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diff --git a/17508-8.txt b/17508-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..24cacaf --- /dev/null +++ b/17508-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5816 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Certain Personal Matters, by H. G. Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Certain Personal Matters + +Author: H. G. Wells + +Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #17508] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS + + BY + + H.G. WELLS + + + + LONDON + T. FISHER UNWIN + PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C. + 1901 + + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + +THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE 7 + +THE TROUBLE OF LIFE 12 + +ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE 18 + +THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO 22 + +OF CONVERSATION 27 + +IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD 32 + +ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME 36 + +THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM 40 + +THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS 45 + +THE LITERARY REGIMEN 49 + +HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT 54 + +OF BLADES AND BLADERY 59 + +OF CLEVERNESS 63 + +THE POSE NOVEL 67 + +THE VETERAN CRICKETER 71 + +CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY 76 + +THE SHOPMAN 80 + +THE BOOK OF CURSES 85 + +DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY 90 + +EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT (_this is illustrated_) 94 + +FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING 98 + +INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD 104 + +OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN 108 + +THE EXTINCTION OF MAN 115 + +THE WRITING OF ESSAYS 120 + +THE PARKES MUSEUM 124 + +BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST 128 + +THE THEORY OF QUOTATION 132 + +ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE 135 + +CONCERNING CHESS 140 + +THE COAL-SCUTTLE 145 + +BAGARROW 150 + +THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY 155 + +THROUGH A MICROSCOPE 159 + +THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING 164 + +THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER 169 + +FROM AN OBSERVATORY 174 + +THE MODE IN MONUMENTS 177 + +HOW I DIED 182 + + + + +CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS + + + + +THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE + + +The world mends. In my younger days people believed in mahogany; some of +my readers will remember it--a heavy, shining substance, having a +singularly close resemblance to raw liver, exceedingly heavy to move, +and esteemed on one or other count the noblest of all woods. Such of us +as were very poor and had no mahogany pretended to have mahogany; and +the proper hepatite tint was got by veneering. That makes one incline to +think it was the colour that pleased people. In those days there was a +word "trashy," now almost lost to the world. My dear Aunt Charlotte used +that epithet when, in her feminine way, she swore at people she did not +like. "Trashy" and "paltry" and "Brummagem" was the very worst she could +say of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to plated +goods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast and +corpulent red-brown discs, which it was folly to speak of as small +change. They were fine handsome coins, and almost as inconvenient as +crown-pieces. I remember she corrected me once when I was very young. +"Don't call a penny a copper, dear," she said; "copper is a metal. The +pennies they have nowadays are bronze." It is odd how our childish +impressions cling to us. I still regard bronze as a kind of upstart +intruder, a mere trashy pretender among metals. + +All my Aunt Charlotte's furniture was thoroughly good, and most of it +extremely uncomfortable; there was not a thing for a little boy to break +and escape damnation in the household. Her china was the only thing with +a touch of beauty in it--at least I remember nothing else--and each of +her blessed plates was worth the happiness of a mortal for days +together. And they dressed me in a Nessus suit of valuable garments. I +learned the value of thoroughly good things only too early. I knew the +equivalent of a teacup to the very last scowl, and I have hated good, +handsome property ever since. For my part I love cheap things, trashy +things, things made of the commonest rubbish that money can possibly +buy; things as vulgar as primroses, and as transitory as a morning's +frost. + +Think of all the advantages of a cheap possession--cheap and nasty, if +you will--compared with some valuable substitute. Suppose you need this +or that. "Get a good one," advises Aunt Charlotte; "one that will last." +You do--and it does last. It lasts like a family curse. These great +plain valuable things, as plain as good women, as complacently assured +of their intrinsic worth--who does not know them? My Aunt Charlotte +scarcely had a new thing in her life. Her mahogany was avuncular; her +china remotely ancestral; her feather beds and her bedsteads!--they were +haunted; the births, marriages, and deaths associated with the best one +was the history of our race for three generations. There was more in her +house than the tombstone rectitude of the chair-backs to remind me of +the graveyard. I can still remember the sombre aisles of that house, the +vault-like shadows, the magnificent window curtains that blotted out the +windows. Life was too trivial for such things. She never knew she tired +of them, but she did. That was the secret of her temper, I think; they +engendered her sombre Calvinism, her perception of the trashy quality of +human life. The pretence that they were the accessories to human life +was too transparent. _We_ were the accessories; we minded them for a +little while, and then we passed away. They wore us out and cast us +aside. We were the changing scenery; they were the actors who played on +through the piece. It was even so with clothing. We buried my other +maternal aunt--Aunt Adelaide--and wept, and partly forgot her; but her +wonderful silk dresses--they would stand alone--still went rustling +cheerfully about an ephemeral world. + +All that offended my sense of proportion, my feeling of what is due to +human life, even when I was a little boy. I want things of my own, +things I can break without breaking my heart; and, since one can live +but once, I want some change in my life--to have this kind of thing and +then that. I never valued Aunt Charlotte's good old things until I sold +them. They sold remarkably well: those chairs like nether millstones for +the grinding away of men; the fragile china--an incessant anxiety until +accident broke it, and the spell of it at the same time; those silver +spoons, by virtue of which Aunt Charlotte went in fear of burglary for +six-and-fifty years; the bed from which I alone of all my kindred had +escaped; the wonderful old, erect, high-shouldered, silver-faced clock. + +But, as I say, our ideas are changing--mahogany has gone, and repp +curtains. Articles are made for man, nowadays, and not man, by careful +early training, for articles. I feel myself to be in many respects a +link with the past. Commodities come like the spring flowers, and vanish +again. "Who steals my watch steals trash," as some poet has remarked; +the thing is made of I know not what metal, and if I leave it on the +mantel for a day or so it goes a deep blackish purple that delights me +exceedingly. My grandfather's hat--I understood when I was a little boy +that I was to have that some day. But now I get a hat for ten shillings, +or less, two or three times a year. In the old days buying clothes was +well-nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat is furnished with +glittering things--wanton arm-chairs just strong enough not to collapse +under you, books in gay covers, carpets you are free to drop lighted +fusees upon; you may scratch what you like, upset your coffee, cast your +cigar ash to the four quarters of heaven. Our guests, at anyrate, are +not snubbed by our furniture. It knows its place. + +But it is in the case of art and adornment that cheapness is most +delightful. The only thing that betrayed a care for beauty on the part +of my aunt was her dear old flower garden, and even there she was not +above suspicion. Her favourite flowers were tulips, rigid tulips with +opulent crimson streaks. She despised wildings. Her ornaments were +simply displays of the precious metal. Had she known the price of +platinum she would have worn that by preference. Her chains and brooches +and rings were bought by weight. She would have turned her back on +Benvenuto Cellini if he was not 22 carats fine. She despised +water-colour art; her conception of a picture was a vast domain of oily +brown by an Old Master. The Babbages at the Hall had a display of gold +plate swaggering in the corner of the dining-room; and the visitor +(restrained by a plush rope from examining the workmanship) was told the +value, and so passed on. I like my art unadorned: thought and skill, and +the other strange quality that is added thereto, to make things +beautiful--and nothing more. A farthing's worth of paint and paper, and, +behold! a thing of beauty!--as they do in Japan. And if it should fall +into the fire--well, it has gone like yesterday's sunset, and to-morrow +there will be another. + +These Japanese are indeed the apostles of cheapness. The Greeks lived to +teach the world beauty, the Hebrews to teach it morality, and now the +Japanese are hammering in the lesson that men may be honourable, daily +life delightful, and a nation great without either freestone houses, +marble mantelpieces, or mahogany sideboards. I have sometimes wished +that my Aunt Charlotte could have travelled among the Japanese nation. +She would, I know, have called it a "parcel of trash." Their use of +paper--paper suits, paper pocket-handkerchiefs--would have made her +rigid with contempt. I have tried, but I cannot imagine my Aunt +Charlotte in paper underclothing. Her aversion to paper was +extraordinary. Her Book of Beauty was printed on satin, and all her +books were bound in leather, the boards regulated rather than decorated +with a severe oblong. Her proper sphere was among the ancient +Babylonians, among which massive populace even the newspapers were +built of brick. She would have compared with the King's daughter whose +raiment was of wrought gold. When I was a little boy I used to think she +had a mahogany skeleton. However, she is gone, poor old lady, and at +least she left me her furniture. Her ghost was torn in pieces after the +sale--must have been. Even the old china went this way and that. I took +what was perhaps a mean revenge of her for the innumerable +black-holeings, bread-and-water dinners, summary chastisements, and +impossible tasks she inflicted upon me for offences against her too +solid possessions. You will see it at Woking. It is a light and graceful +cross. It is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granite +paperweights that oppress the dead on either side of her. Sometimes I am +half sorry for that. When the end comes I shall not care to look her in +the face--she will be so humiliated. + + + + +THE TROUBLE OF LIFE + + +I do not know whether this will awaken a sympathetic lassitude in, say, +fifty per cent. of its readers, or whether my experience is unique and +my testimony simply curious. At anyrate, it is as true as I can make it. +Whether this is a mere mood, and a certain flagrant exhilaration my true +attitude towards things, or this is my true attitude and the exuberant +phase a lapse from it, I cannot say. Probably it does not matter. The +thing is that I find life an extremely troublesome affair. I do not want +to make any railing accusations against life; it is--to my +taste--neither very sad nor very horrible. At times it is distinctly +amusing. Indeed, I know nothing in the same line that can quite compare +with it. But there is a difference between general appreciation and +uncritical acceptance. At times I find life a Bother. + +The kind of thing that I object to is, as a good example, all the +troublesome things one has to do every morning in getting up. There is +washing. This is an age of unsolicited personal confidences, and I will +frankly confess that if it were not for Euphemia I do not think I should +wash at all. There is a vast amount of humbug about washing. Vulgar +people not only profess a passion for the practice, but a physical +horror of being unwashed. It is a sort of cant. I can understand a +sponge bath being a novelty the first time and