me as she might of a star, or something equally +unattainable; but the landlady's daughter, a nasty girl of fifteen, +annoyed me with her ogling, which was a little revolting, but the rest +was, and I speak quite candidly, not wholly unpleasant. It was not +aristocratic, it is true, but, I repeat, it was not unpleasant, nor do I +believe that any young man, however refined, would have found it +unpleasant.</p> + +<p>But if I was offered a choice between a chop and steak in the evening, +in the morning I had to decide between eggs and bacon and bacon and +eggs. A knocking at the door, "Nine o'clock, sir; 'ot water, sir; what +will you have for breakfast?" "What can I have?" "Anything you like, +sir. You can have bacon and eggs, or—" "Anything else?"—Pause,—"Well, +sir, you can have eggs and bacon, or—" "Well, I'll have eggs and +bacon."</p> + +<p>The streets seemed to me like rat holes, dark and wandering as chance +directed, with just an occasional rift of sky, seen as if through an +occasional crevice, so different from the boulevards widening out into +bright space with fountains and clouds of green foliage. The modes of +life were so essentially opposed. I am thinking now of intellectual +rather than physical comforts. I could put up with even lodging-house +food, but I found it difficult to forego the glitter and artistic +enthusiasm of the <i>café</i>. The tavern, I had heard of the tavern.</p> + +<p>Some seventy years ago the Club superseded the Tavern, and since then +all literary intercourse has ceased in London. Literary clubs have been +founded, and their leather arm-chairs have begotten Mr Gosse; but the +tavern gave the world Villon and Marlowe. Nor is this to be wondered at. +What is wanted is enthusiasm and devil-may-careism; and the very aspect +of a tavern is a snort of defiance at the hearth, the leather arm-chairs +are so many salaams to it. I ask, Did anyone ever see a gay club room? +Can any one imagine such a thing? You can't have a club-room without +mahogany tables, you can't have mahogany tables without +magazines—<i>Longman's</i>, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the <i>Nineteenth +Century</i>, with an article, "The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern +Society," by W. E. Gladstone—a dulness that's a purge to good spirits, +an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that's worth a thousand +a year. You can't have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver +salver in his hand; then you can't bring a lady to a club, and you have +to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull.</p> + +<p>As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the +husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can +go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is +considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club—out of the +Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays everyone is respectable—jockeys, +betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs Kendal takes her children +to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them +of the joy of respectability. There is only one class left that is not +respectable, and that will succumb before long; how the transformation +will be effected I can't say, but I know an editor or two who would be +glad of an article on the subject.</p> + +<p>Respectability!—a suburban villa, a piano in the drawing-room, and +going home to dinner. Such things are no doubt very excellent, but they +do not promote intensity of feeling, fervour of mind; and as art is in +itself an outcry against the animality of human existence, it would be +well that the life of the artist should be a practical protest against +the so-called decencies of life; and he can best protest by frequenting +a tavern and cutting his club. In the past the artist has always been an +outcast; it is only latterly he has become domesticated, and judging by +results, it is clear that if Bohemianism is not a necessity it is at +least an adjuvant. For if long locks and general dissoluteness were not +an aid and a way to pure thought, why have they been so long his +characteristics? If lovers were not necessary for the development of +poet, novelist, and actress, why have they always had lovers—Sappho, +George Eliot, George Sand, Rachel, Sara? Mrs Kendal nurses children all +day and strives to play Rosalind at night. What infatuation, what +ridiculous endeavour! To realise the beautiful woodland passion and the +idea of the transformation, a woman must have sinned, for only through +sin may we learn the charm of innocence. To play Rosalind a woman must +have had more than one lover, and if she has been made to wait in the +rain and has been beaten she will have done a great deal to qualify +herself for the part. The ecstatic Sara makes no pretence to virtue, +she introduces her son to an English duchess, and throws over a nation +for the love of Richepin, she can, therefore, say as none other—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Ce n'est plus qu'une ardeur dans mes veines cachée,</p> +<p>C'est Venus tout entière à sa proie attachée."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Swinburne, when he dodged about London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems +and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he +has contributed to the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and published an +interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he +continues his plaint about his mother the sea.</p> + +<p>Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national +costumes are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, +and the smock in the southlands, even the Japanese are becoming +christian and respectable; in another quarter of a century silk hats and +pianos will be found in every house in Yeddo. Too true that universal +uniformity is the future of the world; and when Mr Morris speaks of the +democratic art to be when the world is socialistic, I ask, whence will +the unfortunates draw their inspiration? To-day our plight is pitiable +enough—the duke, the jockey-boy, and the artist are exactly alike; +they are dressed by the same tailor, they dine at the same clubs, they +swear the same oaths, they speak equally bad English, they love the same +women. Such a state of things is dreary enough, but what unimaginable +dreariness there will be when there are neither rich nor poor, when all +have been educated, when self-education has ceased. A terrible world to +dream of, worse, far worse, in darkness and hopelessness than Dante's +lowest circle of hell. The spectre of famine, of the plague, of war, +etc., are mild and gracious symbols compared with that menacing figure, +Universal Education, with which we are threatened, which has already +eunuched the genius of the last five-and-twenty years of the nineteenth +century, and produced a limitless abortion in that of future time. +Education, I tremble before thy dreaded name. The cruelties of Nero, of +Caligula, what were they?—a few crunched limbs in the amphitheatre; but +thine, O Education, are the yearning of souls sick of life, of maddening +discontent, of all the fearsome and fathomless sufferings of the mind. +When Goethe said "More light," he said the wickedest and most infamous +words that human lips ever spoke. In old days, when a people became too +highly civilised the barbarians came down from the north and +regenerated that nation with darkness; but now there are no more +barbarians, and sooner or later I am convinced that we shall have to end +the evil by summary edicts—the obstruction no doubt will be severe, the +equivalents of Gladstone and Morley will stop at nothing to defeat the +Bill; but it will nevertheless be carried by patriotic Conservative and +Unionist majorities, and it will be written in the Statute Book that not +more than one child in a hundred shall be taught to read, and no more +than one in ten thousand shall learn the piano.</p> + +<p>Such will be the end of Respectability, but the end is still far +distant. We are now in a period of decadence growing steadily more and +more acute. The old gods are falling about us, there is little left to +raise our hearts and minds to, and amid the wreck and ruin of things +only a snobbery is left to us, thank heaven, deeply graven in the +English heart; the snob is now the ark that floats triumphant over the +democratic wave; the faith of the old world reposes in his breast, and +he shall proclaim it when the waters have subsided.</p> + +<p>In the meanwhile Respectability, having destroyed the Tavern, and +created the Club, continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating +influence on literature. All audacity of thought and expression has been +stamped out, and the conventionalities are rigorously respected. It has +been said a thousand times that an art is only a reflection of a certain +age; quite so, only certain ages are more interesting than others, and +consequently produce better art, just as certain seasons produce better +crops. We heard in the Nouvelle Athènes how the Democratic movement, in +other words, Respectability, in other words, Education, has extinguished +the handicrafts; it was admitted that in the more individual +arts—painting and poetry—men would be always found to sacrifice their +lives for a picture or a poem: but no man is, after all, so immeasurably +superior to the age he lives in as to be able to resist it wholly; he +must draw sustenance from some quarter, and the contemplation of the +past will not suffice. Then the pressure on him from without is as water +upon the diver; and sooner or later he grows fatigued and comes to the +surface to breathe; he is as a flying-fish pursued by sharks below and +cruel birds above; and he neither dives as deep nor flies as high as his +freer and stronger ancestry. A daring spirit in the nineteenth century +would have been but a timid nursery soul indeed in the sixteenth. We +want tumult and war to give us forgetfulness, sublime moments of peace +to enjoy a kiss in; but we are expected to be home to dinner at seven, +and to say and do nothing that might shock the neighbours. +Respectability has wound itself about society, a sort of octopus, and +nowhere are you quite free from one of its horrible suckers. The power +of the villa residence is supreme: art, science, politics, religion, it +has transformed to suit its requirements. The villa goes to the Academy, +the villa goes to the theatre, and therefore the art of to-day is mildly +realistic; not the great realism of idea, but the puny reality of +materialism; not the deep poetry of a Peter de Hogue, but the meanness +of a Frith—not the winged realism of Balzac, but the degrading +naturalism of a coloured photograph.</p> + +<p>To my mind there is no sadder spectacle of artistic debauchery than a +London theatre; the overfed inhabitants of the villa in the stalls +hoping for gross excitement to assist them through their hesitating +digestions; an ignorant mob in the pit and gallery forgetting the +miseries of life in imbecile stories reeking of the sentimentality of +the back stairs. Were other ages as coarse and common as ours? It is +difficult to imagine Elizabethan audiences as not more intelligent than +those that applaud Mr Pettit's plays. Impossible that an audience that +could sit out Edward II. could find any pleasure in such sinks of +literary infamies as <i>In the Ranks</i> and <i>Harbour Lights</i>. Artistic +atrophy is benumbing us, we are losing our finer feeling for beauty, the +rose is going back to the briar. I will not speak of the fine old +crusted stories, ever the same, on which every drama is based, nor yet +of the musty characters with which they are peopled—the miser in the +old castle counting his gold by night, the dishevelled woman whom he +keeps for ambiguous reasons confined in a cellar. Let all this be +waived. We must not quarrel with the ingredients. The miser and the old +castle are as true, and not one jot more true, than the million events +which go to make up the phenomena of human existence. Not at these +things considered separately do I take umbrage, but at the miserable use +that is made of them, the vulgarity of the complications evolved from +them, and the poverty of beauty in the dialogue.</p> + +<p>Not the thing itself, but the idea of the thing evokes the idea. +Schopenhauer was right; we do not want the thing, but the idea of the +thing. The thing itself is worthless; and the moral writers who +embellish it with pious ornamentation are just as reprehensible as Zola, +who embellishes it with erotic arabesques. You want the idea drawn out +of obscuring matter, and this can best be done by the symbol. The +symbol, or the thing itself, that is the great artistic question. In +earlier ages it was the symbol; a name, a plume, sufficed to evoke the +idea; now we evoke nothing, for we give everything, the imagination of +the spectator is no longer called into play. In Shakespeare's days to +create wealth in a theatre it was only necessary to write upon a board, +"A magnificent apartment in a palace." This was no doubt primitive and +not a little barbarous, but it was better by far than by dint of anxious +archæology to construct the Doge's palace upon the stage. By one rich +pillar, by some projecting balustrade taken in conjunction with a moored +gondola, we should strive to evoke the soul of the city of Veronese: by +the magical and unequalled selection of a subtle and unexpected feature +of a thought or aspect of a landscape, and not by the up-piling of +extraneous detail, are all great poetic effects achieved.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"By the tideless dolorous inland sea,</p> +<p>In a land of sand, of ruin, and gold."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And, better example still,</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Dieu que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois,"</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>that impeccable, that only line of real poetry Alfred de Vigny ever +wrote. Being a great poet Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously +observed more faithfully than any other poet these principles of art; +and, as is characteristic of the present day, nowhere do we find these +principles so grossly violated as in the representation of his plays. I +had painful proof of this some few nights after my arrival in London. I +had never seen Shakespeare acted, and I went to the Lyceum and there I +saw that exquisite love-song—for <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> is no more than a +love song in dialogue—tricked out in silks and carpets and illuminated +building, a vulgar bawd suited to the gross passion of an ignorant +public. I hated all that with the hatred of a passionate heart, and I +longed for a simple stage, a few simple indications, and the simple +recitation of that story of the sacrifice of the two white souls for the +reconciliation of two great families. My hatred did not reach to the age +of the man who played the boy-lover, but to the offensiveness with +which he thrust his individuality upon me, longing to realise the poet's +divine imagination: and the woman, too, I wished with my whole soul +away, subtle and strange though she was, and I yearned for her part to +be played by a youth as in old time: a youth cunningly disguised, would +be a symbol; and my mind would be free to imagine the divine Juliet of +the poet, whereas I could but dream of the bright eyes and delicate mien +and motion of the woman who had thrust herself between me and it.</p> + +<p>But not with symbol and subtle suggestion has the villa to do, but with +such stolid, intellectual fare as corresponds to its material wants. The +villa has not time to think, the villa is the working bee. The tavern is +the drone. It has no boys to put to school, no neighbours to study, and +is therefore a little more refined, or, should I say? depraved, in its +taste. The villa in one form or other has always existed, and always +will exist so long as our present social system holds together. It is +the basis of life, and more important than the tavern. Agreed: but that +does not say that the tavern was not an excellent corrective influence +to the villa, and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising +effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved +impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of +the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I +will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the symbol and +glory of villaism.</p> + +<p>The subject is not unfamiliar to me; I come to it like the son to his +father, like the bird to its nest. (Singularly inappropriate comparison, +but I am in such excellent humour to-day; humour is everything. It is +said that the tiger will sometimes play with the lamb! Let us play.) We +have the villa well in our mind. The father who goes to the city in the +morning, the grown-up girls waiting to be married, the big drawing-room +where they play waltz music, and talk of dancing parties. But waltzes +will not entirely suffice, nor even tennis; the girls must read. Mother +cannot keep a censor (it is as much as she can do to keep a cook, +housemaid and page-boy), besides the expense would be enormous, even if +nothing but shilling and two-shilling novels were purchased. Out of such +circumstances the circulating library was hatched.