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diff --git a/1309-h/1309-h.htm b/1309-h/1309-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3c0aa3 --- /dev/null +++ b/1309-h/1309-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2212 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Spirit of Place</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Spirit of Place, by Alice Meynell</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Spirit of Place, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Spirit of Place + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 15, 2005 [eBook #1309] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF PLACE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1899 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>The Spirit of Place and Other Essays</h1> +<p>Contents:</p> +<p>The Spirit of Place<br /> +Mrs. Dingley<br /> +Solitude<br /> +The Lady of the Lyrics<br /> +July<br /> +Wells<br /> +The Foot<br /> +Have Patience, Little Saint<br /> +The Ladies of the Idyll<br /> +A Derivation<br /> +A Counterchange<br /> +Rain<br /> +Letters of Marceline Valmore<br /> +The Hours of Sleep<br /> +The Horizon<br /> +Habits and Consciousness<br /> +Shadows</p> +<h2>THE SPIRIT OF PLACE</h2> +<p>With mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poets +have all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found +too much interpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her +inaccessible utterance, and to agree with her remote tongue. The +bell, like the bird, is a musician pestered with literature.</p> +<p>To the bell, moreover, men do actual violence. You cannot shake +together a nightingale’s notes, or strike or drive them into haste, +nor can you make a lark toll for you with intervals to suit your turn, +whereas wedding-bells are compelled to seem gay by mere movement and +hustling. I have known some grim bells, with not a single joyous +note in the whole peal, so forced to hurry for a human festival, with +their harshness made light of, as though the Bishop of Hereford had +again been forced to dance in his boots by a merry highwayman.</p> +<p>The clock is an inexorable but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, +and the chimes await their appointed time to fly—wild prisoners—by +twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives—one or +twelve taking wing—they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; +they are delivered from the close hands of this actual present. +Not in vain is the sudden upper door opened against the sky; they are +away, hours of the past.</p> +<p>Of all unfamiliar bells, those which seem to hold the memory most +surely after but one hearing are bells of an unseen cathedral of France +when one has arrived by night; they are no more to be forgotten than +the bells in “Parsifal.” They mingle with the sound +of feet in unknown streets, they are the voices of an unknown tower; +they are loud in their own language. The spirit of place, which +is to be seen in the shapes of the fields and the manner of the crops, +to be felt in a prevalent wind, breathed in the breath of the earth, +overheard in a far street-cry or in the tinkle of some black-smith, +calls out and peals in the cathedral bells. It speaks its local +tongue remotely, steadfastly, largely, clamorously, loudly, and greatly +by these voices; you hear the sound in its dignity, and you know how +familiar, how childlike, how life-long it is in the ears of the people. +The bells are strange, and you know how homely they must be. Their +utterances are, as it were, the classics of a dialect.</p> +<p>Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its +subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen +once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, +its breath, its name. It is recalled all a lifetime, having been +perceived a week, and is not scattered but abides, one living body of +remembrance. The untravelled spirit of place—not to be pursued, +for it never flies, but always to be discovered, never absent, without +variation—lurks in the by-ways and rules over the towers, indestructible, +an indescribable unity. It awaits us always in its ancient and +eager freshness. It is sweet and nimble within its immemorial +boundaries, but it never crosses them. Long white roads outside +have mere suggestions of it and prophecies; they give promise not of +its coming, for it abides, but of a new and singular and unforeseen +goal for our present pilgrimage, and of an intimacy to be made. +Was ever journey too hard or too long that had to pay such a visit? +And if by good fortune it is a child who is the pilgrim, the spirit +of place gives him a peculiar welcome, for antiquity and the conceiver +of antiquity (who is only a child) know one another; nor is there a +more delicate perceiver of locality than a child. He is well used +to words and voices that he does not understand, and this is a condition +of his simplicity; and when those unknown words are bells, loud in the +night, they are to him as homely and as old as lullabies.</p> +<p>If, especially in England, we make rough and reluctant bells go in +gay measures, when we whip them to run down the scale to ring in a wedding—bells +that would step to quite another and a less agile march with a better +grace—there are belfries that hold far sweeter companies. +If there is no music within Italian churches, there is a most curious +local immemorial music in many a campanile on the heights. Their +way is for the ringers to play a tune on the festivals, and the tunes +are not hymn tunes or popular melodies, but proper bell-tunes, made +for bells. Doubtless they were made in times better versed than +ours in the sub-divisions of the arts, and better able to understand +the strength that lies ready in the mere little submission to the means +of a little art, and to the limits—nay, the very embarrassments—of +those means. If it were but possible to give here a real bell-tune—which +cannot be, for those melodies are rather long—the reader would +understand how some village musician of the past used his narrow means +as a composer for the bells, with what freshness, completeness, significance, +fancy, and what effect of liberty.</p> +<p>These hamlet-bells are the sweetest, as to their own voices, in the +world. Then I speak of their antiquity I use the word relatively. +The belfries are no older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, +the time when Italy seems to have been generally rebuilt. But, +needless to say, this is antiquity for music, especially in Italy. +At that time they must have had foundries for bells of tender voices, +and pure, warm, light, and golden throats, precisely tuned. The +hounds of Theseus had not a more just scale, tuned in a peal, than a +North Italian belfry holds in leash. But it does not send them +out in a mere scale, it touches them in the order of the game of a charming +melody. Of all cheerful sounds made by man this is by far the +most light-hearted. You do not hear it from the great churches. +Giotto’s coloured tower in Florence, that carries the bells for +Santa Maria del Fiore and Brunelleschi’s silent dome, does not +ring more than four contralto notes, tuned with sweetness, depth, and +dignity, and swinging one musical phrase which softly fills the country.</p> +<p>The village belfry it is that grows so fantastic and has such nimble +bells. Obviously it stands alone with its own village, and can +therefore hear its own tune from beginning to end. There are no +other bells in earshot. Other such dovecote-doors are suddenly +set open to the cloud, on a <i>festa</i> morning, to let fly those soft-voiced +flocks, but the nearest is behind one of many mountains, and our local +tune is uninterrupted. Doubtless this is why the little, secluded, +sequestered art of composing melodies for bells—charming division +of an art, having its own ends and means, and keeping its own wings +for unfolding by law—dwells in these solitary places. No +tunes in a town would get this hearing, or would be made clear to the +end of their frolic amid such a wide and lofty silence.</p> +<p>Nor does every inner village of Italy hold a bell-tune of its own; +the custom is Ligurian. Nowhere so much as in Genoa does the nervous +tourist complain of church bells in the morning, and in fact he is made +to hear an honest rout of them betimes. But the nervous tourist +has not, perhaps, the sense of place, and the genius of place does not +signal to him to go and find it among innumerable hills, where one by +one, one by one, the belfries stand and play their tunes. Variable +are those lonely melodies, having a differing gaiety for the festivals; +and a pitiful air is played for the burial of a villager.</p> +<p>As for the poets, there is but one among so many of their bells that +seems to toll with a spiritual music so loud as to be unforgotten when +the mind goes up a little higher than the earth, to listen in thought +to earth’s untethered sounds. This is Milton’s curfew, +that sways across one of the greatest of all the seashores of poetry—“the +wide-watered.”</p> +<h2>MRS. DINGLEY</h2> +<p>We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> +All we have to call her by more tenderly is the mere D, the D that ties +her to Stella, with whom she made the two-in-one whom Swift loved “better +a thousand times than life, as hope saved.” MD, without +full stops, Swift writes it eight times in a line for the pleasure of +writing it. “MD sometimes means Stella alone,” says +one of many editors. “The letters were written nominally +to Stella and Mrs. Dingley,” says another, “but it does +not require to be said that it was really for Stella’s sake alone +that they were penned.” Not so. “MD” never +stands for Stella alone. And the editor does not yet live who +shall persuade one honest reader, against the word of Swift, that Swift +loved Stella only, with an ordinary love, and not, by a most delicate +exception, Stella and Dingley, so joined that they make the “she” +and “her” of every letter. And this shall be a paper +of reparation to Mrs. Dingley.</p> +<p>No one else in literary history has been so defrauded of her honours. +In love “to divide is not to take away,” as Shelley says; +and Dingley’s half of the tender things said to MD is equal to +any whole, and takes nothing from the whole of Stella’s half. +But the sentimentalist has fought against Mrs. Dingley from the outset. +He has disliked her, shirked her, misconceived her, and effaced her. +Sly sentimentalist—he finds her irksome. Through one of +his most modern representatives he has but lately called her a “chaperon.” +A chaperon!</p> +<p>MD was not a sentimentalist. Stella was not so, though she +has been pressed into that character; D certainly was not, and has in +this respect been spared by the chronicler; and MD together were “saucy +charming MD,” “saucy little, pretty, dear rogues,” +“little monkeys mine,” “little mischievous girls,” +“nautinautinautidear girls,” “brats,” “huzzies +both,” “impudence and saucy-face,” “saucy noses,” +“my dearest lives and delights,” “dear little young +women,” “good dallars, not crying dallars” (which +means “girls”), “ten thousand times dearest MD,” +and so forth in a hundred repetitions. They are, every now and +then, “poor MD,” but obviously not because of their own +complaining. Swift called them so because they were mortal; and +he, like all great souls, lived and loved, conscious every day of the +price, which is death.</p> +<p>The two were joined by love, not without solemnity, though man, with +his summary and wholesale ready-made sentiment, has thus obstinately +put them asunder. No wholesale sentiment can do otherwise than +foolishly play havoc with such a relation. To Swift it was the +most secluded thing in the world. “I am weary of friends, +and friendships are all monsters, except MD’s;” “I +ought to read these letters I write after I have done. But I hope +it does not puzzle little Dingley to read, for I think I mend: but methinks,” +he adds, “when I write plain, I do not know how, but we are not +alone, all the world can see us. A bad scrawl is so snug; it looks +like PMD.” Again: “I do not like women so much as +I did. MD, you must know, are not women.” “God +Almighty preserve you both and make us happy together.” +“I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may never be +asunder ten days together while poor Presto lives.” “Farewell, +dearest beloved MD, and love poor, poor Presto, who has not had one +happy day since he left you, as hope saved.”</p> +<p>With them—with her—he hid himself in the world, at Court, +at the bar of St. James’s coffee-house, whither he went on the +Irish mail-day, and was “in pain except he saw MD’s little +handwriting.” He hid with them in the long labours of these +exquisite letters every night and morning. If no letter came, +he comforted himself with thinking that “he had it yet to be happy +with.” And the world has agreed to hide under its own manifold +and lachrymose blunders the grace and singularity—the distinction—of +this sweet romance. “Little, sequestered pleasure-house”—it +seemed as though “the many could not miss it,” but not even +the few have found it.</p> +<p>It is part of the scheme of the sympathetic historian that Stella +should be the victim of hope deferred, watching for letters from Swift. +But day and night Presto complains of the scantiness of MD’s little +letters; he waits upon “her” will: “I shall make a +sort of journal, and when it is full I will send it whether MD writes +or not; and so that will be pretty.” “Naughty girls +that will not write to a body!” “I wish you were whipped +for forgetting to send. Go, be far enough, negligent baggages.” +“You, Mistress Stella, shall write your share, and then comes +Dingley altogether, and then Stella a little crumb at the end; and then +conclude with something handsome and genteel, as ‘your most humble +cumdumble.’” But Scott and Macaulay and Thackeray +are all exceedingly sorry for Stella.</p> +<p>Swift is most charming when he is feigning to complain of his task: +“Here is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours; I +must be writing every night; O Lord, O Lord!” “I must +go write idle things, and twittle twattle.” “These +saucy jades take up so much of my time with writing to them in the morning.” +Is it not a stealthy wrong done upon Mrs. Dingley that she should be +stripped of all these ornaments to her name and memory? When Swift +tells a woman in a letter that there he is “writing in bed, like +a tiger,” she should go gay in the eyes of all generations.