exhilarating the second +and third. But day after day, week after week, month after month, and +nothing to show at the end of it all! Then there is shaving. I have to +get shaved because Euphemia hates me with a blue jowl, and I will admit +I hate myself. Yet, if I were left alone, I do not think my personal +taste would affect my decision; I will say that for myself. Either I +hack about with a blunt razor--my razors are always blunt--until I am a +kind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like the +top of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning being +dabbed about the face by a barber with damp hands. In either case it is +a repulsive thing to have, eating into one's time when one might be +living; and I have calculated that all the hair I have lost in this way, +put end to end, would reach to Berlin. All that vital energy thrown +away! However, "Thorns and bristles shall it bring forth to thee." I +suppose it is part of the primal curse, and I try and stand it like a +man. But the thing is a bother all the same. + +Then after shaving comes the hunt for the collar-stud. Of all idiotic +inventions the modern collar is the worst. A man who has to write things +for such readers as mine cannot think over-night of where he puts his +collar-stud; he has to keep his mind at an altogether higher level. +Consequently he walks about the bedroom, thinking hard, and dropping +things about: here a vest and there a collar, and sowing a bitter +harvest against the morning. Or he sits on the edge of the bed jerking +his garments this way and that. "I shot a slipper in the air," as the +poet sings, and in the morning it turns up in the most impossible +quarters, and where you least expect it. And, talking of going to bed, +before Euphemia took the responsibility over, I was always forgetting to +wind my watch. But now that is one of the things she neglects. + +Then, after getting up, there is breakfast. Autolycus of the _Pall Mall +Gazette_ may find heaven there, but I am differently constituted. There +is, to begin with the essence of the offence--the stuff that has to be +eaten somehow. Then there is the paper. Unless it is the face of a +fashionable beauty, I know of nothing more absolutely uninteresting than +a morning paper. You always expect to find something in it, and never +do. It wastes half my morning sometimes, going over and over the thing, +and trying to find out why they publish it. If I edited a daily I think +I should do like my father does when he writes to me. "Things much the +same," he writes; "the usual fussing about the curate's red socks"--a +long letter for him. The rest margin. And, by the bye, there are letters +every morning at breakfast, too! + +Now I do not grumble at letters. You can read them instead of getting on +with your breakfast. They are entertaining in a way, and you can tear +them up at the end, and in that respect at least they are better than +people who come to see you. Usually, too, you need not make a reply. But +sometimes Euphemia gets hold of some still untorn, and says in her +dictatorial way that they _have_ to be answered--insists--says I _must_. +Yet she knows that nothing fills me with a livelier horror than having +to answer letters. It paralyses me. I waste whole days sometimes +mourning over the time that I shall have to throw away presently, +answering some needless impertinence--requests for me to return books +lent to me; reminders from the London Library that my subscription is +overdue; proposals for me to renew my ticket at the stores--Euphemia's +business really; invitations for me to go and be abashed before +impertinent distinguished people: all kinds of bothering things. + +And speaking of letters and invitations brings me round to friends. I +dislike most people; in London they get in one's way in the street and +fill up railway carriages, and in the country they stare at you--but I +_hate_ my friends. Yet Euphemia says I _must_ "keep up" my friends. They +would be all very well if they were really true friends and respected my +feelings and left me alone, just to sit quiet. But they come wearing +shiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer their +gibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wicked +perversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given us +to season our lives rather than to make them insipid. New friends are +the worst in this respect. With old friends one is more at home; you +give them something to eat or drink, or look at, or something--whatever +they seem to want--and just turn round and go on smoking quietly. But +every now and then Euphemia or Destiny inflicts a new human being upon +me. I do not mean a baby, though the sentence has got that turn +somehow, but an introduction; and the wretched thing, all angles and +offence, keeps bobbing about me and discovering new ways of worrying me, +trying, I believe, to find out what topics interest me, though the fact +is no topics interest me. Once or twice, of course, I have met human +beings I think I could have got on with very well, after a time; but in +this mood, at least, I doubt if any human being is quite worth the +bother of a new acquaintance. + +These are just sample bothers--shaving, washing, answering letters, +talking to people. I could specify hundreds more. Indeed, in my sadder +moments, it seems to me life is all compact of bothers. There are the +details of business--knowing the date approximately (an incessant +anxiety) and the time of day. Then, having to buy things. Euphemia does +most of this, it is true, but she draws the line at my boots and gloves +and hosiery and tailoring. Then, doing up parcels and finding pieces of +string or envelopes or stamps--which Euphemia might very well manage for +me. Then, finding your way back after a quiet, thoughtful walk. Then, +having to get matches for your pipe. I sometimes dream of a better +world, where pipe, pouch, and matches all keep together instead of being +mutually negatory. But Euphemia is always putting everything into some +hiding-hole or other, which she calls its "place." Trivial things in +their way, you may say, yet each levying so much toll on my brain and +nervous system, and demanding incessant vigilance and activity. I +calculated once that I wasted a masterpiece upon these mountainous +little things about every three months of my life. Can I help thinking +of them, then, and asking why I suffer thus? And can I avoid seeing at +last how it is they hang together? + +For there is still one other bother, a kind of _bother botherum_, to +tell of, though I hesitate at the telling. It brings this rabble herd of +worries into line and makes them formidable; it is, so to speak, the +Bother Commander-in-Chief. Well! Euphemia. I simply worship the ground +she treads upon, mind, but at the same time the truth is the truth. +Euphemia is a bother. She is a brave little woman, and helps me in +every conceivable way. But I wish she would not. It is so obviously all +her doing. She makes me get up of a morning--I would not stand as much +from anybody else--and keeps a sharp eye on my chin and collar. If it +were not for her I could sit about always with no collar or tie on in +that old jacket she gave to the tramp, and just smoke and grow a beard +and let all the bothers slide. I would never wash, never shave, never +answer any letters, never go to see any friends, never do any +work--except, perhaps, an insulting postcard to a publisher now and +again. I would just sit about. + +Sometimes I think this may be peculiar in me. At other times I fancy I +am giving voice to the secret feeling of every member of my sex. I +suspect, then, that we would all do as the noble savage does, take our +things off and lie about comfortable, if only someone had the courage to +begin. It is these women--all love and reverence to Euphemia +notwithstanding--who make us work and bother us with Things. They keep +us decent, and remind us we have a position to support. And really, +after all, this is not my original discovery! There is the third chapter +of Genesis, for instance. And then who has not read Carlyle's gloating +over a certain historical suit of leather? It gives me a queer thrill of +envy, that Quaker Fox and his suit of leather. Conceive it, if you can! +One would never have to quail under the scrutiny of a tailor any more. +Thoreau, too, come to think of it, was, by way of being a prophet, a +pioneer in this Emancipation of Man from Bothery. + +Then the silent gentry who brew our Chartreuse; what are they in +retirement for? Looking back into history, with the glow of discovery in +my eyes, I find records of wise men--everyone acknowledged they were +wise men--who lived apart. In every age the same associate of solitude, +silence, and wisdom. The holy hermits!... I grant it, they professed to +flee wickedness and seek after righteousness, but now my impression is +that they fled bothers. We all know they had an intense aversion to any +savour of domesticity, and they never shaved, washed, dined, visited, +had new clothes. Holiness, indeed! They were _viveurs_.... We have +witnessed Religion without Theology, and why not an Unsectarian Thebaid? +I sometimes fancy it needs only one brave man to begin.... If it were +not for the fuss Euphemia would make I certainly should. But I know she +would come and worry me worse than St. Anthony was worried until I put +them all on again, and that keeps me from the attempt. + +I am curious whether mine is the common experience. I fancy, after all, +I am only seeing in a clearer way, putting into modern phrase, so to +speak, an observation old as the Pentateuch. And looking up I read upon +a little almanac with which Euphemia has cheered my desk:-- + + "The world was sad" (sweet sadness!) + "The garden was a wild" (a picturesque wild) + "And man the hermit" (he made no complaint) + "Till the woman smiled."--CAMPBELL. + +[And very shortly after he had, as you know, all that bother about the +millinery.] + + + + +ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE + + +Wife-choosing is an unending business. This sounds immoral, but what I +mean will be clearer in the context. People have lived--innumerable +people--exhausted experience, and yet other people keep on coming to +hand, none the wiser, none the better. It is like a waterfall more than +anything else in the world. Every year one has to turn to and warn +another batch about these stale old things. Yet it is one's duty--the +last thing that remains to a man. And as a piece of worldly wisdom, that +has nothing to do with wives, always leave a few duties neglected for +the comfort of your age. There are such a lot of other things one can do +when one is young. + +Now, the kind of wife a young fellow of eight- or nine-and-twenty +insists on selecting is something of one-and-twenty or less, +inexperienced, extremely pretty, graceful, and well dressed, not too +clever, accomplished; but I need not go on, for the youthful reader can +fill in the picture himself from his own ideal. Every young man has his +own ideal, as a matter of course, and they are all exactly alike. Now, I +do not intend to repeat all the stale old saws of out-of-date wiseacres. +Most of them are even more foolish than the follies they reprove. Take, +for instance, the statement that "beauty fades." Absurd; everyone knows +perfectly well that, as the years creep on, beauty simply gets more +highly coloured. And then, "beauty is only skin-deep." Fantastically +wrong! Some of it is not that; and, for the rest, is a woman like a toy +balloon?