</p> + +<p>The villa made known its want, and art fell on its knees. Pressure was +put on the publishers, and books were published at 31s. 6d.; the dirty +outside public was got rid of, and the villa paid its yearly +subscription, and had nice large handsome books that none but the +<i>élite</i> could obtain, and with them a sense of being put on a footing of +equality with my Lady This and Lady That, and certainty that nothing +would come into the hands of dear Kate and Mary and Maggie that they +might not read, and all for two guineas a year. English fiction became +pure, and the garlic and assafœtida with which Byron, Fielding and Ben +Jonson so liberally seasoned their works, and in spite of which, as +critics say, they were geniuses, have disappeared from our literature. +English fiction became pure, dirty stories were to be heard no more, +were no longer procurable. But at this point human nature intervened; +poor human nature! when you pinch it in one place it bulges out in +another, after the fashion of a lady's figure. Human nature has from the +earliest time shown a liking for dirty stories; dirty stories have +formed a substantial part of every literature (I employ the words "dirty +stories" in the circulating library sense); therefore a taste for dirty +stories may be said to be inherent in the human animal. Call it a +disease if you will—an incurable disease—which, if it is driven +inwards, will break out in an unexpected quarter in a new form and with +redoubled virulence. This is exactly what has happened. Actuated by the +most laudable motives, Mudie cut off our rations of dirty stories, and +for forty years we were apparently the most moral people on the face of +the earth. It was confidently asserted that an English woman of sixty +would not read what would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of a +maiden of any other nation. But humiliation and sorrow were awaiting +Mudie. True it is that we still continued to subscribe to his library, +true it is that we still continued to go to church, true it is that we +turned our faces away when <i>Mdlle. de Maupin</i> or the <i>Assommoir</i> was +spoken of; to all appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie +might wish us; and no doubt he looked back upon his forty years of +effort with pride; no doubt he beat his manly breast and said, "I have +scorched the evil one out of the villa; the head of the serpent is +crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly, with all the horror of an +earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders of +fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were +poured upon and hung over the land. Through the mighty columns of our +newspapers the terrible lava rolled unceasing, and in the black stream +the villa, with all its beautiful illusions, tumbled and disappeared.</p> + +<p>An awful and terrifying proof of the futility of human effort, that +there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the +coming of the Nirvana.</p> + +<p>I have written much against the circulating library, and I have read a +feeble defence or two; but I have not seen the argument that might be +legitimately put forward in its favour. It seems to me this: the +circulating library is conservatism, art is always conservative; the +circulating library lifts the writer out of the precariousness and noise +of the wild street of popular fancy into a quiet place where passion is +more restrained and there is more reflection. The young and unknown +writer is placed at once in a place of comparative security, and he is +not forced to employ vile and degrading methods of attracting attention; +the known writer, having a certain market for his work, is enabled to +think more of it and less of the immediate acclamation of the crowd; +but all these possible advantages are destroyed and rendered <i>nil</i> by +the veracious censorship exercised by the librarian.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;"> + +<p>There is one thing in England that is free, that is spontaneous, that +reminds me of the blitheness and nationalness of the Continent;—but +there is nothing French about it, it is wholly and essentially English, +and in its communal enjoyment and its spontaneity it is a survival of +Elizabethan England—I mean the music-hall; the French music-hall seems +to me silly, effete, sophisticated, and lacking, not in the popularity, +but in the vulgarity of an English hall—I will not say the Pavilion, +which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for +preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first +evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—the dissolute +paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the +slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, +the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what +unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all +enjoyed each other's presence; in a word, there was life. Then there +were no cascades of real water, nor London docks, nor offensively rich +furniture, with hotel lifts down which some one will certainly be +thrown, but one scene representing a street; a man comes on—not, mind +you, in a real smock-frock, but in something that suggests one—and +sings of how he came up to London, and was "cleaned out" by thieves. +Simple, you will say; yes, but better than a <i>fricassée</i> of <i>Faust</i>, +garnished with hags, imps, and blue flame; better, far better than a +drawing-room set at the St James's, with an exhibition of passion by Mrs +and Mr Kendal; better, a million times better than the cheap popularity +of Wilson Barrett—an elderly man posturing in a low-necked dress to +some poor trull in the gallery; nor is there in the hall any affectation +of language, nor that worn-out rhetoric which reminds you of a +broken-winded barrel-organ playing <i>a che la morte</i>, bad enough in +prose, but when set up in blank verse awful and shocking in its more +than natural deformity—but bright quips and cranks fresh from the +back-yard of the slum where the linen is drying, or the "pub" where the +unfortunate wife has just received a black eye that will last her a +week. That inimitable artist, Bessie Bellwood, whose native wit is so +curiously accentuated that it is sublimated, that it is no longer +repellent vulgarity but art, choice and rare—see, here she comes with +"What cheer, Rea! Rea's on the job." The sketch is slight, but is +welcome and refreshing after the eternal drawing-room and Mrs Kendal's +cumbrous domesticity; it is curious, quaint, perverted, and are not +these the <i>aions</i> and the attributes of art? Now see that perfect +comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because he is working with +living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he evokes the soul, +the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and elegant in +black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you stand +me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the +spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene +the comedian's eyes—each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, +it is magnetic, it is symbolic, it is art.</p> + +<p>Not art, but a sign, a presentiment of an art, that may grow from the +present seeds, that may rise into some stately and unpremeditated +efflorescence, as the rhapsodist rose to Sophocles, as the miracle play +rose through Peele and Nash to Marlowe, hence to the wondrous summer of +Shakespeare, to die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the +autumn of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic +interludes that in their unexpectedness and naïve naturalness remind me +of the comic passages in Marlowe's <i>Faustus</i>, I waited (I admit in vain) +for some beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic +worshipper cry out in his agony:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships</p> +<p>And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?</p> +<p>Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.</p> +<p>Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!</p> +<p>Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again.</p> +<p>Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,</p> +<p>And all is dross that is not Helena."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>And then the astonishing change of key:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"I will be Paris, and for love of thee,</p> +<p>Instead of Troy shall Wurtemberg be sacked," etc.</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The hall is at least a protest against the wearisome stories concerning +wills, misers in old castles, lost heirs, and the woeful solutions of +such things—she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years +restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the <i>ingenue</i> +to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs +Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs +Pettit and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the +immense drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so +different from the movement of the English comedy with its constant +change of scene. The music-hall is a protest against the villa, the +circulating library, the club, and for this the "'all" is inexpressibly +dear to me.</p> + +<p>But in the interests of those illiterate institutions called theatres it +is not permissible for several characters to narrate events in which +there is a sequel, by means of dialogue, in a music-hall. If this +vexatious restriction were removed it is possible, if it is not certain, +that while some halls remained faithful to comic songs and jugglers +others would gradually learn to cater for more intellectual and subtle +audiences, and that out of obscurity and disorder new dramatic forms, +coloured and permeated by the thought and feeling of to-day, might be +definitely evolved. It is our only chance of again possessing a dramatic +literature.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XII"></a><h2>XII</h2> +<br> + +<p>It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and +dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. +Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, +came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. +Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything +but an ordinary person. Let this be waived. I was as covered with "fads" +as a distinguished foreigner with stars. Naturalism I wore round my +neck, Romanticism was pinned over the heart, Symbolism I carried like a +toy revolver in my waistcoat pocket, to be used on an emergency. I do +not judge whether I was charlatan or genius, I merely state that I found +all—actors, managers, editors, publishers, docile and ready to listen +to me. The world may be wicked, cruel, and stupid, but it is patient; on +this point I will not be gainsaid, it is patient; I know what I am +talking about; I maintain that the world is patient. If it were not, +what would have happened? I should have been murdered by the editors of +(I will suppress names), torn in pieces by the sub-editors, and +devoured by the office boys. There was no wild theory which I did not +assail them with, there was no strange plan for the instant +extermination of the Philistine, which I did not press upon them, and +(here I must whisper), with a fair amount of success, not complete +success I am glad to say—that would have meant for the editors a change +from their arm-chairs to the benches of the Union and the plank beds of +Holloway. The actress, when she returned home from the theatre, +suggested I had an enemy, a vindictive enemy, who dogged my steps; but +her stage experience led her astray. I had no enemy except myself; or to +put it scientifically, no enemy except the logical consequences of my +past life and education, and these caused me a great and real +inconvenience. French wit was in my brain, French sentiment was in my +heart; of the English soul I knew nothing, and I could not remember old +sympathies, it was like seeking forgotten words, and if I were writing a +short story, I had to return in thought to Montmartre or the Champs +Elysées for my characters. That I should have forgotten so much in ten +years seems incredible, and it will be deemed impossible by many, but +that is because few are aware of how little they know of the details of +life, even of their own, and are incapable of appreciating the influence +of their past upon their present. The visible world is visible only to a +few, the moral world is a closed book to nearly all. I was full of +France, and France had to be got rid of, or pushed out of sight before I +could understand England; I was like a snake striving to slough its +skin.</p> + +<p>Handicapped as I was with dangerous ideas, and an impossible style, +defeat was inevitable. My English was rotten with French idiom; it was +like an ill-built wall overpowered by huge masses of ivy; the weak +foundations had given way beneath the weight of the parasite; and the +ideas I sought to give expression to were green, sour, and immature as +apples in August.</p> + +<p>Therefore before long the leading journal that had printed two poems and +some seven or eight critical articles, ceased to send me books for +review, and I fell back upon obscure society papers. Fortunately it was +not incumbent on me to live by my pen; so I talked, and watched, and +waited till I grew akin to those around me, and my thoughts blended +with, and took root in my environment. I wrote a play or two, I +translated a French opera, which had a run of six nights, I dramatized +a novel, I wrote short stories, and I read a good deal of contemporary +fiction.</p> + +<p>The first book that came under my hand was "A Portrait of a Lady," by +Henry James. Each scene is developed with complete foresight and +certainty of touch. What Mr James wants to do he does. I will admit that +an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss +of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word. Shakespeare +gives us the word, Balzac, sometimes, after pages of vain striving, +gives us the word, Tourgueneff gives it with miraculous certainty; but +Henry James, no; a hundred times he flutters about it; his whole book is +one long flutter near to the one magical and unique word, but the word +is not spoken; and for want of the word his characters are never +resolved out of the haze of nebulae. You are on a bowing acquaintance +with them; they pass you in the street, they stop and speak to you, you +know how they are dressed, you watch the colour of their eyes. When I +think of "A Portrait of a Lady," with its marvellous crowd of +well-dressed people, it comes back to me precisely as an accurate +memory of a fashionable soirée—the staircase with its ascending +figures, the hostess smiling, the host at a little distance with his +back turned; some one calls him. He turns; I can see his white kid +gloves, the air is sugar sweet with the odour of the gardenias, there is +brilliant light here, there is shadow in the further rooms, the women's +feet pass to and fro beneath the stiff skirts, I call for my hat and +coat, I light a cigar, I stroll up Piccadilly...a very pleasant evening, +I have seen a good many people I knew, I have observed an attitude, and +an earnestness of manner that proved that a heart was beating.</p> + +<p>Mr James might say, "If I have done this, I have done a great deal," and +I would answer, "No doubt you are a man of great talent, great +cultivation and not at all of the common herd; I place you in the very +front rank, not only of novelists but of men of letters."</p> + +<p>I have read nothing of Henry James's that did suggest the manner of a +scholar; but why should a scholar limit himself to empty and endless +sentimentalities? I will not taunt him with any of the old taunts—why +does he not write complicated stories? Why does he not complete his +stories? Let all this be waived. I will ask him only why he always +avoids decisive action? Why does a woman never say "I will"? Why does a +woman never leave the house with her lover? Why does a man never kill a +man? Why does a man never kill himself? Why is nothing ever +accomplished? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common +occurrence; but Mr James's people live in a calm, sad, and very polite +twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story +begins, suicide or adultery happens some years hence, when the +characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing +happens. The suppression or maintenance of story in a novel is a matter +of personal taste; some prefer character-drawing to adventures, some +adventures to character-drawing; that you cannot have both at once I +take to be a self-evident proposition; so when Mr Lang says, "I like +adventures," I say, "Oh, do you?" as I might to a man who says "I like +sherry," and no doubt when I say I like character-drawing, Mr Lang says, +"Oh, do you?" as he might to a man who says, "I like port." But Mr James +and I are agreed on essentials, we prefer character-drawing to +adventures. One, two, or even three determining actions are not +antagonistic to character-drawing, the practice of Balzac, and +Flaubert, and Thackeray prove that. Is Mr James of the same mind as the +poet Verlaine—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"La nuance, pas la couleur,</p> +<p>Seulement la nuance,</p> +<p>.....</p> +<p>Tout le reste est littérature."