</p> +<p>They will not let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will +not let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. +Marry come up! Why did not the historians assign all the tender +passages (taken very seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the +jokes, then? That would have been no ill share for Dingley. +But no, forsooth, Dingley is allowed nothing.</p> +<p>There are passages, nevertheless, which can hardly be taken from +her. For now and then Swift parts his dear MD. When he does +so he invariably drops those initials and writes “Stella” +or “Ppt” for the one, and “D” or “Dingley” +for the other. There is no exception to this anywhere. He +is anxious about Stella’s “little eyes,” and about +her health generally; whereas Dingley is strong. Poor Ppt, he +thinks, will not catch the “new fever,” because she is not +well; “but why should D escape it, pray?” And Mrs. +Dingley is rebuked for her tale of a journey from Dublin to Wexford. +“I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though +not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers.” Stella is often +reproved for her spelling, and Mrs. Dingley writes much the better hand. +But she is a puzzle-headed woman, like another. “What do +you mean by my fourth letter, Madam Dinglibus? Does not Stella +say you had my fifth, goody Blunder?” “Now, Mistress +Dingley, are you not an impudent slut to except a letter next packet? +Unreasonable baggage! No, little Dingley, I am always in bed by +twelve, and I take great care of myself.” “You are +a pretending slut, indeed, with your ‘fourth’ and ‘fifth’ +in the margin, and your ‘journal’ and everything. +O Lord, never saw the like, we shall never have done.” “I +never saw such a letter, so saucy, so journalish, so everything.” +Swift is insistently grateful for their inquiries for his health. +He pauses seriously to thank them in the midst of his prattle. +Both women—MD—are rallied on their politics: “I have +a fancy that Ppt is a Tory, I fancy she looks like one, and D a sort +of trimmer.”</p> +<p>But it is for Dingley separately that Swift endured a wild bird in +his lodgings. His man Patrick had got one to take over to her +in Ireland. “He keeps it in a closet, where it makes a terrible +litter; but I say nothing; I am as tame as a clout.”</p> +<p>Forgotten Dingley, happy in this, has not had to endure the ignominy, +in a hundred essays, to be retrospectively offered to Swift as an unclaimed +wife; so far so good. But two hundred years is long for her to +have gone stripped of so radiant a glory as is hers by right. +“Better, thanks to MD’s prayers,” wrote the immortal +man who loved her, in a private fragment of a journal, never meant for +Dingley’s eyes, nor for Ppt’s, nor for any human eyes; and +the rogue Stella has for two centuries stolen all the credit of those +prayers, and all the thanks of that pious benediction.</p> +<h2>SOLITUDE</h2> +<p>The wild man is alone at will, and so is the man for whom civilization +has been kind. But there are the multitudes to whom civilization +has given little but its reaction, its rebound, its chips, its refuse, +its shavings, sawdust and waste, its failures; to them solitude is a +right foregone or a luxury unattained; a right foregone, we may name +it, in the case of the nearly savage, and a luxury unattained in the +case of the nearly refined. These has the movement of the world +thronged together into some blind by-way.</p> +<p>Their share in the enormous solitude which is the common, unbounded, +and virtually illimitable possession of all mankind has lapsed, unclaimed. +They do not know it is theirs. Of many of their kingdoms they +are ignorant, but of this most ignorant. They have not guessed +that they own for every man a space inviolate, a place of unhidden liberty +and of no obscure enfranchisement. They do not claim even the +solitude of closed corners, the narrow privacy of the lock and key; +nor could they command so much. For the solitude that has a sky +and a horizon they know not how to wish.</p> +<p>It lies in a perpetual distance. England has leagues thereof, +landscapes, verge beyond verge, a thousand thousand places in the woods, +and on uplifted hills. Or rather, solitudes are not to be measured +by miles; they are to be numbered by days. They are freshly and +freely the dominion of every man for the day of his possession. +There is loneliness for innumerable solitaries. As many days as +there are in all the ages, so many solitudes are there for men. +This is the open house of the earth; no one is refused. Nor is +the space shortened or the silence marred because, one by one, men in +multitudes have been alone there before. Solitude is separate +experience. Nay, solitudes are not to be numbered by days, but +by men themselves. Every man of the living and every man of the +dead might have had his “privacy of light.”</p> +<p>It needs no park. It is to be found in the merest working country; +and a thicket may be as secret as a forest. It is not so difficult +to get for a time out of sight and earshot. Even if your solitude +be enclosed, it is still an open solitude, so there be “no cloister +for the eyes,” and a space of far country or a cloud in the sky +be privy to your hiding-place. But the best solitude does not +hide at all.</p> +<p>This the people who have drifted together into the streets live whole +lives and never know. Do they suffer from their deprivation of +even the solitude of the hiding-place? There are many who never +have a whole hour alone. They live in reluctant or indifferent +companionship, as people may in a boarding-house, by paradoxical choice, +familiar with one another and not intimate. They live under careless +observation and subject to a vagabond curiosity. Theirs is the +involuntary and perhaps the unconscious loss which is futile and barren.</p> +<p>One knows the men, and the many women, who have sacrificed all their +solitude to the perpetual society of the school, the cloister, or the +hospital ward. They walk without secrecy, candid, simple, visible, +without moods, unchangeable, in a constant communication and practice +of action and speech. Theirs assuredly is no barren or futile +loss, and they have a conviction, and they bestow the conviction, of +solitude deferred.</p> +<p>Who has painted solitude so that the solitary seemed to stand alone +and inaccessible? There is the loneliness of the shepherdess in +many a drawing of J.F. Millet. The little figure is away, aloof. +The girl stands so when the painter is gone. She waits so on the +sun for the closing of the hours of pasture. Millet has her as +she looks, out of sight.</p> +<p>Now, although solitude is a prepared, secured, defended, elaborate +possession of the rich, they too deny themselves the natural solitude +of a woman with a child. A newly-born child is so nursed and talked +about, handled and jolted and carried about by aliens, and there is +so much importunate service going forward, that a woman is hardly alone +long enough to become aware, in recollection, how her own blood moves +separately, beside her, with another rhythm and different pulses. +All is commonplace until the doors are closed upon the two. This +unique intimacy is a profound retreat, an absolute seclusion. +It is more than single solitude; it is a redoubled isolation more remote +than mountains, safer than valleys, deeper than forests, and further +than mid-sea.</p> +<p>That solitude partaken—the only partaken solitude in the world—is +the Point of Honour of ethics. Treachery to that obligation and +a betrayal of that confidence might well be held to be the least pardonable +of all crimes. There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep +shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside +the longer, as a child’s foot runs. But the favourite crime +of the sentimentalist is that of a woman against her child. Her +power, her intimacy, her opportunity, that should be her accusers, are +held to excuse her. She gains the most slovenly of indulgences +and the grossest compassion, on the vulgar grounds that her crime was +easy.</p> +<p>Lawless and vain art of a certain kind is apt to claim to-day, by +the way, some such fondling as a heroine of the dock receives from common +opinion. The vain artist had all the opportunities of the situation. +He was master of his own purpose, such as it was; it was his secret, +and the public was not privy to his artistic conscience. He does +violence to the obligations of which he is aware, and which the world +does not know very explicitly. Nothing is easier. Or he +is lawless in a more literal sense, but only hopes the world will believe +that he has a whole code of his own making. It would, nevertheless, +be less unworthy to break obvious rules obviously in the obvious face +of the public, and to abide the common rebuke.</p> +<p>It has just been said that a park is by no means necessary for the +preparation of a country solitude. Indeed, to make those far and +wide and long approaches and avenues to peace seems to be a denial of +the accessibility of what should be so simple. A step, a pace +or so aside, is enough to lead thither.</p> +<p>A park insists too much, and, besides, does not insist very sincerely. +In order to fulfil the apparent professions and to keep the published +promise of a park, the owner thereof should be a lover of long seclusion +or of a very life of loneliness. He should have gained the state +of solitariness which is a condition of life quite unlike any other. +The traveller who may have gone astray in countries where an almost +life-long solitude is possible knows how invincibly apart are the lonely +figures he has seen in desert places there. Their loneliness is +broken by his passage, it is true, but hardly so to them. They +look at him, but they are not aware that he looks at them. Nay, +they look at him as though they were invisible. Their un-self-consciousness +is absolute; it is in the wild degree. They are solitaries, body +and soul; even when they are curious, and turn to watch the passer-by, +they are essentially alone. Now, no one ever found that attitude +in a squire’s figure, or that look in any country gentleman’s +eyes. The squire is not a life-long solitary. He never bore +himself as though he were invisible. He never had the impersonal +ways of a herdsman in the remoter Apennines, with a blind, blank hut +in the rocks for his dwelling. Millet would not even have taken +him as a model for a solitary in the briefer and milder sylvan solitudes +of France. And yet nothing but a life-long, habitual, and wild +solitariness would be quite proportionate to a park of any magnitude.</p> +<p>If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, +so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds. +It is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris expression. +It is the quickly caught, though not interested, look, the dull but +ready glance of those who do not know of their forfeited place apart; +who have neither the open secret nor the close; no reserve, no need +of refuge, no flight nor impulse of flight; no moods but what they may +brave out in the street, no hope of news from solitary counsels.</p> +<h2>THE LADY OF THE LYRICS</h2> +<p>She is eclipsed, or gone, or in hiding. But the sixteenth century +took her for granted as the object of song; she was a class, a state, +a sex. It was scarcely necessary to waste the lyrist’s time—time +that went so gaily to metre as not to brook delays—in making her +out too clearly. She had no more of what later times call individuality +than has the rose, her rival, her foil when she was kinder, her superior +when she was cruel, her ever fresh and ever conventional paragon. +She needed not to be devised or divined; she was ready. A merry +heart goes all the day; the lyrist’s never grew weary. Honest +men never grow tired of bread or of any other daily things whereof the +sweetness is in their own simplicity.</p> +<p>The lady of the lyrics was not loved in mortal earnest, and her punishment +now and then for her ingratitude was to be told that she was loved in +jest. She did not love; her fancy was fickle; she was not moved +by long service, which, by the way, was evidently to be taken for granted +precisely like the whole long past of a dream. She had not a good +temper. When the poet groans it seems that she has laughed at +him; when he flouts her, we may understand that she has chidden her +lyrist in no temperate terms. In doing this she has sinned not +so much against him as against Love. With that she is perpetually +reproved. The lyrist complains to Love, pities Love for her scorning, +and threatens to go away with Love, who is on his side. The sweetest +verse is tuned to love when the loved one proves worthy.</p> +<p>There is no record of success for this policy. She goes on +dancing or scolding, as the case may be, and the lyrist goes on boasting +of his constancy, or suddenly renounces it for a day. The situation +has variants, but no surprise or ending. The lover’s convention +is explicit enough, but it might puzzle a reader to account for the +lady’s. Pride in her beauty, at any rate, is hers—pride +so great that she cannot bring herself to perceive the shortness of +her day. She is so unobservant as to need to be told that life +is brief, and youth briefer than life; that the rose fades, and so forth.</p> +<p>Now we need not assume that the lady of the lyrics ever lived. +But taking her as the perfectly unanimous conception of the lyrists, +how is it she did not discover these things unaided? Why does +the lover invariably imagine her with a mind intensely irritable under +his own praise and poetry? Obviously we cannot have her explanation +of any of these matters. Why do the poets so much lament the absence +of truth in one whose truth would be of little moment? And why +was the convention so pleasant, among all others, as to occupy a whole +age—nay, two great ages—of literature?