--just a surface? To hear that proverb from a man is to know him +at once for a phonographic kind of fool. The fundamental and enduring +grace of womanhood goes down to the skeleton; you cannot have a pretty +face without a pretty skull, just as you cannot have one without a good +temper. + +Yet all the same there is an excellent reason why one should shun beauty +in a prospective wife, at anyrate obvious beauty--the kind of beauty +people talk about, and which gets into the photographers' windows. The +common beautiful woman has a style of her own, a favourite aspect. After +all, she cannot be perfect. She comes upon you, dazzles you, marries +you; there is a time of ecstasy. People envy you, continue to envy you. +After a time you envy yourself--yourself of the day before yesterday. +For the imperfection, the inevitable imperfection--in one case I +remember it was a smile--becomes visible to you, becomes your especial +privilege. That is the real reason. No beauty is a beauty to her +husband. But with the plain woman--the thoroughly plain woman--it is +different. At first--I will not mince matters--her ugliness is an +impenetrable repulse. Face it. After a time little things begin to +appear through the violent discords: little scraps of melody--a shy +tenderness in her smile that peeps out at you and vanishes, a something +that is winning, looking out of her eyes. You find a waviness of her +hair that you never saw at the beginning, a certain surprising, +pleasing, enduring want of clumsiness in part of her ear. And it is +yours. You can see she strikes the beholder with something of a shock; +and while the beauty of the beauty is common for all the world to +rejoice in, you will find in your dear, plain wife beauty enough and to +spare; exquisite--for it is all your own, your treasure-trove, your +safely-hidden treasure.... + +Then, in the matter of age; though young fellows do not imagine it, it +is very easy to marry a wife too young. Marriage has been defined as a +foolish bargain in which one man provides for another man's daughter, +but there is no reason why this should go so far as completing her +education. If your conception of happiness is having something pretty +and innocent and troublesome about you, something that you can cherish +and make happy, a pet rabbit is in every way preferable. At the worst +that will nibble your boots. I have known several cases of the +girl-wife, and it always began like an idyll, charmingly; the tenderest +care on one hand, winsome worship on the other--until some little thing, +a cut chin or a missing paper, startled the pure and natural man out of +his veneer, dancing and blaspheming, with the most amazing consequences. +Only a proven saint should marry a girl-wife, and his motives might be +misunderstood. The idyllic wife is a beautiful thing to read about, but +in practice idylls should be kept episodes; in practice the idyllic life +is a little too like a dinner that is all dessert. A common man, after a +time, tires of winsome worship; he craves after companionship, and a +sympathy based on experience. The ordinary young man, with the still +younger wife, I have noticed, continues to love her with all his +heart--and spends his leisure telling somebody else's wife all about it. +If in these days of blatant youth an experienced man's counsel is worth +anything, it would be to marry a woman considerably older than oneself, +if one must marry at all. And while upon this topic--and I have lived +long--the ideal wife, I am persuaded, from the close observation of many +years, is invariably, by some mishap, a widow.... + +Avoid social charm. It was the capacity for entertaining visitors that +ruined Paradise. It grows upon a woman. An indiscriminating personal +magnetism is perhaps the most dreadful vice a wife can have. You think +you have married the one woman in the world, and you find you have +married a host--that is to say, a hostess. Instead of making a home for +you she makes you something between an ethnographical museum and a +casual ward. You find your rooms littered with people and teacups and +things, strange creatures that no one could possibly care for, that seem +scarcely to care for themselves. You go about the house treading upon +chance geniuses, and get tipped by inexperienced guests. And even when +she does not entertain, she is continually going out. I do not deny that +charming people are charming, that their company should be sought, but +seeking it in marriage is an altogether different matter. + +Then, I really must insist that young men do not understand the real +truth about accomplishments. There comes a day when the most variegated +wife comes to the end of her tunes, and another when she ends them for +the second time; _Vita longa, ars brevis_--at least, as regards the art +of the schoolgirl. It is only like marrying a slightly more complicated +barrel-organ. And, for another point, watch the young person you would +honour with your hand for the slightest inkling of economy or tidiness. +Young men are so full of poetry and emotion that it does not occur to +them how widely the sordid vices are distributed in the other sex. If +you are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or a day labourer, +such weaknesses become a strength, of course, but not otherwise. For a +literary person--if perchance you are a literary person--it is +altogether too dreadful. You are always getting swept and garnished, +straightened up and sent out to be shaved. And home--even your +study--becomes a glittering, spick-and-span mechanism. But you know the +parable of the seven devils? + +To conclude, a summary. The woman you choose should be plain, as plain +as you can find, as old or older than yourself, devoid of social gifts +or accomplishments, poor--for your self-respect--and with a certain +amiable untidiness. Of course no young man will heed this, but at least +I have given my counsel, and very excellent reasons for that counsel. +And possibly I shall be able to remind him that I told him as much, in +the course of a few years' time. And, by the bye, I had almost +forgotten! Never by any chance marry a girl whose dresses do up at the +back, unless you can afford her a maid or so of her own. + + + + +THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO + +A MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A BOX + + +And the box, Euphemia's. Brutally raided it was by an insensate husband, +eager for a tie and too unreasonably impatient to wait an hour or so +until she could get home and find it for him. There was, of course, no +tie at all in that box, for all his stirring--as anyone might have +known; but, if there was no tie, there were certain papers that at least +suggested a possibility of whiling away the time until the Chooser and +Distributer of Ties should return. And, after all, there is no reading +like your accidental reading come upon unawares. + +It was a discovery, indeed, that Euphemia _had_ papers. At the first +glance these close-written sheets suggested a treasonable Keynote, and +the husband gripped it with a certain apprehension mingling with his +relief at the opiate of reading. It was, so to speak, the privilege of +police he exercised, so he justified himself. He began to read. But what +is this? "She stood on the balcony outside the window, while the +noblest-born in the palace waited on her every capricious glance, and +watched for an unbending look to relieve her hauteur, but in vain." None +of your snippy-snappy Keynote there! + +Then he turned over a page or so of the copy, doubting if the privilege +of police still held good. Standing out by virtue of a different ink, +and coming immediately after "bear her to her proud father," were the +words, "How many yards of carpet 3/4 yds. wide will cover room, width 16 +ft., length 27-1/2 ft.?" Then he knew he was in the presence of the +great romance that Euphemia wrote when she was sixteen. He had heard +something of it before. He held it doubtfully in his hands, for the +question of conscience still troubled him. "Bah!" he said abruptly, "not +to find it irresistible was to slight the authoress and her skill." And +with that he sat plump down among the things in the box very comfortably +and began reading, and, indeed, read until Euphemia arrived. But she, at +the sight of his head and legs, made several fragmentary and presumably +offensive remarks about crushing some hat or other, and proceeded with +needless violence to get him out of the box again. However, that is my +own private trouble. We are concerned now with the merits of Euphemia's +romance. + +The hero of the story is a Venetian, named (for some unknown reason) +Ivan di Sorno. So far as I ascertained, he is the entire house of Di +Sorno referred to in the title. No other Di Sornos transpired. Like +others in the story, he is possessed of untold wealth, tempered by a +profound sorrow, for some cause which remains unmentioned, but which is +possibly internal. He is first displayed "pacing a sombre avenue of ilex +and arbutus that reflected with singular truth the gloom of his +countenance," and "toying sadly with the jewelled hilt of his dagger." +He meditates upon his loveless life and the burthen of riches. Presently +he "paces the long and magnificent gallery," where a "hundred +generations of Di Sornos, each with the same flashing eye and the same +marble brow, look down with the same sad melancholy upon the +beholder"--a truly monotonous exhibition. It would be too much for +anyone, day after day. He decides that he will travel. Incognito. + +The next chapter is headed "In Old Madrid," and Di Sorno, cloaked to +conceal his grandeur, "moves sad and observant among the giddy throng." +But "Gwendolen"--the majestic Gwendolen of the balcony--"marked his +pallid yet beautiful countenance." And the next day at the bull-fight +she "flung her bouquet into the arena, and turning to Di Sorno"--a +perfect stranger, mind you--"smiled commandingly." "In a moment he had +flung himself headlong down among the flashing blades of the toreadors +and the trampling confusion of bulls, and in another he stood before +her, bowing low with the recovered flowers in his hand. 'Fair sir,' she +said, 'methinks my poor flowers were scarce worth your trouble.'" A very +proper remark. And then suddenly I put the manuscript down. + +My heart was full of pity for Euphemia. Thus had she gone a-dreaming. A +man of imposing physique and flashing eye, who would fling you oxen here +and there, and vault in and out of an arena without catching a breath, +for his lady's sake--and here I sat, the sad reality, a lean and +slippered literary pretender, and constitutionally afraid of cattle. + +Poor little Euphemia! For after all is said and done, and the New Woman +gibed out of existence, I am afraid we do undeceive these poor wives of +ours a little after the marrying is over. It may be they have deceived +themselves, in the first place, but that scarcely affects their +disappointment. These dream-lovers of theirs, these monsters of +unselfishness and devotion, these tall fair Donovans and dark +worshipping Wanderers! And then comes the rabble rout of us poor human +men, damning at our breakfasts, wiping pens upon our coat sleeves, +smelling of pipes, fearing our editors, and turning Euphemia's private +boxes into public copy. And they take it so steadfastly--most of them. +They never let us see the romance we have robbed them of, but turn to +and make the best of it--and us--with such sweet grace. Only now and +then--as in the instance of a flattened hat--may a cry escape them. And +even then---- + +But a truce to reality! Let us return to Di Sorno. + +This individual does not become enamoured of Gwendolen, as the crude +novel reader might anticipate. He answers her "coldly," and his eye +rests the while on her "tirewoman, the sweet Margot." Then come scenes +of jealousy and love, outside a castle with heavily mullioned windows. +The sweet Margot, though she turns out to be the daughter of a bankrupt +prince, has one characteristic of your servant all the world over--she +spends all her time looking out of the window. Di Sorno tells her of his +love on the evening of the bull-fight, and she cheerfully promises to +"learn to love him," and therafter he spends all his days and nights +"spurring his fiery steed down the road" that leads by the castle +containing the young scholar. It becomes a habit with him--in all, he +does it seventeen times in three chapters. Then, "ere it is too late," +he implores Margot to fly. + +Gwendolen, after a fiery scene with Margot, in which she calls her a +"petty minion,"--pretty language for a young gentlewoman,--"sweeps with +unutterable scorn from the room," never, to the reader's huge +astonishment, to appear in the story again, and Margot flies with Di +Sorno to Grenada, where the Inquisition, consisting apparently of a +single monk with a "blazing eye," becomes extremely machinatory. A +certain Countess di Morno, who intends to marry Di Sorno, and who has +been calling into the story in a casual kind of way since the romance +began, now comes prominently forward. She has denounced Margot for +heresy, and at a masked ball the Inquisition, disguised in a yellow +domino, succeeds in separating the young couple, and in carrying off +"the sweet Margot" to a convent. + +"Di Sorno, half distraught, flung himself into a cab and drove to all +the hotels in Grenada" (he overlooked the police station), and, failing +to find Margot, becomes mad. He goes about ejaculating "Mad, mad!" than +which nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion. +In his paroxysms the Countess di Morno persuades him to "lead her to the +altar," but on the way (with a certain indelicacy they go to church in +the same conveyance) she lets slip a little secret. So Di Sorno jumps +out of the carriage, "hurling the crowd apart," and, "flourishing his +drawn sword," "clamoured at the gate of the Inquisition" for Margot. The +Inquisition, represented by the fiery-eyed monk, "looked over the gate +at him." No doubt it felt extremely uncomfortable. + +Now it was just at this thrilling part that Euphemia came home, and the +trouble about the flattened hat began. I never flattened her hat. It was +in the box, and so was I; but as for deliberate flattening----It was +just a thing that happened. She should not write such interesting +stories if she expects me to go on tiptoe through the world looking +about for her hats. To have that story taken away just at that +particular moment was horrible. There was fully as much as I had read +still to come, so that a lot happened after this duel of Sword _v._ +Fiery Eye. I know from a sheet that came out of place that Margot +stabbed herself with a dagger ("richly jewelled"), but of all that came +between I have not the faintest suspicion. That is the peculiar interest +of it. At this particular moment the one book I want to read in all the +world is the rest of this novel of Euphemia's. And simply, on the score +of a new hat needed, she keeps it back and haggles! + + + + +OF CONVERSATION + +AN APOLOGY + + +I must admit that in conversation I am not a brilliant success. Partly, +indeed, that may be owing to the assiduity with which my aunt suppressed +my early essays in the art: "Children," she said, "should be seen but +not heard," and incontinently rapped my knuckles. To a larger degree, +however, I regard it as intrinsic. This tendency to silence, to go out +of the rattle and dazzle of the conversation into a quiet apart, is +largely, I hold, the consequence of a certain elevation and breadth and +tenderness of mind; I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe, +no rattle that I should be expected to delight my fellow-creatures by +the noises I produce. I go about to this social function and that, +deporting myself gravely and decently in silence, taking, if possible, a +back seat; and, in consequence of that, people who do not understand me +have been heard to describe me as a "stick," as "shy," and by an +abundance of the like unflattering terms. So that I am bound almost in +self-justification to set down my reasons for this temperance of mine in +conversation. + +Speech, no doubt, is a valuable gift, but at the same time it is a gift +that may be abused. What is regarded as polite conversation is, I hold, +such an abuse. Alcohol, opium, tea, are all very excellent things in +their way; but imagine continuous alcohol, an incessant opium, or to +receive, ocean-like, a perennially flowing river of tea! That is my +objection to this conversation: its continuousness. You have to keep on. +You find three or four people gathered together, and instead of being +restful and recreative, sitting in comfortable attitudes and at peace +with themselves and each other, and now and again, perhaps three or four +times in an hour, making a worthy and memorable remark, they are all +haggard and intent upon keeping this fetish flow agoing. A fortuitous +score of cows in a field are a thousand times happier than a score of +people deliberately assembled for the purposes of happiness. These +conversationalists say the most shallow and needless of things, impart +aimless information, simulate interest they do not feel, and generally +impugn their claim to be considered reasonable creatures. Why, when +people assemble without hostile intentions, it should be so imperative +to keep the trickling rill of talk running, I find it impossible to +imagine. It is a vestige of the old barbaric times, when men murdered at +sight for a mere whim; when it was good form to take off your sword in +the antechamber, and give your friend your dagger-hand, to show him it +was no business visit. Similarly, you keep up this babblement to show +your mind has no sinister concentration, not necessarily because you +have anything to say, but as a guarantee of good faith. You have to make +a noise all the time, like the little boy who was left in the room with +the plums. It is the only possible explanation. + +To a logical mind there is something very distressing in this social law +of gabble. Out of regard for Mrs. A, let us say, I attend some festival +she has inaugurated. There I meet for the first time a young person of +pleasant exterior, and I am placed in her company to deliver her at a +dinner-table, or dance her about, or keep her out of harm's way, in a +cosy nook. She has also never seen me before, and probably does not want +particularly to see me now. However, I find her nice to look at, and she +has taken great pains to make herself nice to look at, and why we cannot +pass the evening, I looking at her and she being looked at, I cannot +imagine. But no; we must talk. Now, possibly there are topics she knows +about and I do not--it is unlikely, but suppose so; on these topics she +requires no information. Again, I know about other topics things unknown +to her, and it seems a mean and priggish thing to broach these, since +they put her at a disadvantage. Thirdly, comes a last group of subjects +upon which we are equally informed, and upon which, therefore, neither +of us is justified in telling things to the other. This classification +of topics seems to me exhaustive. + +These considerations, I think, apply to all conversations. In every +conversation, every departure must either be a presumption when you talk +into your antagonist's special things, a pedantry when you fall back +upon your own, or a platitude when you tell each other things you both +know. I don't see any other line a conversation can take. The reason why +one has to keep up the stream of talk is possibly, as I have already +suggested, to manifest goodwill. And in so many cases this could be +expressed so much better by a glance, a deferential carriage, possibly +in some cases a gentle pressure of the hand, or a quiet persistent +smile. And suppose there is some loophole in my reasoning--though I +cannot see it--and that possible topics exist, how superficial and +unexact is the best conversation to a second-rate book! + +Even with two people you see the objection, but when three or four are +gathered together the case is infinitely worse to a man of delicate +perceptions. Let us suppose--I do not grant it--that there is a possible +sequence of things to say to the person A that really harmonise with A +and yourself. Grant also that there is a similar sequence between +yourself and B. Now, imagine yourself and A and B at the corners of an +equilateral triangle set down to talk to each other. The kind of talk +that A appreciates is a discord with B, and similarly B's sequence is +impossible in the hearing of A. As a matter of fact, a real conversation +of three people is the most impossible thing in the world. In real life +one of the three always drops out and becomes a mere audience, or a mere +partisan. In real life you and A talk, and B pretends to be taking a +share by interjecting interruptions, or one of the three talks a +monologue. And the more subtle your sympathy and the greater your +restraint from self-assertion, the more incredible triple and quadruple +conversation becomes. + +I have observed that there is even nowadays a certain advance towards my +views in this matter. Men may not pick out antagonists, and argue to the +general audience as once they did: there is a tacit taboo of +controversy, neither may you talk your "shop," nor invite your +antagonist to talk his. There is also a growing feeling against +extensive quotations or paraphrases from the newspapers. Again, +personalities, scandal, are, at least in theory, excluded. This narrows +the scope down to the "last new book," "the last new play," "impressions +de voyage," and even here it is felt that any very ironical or satirical +remarks, anything unusual, in fact, may disconcert your adversary. You +ask: Have you read the _Wheels of Chance_? The answer is "Yes." "Do you +like it?" "A little vulgar, I thought." And so forth. Most of this is +stereo. It is akin to responses in church, a prescription, a formula. +And, following out this line of thought, I have had a vision of the +twentieth century dinner. At a distance it is very like the nineteenth +century type; the same bright light, the same pleasant deglutition, the +same hum of conversation; but, approaching, you discover each diner has +a little drum-shaped body under his chin--his phonograph. So he dines +and babbles at his ease. In the smoking-room he substitutes his anecdote +record. I imagine, too, the suburban hostess meeting the new maiden: "I +hope, dear, you have brought a lot of conversation," just as now she +asks for the music. For my own part, I must confess I find this dinner +conversation particularly a bother. If I could eat with my eye it would +be different. + +I lose a lot of friends through this conversational difficulty. They +think it is my dulness or my temper, when really it is only my refined +mind, my subtlety of consideration. It seems to me that when I go to see +a man, I go to see him--to enjoy his presence. If he is my friend, the +sight of him healthy and happy is enough for me. I don't want him to +keep his vocal cords, and I don't want to keep my own vocal cords, in +incessant vibration all the time I am in his company. If I go to see a +man, it distracts me to have to talk and it distracts me to hear him +talking. I can't imagine why one should not go and sit about in people's +rooms, without bothering them and without their bothering you to say all +these stereotyped things. Quietly go in, sit down, look at your man +until you have seen him enough, and then go. Why not? + +Let me once more insist that this keeping up a conversation is a sign of +insecurity, of want of confidence. All those who have had real friends +know that when the friendship is assured the gabble ceases. You are not +at the heart of your friend, if either of you cannot go off comfortably +to sleep in the other's presence. Speech was given us to make known our +needs, and for imprecation, expostulation, and entreaty. This pitiful +necessity we are under, upon social occasions, to say something--however +inconsequent--is, I am assured, the very degradation of speech. + + + + +IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD + + +In the literary household of fiction and the drama, things are usually +in a distressing enough condition. The husband, as you know, has a +hacking cough, and the wife a dying baby, and they write in the +intervals of these cares among the litter of the breakfast things. +Occasionally a comic, but sympathetic, servant brings in an +armful--"heaped up and brimming over"--of rejected MSS., for, in the +dramatic life, it never rains but it pours. Instead of talking about +editors in a bright and vigorous fashion, as the recipients of +rejections are wont, the husband groans and covers his face with his +hands, and the wife, leaving the touching little story she is +writing--she posts this about 9 p.m., and it brings in a publisher and +£100 or so before 10.30--comforts him by flopping suddenly over his +shoulder. "Courage," she says, stroking his hyacinthine locks (whereas +all real literary men are more or less grey or bald). Sometimes, as in +_Our Flat_, comic tradesmen interrupt the course of true literature with +their ignoble desire for cash payment, and sometimes, as in _Our Boys_, +uncles come and weep at the infinite pathos of a bad breakfast egg. But +it's always a very sordid, dusty, lump-in-your-throaty affair, and no +doubt it conduces to mortality by deterring the young and impressionable +from literary vices. As for its truth, that is another matter +altogether. + +Yet it must not be really imagined that a literary household is just +like any other. There is the brass paper-fastener, for instance. I have +sometimes thought that Euphemia married me with an eye to these +conveniences. She has two in her grey gloves, and one (with the head +inked) in her boot in the place of a button. Others I suspect her of. +Then she fastened the lamp shade together with them, and tried one day +to introduce them instead of pearl buttons as efficient anchorage for +cuffs and collars. And she made a new handle for the little drawer under +the inkstand with one. Indeed, the literary household is held together, +so to speak, by paper-fasteners, and how other people get along without +them we are at a loss to imagine. + +And another point, almost equally important, is that the husband is +generally messing about at home. That is, indeed, to a superficial +observer, one of the most remarkable characteristics of the literary +household. Other husbands are cast out in the morning to raven for +income and return to a home that is swept and garnished towards the end +of the day; but the literary husband is ever in