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diff --git a/14667-0.txt b/14667-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6430d99 --- /dev/null +++ b/14667-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3504 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14667 *** + +A CHRISTMAS GARLAND + +_woven by_ + +MAX BEERBOHM + + +LONDON MCMXXI + +WILLIAM HEINEMANN + +First printed, October, 1912. + +New Impressions, October, 1912; December, 1912; December, 1912; July, +1918; September, 1918; March, 1931. + +Copyright, 1912. + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + THE WORKS OF MAX BEERBOHM + MORE + YET AGAIN + + A CHRISTMAS GARLAND + + THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE + ZULIEKA DOBSON + SEVEN MEN + AND EVEN NOW + + CARICATURES OF TWENTY-FIVE GENTLEMEN + THE POETS' CORNER + THE SECOND CHILDHOOD OF JOHN BULL + A BOOK OF CARICATURES + FIFTY CARICATURES + + + + +NOTE + + +_Stevenson, in one of his essays, tells us how he "played the sedulous +ape" to Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Montaigne, and other writers of +the past. And the compositors of all our higher-toned newspapers keep +the foregoing sentence set up in type always, so constantly does it +come tripping off the pens of all higher-toned reviewers. Nor ever do +I read it without a fresh thrill of respect for the young Stevenson. +I, in my own very inferior boyhood, found it hard to revel in so much +as a single page of any writer earlier than Thackeray. This disability +I did not shake off, alas, after I left school. There seemed to be +so many live authors worth reading. I gave precedence to them, and, +not being much of a reader, never had time to grapple with the old +masters. Meanwhile, I was already writing a little on my own account. +I had had some sort of aptitude for Latin prose and Latin verse. I +wondered often whether those two things, essential though they were +(and are) to the making of a decent style in English prose, sufficed +for the making of a style more than decent. I felt that I must have +other models. And thus I acquired the habit of aping, now and again, +quite sedulously, this or that live writer--sometimes, it must be +admitted, in the hope of learning rather what to avoid. I acquired, +too, the habit of publishing these patient little efforts. Some of +them appeared in "The Saturday Review" many years ago; others appeared +there more recently. I have selected, by kind permission of the +Editor, one from the earlier lot, and seven from the later. The other +nine in this book are printed for the first time. The book itself may +be taken as a sign that I think my own style is, at length, more or +less formed._ + +_M.B._ + +_Rapallo_, 1912. + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE, H*NRY J*M*S + +P.C., X, 36, R*D**RD K*PL*NG + +OUT OF HARM'S WAY, A.C. B*NS*N + +PERKINS AND MANKIND, H.G. W*LLS + +SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS, G.K. CH*ST*RT*N + +A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS", TH*M*S H*RDY + +SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS, FR*NK H*RR*S + +SCRUTS, ARN*LD B*NN*TT + +ENDEAVOUR, J*HN G*LSW*RTHY + +CHRISTMAS, G.S. STR**T + +THE FEAST, J*S*PH C*NR*D + +A RECOLLECTION, EDM*ND G*SSE + +OF CHRISTMAS, H*L**RE B*LL*C + +A STRAIGHT TALK, G**RG* B*RN*RD SH*W + +FOND HEARTS ASKEW, M**R*CE H*WL*TT + +DICKENS, G**RGE M**RE + +EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT, G**RGE M*R*D*TH + + + + +THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE + +_By_ + +H*NRY J*M*S + + +It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that +he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without +compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left +it. But just where the deuce _had_ he left it? The consciousness of +dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut +enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," +between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality +somewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against +a good number of "teasers;" and the function of teasing them back--of, +as it were, giving them, every now and then, "what for"--was in him so +much a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on the +face of it, nothing to lose. Oh, he always had offered rewards, of +course--had ever so liberally pasted the windows of his soul with +staring appeals, minute descriptions, promises that knew no bounds. +But the actual recovery of the article--the business of drawing and +crossing the cheque, blotched though this were with tears of joy--had +blankly appeared to him rather in the light of a sacrilege, casting, +he sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest. +It was just this fervour that was threatened as, raising himself on +his elbow, he stared at the foot of his bed. That his eyes refused +to rest there for more than the fraction of an instant, may be +taken--_was_, even then, taken by Keith Tantalus--as a hint of his +recollection that after all the phenomenon wasn't to be singular. Thus +the exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulous +at the foot of _his_ was hardly enough to account for the fixity with +which he envisaged it, and for which he was to find, some years later, +a motive in the (as it turned out) hardly generous fear that Eva had +already made the great investigation "on her own." Her very regular +breathing presently reassured him that, if she _had_ peeped into "her" +stocking, she must have done so in sleep. Whether he should wake her +now, or wait for their nurse to wake them both in due course, was +a problem presently solved by a new development. It was plain that +his sister was now watching him between her eyelashes. He had half +expected that. She really was--he had often told her that she really +was--magnificent; and her magnificence was never more obvious than in +the pause that elapsed before she all of a sudden remarked "They so +very indubitably _are_, you know!" + +It occurred to him as befitting Eva's remoteness, which was a part +of Eva's magnificence, that her voice emerged somewhat muffled by the +bedclothes. She was ever, indeed, the most telephonic of her sex. In +talking to Eva you always had, as it were, your lips to the receiver. +If you didn't try to meet her fine eyes, it was that you simply +couldn't hope to: there were too many dark, too many buzzing and +bewildering and all frankly not negotiable leagues in between. +Snatches of other voices seemed often to intertrude themselves in the +parley; and your loyal effort not to overhear these was complicated by +your fear of missing what Eva might be twittering. "Oh, you certainly +haven't, my dear, the trick of propinquity!" was a thrust she had +once parried by saying that, in that case, _he_ hadn't--to which his +unspoken rejoinder that she had caught her tone from the peevish +young women at the Central seemed to him (if not perhaps in the last, +certainly in the last but one, analysis) to lack finality. With +Eva, he had found, it was always safest to "ring off." It was with a +certain sense of his rashness in the matter, therefore, that he now, +with an air of feverishly "holding the line," said "Oh, as to that!" + +Had _she_, he presently asked himself, "rung off"? It was +characteristic of our friend--was indeed "him all over"--that his fear +of what she was going to say was as nothing to his fear of what she +might be going to leave unsaid. He had, in his converse with her, been +never so conscious as now of the intervening leagues; they had never +so insistently beaten the drum of his ear; and he caught himself in +the act of awfully computing, with a certain statistical passion, the +distance between Rome and Boston. He has never been able to decide +which of these points he was psychically the nearer to at the moment +when Eva, replying "Well, one does, anyhow, leave a margin for the +pretext, you know!" made him, for the first time in his life, wonder +whether she were not more magnificent than even he had ever given +her credit for being. Perhaps it was to test this theory, or perhaps +merely to gain time, that he now raised himself to his knees, and, +leaning with outstretched arm towards the foot of his bed, made as +though to touch the stocking which Santa Claus had, overnight, left +dangling there. His posture, as he stared obliquely at Eva, with +a sort of beaming defiance, recalled to him something seen in an +"illustration." This reminiscence, however--if such it was, save in +the scarred, the poor dear old woebegone and so very beguilingly _not_ +refractive mirror of the moment--took a peculiar twist from Eva's +behaviour. She had, with startling suddenness, sat bolt upright, and +looked to him as if she were overhearing some tragedy at the other end +of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest +it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to +make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, +rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, +if _she_ abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did _he_! It +was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters +say, and there you were! He was to feel that he was only too crudely +"there" when, leaning further forward, he laid a chubby forefinger on +the stocking, causing that receptacle to rock ponderously to and fro. +This effect was more expected than the tears which started to Eva's +eyes, and the intensity with which "Don't you," she exclaimed, "see?" + +"The mote in the middle distance?" he asked. "Did you ever, my dear, +know me to see anything else? I tell you it blocks out everything. +It's a cathedral, it's a herd of elephants, it's the whole habitable +globe. Oh, it's, believe me, of an obsessiveness!" But his sense of +the one thing it _didn't_ block out from his purview enabled him +to launch at Eva a speculation as to just how far Santa Claus had, +for the particular occasion, gone. The gauge, for both of them, +of this seasonable distance seemed almost blatantly suspended in +the silhouettes of the two stockings. Over and above the basis of +(presumably) sweetmeats in the toes and heels, certain extrusions +stood for a very plenary fulfilment of desire. And, since Eva had set +her heart on a doll of ample proportions and practicable eyelids--had +asked that most admirable of her sex, their mother, for it with not +less directness than he himself had put into his demand for a sword +and helmet--her coyness now struck Keith as lying near to, at indeed +a hardly measurable distance from, the border-line of his patience. If +she didn't want the doll, why the deuce had she made such a point of +getting it? He was perhaps on the verge of putting this question to +her, when, waving her hand to include both stockings, she said "Of +course, my dear, you _do_ see. There they are, and you know I know +you know we wouldn't, either of us, dip a finger into them." With a +vibrancy of tone that seemed to bring her voice quite close to him, +"One doesn't," she added, "violate the shrine--pick the pearl from the +shell!" + +Even had the answering question "Doesn't one just?" which for an +instant hovered on the tip of his tongue, been uttered, it could not +have obscured for Keith the change which her magnificence had wrought +in him. Something, perhaps, of the bigotry of the convert was already +discernible in the way that, averting his eyes, he said "One doesn't +even peer." As to whether, in the years that have elapsed since he +said this either of our friends (now adult) has, in fact, "peered," is +a question which, whenever I call at the house, I am tempted to put +to one or other of them. But any regret I may feel in my invariable +failure to "come up to the scratch" of yielding to this temptation is +balanced, for me, by my impression--my sometimes all but throned and +anointed certainty--that the answer, if vouchsafed, would be in the +negative. + + + + +P.C., X, 36 + +_By_ + +R*D**RD K*PL*NG + + + Then it's collar 'im tight, + In the name o' the Lawd! + 'Ustle 'im, shake 'im till 'e's sick! + Wot, 'e _would_, would 'e? Well, + Then yer've got ter give 'im 'Ell, + An' it's trunch, trunch, truncheon does the trick + + POLICE STATION DITTIES. + + +I had spent Christmas Eve at the Club, listening to a grand pow-wow +between certain of the choicer sons of Adam. Then Slushby had cut +in. Slushby is one who writes to newspapers and is theirs obediently +"HUMANITARIAN." When Slushby cuts in, men remember they have to be up +early next morning. + +Sharp round a corner on the way home, I collided with something firmer +than the regulation pillar-box. I righted myself after the recoil +and saw some stars that were very pretty indeed. Then I perceived the +nature of the obstruction. + +"Evening, Judlip," I said sweetly, when I had collected my hat from +the gutter. "Have I broken the law, Judlip? If so, I'll go quiet." + +"Time yer was in bed," grunted X, 36. "Yer Ma'll be lookin' out for +yer." + +This from the friend of my bosom! It hurt. Many were the night-beats +I had been privileged to walk with Judlip, imbibing curious lore that +made glad the civilian heart of me. Seven whole 8x5 inch note-books +had I pitmanised to the brim with Judlip. And now to be repulsed as +one of the uninitiated! It hurt horrid. + +There is a thing called Dignity. Small boys sometimes stand on it. +Then they have to be kicked. Then they get down, weeping. I don't +stand on Dignity. + +"What's wrong, Judlip?" I asked, more sweetly than ever. "Drawn a +blank to-night?" + +"Yuss. Drawn a blank blank blank. 'Avent 'ad so much as a kick at a +lorst dorg. Christmas Eve ain't wot it was." I felt for my note-book. +"Lawd! I remembers the time when the drunks and disorderlies down this +street was as thick as flies on a fly-paper. One just picked 'em orf +with one's finger and thumb. A bloomin' battew, that's wot it wos." + +"The night's yet young, Judlip," I insinuated, with a jerk of my thumb +at the flaring windows of the "Rat and Blood Hound." At that moment +the saloon-door swung open, emitting a man and woman who walked with +linked arms and exceeding great care. + +Judlip eyed them longingly as they tacked up the street. Then he +sighed. Now, when Judlip sighs the sound is like unto that which +issues from the vent of a Crosby boiler when the cog-gauges are at +260° F. + +"Come, Judlip!" I said. "Possess your soul in patience. You'll soon +find someone to make an example of. Meanwhile"--I threw back my head +and smacked my lips--"the usual, Judlip?" + +In another minute I emerged through the swing-door, bearing a furtive +glass of that same "usual," and nipped down the mews where my friend +was wont to await these little tokens of esteem. + +"To the Majesty of the Law, Judlip!" + +When he had honoured the toast, I scooted back with the glass, leaving +him wiping the beads off his beard-bristles. He was in his philosophic +mood when I rejoined him at the corner. + +"Wot am I?" he said, as we paced along. "A bloomin' cypher. Wot's +the sarjint? 'E's got the Inspector over 'im. Over above the +Inspector there's the Sooprintendent. Over above 'im's the old +red-tape-masticatin' Yard. Over above that there's the 'Ome Sec. +Wot's 'e? A cypher, like me. Why?" Judlip looked up at the stars. +"Over above 'im's We Dunno Wot. Somethin' wot issues its horders +an' regulations an' divisional injunctions, inscrootable like, but +p'remptory; an' we 'as ter see as 'ow they're carried out, not arskin' +no questions, but each man goin' about 'is dooty.' + +"''Is dooty,'" said I, looking up from my note-book. "Yes, I've got +that." + +"Life ain't a bean-feast. It's a 'arsh reality. An' them as makes it a +bean-feast 'as got to be 'arshly dealt with accordin'. That's wot the +Force is put 'ere for from Above. Not as 'ow we ain't fallible. We +makes our mistakes. An' when we makes 'em we sticks to 'em. For the +honour o' the Force. Which same is the jool Britannia wears on 'er +bosom as a charm against hanarchy. That's wot the brarsted old Beaks +don't understand. Yer remember Smithers of our Div?" + +I remembered Smithers--well. As fine, upstanding, square-toed, +bullet-headed, clean-living a son of a gun as ever perjured himself in +the box. There was nothing of the softy about Smithers. I took off my +billicock to Smithers' memory. + +"Sacrificed to public opinion? Yuss," said Judlip, pausing at a front +door and flashing his 45 c.p. down the slot of a two-grade Yale. +"Sacrificed to a parcel of screamin' old women wot ort ter 'ave gorn +down on their knees an' thanked Gawd for such a protector. 'E'll be +out in another 'alf year. Wot'll 'e do then, pore devil? Go a bust on +'is conduc' money an' throw in 'is lot with them same hexperts wot 'ad +a 'oly terror of 'im." Then Judlip swore gently. + +"What should you do, O Great One, if ever it were your duty to +apprehend him?" + +"Do? Why, yer blessed innocent, yer don't think I'd shirk a fair clean +cop? Same time, I don't say as 'ow I wouldn't 'andle 'im tender like, +for sake o' wot 'e wos. Likewise cos 'e'd be a stiff customer to +tackle. Likewise 'cos--" + +He had broken off, and was peering fixedly upwards at an angle of 85° +across the moonlit street. "Ullo!" he said in a hoarse whisper. + +Striking an average between the direction of his eyes--for Judlip, +when on the job, has a soul-stirring squint--I perceived someone in +the act of emerging from a chimney-pot. + +Judlip's voice clove the silence. "Wot are yer doin' hup there?" + +The person addressed came to the edge of the parapet. I saw then that +he had a hoary white beard, a red ulster with the hood up, and what +looked like a sack over his shoulder. He said something or other in a +voice like a concertina that has been left out in the rain. + +"I dessay," answered my friend. "Just you come down, an' we'll see +about that." + +The old man nodded and smiled. Then--as I hope to be saved--he came +floating gently down through the moonlight, with the sack over his +shoulder and a young fir-tree clasped to his chest. He alighted in a +friendly manner on the curb beside us. + +Judlip was the first to recover himself. Out went his right arm, and +the airman was slung round by the scruff of the neck, spilling his +sack in the road. I made a bee-line for his shoulder-blades. Burglar +or no burglar, he was the best airman out, and I was muchly desirous +to know the precise nature of the apparatus under his ulster. A +back-hander from Judlip's left caused me to hop quickly aside. The +prisoner was squealing and whimpering. He didn't like the feel of +Judlip's knuckles at his cervical vertebræ. + +"Wot wos yer doin' hup there?" asked Judlip, tightening the grip. + +"I'm S-Santa Claus, Sir. P-please, Sir, let me g-go" + +"Hold him," I shouted. "He's a German." + +"It's my dooty ter caution yer that wotever yer say now may be used +in hevidence against yer, yer old sinner. Pick up that there sack, an' +come along o' me." + +The captive snivelled something about peace on earth, good will toward +men. + +"Yuss," said Judlip. "That's in the Noo Testament, ain't it? The Noo +Testament contains some uncommon nice readin' for old gents an' young +ladies. But it ain't included in the librery o' the Force. We confine +ourselves to the Old Testament--O.T., 'ot. An' 'ot you'll get it. Hup +with that sack, an' quick march!" + +I have seen worse attempts at a neck-wrench, but it was just not +slippery enough for Judlip. And the kick that Judlip then let fly was +a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. + +"Frog's-march him!" I shrieked, dancing. "For the love of heaven, +frog's-march him!" + +Trotting by Judlip's side to the Station, I reckoned it out that if +Slushby had not been at the Club I should not have been here to see. +Which shows that even Slushbys are put into this world for a purpose. + + + + +OUT OF HARM'S WAY + +_By_ + +A.C. B*NS*N + + +Chapter XLII.--Christmas + + +More and more, as the tranquil years went by, Percy found himself able +to draw a quiet satisfaction from the regularity, the even sureness, +with which, in every year, one season succeeded to another. In +boyhood he had felt always a little sad at the approach of autumn. +The yellowing leaves of the lime trees, the creeper that flushed to +so deep a crimson against the old grey walls, the chrysanthemums that +shed so prodigally their petals on the smooth green lawn--all these +things, beautiful and wonderful though they were, were somehow a +little melancholy also, as being signs of the year's decay. Once, when +he was fourteen or fifteen years old, he had overheard a friend of +the family say to his father "How the days are drawing in!"