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>In connection with Henry James I had often heard the name of W.D. +Howells. I bought some three or four of his novels. I found them pretty, +very pretty, but nothing more,—a sort of Ashby Sterry done into very +neat prose. He is vulgar, as Henry James is refined; he is more +domestic; girls with white dresses and virginal looks, languid mammas, +mild witticisms, here, there, and everywhere; a couple of young men, one +a little cynical, the other a little over-shadowed by his love, a +strong, bearded man of fifty in the background; in a word, a Tom +Robertson comedy faintly spiced with American. Henry James went to +France and read Tourgueneff. W.D. Howells stayed at home and read Henry +James. Henry James's mind is of a higher cast and temper; I have no +doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral +history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia—he +borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. +Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was +borrowing. Altogether Mr James's instincts are more scholarly. Although +his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the +prudery of the age,—no, not of the age but of librarians,—I cannot but +feel that his concessions, for I suppose I must call them concessions, +are to a certain extent self-imposed, regretfully, perhaps...somewhat in +this fashion—"True, that I live in an age not very favourable to +artistic production, but the art of an age is the spirit of that age; if +I violate the prejudices of the age I shall miss its spirit, and an art +that is not redolent of the spirit of its age is an artificial flower, +perfumeless, or perfumed with the scent of flowers that bloomed three +hundred years ago." Plausible, ingenious, quite in the spirit of Mr +James's mind; I can almost hear him reason so; nor does the argument +displease me, for it is conceived in a scholarly spirit. Now my +conception of W.D. Howells is quite different—I see him the happy +father of a numerous family; the sun is shining, the girls and boys are +playing on the lawn, they come trooping in to high tea, and there is +dancing in the evening.</p> + +<p>My fat landlady lent me a novel by George Meredith,—"Tragic +Comedians"; I was glad to receive it, for my admiration of his poetry, +with which I was slightly acquainted, was very genuine indeed. "Love in +a Valley" is a beautiful poem, and the "Nuptials of Attila," I read it +in the <i>New Quarterly Review</i> years ago, is very present in my mind, and +it is a pleasure to recall its chanting rhythm, and lordly and sombre +refrain—"Make the bed for Attila." I expected, therefore, one of my old +passionate delights from his novels. I was disappointed, painfully +disappointed. But before I say more concerning Mr Meredith, I will admit +at once frankly and fearlessly, that I am not a competent critic, +because emotionally I do not understand him, and all except an emotional +understanding is worthless in art. I do not make this admission because +I am intimidated by the weight and height of the critical authority with +which I am overshadowed, but from a certain sense, of which I am as +distinctly conscious, viz., that the author is, how shall I put it? the +French would say "quelqu'un," that expresses what I would say in +English. I remember, too, that although a man may be able to understand +anything, there must be some modes of thoughts and attitudes of mind +which we are so naturally antagonistic to, so entirely out of sympathy +with, that we are in no true sense critics of them. Such are the +thoughts that come to me when I read Mr George Meredith. I try to +console myself with such reflections, and then I break out and cry +passionately:—jerks, wire splintered wood. In Balzac, which I know by +heart, in Shakespeare, which I have just begun to love, I find words +deeply impregnated with the savour of life; but in George Meredith there +is nothing but crackjaw sentences, empty and unpleasant in the mouth as +sterile nuts. I could select hundreds of phrases which Mr Meredith would +probably call epigrams, and I would defy anyone to say they were wise, +graceful or witty. I do not know any book more tedious than "Tragic +Comedians," more pretentious, more blatant; it struts and screams, +stupid in all its gaud and absurdity as a cockatoo. More than fifty +pages I could not read. How, I asked myself, could the man who wrote the +"Nuptials of Attila" write this? but my soul returned no answer, and I +listened as one in a hollow mountain side. My opinion of George Meredith +never ceases to puzzle me. He is of the north, I am of the south. +Carlyle, Mr Robert Browning, and George Meredith are the three +essentially northern writers; in them there is nothing of Latin +sensuality and subtlety.</p> + +<p>I took up "Rhoda Fleming." I found some exquisite bits of description in +it, but I heartily wished them in verse, they were motives for poems; +and there was some wit. I remember a passage very racy indeed, of +middle-class England. Antony, I think, is the man's name, describes how +he is interrupted at his tea; a paragraph of seven or ten lines with "I +am having my tea, I am at my tea," running through it for refrain. Then +a description of a lodging-house dinner: "a block of bread on a lonely +place, and potatoes that looked as if they had committed suicide in +their own steam." A little ponderous and stilted, but undoubtedly witty. +I read on until I came to a young man who fell from his horse, or had +been thrown from his horse, I never knew which, nor did I feel enough +interest in the matter to make research; the young man was put to bed by +his mother, and once in bed he began to talk!...four, five, six, ten +pages of talk, and such talk! I can offer no opinion why Mr George +Meredith committed them to paper; it is not narrative, it is not witty, +nor is it sentimental, nor is it profound. I read it once; my mind, +astonished at receiving no sensation, cried out like a child at a +milkless breast. I read the pages again...did I understand? Yes, I +understood every sentence, but they conveyed no idea, they awoke no +emotion in me; it was like sand, arid and uncomfortable. The story is +surprisingly commonplace—the people in it are as lacking in subtlety as +those of a Drury Lane melodrama.</p> + +<p>"Diana of the Crossways" I liked better, and had I had absolutely +nothing to do I might have read it to the end. I remember a scene with a +rustic—a rustic who could eat hog a solid hour—that amused me. I +remember the sloppy road in the Weald, and the vague outlines of the +South Downs seen in starlight and mist. But to come to the great +question, the test by which Time will judge us all—the creation of a +human being, of a live thing that we have met with in life before, and +meet for the first time in print, and who abides with us ever after. +Into what shadow has not Diana floated? Where are the magical glimpses +of the soul? Do you remember in "Pères et Enfants," when Tourgueneff is +unveiling the woman's, shall I say, affection, for Bazaroff, or the +interest she feels in him? and exposing at the same time the reasons why +she will never marry him...I wish I had the book by me, I have not seen +it for ten years.</p> + +<p>After striving through many pages to put Lucien, whom you would have +loved, whom I would have loved, that divine representation of all that +is young and desirable in man, before the reader, Balzac puts these +words in his mouth in reply to an impatient question by Vautrin, who +asks him what he wants, what he is sighing for, "<i>D'être célèbre et +d'être aimè</i>,"—these are soul-waking words, these are Shakespearean +words.</p> + +<p>Where in "Diana of the Crossways" do we find soul-evoking words like +these? With tiresome repetition we are told that she is beautiful, +divine; but I see her not at all, I don't know if she is dark, tall, or +fair; with tiresome reiteration we are told that she is brilliant, that +her conversation is like a display of fireworks, that the company is +dazzled and overcome; but when she speaks the utterances are grotesque, +and I say that if anyone spoke to me in real life as she does in the +novel, I should not doubt for an instant that I was in the company of a +lunatic. The epigrams are never good, they never come within measurable +distance of La Rochefoucauld, Balzac, or even Gohcourt. The admirers of +Mr Meredith constantly deplore their existence, admitting that they +destroy all illusion of life. "When we have translated half of Mr +Meredith's utterances into possible human speech, then we can enjoy +him," says the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>. We take our pleasures differently; +mine are spontaneous, and I know nothing about translating the rank +smell of a nettle into the fragrance of a rose, and then enjoying it.</p> + +<p>Mr Meredith's conception of life is crooked, ill-balanced, and out of +tune. What remains?—a certain lustiness. You have seen a big man with +square shoulders and a small head, pushing about in a crowd, he shouts +and works his arms, he seems to be doing a great deal, in reality he is +doing nothing; so Mr Meredith appears to me, and yet I can only think of +him as an artist; his habit is not slatternly, like those of such +literary hodmen as Mr David Christie Murray, Mr Besant, Mr Buchanan. +There is no trace of the crowd about him. I do not question his right of +place, I am out of sympathy with him, that is all; and I regret that it +should be so, for he is one whose love of art is pure and untainted +with commercialism, and if I may praise it for nought else, I can praise +it for this.</p> + +<p>I have noticed that if I buy a book because I am advised, or because I +think I ought, my reading is sure to prove sterile. <i>Il faut que cela +vienne de moi</i>, as a woman once said to me, speaking of her caprices; a +quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected quarter. Mr Hardy and Mr +Blackmore I read because I had heard that they were distinguished +novelists; neither touched me, I might just as well have bought a daily +paper; neither like nor dislike, a shrug of the shoulders—that is all. +Hardy seems to me to bear about the same relation to George Eliot as +Jules Breton does to Millet—a vulgarisation never offensive, and +executed with ability. The story of an art is always the same,...a +succession of abortive but ever strengthening efforts, a moment of +supreme concentration, a succession of efforts weakening the final +extinction. George Eliot gathered up all previous attempts, and created +the English peasant; and following her peasants there came an endless +crowd from Devon, Yorkshire, and the Midland Counties, and, as they +came, they faded into the palest shadows until at last they appeared in +red stockings, high heels and were lost in the chorus of opera. Mr Hardy +was the first step down. His work is what dramatic critics would call +good, honest, straightforward work. It is unillumined by a ray of +genius, it is slow and somewhat sodden. It reminds me of an excellent +family coach—one of the old sort hung on C springs—a fat coachman on +the box and a footman whose livery was made for his predecessor. In +criticising Mr Meredith I was out of sympathy with my author, ill at +ease, angry, puzzled; but with Mr Hardy I am on quite different terms, I +am as familiar with him as with the old pair of trousers I put on when I +sit down to write; I know all about his aims, his methods; I know what +has been done in that line, and what can be done.</p> + +<p>I have heard that Mr Hardy is country bred, but I should not have +discovered this from his writings. They read to me more like a report, +yes, a report—a conscientious, well-done report, executed by a +thoroughly efficient writer sent down by one of the daily papers. +Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and +descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm +people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and +literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for +that it is a little too diluted with Mr Hardy's brains, the edges are a +little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at +work filing; on the other hand, it is not synthesized—the magical word +which reveals the past, and through which we divine the future—is not +seized and set triumphantly as it is in "Silas Marner." The descriptions +do not flow out of and form part of the narrative, but are wedged in, +and often awkwardly. We are invited to assist at a sheep-shearing scene, +or at a harvest supper, because these scenes are not to be found in the +works of George Eliot, because the reader is supposed to be interested +in such things, because Mr Hardy is anxious to show how jolly country he +is.</p> + +<p>Collegians, when they attempt character-drawing, create monstrosities, +but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of +moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any +violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense. I +say that a practised writer should be able to do this; that they +sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it +for my purpose if I admit that Mr Hardy can do this. In Farmer Oak there +is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, the execution is +trustworthy; he has legs, arms, and a heart; but the vital spark that +should make him of our flesh and of our soul is wanting, it is dead +water that the sunlight never touches. The heroine is still more dim, +she is stuffy, she is like tow; the rich farmer is a figure out of any +melodrama, Sergeant Troy nearly quickens to life; now and then the +clouds are liquescent, but a real ray of light never falls.</p> + +<p>The story-tellers are no doubt right when they insist on the difficulty +of telling a story. A sequence of events—it does not matter how simple +or how complicated—working up to a logical close, or, shall I say, a +close in which there is a sense of rhythm and inevitableness is always +indicative of genius. Shakespeare affords some magnificent examples, +likewise Balzac, likewise George Eliot, likewise Tourgueneff; the +"Œdipus" is, of course, the crowning and final achievement in the music +of sequence and the massy harmonies of fate. But in contemporary +English fiction I marvel, and I am repeatedly struck by the inability of +writers, even of the first-class, to make an organic whole of their +stories. Here, I say, the course is clear, the way is obvious, but no +sooner do we enter on the last chapters than the story begins to show +incipient shiftiness, and soon it doubles back and turns, growing with +every turn weaker like a hare before the hounds. From a certain +directness of construction, from the simple means by which Oak's ruin is +accomplished in the opening chapters, I did not expect that the story +would run hare-hearted in its close, but the moment Troy told his wife +that he never cared for her, I suspected something was wrong; when he +went down to bathe and was carried out by the current I knew the game +was up, and was prepared for anything, even for the final shooting by +the rich farmer, and the marriage with Oak, a conclusion which of course +does not come within the range of literary criticism.</p> + +<p>"Lorna Doone" struck me as childishly garrulous, stupidly prolix, +swollen with comments not interesting in themselves and leading to +nothing. Mr Hardy possesses the power of being able to shape events; he +can mould them to a certain form; that he cannot breathe into them the +spirit of life I have already said, but "Lorna Doone" reminds me of a +third-rate Italian opera, <i>La Fille du Régiment</i> or <i>Ernani</i>; it is +corrupt with all the vices of the school, and it does not contain a +single passage of real fervour or force to make us forget the inherent +defects of the art of which it is a poor specimen. Wagner made the +discovery, not a very wonderful one after all when we think, that an +opera had much better be melody from end to end. The realistic school +following on Wagner's footsteps discovered that a novel had much better +be all narrative—an uninterrupted flow of narrative. Description is +narrative, analysis of character is narrative, dialogue is narrative; +the form is ceaselessly changing, but the melody of narration is never +interrupted.</p> + +<p>But the reading of "Lorna Doone" calls to my mind, and very vividly, an +original artistic principle of which English romance writers are either +strangely ignorant or neglectful, viz., that the sublimation of the +<i>dramatis personæ</i> and the deeds in which they are involved must +correspond, and their relationship should remain unimpaired. Turner's +"Carthage" is Nature transposed and wonderfully modified. Some of the +passages of light and shade—those of the balustrade—are fugues, and +there his art is allied to Bach in sonority and beautiful combination. +Turner knew that a branch hung across the sun looked at separately was +black, but he painted it light to maintain the equipoise of atmosphere. +In the novel the characters are the voice, the deeds are the orchestra. +But the English novelist takes 'Any and 'Arriet, and without question +allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to pass them into the +realms of the supernatural. Such violation of the first principles of +narration is never to be met with in the elder writers. Achilles stands +as tall as Troy, Merlin is as old and as wise as the world. Rhythm and +poetical expression are essential attributes of dramatic genius, but the +original sign of race and mission is an instinctive modulation of man +with the deeds he attempts or achieves. The man and the deed must be +cognate and equal, and the melodic balance and blending are what first +separate Homer and Hugo from the fabricators of singular adventures. In +Scott leather jerkins, swords, horses, mountains, and castles harmonise +completely and fully with food, fighting, words, and vision of life; the +chords are simple as Handel's but they are as perfect. Lytton's work, +although as vulgar as Verdi's is, in much the same fashion, sustained by +a natural sense of formal harmony; but all that follows is decadent,—an +admixture of romance and realism, the exaggerations of Hugo and the +homeliness of Trollope; a litter of ancient elements in a state of +decomposition.