possession. His work +must not be disturbed even when he is merely thinking. The study is +consequently a kind of domestic cordite factory, and you are never +certain when it may explode. The concussion of a dust-pan and brush may +set it going, the sweeping of a carpet in the room upstairs. Then behold +a haggard, brain-weary man, fierce and dishevelled, and full of +shattered masterpiece--expostulating. Other houses have their day of +cleaning out this room, and their day for cleaning out that; but in the +literary household there is one uniform date for all such functions, and +that is "to-morrow." So that Mrs. Mergles makes her purifying raids with +her heart in her mouth, and has acquired a way of leaving the pail and +brush, or whatever artillery she has with her, in a manner that +unavoidably engages the infuriated brute's attention and so covers her +retreat. + +It is a problem that has never been probably solved, this discord of +order and orderly literary work. Possibly it might be done by making the +literary person live elsewhere or preventing literary persons from +having households. However it might be done, it is not done. This is a +thing innocent girls exposed to the surreptitious proposals of literary +men do not understand. They think it will be very fine to have +photographs of themselves and their "cosy nooks" published in magazines, +to illustrate the man's interviews, and the full horror of having this +feral creature always about the house, and scarcely ever being able to +do any little thing without his knowing it, is not brought properly home +to them until escape is impossible. + +And then there is the taint of "copy" everywhere. That is really the +fundamental distinction. It is the misfortune of literary people, that +they have to write about something. There is no reason, of course, why +they should, but the thing is so. Consequently, they are always looking +about them for something to write about. They cannot take a pure-minded +interest in anything in earth or heaven. Their servant is no servant, +but a character; their cat is a possible reservoir of humorous +observation; they look out of window and see men as columns walking. +Even the sanctity of their own hearts, their self-respect, their most +private emotions are disregarded. The wife is infected with the taint. +Her private opinion of her husband she makes into a short story--forgets +its origin and shows it him with pride--while the husband decants his +heart-beats into occasional verse and minor poetry. It is amazing what a +lot of latter-day literature consists of such breaches of confidence. +And not simply latter-day literature. + +The visitor is fortunate who leaves no marketable impression behind. The +literary entertainers eye you over, as if they were dealers in a slave +mart, and speculate on your uses. They try to think how you would do as +a scoundrel, and mark your little turns of phrase and kinks of thought +to that end. The innocent visitor bites his cake and talks about +theatres, while the meditative person in the arm-chair may be in +imagination stabbing him, or starving him on a desert island, or +even--horrible to tell!--flinging him headlong into the arms of the +young lady to the right and "covering her face with a thousand +passionate kisses." A manuscript in the rough of Euphemia's, that I +recently suppressed, was an absolutely scandalous example of this method +of utilising one's acquaintances. Mrs. Harborough, who was indeed +Euphemia's most confidential friend for six weeks and more, she had +made to elope with Scrimgeour--as steady and honourable a man as we +know, though unpleasant to Euphemia on account of his manner of holding +his teacup. I believe there really was something--quite harmless, of +course--between Mrs. Harborough and Scrimgeour, and that, imparted in +confidence, had been touched up with vivid colour here and there and +utilised freely. Scrimgeour is represented as always holding teacups in +his peculiar way, so that anyone would recognise him at once. Euphemia +calls that character. Then Harborough, who is really on excellent terms +with his wife, and, in spite of his quiet manner, a very generous and +courageous fellow, is turned aside from his headlong pursuit of the +fugitives across Wimbledon Common--they elope, by the bye, on +Scrimgeour's tandem bicycle--by the fear of being hit by a golf ball. I +pointed out to Euphemia that these things were calculated to lose us +friends, and she promises to destroy the likeness; but I have no +confidence in her promise. She will probably clap a violent auburn wig +on Mrs. Harborough and make Scrimgeour squint and give Harborough a big +beard. The point that she won't grasp is, that with that fatal facility +for detail, which is one of the most indisputable proofs of woman's +intellectual inferiority, she has reproduced endless remarks and +mannerisms of these excellent people with more than photographic +fidelity. But this is really a private trouble, though it illustrates +very well the shameless way in which those who have the literary taint +will bring to market their most intimate affairs. + + + + +ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME + + +I do not know if you remember your "dates." Indeed, I do not know if +anyone does. My own memory is of a bridge; like that bridge of +Goldsmith's, standing firm and clear on its hither piers and then +passing into a cloud. In the beginning of days was "William the +Conqueror, 1066," and the path lay safe and open to Henry the Second; +then came Titanic forms of kings, advancing and receding, elongating and +dwindling, exchanging dates, losing dates, stealing dates from battles +and murders and great enactments--even inventing dates, vacant years +that were really no dates at all. The things I have suffered--prisons, +scourgings, beating with rods, wild masters, in bounds often, a hundred +lines often, standing on forms and holding out books often--on account +of these dates! I knew, and knew well before I was fifteen, what these +"heredity" babblers are only beginning to discover--that the past is the +curse of the present. But I never knew my dates--never. And I marvel now +that all little boys do not grow up to be Republicans, seeing how much +they suffer for the mere memory of Kings. + +Then there were pedigrees, and principal parts and conjugations, and +county towns. Every county had a county town, and it was always on a +river. Mr. Sandsome never allowed us a town without that colophon. I +remember in my early manhood going to Guildford on the Wey, and trying +to find that unobtrusive rivulet. I went over the downs for miles. It is +not only the Wey I have had a difficulty in finding. There are certain +verses--Heaven help me, but I have forgotten them!--about "_i_ vel _e_ +dat" (_was_ it dat?) "utrum malis"--if I remember rightly--and all that +about _amo, amas, amat_. There was a multitude of such things I +acquired, and they lie now, in the remote box-rooms and lumber recesses +of my mind, a rusting armoury far gone in decay. I have never been able +to find a use for them. I wonder even now why Mr. Sandsome equipped me +with them. Yet he seemed to be in deadly earnest about this learning, +and I still go in doubt. In those early days he impressed me, chiefly in +horizontal strips, with the profoundest respect for his mental and +physical superiority. I credited him then, and still incline to believe +he deserved to be credited, with a sincere persuasion that unless I +learnt these things I should assuredly go--if I may be frank--to the +devil. It may be so. I may be living in a fool's paradise, +prospering--like that wicked man the Psalmist disliked. Some unsuspected +gulf may open, some undreamt-of danger thrust itself through the +phantasmagoria of the universe, and I may learn too late the folly of +forgetting my declensions. + +I remember Mr. Sandsome chiefly as sitting at his desk, in a little room +full of boys, a humming hive whose air was thick with dust, as the +slanting sunbeams showed. When we were not doing sums or writing copies, +we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr. +Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keen +and observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There was +a standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis. +How long the days were then! I have heard that scientific +people--Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err--which +probably I do, for names and dates I have hated from my youth up--say +the days grow longer. Anyhow, whoever says it, it is quite wrong. But as +the lank hours of that vast schooltime drawled on, Mr. Sandsome lost +energy, drooped like a flower,--especially if the day was at all +hot,--his sandy hair became dishevelled, justice became nerveless, +hectic, and hasty. Finally came copybooks; and yawns and weird rumblings +from Mr. Sandsome. And so the world aged to the dinner-hour. + +When I had been home--it was a day school, for my aunt, who had an +appetite for such things, knew that boarding-schools were sinks of +iniquity--and returned, I had Mr. Sandsome at another phase. He had +dined--for we were simple country folk. The figurative suggestions of +that "phase" are irresistible--the lunar quality. May I say that Mr. +Sandsome was at his full? We now stood up, thirty odd of us altogether, +to read, reading out of books in a soothing monotone, and he sat with +his reading-book before him, ruddy as the setting sun, and slowly, +slowly settling down. But now and then he would jerk back suddenly into +staring wakefulness as though he were fishing--with himself as bait--for +schoolboy crimes in the waters of oblivion--and fancied a nibble. That +was a dangerous time, full of anxiety. At last he went right under and +slept, and the reading grew cheerful, full of quaint glosses and +unexpected gaps, leaping playfully from boy to boy, instead of +travelling round with a proper decorum. But it never ceased, and little +Hurkley's silly little squeak of a voice never broke in upon its mellow +flow. (It took a year for Hurkley's voice to break.) Any such +interruption and Mr. Sandsome woke up and into his next phase +forthwith--a disagreeable phase always, and one we made it our business +to postpone as long as possible. + +During that final period, the last quarter, Mr. Sandsome was distinctly +malignant. It was hard to do right; harder still to do wrong. A feverish +energy usually inspired our government. "Let us try to get some work +done," Mr. Sandsome would say--and I have even known him teach things +then. More frequently, with a needless bitterness, he set us upon +impossible tasks, demanding a colossal tale of sums perhaps, scattering +pens and paper and sowing the horrors of bookkeeping, or chastising us +with the scorpions of parsing and translation. And even in wintry +weather the little room grew hot and stuffy, and we terminated our +schoolday, much exhausted, with minds lax, lounging attitudes, and red +ears. What became of Mr. Sandsome after the giving-out of home-work, the +concluding prayer, and the aftermath of impositions, I do not know. I +stuffed my books, such as came to hand--very dirty they were inside, and +very neat out with my Aunt Charlotte's chintz covers--into my green +baize bag, and went forth from the mysteries of schooling into the great +world, up the broad white road that went slanting over the Down. + +I say "the mysteries of schooling" deliberately. I wondered then, I +wonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt +from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home +and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is +deliberate--it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the +things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like +the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire--great, disconnected, time-worn chunks +amidst the natural herbage of it. "The Rivers of the East Coast; the +Tweed, the Tyne, the Wear, the Tees, the Humber"--why is that, for +instance, sticking up among my ferns and wild flowers? It is not only +useless but misleading, for the Humber is not another Tweed. I sometimes +fancy the world may be mad--yet that seems egotistical. The fact remains +that for the greater part of my young life Mr. Sandsome got an appetite +upon us from nine till twelve, and digested his dinner, at first +placidly and then with petulance, from two until five--and we thirty odd +boys were sent by our twenty odd parents to act as a sort of chorus to +his physiology. And he was fed (as I judge) more than sufficiently, +clothed, sheltered, and esteemed on account of this relation. I think, +after all, there must have been something in that schooling. I can't +believe the world mad. And I have forgotten it--or as good as forgotten +it--all! At times I feel a wild impulse to hunt up all those +chintz-covered books, and brush up my dates and paradigms, before it is +too late. + + + + +THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM + + +"I am beginning life," he said, with a sigh. "Great Heavens! I have +spent a day--_a day!