--a remark +which set him thinking deeply, with an almost morbid abandonment to +gloom, for quite a long time. He had not then grasped the truth that +in exactly the proportion in which the days draw in they will, in +the fullness of time, draw out. This was a lesson that he mastered in +later years. And, though the waning of summer never failed to touch +him with the sense of an almost personal loss, yet it seemed to him a +right thing, a wise ordination, that there should be these recurring +changes. Those men and women of whom the poet tells us that they lived +in "a land where it was always afternoon"--could they, Percy often +wondered, have felt quite that thankfulness which on a fine afternoon +is felt by us dwellers in ordinary climes? Ah, no! Surely it is +because we are made acquainted with the grey sadness of twilight, the +solemn majesty of the night-time, the faint chill of the dawn, that +we set so high a value on the more meridional hours. If there were no +autumn, no winter, then spring and summer would lose, not all indeed, +yet an appreciable part of their sweet savour for us. Thus, as his +mind matured, Percy came to be very glad of the gradual changes of the +year. He found in them a rhythm, as he once described it in his diary; +and this he liked very much indeed. He was aware that in his own +character, with its tendency to waywardness, to caprice, to disorder, +there was an almost grievous lack of this _rhythmic_ quality. In the +sure and seemly progression of the months, was there not for him a +desirable exemplar, a needed corrective? He was so liable to moods in +which he rebelled against the performance of some quite simple duty, +some appointed task--moods in which he said to himself "H-ng it! I +will not do this," or "Oh, b-th-r! I shall not do that!" But it was +clear that Nature herself never spoke thus. Even as a passenger in +a frail barque on the troublous ocean will keep his eyes directed +towards some upstanding rock on the far horizon, finding thus inwardly +for himself, or hoping to find, a more stable equilibrium, a deeper +tranquillity, than is his, so did Percy daily devote a certain portion +of his time to quiet communion with the almanac. + +There were times when he was sorely tempted to regret a little that +some of the feasts of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved +only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain +unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that +they did move, there seemed--to use an expressive slang phrase of the +day--"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts +that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he +experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those +who knew him only slightly. + +By reason of the athletic exercises of his earlier years, Percy had +retained in middle life a certain lightness and firmness of tread; +and this on Christmas morning, between his rooms and the Cathedral, +was always so peculiarly elastic that he might almost have seemed to +be rather running than walking. The ancient fane, with its soarings +of grey columns to the dimness of its embowed roof, the delicate +traceries of the organ screen, the swelling notes of the organ, the +mellow shafts of light filtered through the stained-glass windows +whose hues were as those of emeralds and rubies and amethysts, the +stainless purity of the surplices of clergy and choir, the sober +richness of Sunday bonnets in the transept, the faint yet heavy +fragrance exhaled from the hot-water pipes--all these familiar things, +appealing, as he sometimes felt, almost too strongly to that sensuous +side of his nature which made him so susceptible to the paintings of +Mr. Leader, of Sir Luke Fildes, were on Christmas morning more than +usually affecting by reason of that note of quiet joyousness, of peace +and good will, that pervaded the lessons of the day, the collect, the +hymns, the sermon. + +It was this spiritual aspect of Christmas that Percy felt to be +hardly sufficiently regarded, or at least dwelt on, nowadays, and he +sometimes wondered whether the modern Christmas had not been in some +degree inspired and informed by Charles Dickens. He had for that +writer a very sincere admiration, though he was inclined to think that +his true excellence lay not so much in faithful portrayal of the life +of his times, or in gift of sustained narration, or in those scenes of +pathos which have moved so many hearts in so many quiet homes, as in +the power of inventing highly fantastic figures, such as Mr. Micawber +or Mr. Pickwick. This view Percy knew to be somewhat heretical, and, +constitutionally averse from the danger of being suspected of "talking +for effect," he kept it to himself; but, had anyone challenged him to +give his opinion, it was thus that he would have expressed himself. +In regard to Christmas, he could not help wishing that Charles Dickens +had laid more stress on its spiritual element. It was right that the +feast should be an occasion for good cheer, for the savoury meats, the +steaming bowl, the blazing log, the traditional games. But was not +the modern world, with its almost avowed bias towards materialism, too +little apt to think of Christmas as also a time for meditation, for +taking stock, as it were, of the things of the soul? Percy had heard +that in London nowadays there was a class of people who sate down +to their Christmas dinners in public hotels. He did not condemn this +practice. He never condemned a thing, but wondered, rather, whether +it were right, and could not help feeling that somehow it was not. +In the course of his rare visits to London he had more than once +been inside of one of the large new hotels that had sprung up--these +"great caravanseries," as he described them in a letter to an +old school-fellow who had been engaged for many years in Chinese +mission work. And it seemed to him that the true spirit of Christmas +could hardly be acclimatised in such places, but found its proper +resting-place in quiet, detached homes, where were gathered together +only those connected with one another by ties of kinship, or of long +and tested friendship. + +He sometimes blamed himself for having tended more and more, as the +quiet, peaceful, tranquil years went by, to absent himself from even +those small domestic gatherings. And yet, might it not be that his +instinct for solitude at this season was a right instinct, at least +for him, and that to run counter to it would be in some degree +unacceptable to the Power that fashioned us? Thus he allowed himself +to go, as it were, his own way. After morning service, he sate down +to his Christmas fare alone, and then, when the simple meal was over, +would sit and think in his accustomed chair, falling perhaps into +one of those quiet dozes from which, because they seemed to be so +natural a result, so seemly a consummation, of his thoughts, he +did not regularly abstain. Later, he sallied forth, with a sense +of refreshment, for a brisk walk among the fens, the sedges, the +hedgerows, the reed-fringed pools, the pollard willows that would in +due course be putting forth their tender shoots of palest green. And +then, once more in his rooms, with the curtains drawn and the candles +lit, he would turn to his book-shelves and choose from among them some +old book that he knew and loved, or maybe some quite new book by that +writer whose works were most dear to him because in them he seemed +always to know so precisely what the author would say next, and +because he found in their fine-spun repetitions a singular repose, +a sense of security, an earnest of calm and continuity, as though he +were reading over again one of those wise copy-books that he had so +loved in boyhood, or were listening to the sounds made on a piano by +some modest, very conscientious young girl with a pale red pig-tail, +practising her scales, very gently, hour after hour, next door. + + + + +PERKINS AND MANKIND + +_By_ + +H.G. W*LLS + + +Chapter XX + + +§1. + +It was the Christmas party at Heighton that was one of the +turning-points in Perkins' life. The Duchess had sent him a three-page +wire in the hyperbolical style of her class, conveying a vague +impression that she and the Duke had arranged to commit suicide +together if Perkins didn't "chuck" any previous engagement he had +made. And Perkins had felt in a slipshod sort of way--for at this +period he was incapable of ordered thought--he might as well be at +Heighton as anywhere.... + +The enormous house was almost full. There must have been upwards of +fifty people sitting down to every meal. Many of these were members of +the family. Perkins was able to recognise them by their unconvoluted +ears--the well-known Grifford ear, transmitted from one generation to +another. For the rest there were the usual lot from the Front Benches +and the Embassies. Evesham was there, clutching at the lapels of his +coat; and the Prescotts--he with his massive mask of a face, and she +with her quick, hawk-like ways, talking about two things at a time; +old Tommy Strickland, with his monocle and his dropped g's, telling +you what he had once said to Mr. Disraeli; Boubou Seaforth and his +American wife; John Pirram, ardent and elegant, spouting old French +lyrics; and a score of others. + +Perkins had got used to them by now. He no longer wondered what +they were "up to," for he knew they were up to nothing whatever. He +reflected, while he was dressing for dinner on Christmas night, how +odd it was he had ever thought of Using them. He might as well have +hoped to Use the Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses that grinned out +in the last stages of refinement at him from the glazed cabinets in +the drawing-rooms.... Or the Labour Members themselves.... + +True there was Evesham. He had shown an exquisitely open mind about +the whole thing. He had at once grasped the underlying principles, +thrown out some amazingly luminous suggestions. Oh yes, Evesham was a +statesman, right enough. But had even he ever really _believed_ in the +idea of a Provisional Government of England by the Female Foundlings? + +To Perkins the whole thing had seemed so simple, so imminent--a thing +that needed only a little general good-will to bring it about. And +now.... Suppose his Bill _had_ passed its Second Reading, suppose it +had become Law, would this poor old England be by way of functioning +decently--after all? Foundlings were sometimes naughty.... + +What was the matter with the whole human race? He remembered again +those words of Scragson's that had had such a depressing effect on him +at the Cambridge Union--"Look here, you know! It's all a huge nasty +mess, and we're trying to swab it up with a pocket handkerchief." +Well, he'd given up trying to do that.... + + +§2. + +During dinner his eyes wandered furtively up and down the endless +ornate table, and he felt he had been, in a sort of way, right in +thinking these people were the handiest instrument to prise open +the national conscience with. The shining red faces of the men, the +shining white necks and arms of the women, the fearless eyes, the +general free-and-easiness and spaciousness, the look of late hours +counteracted by fresh air and exercise and the best things to eat and +drink--what mightn't be made of these people, if they'd only Submit? + +Perkins looked behind them, at the solemn young footmen passing +and repassing, noiselessly, in blue and white liveries. _They_ had +Submitted. And it was just because they had been able to that they +were no good. + +"Damn!" said Perkins, under his breath. + + +§3. + +One of the big conifers from the park had been erected in the hall, +and this, after dinner, was found to be all lighted up with electric +bulbs and hung with packages in tissue paper. + +The Duchess stood, a bright, feral figure, distributing these packages +to the guests. Perkins' name was called out in due course and the +package addressed to him was slipped into his hand. He retired +with it into a corner. Inside the tissue-paper was a small morocco +leather case. Inside that was a set of diamond and sapphire +sleeve-links--large ones. + +He stood looking at them, blinking a little. + +He supposed he must put them on. But something in him, +some intractably tough bit of his old self, rose up +protesting--frantically. + +If he couldn't Use these people, at least they weren't going to Use +_him_! + +"No, damn it!" he said under his breath, and, thrusting the case into +his pocket, slipped away unobserved. + + +§4. + +He flung himself into a chair in his bedroom and puffed a blast of air +from his lungs.... Yes, it had been a narrow escape. He knew that if +he had put those beastly blue and white things on he would have been a +lost soul.... + +"You've got to pull yourself together, d'you hear?" he said to +himself. "You've got to do a lot of clear, steady, merciless +thinking--now, to-night. You've got to persuade yourself somehow that, +Foundlings or no Foundlings, this regeneration of mankind business may +still be set going--and by _you_." + +He paced up and down the room, fuming. How recapture the generous +certitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He found +himself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf by +his bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almost +have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it +hopped down into his hand.... + +"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series by +which H.G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when he +was at the 'Varsity. + +He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old sway +over him now? + +The page he had opened it at was headed "General Cessation Day," and +he began to read.... + +"The re-casting of the calendar on a decimal basis seems a simple +enough matter at first sight. But even here there are details that +will have to be thrashed out.... + +"Mr. Edgar Dibbs, in his able pamphlet 'Ten to the Rescue,'[1] +advocates a twenty-hour day, and has drawn up an ingenious scheme for +accelerating the motion of this planet by four in every twenty-four +hours, so that the alternations of light and darkness shall be +re-adjusted to the new reckoning. I think such re-adjustment would +be indispensable (though I know there is a formidable body of opinion +against me). But I am far from being convinced of the feasibility +of Mr. Dibbs' scheme. I believe the twenty-four hour day has come to +stay--anomalous though it certainly will seem in the ten-day week, +the fifty-day month, and the thousand-day year. I should like to have +incorporated Mr. Dibbs' scheme in my vision of the Dawn. But, as I +have said, the scope of this vision is purely practical.... + +[Footnote 1: Published by the Young Self-Helpers' Press, Ipswich.] + +"Mr. Albert Baker, in a paper[2] read before the South Brixton +Hebdomadals, pleads that the first seven days of the decimal +week should retain their old names, the other three to be called +provisionally Huxleyday, Marxday, and Tolstoiday. But, for reasons +which I have set forth elsewhere,[3] I believe that the nomenclature +which I had originally suggested[4]--Aday, Bday, and so on to +Jday--would be really the simplest way out of the difficulty. +Any fanciful way of naming the days would be bad, as too sharply +differentiating one day from another. What we must strive for in the +Dawn is that every day shall be as nearly as possible like every +other day. We must help the human units--these little pink slobbering +creatures of the Future whose cradle we are rocking--to progress not +in harsh jerks, but with a beautiful unconscious rhythm.... + +[Footnote 2: "Are We Going Too Fast?"] + +[Footnote 3: "A Midwife For The Millennium." H.G. W*lls.] + +[Footnote 4: "How To Be Happy Though Yet Unborn." H.G. W*lls.] + +"There must be nothing corresponding to our Sunday. Sunday is a canker +that must be cut ruthlessly out of the social organism. At present +the whole community gets 'slack' on Saturday because of the paralysis +that is about to fall on it. And then 'Black Monday'!--that day when +the human brain tries to readjust itself--tries to realise that the +shutters are down, and the streets are swept, and the stove-pipe hats +are back in their band-boxes.... + +"Yet of course there must be holidays. We can no more do without +holidays than without sleep. For every man there must be certain +stated intervals of repose--of recreation in the original sense of the +word. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhaps +pretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service that +my friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5] +that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating--i.e.,[6] +a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves in. The problem +before us is how to secure for the human units in the Dawn--these +giants of whom we are but the foetuses--the holidays necessary for +their full capacity for usefulness to the State, without at the same +time disorganising the whole community--and them. + +[Footnote 5: "Words About Words." By Ezra K. Higgins, Professor of + Etymology, Abraham Z. Stubbins University, Padua, Pa., U.S.A. (2 + vols.).] + +[Footnote 6: "_Id est_"--"That is."] + +"The solution is really very simple. The community will be divided +into ten sections--Section A, Section B, and so on to Section J. And +to every section one day of the decimal week will be assigned as a +'Cessation Day.' Thus, those people who fall under Section A will rest +on Aday, those who fall under Section B will rest on Bday, and so on. +On every day of the year one-tenth of the population will be resting, +but the other nine-tenths will be at work. The joyous hum and clang of +labour will never cease in the municipal workshops.... + +"You figure the smokeless blue sky above London dotted all over with +airships in which the holiday-making tenth are re-creating themselves +for the labour of next week--looking down a little wistfully, perhaps, +at the workshops from which they are temporarily banished. And here I +scent a difficulty. So attractive a thing will labour be in the Dawn +that a man will be tempted not to knock off work when his Cessation +Day comes round, and will prefer to work for no wage rather than not +at all. So that perhaps there will have to be a law making Cessation +Day compulsory, and the Overseers will be empowered to punish +infringement of this law by forbidding the culprit to work for ten +days after the first offence, twenty after the second, and so on. But +I don't suppose there will often be need to put this law in motion. +The children of the Dawn, remember, will not be the puny self-ridden +creatures that we are. They will not say, 'Is this what I want to +do?' but 'Shall I, by doing this, be (a) harming or (b) benefiting--no +matter in how infinitesimal a degree--the Future of the Race?' + +"Sunday must go. And, as I have hinted, the progress of mankind will +be steady proportionately to its own automatism. Yet I think there +would be no harm in having one--just one--day in the year set aside as +a day of universal rest--a day for the searching of hearts. Heaven--I +mean the Future--forbid that I should be hide-bound by dry-as-dust +logic, in dealing with problems of flesh and blood. The sociologists +of the past thought the grey matter of their own brains all-sufficing. +They forgot that flesh is pink and blood is red. That is why they +could not convert people.... + +"The five-hundredth and last day of each year shall be a General +Cessation Day. It will correspond somewhat to our present Christmas +Day. But with what a difference! It will not be, as with us, a mere +opportunity for relatives to make up the quarrels they have picked +with each other during the past year, and to eat and drink things that +will make them ill well into next year. Holly and mistletoe there will +be in the Municipal Eating Rooms, but the men and women who sit down +there to General Cessation High-Tea will be glowing not with a facile +affection for their kith and kin, but with communal anxiety for the +welfare of the great-great-grand-children of people they have never +met and are never likely to meet. + +"The great event of the day will be the performance of the ceremony of +'Making Way.' + +"In the Dawn, death will not be the haphazard affair that it is under +the present anarchic conditions. Men will not be stumbling out of +the world at odd moments and for reasons over which they have no +control. There will always, of course, be a percentage of deaths by +misadventure. But there will be no deaths by disease. Nor, on the +other hand, will people die of old age. Every child will start life +knowing that (barring misadventure) he has a certain fixed period of +life before him--so much and no more, but not a moment less. + +"It is impossible to foretell to what average age the children of the +Dawn will retain the use of all their faculties--be fully vigorous +mentally and physically. We only know they will be 'going strong' at +ages when we have long ceased to be any use to the State. Let us, for +sake of argument, say that on the average their facilities will have +begun to decay at the age of ninety--a trifle over thirty-two, by the +new reckoning. That, then, will be the period of life fixed for all +citizens. Every man on fulfilling that period will avail himself of +the Municipal Lethal Chamber. He will 'make way'.... + +"I thought at one time that it would be best for every man to 'make +way' on the actual day when he reaches the age-limit. But I see now +that this