</p> + +<p>The spiritual analysis of Balzac equals the triumphant imagination of +Shakespeare; and by different roads they reach the same height of tragic +awe, but when improbability, which in these days does duty for +imagination, is mixed with the familiar aspects of life, the result is +inchoate and rhythmless folly, I mean the regular and inevitable +alternation and combination of pa and ma, and dear Annie who lives at +Clapham, with the Mountains of the Moon, and the secret of eternal life; +this violation of the first principles of art—that is to say, of the +rhythm of feeling and proportion, is not possible in France. I ask the +reader to recall what was said on the subject of the Club, Tavern, and +Villa. We have a surplus population of more than two million women, the +tradition that chastity is woman's only virtue still survives, the +Tavern and its adjunct Bohemianism have been suppressed, and the Villa +is omnipotent and omnipresent; tennis-playing, church on Sundays, and +suburban hops engender a craving for excitement for the far away, for +the unknown: but the Villa with its tennis-playing, church on Sundays, +and suburban hops will not surrender its own existence, it must take a +part in the heroic deeds that happen in the Mountains of the Moon; it +will have heroism in its own pint pot. Achilles and Merlin must be +replaced by Uncle Jim and an undergraduate: and so the Villa is the only +begotten of Rider Haggard, Hugh Conway, Robert Buchanan, and the author +of "The House on the Marsh."</p> + +<p>I read two books by Mr Christie Murray, "Joseph's Coat" and "Rainbow +Gold," and one by Messrs Besant and Rice,—"The Seamy Side." It is +difficult to criticise such work. It is as suited to the needs of the +Villa as the baker's loaves and the butcher's rounds of beef. I do not +think that any such miserable literature is found in any other country. +In France some three or four men produce works of art, the rest of the +fiction of the country is unknown to men of letters. But "Rainbow +Gold"—to take the best of the three—is not bad as a second-rate French +novel is bad; it is excellent as all that is straightforward is +excellent; and it is surprising to find that work can be so good, and at +the same time so devoid of artistic charm. That such a thing should be +is one of the miracles of the Villa.</p> + +<p>I have heard that Mr Besant is an artist in the "Chaplain of the Fleet" +and other novels, but this is not possible. The artist shows what he is +going to do the moment he puts pen to paper, or brush to canvas; he +improves on his first attempts, that is all; and I found "The Seamy +Side" so very common, that I cannot believe for a moment that its author +or authors could write a line that would interest me.</p> + +<p>Mr Robert Buchanan is a type of artist that every age produces +unfailingly: Catulle Mendès is his counterpart in France,—but the +pallid Portuguese Jew with his Christ-like face, and his fascinating +fervour is more interesting than the spectacled Scotchman. Both began +with volumes of excellent but characterless verse, and loud outcries +about the dignity of art, and both have—well...Mr Robert Buchanan has +collaborated with Gus Harris, and written the programme poetry for the +Vaudeville Theatre; he has written a novel, the less said about which +the better—he has attacked men whose shoe-strings he is unworthy to +tie, and having failed to injure them, he retracted all he said, and +launched forth into slimy benedictions. He took Fielding's masterpiece, +degraded it, and debased it; he wrote to the papers that Fielding was a +genius in spite of his coarseness, thereby inferring that he was a much +greater genius since he had sojourned in this Scotch house of literary +ill-fame. Clarville, the author of "Madame Angot," transformed Madame +Marneff into a virtuous woman, but he did not write to the papers to say +that Balzac owed him a debt of gratitude on that account.</p> + +<p>The star of Miss Braddon has finally set in the obscure regions of +servantgalism; Ouida and Rhoda Broughton continue to rewrite the books +they wrote ten years ago; Mrs Lynn Linton I have not read. The "Story of +an African Farm" was pressed upon me. I found it sincere and youthful, +disjointed but well-written; descriptions of sandhills and ostriches +sandwiched with doubts concerning a future state, and convictions +regarding the moral and physical superiority of women: but of art +nothing; that is to say, art as I understand it,—rhythmical sequence of +events described with rhythmical sequence of phrase.</p> + +<p>I read the "Story of Elizabeth" by Miss Thackeray. It came upon me with +all the fresh and fair naturalness of a garden full of lilacs and blue +sky, and I thought of Hardy, Blackmore, Murray, and Besant as of great +warehouses where everything might be had, and even if the article +required were not in stock it could be supplied in a few days at latest. +These are exquisite little descriptions, full of air, colour, lightness, +grace, the French life seen with such sweet English eyes, the sweet +little descriptions all so gently evocative. "What a tranquil little +kitchen it was, with a glimpse of the courtyard outside, and the cocks +and hens, and the poplar trees waving in the sunshine, and the old woman +sitting in her white cap busy at her homely work." Into many wearisome +pages these simple lines have since been expanded, without affecting the +beauty of the original. "Will Dampier turned his broad back and looked +out of the window. There was a moment's silence. They could hear the +tinkling of bells, the whistling of the sea, the voices of the men +calling to each other in the port, the sunshine streamed in; Elly was +standing in it, and seemed gilt with a golden background. She ought to +have held a palm in her hand, poor little martyr!" There is sweet wisdom +in this book, wisdom that is eternal, being simple; near may not come +the ugliness of positivism, nor the horror of pessimism, nor the +profound greyness of Hegelism, but merely the genial love and reverence +of a beautiful-minded woman.</p> + +<p>Such charms as these necessitate certain defects, I should say +limitations. Vital creation of character is not possible to Miss +Thackeray, but I do not rail against beautiful water-colour indications +of balconies, vases, gardens, fields, and harvesters because they have +not the fervid glow and passionate force of Titian's Ariadne; Miss +Thackeray cannot give us a Maggie Tulliver, and all the many profound +modulations of that Beethoven-like countryside: the pine wood and the +cripple; this aunt's linen presses, and that one's economies; the boy +going forth to conquer the world, the girl remaining at home to conquer +herself; the mighty river holding the fate of all, playing and dallying +with it for a while, and bearing it on at last to final and magnificent +extinction. That sense of the inevitable which the Greek dramatists had +in perfection, which George Eliot had sufficiently, that rhythmical +progression of events, rhythm and inevitableness (two words for one and +the same thing) is not there. Elly's golden head, the background of +austere French Protestants, is sketched with a flowing water-colour +brush, I do not know if it is true, but true or false in reality, it is +true in art. But the jarring dissonance of her marriage is inadmissible; +it cannot be led up to by any chords no matter how ingenious, the +passage, the attempts from one key to the other, is impossible; the true +end is the ruin, by death or lingering life, of Elly and the remorse of +the mother.</p> + +<p>One of the few writers of fiction who seems to me to possess an ear for +the music of events is Miss Margaret Veley. Her first novel, "For +Percival," although diffuse, although it occasionally flowed into +by-channels and lingered in stagnating pools, was informed and held +together, even at ends the most twisted and broken, by that sense of +rhythmic progression which is so dear to me, and which was afterwards so +splendidly developed in "Damocles." Pale, painted with grey and opaline +tints of morning passes the grand figure of Rachel Conway, a victim +chosen for her beauty, and crowned with flowers of sacrifice. She has +not forgotten the face of the maniac, and it comes back to her in its +awful lines and lights when she finds herself rich and loved by the man +whom she loves. The catastrophe is a double one. Now she knows she is +accursed, and that her duty is to trample out her love. Unborn +generations cry to her. The wrath and the lamentation of the chorus of +the Greek singer, the intoning voices of the next-of-kin, the pathetic +responses of voices far in the depths of ante-natal night, these the +modern novelist, playing on an inferior instrument, may suggest, but +cannot give: but here the suggestion is so perfect that we cease to +yearn for the real music, as, reading from a score, we are satisfied +with the flute and bassoons that play so faultlessly in soundless dots.</p> + +<p>There is neither hesitation nor doubt. Rachel Conway puts her dreams +away, she will henceforth walk in a sad and shady path; her interests +are centred in the child of the man she loves, and as she looks for a +last time on the cloud of trees, glorious and waving green in the sunset +that encircles her home, her sorrow swells once again to passion, and, +we know, for the last time.</p> + +<p>The mechanical construction of M. Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the +naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the +action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing +about of a <i>dénouement</i>; and I thought of all this as I read +"Disenchantment" by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my +knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for +the <i>mise en place</i>, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so +loose, that much of its strength had dribbled away before it had rightly +begun. But the figure of the Irish politician I accept without reserve. +It seems to me grand and mighty in its sorrowfulness. The tall, +dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations +of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the +girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt's hereditary +sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his +acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that +he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his +country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the +disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once +life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what +remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink. The woman cannot +understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent +desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life's +sky. Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful +knot by suicide.</p> + +<p>I aver that Mr R.L. Stevenson never wrote a line that failed to delight +me; but he never wrote a book. You arrive at a strangely just estimate +of a writer's worth by the mere question: "What is he the author of?" +for every writer whose work is destined to live is the author of one +book that outshines the other, and, in popular imagination, epitomises +his talent and position. Ask the same question about Milton, Fielding, +Byron, Carlyle, Thackeray, Zola, Mr Swinburne.</p> + +<p>I think of Mr Stevenson as a consumptive youth weaving garlands of sad +flowers with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, +and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil. His +periods are fresh and bright, rhythmical in sound, and perfect +realizations of their sense; in reading you often think that never +before was such definiteness united to such poetry of expression; every +page and every sentence rings of its individuality. Mr Stevenson's style +is over-smart, well-dressed, shall I say, like a young man walking in +the Burlington Arcade? Yes, I will say so, but, I will add, the most +gentlemanly young man that ever walked in the Burlington. Mr Stevenson +is competent to understand any thought that might be presented to him, +but if he were to use it, it would instantly become neat, sharp, +ornamental, light, and graceful, and it would lose all its original +richness and harmony. It is not Mr Stevenson's brain that prevents him +from being a thinker, but his style.</p> + +<p>Another thing that strikes me in thinking of Stevenson (I pass over his +direct indebtedness to Edgar Poe, and his constant appropriation of his +methods), is the unsuitableness of the special characteristics of his +talent to the age he lives in. He wastes in his limitations, and his +talent is vented in prettiness of style. In speaking of Mr Henry James, +I said that, although he had conceded much to the foolish, false, and +hypocritical taste of the time, the concessions he made had in little +or nothing impaired his talent. The very opposite seems to me the case +with Mr Stevenson. For if any man living in this end of the century +needed freedom of expression for the distinct development of his genius, +that man is R.L. Stevenson. He who runs may read, and he with any +knowledge of literature will, before I have written the words, have +imagined Mr Stevenson writing in the age of Elizabeth or Anne.</p> + +<p>Turn your platitudes prettily, but write no word that could offend the +chaste mind of the young girl who has spent her morning reading the +Colin Campbell divorce case; so says the age we live in. The penny paper +that may be bought everywhere, that is allowed to lie on every table, +prints seven or eight columns of filth, for no reason except that the +public likes to read filth; the poet and novelist must emasculate and +destroy their work because.... Who shall come forward and make answer? +Oh, vile, filthy, and hypocritical century, I at least scorn you.</p> + +<p>But this is not a course of literature but the story of the artistic +development of me, George Moore; so I will tarry no longer with mere +criticism, but go direct to the book to which I owe the last temple in +my soul—"Marius the Epicurean." Well I remember when I read the +opening lines, and how they came upon me sweetly as the flowing breath +of a bright spring. I knew that I was awakened a fourth time, that a +fourth vision of life was to be given to me. Shelley had revealed to me +the unimagined skies where the spirit sings of light and grace; Gautier +had shown me how extravagantly beautiful is the visible world and how +divine is the rage of the flesh; and with Balzac I had descended circle +by circle into the nether world of the soul, and watched its +afflictions. Then there were minor awakenings. Zola had enchanted me +with decoration and inebriated me with theory; Flaubert had astonished +with the wonderful delicacy and subtlety of his workmanship; Goncourt's +brilliant adjectival effects had captivated me for a time, but all these +impulses were crumbling into dust, these aspirations were etiolated, +sickly as faces grown old in gaslight.</p> + +<p>I had not thought of the simple and unaffected joy of the heart of +natural things; the colour of the open air, the many forms of the +country, the birds flying,—that one making for the sea; the abandoned +boat, the dwarf roses and the wild lavender; nor had I thought of the +beauty of mildness in life, and how by a certain avoidance of the +wilfully passionate, and the surely ugly, we may secure an aspect of +temporal life which is abiding and soul-sufficing. A new dawn was in my +brain, fresh and fair, full of wide temples and studious hours, and the +lurking fragrance of incense; that such a vision of life was possible I +had no suspicion, and it came upon me almost with the same strength, +almost as intensely, as that divine song of the flesh,—Mademoiselle de +Maupin.</p> + +<p>Certainly, in my mind, these books will be always intimately associated; +and when a few adventitious points of difference be forgotten, it is +interesting to note how firm is the alliance, and how cognate and +co-equal the sympathies on which it is based; the same glad worship of +the visible world, and the same incurable belief that the beauty of +material things is sufficient for all the needs of life. Mr Pater can +join hands with Gautier in saying—<i>je trouve la terre aussi belle que +le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu</i>. And I +too join issue; I too love the great pagan world, its bloodshed, its +slaves, its injustice, its loathing of all that is feeble.