_--in a shop. Three bedroom suites and a sideboard +are among the unanticipated pledges of our affection. Have you lithia? +For a man of twelve limited editions this has been a terrible day." + +I saw to his creature comforts. His tie was hanging outside his +waistcoat, and his complexion was like white pasteboard that has got +wet. "Courage," said I. "It will not occur again----" + +"It will," said he. "We have to get there again tomorrow. We have--what +is it?--carpets, curtains----" + +He produced his tablets. I was amazed. Those receptacles of choice +thoughts! + +"The amber sunlight splashing through the leaky--leafy interlacing +green," he read. "No!--that's not it. Ah, here! Curtains! +Drawing-room--not to cost more than thirty shillings! And there's all +the Kitchen Hardware! (Thanks.) Dining-room chairs--query--rush bottoms? +What's this? G.L.I.S.--ah! "Glistering thro' deeps of +glaucophane"--that's nothing. Mem. to see can we afford Indian +needlework chairs--57s. 6d.? It's dreadful, Bellows!" + +He helped himself to a cigarette. + +"Find the salesman pleasant?" said I. + +"Delightful. Assumed I was a spendthrift millionaire at first. Produced +in an off-hand way an eighty-guinea bedroom suite--we're trying to do +the entire business, you know, on about two hundred pounds. Well--that's +ten editions, you know. Came down, with evidently dwindling respect, to +things that were still ruinously expensive. I told him we wanted an +idyll--love in a cottage, and all that kind of thing. He brushed that on +one side, said idols were upstairs in the Japanese Department, and that +perhaps we might _do_ with a servant's set of bedroom furniture. Do with +a set! He was a gloomy man with (I should judge) some internal pain. I +tried to tell him that there was quite a lot of middle-class people like +myself in the country, people of limited or precarious means, whose +existence he seemed to ignore; assured him some of them led quite +beautiful lives. But he had no ideas beyond wardrobes. I quite forgot +the business of shopping in an attempt to kindle a little human +enthusiasm in his heart. We were in a great vast place full of +wardrobes, with a remote glittering vista of brass bedsteads--skeleton +beds, you know--and I tried to inspire him with some of the poetry of +his emporium; tried to make him imagine these beds and things going east +and west, north and south, to take sorrow, servitude, joy, worry, +failing strength, restless ambition in their impartial embraces. He only +turned round to Annie, and asked her if she thought she could _do_ with +'enamelled.' But I was quite taken with my idea----Where is it? I left +Annie to settle with this misanthrope, amidst his raw frameworks of the +Homes of the Future." + +He fumbled with his tablets. "Mats for hall--not to exceed 3s. 9d.... +Kerbs ... inquire tiled hearth ... Ah! Here we are: 'Ballade of the +Bedroom Suite':-- + + "'Noble the oak you are now displaying, + Subtly the hazel's grainings go, + Walnut's charm there is no gainsaying, + Red as red wine is your rosewood's glow; + Brave and brilliant the ash you show, + Rich your mahogany's hepatite shine, + Cool and sweet your enamel: But oh! + _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_' + +"They have 'em in the catalogue at five guineas, with a picture--quite +as good they are as the more expensive ones. To judge by the picture." + +"But that's scarcely the idea you started with," I began. + +"Not; it went wrong--ballades often do. The preoccupation of the +'Painted Pine' was too much for me. What's this? 'N.B.--Sludge sells +music stools at--' No. Here we are (first half unwritten):-- + + "'White enamelled, like driven snow, + Picked with just one delicate line. + Price you were saying is? Fourteen!--No! + _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_' + +"Comes round again, you see! Then _L'Envoy_:-- + + "'Salesman, sad is the truth I trow: + Winsome walnut can never be mine. + Poets are cheap. And their poetry. So + _Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?_' + +"Prosaic! As all true poetry is, nowadays. But, how I tired as the +afternoon moved on! At first I was interested in the shopman's amazing +lack of imagination, and the glory of that fond dream of mine--love in a +cottage, you know--still hung about me. I had ideas come--like that +Ballade--and every now and then Annie told me to write notes. I think my +last gleam of pleasure was in choosing the drawing-room chairs. There is +scope for fantasy in chairs. Then----" + +He took some more whisky. + +"A kind of grey horror came upon me. I don't know if I can describe it. +We went through vast vistas of chairs, of hall-tables, of machine-made +pictures, of curtains, huge wildernesses of carpets, and ever this cold, +unsympathetic shopman led us on, and ever and again made us buy this or +that. He had a perfectly grey eye--the colour of an overcast sky in +January--and he seemed neither to hate us nor to detest us, but simply +to despise us, to feel such an overwhelming contempt for our petty means +and our petty lives, as an archangel might feel for an apple-maggot. It +made me think...." + +He lit a fresh cigarette. + +"I had a kind of vision. I do not know if you will understand. The +Warehouse of Life, with our Individual Fate hurrying each of us through. +Showing us with a covert sneer all the good things that we cannot +afford. A magnificent Rosewood love affair, for instance, deep and +rich, fitted complete, some hours of perfect life, some acts of perfect +self-sacrifice, perfect self-devotion.... You ask the price." + +He shrugged his shoulders. + +"Where are the wardrobes of Painted Pine?" I quoted. + +"That's it. All the things one might do, if the purse of one's courage +were not so shallow. If it wasn't for the lack of that coinage, Bellows, +every man might be magnificent. There's heroism, there's such nobility +as no one has ever attained to, ready to hand. Anyone, if it were not +for this lack of means, might be a human god in twenty-four hours.... +You see the article. You cannot buy it. No one buys it. It stands in the +emporium, I suppose, for show--on the chance of a millionaire. And the +shopman waves his hand to it on your way to the Painted Pine. + +"Then you meet other couples and solitary people going about, each with +a gloomy salesman leading. The run of them look uncomfortable; some are +hot about the ears and in the spiteful phase of ill-temper; all look +sick of the business except the raw new-comers. It's the only time they +will ever select any furniture, their first chance and their last. Most +of their selections are hurried a little. The salesman must not be kept +all day.... Yet it goes hard with you if you buy your Object in Life and +find it just a 'special line' made to sell.... We're all amateurs at +living, just as we are all amateurs at furnishing--or dying. Some of the +poor devils one meets carry tattered little scraps of paper, and fumble +conscientiously with stumpy pencils. It's a comfort to see how you go, +even if you do have to buy rubbish. 'If we have _this_ so good, dear, I +don't know _how_ we shall manage in the kitchen,' says the careful +housewife.... So it is we do our shopping in the Great Emporium." + +"You will have to rewrite your Ballade," said I, "and put all that in." + +"I wish I could," said the poet. + +"And while you were having these very fine moods?" + +"Annie and the shopman settled most of the furniture between them. +Perhaps it's just as well. I was never very good at the practical +details of life.... Cigarette's out! Have you any more matches?" + +"Horribly depressed you are!" I said. + +"There's to-morrow. Well, well...." + +And then he went off at a tangent to tell me what he expected to make by +his next volume of poems, and so came to the congenial business of +running down his contemporaries, and became again the cheerful little +Poet that I know. + + + + +THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS + + +During the early Victorian revival of chivalry the Language of Flowers +had some considerable vogue. The Romeo of the mutton-chop whiskers was +expected to keep this delicate symbolism in view, and even to display +his wit by some dainty conceits in it. An ignorance of the code was +fraught with innumerable dangers. A sprig of lilac was a suggestion, a +moss-rosebud pushed the matter, was indeed evidence to go to court upon; +and unless Charlotte parried with white poplar--a by no means accessible +flower--or apricot blossom, or failing these dabbed a cooling dock-leaf +at the fellow, he was at her with tulip, heliotrope, and honeysuckle, +peach-blossom, white jonquil, and pink, and a really overpowering and +suffocating host of attentions. I suppose he got at last to +three-cornered notes in the vernacular; and meanwhile what could a poor +girl do? There was no downright "No!" in the language of flowers, +nothing equivalent to "Go away, please," no flower for "Idiot!" The only +possible defence was something in this way: "Your cruelty causes me +sorrow," "Your absence is a pleasure." For this, according to the code +of Mr. Thomas Miller (third edition, 1841, with elegantly coloured +plates) you would have to get a sweet-pea blossom for Pleasure, wormwood +for Absence, and indicate Sorrow by the yew, and Cruelty by the +stinging-nettle. There is always a little risk of mixing your predicates +in this kind of communication, and he might, for instance, read that his +Absence caused you Sorrow, but he could scarcely miss the point of the +stinging-nettle. That and the gorse carefully concealed were about the +only gleams of humour possible in the language. But then it was the +appointed tongue of lovers, and while their sickness is upon them they +have neither humour nor wit. + +This Mr. Thomas Miller wrote abundant flowers of language in his book, +and the plates were coloured by hand. By the bye, what a blessed thing +colour-printing is! These hand-tinted plates, to an imaginative person, +are about as distressing as any plates can very well be. Whenever I look +at these triumphs of art over the beauties of nature, with all their +weary dabs of crimson, green, blue, and yellow, I think of wretched, +anæmic girls fading their youth away in some dismal attic over a +publisher's, toiling through the whole edition tint by tint, and being +mocked the while by Mr. Miller's alliterative erotics. And they _are_ +erotics! In one place he writes, "Beautiful art thou, O Broom! on the +breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath"; and throughout he buds and +blossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and coy toyings and +modest blushes, and bowers and meads. He always adds, "Wonderful boy!" +to Chatterton's name as if it were a university degree (W.B.), and he +invariably refers to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton as the +Bard of Paradise--though Bard of the Bottomless Pit would be more +appropriate. However, we are not concerned with Mr. Miller's language so +much as with a very fruitful suggestion he throws out, that "it is +surely worth while to trace a resemblance between the flower and the +emblem it represents" (a turn like that is nothing to Mr. Miller) "which +shall at least have some show of reason in it." + +Come to think of it, there is something singularly unreasonable about +almost all floral symbolism. There is your forget-me-not, pink in the +bud, and sapphire in the flower, with a fruit that breaks up into four, +the very picture of inconstancy and discursiveness. Yet your lover, with +a singular blindness, presents this to his lady when they part. Then the +white water-lily is supposed to represent purity of heart, and, mark +you, it is white without and its centre is all set about with +innumerable golden stamens, while in the middle lies, to quote the words +of that distinguished botanist, Mr. Oliver, "a fleshy disc." Could +there be a better type of sordid and mercenary deliberation maintaining +a fair appearance? The tender apple-blossom, rather than Pretence, is +surely a reminder of Eden and the fall of love's devotion into inflated +worldliness. The poppy which flaunts its violent colours athwart the +bearded corn, and which frets and withers like the Second Mrs. Tanqueray +so soon as you bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is made the +symbol of Repose. One might almost think Aimé Martin and the other great +authorities on this subject wrote in a mood of irony. + +The daisy, too, presents you Innocence, "companion of the milk-white +lamb," Mr. Miller calls it. I am sorry for the milk-white lamb. It was +one of the earliest discoveries of systematic botany that the daisy is a +fraud, a complicated impostor. _The daisy is not a flower at all._ It is +a favourite trap in botanical examinations, a snare for artless young +men entering the medical profession. Each of the little yellow things in +the centre of the daisy is a flower in itself,--if you look at one with +a lens you will find it not unlike a cowslip flower,--and the white rays +outside are a great deal more than the petals they ought to be if the +Innocence theory is to hold good. There is no such thing as an innocent +flower; they are all so many deliberate advertisements to catch the eye +of the undecided bee, but any flower almost is simpler than this one. We +would make it the emblem of artistic deception, and the confidence trick +expert should wear it as his crest. + +The violet, again, is a greatly overrated exemplar. It stimulates a +certain bashfulness, hangs its head, and passed as modest among our +simple grandparents. Its special merit is its perfume, and it pretends +to wish to hide that from every eye. But, withal, the fragrance is as +far-reaching as any I know. It droops ingenuously. "How _could_ you come +to me," it seems to say, "when all these really brilliant flowers invite +you?" Mere fishing for compliments. All the while it is being sweet, to +the very best of its undeniable ability. Then it comes, too, in early +spring, without a chaperon, and catches our hearts fresh before they +are jaded with the crowded beauties of May. A really modest flower would +wait for the other flowers to come first. A subtle affectation is surely +a different thing from modesty. The violet is simply artful, the young +widow among flowers, and to hold up such a flower as an example is not +doing one's duty by the young. For true modesty commend me to the agave, +which flowers once only in half a hundred years, as one may see for +oneself at the Royal Botanical Gardens. + +Enough has been said to show what scope there is for revision of this +sentimental Volapuk. Mr. Martin himself scarcely goes so far as I have +done, though I have merely worked out his suggestion. His only +revolutionary proposal is to displace the wind star by the "rathe +primrose" for Forsaken, on the strength of a quotation familiar to every +reader of Mason's little text-book on the English language. For the rest +he followed his authorities, and has followed them now to the remote +recesses of the literary lumber-room and into the twopenny book-box. +From that receptacle one copy of him was disinterred only a day or so +ago; a hundred and seventy pages of prose, chiefly alliterative, several +coloured plates, enthusiastic pencil-marking of a vanished somebody, +and, besides, an early Victorian flavour of dust and a dim vision of a +silent conversation in a sunlit flower garden--altogether I think very +cheap at twopence. The fashion has changed altogether now. In these days +we season our love-making with talk about heredity, philanthropy, and +sanitation, and present one another with Fabian publications instead of +wild flowers. But in the end, I fancy, the business comes to very much +the same thing. + + + + +THE LITERARY REGIMEN + + +At the risk of offending the young beginner's illusions, he must be +reminded of one or two homely but important facts bearing upon literary +production. Homely as they are, they explain much that is at first +puzzling. This perplexing question of distinction; the quality of being +somehow _fresh_--individual. Really it is a perfectly simple matter. It +is common knowledge that, after a prolonged fast, the brain works in a +feeble manner, the current of one's thoughts is pallid and shallow, it +is difficult to fix the attention and impossible to mobilise the full +forces of the mind. On the other hand, immediately after a sound meal, +the brain feels massive, but static. Tea is conducive to a gentle flow +of pleasing thoughts, and anyone who has taken Easton's syrup of the +hypophosphites will recall at once the state of cerebral erethrism, of +general mental alacrity, that followed on a dose. Again, champagne +(followed perhaps by a soupçon of whisky) leads to a mood essentially +humorous and playful, while about three dozen oysters, taken fasting, +will in most cases produce a profound and even ominous melancholy. One +might enlarge further upon this topic, on the brutalising influence of +beer, the sedative quality of lettuce, the stimulating consequences of +curried chicken; but enough has been said to point our argument. It is, +that such facts as this can surely indicate only one conclusion, and +that is the entire dependence of literary qualities upon the diet of the +writer. + +I may remind the reader, in confirmation of this suggestion, of what is +perhaps the most widely known fact about Carlyle, that on one memorable +occasion he threw his breakfast out of the window. Why did he throw his +breakfast out of the window? Surely his friends have cherished the story +out of no petty love of depreciatory detail? There are, however, those +who would have us believe it was mere childish petulance at a chilly +rasher or a hard-boiled egg. Such a supposition is absurd. On the other +hand, what is more natural than an outburst of righteous indignation at +the ruin of some carefully studied climax of feeding? The thoughtful +literary beginner who is not altogether submerged in foolish theories of +inspiration and natural genius will, we fancy, see pretty clearly that I +am developing what is perhaps after all the fundamental secret of +literary art. + +To come now to more explicit instructions. It is imperative, if you wish +to write with any power and freshness at all, that you should utterly +ruin your digestion. Any literary person will confirm this statement. At +any cost the thing must be done, even if you have to live on German +sausage, onions, and cheese to do it. So long as you turn all your +dietary to flesh and blood you will get no literature out of it. "We +learn in suffering what we teach in song." This is why men who live at +home with their mothers, or have their elder sisters to see after them, +never, by any chance, however great their literary ambition may be, +write anything but minor poetry. They get their meals at regular hours, +and done to a turn, and that plays the very devil--if you will pardon +the phrase--with one's imagination. + +A careful study of the records of literary men in the past, and a +considerable knowledge of living authors, suggests two chief ways of +losing one's digestion and engendering literary capacity. You go and +live in humble lodgings,--we could name dozens of prominent men who have +fed a great ambition in this way,--or you marry a nice girl who does not +understand housekeeping. The former is the more efficacious method, +because, as a rule, the nice girl wants to come and sit on your knee all +day, and that is a great impediment to literary composition. Belonging +to a club--even a literary club--where you can dine is absolute ruin to +the literary beginner. Many a bright young fellow, who has pushed his +way, or has been pushed by indiscreet friends, into the society of +successful literary men, has been spoilt by this fatal error, and he has +saved his stomach to lose his reputation. + +Having got rid of your digestion, then, the common condition of all good +literature, the next thing is to arrange your dietary for the particular +literary effect you desire. And here we may point out the secrecy +observed in such matters by literary men. Stevenson fled to Samoa to +hide his extremely elaborate methods, and to keep his kitchen servants +out of the reach of bribery. Even Sir Walter Besant, though he is fairly +communicative to the young aspirant, has dropped no hints of the plain, +pure, and wholesome menu he follows. Sala professed to eat everything, +but that was probably his badinage. Possibly he had one staple, and took +the rest as condiment. Then what did Shakespeare live on? Bacon? And Mr. +Barrie, though he has written a delightful book about his pipe and +tobacco, full of suggestion to the young humorist, lets out nothing or +next to nothing of his meat and drink. His hints about pipes are very +extensively followed, and nowadays every ambitious young pressman smokes +in public at least one well-burnt briar with an eccentric stem--even at +some personal inconvenience. But this jealous reticence on the part of +successful men--you notice they never let even the interviewer see their +kitchens or the débris of a meal--necessarily throws one back upon +rumour and hypothesis in this matter. Mr. Andrew Lang, for instance, is +popularly associated with salmon, but that is probably a wilful +delusion. Excessive salmon, far from engendering geniality, will be +found in practice a vague and melancholy diet, tending more towards the +magnificent despondency of Mr. Hall Caine. + +Nor does Mr. Haggard feed entirely on raw meat. Indeed, for lurid and +somewhat pessimistic narrative, there is nothing like the ordinary +currant bun, eaten new and in quantity. A light humorous style is best +attained by soda-water and dry biscuits, following café-noir. The +soda-water may be either Scotch or Irish as the taste inclines. For a +florid, tawdry style the beginner must take nothing but boiled water, +stewed vegetables, and an interest in the movements against vivisection, +opium, alcohol, tobacco, sarcophagy, and the male sex. + +For contributions to the leading reviews, boiled pork and cabbage may be +eaten, with bottled beer, followed by apple dumpling. This effectually +suppresses any tendency to facetiousness, or what respectable English +people call _double entendre_, and brings you _en rapport_ with the +serious people who read these publications. So soon as you begin to feel +wakeful and restless discontinue writing. For what is vulgarly known as +the _fin-de-siècle_ type of publication, on the other hand, one should +limit oneself to an aërated bread shop for a week or so, with the +exception of an occasional tea in a literary household. All people fed +mainly on scones become clever. And this regimen, with an occasional +debauch upon macaroons, chocolate, and cheap champagne, and brisk daily +walks from Oxford Circus, through Regent Street, Piccadilly, and the +Green Park, to Westminster and back, should result in an animated +society satire. + +It is not known what Mr. Kipling takes to make him so peculiar. Many of +us would like to know. Possibly it is something he picked up in the +jungle--berries or something. A friend who made a few tentative +experiments to this end turned out nothing beyond a will, and that he +dictated and left incomplete. (It was scarcely on the lines of an +ordinary will, being blasphemous, and mentioning no property except his +inside.) For short stories of the detective type, strong cold tea and +hard biscuits are fruitful eating, while for a social science novel one +should take an abundance of boiled rice and toast and water. + +However, these remarks are mainly by way of suggestion. Every writer in +the end, so soon as his digestion is destroyed, must ascertain for +himself the peculiar diet that suits him best--that is, which disagrees +with him the most. If everything else fails he might try some chemical +food. "Jabber's Food for Authors," by the bye, well advertised, and with +portraits of literary men, in their drawing-rooms, "Fed entirely on +Jabber's Food," with medical certificates of its unwholesomeness, and +favourable and expurgated reviews of works written on it, ought to be a +brilliant success among literary aspirants. A small but sufficient +quantity of arsenic might with advantage be mixed in. + + + + +HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT + + +Since Adam and Eve went hand in hand out of the gates of Paradise, the +world has travailed under an infinite succession of house-hunts. To-day +in every eligible suburb you may see New Adams and New Eves by the +score, with rusty keys and pink order-forms in hand, wandering still, in +search of the ideal home. To them it is anything but an amusement. Most +of these poor pilgrims look simply tired, some are argumentative in +addition, but all are disappointed, anxious, and unhappy, their hands +dirty with prying among cisterns, and their garments soiled from cellar +walls. All, in the exaltation of the wooing days, saw at least the +indistinct reflection of the perfect house, but now the Quest is +irrevocably in hand they seek and do not find. And such a momentous +question it is to them. Are they not choosing