</p> +<p>Music seems to be principally answerable. For the lyrics of +the lady are “words for music” by a great majority. +There is hardly a single poem in the Elizabethan Song-books, properly +so named, that has what would in our day be called a tone of sentiment. +Music had not then the tone herself; she was ingenious, and so must +the words be. She had the air of epigram, and an accurately definite +limit. So, too, the lady of the lyrics, who might be called the +lady of the stanzas, so strictly does she go by measure. When +she is quarrelsome, it is but fuguishness; when she dances, she does +it by a canon. She could not but be perverse, merrily sung to +such grave notes.</p> +<p>So fixed was the law of this perversity that none in the song-books +is allowed to be kind enough for a “melody,” except one +lady only. She may thus derogate, for the exceedingly Elizabethan +reason that she is “brown.” She is brown and kind, +and a “sad flower,” but the song made for her would have +been too insipid, apparently, without an antithesis. The fair +one is warned that her disdain makes her even less lovely than the brown.</p> +<p>Fair as a lily, hard to please, easily angry, ungrateful for innumerable +verses, uncertain with the regularity of the madrigal, and inconstant +with the punctuality of a stanza, she has gone with the arts of that +day; and neither verse nor music will ever make such another lady. +She refused to observe the transiency of roses; she never really intended—much +as she was urged—to be a shepherdess; she was never persuaded +to mitigate her dress. In return, the world has let her disappear. +She scorned the poets until they turned upon her in the epigram of many +a final couplet; and of these the last has been long written. +Her “No” was set to counterpoint in the part-song, and she +frightened Love out of her sight in a ballet. Those occupations +are gone, and the lovely Elizabethan has slipped away. She was +something less than mortal.</p> +<p>But she who was more than mortal was mortal too. This was no +lady of the unanimous lyrists, but a rare visitant unknown to these +exquisite little talents. She was not set for singing, but poetry +spoke of her; sometimes when she was sleeping, and then Fletcher said—</p> +<blockquote><p>None can rock Heaven to sleep but her.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Or when she was singing, and Carew rhymed—</p> +<blockquote><p>Ask me no more whither doth haste<br /> +The nightingale when May is past;<br /> +For in your sweet dividing throat<br /> +She winters, and keeps warm her note.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Sometimes when the lady was dead, and Carew, again, wrote on her +monument—</p> +<blockquote><p>And here the precious dust is laid,<br /> +Whose purely-tempered clay was made<br /> +So fine that it the guest betrayed.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But there was besides another Lady of the lyrics; one who will never +pass from the world, but has passed from song. In the sixteenth +century and in the seventeenth century this lady was Death. Her +inspiration never failed; not a poet but found it as fresh as the inspiration +of life. Fancy was not quenched by the inevitable thought in those +days, as it is in ours, and the phrase lost no dignity by the integrity +of use.</p> +<p>To every man it happens that at one time of his life—for a +space of years or for a space of months—he is convinced of death +with an incomparable reality. It might seem as though literature, +living the life of a man, underwent that conviction in those ages. +Death was as often on the tongues of men in older ages, and oftener +in their hands, but in the sixteenth century it was at their hearts. +The discovery of death did not shake the poets from their composure. +On the contrary, the verse is never measured with more majestic effect +than when it moves in honour of this Lady of the lyrics. Sir Walter +Raleigh is but a jerky writer when he is rhyming other things, however +bitter or however solemn; but his lines on death, which are also lines +on immortality, are infinitely noble. These are, needless to say, +meditations upon death by law and violence; and so are the ingenious +rhymes of Chidiock Tichborne, written after his last prose in his farewell +letter to his wife—“Now, Sweet-cheek, what is left to bestow +on thee, a small recompense for thy deservings”—and singularly +beautiful prose is this. So also are Southwell’s words. +But these are exceptional deaths, and more dramatic than was needed +to awake the poetry of the meditative age.</p> +<p>It was death as the end of the visible world and of the idle business +of life—not death as a passage nor death as a fear or a darkness—that +was the Lady of the lyrists. Nor was their song of the act of +dying. With this a much later and much more trivial literature +busied itself. Those two centuries felt with a shock that death +would bring an end, and that its equalities would make vain the differences +of wit and wealth which they took apparently more seriously than to +us seems probable. They never wearied of the wonder. The +poetry of our day has an entirely different emotion for death as parting. +It was not parting that the lyrists sang of; it was the mere simplicity +of death. None of our contemporaries will take such a subject; +they have no more than the ordinary conviction of the matter. +For the great treatment of obvious things there must evidently be an +extraordinary conviction.</p> +<p>But whether the chief Lady of the lyrics be this, or whether she +be the implacable Elizabethan feigned by the love-songs, she has equally +passed from before the eyes of poets.</p> +<h2>JULY</h2> +<p>One has the leisure of July for perceiving all the differences of +the green of leaves. It is no longer a difference in degrees of +maturity, for all the trees have darkened to their final tone, and stand +in their differences of character and not of mere date. Almost +all the green is grave, not sad and not dull. It has a darkened +and a daily colour, in majestic but not obvious harmony with dark grey +skies, and might look, to inconstant eyes, as prosaic after spring as +eleven o’clock looks after the dawn.</p> +<p>Gravity is the word—not solemnity as towards evening, nor menace +as at night. The daylight trees of July are signs of common beauty, +common freshness, and a mystery familiar and abiding as night and day. +In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise +than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher sensibility +for April and April evenings—a heartache for them, which in riper +years is gradually and irretrievably consoled.</p> +<p>But, on the other hand, childhood has so quickly learned to find +daily things tedious, and familiar things importunate, that it has no +great delight in the mere middle of the day, and feels weariness of +the summer that has ceased to change visibly. The poetry of mere +day and of late summer becomes perceptible to mature eyes that have +long ceased to be sated, have taken leave of weariness, and cannot now +find anything in nature too familiar; eyes which have, indeed, lost +sight of the further awe of midsummer daybreak, and no longer see so +much of the past in April twilight as they saw when they had no past; +but which look freshly at the dailiness of green summer, of early afternoon, +of every sky of any form that comes to pass, and of the darkened elms.</p> +<p>Not unbeloved is this serious tree, the elm, with its leaf sitting +close, unthrilled. Its stature gives it a dark gold head when +it looks alone to a late sun. But if one could go by all the woods, +across all the old forests that are now meadowlands set with trees, +and could walk a county gathering trees of a single kind in the mind, +as one walks a garden collecting flowers of a single kind in the hand, +would not the harvest be a harvest of poplars? A veritable passion +for poplars is a most intelligible passion. The eyes do gather +them, far and near, on a whole day’s journey. Not one is +unperceived, even though great timber should be passed, and hill-sides +dense and deep with trees. The fancy makes a poplar day of it. +Immediately the country looks alive with signals; for the poplars everywhere +reply to the glance. The woods may be all various, but the poplars +are separate.</p> +<p>All their many kinds (and aspens, their kin, must be counted with +them) shake themselves perpetually free of the motionless forest. +It is easy to gather them. Glances sent into the far distance +pay them a flash of recognition of their gentle flashes; and as you +journey you are suddenly aware of them close by. Light and the +breezes are as quick as the eyes of a poplar-lover to find the willing +tree that dances to be seen.</p> +<p>No lurking for them, no reluctance. One could never make for +oneself an oak day so well. The oaks would wait to be found, and +many would be missed from the gathering. But the poplars are alert +enough for a traveller by express; they have an alarum aloft, and do +not sleep. From within some little grove of other trees a single +poplar makes a slight sign; or a long row of poplars suddenly sweep +the wind. They are salient everywhere, and full of replies. +They are as fresh as streams.</p> +<p>It is difficult to realize a drought where there are many poplars. +And yet their green is not rich; the coolest have a colour much mingled +with a cloud-grey. It does but need fresh and simple eyes to recognize +their unfaded life. When the other trees grow dark and keep still, +the poplar and the aspen do not darken—or hardly—and the +deepest summer will not find a day in which they do not keep awake. +No waters are so vigilant, even where a lake is bare to the wind.</p> +<p>When Keats said of his Dian that she fastened up her hair “with +fingers cool as aspen leaves,” he knew the coolest thing in the +world. It is a coolness of colour, as well as of a leaf which +the breeze takes on both sides—the greenish and the greyish. +The poplar green has no glows, no gold; it is an austere colour, as +little rich as the colour of willows, and less silvery than theirs. +The sun can hardly gild it; but he can shine between. Poplars +and aspens let the sun through with the wind. You may have the +sky sprinkled through them in high midsummer, when all the woods are +close.</p> +<p>Sending your fancy poplar-gathering, then, you ensnare wild trees, +beating with life. No fisher’s net ever took such glancing +fishes, nor did the net of a constellation’s shape ever enclose +more vibrating Pleiades.</p> +<h2>WELLS</h2> +<p>The world at present is inclined to make sorry mysteries or unattractive +secrets of the methods and supplies of the fresh and perennial means +of life. A very dull secret is made of water, for example, and +the plumber sets his seal upon the floods whereby we live. They +are covered, they are carried, they are hushed, from the spring to the +tap; and when their voices are released at last in the London scullery, +why, it can hardly be said that the song is eloquent of the natural +source of waters, whether earthly or heavenly. There is not one +of the circumstances of this capture of streams—the company, the +water-rate, and the rest—that is not a sign of the ill-luck of +modern devices in regard to style. For style implies a candour +and simplicity of means, an action, a gesture, as it were, in the doing +of small things; it is the ignorance of secret ways; whereas the finish +of modern life and its neatness seem to be secured by a system of little +shufflings and surprises.</p> +<p>Dress, among other things, is furnished throughout with such fittings; +they form its very construction. Style does not exist in modern +arrayings, for all their prettiness and precision, and for all the successes—which +are not to be denied—of their outer part; the happy little swagger +that simulates style is but another sign of its absence, being prepared +by mere dodges and dexterities beneath, and the triumph and success +of the present art of raiment—“fit” itself—is +but the result of a masked and lurking labour and device.</p> +<p>The masters of fine manners, moreover, seem to be always aware of +the beauty that comes of pausing slightly upon the smaller and slighter +actions, such as meaner men are apt to hurry out of the way. In +a word, the workman, with his finish and accomplishment, is the dexterous +provider of contemporary things; and the ready, well-appointed, and +decorated life of all towns is now altogether in his hands; whereas +the artist craftsman of other times made a manifestation of his means. +The first hides the streams, under stress and pressure, in paltry pipes +which we all must make haste to call upon the earth to cover, and the +second lifted up the arches of the aqueduct.</p> +<p>The search of easy ways to live is not always or everywhere the way +to ugliness, but in some countries, at some dates, it is the sure way. +In all countries, and at all dates, extreme finish compassed by hidden +means must needs, from the beginning, prepare the abolition of dignity. +This is easy to understand, but it is less easy to explain the ill-fortune +that presses upon the expert workman, in search of easy ways to live, +all the ill-favoured materials, makes them cheap for him, makes them +serviceable and effectual, urges him to use them, seal them, and inter +them, turning the trim and dull completeness out to the view of the +daily world. It is an added mischance. Nor, on the other +hand, is it easy to explain the beautiful good luck attending the simpler +devices which are, after all, only less expert ways of labour. +In those happy conditions, neither from the material, suggesting to +the workman, nor from the workman looking askance at his unhandsome +material, comes a first proposal to pour in cement and make fast the +underworld, out of sight. But fate spares not that suggestion +to the able and the unlucky at their task of making neat work of the +means, the distribution, the traffick of life.</p> +<p>The springs, then, the profound wells, the streams, are of all the +means of our lives those which we should wish to see open to the sun, +with their waters on their progress and their way to us; but, no, they +are lapped in lead.</p> +<p>King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals.</p> +<p>Yet we have been delighted, elsewhere, by open floods. The +hiding-place that nature and the simpler crafts allot to the waters +of wells are, at their deepest, in communication with the open sky. +No other mine is so visited; for the noonday sun himself is visible +there; and it is fine to think of the waters of this planet, shallow +and profound, all charged with shining suns, a multitude of waters multiplying +suns, and carrying that remote fire, as it were, within their unalterable +freshness. Not a pool without this visitant, or without passages +of stars. As for the wells of the Equator, you may think of them +in their last recesses as the daily bathing-places of light; a luminous +fancy is able so to scatter fitful figures of the sun, and to plunge +them in thousands within those deeps.</p> +<p>Round images lie in the dark waters, but in the bright waters the +sun is shattered out of its circle, scattered into waves, broken across +stones, and rippled over sand; and in the shallow rivers that fall through +chestnut woods the image is mingled with the mobile figures of leaves. +To all these waters the agile air has perpetual access. Not so +can great towns be watered, it will be said with reason; and this is +precisely the ill-luck of great towns.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have +the grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every <i>campo</i> +has its circle of carved stone, its clashing of dark copper on the pavement, +its soft kiss of the copper vessel with the surface of the water below, +and the cheerful work of the cable.</p> +<p>Or the Romans knew how to cause the parted floods to measure their +plain with the strong, steady, and level flight of arches from the watersheds +in the hills to the and city; and having the waters captive, they knew +how to compel them to take part, by fountains, in this Roman triumph. +They had the wit to boast thus of their brilliant prisoner.</p> +<p>None more splendid came bound to Rome, or graced captivity with a +more invincible liberty of the heart. And the captivity and the +leap of the heart of the waters have outlived their captors. They +have remained in Rome, and have remained alone. Over them the +victory was longer than empire, and their thousands of loud voices have +never ceased to confess the conquest of the cold floods, separated long +ago, drawn one by one, alive, to the head and front of the world.</p> +<p>Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest +fact of Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains +or to the distance from the city without seeing the approach of those +perpetual waters—waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. +This, then, was the style of a master, who does not lapse from “incidental +greatness,” has no mean precision, out of sight, to prepare the +finish of his phrases, and does not think the means and the approaches +are to be plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, without haste, +and without misgiving are all great things to be done, and neither interruption +in the doing nor ruin after they are done finds anything in them to +betray. There was never any disgrace of means, and when the world +sees the work broken through there is no disgrace of discovery. +The labour of Michelangelo’s chisel, little more than begun, a +Roman structure long exposed in disarray—upon these the light +of day looks full, and the Roman and the Florentine have their unrefuted +praise.</p> +<h2>THE FOOT</h2> +<p>Time was when no good news made a journey, and no friend came near, +but a welcome was uttered, or at least thought, for the travelling feet +of the wayfarer or the herald. The feet, the feet were beautiful +on the mountains; their toil was the price of all communication, and +their reward the first service and refreshment. They were blessed +and bathed; they suffered, but they were friends with the earth; dews +in grass at morning, shallow rivers at noon, gave them coolness. +They must have grown hard upon their mountain paths, yet never so hard +but they needed and had the first pity and the readiest succour. +It was never easy for the feet of man to travel this earth, shod or +unshod, and his feet are delicate, like his colour.</p> +<p>If they suffered hardship once, they suffer privation now. +Yet the feet should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know +more of flowers, freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than +does anything else about us. It is their calling; and the hands +might be glad to be stroked for a day by grass and struck by buttercups, +as the feet are of those who go barefoot; and the nostrils might be +flattered to be, like them, so long near moss. The face has only +now and then, for a resting-while, their privilege.</p> +<p>If our feet are now so severed from the natural ground, they have +inevitably lost life and strength by the separation. It is only +the entirely unshod that have lively feet. Watch a peasant who +never wears shoes, except for a few unkind hours once a week, and you +may see the play of his talk in his mobile feet; they become as dramatic +as his hands. Fresh as the air, brown with the light, and healthy +from the field, not used to darkness, not grown in prison, the foot +of the <i>contadino</i> is not abashed. It is the foot of high +life that is prim, and never lifts a heel against its dull conditions, +for it has forgotten liberty. It is more active now than it lately +was—certainly the foot of woman is more active; but whether on +the pedal or in the stirrup, or clad for a walk, or armed for a game, +or decked for the waltz, it is in bonds. It is, at any rate, inarticulate.</p> +<p>It has no longer a distinct and divided life, or none that is visible +and sensible. Whereas the whole living body has naturally such +infinite distinctness that the sense of touch differs, as it were, with +every nerve, and the fingers are so separate that it was believed of +them of old that each one had its angel, yet the modern foot is, as +much as possible, deprived of all that delicate distinction: undone, +unspecialized, sent back to lower forms of indiscriminate life. +It is as though a landscape with separate sweetness in every tree should +be rudely painted with the blank—blank, not simple—generalities +of a vulgar hand. Or as though one should take the pleasures of +a day of happiness in a wholesale fashion, not “turning the hours +to moments,” which joy can do to the full as perfectly as pain.</p> +<p>The foot, with its articulations, is suppressed, and its language +confused. When Lovelace likens the hand of Amarantha to a violin, +and her glove to the case, he has at any rate a glove to deal with, +not a boot. Yet Amarantha’s foot is as lovely as her hand. +It, too, has a “tender inward”; no wayfaring would ever +make it look anything but delicate; its arch seems too slight to carry +her through a night of dances; it does, in fact, but balance her. +It is fit to cling to the ground, but rather for springing than for +rest.</p> +<p>And, doubtless, for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, +sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little +surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural +eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. It is a part of vital +design and has a history; and man does not go erect but at a price of +weariness and pain. How weak it is may be seen from a footprint: +for nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a +naked foot.</p> +<p>Tender, too, is the silence of human feet. You have but to +pass a season amongst the barefooted to find that man, who, shod, makes +so much ado, is naturally as silent as snow. Woman, who not only +makes her armed heel heard, but also goes rustling like a shower, is +naturally silent as snow. The vintager is not heard among the +vines, nor the harvester on his threshing-floor of stone. There +is a kind of simple stealth in their coming and going, and they show +sudden smiles and dark eyes in and out of the rows of harvest when you +thought yourself alone. The lack of noise in their movement sets +free the sound of their voices, and their laughter floats.</p> +<p>But we shall not praise the “simple, sweet” and “earth-confiding +feet” enough without thanks for the rule of verse and for the +time of song. If Poetry was first divided by the march, and next +varied by the dance, then to the rule of the foot are to be ascribed +the thought, the instruction, and the dream that could not speak by +prose. Out of that little physical law, then, grew a spiritual +law which is one of the greatest things we know; and from the test of +the foot came the ultimate test of the thinker: “Is it accepted +of Song?”</p> +<p>The monastery, in like manner, holds its sons to little trivial rules +of time and exactitude, not to be broken, laws that are made secure +against the restlessness of the heart fretting for insignificant liberties—trivial +laws to restrain from a trivial freedom. And within the gate of +these laws which seem so small, lies the world of mystic virtue. +They enclose, they imply, they lock, they answer for it. Lesser +virtues may flower in daily liberty and may flourish in prose; but infinite +virtues and greatness are compelled to the measure of poetry, and obey +the constraint of an hourly convent bell. It is no wonder that +every poet worthy the name has had a passion for metre, for the very +verse. To him the difficult fetter is the condition of an interior +range immeasurable.</p> +<h2>HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT</h2> +<p>Some considerable time must have gone by since any kind of courtesy +ceased, in England, to be held necessary in the course of communication +with a beggar. Feeling may be humane, and the interior act most +gentle; there may be a tacit apology, and a profound misgiving unexpressed; +a reluctance not only to refuse but to be arbiter; a dislike of the +office; a regret, whether for the unequal distribution of social luck +or for a purse left at home, equally sincere; howbeit custom exacts +no word or sign, nothing whatever of intercourse. If a dog or +a cat accosts you, or a calf in a field comes close to you with a candid +infant face and breathing nostrils of investigation, or if any kind +of animal comes to you on some obscure impulse of friendly approach, +you acknowledge it. But the beggar to whom you give nothing expects +no answer to a question, no recognition of his presence, not so much +as the turn of your eyelid in his direction, and never a word to excuse +you.</p> +<p>Nor does this blank behaviour seem savage to those who are used to +nothing else. Yet it is somewhat more inhuman to refuse an answer +to the beggar’s remark than to leave a shop without “Good +morning.” When complaint is made of the modern social manner—that +it has no merit but what is negative, and that it is apt even to abstain +from courtesy with more lack of grace than the abstinence absolutely +requires—the habit of manner towards beggars is probably not so +much as thought of. To the simply human eye, however, the prevalent +manner towards beggars is a striking thing; it is significant of so +much.</p> +<p>Obviously it is not easy to reply to begging except by the intelligible +act of giving. We have not the ingenuous simplicity that marks +the caste answering more or less to that of Vere de Vere, in Italy, +for example. An elderly Italian lady on her slow way from her +own ancient ancestral <i>palazzo</i> to the village, and accustomed +to meet, empty-handed, a certain number of beggars, answers them by +a retort which would be, literally translated, “Excuse me, dear; +I, too, am a poor devil,” and the last word she naturally puts +into the feminine.</p> +<p>Moreover, the sentence is spoken in all the familiarity of the local +dialect—a dialect that puts any two people at once upon equal +terms as nothing else can do it. Would it were possible to present +the phrase to English readers in all its own helpless good-humour. +The excellent woman who uses it is practising no eccentricity thereby, +and raises no smile. It is only in another climate, and amid other +manners, that one cannot recall it without a smile. To a mind +having a lively sense of contrast it is not a little pleasant to imagine +an elderly lady of corresponding station in England replying so to importunities +for alms; albeit we have nothing answering to the good fellowship of +a broad patois used currently by rich and poor, and yet slightly grotesque +in the case of all speakers—a dialect in which, for example, no +sermon is ever preached, and in which no book is ever printed, except +for fun; a dialect “familiar, but by no means vulgar.” +Besides, even if our Englishwoman could by any possibility bring herself +to say to a mendicant, “Excuse me, dear; I, too, am a poor devil,” +she would still not have the opportunity of putting the last word punctually +into the feminine, which does so complete the character of the sentence.</p> +<p>The phrase at the head of this paper is the far more graceful phrase +of excuse customary in the courteous manners of Portugal. And +everywhere in the South, where an almost well-dressed old woman, who +suddenly begins to beg from you when you least expected it, calls you +“my daughter,” you can hardly reply without kindness. +Where the tourist is thoroughly well known, doubtless the company of +beggars are used to savage manners in the rich; but about the by-ways +and remoter places there must still be some dismay at the anger, the +silence, the indignation, and the inexpensive haughtiness wherewith +the opportunity of alms-giving is received by travellers.</p> +<p>In nothing do we show how far the West is from the East so emphatically +as we show it by our lofty ways towards those who so manifestly put +themselves at our feet. It is certainly not pleasant to see them +there; but silence or a storm of impersonal protest—a protest +that appeals vaguely less to the beggars than to some not impossible +police—does not seem the most appropriate manner of rebuking them. +We have, it may be, a scruple on the point of human dignity, compromised +by the entreaty and the thanks of the mendicant; but we have a strange +way of vindicating that dignity when we refuse to man, woman, or child +the recognition of a simply human word. Nay, our offence is much +the greater of the two. It is not merely a rough and contemptuous +intercourse, it is the refusal of intercourse—the last outrage. +How do we propose to redress those conditions of life that annoy us +when a brother whines, if we deny the presence, the voice, and the being +of this brother, and if, because fortune has refused him money, we refuse +him existence?