</p> + +<p>But "Marius the Epicurean" was more to me than a mere emotional +influence, precious and rare though that may be, for this book was the +first in English prose I had come across that procured for me any +genuine pleasure in the language itself, in the combination of words for +silver or gold chime, and unconventional cadence, and for all those +lurking half-meanings, and that evanescent suggestion, like the odour of +dead roses, that words retain to the last of other times and elder +usage. Until I read "Marius" the English language (English prose) was to +me what French must be to the majority of English readers. I read for +the sense and that was all; the language itself seemed to me coarse and +plain, and awoke in me neither æsthetic emotion nor even interest. +"Marius" was the stepping-stone that carried me across the channel into +the genius of my own tongue. The translation was not too abrupt; I found +a constant and careful invocation of meaning that was a little aside of +the common comprehension, and also a sweet depravity of ear for +unexpected falls of phrase, and of eye for the less observed depths of +colours, which although new was a sort of sequel to the education I had +chosen, and a continuance of it in a foreign, but not wholly unfamiliar +medium, and so, having saturated myself with Pater, the passage to De +Quincey was easy. He, too, was a Latin in manner and in temper of mind; +but he was truly English, and through him I passed to the study of the +Elizabethan dramatists, the real literature of my race, and washed +myself clean.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XIII"></a><h2>XIII</h2> + +<p>THOUGHTS IN A STRAND LODGING</p> +<br> + +<p>Awful Emma has undressed and put the last child away—stowed the last +child away in some mysterious and unapproachable corner that none knows +of but she; the fat landlady has ceased to loiter about my door, has +ceased to tempt me with offers of brandy and water, tea and toast, the +inducements that occur to her landlady's mind; the actress from the +Savoy has ceased to walk up and down the street with the young man who +accompanies her home from the theatre; she has ceased to linger on the +doorstep talking to him, her key has grated in the lock, she has come +upstairs, we have had our usual midnight conversation on the landing, +she has told me her latest hopes of obtaining a part, she has told me +of the husband whom she was obliged to leave; we have bidden each other +good-night; she has gone up the creaky staircase, and I have returned to +my room, littered with MS. and queer publications!...the night is hot +and heavy, but now a wind is blowing from the river, and listless and +lonely I open a book, the first book that comes to hand. It is <i>Le +Journal des Goncourts,</i> p. 358, the end of a chapter:—</p> + +<p>"<i>It is really curious that it should be the four men the most free from +all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the +most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public +prosecutor: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and ourselves</i>."</p> + +<p>Goncourt's statement is suggestive, and I leave it uncommented on; but I +would put by its side another naked simple truth. That if in England the +public prosecutor does not seek to over-ride literature the means of +tyranny are not wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the +nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations +entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved +literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, +were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. +Byron and Shelley, and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its +own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw +his book from the reach of a public that was rooting then amid the +garbage of the Yelverton divorce case. I think of these facts and think +of Baudelaire's prose poem, that poem in which he tells how a dog will +run away howling if you hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you +offer him some putrid morsel picked out of some gutter hole, he will +sniff round it joyfully, and will seek to lick your hand for gratitude. +Baudelaire compared that dog to the public.</p> + +<p>When I read Balzac's stories of Vautrin and Lucien de Rubempré, I often +think of Hadrian and the Antinous. I wonder if Balzac thought of +transposing the Roman Emperor and his favourite into modern life. It is +the kind of thing that Balzac would think of. No critic has ever noticed +this.</p> + +<p>Sometimes, at night, when all is still, and I look out on that desolate +river, I think I shall go mad with grief, with wild regret for my +beautiful <i>appartement</i> in <i>Rue de la Tour des Dames</i>. How different +the present from the past! I hate with my whole soul this London +lodging, and all that concerns it—Emma, and eggs and bacon, the +lascivious landlady and her lascivious daughter; I am weary of the +sentimental actress who lives upstairs, I swear I will never go out to +talk to her on the landing again. Then there is failure—I can do +nothing, nothing; my novel I know is worthless; my life is a leaf, it +will flutter out of sight. I am weary of everything, and wish I were +back in Paris. I am weary of reading, there is nothing to read, Flaubert +bores me. What nonsense has been talked about him! Impersonal! He is the +most personal writer. But his odious pessimism! How weary I am of it, it +never ceases, it is lugged in <i>à tout propos</i>, and the little lyrical +phrase with which he winds up every paragraph, how boring it is. +Happily, I have "A Rebours" to read, that prodigious book, that +beautiful mosaic. Huysmans is quite right, ideas are well enough until +you are twenty, afterwards only words are bearable...a new idea, what +can be more insipid—fit for members of parliament. Shall I go to bed? +No. I wish I had a volume of Verlaine, or something of Mallarmé's to +read—Mallarmé for preference. I remember Huysmans speaks of Mallarmé in +"A Rebours." In hours like these a page of Huysmans is as a dose of +opium, a glass of something exquisite and spirituous.</p> + +<p>"The decadence of a literature irreparably attacked in its organism, +weakened by the age of ideas, overworn by the excess of syntax, sensible +only of the curiosity which fevers sick people, but nevertheless +hastening to explain everything in its decline, desirous of repairing +all the omissions of its youth, to bequeath all the most subtle +souvenirs of its suffering on its deathbed, is incarnate in Mallarmé in +most consummate and absolute fashion....</p> + +<p>"The poem in prose is the form, above all others, they prefer; handled +by an alchemist of genius, it should contain in a state of meat the +entire strength of the novel, the long analysis and the superfluous +description of which it suppresses...the adjective placed in such an +ingenious and definite way, that it could not be legally dispossessed of +its place, would open up such perspectives, that the reader would dream +for whole weeks together on its meaning at once precise and multiple, +affirm the present, reconstruct the past, divine the future of the +souls of the characters revealed by the light of the unique epithet. The +novel thus understood, thus condensed into one or two pages, would be a +communion of thought between a magical writer and an ideal reader, a +spiritual collaboration by consent between ten superior persons +scattered through the universe, a delectation offered to the most +refined, and accessible only to them."</p> + +<p>Huysmans goes to my soul like a gold ornament of Byzantine workmanship: +there is in his style the yearning charm of arches, a sense of ritual, +the passion of the Gothic, of the window. Ah! in this hour of weariness +for one of Mallarmé's prose poems! Stay, I remember I have some numbers +of <i>La Vogue</i>, One of the numbers contains, I know, "Forgotten Pages;" I +will translate word for word, preserving the very rhythm, one or two of +these miniature marvels of diction:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"><p><br> + +<p> I</p> + +<p> FORGOTTEN PAGES.</p> +<br> + +<p> "Since Maria left me to go to another star—which? Orion, Altair, or + thou, green Venus?—I have always cherished solitude. What long days + I have passed alone with my cat. By alone, I mean without a material + being, and my cat is a mystical companion—a spirit. I can, + therefore, say that I have passed whole days alone with my cat, and + alone with one of the last authors of the Latin decadence; for since + that white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I have loved + all that the word <i>fall</i> expresses. In such wise that my favourite + season of the year is the last weary days of summer, which + immediately precede autumn, and the hour I choose to walk in is when + the sun rests before disappearing, with rays of yellow copper on the + grey walls and red copper on the tiles. In the same way the + literature that my soul demands—a sad voluptuousness—is the dying + poetry of the last moments of Rome, but before it has breathed at all + the rejuvenating approach of the barbarians, or has begun to stammer + the infantile Latin of the first Christian poetry.</p> + +<p> "I was reading, therefore, one of those dear poems (whose paint has + more charm for me than the blush of youth), had plunged one hand into + the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel-organ sang languidly and + melancholy beneath my window. It played in the great alley of + poplars, whose leaves appear to me yellow, even in the spring-tide, + since Maria passed there with the tall candles for the last time. The + instrument is the saddest, yes, truly; the piano scintillates, the + violin opens the torn soul to the light, but the barrel-organ, in the + twilight of remembrance, made me dream despairingly. Now it murmurs + an air joyously vulgar which awakens joy in the heart of the suburbs, + an air old-fashioned and commonplace. Why do its flourishes go to my + soul, and make me weep like a romantic ballad? I listen, imbibing it + slowly, and I do not throw a penny out of the window for fear of + moving from my place, and seeing that the instrument is not singing + itself.</p> +<br> + +<p> II</p> +<br> + +<p> "The old Saxony clock, which is slow, and which strikes thirteen amid + its flowers and gods, to whom did it belong? Thinkest that it came + from Saxony by the mail coaches of old time?</p> + +<p> "(Singular shadows hang about the worn-out panes.)</p> + +<p> "And thy Venetian mirror, deep as a cold fountain in its banks of + gilt work; what is reflected there? Ah! I am sure that more than one + woman bathed there in her beauty's sin; and, perhaps, if I looked + long enough, I should see a naked phantom.</p> + +<p> "Wicked one, thou often sayest wicked things.</p> + +<p> "(I see the spiders' webs above the lofty windows.)</p> + +<p> "Our wardrobe is very old; see how the fire reddens its sad panels! + the weary curtains are as old, and the tapestry on the arm-chairs + stripped of paint, and the old engravings, and all these old things. + Does it not seem to thee that even these blue birds are discoloured + by time?</p> + +<p> "(Dream not of the spiders' webs that tremble above the lofty + windows.)</p> + +<p> "Thou lovest all that, and that is why I live by thee. When one of my + poems appeared, didst thou not desire, my sister, whose looks are + full of yesterdays, the words, the grace of faded things? New objects + displease thee; thee also do they frighten with their loud boldness, + and thou feelest as if thou shouldst use them—a difficult thing + indeed to do, for thou hast no taste for action.</p> + +<p> "Come, close thy old German almanack that thou readest with + attention, though it appeared more than a hundred years ago, and the + Kings it announces are all dead, and, lying on this antique carpet, + my head leaned upon thy charitable knees, on the pale robe, oh! calm + child, I will speak with thee for hours; there are no fields, and the + streets are empty, I will speak to thee of our furniture.</p> + +<p> "Thou art abstracted?</p> + +<p> "(The spiders' webs are shivering above the lofty windows.)"</p></div> + +<p>We, the "ten superior persons scattered through the universe" think +these prose poems the concrete essence, the osmazome of literature, the +essential oil of art, others, those in the stalls, will judge them to be +the aberrations of a refined mind, distorted with hatred of the +commonplace; the pit will immediately declare them to be nonsense, and +will return with satisfaction to the last leading article in the daily +paper.</p> + +<p><i>J'ai fait mes adieux à ma mère et je viens pour vous faire les miens</i> +and other absurdities by Ponson du Terrail amused us many a year in +France, and in later days similar bad grammar by Georges Ohnet has not +been lost upon us, but neither Ponson du Terrail nor Georges Ohnet +sought literary suffrage, such a thing could not be in France, but in +England, Rider Haggard, whose literary atrocities are more atrocious +than his accounts of slaughter, receives the attention of leading +journals and writes about the revival of Romance. As it is as difficult +to write the worst as the best conceivable sentence, I take this one and +place it for its greater glory in my less remarkable prose:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"><p>"<i>As we gazed on the beauties thus revealed by Good, a spirit of + emulation filled our breasts, and we set to work to get ourselves up + as well as we could</i>."</p></div> + +<p>A return to romance! a return to the animal, say I.</p> + +<p>One thing that cannot be denied to the realists: a constant and intense +desire to write well, to write artistically. When I think of what they +have done in the matter of the use of words, of the myriad verbal +effects they have discovered, of the thousand forms of composition they +have created, how they have remodelled and refashioned the language in +their untiring striving for intensity of expression for the very +osmazome of art, I am lost in ultimate wonder and admiration. What Hugo +did for French verse, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, and Huysmans have done +for French prose. No more literary school than the realists has ever +existed, and I do not except even the Elizabethans. And for this reason +our failures are more interesting than the vulgar successes of our +opponents; for when we fall into the sterile and distorted, it is +through our noble and incurable hatred of the commonplace of all that is +popular.</p> + +<p>The healthy school is played out in England; all that could be said has +been said; the successors of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot have +no ideal, and consequently no language; what can be more pudding than +the language of Mr Hardy, and he is typical of a dozen other writers, Mr +Besant, Mr Murray, Mr Crawford? The reason of this heaviness of thought +and expression is that the avenues are closed, no new subject matter is +introduced, the language of English fiction has therefore run stagnant. +But if the realists should catch favour in England the English tongue +may be saved from dissolution, for with the new subjects they would +introduce new forms of language would arise.</p> + +<p>"Carmen Sylva!" How easy it is to divine the æstheticism of any one +signing, "Carmen Sylva."</p> + +<p>In youth the genius of Shelly astonished me; but now I find the +stupidity of the ordinary person infinitely more surprising.</p> + +<p>That I may die childless—that when my hour comes I may turn my face to +the wall saying, I have not increased the great evil of human +life—then, though I were murderer, fornicator, thief, and liar, my sins +shall melt even as a cloud. But he who dies with children about him, +though his life were in all else an excellent deed, shall be held +accursed by the truly wise, and the stain upon him shall endure for +ever.</p> + +<p>I realize that this is truth, the one truth, and the whole truth; and +yet the vainest woman that ever looked in a glass never regretted her +youth more than I, or felt the disgrace of middle-age more keenly. She +has her portrait painted, I write these confessions; each hopes to save +something of the past, and escape somehow the ravening waves of time and +float into some haven of remembrance. St Augustine's Confessions are the +story of a God-tortured, mine of an art-tortured, soul. Which subject is +the most living? The first! for man is stupid and still loves his +conscience as a child loves a toy. Now the world plays with "Robert +Elsmere." This book seems to me like a suite of spacious, well +distributed, and well proportioned rooms. Looking round, I say, 'tis a +pity these rooms are only in plaster of Paris.</p> + +<p>"Les Palais Nomades" is a really beautiful book, and it is free from all +the faults that make an absolute and supreme enjoyment of great poetry +an impossibility. For it is in the first place free from those pests and +parasites of artistic work—ideas. Of all literary qualities the +creation of ideas is the most fugitive. Think of the fate of an author +who puts forward a new idea to-morrow in a book, in a play, in a poem. +The new idea is seized upon, it becomes common property, it is dragged +through newspaper articles, magazine articles, through books, it is +repeated in clubs, drawing-rooms; it is bandied about the corners of +streets; in a week it is wearisome, in a month it is an abomination. Who +has not felt a sickening feeling come over him when he hears such +phrases as "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Shakespeare was +really great when he wrote "Music to hear, why hearest thou music +sadly?" not when he wrote, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." Could he +be freed from his ideas what a poet we should have! Therefore, let those +who have taken firsts at Oxford devote their intolerable leisure to +preparing an edition from which everything resembling an idea shall be +excluded. We might then shut up our Marlowes and our Beaumonts and +resume our reading of the bard, and the witless foists would confer +happiness on many, and crown themselves with truly immortal bays. See +the fellows! their fingers catch at scanty wisps of hair, the lamps are +burning, the long pens are poised, and idea after idea is hurled out of +existence.