would savour of private enterprise. Moreover, it would rule +out that element of sentiment which, in relation to such a thing as +death, we must do nothing to mar. The children and friends of a man on +the brink of death would instinctively wish to gather round him. How +could they accompany him to the lethal chamber, if it were an ordinary +working-day, with every moment of the time mapped out for them? + +"On General Cessation Day, therefore, the gates of the lethal chambers +will stand open for all those who shall in the course of the past year +have reached the age-limit. You figure the wide streets filled all day +long with little solemn processions--solemn and yet not in the least +unhappy.... You figure the old man walking with a firm step in the +midst of his progeny, looking around him with a clear eye at this dear +world which is about to lose him. He will not be thinking of himself. +He will not be wishing the way to the lethal chamber was longer. He +will be filled with joy at the thought that he is about to die for +the good of the race--to 'make way' for the beautiful young breed +of men and women who, in simple, artistic, antiseptic garments, are +disporting themselves so gladly on this day of days. They pause +to salute him as he passes. And presently he sees, radiant in the +sunlight, the pleasant white-tiled dome of the lethal chamber. You +figure him at the gate, shaking hands all round, and speaking perhaps +a few well-chosen words about the Future...." + + +§5. + +It was enough. The old broom hadn't lost its snap. It had swept clean +the chambers of Perkins' soul--swished away the whole accumulation of +nasty little cobwebs and malignant germs. Gone were the mean doubts +that had formed in him, the lethargy, the cheap cynicism. Perkins was +himself again. + +He saw now how very stupid it was of him to have despaired just +because his own particular panacea wasn't given a chance. That +Provisional Government plan of his had been good, but it was only +one of an infinite number of possible paths to the Dawn. He would +try others--scores of others.... + +He must get right away out of here--to-night. He must have his car +brought round from the garage--now--to a side door.... + +But first he sat down to the writing-table, and wrote quickly: + + _Dear Duchess,_ + + _I regret I am called away on urgent political business...._ + + _Yours faithfully_ _J. Perkins...._ + +He took the morocco leather case out of his pocket and enclosed it, +with the note, in a large envelope. + +Then he pressed the electric button by his bedside, almost feeling +that this was a signal for the Dawn to rise without more ado.... + + + + +SOME DAMNABLE ERRORS ABOUT CHRISTMAS + +_By_ + +G.K. CH*ST*RT*N + + +That it is human to err is admitted by even the most positive of our +thinkers. Here we have the great difference between latter-day thought +and the thought of the past. If Euclid were alive to-day (and I dare +say he is) he would not say, "The angles at the base of an isosceles +triangle are equal to one another." He would say, "To me (a very +frail and fallible being, remember) it does somehow seem that these +two angles have a mysterious and awful equality to one another." The +dislike of schoolboys for Euclid is unreasonable in many ways; but +fundamentally it is entirely reasonable. Fundamentally it is the +revolt from a man who was either fallible and therefore (in pretending +to infallibility) an impostor, or infallible and therefore not human. + +Now, since it is human to err, it is always in reference to those +things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions--I mean +the emotion of love--that we conceive the deepest of our errors. +Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and +confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids +with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he +cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany +him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order +that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiant +goodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect his +enthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm. +But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a +dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact +that he told us about isosceles triangles. For adoration involves a +glorious obliquity of vision. It involves more than that. We do not +say of Love that he is short-sighted. We do not say of Love that he +is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite +simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That +would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and +say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For +love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, +filled with a gusty wind from Heaven. + +It is always about the thing that we love most that we talk most. +About this thing, therefore, our errors are something more than our +deepest errors: they are our most frequent errors. That is why for +nearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on the +subject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hated +Christmas, he would have understood it from the first. What would +have happened then, it is impossible to say. For that which is hated, +and therefore is persecuted, and therefore grows brave, lives on +for ever, whilst that which is understood dies in the moment of our +understanding of it--dies, as it were, in our awful grasp. Between +the horns of this eternal dilemma shivers all the mystery of the jolly +visible world, and of that still jollier world which is invisible. +And it is because Mr. Shaw and the writers of his school cannot, with +all their splendid sincerity and, acumen, perceive that he and they +and all of us are impaled on those horns as certainly as the sausages +I ate for breakfast this morning had been impaled on the cook's +toasting-fork--it is for this reason, I say, that Mr. Shaw and his +friends seem to me to miss the basic principle that lies at the root +of all things human and divine. By the way, not all things that are +divine are human. But all things that are human are divine. But to +return to Christmas. + +I select at random two of the more obvious fallacies that obtain. One +is that Christmas should be observed as a time of jubilation. This is +(I admit) quite a recent idea. It never entered into the tousled heads +of the shepherds by night, when the light of the angel of the Lord +shone about them and they arose and went to do homage to the Child. It +never entered into the heads of the Three Wise Men. They did not bring +their gifts as a joke, but as an awful oblation. It never entered into +the heads of the saints and scholars, the poets and painters, of the +Middle Ages. Looking back across the years, they saw in that dark and +ungarnished manger only a shrinking woman, a brooding man, and a child +born to sorrow. The philomaths of the eighteenth century, looking +back, saw nothing at all. It is not the least of the glories of the +Victorian Era that it rediscovered Christmas. It is not the least of +the mistakes of the Victorian Era that it supposed Christmas to be a +feast. + +The splendour of the saying, "I have piped unto you, and you have not +danced; I have wept with you, and you have not mourned" lies in the +fact that it might have been uttered with equal truth by any man who +had ever piped or wept. There is in the human race some dark spirit of +recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in +which we are reasonably expected to go. At a funeral, the slightest +thing, not in the least ridiculous at any other time, will convulse +us with internal laughter. At a wedding, we hover mysteriously on the +brink of tears. So it is with the modern Christmas. I find myself in +agreement with the cynics in so far that I admit that Christmas, as +now observed, tends to create melancholy. But the reason for this +lies solely in our own misconception. Christmas is essentially a _dies +iræ_. If the cynics will only make up their minds to treat it as such, +even the saddest and most atrabilious of them will acknowledge that he +has had a rollicking day. + +This brings me to the second fallacy. I refer to the belief that +"Christmas comes but once a year." Perhaps it does, according to the +calendar--a quaint and interesting compilation, but of little or no +practical value to anybody. It is not the calendar, but the Spirit of +Man that regulates the recurrence of feasts and fasts. Spiritually, +Christmas Day recurs exactly seven times a week. When we have frankly +acknowledged this, and acted on this, we shall begin to realise the +Day's mystical and terrific beauty. For it is only every-day things +that reveal themselves to us in all their wonder and their splendour. +A man who happens one day to be knocked down by a motor-bus merely +utters a curse and instructs his solicitor, but a man who has been +knocked down by a motor-bus every day of the year will have begun to +feel that he is taking part in an august and soul-cleansing ritual. +He will await the diurnal stroke of fate with the same lowly and pious +joy as animated the Hindoos awaiting Juggernaut. His bruises will be +decorations, worn with the modest pride of the veteran. He will cry +aloud, in the words of the late W.E. Henley, "My head is bloody but +unbowed." He will add, "My ribs are broken but unbent." + +I look for the time when we shall wish one another a Merry Christmas +every morning; when roast turkey and plum-pudding shall be the staple +of our daily dinner, and the holly shall never be taken down from the +walls, and everyone will always be kissing everyone else under the +mistletoe. And what is right as regards Christmas is right as regards +all other so-called anniversaries. The time will come when we shall +dance round the Maypole every morning before breakfast--a meal at +which hot-cross buns will be a standing dish--and shall make April +fools of one another every day before noon. The profound significance +of All Fool's Day--the glorious lesson that we are all fools--is +too apt at present to be lost. Nor is justice done to the sublime +symbolism of Shrove Tuesday--the day on which all sins are shriven. +Every day pancakes shall be eaten, either before or after the +plum-pudding. They shall be eaten slowly and sacramentally. They shall +be fried over fires tended and kept for ever bright by Vestals. They +shall be tossed to the stars. + +I shall return to the subject of Christmas next week. + + + + +A SEQUELULA TO "THE DYNASTS"[7] + +_By_ + +TH*M*S H*RDY + +[Footnote 7: _This has been composed from a scenario thrust on me + by some one else. My philosophy of life saves me from sense of + responsibility for any of my writings; but I venture to hold + myself specially irresponsible for this one._--TH*M*S H*RDY.] + + + The Void is disclosed. Our own Solar System is visible, + distant by some two million miles. + + Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit + and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirit Ironic, the Spirit + Sinister, Rumours, Spirit-Messengers, and the Recording Angel. + + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Yonder, that swarm of things insectual_ + _Wheeling Nowhither in Particular--_ + _What is it?_ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _That? Oh that is merely one_ + _Of those innumerous congeries_ + _Of parasites by which, since time began,_ + _Space has been interfested._ + +SPIRIT SINISTER. + + _What a pity_ + _We have no means of stamping out these pests!_ + +SPIRIT IRONIC. + + _Nay, but I like to watch them buzzing round,_ + _Poor little trumpery ephaeonals!_ + +CHORUS OF THE PIETIES (aerial music). + + _Yes, yes!_ + _What matter a few more or less?_ + _Here and Nowhere plus_ + _Whence and Why makes Thus._ + _Let these things be._ + _There's room in the world for them and us._ + + _Nothing is,_ + _Out in the vast immensities_ + _Where these things flit,_ + _Irrequisite_ + _In a minor key_ + _To the tune of the sempiternal It._ + +SPIRIT IRONIC. + + _The curious thing about them is that some_ + _Have lesser parasites adherent to them--_ + _Bipedular and quadrupedular_ + _Infinitesimals. On close survey_ + _You see these movesome. Do you not recall,_ + _We once went in a party and beheld_ + _All manner of absurd things happening_ + _On one of those same--planets, don't you call them?_ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (screwing up his eyes at the Solar System). + + _One of that very swarm it was, if I mistake not._ + _It had a parasite that called itself_ + _Napoléon. And lately, I believe,_ + _Another parasite has had the impudence_ + _To publish an elaborate account_ + _Of our (for so we deemed it) private visit._ + +SPIRIT SINISTER. + + _His name?_ + +RECORDING ANGEL. + + _One moment._ + +(Turns over leaves.) + + _Hardy, Mr. Thomas,_ + _Novelist. Author of "The Woodlanders,"_ + _"Far from the Madding Crowd," "The Trumpet Major,"_ + _"Tess of the D'Urbervilles," etcetera,_ + _Etcetera. In 1895_ + _"Jude the Obscure" was published, and a few_ + _Hasty reviewers, having to supply_ + _A column for the day of publication,_ + _Filled out their space by saying that there were_ + _Several passages that might have been_ + _Omitted with advantage. Mr. Hardy_ + _Saw that if that was so, well then, of course,_ + _Obviously the only thing to do_ + _Was to write no more novels, and forthwith_ + _Applied himself to drama, and to Us._ + +SPIRIT IRONIC. + + _Let us hear what he said about Us._ + +THE OTHER SPIRITS. + + _Let's._ + +RECORDING ANGEL (raising receiver of aerial telephone). + + _3 oh 4 oh oh 3 5, Space.... Hulloa._ + _Is that the Superstellar Library?_ + _I'm the Recording Angel. Kindly send me_ + _By Spirit-Messenger a copy of_ + _"The Dynasts" by T. Hardy. Thank you._ + + A pause. Enter Spirit-Messenger, with copy of "The Dynasts." + + _Thanks._ + + Exit Spirit-Messenger. The Recording Angel reads "The Dynasts" + aloud. + + Just as the reading draws to a close, enter the Spirit of Mr. + Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters. They are visible + as small grey transparencies swiftly interpenetrating the + brains of the spatial Spirits. + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _It is a book which, once you take it up,_ + _You cannot readily lay down._ + +SPIRIT SINISTER. + + _There is_ + _Not a dull page in it._ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _A bold conception_ + _Outcarried with that artistry for which_ + _The author's name is guarantee. We have_ + _No hesitation in commending to our readers_ + _A volume which--_ + + The Spirit of Mr. Clement Shorter and Chorus of Subtershorters + are detected and expelled. + + _--we hasten to denounce_ + _As giving an entirely false account_ + _Of our impressions._ + +SPIRIT IRONIC. + + Hear, _hear_! + +SPIRIT SINISTER. + + Hear, _hear_! + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Hear_! + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _Intensive vision has this Mr. Hardy,_ + _With a dark skill in weaving word-patterns_ + _Of subtle ideographies that mark him_ + _A man of genius. So am not I,_ + _But a plain Spirit, simple and forthright,_ + _With no damned philosophical fal-lals_ + _About me. When I visited that planet_ + _And watched the animalculae thereon,_ + _I never said they were "automata"_ + _And "jackaclocks," nor dared describe their deeds_ + _As "Life's impulsion by Incognizance."_ + _It may be that those mites have no free will,_ + _But how should I know? Nay, how Mr. Hardy?_ + _We cannot glimpse the origin of things,_ + _Cannot conceive a Causeless Cause, albeit_ + _Such a Cause must have been, and must be greater_ + _Than we whose little wits cannot conceive it._ + _"Incognizance"! Why deem incognizant_ + _An infinitely higher than ourselves?_ + _How dare define its way with us? How know_ + _Whether it leaves us free or holds us bond?_ + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Allow me to associate myself_ + _With every word that's fallen from your lips._ + _The author of "The Dynasts" has indeed_ + _Misused his undeniably great gifts_ + _In striving to belittle things that are_ + _Little enough already. I don't say_ + _That the phrenetical behaviour_ + _Of those aforesaid animalculae_ + _Did, while we watched them, seem to indicate_ + _Possession of free-will. But, bear in mind,_ + _We saw them in peculiar circumstances--_ + _At war, blinded with blood and lust and fear._ + _Is it not likely that at other times_ + _They are quite decent midgets, capable_ + _Of thinking for themselves, and also acting_ + _Discreetly on their own initiative,_ + _Not drilled and herded, yet gregarious--_ + _A wise yet frolicsome community?_ + +SPIRIT IRONIC. + + _What are these "other times" though? I had thought_ + _Those midgets whiled away the vacuous hours_ + _After one war in training for the next._ + _And let me add that my contempt for them_ + _Is not done justice to by Mr. Hardy._ + +SPIRIT SINISTER. + + _Nor mine. And I have reason to believe_ + _Those midgets shone above their average_ + _When we inspected them._ + +A RUMOUR (tactfully intervening). + + _Yet have I heard_ + _(Though not on very good authority)_ + _That once a year they hold a festival_ + _And thereat all with one accord unite_ + _In brotherly affection and good will._ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel). + + _Can you authenticate this Rumour?_ + +RECORDING ANGEL. + + _Such festival they have, and call it "Christmas."_ + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Then let us go and reconsider them_ + _Next "Christmas."_ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to Recording Angel). + + _When is that?_ + +RECORDING ANGEL (consults terrene calendar). + + _This day three weeks._ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _On that day we will re-traject ourselves._ + _Meanwhile, 'twere well we should be posted up_ + _In details of this feast._ + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES (to Recording Angel). + + _Aye, tell us more._ + +RECORDING ANGEL. + + _I fancy you could best find what you need_ + _In the Complete Works of the late Charles Dickens._ + _I have them here._ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _Read them aloud to us._ + + The Recording Angel reads aloud the Complete Works of Charles + Dickens. + +RECORDING ANGEL (closing "Edwin Drood"). + + _'Tis Christmas Morning._ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _Then must we away._ + +SEMICHORUS I. OF YEARS (aerial music). + + _'Tis time we press on to revisit_ + _That dear little planet,_ + _To-day of all days to be seen at_ + _Its brightest and best._ + + _Now holly and mistletoe girdle_ + _Its halls and its homesteads,_ + _And every biped is beaming_ + _With peace and good will._ + +SEMICHORUS II. + + _With good will and why not with free will?_ + _If clearly the former_ + _May nest in those bosoms, then why not_ + _The latter as well?_ + _Let's lay down no laws to trip up on,_ + _Our way is in darkness,_ + _And not but by groping unhampered_ + _We win to the light._ + + The Spirit and Chorus of the Years traject themselves, closely + followed by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits + and Choruses Sinister and Ironic, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, + and the Recording Angel. + + There is the sound of a rushing wind. The Solar System is seen + for a few instants growing larger and larger--a whorl of dark, + vastening orbs careering round the sun. All but one of these + is lost to sight. The convex seas and continents of our planet + spring into prominence. + + The Spirit of Mr. Hardy is visible as a grey transparency + swiftly interpenetrating the brain of the Spirit of the Years, + and urging him in a particular direction, to a particular + point. + + The Aerial Visitants now hover in mid-air on the outskirts of + Casterbridge, Wessex, immediately above the County Gaol. + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _First let us watch the revelries within_ + _This well-kept castle whose great walls connote_ + _A home of the pre-eminently blest._ + + The roof of the gaol becomes transparent, and the whole + interior is revealed, like that of a beehive under glass. + Warders are marching mechanically round the corridors of + white stone, unlocking and clanging open the iron doors of + the cells. Out from every door steps a convict, who stands at + attention, his face to the wall. + + At a word of command the convicts fall into gangs of twelve, + and march down the stone stairs, out into the yard, where they + line up against the walls. + + Another word of command, and they file mechanically, but not + more mechanically than their warders, into the Chapel. + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Enough!_ + +SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC. + + _'Tis more than even we can bear._ + +SPIRIT OF THE PITIES. + + _Would we had never come!