</p> +<p>We take the matter too seriously, or not seriously enough, to hold +it in the indifference of the wise. “Have patience, little +saint,” is a phrase that might teach us the cheerful way to endure +our own unintelligible fortunes in the midst, say, of the population +of a hill-village among the most barren of the Maritime Alps, where +huts of stone stand among the stones of an unclothed earth, and there +is no sign of daily bread. The people, albeit unused to travellers, +yet know by instinct what to do, and beg without the delay of a moment +as soon as they see your unwonted figure. Let it be taken for +granted that you give all you can; some form of refusal becomes necessary +at last, and the gentlest—it is worth while to remember—is +the most effectual. An indignant tourist, one who to the portent +of a puggaree which, perhaps, he wears on a grey day, adds that of ungovernable +rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand +him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without +a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something +else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the violence of the +rich.</p> +<p>It is the merry beggar who has so lamentably disappeared. If +a beggar is still merry anywhere, he hides away what it would so cheer +and comfort us to see; he practises not merely the conventional seeming, +which is hardly intended to convince, but a more subtle and dramatic +kind of semblance, of no good influence upon the morals of the road. +He no longer trusts the world with a sight of his gaiety. He is +not a wholehearted mendicant, and no longer keeps that liberty of unstable +balance whereby an unattached creature can go in a new direction with +a new wind. The merry beggar was the only adventurer free to yield +to the lighter touches of chance, the touches that a habit of resistance +has made imperceptible to the seated and stable social world.</p> +<p>The visible flitting figure of the unfettered madman sprinkled our +literature with mad songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have, +by tradition, written them; but that wild source of inspiration has +been stopped; it has been built over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, +led underground. The light melancholy and the wind-blown joys +of the song of the distraught, which the poets were once ingenious to +capture, have ceased to sound one note of liberty in the world’s +ears. But it seems that the grosser and saner freedom of the happy +beggar is still the subject of a Spanish song.</p> +<p>That song is gay, not defiant it is not an outlaw’s or a robber’s, +it is not a song of violence or fear. It is the random trolling +note of a man who owes his liberty to no disorder, failure, or ill-fortune, +but takes it by choice from the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand +of unreluctant charity; who twits the world with its own choice of bonds, +but has not broken his own by force. It seems, therefore, the +song of an indomitable liberty of movement, light enough for the puffs +of a zephyr chance.</p> +<h2>THE LADIES OF THE IDYLL</h2> +<p>Little Primrose dames of the English classic, the wife and daughters +of the Vicar of Wakefield have no claim whatever to this name of lady. +It is given to them in this page because Goldsmith himself gave it to +them in the yet undepreciated state of the word, and for the better +reason that he obviously intended them to be the equals of the men to +whom he marries them, those men being, with all their faults, gentlemen. +Goldsmith, in a word, meant them to be ladies, of country breeding, +but certainly fit for membership of that large class of various fortune +within which the name makes a sufficient equality.</p> +<p>He, their author, thought them sufficient. Having amused himself +ingeniously throughout the story with their nameless vulgarities, he +finally hurries them into so much sentiment as may excuse the convention +of heroes in love. He plays with their coarseness like a perfectly +pleased and clever showman, and then piously and happily shuts up his +couples—the gentle Dr. Primrose with his abominable Deborah; the +excellent Mr. Burchell with the paltry Sophia; Olivia—but no, +Olivia is not so certainly happy ever after; she has a captured husband +ready for her in a state of ignominy, but she has also a forgotten farmer +somewhere in the background—the unhappy man whom, with her father’s +permission, this sorry heroine had promised to marry in order that his +wooing might pluck forward the lagging suit of the squire.</p> +<p>Olivia, then, plays her common trick upon the harmless Williams, +her father conniving, with a provision that he urges with some demonstration +of virtue: she shall consent to make the farmer happy if the proposal +of the squire be not after all forthcoming. But it is so evident +her author knew no better, that this matter may pass. It involves +a point of honour, of which no one—neither the maker of the book +nor anyone he made—is aware. What is better worth considering +is the fact that Goldsmith was completely aware of the unredeemed vulgarity +of the ladies of the Idyll, and cheerfully took it for granted as the +thing to be expected from the mother-in-law of a country gentleman and +the daughters of a scholar. The education of women had sunk into +a degradation never reached before, inasmuch as it was degraded in relation +to that of men. It would matter little indeed that Mrs. Primrose +“could read any English book without much spelling” if her +husband and son were as definitely limited to journeyman’s field-labour +as she was to the pickling and the gooseberry wine. Any of those +industries is a better and more liberal business than unselect reading, +for instance, or than unselect writing. Therefore let me not be +misunderstood to complain too indiscriminately of that century or of +an unlettered state. What is really unhandsome is the new, slovenly, +and corrupt inequality whereinto the century had fallen.</p> +<p>That the mother of daughters and sons should be fatuous, a village +worldling, suspicious, ambitious, ill-bred, ignorant, gross, insolent, +foul-mouthed, pushing, importunate, and a fool, seems natural, almost +innocently natural, in Goldsmith’s story; the squalid Mrs. Primrose +is all this. He is still able, through his Vicar, in the most +charmingly humorous passage in the book, to praise her for her “prudence, +economy, and obedience.” Her other, more disgusting, characteristics +give her husband an occasion for rebuking her as “Woman!” +This is done, for example, when, despite her obedience, she refuses +to receive that unlucky schemer, her own daughter, returned in ruins, +without insulting her by the sallies of a kitchen sarcasm.</p> +<p>She plots with her daughters the most disastrous fortune hunt. +She has given them a teaching so effectual that the Vicar has no fear +lest the paltry Sophia should lose her heart to the good, the sensible +Burchell, who had saved her life; for he has no fortune. Mrs. +Primrose begins grotesquely, with her tedious histories of the dishes +at dinner, and she ends upon the last page, anxious, amid the general +happiness, in regard to securing the head of the table. Upon these +feminine humours the author sheds his Vicar’s indulgent smile. +What a smile for a self-respecting husband to be pricked to smile! +A householder would wince, one would think, at having opportunity to +bestow its tolerance upon his cook.</p> +<p>Between these two housewifely appearances, Mrs. Primrose potters +through the book; plots—always squalidly; talks the worst kinds +of folly; takes the lead, with a loud laugh, in insulting a former friend; +crushes her repentant daughter with reproaches that show envy rather +than indignation, and kisses that daughter with congratulation upon +hearing that she had, unconsciously and unintentionally, contracted +a valid marriage (with a rogue); spoils and makes common and unclean +everything she touches; has but two really gentle and tender moments +all through the story; and sets, once for all, the example in literature +of the woman we find thenceforth, in Thackeray, in Douglas Jerrold, +in Dickens, and <i>un</i> <i>peu</i> <i>partout</i>.</p> +<p>Hardly less unspiritual, in spite of their conventional romance of +youth and beauty, are the daughters of the squalid one. The author, +in making them simple, has not abstained from making them cunning. +Their vanities are well enough, but these women are not only vain, they +are so envious as to refuse admiration to a sister-in-law—one +who is their rival in no way except in so much as she is a contemporary +beauty. “Miss Arabella Wilmot,” says the pious father +and vicar, “was allowed by all (except my two daughters) to be +completely pretty.”</p> +<p>They have been left by their father in such brutal ignorance as to +be instantly deceived into laughing at bad manners in error for humour. +They have no pretty or sensitive instincts. “The jests of +the rich,” says the Vicar, referring to his own young daughters +as audience, “are ever successful.” Olivia, when the +squire played off a dullish joke, “mistook it for humour. +She thought him, therefore, a very fine gentleman.” The +powders and patches for the country church, the ride thither on Blackberry, +in so strange a procession, the face-wash, the dreams and omens, are +all good gentle comedy; we are completely convinced of the tedium of +Mrs. Primrose’s dreams, which she told every morning. But +there are other points of comedy that ought not to precede an author’s +appeal to the kind of sentiment about to be touched by the tragic scenes +of <i>The</i> <i>Vicar</i> <i>of</i> <i>Wakefield</i>.</p> +<p>In odd sidling ways Goldsmith bethinks himself to give his principal +heroine a shadow of the virtues he has not bestowed upon her. +When the unhappy Williams, above-mentioned, has been used in vain by +Olivia, and the squire has not declared himself, and she is on the point +of keeping her word to Williams by marrying him, the Vicar creates a +situation out of it all that takes the reader roundly by surprise: “I +frequently applauded her resolution in preferring happiness to ostentation.” +The good Goldsmith! Here is Olivia perfectly frank with her father +as to her exceedingly sincere preference for ostentation, and as to +her stratagem to try to obtain it at the expense of honour and of neighbour +Williams; her mind is as well known to her father as her father’s +mind is known to Oliver Goldsmith, and as Oliver Goldsmith’s, +Dr. Primrose’s, and Olivia’s minds are known to the reader. +And in spite of all, your Goldsmith and your Vicar turn you this phrase +to your very face. You hardly know which way to look; it is so +disconcerting.</p> +<p>Seeing that Olivia (with her chance-recovered virtue) and Sophia +may both be expected to grow into the kind of matronhood represented +by their mother, it needs all the conditions of fiction to surround +the close of their love-affairs with the least semblance of dignity. +Nor, in fact, can it be said that the final winning of Sophia is an +incident that errs by too much dignity. The scene is that in which +Burchell, revealed as Sir William Thornhill, feigns to offer her in +marriage to the good-natured rogue, Jenkinson, fellow prisoner with +her father, in order that, on her indignant and distressed refusal, +he may surprise her agreeably by crying, “What? Not have +him? If that be the case, I think I must have you myself.” +Even for an avowedly eccentric master of whims, this is playing with +forbidden ironies. True, he catches her to his breast with ardour, +and calls her “sensible.” “Such sense and such +heavenly beauty,” finally exclaims the happy man. Let us +make him a present of the heavenly beauty. It is the only thing +not disproved, not dispraised, not disgraced, by a candid study of the +Ladies of the Idyll.</p> +<h2>A DERIVATION</h2> +<p>By what obscure cause, through what ill-directed industry, and under +the constraint of what disabling hands, had the language of English +poetry grown, for an age, so rigid that a natural writer at the end +of the eighteenth century had much ado to tell a simple story in sufficient +verse? All the vital exercise of the seventeenth century had left +the language buoyant; it was as elastic as deep and mobile waters; then +followed the grip of that incapacitating later style. Much later, +English has been so used as to become flaccid—it has been stretched, +as it were, beyond its power of rebound, or certainly beyond its power +of rebound in common use (for when a master writes he always uses a +tongue that has suffered nothing). It is in our own day that English +has been so over-strained. In Crabbe’s day it had been effectually +curbed, hindered, and hampered, and it cannot be said of Crabbe that +he was a master who takes natural possession of a language that has +suffered nothing. He was evidently a man of talent who had to +take his part with the times, subject to history. To call him +a poet was a mere convention. There seems to be not a single moment +of poetry in his work, and assuredly if he had known the earlier signification +of the word he would have been the last man to claim the incongruous +title of poet. But it is impossible to state the question as it +would have presented itself to Crabbe or to any other writer of his +quality entering into the same inheritance of English.</p> +<p>It is true that Crabbe read and quoted Milton; so did all his contemporaries; +and to us now it seems that poetry cannot have been forgotten by any +age possessing <i>Lycidas</i>. Yet that age can scarcely be said +to have in any true sense possessed <i>Lycidas</i>. There are +other things, besides poetry, in Milton’s poems. We do not +entirely know, perhaps, but we can conjecture how a reader in Crabbe’s +late eighteenth century, looking in Milton for authority for all that +he unluckily and vainly admired, would well find it. He would +find the approval of Young’s “Night Thoughts” did +he search for it, as we who do not search for it may not readily understand. +A step or so downwards, from a few passages in “Paradise Lost” +and “Paradise Regained,” an inevitable drop in the derivation, +a depression such as is human, and everything, from Dryden to “The +Vanity of Human Wishes,” follows, without violence and perhaps +without wilful misappreciation. The poet Milton fathered, legitimately +enough, an unpoetic posterity. Milton, therefore, who might have +kept an age, and many a succeeding age, on the heights of poetry by +lines like these—</p> +<blockquote><p>Who sing and singing in their glory move—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>by this, and by many and many another so divine—Milton justified +also the cold excesses of his posterity by the example of more than +one group of blank verse lines in his greatest poem. Manifestly +the sanction is a matter of choice, and depends upon the age: the age +of Crabbe found in Milton such ancestry as it was fit for.