</p> + +<p>Gustave Kahn took counsel of the past, and he has successfully avoided +everything that even a hostile critic might be tempted to term an idea; +and for this I am grateful. Nor is his volume a collection of +miscellaneous verses bound together. He has chosen a certain sequence of +emotions; the circumstances out of which these emotions have sprung are +given in a short prose note. "Les Palais Nomades" is therefore a novel +in essence; description and analysis are eliminated, and only the +moments when life grows lyrical with suffering are recorded; recorded in +many varying metres conforming only to the play of the emotion, for, +unlike many who, having once discovered a tune, apply it promiscuously +to every subject they treat, Kahn adapts his melody to the emotion he is +expressing, with the same propriety and grace as Nature distributes +perfume to her flowers. For an example of magical transition of tone I +turn to <i>Intermède</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"Chère apparence, viens aux couchants illuminés.</p> +<p class="i2">Veux-tu mieux des matins albes et calmes?</p> +<p>Les soirs et les matins ont des calmes rosâtres</p> +<p>Les eaux ont des manteaux de cristal irisé</p> +<p class="i2">Et des rhythmes de calmes palmes</p> +<p>Et l'air évoque de calmes musiques de pâtres.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Viens sous des tendelets aux fleuves souriants</p> +<p class="i2">Aux lilas pâlis des nuits d'Orient</p> +<p>Aux glauques étendues à falbalas d'argent</p> +<p class="i2">A l'oasis des baisers urgents</p> +<p>Seulement vit le voile aux seuls Orients.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<hr style="width: 45%;"> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Quel que soit le spectacle et quelle que soit la rame</p> +<p>Et quelle que soit la voix qui s'affame et brame,</p> +<p>L'oubli du lointain des jours chatouille et serre,</p> +<p>Le lotos de l'oubli s'est fané dans mes serres,</p> +<p class="i4">Cependant tu m'aimais à jamais?</p> +<p class="i8">Adieu pour jamais."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>The repetitions of Edgar Poe seem hard and mechanical after this, so +exquisite and evanescent is the rhythm, and the intonations come as +sweetly and suddenly as a gust of perfume; it is as the vibration of a +fairy orchestra, flute and violin disappearing in a silver mist; but the +clouds break, and all the enchantment of a spring garden appears in a +shaft of sudden sunlight.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>"L'éphemère idole, au frisson du printemps,</p> +<p class="i2">Sentant des renouveaux éclorent,</p> +<p>Se guèpa de satins si lointains et d'antan:</p> +<p class="i2">Rose exilé des flores!</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Le jardin rima ses branches de lilas;</p> +<p class="i2">Aux murs, les roses tremières;</p> +<p>La terre étala, pour fêter les las,</p> +<p class="i2">Des divans vert lumière;</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Des rires ailés peuplèrent le jardin;</p> +<p class="i2">Souriants des caresses brèves,</p> +<p>Des oiseaux joyeaux, jaunes, incarnadins</p> +<p class="i2">Vibrèrent aux ciels de rêve."</p> +</div> +</div> + +<p>But to the devil with literature! Who cares if Gustave Kahn writes well +or badly? I met a chappie yesterday whose views of life coincide with +mine. "A ripping good dinner," he says; "get a skinful of champagne +inside you, go to bed when it is light, and get up when you are rested."</p> + +<p>Each century has its special ideal, the ideal of the nineteenth is the +young man. The eighteenth century is only woman—see the tapestries, the +delightful goddesses who have discarded their hoops and heels to appear +in still more delightful nakedness, the noble woods, the tall castles, +with the hunters looking round; no servile archæology chills the fancy; +and this treatment of antiquity is the highest proof of the genius of +the eighteenth century. See the Fragonards—the ladies in high-peaked +bodices, their little ankles showing amid the snow of the petticoats. Up +they go; you can hear their light false voices amid the summer of the +leaves, where Loves are garlanded even as roses. Masks and arrows are +everywhere, all the machinery of light and gracious days. In the +Watteaus the note is more pensive; there is satin and sunset, plausive +gestures and reluctance—false reluctance; the guitar is tinkling, and +exquisite are the notes in the languid evening; and there is the +Pierrot, that marvellous white animal, sensual and witty and glad, the +soul of the century—ankles and epigrams everywhere, for love was not +then sentimental, it was false and a little cruel; see the furniture and +the polished floor, and the tapestries with whose delicate tints and +decorations the high hair blends, the foot-stool and the heel and the +calf of the leg that is withdrawn, showing in the shadows of the lace; +see the satin of the bodices, the fan outspread, the wigs so adorably +false, the knee-breeches, the buckles on the shoes, how false; adorable +little comedy, adorably mendacious; and how winsome it is to feast on +these sweet lies, it is indeed delight to us, wearied with the bland +sincerity of newspapers. In the eighteenth century it was the man who +knelt at the woman's feet, it was the man who pleaded and the woman who +acceded; but in our century the place of the man is changed, it is he +who holds the fan, it is he who is besought; and if one were to dream +of continuing the tradition of Watteau and Fragonard in the nineteenth +century, he would have to take note of and meditate deeply and +profoundly on this, as he sought to formulate and synthesize the erotic +spirit of our age.</p> + +<p>The position of a young man in the nineteenth century is the most +enviable that has ever fallen to the lot of any human creature. He is +the rare bird, and is fêted, flattered, adored. The sweetest words are +addressed to him, the most loving looks are poured upon him. The young +man can do no wrong. Every house is open to him, and the best of +everything is laid before him; girls dispute the right to serve him; +they come to him with cake and wine, they sit circlewise and listen to +him, and when one is fortunate to get him alone she will hang upon his +neck, she will propose to him, and will take his refusal kindly and +without resentment. They will not let him stoop to tie up his shoe lace, +but will rush and simultaneously claim the right to attend on him. To +represent in a novel a girl proposing marriage to a man would be deemed +unnatural, but nothing is more common; there are few young men who have +not received at least a dozen offers, nay, more; it is characteristic, +it has become instinctive for girls to choose, and they prefer men not +to make love to them; and every young man who knows his business avoids +making advances, knowing well that it will only put the girl off.</p> + +<p>In a society so constituted, what a delightful opening there is for a +young man. He would have to waltz perfectly, play tennis fairly, the +latest novel would suffice for literary attainments; billiards, +shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be +considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by +the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action +of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and +must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must +succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, +love draws all things. Our young man would have to be five feet eleven, +or six feet, broad shoulders, light brown hair, deep eyes, soft and +suggestive, broad shoulders, a thin neck, long delicate hands, a high +instep. His nose should be straight, his face oval and small, he must be +clean about the hips, and his movements must be naturally caressing. He +comes into the ball-room, his shoulders well back, he stretches his hand +to the hostess, he looks at her earnestly (it is characteristic of him +to think of the hostess first, he is in her house, the house is +well-furnished, and is suggestive of excellent meats and wines). He can +read through the slim woman whose black hair, a-glitter with diamonds, +contrasts with her white satin; an old man is talking to her, she dances +with him, and she refused a young man a moment before. This is a bad +sign; our Lovelace knows it; there is a stout woman of thirty-five, who +is looking at him, red satin bodice, doubtful taste. He looks away; a +little blonde woman fixes her eyes on him, she looks as innocent as a +child; instinctively our Lovelace turns to his host. "Who is that little +blonde woman over there, the right hand corner?" he asks. "Ah, that is +Lady ——." "Will you introduce me?" "Certainly," Lovelace has made up +his mind. Then there is a young oldish girl, richly dressed; "I hear her +people have a nice house in a hunting country, I will dance with her, +and take the mother into supper, and, if I can get a moment, will have a +pleasant talk with the father in the evening."</p> + +<p>In manner Lovelace is facile and easy; he never says no, it is always +yes, ask him what you will; but he only does what he has made up his +mind it is his advantage to do. Apparently he is an embodiment of all +that is unselfish, for he knows that after he has helped himself, it is +advisable to help some one else, and thereby make a friend who, on a +future occasion, will be useful to him. Put a violinist into a room +filled with violins, and he will try every one. Lovelace will put each +woman aside so quietly that she is often only half aware that she has +been put aside. Her life is broken; she is content that it should be +broken. The real genius for love lies not in getting into, but getting +out of love.</p> + +<p>I have noticed that there are times when every second woman likes you. +Is love, then, a magnetism which we sometimes possess and exercise +unconsciously, and sometimes do not possess?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XIV"></a><h2>XIV</h2> +<br> + +<p>Now I am full of eager impulses that mourn and howl by turns, striving +for utterance like wind in turret chambers. I hate this infernal +lodging. I feel like a fowl in a coop;—that landlady, those children, +Emma.... The actress will be coming upstairs presently; shall I ask her +into my room? Better let things remain as they are.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Why intrude a new vexation on her already vexed life?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Hallo, you startled me! Well, I am surprised. We have not talked +together for a long time. Since when?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I will spare your feelings. I merely thought I would remind you that you +have passed the rubicon—your thirtieth year.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>It is terrible to think of. My youth gone!</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Then you are ashamed—you repent?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I am ashamed of nothing—I am a writer; 'tis my profession not to be +ashamed.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I had forgotten. So you are lost to shame?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Completely. I will chat with you when you please; even now, at this +hour, about all things—about any of my sins.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Since we lost sight of each other you have devoted your time to the +gratification of your senses.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Pardon me, I have devoted quite as much of my time to art.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You were glad, I remember, when your father died, because his death gave +you unlimited facilities for moulding the partial self which the +restraining influence of home had only permitted, into that complete +and ideal George Moore which you had in mind. I think I quote you +correctly.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You don't; but never mind. Proceed.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Then, if you have no objection, we will examine how far you have turned +your opportunities to account.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You will not deny that I have educated myself and made many friends.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Friends! your nature is very adaptable—you interest yourself in their +pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your +education—speak not of it; it is but flimsy stuff.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>There I join issue with you. Have I not drawn the intense ego out of the +clouds of semi-consciousness, and realised it? And surely, the rescue +and the individualisation of the ego is the first step.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>,</p> + +<p>To what end? You have nothing to teach, nothing to reveal. I have often +thought of asking you this: since death is the only good, why do you not +embrace death? Of all the world's goods it is the cheapest, and the most +easily obtained.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>We must live since nature has willed it so. My poor conscience, are you +still struggling in the fallacy of free will?</p> + +<p>For at least a hundred thousand years man has rendered this planet +abominable and ridiculous with what he is pleased to call his +intelligence, without, however, having learned that his life is merely +the breaking of the peace of unconsciousness, the drowsy uplifting of +tired eyelids of somnolent nature. How glibly this loquacious ape +chatters of his religion and his moral sense, always failing to see that +both are but allurements and inveiglements! With religion he is induced +to bear his misery, and his sexual appetite is preserved, ignorant, and +vigorous, by means of morals. A scorpion, surrounded by a ring of fire, +will sting itself to death, and man would turn upon life and deny it, +if his reason were complete. Religion and morals are the poker and tongs +with which nature intervenes and scatters the ring of reason.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i> (after a long pause).</p> + +<p>I believe—forgive my ignorance, but I have seen so little of you this +long while—that your boast is that no woman influenced, changed, or +modified your views of life.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>None; my mind is a blank on the subject. Stay! my mother said once, when +I was a boy, "You must not believe them; all their smiles and pretty +ways are only put on. Women like men only for what they can get out of +them." And to these simple words I attribute all the suspicion of +woman's truth which hung over my youth. For years it seemed to me +impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful +and desirable—men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without +revulsion of feeling, could they really desire us? I was absorbed in the +life of woman—the mystery of petticoats, so different from the +staidness of trousers! the rolls of hair entwined with so much art, and +suggesting so much colour and perfume, so different from the bare crop; +the unnaturalness of the waist in stays! plenitude and slenderness of +silk, so different from the stupidity of a black tail-coat; rose feet +passing under the triple ruches of rose, so different from the broad +foot of the male. My love for the life of women was a life within my +life; and oh, how strangely secluded and veiled! A world of calm colour +with phantoms moving, floating past and changing in dim light—an +averted face with abundant hair, the gleam of a perfect bust or the +poise of a neck turning slowly round, the gaze of deep translucid eyes. +I loved women too much to give myself wholly to one.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Yes, yes; but what real success have you had with women?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Damn it! you would not seek to draw me into long-winded stories about +women—how it began, how it was broken off, how it began again? I'm not +Casenova. I love women as I love champagne—I drink it and enjoy it; +but an exact account of every bottle drunk would prove flat narrative.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You have never consulted me about your champagne loves: but you have +asked me if you have ever inspired a real affection, and I told you that +we cannot inspire in others what does not exist in ourselves. You have +never known a nice woman who would have married you?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Why should I undertake to keep a woman by me for the entire space of her +life, watching her grow fat, grey, wrinkled, and foolish? Think of the +annoyance of perpetually looking after any one, especially a woman! +Besides, marriage is antagonistic to my ideal. You say that no ideal +illumines the pessimist's life, that if you ask him why he exists, he +cannot answer, and that Schopenhauer's arguments against suicide are not +even plausible causistry. True, on this point his reasoning is feeble +and ineffective. But we may easily confute our sensual opponents. We +must say that we do not commit suicide, although we admit it is a +certain anodyne to the poison of life,—an absolute erasure of the wrong +inflicted on us by our parents,—because we hope by noble example and +precept to induce others to refrain from love. We are the saviours of +souls. Other crimes are finite; love alone is infinite. We punish a man +with death for killing his fellow; but a little reflection should make +the dullest understand that the crime of bringing a being into the world +exceeds by a thousand, a millionfold that of putting one out of it.