_ + +SPIRIT OF THE YEARS. + + _Brother, 'tis well_ + _To have faced a truth however hideous,_ + _However humbling. Gladly I discipline_ + _My pride by taking back those pettish doubts_ + _Cast on the soundness of the central thought_ + _In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right._ + _Automata these animalculae_ + _Are--puppets, pitiable jackaclocks._ + _Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet_ + _There's no free will, only obedience_ + _To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry_ + _That justifies the horridest pessimism._ + _Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat_ + _A quick but not disorderly retreat._ + + He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his + Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the + Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, + Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS + +_By_ + +FR*NK H*RR*S + + +That Shakespeare hated Christmas--hated it with a venom utterly +alien to the gentle heart in him--I take to be a proposition that +establishes itself automatically. If there is one thing lucid-obvious +in the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare's unconquerable loathing +of Christmas. The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it is +proven. With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully. I will meet them +on their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by shedding +there the last drop of the water that flows through their veins. + +If you find, in the works of a poet whose instinct is to write about +everything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touched +hardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some good +reason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one of +the divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off at +a tangent from his main theme to unpack his heart in words about some +frivolous-small irrelevance that had come into his head. If it could +be shown that he never mentioned Christmas, we should have proof +presumptive that he consciously avoided doing so. But if the fact +is that he did mention it now and again, but in grudging fashion, +without one spark of illumination--he, the arch-illuminator of all +things--then we have proof positive that he detested it. + +I see Dryasdust thumbing his Concordance. Let my memory save him the +trouble. I will reel him off the one passage in which Shakespeare +spoke of Christmas in words that rise to the level of mediocrity. + + Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes + Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, + The bird of dawning singeth all night long: + And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; + The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, + No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, + So hallowed and so gracious is the time. + +So says Marcellus at Elsinore. This is the best our Shakespeare can +vamp up for the birthday of the Man with whom he of all men had the +most in common. And Dryasdust, eternally unable to distinguish chalk +from cheese, throws up his hands in admiration of the marvellous +poetry. If Dryasdust had written it, it would more than pass +muster. But as coming from Shakespeare, how feeble-cold--aye, +and sulky-sinister! The greatest praiser the world will ever +know!--and all he can find in his heart to sing of Christmas is a +stringing-together of old women's superstitions! Again and again he +has painted Winter for us as it never has been painted since--never +by Goethe even, though Goethe in more than one of the _Winter-Lieder_ +touched the hem of his garment. There was every external reason why +he should sing, as only he could have sung, of Christmas. The Queen +set great store by it. She and her courtiers celebrated it year by +year with lusty-pious unction. And thus the ineradicable snob in +Shakespeare had the most potent of all inducements to honour the feast +with the full power that was in him. But he did not, because he would +not. What is the key to the enigma? + +For many years I hunted it vainly. The second time that I met Carlyle +I tried to enlist his sympathy and aid. He sat pensive for a while and +then said that it seemed to him "a goose-quest." I replied, "You have +always a phrase for everything, Tom, but always the wrong one." He +covered his face, and presently, peering at me through his gnarled +fingers, said "Mon, ye're recht." I discussed the problem with Renan, +with Emerson, with Disraeli, also with Cetewayo--poor Cetewayo, best +and bravest of men, but intellectually a Professor, like the rest of +them. It was borne in on me that if I were to win to the heart of the +mystery I must win alone. + +The solution, when suddenly it dawned on me, was so simple-stark that +I was ashamed of the ingenious-clever ways I had been following. (I +learned then--and perhaps it is the one lesson worth the learning of +any man--that truth may be approached only through the logic of the +heart. For the heart is eye and ear, and all excellent understanding +abides there.) On Christmas Day, assuredly, Anne Hathaway was born. + +In what year she was born I do not know nor care. I take it she +was not less than thirty-eight when she married Shakespeare. This, +however, is sheer conjecture, and in no way important-apt to our +inquiry. It is not the year, but the day of the year, that matters. +All we need bear in mind is that on Christmas Day that woman was born +into the world. + +If there be any doubting Thomas among my readers, let him not +be afraid to utter himself. I am (with the possible exception of +Shakespeare) the gentlest man that ever breathed, and I do but bid him +study the Plays in the light I have given him. The first thing that +will strike him is that Shakespeare's thoughts turned constantly to +the birthdays of all his Fitton-heroines, as a lover's thoughts always +do turn to the moment at which the loved one first saw the light. +"There was a star danced, and under that" was born Beatrice. Juliet +was born "on Lammas Eve." Marina tells us she derived her name from +the chance of her having been "born at sea." And so on, throughout the +whole gamut of women in whom Mary Fitton was bodied forth to us. But +mark how carefully Shakespeare says never a word about the birthdays +of the various shrews and sluts in whom, again and again, he gave +us his wife. When and were was born Queen Constance, the scold? And +Bianca? And Doll Tearsheet, and "Greasy Jane" in the song, and all +the rest of them? It is of the last importance that we should know. +Yet never a hint is vouchsafed us in the text. It is clear that +Shakespeare cannot bring himself to write about Anne Hathaway's +birthday--will not stain his imagination by thinking of it. That is +entirely human-natural. But why should he loathe Christmas Day itself +with precisely the same loathing? There is but one answer--and that +inevitable-final. The two days were one. + +Some soul-secrets are so terrible that the most hardened realist of us +may well shrink from laying them bare. Such a soul-secret was this of +Shakespeare's. Think of it! The gentlest spirit that ever breathed, +raging and fuming endlessly in impotent-bitter spleen against the +prettiest of festivals! Here is a spectacle so tragic-piteous that, +try as we will, we shall not put it from us. And it is well that we +should not, for in our plenary compassion we shall but learn to love +the man the more. + + [Mr. Fr*nk H*rr*s is very much a man of genius, and I should + be sorry if this adumbration of his manner made any one + suppose that I do not rate his writings about Shakespeare + higher than those of all "the Professors" together.--M.B.] + + + + +SCRUTS + +_By_ + +ARN*LD B*NN*TT + + +I. + +Emily Wrackgarth stirred the Christmas pudding till her right arm +began to ache. But she did not cease for that. She stirred on till her +right arm grew so numb that it might have been the right arm of some +girl at the other end of Bursley. And yet something deep down in her +whispered "It is _your_ right arm! And you can do what you like with +it!" + +She did what she liked with it. Relentlessly she kept it moving till +it reasserted itself as the arm of Emily Wrackgarth, prickling and +tingling as with red-hot needles in every tendon from wrist to elbow. +And still Emily Wrackgarth hardened her heart. + +Presently she saw the spoon no longer revolving, but wavering +aimlessly in the midst of the basin. Ridiculous! This must be seen +to! In the down of dark hairs that connected her eyebrows there was a +marked deepening of that vertical cleft which, visible at all times, +warned you that here was a young woman not to be trifled with. Her +brain despatched to her hand a peremptory message--which miscarried. +The spoon wabbled as though held by a baby. Emily knew that she +herself as a baby had been carried into this very kitchen to stir +the Christmas pudding. Year after year, as she grew up, she had been +allowed to stir it "for luck." And those, she reflected, were the only +cookery lessons she ever got. How like Mother! + +Mrs. Wrackgarth had died in the past year, of a complication of +ailments.[8] Emily still wore on her left shoulder that small tag of +crape which is as far as the Five Towns go in the way of mourning. Her +father had died in the year previous to that, of a still more curious +and enthralling complication of ailments.[9] Jos, his son, carried +on the Wrackgarth Works, and Emily kept house for Jos. She with her +own hand had made this pudding. But for her this pudding would not +have been. Fantastic! Utterly incredible! And yet so it was. She was +grown-up. She was mistress of the house. She could make or unmake +puddings at will. And yet she was Emily Wrackgarth. Which was absurd. + +[Footnote 8: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth," pp. 345-482.] + +[Footnote 9: See "The History of Sarah Wrackgarth," pp. 231-344.] + +She would not try to explain, to reconcile. She abandoned herself to +the exquisite mysteries of existence. And yet in her abandonment she +kept a sharp look-out on herself, trying fiercely to make head or +tail of her nature. She thought herself a fool. But the fact that +she thought so was for her a proof of adult sapience. Odd! She gave +herself up. And yet it was just by giving herself up that she seemed +to glimpse sometimes her own inwardness. And these bleak revelations +saddened her. But she savoured her sadness. It was the wine of life +to her. And for her sadness she scorned herself, and in her conscious +scorn she recovered her self-respect. + +It is doubtful whether the people of southern England have even yet +realised how much introspection there is going on all the time in the +Five Towns. + +Visible from the window of the Wrackgarths' parlour was that colossal +statue of Commerce which rears itself aloft at the point where Oodge +Lane is intersected by Blackstead Street. Commerce, executed in glossy +Doultonware by some sculptor or sculptors unknown, stands pointing her +thumb over her shoulder towards the chimneys of far Hanbridge. When I +tell you that the circumference of that thumb is six inches, and the +rest to scale, you will understand that the statue is one of the prime +glories of Bursley. There were times when Emily Wrackgarth seemed to +herself as vast and as lustrously impressive as it. There were other +times when she seemed to herself as trivial and slavish as one of +those performing fleas she had seen at the Annual Ladies' Evening Fête +organised by the Bursley Mutual Burial Club. Extremist! + +She was now stirring the pudding with her left hand. The ingredients +had already been mingled indistinguishably in that rich, undulating +mass of tawniness which proclaims perfection. But Emily was determined +to give her left hand, not less than her right, what she called "a +doing." Emily was like that. + +At mid-day, when her brother came home from the Works, she was still +at it. + +"Brought those scruts with you?" she asked, without looking up. + +"That's a fact," he said, dipping his hand into the sagging pocket of +his coat. + +It is perhaps necessary to explain what scruts are. In the daily +output of every potbank there are a certain proportion of flawed +vessels. These are cast aside by the foreman, with a lordly gesture, +and in due course are hammered into fragments. These fragments, which +are put to various uses, are called scruts; and one of the uses they +are put to is a sentimental one. The dainty and luxurious Southerner +looks to find in his Christmas pudding a wedding-ring, a gold thimble, +a threepenny-bit, or the like. To such fal-lals the Five Towns would +say fie. A Christmas pudding in the Five Towns contains nothing but +suet, flour, lemon-peel, cinnamon, brandy, almonds, raisins--and +two or three scruts. There is a world of poetry, beauty, romance, in +scruts--though you have to have been brought up on them to appreciate +it. Scruts have passed into the proverbial philosophy of the district. +"Him's a pudden with more scruts than raisins to 'm" is a criticism +not infrequently heard. It implies respect, even admiration. Of Emily +Wrackgarth herself people often said, in reference to her likeness to +her father, "Her's a scrut o' th' owd basin." + +Jos had emptied out from his pocket on to the table a good three dozen +of scruts. Emily laid aside her spoon, rubbed the palms of her hands +on the bib of her apron, and proceeded to finger these scruts with the +air of a connoisseur, rejecting one after another. The pudding was +a small one, designed merely for herself and Jos, with remainder to +"the girl"; so that it could hardly accommodate more than two or three +scruts. Emily knew well that one scrut is as good as another. Yet she +did not want her brother to feel that anything selected by him would +necessarily pass muster with her. For his benefit she ostentatiously +wrinkled her nose. + +"By the by," said Jos, "you remember Albert Grapp? I've asked him to +step over from Hanbridge and help eat our snack on Christmas Day." + +Emily gave Jos one of her looks. "You've asked that Mr. Grapp?" + +"No objection, I hope? He's not a bad sort. And he's considered a bit +of a ladies' man, you know." + +She gathered up all the scruts and let them fall in a rattling shower +on the exiguous pudding. Two or three fell wide of the basin. These +she added. + +"Steady on!" cried Jos. "What's that for?" + +"That's for your guest," replied his sister. "And if you think you're +going to palm me off on to him, or on to any other young fellow, +you're a fool, Jos Wrackgarth." + +The young man protested weakly, but she cut him short. + +"Don't think," she said, "I don't know what you've been after, just of +late. Cracking up one young sawny and then another on the chance of me +marrying him! I never heard of such goings on. But here I am, and here +I'll stay, as sure as my name's Emily Wrackgarth, Jos Wrackgarth!" + +She was the incarnation of the adorably feminine. She was exquisitely +vital. She exuded at every pore the pathos of her young undirected +force. It is difficult to write calmly about her. For her, in another +age, ships would have been launched and cities besieged. But brothers +are a race apart, and blind. It is a fact that Jos would have been +glad to see his sister "settled"--preferably in one of the other four +Towns. + +She took up the spoon and stirred vigorously. The scruts grated and +squeaked together around the basin, while the pudding feebly wormed +its way up among them. + + +II. + +Albert Grapp, ladies' man though he was, was humble of heart. Nobody +knew this but himself. Not one of his fellow clerks in Clither's +Bank knew it. The general theory in Hanbridge was "Him's got a stiff +opinion o' hisself." But this arose from what was really a sign of +humility in him. He made the most of himself. He had, for instance, a +way of his own in the matter of dressing. He always wore a voluminous +frock-coat, with a pair of neatly-striped vicuna trousers, which he +placed every night under his mattress, thus preserving in perfection +the crease down the centre of each. His collar was of the highest, +secured in front with an aluminium stud, to which was attached by a +patent loop a natty bow of dove-coloured sateen. He had two caps, +one of blue serge, the other of shepherd's plaid. These he wore on +alternate days. He wore them in a way of his own--well back from his +forehead, so as not to hide his hair, and with the peak behind. The +peak made a sort of half-moon over the back of his collar. Through a +fault of his tailor, there was a yawning gap between the back of his +collar and the collar of his coat. Whenever he shook his head, the +peak of his cap had the look of a live thing trying to investigate +this abyss. Dimly aware of the effect, Albert Grapp shook his head as +seldom as possible. + +On wet days he wore a mackintosh. This, as he did not yet possess a +great-coat, he wore also, but with less glory, on cold days. He had +hoped there might be rain on Christmas morning. But there was no rain. +"Like my luck," he said as he came out of his lodgings and turned +his steps to that corner of Jubilee Avenue from which the +Hanbridge-Bursley trams start every half-hour. + +Since Jos Wrackgarth had introduced him to his sister at the Hanbridge +Oddfellows' Biennial Hop, when he danced two quadrilles with her, he +had seen her but once. He had nodded to her, Five Towns fashion, and +she had nodded back at him, but with a look that seemed to say "You +needn't nod next time you see me. I can get along well enough without +your nods." A frightening girl! And yet her brother had since told him +she seemed "a bit gone, like" on him. Impossible! He, Albert Grapp, +make an impression on the brilliant Miss Wrackgarth! Yet she had sent +him a verbal invite to spend Christmas in her own home. And the time +had come. He was on his way. Incredible that he should arrive! The +tram must surely overturn, or be struck by lightning. And yet no! He +arrived safely. + +The small servant who opened the door gave him another verbal message +from Miss Wrackgarth. It was that he must wipe his feet "well" on the +mat. In obeying this order he experienced a thrill of satisfaction +he could not account for. He must have stood shuffling his boots +vigorously for a full minute. This, he told himself, was life. He, +Albert Grapp, was alive. And the world was full of other men, all +alive; and yet, because they were not doing Miss Wrackgarth's bidding, +none of them really lived. He was filled with a vague melancholy. But +his melancholy pleased him. + +In the parlour he found Jos awaiting him. The table was laid for +three. + +"So you're here, are you?" said the host, using the Five Towns +formula. "Emily's in the kitchen," he added. "Happen she'll be here +directly." + +"I hope she's tol-lol-ish?" asked Albert. + +"She is," said Jos. "But don't you go saying that to her. She doesn't +care about society airs and graces. You'll make no headway if you +aren't blunt." + +"Oh, right you are," said Albert, with the air of a man who knew his +way about. + +A moment later Emily joined them, still wearing her kitchen apron. "So +you're here, are you?" she said, but did not shake hands. The servant +had followed her in with the tray, and the next few seconds were +occupied in the disposal of the beef and trimmings. + +The meal began, Emily carving. The main thought of a man less +infatuated than Albert Grapp would have been "This girl can't cook. +And she'll never learn to." The beef, instead of being red and brown, +was pink and white. Uneatable beef! And yet he relished it more than +anything he had ever tasted. This beef was her own handiwork. Thus +it was because she had made it so.... He warily refrained from +complimenting her, but the idea of a second helping obsessed him. + +"Happen I could do with a bit more, like," he said. + +Emily hacked off the bit more and jerked it on to the plate he had +held out to her. + +"Thanks," he said; and then, as Emily's lip curled, and Jos gave him +a warning kick under the table, he tried to look as if he had said +nothing. + +Only when the second course came on did he suspect that the meal was a +calculated protest against his presence. This a Christmas pudding? The +litter of fractured earthenware was hardly held together by the suet +and raisins. All his pride of manhood--and there was plenty of pride +mixed up with Albert Grapp's humility--dictated a refusal to touch +that pudding. Yet he soon found himself touching it, though gingerly, +with his spoon and fork. + +In the matter of dealing with scruts there are two schools--the old +and the new. The old school pushes its head well over its plate and +drops the scrut straight from its mouth. The new school emits the +scrut into the fingers of its left hand and therewith deposits it on +the rim of the plate. Albert noticed that Emily was of the new school. +But might she not despise as affectation in him what came natural to +herself? On the other hand, if he showed himself as a prop of the old +school, might she not set her face the more stringently against him? +The chances were that whichever course he took would be the wrong one. + +It was then that he had an inspiration--an idea of the sort that comes +to a man once in his life and finds him, likely as not, unable to put +it into practice. Albert was not sure he could consummate this idea of +his. He had indisputably fine teeth--"a proper mouthful of grinders" +in local phrase. But would they stand the strain he was going to +impose on them? He could but try them. Without a sign of nervousness +he raised his spoon, with one scrut in it, to his mouth. This scrut he +put between two of his left-side molars, bit hard on it, and--eternity +of that moment!