</p> +<p>Crabbe, then, was not a poet of poetry. But he came into possession +of a metrical form charged by secondary poets with a contented second-class +dignity that bears constant reference, in the way of respect rather +than of imitation, to the state and nobility of Pope at his best—the +couplet. The weak yet rigid “poetry” that fell to +his lot owed all the decorum it possessed to the mechanical defences +and props—the exclusions especially—of this manner of versification. +The grievous thing was that, being moved to write simply of simple things, +he had no more supple English for his purpose. His effort to disengage +the phrase—long committed to convention and to an exposed artifice—did +but prove how surely the ancient vitality was gone.</p> +<p>His preface to “The Borough, a Poem,” should be duly +read before the “poem” itself, for the prose has a propriety +all its own. Everything is conceived with the most perfect moderation, +and then presented in a form of reasoning that leaves you no possible +ground of remonstrance. In proposing his subject Crabbe seems +to make an unanswerable apology with a composure that is almost sweet. +For instance, at some length and with some nobility he anticipates a +probable conjecture that his work was done “without due examination +and revisal,” and he meets the conjectured criticism thus: “Now, +readers are, I believe, disposed to treat with more than common severity +those writers who have been led into presumption by the approbation +bestowed upon their diffidence, and into idleness and unconcern by the +praises given to their attention.” It would not be possible +to say a smaller thing with greater dignity and gentleness. It +is worth while to quote this prose of a “poet” who lived +between the centuries, if only in order to suggest the chastening thought, +“It is a pity that no one, however little he may have to say, +says it now in this form!” The little, so long as it is +reasonable, is so well suited in this antithesis and logic. Is +there no hope that journalism will ever take again these graces of unanswerable +argument? No: they would no longer wear the peculiar aspect of +adult innocence that was Crabbe’s.</p> +<h2>A COUNTERCHANGE</h2> +<p>“Il s’est trompé de défunte.” +The writer of this phrase had his sense of that portly manner of French, +and his burlesque is fine; but—the paradox must be risked—because +he was French he was not able to possess all its grotesque mediocrity +to the full; that is reserved for the English reader. The words +are in the mouth of a widower who, approaching his wife’s tomb, +perceives there another “monsieur.” “Monsieur,” +again; the French reader is deprived of the value of this word, too, +in its place; it says little or nothing to him, whereas the Englishman, +who has no word of the precise bourgeois significance that it sometimes +bears, but who must use one of two English words of different allusion—man +or I gentleman—knows the exact value of its commonplace. +The serious Parisian, then, sees “un autre monsieur;” as +it proves anon, there had been a divorce in the history of the lady, +but the later widower is not yet aware of this, and explains to himself +the presence of “un monsieur” in his own place by that weighty +phrase, “Il s’est trompé de défunte.”</p> +<p>The strange effect of a thing so charged with allusion and with national +character is to cause an English reader to pity the mocking author who +was debarred by his own language from possessing the whole of his own +comedy. It is, in fact, by contrast with his English that an Englishman +does possess it. Your official, your professional Parisian has +a vocabulary of enormous, unrivalled mediocrity. When the novelist +perceives this he does not perceive it all, because some of the words +are the only words in use. Take an author at his serious moments, +when he is not at all occupied with the comedy of phrases, and he now +and then touches a word that has its burlesque by mere contrast with +English. “L’Histoire d’un Crime,” of Victor +Hugo, has so many of these touches as to be, by a kind of reflex action, +a very school of English. The whole incident of the omnibus in +that grave work has unconscious international comedy. The Deputies +seated in the interior of the omnibus had been, it will be remembered, +shut out of their Chamber by the perpetrator of the Coup d’Etat, +but each had his official scarf. Scarf—pish!—“l’écharpe!” +“Ceindre l’écharpe”—there is no real +English equivalent. Civic responsibility never was otherwise adequately +expressed. An indignant deputy passed his scarf through the window +of the omnibus, as an appeal to the public, “et l’agita.” +It is a pity that the French reader, having no simpler word, is not +in a position to understand the slight burlesque. Nay, the mere +word “public,” spoken with this peculiar French good faith, +has for us I know not what untransferable gravity.</p> +<p>There is, in short, a general international counterchange. +It is altogether in accordance with our actual state of civilization, +with its extremely “specialized” manner of industry, that +one people should make a phrase, and another should have and enjoy it. +And, in fact, there are certain French authors to whom should be secured +the use of the literary German whereof Germans, and German women in +particular, ought with all severity to be deprived. For Germans +often tell you of words in their own tongue that are untranslatable; +and accordingly they should not be translated, but given over in their +own conditions, unaltered, into safer hands. There would be a +clearing of the outlines of German ideas, a better order in the phrase; +the possessors of an alien word, with the thought it secures, would +find also their advantage.</p> +<p>So with French humour. It is expressly and signally for English +ears. It is so even in the commonest farce. The unfortunate +householder, for example, who is persuaded to keep walking in the conservatory +“pour rétablir la circulation,” and the other who +describes himself “sous-chef de bureau dans l’enregistrement,” +and he who proposes to “faire hommage” of a doubtful turbot +to the neighbouring “employé de l’octroi”—these +and all their like speak commonplaces so usual as to lose in their own +country the perfection of their dulness. We only, who have the +alternative of plainer and fresher words, understand it. It is +not the least of the advantages of our own dual English that we become +sensible of the mockery of certain phrases that in France have lost +half their ridicule, uncontrasted.</p> +<p>Take again the common rhetoric that has fixed itself in conversation +in all Latin languages—rhetoric that has ceased to have allusions, +either majestic or comic. To the ear somewhat unused to French +this proffers a frequent comedy that the well-accustomed ear, even of +an Englishman, no longer detects. A guard on a French railway, +who advised two travellers to take a certain train for fear they should +be obliged to “végéter” for a whole hour in +the waiting-room of such or such a station seemed to the less practised +tourist to be a fresh kind of unexpected humourist.</p> +<p>One of the phrases always used in the business of charities and subscriptions +in France has more than the intentional comedy of the farce-writer; +one of the most absurd of his personages, wearying his visitors in the +country with a perpetual game of bowls, says to them: “Nous jouons +cinquante centimes—les bénéfices seront versés +intégralement à la souscription qui est ouverte à +la commune pour la construction de notre maison d’école.”</p> +<p>“Flétrir,” again. Nothing could be more +rhetorical than this perfectly common word of controversy. The +comic dramatist is well aware of the spent violence of this phrase, +with which every serious Frenchman will reply to opponents, especially +in public matters. But not even the comic dramatist is aware of +the last state of refuse commonplace that a word of this kind represents. +Refuse rhetoric, by the way, rather than Emerson’s “fossil +poetry,” would seem to be the right name for human language as +some of the processes of the several recent centuries have left it.</p> +<p>The French comedy, then, is fairly stuffed with thin-S for an Englishman. +They are not all, it is true, so finely comic as “Il s’est +trompé de défunte.” In the report of that +dull, incomparable sentence there is enough humour, and subtle enough, +for both the maker and the reader; for the author who perceives the +comedy as well as custom will permit, and for the reader who takes it +with the freshness of a stranger. But if not so keen as this, +the current word of French comedy is of the same quality of language. +When of the fourteen couples to be married by the mayor, for instance, +the deaf clerk has shuffled two, a looker-on pronounces: “Il s’est +empêtré dans les futurs.” But for a reader +who has a full sense of the several languages that exist in English +at the service of the several ways of human life, there is, from the +mere terminology of official France, high or low—daily France—a +gratuitous and uncovenanted smile to be had. With this the wit +of the report of French literature has not little to do. Nor is +it in itself, perhaps, reasonably comic, but the slightest irony of +circumstance makes it so. A very little of the mockery of conditions +brings out all the latent absurdity of the “sixième et +septième arron-dissements,” in the twinkling of an eye. +So is it with the mere “domicile;” with the aid of but a +little of the burlesque of life, the suit at law to “réintégrer +le domicile conjugal” becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make +it. Even “à domicile” merely—the word +of every shopman—is, in the unconscious mouths of the speakers, +always awaiting the lightest touch of farce, if only an Englishman hears +it; so is the advice of the police that you shall “circuler” +in the street; so is the request, posted up, that you shall not, in +the churches.</p> +<p>So are the serious and ordinary phrases, “maison nuptiale,” +“maison mortuaire,” and the still more serious “repos +dominical,” “oraison dominicale.” There is no +majesty in such words. The unsuspicious gravity with which they +are spoken broadcast is not to be wondered at, the language offering +no relief of contrast; and what is much to the credit of the comic sensibility +of literature is the fact that, through this general unconsciousness, +the ridicule of a thousand authors of comedy perceives the fun, and +singles out the familiar thing, and compels that most elaborate dulness +to amuse us. <i>Us</i>, above all, by virtue of the custom of +counterchange here set forth.</p> +<p>Who shall say whether, by operation of the same exchange, the English +poets that so persist in France may not reveal something within the +English language—one would be somewhat loth to think so—reserved +to the French reader peculiarly? Byron to the multitude, Edgar +Poe to the select? Then would some of the mysteries of French +reading of English be explained otherwise than by the plainer explanation +that has hitherto satisfied our haughty curiosity. The taste for +rhetoric seemed to account for Byron, and the desire of the rhetorician +to claim a taste for poetry seemed to account for Poe. But, after +all, <i>patatras</i>! Who can say?</p> +<h2>RAIN</h2> +<p>Not excepting the falling stars—for they are far less sudden—there +is nothing in nature that so outstrips our unready eyes as the familiar +rain. The rods that thinly stripe our landscape, long shafts from +the clouds, if we had but agility to make the arrowy downward journey +with them by the glancing of our eyes, would be infinitely separate, +units, an innumerable flight of single things, and the simple movement +of intricate points.</p> +<p>The long stroke of the raindrop, which is the drop and its path at +once, being our impression of a shower, shows us how certainly our impression +is the effect of the lagging, and not of the haste, of our senses. +What we are apt to call our quick impression is rather our sensibly +tardy, unprepared, surprised, outrun, lightly bewildered sense of things +that flash and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle +eyes of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. +These inexpert eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image +that puzzles them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, +and part slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, +whose moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference +of instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man’s +eyes, and causes the past, a moment old, to be written, vanishing, upon +the skies.</p> +<p>The visible world is etched and engraved with the signs and records +of our halting apprehension; and the pause between the distant woodman’s +stroke with the axe and its sound upon our ears is repeated in the impressions +of our clinging sight. The round wheel dazzles it, and the stroke +of the bird’s wing shakes it off like a captivity evaded. +Everywhere the natural haste is impatient of these timid senses; and +their perception, outrun by the shower, shaken by the light, denied +by the shadow, eluded by the distance, makes the lingering picture that +is all our art. One of the most constant causes of all the mystery +and beauty of that art is surely not that we see by flashes, but that +nature flashes on our meditative eyes. There is no need for the +impressionist to make haste, nor would haste avail him, for mobile nature +doubles upon him, and plays with his delays the exquisite game of visibility.