</p> + +<p>Men are to-day as thick as flies in a confectioner's shop; in fifty +years there will be less to eat, but certainly some millions more +mouths. I laugh, I rub my hands! I shall be dead before the red time +comes. I laugh at the religionists who say that God provides for those +He brings into the world. The French Revolution will compare with the +revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a +puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears +on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an +electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago. +Christ, who with his white feet trod out the blood of the ancient world, +and promised Universal Peace, shall go out in a cataclysm of blood. The +neck of mankind shall be opened, and blood shall cover the face of the +earth.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Your philosophy is on a par with your painting and your poetry; but, +then, I am a conscience, and a conscience is never philosophic—you go +in for "The Philosophy of the Unconscious"?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>No, no, 'tis but a silly vulgarisation. But Schopenhauer, oh, my +Schopenhauer! Say, shall I go about preaching hatred of women? Were I to +call them a short-legged race that was admitted into society only a +hundred and fifty years ago?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You cannot speak the truth even to me; no, not even at half-past twelve +at night.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Surely of all hours this is the one in which it is advisable to play you +false?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience.</i></p> + +<p>You are getting humorous.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I am getting sleepy. You are a tiresome old thing, a relic of the +ancient world—I mean the mediæval world. You know that I now affect +antiquity?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You wander helplessly in the road of life until you stumble against a +battery; nerved with the shock you are frantic, and rush along wildly +until the current received is exhausted, and you lapse into +disorganisation.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>If I am sensitive to and absorb the various potentialities of my age, am +I not of necessity a power?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>To be the receptacle of and the medium through which unexplained forces +work, is a very petty office to fulfil. Can you think of nothing higher? +Can you feel nothing original in you, a something that is cognisant of +the end?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You are surely not going to drop into talking to me of God?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You will not deny that I at least exist? I am with you now, and +intensely, far more than the dear friend with whom you love to walk in +the quiet evening; the women you have held to your bosom in the perfumed +darkness of the chamber—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Pray don't. "The perfumed darkness of the chamber" is very common. I was +suckled on that kind of literature.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You are rotten to the root. Nothing but a very severe attack of +indigestion would bring you to your senses—or a long lingering illness.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>'Pon my faith, you are growing melodramatic. Neither indigestion nor +illness long drawn out can change me. I have torn you all to pieces +long ago, and you have not now sufficient rags on your back to scare +the rooks in seed-time.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>In destroying me you have destroyed yourself.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Edgar Poe, pure and simple. Don't pick holes in my originality until you +have mended those in your own.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I was Poe's inspiration; he is eternal, being of me. But your +inspiration springs from the flesh, and is therefore ephemeral even as +the flesh.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>If you had read Schopenhauer you would know that the flesh is not +ephemeral, but the eternal objectification of the will to live. Siva is +represented, not only with the necklace of skulls, but with the lingam.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You have failed in all you have attempted, and the figure you have +raised on your father's tomb is merely a sensitive and sensuous +art-cultured being who lives in a dirty lodging and plays in desperate +desperation his last card. You are now writing a novel. The hero is a +wretched creature, something like yourself. Do you think there is a +public in England for that kind of thing?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Just the great Philistine that you always were! What do you mean by a +"public"?</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I have not a word to say on that account, your one virtue is sobriety.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>A wretched pun.... The mass of mankind run much after the fashion of the +sheep of Panurge, but there are always a few that—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>A few that are like the Gadarene swine.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Ah,...were I the precipice, were I the sea in which the pigs might +drown!</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>The same old desire of admiration, admiration in its original sense of +wonderment (miratio); you are a true child of the century; you do not +desire admiration, you would avoid it, fearing it might lessen that +sense which you only care to stimulate—wonderment. And persecuted by +the desire to astonish, you are now exhibiting yourself in the most +hideous light you can devise. The man whose biography you are writing is +no better than a pimp.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Then he is not like me; I have never been a pimp, and I don't think I +would be if I could.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>The whole of your moral nature is reflected in Lewis Seymore, even to +the "And I don't think I would be if I could."</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>I love the abnormal, and there is certainly something strangely +grotesque in the life of a pimp. But it is nonsense to suggest that +Lewis Seymore is myself;...you know that my original notion was to do +the side of Lucien de Rubrempré that—</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>That Balzac had the genius to leave out.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>Really, if you can only make disagreeable remarks, I think we had better +bring this conversation to a close.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>One word more. You have failed in everything you have attempted, and you +will continue to fail until you consider those moral principles—those +rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring +instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those +who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched +scribbler such as you are, has escaped her vengeance.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>You would have me pull down the black flag and turn myself into an +honest merchantman, with children in the hold and a wife at the helm. +You would remind me that grey hairs begin to show, that health falls +into rags, that high spirits split like canvas, and that in the end the +bright buccaneer drifts, an old derelict, tossed by the waves of ill +fortune, and buffeted by the winds into those dismal bays and dangerous +offings—housekeepers, nurses, and uncomfortable chambers. Such will be +my fate; and since none may avert his fate, none can do better than to +run pluckily the course which he must pursue.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>You might devise a moral ending; one that would conciliate all classes.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>It is easy to see that you are a nineteenth-century conscience.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>I do not hope to find a Saint Augustine in you.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>I</i>.</p> + +<p>An idea; one of these days I will write my confessions! Again I tell you +that nothing really matters to me but art. And, knowing this, you +chatter of the unwisdom of my not concluding my novel with some foolish +moral.... Nothing matters to me but art.</p> + +<p class="p2"><i>Conscience</i>.</p> + +<p>Would you seduce the wretched servant girl if by so doing you could +pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XV"></a><h2>XV</h2> +<br> + +<p>And now, hypocritical reader, I will answer the questions which have +been agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage +of this long narrative of a sinful life.<a name="FNanchor2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> Shake not your head, lift +not your finger, exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in +nothing. I know the base and unworthy soul. This is a magical +<i>tête-à-tête</i>, such a one as will never happen in your life again; +therefore I say let us put off all customary disguise, let us be frank: +you have been angrily asking, exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you +have been <i>forced</i> to read this record of sinful life; in your exquisite +hypocrisy, you have said over and over again what good purpose can it +serve for a man to tell us of his unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to +show us how he may rise, as if on stepping stones of his dead self, to +higher things, etc. You sighed, O hypocritical friend, and you threw the +magazine on the wicker table, where such things lie, and you murmured +something about leaving the world a little better than you found it, and +you went down to dinner and lost consciousness of the world<a name="FNanchor3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a> in the +animal enjoyment of your stomach. I hold out my hand to you, I embrace +you, you are my brother, and I say, undeceive yourself, you will leave +the world no better than you found it. The pig that is being slaughtered +as I write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but +you will leave only a putrid carcase fit for nothing but worms. Look +back upon your life, examine it, probe it, weigh it, philosophise on it, +and then say, if you dare, that it has not been a very futile and +foolish affair. Soldier, robber, priest, Atheist, courtesan, virgin, I +care not what you are, if you have not brought children into the world +to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has been. I +hold out my hand to you, we are brothers; but in my heart of hearts I +think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the +world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, +think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the +world better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of +life is to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our +neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is +affording you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my +friend, my brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not +so bad after all. Now to resume.</p> + +<p>The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my +youth will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so +now while standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on +the valley I lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; +and a fool and a weakling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the +rarity of more than ten years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided +me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she +ever turned out of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the +most perfect equipoise possible to conceive, and up and down they went +and still go with measured movement, absorbing and assimilating all that +is poured into them without friction or stoppage. This book is a record +of my mental digestions; but it would take another series of confessions +to tell of the dinners I have eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the +suppers! seven dozen of oysters, pâté-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, +salad, and then a walk home in the early morning, a few philosophical +reflections suggested by the appearance of a belated street-sweeper, +then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep.</p> + +<p>I have had the rarest, the finest friends. I have loved my friends; the +rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions; everything +conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do you think +this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you are a +fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle +selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of +life's pie than the seven deadly virtues.<a name="FNanchor4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a> If you are a good man you +want a bad one to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to +go out on the spree with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place +your hand upon your heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical +<i>tête-à-tête</i> which will happen never again in your life, admit that you +feel just a little interested in my wickedness,<a name="FNanchor5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a> admit that if you +ever thought you would like to know me that it is because I know a good +deal that you probably don't; admit that your mouth waters when you +think of rich and various pleasures that fell to my share in happy +Paris; admit that if this book had been an account of the pious books I +had read, the churches I had been to, and the good works I had done, +that you would not have bought it or borrowed it. Hypocritical reader, +think, had you had courage, health and money to lead a fast life, would +you not have done so? You don't know, no more do I; I have done so, and +I regret nothing except that some infernal farmers and miners will not +pay me what they owe me and enable me to continue the life that was once +mine, and of which I was so bright an ornament. How I hate this +atrocious Strand lodging-house, how I long for my apartment in <i>Rue de +la Tour des Dames</i>, with all its charming adjuncts, palms and pastels, +my cat, my python, my friends, blond hair and dark.</p> + +<p>The daily article soon grows monotonous, even when you know it will be +printed, and this I did not know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas +were unsettled, I could not go to the tap and draw them off, the liquor +was still fermenting; and partly because my articles were not very +easily disposed of, and partly because I was weary of writing on +different subjects, I turned my attention to short stories. I wrote a +dozen. Some were printed in weekly newspapers, some were returned to me.</p> + +<p>There was a publisher in the neighbourhood of the Strand, who used to +frequent a certain bar, and this worthy man conducted his business as he +dressed himself, sloppily; a dear kind soul, quite witless and quite +<i>h</i>-less. From long habit he would make a feeble attempt to drive a +bargain, but he was duped generally. If a fashionable author asked two +hundred pounds for a book out of which he would be certain to make +three, it was ten to one that he would allow the chance to drift away +from him; but after having refused a dozen times the work of a Strand +loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would say, "Send it +in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it." There was a +long counter, and the way to be published by Mr B. was to straddle on +the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman behind this +counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read the MS., +looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts and entertained +the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs Macmillan and Messrs Longman with +polite requests to look at my MS., I straddled, played with the cat, +joked with the Irishman, drank with Mr. B., and in the natural order of +things my stories went into the magazine and were paid for. Strange were +the ways of this office; Shakespeare might have sent in prose and +poetry, but he would have gone into the wastepaper basket had he not +previously straddled. For those who were in the "know" this was a matter +of congratulation; straddling, we would cry, "We want no blooming +outsiders coming along interfering with our magazine. And you, Smith, +you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last month and cut me out. +O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of poems as well as +my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try to manage it; +here's the governor." And looking exactly like the unfortunate Mr +Sedley, Mr B. used to slouch in; he would fall into his leather +armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques—the last time I saw +that chair it was standing in the street in the hands of the brokers.