--felt it and heard it snap in two. Emily also heard +it. He was conscious that at sound of the percussion she started +forward and stared at him. But he did not look at her. Calmly, +systematically, with gradually diminishing crackles, he reduced that +scrut to powder, and washed the powder down with a sip of beer. While +he dealt with the second scrut he talked to Jos about the Borough +Council's proposal to erect an electric power-station on the site of +the old gas-works down Hillport way. He was aware of a slight abrasion +inside his left cheek. No matter. He must be more careful. There were +six scruts still to be negotiated. He knew that what he was doing was +a thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thing +that would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet he +kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, +he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so +he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a +first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he +had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland's +proposal to drive a tunnel under the Knype Canal so as to link up the +main-line with the Critchworth and Suddleford loop-line. Jos was too +amazed to put in a word. Jos sat merely gaping--a gape that merged by +imperceptible degrees into a grin. Presently he ceased to watch his +guest. He sat watching his sister. + +Not once did Albert himself glance in her direction. She was just +a dim silhouette on the outskirts of his vision. But there she was, +unmoving, and he could feel the fixture of her unseen eyes. The time +was at hand when he would have to meet those eyes. Would he flinch? +Was he master of himself? + +The last scrut was powder. No temporising! He jerked his glass to his +mouth. A moment later, holding out his plate to her, he looked Emily +full in the eyes. They were Emily's eyes, but not hers alone. They +were collective eyes--that was it! They were the eyes of stark, +staring womanhood. Her face had been dead white, but now suddenly +up from her throat, over her cheeks, through the down between her +eyebrows, went a rush of colour, up over her temples, through the very +parting of her hair. + +"Happen," he said without a quaver in his voice, "I'll have a bit +more, like." + +She flung her arms forward on the table and buried her face in them. +It was a gesture wild and meek. It was the gesture foreseen and yet +incredible. It was recondite, inexplicable, and yet obvious. It was +the only thing to be done--and yet, by gum, she had done it. + +Her brother had risen from his seat and was now at the door. "Think +I'll step round to the Works," he said, "and see if they banked up +that furnace aright." + + NOTE.--_The author has in preparation a series of volumes + dealing with the life of Albert and Emily Grapp._ + + + + +ENDEAVOUR + +_By_ + +J*HN G*LSW*RTHY + + +The dawn of Christmas Day found London laid out in a shroud of snow. +Like a body wasted by diseases that had triumphed over it at last, +London lay stark and still now, beneath a sky that was as the closed +leaden shell of a coffin. It was what is called an old-fashioned +Christmas. + +Nothing seemed to be moving except the Thames, whose embanked waters +flowed on sullenly in their eternal act of escape to the sea. All +along the wan stretch of Cheyne Walk the thin trees stood exanimate, +with not a breath of wind to stir the snow that pied their +soot-blackened branches. Here and there on the muffled ground lay a +sparrow that had been frozen in the night, its little claws sticking +up heavenward. But here and there also those tinier adventurers of the +London air, smuts, floated vaguely and came to rest on the snow--signs +that in the seeming death of civilisation some housemaids at least +survived, and some fires had been lit. + +One of these fires, crackling in the grate of one of those +dining-rooms which look fondly out on the river and tolerantly across +to Battersea, was being watched by the critical eye of an aged +canary. The cage in which this bird sat was hung in the middle of +the bow-window. It contained three perches, and also a pendent hoop. +The tray that was its floor had just been cleaned and sanded. In +the embrasure to the right was a fresh supply of hemp-seed; in the +embrasure to the left the bath-tub had just been refilled with clear +water. Stuck between the bars was a large sprig of groundsel. Yet, +though all was thus in order, the bird did not eat nor drink, nor did +he bathe. With his back to Battersea, and his head sunk deep between +his little sloping shoulders, he watched the fire. The windows had for +a while been opened, as usual, to air the room for him; and the fire +had not yet mitigated the chill. It was not his custom to bathe at so +inclement an hour; and his appetite for food and drink, less keen than +it had once been, required to be whetted by example--he never broke +his fast before his master and mistress broke theirs. Time had been +when, for sheer joy in life, he fluttered from perch to perch, though +there were none to watch him, and even sang roulades, though there +were none to hear. He would not do these things nowadays save at +the fond instigation of Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Berridge. The housemaid +who ministered to his cage, the parlourmaid who laid the Berridges' +breakfast table, sometimes tried to incite him to perform for their +own pleasure. But the sense of caste, strong in his protuberant little +bosom, steeled him against these advances. + +While the breakfast-table was being laid, he heard a faint tap against +the window-pane. Turning round, he perceived on the sill a creature +like to himself, but very different--a creature who, despite the +pretensions of a red waistcoat in the worst possible taste, belonged +evidently to the ranks of the outcast and the disinherited. In +previous winters the sill had been strewn every morning with +bread-crumbs. This winter, no bread-crumbs had been vouchsafed; and +the canary, though he did not exactly understand why this was so, +was glad that so it was. He had felt that his poor relations took +advantage of the Berridges' kindness. Two or three of them, as +pensioners, might not have been amiss. But they came in swarms, +and they gobbled their food in a disgusting fashion, not trifling +coquettishly with it as birds should. The reason for this, the canary +knew, was that they were hungry; and of that he was sorry. He hated +to think how much destitution there was in the world; and he could +not help thinking about it when samples of it were thrust under +his notice. That was the principal reason why he was glad that the +window-sill was strewn no more and seldom visited. + +He would much rather not have seen this solitary applicant. The two +eyes fixed on his made him feel very uncomfortable. And yet, for fear +of seeming to be outfaced, he did not like to look away. + +The subdued clangour of the gong, sounded for breakfast, gave him an +excuse for turning suddenly round and watching the door of the room. + +A few moments later there came to him a faint odour of Harris tweed, +followed immediately by the short, somewhat stout figure of his +master--a man whose mild, fresh, pink, round face seemed to find +salvation, as it were, at the last moment, in a neatly-pointed auburn +beard. + +Adrian Berridge paused on the threshold, as was his wont, with closed +eyes and dilated nostrils, enjoying the aroma of complex freshness +which the dining-room had at this hour. Pathetically a creature of +habit, he liked to savour the various scents, sweet or acrid, that +went to symbolise for him the time and the place. Here were the +immediate scents of dry toast, of China tea of napery fresh from +the wash, together with that vague, super-subtle scent which boiled +eggs give out through their unbroken shells. And as a permanent base +to these there was the scent of much-polished Chippendale, and of +bees'-waxed parquet, and of Persian rugs. To-day, moreover, crowning +the composition, there was the delicate pungency of the holly that +topped the Queen Anne mirror and the Mantegna prints. + +Coming forward into the room, Mr. Berridge greeted the canary. +"Well, Amber, old fellow," he said, "a happy Christmas to you!" +Affectionately he pushed the tip of a plump white finger between the +bars. "Tweet!" he added. + +"Tweet!" answered the bird, hopping to and fro along his perch. + +"Quite an old-fashioned Christmas, Amber!" said Mr. Berridge, turning +to scan the weather. At sight of the robin, a little spasm of pain +contracted his face. A shine of tears came to his prominent pale eyes, +and he turned quickly away. Just at that moment, heralded by a slight +fragrance of old lace and of that peculiar, almost unseizable odour +that uncut turquoises have, Mrs. Berridge appeared. + +"What is the matter, Adrian?" she asked quickly. She glanced sideways +into the Queen Anne mirror, her hand fluttering, like a pale moth, to +her hair, which she always wore braided in a fashion she had derived +from Pollaiuolo's St. Ursula. + +"Nothing, Jacynth--nothing," he answered with a lightness that carried +no conviction; and he made behind his back a gesture to frighten away +the robin. + +"Amber isn't unwell, is he?" She came quickly to the cage. Amber +executed for her a roulade of great sweetness. His voice had not +perhaps the fullness for which it had been noted in earlier years; +but the art with which he managed it was as exquisite as ever. It was +clear to his audience that the veteran artist was hale and hearty. + +But Jacynth, relieved on one point, had a misgiving on another. "This +groundsel doesn't look very fresh, does it?" she murmured, withdrawing +the sprig from the bars. She rang the bell, and when the servant came +in answer to it said, "Oh Jenny, will you please bring up another +piece of groundsel for Master Amber? I don't think this one is quite +fresh." + +This formal way of naming the canary to the servants always jarred on +her principles and on those of her husband. They tried to regard their +servants as essentially equals of themselves, and lately had given +Jenny strict orders to leave off calling them "Sir" and "Ma'am," and +to call them simply "Adrian" and "Jacynth." But Jenny, after one or +two efforts that ended in faint giggles, had reverted to the crude +old nomenclature--as much to the relief as to the mortification of the +Berridges. They did, it is true, discuss the possibility of redressing +the balance by calling the parlourmaid "Miss." But, when it came to +the point, their lips refused this office. And conversely their lips +persisted in the social prefix to the bird's name. + +Somehow that anomaly seemed to them symbolic of their lives. Both of +them yearned so wistfully to live always in accordance to the nature +of things. And this, they felt, ought surely to be the line of least +resistance. In the immense difficulties it presented, and in their +constant failures to surmount these difficulties, they often wondered +whether the nature of things might not be, after all, something other +than what they thought it. Again and again it seemed to be in as +direct conflict with duty as with inclination; so that they were +driven to wonder also whether what they conceived to be duty were +not also a mirage--a marsh-light leading them on to disaster. + +The fresh groundsel was brought in while Jacynth was pouring out the +tea. She rose and took it to the cage; and it was then that she too +saw the robin, still fluttering on the sill. With a quick instinct she +knew that Adrian had seen it--knew what had brought that look to his +face. She went and, bending over him, laid a hand on his shoulder. +The disturbance of her touch caused the tweed to give out a tremendous +volume of scent, making her feel a little dizzy. + +"Adrian," she faltered, "mightn't we for once--it is Christmas +Day--mightn't we, just to-day, sprinkle some bread-crumbs?" + +He rose from the table, and leaned against the mantelpiece, looking +down at the fire. She watched him tensely. At length, "Oh Jacynth," he +groaned, "don't--don't tempt me." + +"But surely, dear, surely--" + +"Jacynth, don't you remember that long talk we had last winter, after +the annual meeting of the Feathered Friends' League, and how we agreed +that those sporadic doles could do no real good--must even degrade the +birds who received them--and that we had no right to meddle in what +ought to be done by collective action of the State?" + +"Yes, and--oh my dear, I do still agree, with all my heart. But if the +State will do nothing--nothing--" + +"It won't, it daren't, go on doing nothing, unless we encourage it to +do so. Don't you see, Jacynth, it is just because so many people take +it on themselves to feed a few birds here and there that the State +feels it can afford to shirk the responsibility?" + +"All that is fearfully true. But just now--Adrian, the look in that +robin's eyes--" + +Berridge covered his own eyes, as though to blot out from his mind the +memory of that look. But Jacynth was not silenced. She felt herself +dragged on by her sense of duty to savour, and to make her husband +savour, the full bitterness that the situation could yield for +them both. "Adrian," she said, "a fearful thought came to me. +Suppose--suppose it had been Amber!" + +Even before he shuddered at the thought, he raised his finger to his +lips, glancing round at the cage. It was clear that Amber had not +overheard Jacynth's remark, for he threw back his head and uttered one +of his blithest trills. Adrian, thus relieved, was free to shudder at +the thought just suggested. + +"Sometimes," murmured Jacynth, "I wonder if we, holding the views we +hold, are justified in keeping Amber." + +"Ah, dear, we took him in our individualistic days. We cannot +repudiate him now. It wouldn't be fair. Besides, you see, he isn't +here on a basis of mere charity. He's not a parasite, but an artist. +He gives us of his art." + +"Yes, dear, I know. But you remember our doubts about the position of +artists in the community--whether the State ought to sanction them at +all." + +"True. But we cannot visit those doubts on our old friend yonder, can +we, dear? At the same time, I admit that when--when--Jacynth, if +ever anything happens to Amber, we shall perhaps not be justified in +keeping another bird." + +"Don't, please don't talk of such things." She moved to the window. +Snow, a delicate white powder, was falling on the coverlet of snow. + +Outside, on the sill, the importunate robin lay supine, his little +heart beating no more behind the shabby finery of his breast, but +his glazing eyes half-open as though even in death he were still +questioning. Above him and all around him brooded the genius of +infinity, dispassionate, inscrutable, grey. + +Jacynth turned and mutely beckoned her husband to the window. + +They stood there, these two, gazing silently down. + +Presently Jacynth said: "Adrian, are you sure that we, you and I, for +all our theories, and all our efforts, aren't futile?" + +"No, dear. Sometimes I am not sure. But--there's a certain comfort in +not being sure. To die for what one knows to be true, as many saints +have done--that is well. But to live, as many of us do nowadays, in +service of what may, for aught we know, be only a half-truth or not +true at all--this seems to me nobler still." + +"Because it takes more out of us?" + +"Because it takes more out of us." + +Standing between the live bird and the dead, they gazed across +the river, over the snow-covered wharves, over the dim, slender +chimneys from which no smoke came, into the grey-black veil of the +distance. And it seemed to them that the genius of infinity did not +know--perhaps did not even care--whether they were futile or not, +nor how much and to what purpose, if to any purpose, they must go +on striving. + + + +CHRISTMAS + +_By_ + +G.S. STR**T + + +One likes it or not. This said, there is plaguey little else to say of +Christmas, and I (though I doubt my sentiments touch you not at all) +would rather leave that little unsaid. Did I confess a distaste for +Christmas, I should incur your enmity. But if I find it, as I protest +I do, rather agreeable than otherwise, why should I spoil my pleasure +by stringing vain words about it? Swift and the broomstick--yes. But +that essay was done at the behest of a clever woman, and to annoy the +admirers of Robert Boyle. Besides, it was hardly--or do you think it +was?--worth the trouble of doing it. There was no trouble involved? +Possibly. But I am not the Dean. And anyhow the fact that he never did +anything of the kind again may be taken to imply that he would not be +bothered. So would not I, if I had a deanery. + +That is an hypothesis I am tempted to pursue. I should like to fill +my allotted space before reaching the tiresome theme I have set +myself ... A deanery, the cawing of rooks, their effect on the nervous +system, Trollope's delineations of deans, the advantages of the +Mid-Victorian novel ... But your discursive essayist is a nuisance. +Best come to the point. The bore is in finding a point to come to. +Besides, the chances are that any such point will have long ago been +worn blunt by a score of more active seekers. Alas! + +Since I wrote the foregoing words, I have been out for a long walk, +in search of inspiration, through the streets of what is called the +West End. Snobbishly so called. Why draw these crude distinctions? We +all know that Mayfair happens to lie a few miles further west than +Whitechapel. It argues a lack of breeding to go on calling attention +to the fact. If the people of Whitechapel were less beautiful or less +well-mannered or more ignorant than we, there might be some excuse. +But they are not so. True, themselves talk about the East End, but +this only makes the matter worse. To a sensitive ear their phrase +has a ring of ironic humility that jars not less than our own coarse +boastfulness. Heaven knows they have a right to be ironic, and who +shall blame them for exercising it? All the same, this sort of thing +worries me horribly. + +I said that I found Christmas rather agreeable than otherwise. But I +was speaking as one accustomed to live mostly in the past. The walk I +have just taken, refreshing in itself, has painfully reminded me that +I cannot hit it off with the present. My life is in the later days of +the eighteenth and the earlier days of the nineteenth century. This +twentieth affair is as a vision, dimly foreseen at odd moments, and +put from me with a slight shudder. My actual Christmases are spent +(say) in Holland House, which has but recently been built. Little +Charles Fox is allowed by his father to join us for the earlier stages +of dessert. I am conscious of patting him on the head and predicting +for him a distinguished future. A very bright little fellow, with +his father's eyes! Or again, I am down at Newstead. Byron is in his +wildest spirits, a shade too uproarious. I am glad to escape into +the park and stroll a quiet hour on the arm of Mr. Hughes Ball. Years +pass. The approach of Christmas finds one loth to leave one's usual +haunts. One is on one's way to one's club to dine with Postumus and +dear old "Wigsby" Pendennis, quietly at one's consecrated table near +the fireplace. As one is crossing St. James's Street an ear-piercing +grunt causes one to reel back just in time to be not run over by +a motor-car. Inside is a woman who scowls down at one through the +window--"Serve you right if we'd gone over you." Yes, I often have +these awakenings to fact--or rather these provisions of what life +might be if I survived into the twentieth century. Alas! + +I have mentioned that woman in the motor-car because she is germane +to my theme. She typifies the vices of the modern Christmas. For her, +by the absurd accident of her wealth, there is no distinction between +people who have not motor-cars and people who might as well be run +over. But I wrong her. If we others were all run over, there would be +no one before whom she could flaunt her loathsome air of superiority. +And what would she do then, poor thing? I doubt she would die of +boredom--painfully, one hopes. In the same way, if the shop-keepers +in Bond Street knew there was no one who could not afford to buy the +things in their windows, there would be an end to the display that +makes those windows intolerable (to you and me) during the month of +December. I had often suspected that the things there were not meant +to be bought by people who could buy them, but merely to irritate the +rest. This afternoon I was sure