</p> +<p>Momently visible in a shower, invisible within the earth, the ministration +of water is so manifest in the coming rain-cloud that the husbandman +is allowed to see the rain of his own land, yet unclaimed in the arms +of the rainy wind. It is an eager lien that he binds the shower +withal, and the grasp of his anxiety is on the coming cloud. His +sense of property takes aim and reckons distance and speed, and even +as he shoots a little ahead of the equally uncertain ground-game, he +knows approximately how to hit the cloud of his possession. So +much is the rain bound to the earth that, unable to compel it, man has +yet found a way, by lying in wait, to put his price upon it. The +exhaustible cloud “outweeps its rain,” and only the inexhaustible +sun seems to repeat and to enforce his cumulative fires upon every span +of ground, innumerable. The rain is wasted upon the sea, but only +by a fantasy can the sun’s waste be made a reproach to the ocean, +the desert, or the sealed-up street. Rossetti’s “vain +virtues” are the virtues of the rain, falling unfruitfully.</p> +<p>Baby of the cloud, rain is carried long enough within that troubled +breast to make all the multitude of days unlike each other. Rain, +as the end of the cloud, divides light and withholds it; in its flight +warning away the sun, and in its final fall dismissing shadow. +It is a threat and a reconciliation; it removes mountains compared with +which the Alps are hillocks, and makes a childlike peace between opposed +heights and battlements of heaven.</p> +<h2>THE LETTERS OF MARCELINE VALMORE</h2> +<p>“Prends garde à moi, ma fille, et couvre moi bien!” +Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, writing from France to her daughter Ondine, +who was delicate and chilly in London in 1841, has the same solicitous, +journeying fancy as was expressed by two other women, both also Frenchwomen, +and both articulate in tenderness. Eugénie de Guérin, +that queen of sisters, had preceded her with her own complaint, “I +have a pain in my brother’s side”; and in another age Mme. +de Sévigné had suffered, in the course of long posts and +through infrequent letters—a protraction of conjectured pain—within +the frame of her absent daughter. She phrased her plight in much +the same words, confessing the uncancelled union with her child that +had effaced for her the boundaries of her personal life.</p> +<p>Is not what we call a life—the personal life—a separation +from the universal life, a seclusion, a division, a cleft, a wound? +For these women, such a severance was in part healed, made whole, closed +up, and cured. Life was restored between two at a time of human-kind. +Did these three women guess that their sufferings of sympathy with their +children were indeed the signs of a new and universal health—the +prophecy of human unity?</p> +<p>The sign might have been a more manifest and a happier prophecy had +this union of tenderness taken the gay occasion as often as the sad. +Except at times, in the single case of Mme. de Sévigné, +all three—far more sensitive than the rest of the world—were +yet not sensitive enough to feel equally the less sharp communication +of joy. They claimed, owned, and felt sensibly the pangs and not +the pleasures of the absent. Or if not only the pangs, at least +they were apprehensive chiefly in that sense which human anxiety and +foreboding have lent to the word; they were apprehensive of what they +feared. “Are you warm?” writes Marceline Valmore to +her child. “You have so little to wear—are you really +warm? Oh, take care of me—cover me well.” Elsewhere +she says, “You are an insolent child to think of work. Nurse +your health, and mine. Let us live like fools”; whereby +she meant that she should work with her own fervent brain for both, +and take the while her rest in Ondine. If this living and unshortened +love was sad, it must be owned that so, too, was the story. Eugénie +and Maurice de Guérin were both to die soon, and Marceline was +to lose this daughter and another.</p> +<p>But set free from the condition and occasion of pain and sorrow, +this life without boundaries which mothers have undergone seems to suggest +and to portend what the progressive charity of generations may be—and +is, in fact, though the continuity does not always appear—in the +course of the world. If a love and life without boundaries go +down from a mother into her child, and from that child into her children +again, then incalculable, intricate, universal, and eternal are the +unions that seem—and only seem—so to transcend the usual +experience. The love of such a mother passes unchanged out of +her own sight. It drops down ages, but why should it alter? +What in her daughter should she make so much her own as that daughter’s +love for her daughter in turn? There are no lapses.</p> +<p>Marceline Valmore, married to an actor who seems to have “created +the classic genre” in vain, found the sons and daughters of other +women in want. Some of her rich friends, she avers, seem to think +that the sadness of her poems is a habit—a matter of metre and +rhyme, or, at most, that it is “temperament.” But +others take up the cause of those whose woes, as she says, turned her +long hair white too soon. Sainte-Beuve gave her his time and influence, +succoured twenty political offenders at her instance, and gave perpetually +to her poor. “He never has any socks,” said his mother; +“he gives them all away, like Béranger.” “He +gives them with a different accent,” added the literary Marceline.</p> +<p>Even when the stroller’s life took her to towns she did not +hate, but loved—her own Douai, where the names of the streets +made her heart leap, and where her statue stands, and Bordeaux, which +was, in her eyes, “rosy with the reflected colour of its animating +wine”—she was taken away from the country of her verse. +The field and the village had been dear to her, and her poems no longer +trail and droop, but take wing, when they come among winds, birds, bells, +and waves. They fly with the whole volley of a summer morning. +She loved the sun and her liberty, and the liberty of others. +It was apparently a horror of prisons that chiefly inspired her public +efforts after certain riots at Lyons had been reduced to peace. +The dead were free, but for the prisoners she worked, wrote, and petitioned. +She looked at the sentinels at the gates of the Lyons gaols with such +eyes as might have provoked a shot, she thinks.</p> +<p>During her lifetime she very modestly took correction from her contemporaries, +for her study had hardly been enough for the whole art of French verse. +But Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire, and Verlaine have praised her as one of +the poets of France. The later critics—from Verlaine onwards—will +hold that she needs no pardon for certain slight irregularities in the +grouping of masculine and feminine rhymes, for upon this liberty they +themselves have largely improved. The old rules in their completeness +seemed too much like a prison to her. She was set about with importunate +conditions—a caesura, a rhyme, narrow lodgings in strange towns, +bankruptcies, salaries astray—and she took only a little gentle +liberty.</p> +<h2>THE HOURS OF SLEEP</h2> +<p>There are hours claimed by Sleep, but refused to him. None +the less are they his by some state within the mind, which answers rhythmically +and punctually to that claim. Awake and at work, without drowsiness, +without languor, and without gloom, the night mind of man is yet not +his day mind; he has night-powers of feeling which are at their highest +in dreams, but are night’s as well as sleep’s. The +powers of the mind in dreams, which are inexplicable, are not altogether +baffled because the mind is awake; it is the hour of their return as +it is the hour of a tide’s, and they do return.</p> +<p>In sleep they have their free way. Night then has nothing to +hamper her influence, and she draws the emotion, the senses, and the +nerves of the sleeper. She urges him upon those extremities of +anger and love, contempt and terror to which not only can no event of +the real day persuade him, but for which, awake, he has perhaps not +even the capacity. This increase of capacity, which is the dream’s, +is punctual to the night, even though sleep and the dream be kept at +arm’s length.</p> +<p>The child, not asleep, but passing through the hours of sleep and +their dominions, knows that the mood of night will have its hour; he +puts off his troubled heart, and will answer it another time, in the +other state, by day. “I shall be able to bear this when +I am grown up” is not oftener in a young child’s mind than +“I shall endure to think of it in the day-time.” By +this he confesses the double habit and double experience, not to be +interchanged, and communicating together only by memory and hope.</p> +<p>Perhaps it will be found that to work all by day or all by night +is to miss something of the powers of a complex mind. One might +imagine the rhythmic experience of a poet, subject, like a child, to +the time, and tempering the extremities of either state by messages +of remembrance and expectancy.</p> +<p>Never to have had a brilliant dream, and never to have had any delirium, +would be to live too much in the day; and hardly less would be the loss +of him who had not exercised his waking thought under the influence +of the hours claimed by dreams. And as to choosing between day +and night, or guessing whether the state of day or dark is the truer +and the more natural, he would be rash who should make too sure.</p> +<p>In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. +That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to +lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The +hours of sleep are too much altered when they are filled by lights and +crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, +as when the larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs +and sing daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature +is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray +as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid +so much noise and among so many people that you shall not be aware of +them; you may thus merely force and prolong the day. But to do +so is not to live well both lives; it is not to yield to the daily and +nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in the swing of change.</p> +<p>There surely never was a poet but was now and then rocked in such +a cradle of alternate hours. “It cannot be,” says +Herbert, “that I am he on whom Thy tempests fell all night.”</p> +<p>It is in the hours of sleep that the mind, by some divine paradox, +has the extremest sense of light. Almost the most shining lines +in English poetry—lines that cast sunrise shadows—are those +of Blake, written confessedly from the side of night, the side of sorrow +and dreams, and those dreams the dreams of little chimney-sweepers; +all is as dark as he can make it with the “bags of soot”; +but the boy’s dream of the green plain and the river is too bright +for day. So, indeed, is another brightness of Blake’s, which +is also, in his poem, a child’s dream, and was certainly conceived +by him in the hours of sleep, in which he woke to write the Songs of +Innocence:-</p> +<blockquote><p>O what land is the land of dreams?<br /> +What are its mountains, and what are its streams?<br /> +O father, I saw my mother there,<br /> +Among the lilies by waters fair.<br /> +Among the lambs clothéd in white,<br /> +She walk’d with her Thomas in sweet delight.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision.</p> +<p>Corot also took the brilliant opportunity of the hours of sleep. +In some landscapes of his early manner he has the very light of dreams, +and it was surely because he went abroad at the time when sleep and +dreams claimed his eyes that he was able to see so spiritual an illumination. +Summer is precious for a painter, chiefly because in summer so many +of the hours of sleep are also hours of light. He carries the +mood of man’s night out into the sunshine—Corot did so—and +lives the life of night, in all its genius, in the presence of a risen +sun. In the only time when the heart can dream of light, in the +night of visions, with the rhythmic power of night at its dark noon +in his mind, his eyes see the soaring of the actual sun.</p> +<p>He himself has not yet passed at that hour into the life of day. +To that life belongs many another kind of work, and a sense of other +kinds of beauty; but the summer daybreak was seen by Corot with the +extreme perception of the life of night. Here, at last, is the +explanation of all the memories of dreams recalled by these visionary +paintings, done in earlier years than were those, better known, that +are the Corots of all the world. Every man who knows what it is +to dream of landscape meets with one of these works of Corot’s +first manner with a cry, not of welcome only, but of recognition. +Here is morning perceived by the spirit of the hours of sleep.</p> +<h2>THE HORIZON</h2> +<p>To mount a hill is to lift with you something lighter and brighter +than yourself or than any meaner burden. You lift the world, you +raise the horizon; you give a signal for the distance to stand up. +It is like the scene in the Vatican when a Cardinal, with his dramatic +Italian hands, bids the kneeling groups to arise. He does more +than bid them. He lifts them, he gathers them up, far and near, +with the upward gesture of both arms; he takes them to their feet with +the compulsion of his expressive force. Or it is as when a conductor +takes his players to successive heights of music. You summon the +sea, you bring the mountains, the distances unfold unlooked-for wings +and take an even flight. You are but a man lifting his weight +upon the upward road, but as you climb the circle of the world goes +up to face you.</p> +<p>Not here or there, but with a definite continuity, the unseen unfolds. +This distant hill outsoars that less distant, but all are on the wing, +and the plain raises its verge. All things follow and wait upon +your eyes. You lift these up, not by the raising of your eyelids, +but by the pilgrimage of your body. “Lift thine eyes to +the mountains.” It is then that other mountains lift themselves +to your human eyes.