</p> + +<p>But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all +means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had +not passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip +through our defences. One hot summer's day, we were all on the counter, +our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered. He must have been +six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr B.'s room, he asked him +to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened. "Wastepaper basket, +wastepaper basket," we shouted. "What an odd-looking fish he is—like a +pike!" said O'Flanagan; "I wonder what his MS. is like." "Very like a +pike," we cried. But O'Flanagan took the MS. home to read, and returned +next morning convinced he had discovered an embryo Dickens. The young +man was asked to call, his book was accepted, and we adjourned to the +bar.</p> + +<p>This young man took rooms in the house next to me on the ground floor. +He had been to Oxford, and to Heidelberg, he drank beer and smoked long +pipes, he talked of nothing but tobacco. Soon, very soon, I began to see +that he thought me a simpleton; he pooh-poohed my belief in Naturalism +and declined to discuss the symbolist question. He curled his long legs +upon the rickety sofa and spoke of the British public as the "B.P.," and +of the magazine as the "mag," and in the office which I had marked down +as my own I saw him installed as a genius. He brought a little man about +five feet three to live with him, and when the two, the long and the +short, went out together, it was like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza +setting forth in quest of adventures in the land of Strand. The short +man indulged in none of the loud, rasping affectation of humour that was +so maddening in the long; he was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did +join in the conversation it was like an empty nut between the +teeth—dusty and bitter. He kept a pocket-book, in which he held an +account of his reading. Holding the pocket-book between finger and +thumb, he would say, "Last year I read ten plays by Nash, twelve by +Peele, six by Greene, fifteen by Beaumont and Fletcher, and eleven +anonymous plays,—fifty-four in all."</p> + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a> The use of the word sinful here seems liable to +misinterpretation. The phrase should run: "Of a virtuous life, for +remember that my virtues are your vices."</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a> This should run: "Forgot your hypocrisy."</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a> Vices, surely? See Footnote 2 above.</p> + +<p><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a> Virtue?</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVI"></a><h2>XVI</h2> +<br> + +<p>Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this +time, attracted into other ways—ways that led into London life, and +were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses +and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever +an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of +whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The +bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his +favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another +friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in +character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept +it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the +impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening +clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house +was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the +cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort +of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I +found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of +titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten +sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous +cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant +champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; +a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and +eternal squandering of money,—money that rose at no discoverable +well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of +whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying +through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I +joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and +about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying +point.</p> + +<p>After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and +theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their +drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night—at +half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or +two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney +sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street +and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we +struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced +writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off +the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our +lagging pens.</p> + +<p>But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a +personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in +a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I +longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame, +brutal and glaring.</p> + +<p>Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the +souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have +known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in +the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes +and murmuring "dreadful young man"—examine your weakly heart, and see +what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what +is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up +natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched +soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails +for—paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done, +especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety.</p> + +<p>"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself. +"Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my +journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, +but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than +when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a +friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is +more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will +hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost +stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one +hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, +Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. +Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in +spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and +it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his +white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I +don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" +and he gives the beggar a shilling.</p> + +<p>We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are +not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable +when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell +you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my +craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—it +will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, +dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a +man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make +himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your +friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of +course, instantly want to know more about him.</p> + +<p>It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in +hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the +comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; +choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting +to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was +a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can +resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the +mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful +lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did +not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, +as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies +retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through +various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose +and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did +not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred +until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The +beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was +sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into +ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at +last, to bring matters to a head, I said,</p> + +<p>"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity."</p> + +<p>"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool."</p> + +<p>"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me, +and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at +table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad."</p> + +<p>There was a lull, then a moment after he said,</p> + +<p>"I only meant politically."</p> + +<p>"And I only meant socially."</p> + +<p>He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger +tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and +shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked +up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although +I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that +if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and +as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force +on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers +I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by +pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press +would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say +against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and +apples for the journalists.</p> + +<p>I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking, +calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of +the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been +arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to +arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed.</p> + +<p>Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me +perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as +October scatters swallows.</p> + +<p>The first one said, "it was about one or two in the morning?"</p> + +<p>"Later than that, it was about seven."</p> + +<p>"He struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you hit him with a +champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out."</p> + +<p>"I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you don't like +to act for me, say so."</p> + +<p>I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:—"Can I count on you to +act for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply +came. "Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it +over." English people, I said, will have nothing to do with serious +duelling. I must telegraph to Marshall. "Of all importance. Come over at +once and act for me in an affair of honour. Bring the Count with you; +leave him at Boulogne; he knows the colonel of the ——." The next day I +received the following. "Am burying my father; as soon as he is +underground will come." Was there ever such ill-luck?... He won't be +here before the end of the week. These things demand the utmost +promptitude. Three or four days afterwards Emma told me a gentleman was +upstairs taking a bath. "Hollo, Marshall, how are you? Had a good +crossing? The poor old gentleman went off quite suddenly, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay +quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side...wonderful +presence of mind."</p> + +<p>"He left no money?"</p> + +<p>"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the +Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find +out now what a success that picture was. <i>Je t'assure, je fais +l'ècole</i>"...</p> + +<p>"<i>Tu crois ça...on fait l'ècole après vingt ans de travail</i>."</p> + +<p>When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.</p> + +<p>"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel."</p> + +<p>No sooner had I begun to tell the story than it dawned upon me that it +was impossible to tell it seriously, for it was fundamentally an absurd +story; and I lacked courage to tell Marshall that I only wished to go +through with the duel in order to become notorious. No one will admit +such a thing as that to his friend, and if I had admitted it Marshall +would not have consented. I suddenly began to get interested in other +things. There was Marshall's painting to talk about. After the theatre +we went home and æstheticised till three in the morning. The duel became +the least important event and Marshall's new picture the greatest. At +breakfast next day the duel seemed more tiresome than ever, but the +gentlemen were coming to meet Marshall. He showed his usual tact in +arranging my affair of honour; a letter was drawn up in which my friend +withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, +etc.—really now I lack energy to explain it any further.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVII"></a><h2>XVII</h2> +<br> + +<p>Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, +"How very base"; but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, +if you are a soldier in Her Majesty's army, for war,—war that would +bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed +for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into the +<i>Gazette</i>. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical +reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in +telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical +reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical +reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute +you.</p> + +<p>Day passed over day, and my novel seemed an impossible task—defeat +glared at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so +thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt +unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the +style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down +on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. +Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the +landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered +into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and +lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon +Street temptations, I trudged home to eat a chop. I studied the servant +as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she +would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!"</p> + +<p>I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs, and I never wearied of +talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired, +and she used to ask me about my novel.</p> + +<p>When my troubles lay too heavily upon me, I let her go up to her garret +without a word, and remained at the window wondering if I should ever +escape from Cecil Street, if I should ever be a light in that London, +long, low, misshapen, that dark monumented stream flowing through the +lean bridges. What if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass? +Happiness abides only in the natural affections—in a home and a sweet +wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her +simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, +not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for +her, I am too sullied for her lips. Were I to win her could I be +dutiful, true?...</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="XVIII"></a><h2>XVIII</h2> +<br> + +<p>"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, +not the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses +there is reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish +young men who think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is +over for me, I have eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and +drink as I have; do you be young as I was. I have written it! The word +is not worth erasure, if it is not true to-day it will be in two years +hence; farewell! I yield my place, do you be young as I was, do you love +youth as I did; remember you are the most interesting beings under +heaven, for you all sacrifices will be made, you will be fêted and +adored upon the condition of remaining young men. The feast is over for +me, I yield my place, but I will not make this leavetaking more +sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice and +instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly +against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate +yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can +use it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my +place; but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I +would say my last word—were it possible I would be remembered by you as +a young man: but I know too well that the young never realise that the +old were not born old. Farewell."</p> + +<p>I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the +window, and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my +novel.</p> +<br/> +<p> +THE END +</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12278-h.htm or 12278-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/2/7/12278/ + +Produced by Jon Ingram, David Cavanagh and Distributed Proofreaders + +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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