of it. Not in one window anything +a sane person would give to any one not an idiot, but everywhere a +general glossy grin out at people who are not plutocrats. This sort +of thing lashes me to ungovernable fury. The lion is roused, and I +recognise in myself a born leader of men. Be so good as to smash those +windows for me. + +One does not like to think that Christmas has been snapped up, docked +of its old-world kindliness, and pressed into the service of an odious +ostentation. But so it has. Alas! The thought of Father Christmas +trudging through the snow to the homes of gentle and simple alike +(forgive that stupid, snobbish phrase) was agreeable. But Father +Christmas in red plush breeches, lounging on the doorstep of Sir +Gorgius Midas--one averts one's eyes. + +I have--now I come to think of it--another objection to the modern +Christmas. It would be affectation to pretend not to know that +there are many Jews living in England, and in London especially. I +have always had a deep respect for that race, their distinction in +intellect and in character. Being not one of them, I may in their +behalf put a point which themselves would be the last to suggest. I +hope they will acquit me of impertinence in doing this. You, in your +turn, must acquit me of sentimentalism. The Jews are a minority, and +as such must take their chances. But may not a majority refrain from +pressing its rights to the utmost? It is well that we should celebrate +Christmas heartily, and all that. But we could do so without an +emphasis that seems to me, in the circumstances, 'tother side good +taste. "Good taste" is a hateful phrase. But it escaped me in the heat +of the moment. Alas! + + + + +THE FEAST + +_By_ + +J*S*PH C*NR*D + + +The hut in which slept the white man was on a clearing between the +forest and the river. Silence, the silence murmurous and unquiet of a +tropical night, brooded over the hut that, baked through by the sun, +sweated a vapour beneath the cynical light of the stars. Mahamo lay +rigid and watchful at the hut's mouth. In his upturned eyes, and along +the polished surface of his lean body black and immobile, the stars +were reflected, creating an illusion of themselves who are illusions. + +The roofs of the congested trees, writhing in some kind of agony +private and eternal, made tenebrous and shifty silhouettes against the +sky, like shapes cut out of black paper by a maniac who pushes them +with his thumb this way and that, irritably, on a concave surface of +blue steel. Resin oozed unseen from the upper branches to the trunks +swathed in creepers that clutched and interlocked with tendrils +venomous, frantic and faint. Down below, by force of habit, the +lush herbage went through the farce of growth--that farce old and +screaming, whose trite end is decomposition. + +Within the hut the form of the white man, corpulent and pale, was +covered with a mosquito-net that was itself illusory like everything +else, only more so. Flying squadrons of mosquitoes inside its meshes +flickered and darted over him, working hard, but keeping silence so +as not to excite him from sleep. Cohorts of yellow ants disputed him +against cohorts of purple ants, the two kinds slaying one another +in thousands. The battle was undecided when suddenly, with no such +warning as it gives in some parts of the world, the sun blazed up over +the horizon, turning night into day, and the insects vanished back +into their camps. + +The white man ground his knuckles into the corners of his eyes, +emitting that snore final and querulous of a middle-aged man awakened +rudely. With a gesture brusque but flaccid he plucked aside the net +and peered around. The bales of cotton cloth, the beads, the brass +wire, the bottles of rum, had not been spirited away in the night. So +far so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now at liberty +to care for his own interests. He regarded himself, passing his hands +over his skin. + +"Hi! Mahamo!" he shouted. "I've been eaten up." + +The islander, with one sinuous motion, sprang from the ground, through +the mouth of the hut. Then, after a glance, he threw high his hands in +thanks to such good and evil spirits as had charge of his concerns. In +a tone half of reproach, half of apology, he murmured-- + +"You white men sometimes say strange things that deceive the heart." + +"Reach me that ammonia bottle, d'you hear?" answered the white man. +"This is a pretty place you've brought me to!" He took a draught. +"Christmas Day, too! Of all the ---- But I suppose it seems all right +to you, you funny blackamoor, to be here on Christmas Day?" + +"We are here on the day appointed, Mr. Williams. It is a feast-day of +your people?" + +Mr. Williams had lain back, with closed eyes, on his mat. Nostalgia +was doing duty to him for imagination. He was wafted to a bedroom in +Marylebone, where in honour of the Day he lay late dozing, with great +contentment; outside, a slush of snow in the street, the sound of +church-bells; from below a savour of especial cookery. "Yes," he said, +"it's a feast-day of my people." + +"Of mine also," said the islander humbly. + +"Is it though? But they'll do business first?" + +"They must first do that." + +"And they'll bring their ivory with them?" + +"Every man will bring ivory," answered the islander, with a smile +gleaming and wide. + +"How soon'll they be here?" + +"Has not the sun risen? They are on their way." + +"Well, I hope they'll hurry. The sooner we're off this cursed island +of yours the better. Take all those things out," Mr. Williams added, +pointing to the merchandise, "and arrange them--neatly, mind you!" + +In certain circumstances it is right that a man be humoured in +trifles. Mahamo, having borne out the merchandise, arranged it very +neatly. + +While Mr. Williams made his toilet, the sun and the forest, careless +of the doings of white and black men alike, waged their warfare +implacable and daily. The forest from its inmost depths sent forth +perpetually its legions of shadows that fell dead in the instant +of exposure to the enemy whose rays heroic and absurd its outposts +annihilated. There came from those inilluminable depths the equable +rumour of myriads of winged things and crawling things newly roused to +the task of killing and being killed. Thence detached itself, little +by little, an insidious sound of a drum beaten. This sound drew more +near. + +Mr. Williams, issuing from the hut, heard it, and stood gaping towards +it. + +"Is that them?" he asked. + +"That is they," the islander murmured, moving away towards the edge of +the forest. + +Sounds of chanting were a now audible accompaniment to the drum. + +"What's that they're singing?" asked Mr. Williams. + +"They sing of their business," said Mahamo. + +"Oh!" Mr. Williams was slightly shocked. "I'd have thought they'd be +singing of their feast." + +"It is of their feast they sing." + +It has been stated that Mr. Williams was not imaginative. But a few +years of life in climates alien and intemperate had disordered his +nerves. There was that in the rhythms of the hymn which made bristle +his flesh. + +Suddenly, when they were very near, the voices ceased, leaving a +legacy of silence more sinister than themselves. And now the black +spaces between the trees were relieved by bits of white that were the +eyeballs and teeth of Mahamo's brethren. + +"It was of their feast, it was of you, they sang," said Mahamo. + +"Look here," cried Mr. Williams in his voice of a man not to be +trifled with. "Look here, if you've--" + +He was silenced by sight of what seemed to be a young sapling sprung +up from the ground within a yard of him--a young sapling tremulous, +with a root of steel. Then a thread-like shadow skimmed the air, and +another spear came impinging the ground within an inch of his feet. + +As he turned in his flight he saw the goods so neatly arranged at +his orders, and there flashed through him, even in the thick of the +spears, the thought that he would be a grave loss to his employers. +This--for Mr. Williams was, not less than the goods, of a kind easily +replaced--was an illusion. It was the last of Mr. Williams illusions. + + + + +A RECOLLECTION + +_By_ + +EDM*ND G*SSE + + + "And let us strew + Twain wreaths of holly and of yew." + + WALLER. + + +One out of many Christmas Days abides with peculiar vividness in my +memory. In setting down, however clumsily, some slight record of +it, I feel that I shall be discharging a duty not only to the two +disparately illustrious men who made it so very memorable, but also to +all young students of English and Scandinavian literature. My use of +the first person singular, delightful though that pronoun is in the +works of the truly gifted, jars unspeakably on me; but reasons of +space baulk my sober desire to call myself merely the present writer, +or the infatuated go-between, or the cowed and imponderable young +person who was in attendance. + +In the third week of December, 1878, taking the opportunity of a brief +and undeserved vacation, I went to Venice. On the morning after my +arrival, in answer to a most kind and cordial summons, I presented +myself at the Palazzo Rezzonico. Intense as was the impression he +always made even in London, I think that those of us who met Robert +Browning only in the stress and roar of that metropolis can hardly +have gauged the fullness of his potentialities for impressing. Venice, +"so weak, so quiet," as Mr. Ruskin had called her, was indeed the +ideal setting for one to whom neither of those epithets could by any +possibility have been deemed applicable. The steamboats that now wake +the echoes of the canals had not yet been imported; but the vitality +of the imported poet was in some measure a preparation for them. It +did not, however, find me quite prepared for itself, and I am afraid +that some minutes must have elapsed before I could, as it were, find +my feet in the torrent of his geniality and high spirits, and give him +news of his friends in London. + +He was at that time engaged in revising the proof-sheets of "Dramatic +Idylls," and after luncheon, to which he very kindly bade me remain, +he read aloud certain selected passages. The yellow haze of a wintry +Venetian sunshine poured in through the vast windows of his _salone_, +making an aureole around his silvered head. I would give much to +live that hour over again. But it was vouchsafed in days before the +Browning Society came and made everything so simple for us all. I am +afraid that after a few minutes I sat enraptured by the sound rather +than by the sense of the lines. I find, in the notes I made of the +occasion, that I figured myself as plunging through some enchanted +thicket on the back of an inspired bull. + +That evening, as I was strolling in Piazza San Marco, my thoughts +of Browning were all of a sudden scattered by the vision of a small, +thick-set man seated at one of the tables in the Café Florian. This +was--and my heart leapt like a young trout when I saw that it could be +none other than--Henrik Ibsen. Whether joy or fear was the predominant +emotion in me, I should be hard put to it to say. It had been my +privilege to correspond extensively with the great Scandinavian, and +to be frequently received by him, some years earlier than the date of +which I write, in Rome. In that city haunted by the shades of so many +Emperors and Popes I had felt comparatively at ease even in Ibsen's +presence. But seated here in the homelier decay of Venice, closely +buttoned in his black surcoat and crowned with his uncompromising +top-hat, with the lights of the Piazza flashing back wanly from his +gold-rimmed spectacles, and his lips tight-shut like some steel trap +into which our poor humanity had just fallen, he seemed to constitute +a menace under which the boldest might well quail. Nevertheless, +I took my courage in both hands, and laid it as a kind of votive +offering on the little table before him. + +My reward was in the surprising amiability that he then and afterwards +displayed. My travelling had indeed been doubly blessed, for, whilst +my subsequent afternoons were spent in Browning's presence, my +evenings fell with regularity into the charge of Ibsen. One of these +evenings is for me "prouder, more laurel'd than the rest" as having +been the occasion when he read to me the MS. of a play which he had +just completed. He was staying at the Hôtel Danieli, an edifice famous +for having been, rather more than forty years previously, the socket +in which the flame of an historic _grande passion_ had finally sunk +and guttered out with no inconsiderable accompaniment of smoke and +odour. It was there, in an upper room, that I now made acquaintance +with a couple very different from George Sand and Alfred de Musset, +though destined to become hardly less famous than they. I refer to +Torvald and Nora Helmer. My host read to me with the utmost vivacity, +standing in the middle of the apartment; and I remember that in +the scene where Nora Helmer dances the tarantella her creator +instinctively executed a few illustrative steps. + +During those days I felt very much as might a minnow swimming to and +fro between Leviathan on the one hand and Behemoth on the other--a +minnow tremulously pleased, but ever wistful for some means of +bringing his two enormous acquaintances together. On the afternoon of +December 24th I confided to Browning my aspiration. He had never heard +of this brother poet and dramatist, whose fame indeed was at that time +still mainly Boreal; but he cried out with the greatest heartiness, +"Capital! Bring him round with you at one o'clock to-morrow for turkey +and plum-pudding!" + +I betook myself straight to the Hôtel Danieli, hoping against hope +that Ibsen's sole answer would not be a comminatory grunt and an +instant rupture of all future relations with myself. At first he was +indeed resolute not to go. He had never heard of this Herr Browning. +(It was one of the strengths of his strange, crustacean genius that +he never had heard of anybody.) I took it on myself to say that +Herr Browning would send his private gondola, propelled by his two +gondoliers, to conduct Herr Ibsen to the scene of the festivity. I +think it was this prospect that made him gradually unbend, for he had +already acquired that taste for pomp and circumstance which was so +notable a characteristic of his later years. I hastened back to the +Palazzo Rezzonico before he could change his mind. I need hardly say +that Browning instantly consented to send the gondola. So large +and lovable was his nature that, had he owned a thousand of those +conveyances, he would not have hesitated to send out the whole fleet +in honour of any friend of any friend of his. + +Next day, as I followed Ibsen down the Danielian water-steps into the +expectant gondola, my emotion was such that I was tempted to snatch +from him his neatly-furled umbrella and spread it out over his head, +like the umbrella beneath which the Doges of days gone by had made +their appearances in public. It was perhaps a pity that I repressed +this impulse. Ibsen seemed to be already regretting that he had +unbent. I could not help thinking, as we floated along the Riva +Schiavoni, that he looked like some particularly ruthless member of +the Council of Ten. I did, however, try faintly to attune him in +some sort to the spirit of our host and of the day of the year. I +adumbrated Browning's outlook on life, translating into Norwegian, I +well remember, the words "God's in His heaven, all's right with the +world." In fact I cannot charge myself with not having done what I +could. I can only lament that it was not enough. + +When we marched into the _salone_, Browning was seated at the piano, +playing (I think) a Toccata of Galuppi's. On seeing us, he brought +his hands down with a great crash on the keyboard, seemed to reach +us in one astonishing bound across the marble floor, and clapped +Ibsen loudly on either shoulder, wishing him "the Merriest of Merry +Christmases." + +Ibsen, under this sudden impact, stood firm as a rock, and it flitted +through my brain that here at last was solved the old problem of what +would happen if an irresistible force met an immoveable mass. But it +was obvious that the rock was not rejoicing in the moment of victory. +I was tartly asked whether I had not explained to Herr Browning that +his guest did not understand English. I hastily rectified my omission, +and thenceforth our host spoke in Italian. Ibsen, though he understood +that language fairly well, was averse to speaking it. Such remarks as +he made in the course of the meal to which we presently sat down were +made in Norwegian and translated by myself. + +Browning, while he was carving the turkey, asked Ibsen whether he had +visited any of the Venetian theatres. Ibsen's reply was that he never +visited theatres. Browning laughed his great laugh, and cried "That's +right! We poets who write plays must give the theatres as wide a berth +as possible. We aren't wanted there!" "How so?" asked Ibsen. Browning +looked a little puzzled, and I had to explain that in northern Europe +Herr Ibsen's plays were frequently performed. At this I seemed to see +on Browning's face a slight shadow--so swift and transient a shadow as +might be cast by a swallow flying across a sunlit garden. An instant, +and it was gone. I was glad, however, to be able to soften my +statement by adding that Herr Ibsen had in his recent plays abandoned +the use of verse. + +The trouble was that in Browning's company he seemed practically to +have abandoned the use of prose too. When, moreover, he did speak, it +was always in a sense contrary to that of our host. The Risorgimento +was a theme always very near to the great heart of Browning, and on +this occasion he hymned it with more than his usual animation and +resource (if indeed that were possible). He descanted especially on +the vast increase that had accrued to the sum of human happiness +in Italy since the success of that remarkable movement. When Ibsen +rapped out the conviction that what Italy needed was to be invaded +and conquered once and for all by Austria, I feared that an explosion +was inevitable. But hardly had my translation of the inauspicious +sentiment been uttered when the plum-pudding was borne into the room, +flaming on its dish. I clapped my hands wildly at sight of it, in the +English fashion, and was intensely relieved when the yet more resonant +applause of Robert Browning followed mine. Disaster had been averted +by a crowning mercy. But I am afraid that Ibsen thought us both quite +mad. + +The next topic that was started, harmless though it seemed at first, +was fraught with yet graver peril. The world of scholarship was at +that time agitated by the recent discovery of what might or might not +prove to be a fragment of Sappho. Browning proclaimed his unshakeable +belief in the authenticity of these verses. To my surprise, Ibsen, +whom I had been unprepared to regard as a classical scholar, said +positively that they had not been written by Sappho. Browning +challenged him to give a reason. A literal translation of the reply +would have been "Because no woman ever was capable of writing a +fragment of good poetry." Imagination reels at the effect this would +have had on the recipient of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." The +agonised interpreter, throwing honour to the winds, babbled some +wholly fallacious version of the words. Again the situation had +been saved; but it was of the kind that does not even in furthest +retrospect lose its power to freeze the heart and constrict the +diaphragm. + +I was fain to thank heaven when, immediately after the termination +of the meal, Ibsen rose, bowed to his host, and bade me express +his thanks for the entertainment. Out on the Grand Canal, in the +gondola which had again been placed at our disposal, his passion +for "documents" that might bear on his work was quickly manifested. +He asked me whether Herr Browning had ever married. Receiving an +emphatically affirmative reply, he inquired whether Fru Browning had +been happy. Loth though I was to cast a blight on his interest in the +matter, I conveyed to him with all possible directness the impression +that Elizabeth Barrett had assuredly been one of those wives who do +not dance tarantellas nor slam front-doors. He did not, to the best +of my recollection, make further mention of Browning, either then or +afterwards. Browning himself, however, thanked me warmly, next +day, for having introduced my friend to him. "A capital fellow!" he +exclaimed, and then, for a moment, seemed as though he were about +to qualify this estimate, but ended by merely repeating "A capital +fellow!" + +Ibsen remained in Venice some weeks after my return to London. He was, +it may be conjectured, bent on a specially close study of the Bride of +the Adriatic because her marriage had been not altogether a happy one. +But there appears to be no evidence whatsoever that he went again, +either of his own accord or by invitation, to the Palazzo Rezzonico. + + + + +OF CHRISTMAS + +_By_ + +H*L**RE B*LL*C + + +There was a man came to an Inn by night, and after