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diff --git a/1309.txt b/1309.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c199e46 --- /dev/null +++ b/1309.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2361 @@ +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*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1899 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +The Spirit of Place and Other Essays + + +Contents: + +The Spirit of Place +Mrs. Dingley +Solitude +The Lady of the Lyrics +July +Wells +The Foot +Have Patience, Little Saint +The Ladies of the Idyll +A Derivation +A Counterchange +Rain +Letters of Marceline Valmore +The Hours of Sleep +The Horizon +Habits and Consciousness +Shadows + + + + +THE SPIRIT OF PLACE + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _festa_ 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. + +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. + +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." + + + + +MRS. DINGLEY + + +We cannot do her honour by her Christian name. {1} 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. + +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! + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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." + +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. + + + + +SOLITUDE + + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE LADY OF THE LYRICS + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + + None can rock Heaven to sleep but her. + +Or when she was singing, and Carew rhymed-- + + Ask me no more whither doth haste + The nightingale when May is past; + For in your sweet dividing throat + She winters, and keeps warm her note. + +Sometimes when the lady was dead, and Carew, again, wrote on her +monument-- + + And here the precious dust is laid, + Whose purely-tempered clay was made + So fine that it the guest betrayed. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +JULY + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +WELLS + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +King Pandion and his friends lie not under heavier seals. + +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. + +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. + +Nevertheless, there are towns, not, in a sense, so great, that have the +grace of visible wells; such as Venice, where every _campo_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE FOOT + + +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. + +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. + +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 +_contadino_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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?" + +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. + + + + +HAVE PATIENCE, LITTLE SAINT + + +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. + +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. + +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 +_palazzo_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE LADIES OF THE IDYLL + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _un +peu partout_. + +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." + +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 _The Vicar of Wakefield_. + +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. + +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. + + + + +A DERIVATION + + +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. + +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 _Lycidas_. Yet that age can scarcely be +said to have in any true sense possessed _Lycidas_. 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-- + + Who sing and singing in their glory move-- + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +A COUNTERCHANGE + + +"Il s'est trompe de defunte." 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 trompe de defunte." + +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'echarpe!" +"Ceindre l'echarpe"--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. + +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. + +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 +retablir 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 "employe 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. + +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 "vegeter" 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. + +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 benefices seront verses integralement a la +souscription qui est ouverte a la commune pour la construction de notre +maison d'ecole." + +"Fletrir," 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. + +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 trompe de +defunte." 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 empetre 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 +"sixieme et septieme 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 "reintegrer le domicile conjugal" +becomes as grotesque as a phrase can make it. Even "a 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. + +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. _Us_, above all, by virtue of +the custom of counterchange here set forth. + +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, _patatras_! Who can +say? + + + + +RAIN + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE LETTERS OF MARCELINE VALMORE + + +"Prends garde a 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. Eugenie de Guerin, 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 Sevigne 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. + +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? + +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 Sevigne, 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. Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin were both to die soon, and +Marceline was to lose this daughter and another. + +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. + +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 Beranger." +"He gives them with a different accent," added the literary Marceline. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE HOURS OF SLEEP + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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:- + + O what land is the land of dreams? + What are its mountains, and what are its streams? + O father, I saw my mother there, + Among the lilies by waters fair. + Among the lambs clothed in white, + She walk'd with her Thomas in sweet delight. + +To none but the hours claimed and inspired by sleep, held awake by +sufferance of sleep, belongs such a vision. + +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. + +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. + + + + +THE HORIZON + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +HABITS AND CONSCIOUSNESS + + +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 Karenina, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +SHADOWS + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{1} I found it afterwards: it was Rebecca. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPIRIT OF PLACE*** + + +******* This file should be named 1309.txt or 1309.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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