</p> +<p>It is the law whereby the eye and the horizon answer one another +that makes the way up a hill so full of universal movement. All +the landscape is on pilgrimage. The town gathers itself closer, +and its inner harbours literally come to light; the headlands repeat +themselves; little cups within the treeless hills open and show their +farms. In the sea are many regions. A breeze is at play +for a mile or two, and the surface is turned. There are roads +and curves in the blue and in the white. Not a step of your journey +up the height that has not its replies in the steady motion of land +and sea. Things rise together like a flock of many-feathered birds.</p> +<p>But it is the horizon, more than all else, you have come in search +of. That is your chief companion on your way. It is to uplift +the horizon to the equality of your sight that you go high. You +give it a distance worthy of the skies. There is no distance, +except the distance in the sky, to be seen from the level earth; but +from the height is to be seen the distance of this world. The +line is sent back into the remoteness of light, the verge is removed +beyond verge, into a distance that is enormous and minute.</p> +<p>So delicate and so slender is the distant horizon that nothing less +near than Queen Mab and her chariot can equal its fineness. Here +on the edges of the eyelids, or there on the edges of the world—we +know no other place for things so exquisitely made, so thin, so small +and tender. The touches of her passing, as close as dreams, or +the utmost vanishing of the forest or the ocean in the white light between +the earth and the air; nothing else is quite so intimate and fine. +The extremities of a mountain view have just such tiny touches as the +closeness of closed eyes shuts in.</p> +<p>On the horizon is the sweetest light. Elsewhere colour mars +the simplicity of light; but there colour is effaced, not as men efface +it, by a blur or darkness, but by mere light. The bluest sky disappears +on that shining edge; there is not substance enough for colour. +The rim of the hill, of the woodland, of the meadow-land, of the sea—let +it only be far enough—has the same absorption of colour; and even +the dark things drawn upon the bright edges of the sky are lucid, the +light is among them, and they are mingled with it. The horizon +has its own way of making bright the pencilled figures of forests, which +are black but luminous.</p> +<p>On the horizon, moreover, closes the long perspective of the sky. +There you perceive that an ordinary sky of clouds—not a thunder +sky—is not a wall but the underside of a floor. You see +the clouds that repeat each other grow smaller by distance; and you +find a new unity in the sky and earth that gather alike the great lines +of their designs to the same distant close. There is no longer +an alien sky, tossed up in unintelligible heights above a world that +is subject to intelligible perspective.</p> +<p>Of all the things that London has foregone, the most to be regretted +is the horizon. Not the bark of the trees in its right colour; +not the spirit of the growing grass, which has in some way escaped from +the parks; not the smell of the earth unmingled with the odour of soot; +but rather the mere horizon. No doubt the sun makes a beautiful +thing of the London smoke at times, and in some places of the sky; but +not there, not where the soft sharp distance ought to shine. To +be dull there is to put all relations and comparisons in the wrong, +and to make the sky lawless.</p> +<p>A horizon dark with storm is another thing. The weather darkens +the line and defines it, or mingles it with the raining cloud; or softly +dims it, or blackens it against a gleam of narrow sunshine in the sky. +The stormy horizon will take wing, and the sunny. Go high enough, +and you can raise the light from beyond the shower, and the shadow from +behind the ray. Only the shapeless and lifeless smoke disobeys +and defeats the summer of the eyes.</p> +<p>Up at the top of the seaward hill your first thought is one of some +compassion for sailors, inasmuch as they see but little of their sea. +A child on a mere Channel cliff looks upon spaces and sizes that they +cannot see in the Pacific, on the ocean side of the world. Never +in the solitude of the blue water, never between the Cape of Good Hope +and Cape Horn, never between the Islands and the West, has the seaman +seen anything but a little circle of sea. The Ancient Mariner, +when he was alone, did but drift through a thousand narrow solitudes. +The sailor has nothing but his mast, indeed. And but for his mast +he would be isolated in as small a world as that of a traveller through +the plains.</p> +<p>Round the plains the horizon lies with folded wings. It keeps +them so perpetually for man, and opens them only for the bird, replying +to flight with flight.</p> +<p>A close circlet of waves is the sailor’s famous offing. +His offing hardly deserves the name of horizon. To hear him you +might think something of his offing, but you do not so when you sit +down in the centre of it.</p> +<p>As the upspringing of all things at your going up the heights, so +steady, so swift, is the subsidence at your descent. The further +sea lies away, hill folds down behind hill. The whole upstanding +world, with its looks serene and alert, its distant replies, its signals +of many miles, its signs and communications of light, gathers down and +pauses. This flock of birds which is the mobile landscape wheels +and goes to earth. The Cardinal weighs down the audience with +his downward hands. Farewell to the most delicate horizon.</p> +<h2>HABITS AND CONSCIOUSNESS</h2> +<p>Education might do somewhat to control the personal habits for which +ungenerous observant men are inclined to dislike one another. +It has done little. As to literature, this has had the most curiously +diverse influence upon the human sensitiveness to habit. Tolstoi’s +perception of habits is keener than a child’s, and he takes them +uneasily, as a child does not. He holds them to be the occasion, +if not the cause, of hatred. Anna Karénina, as she drank +her coffee, knew that her sometime lover was dreading to hear her swallow +it, and was hating the crooking of her little finger as she held her +cup. It is impossible to live in a world of habits with such an +apprehension of habits as this.</p> +<p>It is no wonder that Tolstoi denies to other men unconsciousness, +and even preoccupation. With him perception never lapses, and +he will not describe a murderer as rapt away by passion from the details +of the room and the observation of himself; nor will he represent a +theologian as failing—even while he thinks out and decides the +question of his faith—to note the things that arrest his present +and unclouded eyes. No habits would dare to live under those glances. +They must die of dismay.</p> +<p>Tolstoi sees everything that is within sight. That he sees +this multitude of things with invincible simplicity is what proves him +an artist; nevertheless, for such perception as his there is no peace. +For when it is not the trivialities of other men’s habits but +the actualities of his own mind that he follows without rest, for him +there is no possible peace but sleep. To him, more than to all +others, it has been said, “Watch!” There is no relapse, +there is no respite but sleep or death.</p> +<p>To such a mind every night must come with an overwhelming change, +a release too great for gratitude. What a falling to sleep! +What a manumission, what an absolution! Consciousness and conscience +set free from the exacted instant replies of the unrelapsing day. +And at the awakening all is ready yet once more, and apprehension begins +again: a perpetual presence of mind.</p> +<p>Dr. Johnson was “absent.” No man of “absent” +mind is without some hourly deliverance. It is on the present +mind that presses the burden of the present world.</p> +<h2>SHADOWS</h2> +<p>Another good reason that we ought to leave blank, unvexed, and unencumbered +with paper patterns the ceiling and walls of a simple house is that +the plain surface may be visited by the unique designs of shadows. +The opportunity is so fine a thing that it ought oftener to be offered +to the light and to yonder handful of long sedges and rushes in a vase. +Their slender grey design of shadows upon white walls is better than +a tedious, trivial, or anxious device from the shop.</p> +<p>The shadow has all intricacies of perspective simply translated into +line and intersecting curve, and pictorially presented to the eyes, +not to the mind. The shadow knows nothing except its flat designs. +It is single; it draws a decoration that was never seen before, and +will never be seen again, and that, untouched, varies with the journey +of the sun, shifts the interrelation of a score of delicate lines at +the mere passing of time, though all the room be motionless. Why +will design insist upon its importunate immortality? Wiser is +the drama, and wiser the dance, that do not pause upon an attitude. +But these walk with passion or pleasure, while the shadow walks with +the earth. It alters as the hours wheel.</p> +<p>Moreover, while the habit of your sunward thoughts is still flowing +southward, after the winter and the spring, it surprises you in the +sudden gleam of a north-westering sun. It decks a new wall; it +is shed by a late sunset through a window unvisited for a year past; +it betrays the flitting of the sun into unwonted skies—a sun that +takes the midsummer world in the rear, and shows his head at a sally-porte, +and is about to alight on an unused horizon. So does the grey +drawing, with which you have allowed the sun and your pot of rushes +to adorn your room, play the stealthy game of the year.</p> +<p>You need not stint yourself of shadows, for an occasion. It +needs but four candles to make a hanging Oriental bell play the most +buoyant jugglery overhead. Two lamps make of one palm-branch a +symmetrical countercharge of shadows, and here two palm-branches close +with one another in shadow, their arches flowing together, and their +paler greys darkening. It is hard to believe that there are many +to prefer a “repeating pattern.”</p> +<p>It must be granted to them that a grey day robs of their decoration +the walls that should be sprinkled with shadows. Let, then, a +plaque or a picture be kept for hanging on shadowless clays. To +dress a room once for all, and to give it no more heed, is to neglect +the units of the days.</p> +<p>Shadows within doors are yet only messages from that world of shadows +which is the landscape of sunshine. Facing a May sun you see little +except an infinite number of shadows. Atoms of shadow—be +the day bright enough—compose the very air through which you see +the light. The trees show you a shadow for every leaf, and the +poplars are sprinkled upon the shining sky with little shadows that +look translucent. The liveliness of every shadow is that some +light is reflected into it; shade and shine have been entangled as though +by some wild wind through their million molecules.</p> +<p>The coolness and the dark of night are interlocked with the unclouded +sun. Turn sunward from the north, and shadows come to life, and +are themselves the life, the action, and the transparence of their day.</p> +<p>To eyes tired and retired all day within lowered blinds, the light +looks still and changeless. So many squares of sunshine abide +for so many hours, and when the sun has circled away they pass and are +extinguished. Him who lies alone there the outer world touches +less by this long sunshine than by the haste and passage of a shadow. +Although there may be no tree to stand between his window and the south, +and although no noonday wind may blow a branch of roses across the blind, +shadows and their life will be carried across by a brilliant bird.</p> +<p>To the sick man a cloud-shadow is nothing but an eclipse; he cannot +see its shape, its color, its approach, or its flight. It does +but darken his window as it darkens the day, and is gone again; he does +not see it pluck and snatch the sun. But the flying bird shows +him wings. What flash of light could be more bright for him than +such a flash of darkness?</p> +<p>It is the pulse of life, where all change had seemed to be charmed. +If he had seen the bird itself he would have seen less—the bird’s +shadow was a message from the sun.</p> +<p>There are two separated flights for the fancy to follow, the flight +of the bird in the air, and the flight of its shadow on earth. +This goes across the window blind, across the wood, where it is astray +for a while in the shades; it dips into the valley, growing vaguer and +larger, runs, quicker than the wind, uphill, smaller and darker on the +soft and dry grass, and rushes to meet its bird when the bird swoops +to a branch and clings.</p> +<p>In the great bird country of the north-eastern littoral of England, +about Holy Island and the basaltic rocks, the shadows of the high birds +are the movement and the pulse of the solitude. Where there are +no woods to make a shade, the sun suffers the brilliant eclipse of flocks +of pearl-white sea birds, or of the solitary creature driving on the +wind. Theirs is always a surprise of flight. The clouds +go one way, but the birds go all ways: in from the sea or out, across +the sands, inland to high northern fields, where the crops are late +by a month. They fly so high that though they have the shadow +of the sun under their wings, they have the light of the earth there +also. The waves and the coast shine up to them, and they fly between +lights.</p> +<p>Black flocks and white they gather their delicate shadows up, “swift +as dreams,” at the end of their flight into the clefts, platforms, +and ledges of harbourless rocks dominating the North Sea. They +subside by degrees, with lessening and shortening volleys of wings and +cries until there comes the general shadow of night wherewith the little +shadows close, complete.</p> +<p>The evening is the shadow of another flight. All the birds +have traced wild and innumerable paths across the mid-May earth; their +shadows have fled all day faster than her streams, and have overtaken +all the movement of her wingless creatures. But now it is the +flight of the very earth that carries her clasped shadow from the sun.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> I found +it afterwards: it was Rebecca.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF PLACE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1309-h.htm or 1309-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/0/1309 + + + +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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