he had called three +times they should open him the door--though why three times, and not +three times three, nor thirty times thirty, which is the number of +the little stone devils that make mows at St. Aloesius of Ledera over +against the marshes Gué-la-Nuce to this day, nor three hundred times +three hundred (which is a bestial number), nor three thousand times +three-and-thirty, upon my soul I know not, and nor do you--when, +then, this jolly fellow had three times cried out, shouted, yelled, +holloa'd, loudly besought, caterwauled, brayed, sung out, and roared, +he did by the same token set himself to beat, hammer, bang, pummel, +and knock at the door. Now the door was Oak. It had been grown in the +forest of Boulevoise, hewn in Barre-le-Neuf, seasoned in South Hoxton, +hinged nowhere in particular, and panelled--and that most abominably +well--in Arque, where the peasants sell their souls for skill in such +handicraft. But our man knew nothing of all this, which, had he known +it, would have mattered little enough to him, for a reason which I +propose to tell in the next sentence. The door was opened. As to the +reasons why it was not opened sooner, these are most tediously set +forth in Professor Sir T.K. Slibby's "Half-Hours With Historic Doors," +as also in a fragment at one time attributed to Oleaginus Silo but now +proven a forgery by Miss Evans. Enough for our purpose, merry reader +of mine, that the door was opened. + +The man, as men will, went in. And there, for God's sake and by +the grace of Mary Mother, let us leave him; for the truth of it is +that his strength was all in his lungs, and himself a poor, weak, +clout-faced, wizen-bellied, pin-shanked bloke anyway, who at Trinity +Hall had spent the most of his time in reading Hume (that was +Satan's lackey) and after taking his degree did a little in the way +of Imperial Finance. Of him it was that Lord Abraham Hart, that +far-seeing statesman, said, "This young man has the root of the matter +in him." I quote the epigram rather for its perfect form than for its +truth. For once, Lord Abraham was deceived. But it must be remembered +that he was at this time being plagued almost out of his wits by +the vile (though cleverly engineered) agitation for the compulsory +winding-up of the Rondoosdop Development Company. Afterwards, in +Wormwood Scrubbs, his Lordship admitted that his estimate of his young +friend had perhaps been pitched too high. In Dartmoor he has since +revoked it altogether, with that manliness for which the Empire so +loved him when he was at large. + +Now the young man's name was Dimby--"Trot" Dimby--and his mother had +been a Clupton, so that--but had I not already dismissed him? Indeed I +only mentioned him because it seemed that his going to that Inn might +put me on track of that One Great Ultimate and Final True Thing I am +purposed to say about Christmas. Don't ask me yet what that Thing is. +Truth dwells in no man, but is a shy beast you must hunt as you may in +the forests that are round about the Walls of Heaven. And I do hereby +curse, gibbet, and denounce in _execrationem perpetuam atque aeternam_ +the man who hunts in a crafty or calculating way--as, lying low, +nosing for scents, squinting for trails, crawling noiselessly till +he shall come near to his quarry and then taking careful aim. Here's +to him who hunts Truth in the honest fashion of men, which is, going +blindly at it, following his first scent (if such there be) or (if +none) none, scrambling over boulders, fording torrents, winding his +horn, plunging into thickets, skipping, firing off his gun in the air +continually, and then ramming in some more ammunition anyhow, with +a laugh and a curse if the charge explode in his own jolly face. The +chances are he will bring home in his bag nothing but a field-mouse +he trod on by accident. Not the less his is the true sport and the +essential stuff of holiness. + +As touching Christmas--but there is nothing like verse to clear the +mind, heat the blood, and make very humble the heart. Rouse thee, +Muse! + + One Christmas Night in Pontgibaud + (_Pom-pom, rub-a-dub-dub_) + A man with a drum went to and fro + (_Two merry eyes, two cheeks chub_) + Nor not a citril within, without, + But heard the racket and heard the rout + And marvelled what it was all about + (_And who shall shrive Beelzebub?_) + + He whacked so hard the drum was split + (_Pom-pom, rub-a-dub-dum_) + Out lept Saint Gabriel from it + (_Praeclarissimus Omnium_) + Who spread his wings and up he went + Nor ever paused in his ascent + Till he had reached the firmament + (_Benedicamus Dominum_). + +That's what I shall sing (please God) at dawn to-morrow, standing on +the high, green barrow at Storrington, where the bones of Athelstan's +men are. Yea, + + At dawn to-morrow + On Storrington Barrow + I'll beg or borrow + A bow and arrow + And shoot sleek sorrow + Through the marrow. + The floods are out and the ford is narrow, + The stars hang dead and my limbs are lead, + But ale is gold + And there's good foot-hold + On the Cuckfield side of Storrington Barrow. + +This too I shall sing, and other songs that are yet to write. In +Pagham I shall sing them again, and again in Little Dewstead. In +Hornside I shall rewrite them, and at the Scythe and Turtle in Liphook +(if I have patience) annotate them. At Selsey they will be very +damnably in the way, and I don't at all know what I shall do with them +at Selsey. + +Such then, as I see it, is the whole pith, mystery, outer form, common +acceptation, purpose, usage usual, meaning and inner meaning, beauty +intrinsic and extrinsic, and right character of Christmas Feast. +_Habent urbs atque orbis revelationem._ Pray for my soul. + + + + +A STRAIGHT TALK + +_By_ + +G**RGE B*RN*RD SH*W + + +(_Preface to "Snt George. A Christmas Play"_) + + +When a public man lays his hand on his heart and declares that his +conduct needs no apology, the audience hastens to put up its umbrellas +against the particularly severe downpour of apologies in store for +it. I wont give the customary warning. My conduct shrieks aloud for +apology, and you are in for a thorough drenching. + +Flatly, I stole this play. The one valid excuse for the theft would +be mental starvation. That excuse I shant plead. I could have made +a dozen better plays than this out of my own head. You don't suppose +Shakespeare was so vacant in the upper storey that there was nothing +for it but to rummage through cinquecento romances, Townley Mysteries, +and suchlike insanitary rubbishheaps, in order that he might fish out +enough scraps for his artistic fangs to fasten on. Depend on it, there +were plenty of decent original notions seething behind yon marble +brow. Why didn't our William use them? He was too lazy. And so am I. +It is easier to give a new twist to somebody else's story that you +take readymade than to perform that highly-specialised form of skilled +labor which consists in giving artistic coherence to a story that you +have conceived roughly for yourself. A literary gentleman once hoisted +a theory that there are only thirty-six possible stories in the world. +This--I say it with no deference at all--is bosh. There are as many +possible stories in the world as there are microbes in the well-lined +shelves of a literary gentleman's "den." On the other hand, it is +perfectly true that only a baker's dozen of these have got themselves +told. The reason lies in that bland, unalterable resolve to shirk +honest work, by which you recognise the artist as surely as you +recognise the leopard by his spots. In so far as I am an artist, I +am a loafer. And if you expect me, in that line, to do anything but +loaf, you will get the shock your romantic folly deserves. The only +difference between me and my rivals past and present is that I have +the decency to be ashamed of myself. So that if you are not too +bemused and bedevilled by my "brilliancy" to kick me downstairs, you +may rely on me to cheerfully lend a foot in the operation. But, while +I have my share of judicial vindictiveness against crime, Im not going +to talk the common judicial cant about brutality making a Better Man +of the criminal. I havent the slightest doubt that I would thieve +again at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile be so good as to listen +to the evidence on the present charge. + +In the December after I was first cast ashore at Holyhead, I had to go +down to Dorsetshire. In those days the more enterprising farm-laborers +used still to annually dress themselves up in order to tickle the +gentry into disbursing the money needed to supplement a local-minimum +wage. They called themselves the Christmas Mummers, and performed +a play entitled Snt George. As my education had been of the typical +Irish kind, and the ideas on which I had been nourished were precisely +the ideas that once in Tara's Hall were regarded as dangerous +novelties, Snt George staggered me with the sense of being suddenly +bumped up against a thing which lay centuries ahead of the time I +had been born into. (Being, in point of fact, only a matter of five +hundred years old, it would have the same effect to-day on the average +London playgoer if it was produced in a west end theatre.) The plot +was simple. It is set forth in Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native"; +but, as the people who read my books have no energy left over to cope +with other authors, I must supply an outline of it myself. + +Entered, first of all, the English Knight, announcing his +determination to fight and vanquish the Turkish Knight, a vastly +superior swordsman, who promptly made mincemeat of him. After the +Saracen had celebrated his victory in verse, and proclaimed himself +the world's champion, entered Snt George, who, after some preliminary +patriotic flourishes, promptly made mincemeat of the Saracen--to the +blank amazement of an audience which included several retired army +officers. Snt George, however, saved his face by the usual expedient +of the victorious British general, attributing to Providence a result +which by no polite stretch of casuistry could have been traced to the +operations of his own brain. But here the dramatist was confronted +by another difficulty: there being no curtain to ring down, how were +the two corpses to be got gracefully rid of? Entered therefore the +Physician, and brought them both to life. (Any one objecting to this +scene on the score of romantic improbability is hereby referred to +the Royal College of Physicians, or to the directors of any accredited +medical journal, who will hail with delight this opportunity of +proving once and for all that re-vitalisation is the child's-play of +the Faculty.) + +Such then is the play that I have stolen. For all the many pleasing +esthetic qualities you will find in it--dramatic inventiveness, humor +and pathos, eloquence, elfin glamor and the like--you must bless +the original author: of these things I have only the usufruct. To +me the play owes nothing but the stiffening of civistic conscience +that has been crammed in. Modest? Not a bit of it. It is my civistic +conscience that makes a man of me and (incidentally) makes this play +a masterpiece. + +Nothing could have been easier for me (if I were some +one else) than to perform my task in that +God-rest-you-merry-gentlemen-may-nothing-you-dismay spirit which +so grossly flatters the sensibilities of the average citizen by its +assumption that he is sharp enough to be dismayed by what stares +him in the face. Charles Dickens had lucid intervals in which he was +vaguely conscious of the abuses around him; but his spasmodic efforts +to expose these brought him into contact with realities so agonising +to his highstrung literary nerves that he invariably sank back into +debauches of unsocial optimism. Even the Swan of Avon had his glimpses +of the havoc of displacement wrought by Elizabethan romanticism in the +social machine which had been working with tolerable smoothness under +the prosaic guidance of Henry 8. The time was out of joint; and the +Swan, recognising that he was the last person to ever set it right, +consoled himself by offering the world a soothing doctrine of despair. +Not for me, thank you, that Swansdown pillow. I refuse as flatly +to fuddle myself in the shop of "W. Shakespeare, Druggist," as +to stimulate myself with the juicy joints of "C. Dickens, Family +Butcher." Of these and suchlike pernicious establishments my patronage +consists in weaving round the shop-door a barbed-wire entanglement of +dialectic and then training my moral machine-guns on the customers. + +In this devilish function I have, as you know, acquired by practice +a tremendous technical skill; and but for the more or less innocent +pride I take in showing off my accomplishment to all and sundry, I +doubt whether even my iron nerves would be proof against the horrors +that have impelled me to thus perfect myself. In my nonage I believed +humanity could be reformed if only it were intelligently preached +at for a sufficiently long period. This first fine careless rapture +I could no more recapture, at my age, than I could recapture +hoopingcough or nettlerash. One by one, I have flung all political +nostra overboard, till there remain only dynamite and scientific +breeding. My touching faith in these saves me from pessimism: I +believe in the future; but this only makes the present--which I +foresee as going strong for a couple of million of years or so--all +the more excruciating by contrast. + +For casting into dramatic form a compendium of my indictments of the +present from a purely political standpoint, the old play of Snt George +occurred to me as having exactly the framework I needed. In the person +of the Turkish Knight I could embody that howling chaos which does +duty among us for a body-politic. The English Knight would accordingly +be the Liberal Party, whose efforts (whenever it is in favor with the +electorate) to reduce chaos to order by emulating in foreign politics +the blackguardism of a Metternich or Bismarck, and in home politics +the spirited attitudinisings of a Garibaldi or Cavor, are foredoomed +to the failure which its inherent oldmaidishness must always win for +the Liberal Party in all undertakings whatsoever. Snt George is, of +course, myself. But here my very aptitude in controversy tripped me up +as playwright. Owing to my nack of going straight to the root of the +matter in hand and substituting, before you can say Jack Robinson, a +truth for every fallacy and a natural law for every convention, the +scene of Snt George (Bernard Shaw)'s victory over the Turkish Knight +came out too short for theatrical purposes. I calculated that the play +as it stood would not occupy more than five hours in performance. I +therefore departed from the original scheme so far as to provide the +Turkish Knight with three attendant monsters, severally named the +Good, the Beyootiful, and the Ter-rew, and representing in themselves +the current forms of Religion, Art, and Science. These three Snt +George successively challenges, tackles, and flattens out--the first +as lunacy, the second as harlotry, the third as witchcraft. But even +so the play would not be long enough had I not padded a good deal of +buffoonery into the scene where the five corpses are brought back to +life. + +The restorative Physician symbolises that irresistible force of human +stupidity by which the rottenest and basest institutions are enabled +to thrive in the teeth of the logic that has demolished them. Thus, +for the author, the close of the play is essentially tragic. But what +is death to him is fun to you, and my buffooneries wont offend any of +you. Bah! + + + + +FOND HEARTS ASKEW + +_By_ + +M**R*CE H*WL*TT + + +TO WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL SAGE AND REVEREND AND A TRUE KNIGHT THIS +ROMAUNT OF DAYS EDVARDIAN + + +PROLOGUE. + +_Too strong a wine, belike, for some stomachs, for there's honey in +it, and a dibbet of gore, with other condiments. Yet Mistress Clio +(with whom, some say, Mistress Thalia, that sweet hoyden) brewed it: +she, not I, who do but hand the cup round by her warrant and good +favour. Her guests, not mine, you shall take it or leave it--spill it +untasted or quaff a bellyful. Of a hospitable temper, she whose page +I am; but a great lady, over self-sure to be dudgeoned by wry faces in +the refectory. As for the little sister (if she did have finger in the +concoction)--no fear of offence there! I dare vow, who know somewhat +the fashion of her, she will but trill a pretty titter or so at your +qualms._ + + +BENEDICTUS BENEDICAT. + +I cry you mercy for a lacuna at the outset. I know not what had +knitted and blackened the brows of certain two speeding eastward +through London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box: +_alter_, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable," _lieu-tenant_ in +the Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; _altera_, the Lady Angelica +Plantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker: +enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight of the girl! + +Johannes Sargent, that swift giant from the New World, had already +flung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters. She outstands there, a +virgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashion +of the period; neck like a giraffe's; lips shaped for kissing rather +than smiling; eyes like a giraffe's again; breasts like a boy's, and +something of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her. She has +arms a trifle long even for such height as hers; fingers very long, +too, with red-pink nails trimmed to a point. She looks out slantwise, +conscious of her beauty, and perhaps of certain other things. Fire +under that ice, I conjecture--red corpuscles rampant behind that meek +white mask of hers. "_Forsitan in hoc anno pulcherrima debutantium_" +is the verdict of a contemporary journal. For "_forsitan_" read +"_certe_." No slur, that, on the rest of the bevy. + +Very much as Johannes had seen her did she appear now to the cits, +as the cabriolet swung past them. Paramount there, she was still more +paramount here. Yet this Geoffrey was not ill-looking. In the secret +journal of Mary Jane, serving-wench in the palace of Geoffrey's father +(who gat his barony by beer) note is made of his "lovely blue eyes; +complexion like a blush rose; hands like a girl's; lips like a girl's +again; yellow curls close cropped; and for moustachio (so young is he +yet) such a shadow as amber might cast on water." + +Here, had I my will, I would limn you Mary Jane herself, that parched +nymph. Time urges, though. The cabrioleteer thrashes his horse (me +with it) to a canter, and plunges into Soho. Some wagon athwart the +path gives pause. Angelica, looking about her, bites lip. For this +is the street of Wardour, wherein (say all the chronicles most +absolutely) she and Geoffrey had first met and plit their troth. + +"Methinks," cries she, loud and clear to the wagoner, and pointing +finger at Geoffrey, "the Devil must be between your shafts, to make a +mock of me in this conjunction, the which is truly of his own doing." + +"Sweet madam," says Geoffrey (who was also called "The Ready"), "shall +I help harness you at his side? Though, for my part, I doubt 'twere +supererogant, in that he buckled you to his service or ever the priest +dipped you." + +A bitter jest, this; and the thought of it still tingled on the +girl's cheek and clawed her heart when Geoffrey handed her down at the +portico of Drury Lane Theatre. A new pantomime was afoot. Geoffrey's +father (that bluff red baron) had chartered a box, was already there +with his lady and others. + +Lily among peonies, Angelica sat brooding, her eyes fastened on the +stage, Geoffrey behind her chair, brooding by the same token. +Presto, he saw a flood of pink rush up her shoulders to her ears. The +"principal boy" had just skipped on to the stage. No boy at all (God +be witness), but one Mistress Tina Vandeleur, very apt in masquerado, +and seeming true boy enough to the guileless. Stout of leg, +light-footed, with a tricksy plume to his cap, and the swagger of one +who would beard the Saints for a wager, this Aladdin was just such a +galliard as Angelica had often fondled in her dreams. He lept straight +into the closet of her heart, and "Deus!" she cried, "maugre my +maidenhood, I will follow those pretty heels round the earth!" + +Cried Geoffrey "Yea! and will not I presently string his ham to save +your panting?" + +"_Tacete!_" cried the groundlings. + +A moment after, Geoffrey forgot his spleen. Cupid had noosed +him--bound him tight to the Widow Twankey. This was a woman most +unlike to Angelica: poplar-tall, I grant you; but elm-wide into the +bargain; deep-voiced, robustious, and puffed bravely out with hot +vital essences. Seemed so to Geoffrey, at least, who had no smattering +of theatres and knew not his cynosure to be none other than Master +Willie Joffers, prime buffo of the day. Like Angelica, he had had fond +visions; and lo here, the very lady of them! + +Says he to Angelica, "I am heartset on this widow." + +"By so much the better!" she laughs. "I to my peacock, you to your +peahen, with a Godspeed from each to other." + +How to snare the birds? A pretty problem: the fowling was like to be +delicate. So hale a strutter as Aladdin could not lack for bonamies. +"Will he deign me?" wondered meek Angelica. "This widow," thought +Geoffrey, "is belike no widow at all, but a modest wife with a yea for +no man but her lord." Head to head they took counsel, cudgelled their +wits for some proper vantage. Of a sudden, Geoffrey clapped hand to +thigh. Student of Boccaccio, Heveletius, and other sages, he had the +clue in his palm. A whisper from him, a nod from Angelica, and the +twain withdrew from the box into the corridor without. + +There, back to back, they disrobed swiftly, each tossing to other +every garment as it was doffed. Then a flurried toilet, and a +difficult, for the man especially; but hotness of desire breeds +dexterity. When they turned and faced each other, Angelica was such +a boy as Aladdin would not spurn as page, Geoffrey such a girl as the +widow might well covet as body-maid. + +Out they hied under the stars, and sought way to the postern whereby +the mummers would come when their work were done. Thereat they +stationed themselves in shadow. A bitter night, with a lather of snow +on the cobbles; but they were heedless of that: love and their dancing +hearts warmed them. + +They waited long. Strings of muffled figures began to file out, but +never an one like to Aladdin or the Widow. Midnight tolled. Had these +two had wind of the ambuscado and crept out by another door? Nay, +patience! + +At last! A figure showed in the doorway--a figure cloaked womanly, but +topped with face of Aladdin. Trousered Angelica, with a cry, darted +forth from the shadow. To Mistress Vandeleur's eyes she was as truly +man as was Mistress Vandeleur to hers. Thus confronted, Mistress +Vandeleur shrank back, blushing hot. + +"Nay!" laughs Angelica, clipping her by the wrists. "Cold boy, you +shall not so easily slip me. A pretty girl you make, Aladdin; but love +pierces such disguise as a rapier might pierce lard." + +"Madman! Unhandle me!" screams the actress. + +"No madman I, as well you know," answers Angelica, "but a maid whom +spurned love may yet madden. Kiss me on the lips!" + +While they struggle, another figure fills the postern, and in an +instant Angelica is torn aside by Master Willie Joffers (well versed, +for all his mumming, in matters of chivalry). "Kisses for such coward +lips?" cries he. "Nay, but a swinge to silence them!" and would have +struck trousered Angelica full on the mouth. But décolleté Geoffrey +Dizzard, crying at him "Sweet termagant, think not to baffle me by +these airs of manhood!" had sprung in the way and on his own nose +received the blow. + +He staggered and, spurting blood, fell. Up go the buffo's hands, +and "Now may the Saints whip me," cries he, "for a tapster of +girl's blood!" and fled into the night, howling like a dog. Mistress +Vandeleur had fled already. Down on her knees goes Angelica, to stanch +Geoffrey's flux. + +Thus far, straight history. Apocrypha, all the rest: you shall pick +your own sequel. As for instance, some say Geoffrey bled to the death, +whereby stepped Master Joffers to the scaffold, and Angelica (the +Vandeleur too, like as not) to a nunnery. Others have it he lived, +thanks to nurse Angelica, who, thereon wed, suckled him twin Dizzards +in due season. Joffers, they say, had wife already, else would have +wed the Vandeleur, for sake of symmetry. + + + + +DICKENS + +_By_ + +G**RGE M**RE + + +I had often wondered why when people talked to me of Tintoretto I +always found myself thinking of Turgéneff. It seemed to me strange +that I should think of Turgéneff instead of thinking of Tintoretto; +for at first sight nothing can be more far apart than the Slav mind +and the Flemish. But one morning, some years ago, while I was musing +by my fireplace in Victoria Street, Dolmetsch came to see me. He had +a soiled roll of music under his left arm. I said, "How are you?" He +said, "I am well. And you?" I said, "I, too, am well. What is that, my +dear Dolmetsch, that you carry under your left arm?" He answered, "It +is a Mass by Palestrina." "Will you read me the score?" I asked. I was +afraid he would say no. But Dolmetsch is not one of those men who say +no, and he read me the score. He did not read very well, but I had +never heard it before, so when he finished I begged of him he would +read it to me again. He said, "Very well, M**re, I will read it to you +again." I remember his exact words, because they seemed to me at the +time to be the sort of thing that only Dolmetsch could have said. It +was a foggy morning in Victoria Street, and while Dolmetsch read again +the first few bars, I thought how Renoir would have loved to paint +in such an atmosphere the tops of the plane trees that flaccidly show +above the wall of Buckingham Palace.... Why had I never been invited +to Buckingham Palace? I did not want to go there, but it would have +been nice to have been asked.... How _brave gaillard_ was Renoir, and +how well he painted from that subfusc palette!... + +My roving thoughts were caught back to the divine score which +Arnold Dolmetsch was reading to me. How well placed they were, those +semibreves! Could anyone but Palestrina have placed them so nicely? I +wondered what girl Palestrina was courting when he conceived them. She +must have been blonde, surely, and with narrow flanks.... There are +moments when one does not think of girls, are there not, dear reader? +And I swear to you that such a moment came to me while Dolmetsch +mumbled the last two bars of that Mass. The notes were "do, la, sol, +do, fa, do, sol, la," and as he mumbled them I sat upright and stared +into space, for it had become suddenly plain to me why when people +talked of Tintoretto I always found myself thinking of Turgéneff. + +I do not say that this story that I have told to you is a very good +story, and I am afraid that I have not well told it. Some day, when +I have time, I should like to re-write it. But meantime I let it +stand, because without it you could not receive what is upmost in my +thoughts, and which I wish you to share with me. Without it, what I +am yearning to say might seem to you a hard saying; but now you will +understand me. + +There never was a writer except Dickens. Perhaps you have never heard +say of him? No matter, till a few days past he was only a name to me. +I remember that when I was a young man in Paris, I read a praise of +him in some journal; but in those days I was kneeling at other altars, +I was scrubbing other doorsteps.... So has it been ever since; always +a false god, always the wrong doorstep. I am sick of the smell of the +incense I have swung to this and that false god--Zola, Yeats, _et tous +ces autres_. I am angry to have got housemaid's knee, because I got +it on doorsteps that led to nowhere. There is but one doorstep worth +scrubbing. The doorstep of Charles Dickens.... + +Did he write many books? I know not, it does not greatly matter, he +wrote the "Pickwick Papers"; that suffices. I have read as yet but +one chapter, describing a Christmas party in a country house. Strange +that anyone should have essayed to write about anything but that! +Christmas--I see it now--is the only moment in which men and women are +really alive, are really worth writing about. At other seasons they +do not exist for the purpose of art. I spit on all seasons except +Christmas.... Is he not in all fiction the greatest figure, this Mr. +Wardell, this old "squire" rosy-cheeked, who entertains this Christmas +party at his house? He is more truthful, he is more significant, than +any figure in Balzac. He is better than all Balzac's figures rolled +into one.... I used to kneel on that doorstep. Balzac wrote many +books. But now it behoves me to ask myself whether he ever wrote a +good book. One knows that he used to write for fifteen hours at a +stretch, gulping down coffee all the while. But it does not follow +that the coffee was good, nor does it follow that what he wrote was +good. The Comédie Humaine is all chicory.... I had wished for some +years to say this, I am glad _d'avoir débarrassé ma poitrine de ça_. + +To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it is +not everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is +the only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed into +a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist +to be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is not +supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist.... +Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle, +a sportman, and Miss Arabella, "a young lady with fur-topped boots." +They go skating, he helps her over a stile. Can one not well see +her? She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through her +balbriggan stocking. She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr. +Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the wind +is north-west. Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over this +landscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted--no, Winchoven +would have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done it +well. Hals would have approved--would he not?--the pollard aspens, +these pollard aspens deciduous and wistful, which the rime makes +glistening. That field, how well ploughed it is, and are they not like +petticoats, those clouds low-hanging? Yes, Hals would have stated them +well, but only Manet could have stated the slope of the thighs of +the girl--how does she call herself?--Arabella--it is a so hard name +to remember--as she steps across the stile. Manet would have found +pleasure in her cheeks also. They are a little chapped with the +north-west wind that makes the pollard aspens to quiver. How adorable +a thing it is, a girl's nose that the north-west wind renders red! We +may tire of it sometimes, because we sometimes tire of all things, +but Winkle does not know this. Is Arabella his mistress? If she is +not, she has been, or at any rate she will be. How full she is of +temperament, is she not? Her shoulder-blades seem a little carelessly +modelled, but how good they are in intention! How well placed that +smut on her left cheek! + +Strange thoughts of her surge up vaguely in me as I watch +her--thoughts that I cannot express in English.... Elle est plus +vieille que les roches entre lesquelles elle s'est assise; comme +le vampire elle a été fréquemment morte, et a appris les secrets du +tombeau; et s'est plongée dans des mers profondes, et conserve autour +d'elle leur jour ruiné; et, comme Lède, était mère d'Hélène de Troie, +et, comme Sainte-Anne, mère de Maria; et tout cela n'a été pour elle +que.... I desist, for not through French can be expressed the thoughts +that surge in me. French is a stale language. So are all the European +languages, one can say in them nothing fresh.... The stalest of them +all is Erse.... + +Deep down in my heart a sudden voice whispers me that there is only +one land wherein art may reveal herself once more. Of what avail to +await her anywhere else than in Mexico? Only there can the apocalypse +happen. I will take a ticket for Mexico, I will buy a Mexican grammar, +I will be a Mexican.... On a hillside, or beside some grey pool, +gazing out across those plains poor and arid, I will await the first +pale showings of the new dawn.... + + + + +EUPHEMIA CLASHTHOUGHT[10] + +AN IMITATION OF MEREDITH + + +[Footnote 10: It were not, as a general rule, well to republish after + a man's death the skit you made of his work while he lived. Meredith, + however, was so transcendent that such skits must ever be harmless, + and so lasting will his fame be that they can never lose what + freshness they may have had at first. So I have put this thing in + with the others, making improvements that were needed.--M.B.] + +In the heart of insular Cosmos, remote by some scores of leagues of +Hodge-trod arable or pastoral, not more than a snuff-pinch for gaping +tourist nostrils accustomed to inhalation of prairie winds, but enough +for perspective, from those marginal sands, trident-scraped, we are +to fancy, by a helmeted Dame Abstract familiarly profiled on discs +of current bronze--price of a loaf for humbler maws disdainful of +Gallic side-dishes for the titillation of choicer palates--stands +Clashthought Park, a house of some pretension, mentioned at Runnymede, +with the spreading exception of wings given to it in later times +by Daedalean masters not to be baulked of billiards or traps for +Terpsichore, and owned for unbroken generations by a healthy line +of procreant Clashthoughts, to the undoing of collateral branches +eager for the birth of a female. Passengers through cushioned space, +flying top-speed or dallying with obscure stations not alighted at +apparently, have had it pointed out to them as beheld dimly for a +privileged instant before they sink back behind crackling barrier of +instructive paper with a "Thank you, Sir," or "Madam," as the case +may be. Guide-books praise it. I conceive they shall be studied for +a cock-shy of rainbow epithets slashed in at the target of Landed +Gentry, premonitorily. The tintinnabulation's enough. Periodical +footings of Clashthoughts into Mayfair or the Tyrol, signalled by the +slide from its mast of a crested index of Aeolian caprice, blazon of +their presence, give the curious a right to spin through the halls +and galleries under a cackle of housekeeper guideship--scramble for a +chuck of the dainties, dog fashion. There is something to be said for +the rope's twist. Wisdom skips. + +It is recorded that the goblins of this same Lady Wisdom were all agog +one Christmas morning between the doors of the house and the village +church, which crouches on the outskirt of the park, with something of +a lodge in its look, you might say, more than of celestial twinkles, +even with Christmas hoar-frost bleaching the grey of it in sunlight, +as one sees imaged on seasonable missives for amity in the trays +marked "sixpence and upwards," here and there, on the counters of +barter. + +Be sure these goblins made obeisance to Sir Peter Clashthought, as he +passed by, starched beacon of squirearchy, wife on arm, sons to heel. +After him, certain members of the household--rose-chapped males and +females, bearing books of worship. The pack of goblins glance up +the drive with nudging elbows and whisperings of "Where is daughter +Euphemia? Where Sir Rebus, her affianced?" + +Off they scamper for a peep through the windows of the house. They +throng the sill of the library, ears acock and eyelids twittering +admiration of a prospect. Euphemia was in view of them--essence of +her. Sir Rebus was at her side. Nothing slips the goblins. + +"Nymph in the Heavy Dragoons" was Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler's famous +definition of her. The County took it for final--an uncut gem with +a fleck in the heart of it. Euphemia condoned the imagery. She had +breadth. Heels that spread ample curves over the ground she stood on, +and hands that might floor you with a clench of them, were hers. Grey +eyes looked out lucid and fearless under swelling temples that were +lost in a ruffling copse of hair. Her nose was virginal, with hints of +the Iron Duke at most angles. Square chin, cleft centrally, gave +her throat the look of a tower with a gun protrudent at top. She was +dressed for church evidently, but seemed no slave to Time. Her bonnet +was pushed well back from her head, and she was fingering the ribbons. +One saw she was a woman. She inspired deference. + +"Forefinger for Shepherd's Crook" was what Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler had +said of Sir Rebus. It shall stand at that. + +"You have Prayer Book?" he queried. + +She nodded. Juno catches the connubial trick. + +"Hymns?" + +"Ancient and Modern." + +"I may share with you?" + +"I know by heart. Parrots sing." + +"Philomel carols," he bent to her. + +"Complaints spoil a festival." + +He waved hand to the door. "Lady, your father has started." + +"He knows the adage. Copy-books instil it." + +"Inexorable truth in it." + +"We may dodge the scythe." + +"To be choked with the sands?" + +She flashed a smile. "I would not," he said, "that my Euphemia were +late for the Absolution." + +She cast eyes to the carpet. He caught them at the rebound. + +"It snows," she murmured, swimming to the window. + +"A flake, no more. The season claims it." + +"I have thin boots." + +"Another pair?" + +"My maid buttons. She is at church." + +"My fingers?" + +"Ten on each." + +"Five," he corrected. + +"Buttons." + +"I beg your pardon." + +She saw opportunity. She swam to the bell-rope and grasped it for a +tinkle. The action spread feminine curves to her lover's eyes. He was +a man. + +Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order +for port--two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her. +Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon. +Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an instant she was sunset. + +"Medicinal," she murmured. + +"Forgive me, Madam. A glass, certainly. 'Twill warm us for +worshipping." + +The wine appeared, seemed to blink owlishly through the facets of +its decanter, like some hoary captive dragged forth into light after +years of subterraneous darkness--something querulous in the sudden +liberation of it. Or say that it gleamed benignant from its tray, +steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility +pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the +Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us; +as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in +the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the +veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a +cosset. We go to Port, mark you! + +Sir Rebus sipped with an affectionate twirl of thumb at the glass's +stem. He said "One scents the cobwebs." + +"Catches in them," Euphemia flung at him. + +"I take you. Bacchus laughs in the web." + +"Unspun but for Pallas." + +"A lady's jealousy." + +"Forethought, rather." + +"Brewed in the paternal pate. Grant it!" + +"For a spring in accoutrements." + +Sir Rebus inclined gravely. Port precludes prolongment of the riposte. + +She replenished glasses. Deprecation yielded. "A step," she said, "and +we are in time for the First Lesson." + +"This," he agreed, "is a wine." + +"There are blasphemies in posture. One should sit to it." + +"Perhaps." He sank to commodious throne of leather indicated by her +finger. + +Again she filled for him. "This time, no heel-taps," she was +imperative. "The Litany demands basis." + +"True." He drained, not repelling the decanter placed at his elbow. + +"It is a wine," he presently repeated with a rolling tongue over it. + +"Laid down by my great-grandfather. Cloistral." + +"Strange," he said, examining the stopper, "no date. Antediluvian. +Sound, though." + +He drew out his note-book. "_The senses_" he wrote, "_are internecine. +They shall have learned esprit de corps before they enslave us._" This +was one of his happiest flings to general from particular. "_Visual +distraction cries havoc to ultimate delicacy of palate_" would but +have pinned us a butterfly best a-hover; nor even so should we have +had truth of why the aphorist, closing note-book and nestling back of +head against that of chair, closed eyes also. + +As by some such law as lurks in meteorological toy for our guidance +in climes close-knit with Irony for bewilderment, making egress of old +woman synchronise inevitably with old man's ingress, or the other way +about, the force that closed the aphorist's eye-lids parted his lips +in degree according. Thus had Euphemia, erect on hearth-rug, a cavern +to gaze down into. Outworks of fortifying ivory cast but denser +shadows into the inexplorable. The solitudes here grew murmurous. To +and fro through secret passages in the recesses leading up deviously +to lesser twin caverns of nose above, the gnomes Morphean went about +their business, whispering at first, but presently bold to wind horns +in unison--Roland-wise, not less. + +Euphemia had an ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master +relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths +of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged +female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking out of pith +for salvation. + +She caught tablets pendent at her girdle. "_How long_," queried her +stilus, "_has our sex had humour? Jael hammered._" + +She might have hitched speculation further. But Mother Earth, +white-mantled, called to her. + +Casting eye of caution at recumbence, she paddled across the carpet +and anon swam out over the snow. + +Pagan young womanhood, six foot of it, spanned eight miles before +luncheon. + + * * * * * + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY + +RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, + +BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Garland, by Max Beerbohm + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14667 *** |