the background, the air +and the colour, as it were, of the next three or four years, the +cardinal years, too! of their lives? + +Perhaps the exquisite exasperation of the business for the man who hunts +among empty houses for a home is, that it is so entirely a choice of +second-hand, or at least ready-made goods. To me, at least, there is a +decided suggestion of the dead body in your empty house that has once +been occupied. Here, like pale ghosts upon the wall paper, are outlined +the pictures of the departed tenant; here are the nails of the invisible +curtains, this dent in the wall is all that is sensible of a vanished +piano. I could fancy all these things creeping back to visibility as the +light grew dim. Someone was irritable in the house, perhaps, and a +haunting fragrance of departed quarrels is to be found in the loose +door-handles, and the broken bell-pull. Then the blind in the bedroom +has a broken string. He was a beer-drinker, for the drip of the tap has +left its mark in the cellar; a careless man, for this wall is a record +of burst water-pipes; and rough in his methods, as his emendation of the +garden gate--a remedy rather worse than the disease--shows. The mark of +this prepotent previous man is left on the house from cellar to attic. +It is his house really, not mine. And against these haunting +individualities set the horrible wholesale flavour, the obvious +dexterous builder's economies of a new house. Yet, whatever your +repulsion may be, the end is always the same. After you have asked for +your ideal house a hundred times or so you begin to see you do not get +it. You go the way of your kind. All houses are taken in despair. + +But such disgusts as this are for the man who really aims at taking a +house. The artist house-hunter knows better than that. He hunts for the +hunt's sake, and does not mar his work with a purpose. Then +house-hunting becomes a really delightful employment, and one strangely +neglected in this country. I have heard, indeed, of old ladies who +enlivened the intervals of their devotions in this manner, but to the +general run of people the thing is unknown. Yet a more entertaining way +of spending a half-holiday--having regard to current taste--it should be +difficult to imagine. An empty house is realistic literature in the +concrete, full of hints and allusions if a little wanting in tangible +humanity, and it outdoes the modern story in its own line, by beginning +as well as ending in a note of interrogation. That it is not more +extensively followed I can only explain by supposing that its merits are +generally unsuspected. In which case this book should set a fashion. + +One singular thing the house-hunter very speedily discovers is, that the +greater portion of the houses in this country are owned by old gentlemen +or old ladies who live next door. After a certain age, and especially +upon retired tradespeople, house property, either alone or in common +with gardening, exercises an irresistible fascination. You always know +you are going to meet a landlord or landlady of this type when you read +on your order to view, "Key next door but one." Calling next door but +one, you are joined after the lapse of a few minutes by a bald, stout +gentleman, or a lady of immemorial years, who offers to go over "the +property" with you. Apparently the intervals between visits to view are +spent in slumber, and these old people come out refreshed and keen to +scrutinise their possible new neighbours. They will tell you all about +the last tenant, and about the present tenants on either side, and about +themselves, and how all the other houses in the neighbourhood are damp, +and how they remember when the site of the house was a cornfield, and +what they do for their rheumatism. As one hears them giving a most +delightful vent to their loquacity, the artistic house-hunter feels all +the righteous self-applause of a kindly deed. Sometimes they get +extremely friendly. One old gentleman--to whom anyone under forty must +have seemed puerile--presented the gentle writer with three fine large +green apples as a kind of earnest of his treatment: apples, no doubt, of +some little value, since they excited the audible envy of several little +boys before they were disposed of. + +Sometimes the landlord has even superintended the building of the house +himself, and then it often has peculiar distinctions--no coal cellar, or +a tower with turrets, or pillars of ornamental marble investing the +portico with disproportionate dignity. One old gentleman, young as old +gentlemen go, short of stature, of an agreeable red colour, and with +short iron-grey hair, had a niche over the front door containing a piece +of statuary. It gave one the impression of the Venus of Milo in +chocolate pyjamas. "It was nood at first," said the landlord, "but the +neighbourhood is hardly educated up to art, and objected. So I gave it +that brown paint." + +On one expedition the artistic house-hunter was accompanied by Euphemia. +Then it was he found Hill Crest, a vast edifice at the incredible rent +of £40 a year, with which a Megatherial key was identified. It took the +two of them, not to mention an umbrella, to turn this key. The rent was +a mystery, and while they were in the house--a thunderstorm kept them +there some time--they tried to imagine the murder. From the top windows +they could see the roofs of the opposite houses in plan. + +"I wonder how long it would take to get to the top of the house from the +bottom?" said Euphemia. + +"Certainly longer than we could manage every day," said the artistic +house-hunter. "Fancy looking for my pipe in all these rooms. Starting +from the top bedroom at the usual time, I suppose one would arrive +downstairs to breakfast about eleven, and then we should have to be +getting upstairs again by eight o'clock if we wanted any night's rest +worth having. Or we might double or treble existence, live a Gargantuan +life to match the house, make our day of forty-eight hours instead of +twenty-four. By doubling everything we should not notice the hole it +made in our time getting about the place. Perhaps by making dinner last +twice as long, eating twice as much, and doing everything on the scale +of two to one, we might adapt ourselves to our environment in time, grow +twice as big." + +"_Then_ we might be very comfortable here," said Euphemia. + +They went downstairs again. By that time it was thundering and raining +heavily. The rooms were dark and gloomy. The big side door, which would +not shut unless locked from the outside, swayed and banged as the gusts +of wind swept round the house. But they had a good time in the front +kitchen, playing cricket with an umbrella and the agent's order crumpled +into a ball. Presently the artistic house-hunter lifted Euphemia on to +the tall dresser, and they sat there swinging their feet patiently until +the storm should leave off and release them. + +"I should feel in this kitchen," said Euphemia, "like one of my little +dolls must have felt in the dolls'-house kitchen I had once. The top of +her head just reached the level of the table. There were only four +plates on the dresser, but each was about half her height across----" + +"Your reminiscences are always entertaining," said the artistic +house-hunter; "still they fail to explain the absorbing mystery of this +house being to let at £40 a year." The problem raised his curiosity, but +though he made inquiries he found no reason for the remarkably low rent +or the continued emptiness of the house. It was a specimen puzzle for +the house-hunter. A large house with a garden of about half an acre, and +with accommodation for about six families, going begging for £40 a year. +Would it let at eighty? Some such problem, however, turns up in every +house-hunt, and it is these surprises that give the sport its particular +interest and delight. Always provided the mind is not unsettled by any +ulterior notion of settling down. + + + + +OF BLADES AND BLADERY + + +The Blade is not so much a culture as a temperament, and Bladery--if the +thing may have the name--a code of sentiments rather than a ritual. It +is the rococo school of behaviour, the flamboyant gentleman, the +gargoyle life. The Blade is the tribute innocence pays to vice. He may +look like a devil and belong to a church. And the clothing of the Blade, +being symbolical, is a very important part of him. It must show not only +a certain tastiness, but also decision in the accent, courage in the +pattern, and a Dudley Hardihood of outline. A Blade must needs take the +colour of his social standing, but all Blades have the same essential +qualities. And all Blades have this quality, that they despise and +contemn other Blades from the top downward. (But where the bottommost +Blade comes no man can tell.) + +A well-bred Blade--though he be a duke--tends to wear his hat tilted a +little over the right eyebrow, and a piece of hair is pulled +coquettishly down just below the brim. His collar is high, and a very +large bow is worn slightly askew. This may be either cream-coloured or +deep blue, with spots of white, or it may be red, or buff, but not +green, because of badinage. The Blade of the middle class displays a +fine gold watch-chain, and his jacket and vest may be of a rough black +cloth or blue serge. The trousering may be of a suit with the jacket, or +tasteful, and the shoes must be long. The betting man, adorned, is a +perfect Blade. There is often a large and ornamental stick, which is +invariably carried head downwards. And note, that the born Blade +instinctively avoids any narrowness of pose. In walking he thrusts out +his shoulders, elbows, and knees, and it is rather the thing to +dominate a sphere of influence beyond this by swinging his stick. At +first the beginner will find this weapon a little apt to slip from the +hand and cause inconvenience to the general public; but he must not mind +that. After a few such misadventures he will acquire dexterity. + +All Blades smoke--publicly at least. To smoke a white meerschaum in the +streets, however, is very inferior form. The proper smoking is a briar, +and, remember, it is not smart to have a new pipe. So soon as he buys +it, the Blade takes his pipe home, puts it on a glowing fire to burn the +rim, scrapes this away, burns it again, and so on until it looks a +sullen desperado of a pipe--a pipe with a wild past. Sometimes he cannot +smoke a pipe. In this case he may--for his stomach's sake--smoke a +cigarette. And, besides, there is something cynical about a cigarette. +For the very young Blade there are certain makes of cigarette that burn +well--they are mixed with nitre--and these may be smoked by holding them +in the left hand and idly swinging them to and fro in the air. If it +were not for the public want of charity, I would recommend a well-known +brand. A Blade may always escape a cigar by feigning a fastidious taste. +"None of your Cabanas" is rather good style. + +The Blade, it must be understood--especially by the Blade's +friends--spends his time in a whirl of dissipation. That is the +symbolism of the emphatic obliquity of the costume. First, he drinks. +The Blade at Harrow, according to a reliable authority, drinks cherry +brandy and even champagne; other Blades consume whisky-and-soda; the +less costly kind of Blade does it on beer. And here the beginner is +often at a loss. Let us say he has looked up the street and down, +ascertained that there are no aunts in the air, and then plunged into +his first public-house. How shall he ask for his liquor? "I will take a +glass of ale, if you please, Miss," seems tame for a Blade. It may be +useful to know a more suitable formula. Just at present, we may assure +the Blade neophyte, it is all the rage to ask for "Two of swipes, +ducky." Go in boldly, bang down your money as loudly as possible, and +shout that out at the top of your voice. If it is a barman, though, you +had better not say "ducky." The slang will, we can assure him, prove +extremely effective. + +Then the Blade gambles; but over the gambling of the Blade it is well to +draw a veil--a partially translucent and coquettish veil, through which +we can see the thing dimly, and enhanced in its enormity. You must +patronise the Turf, of course, and have money on horses, or you are no +Blade at all, but a mere stick. The Harrow Blade has his book on all the +big races in the calendar; and the great and noble game of Nap--are not +Blades its worshippers wherever the sun shines and a pack of cards is +obtainable? Baccarat, too. Many a glorious Blade has lost his whole +term's pocket-money at a single sitting at that noble game. And the +conversation of the Blade must always be brilliant in the extreme, like +the flashing of steel in the sunlight. It is usually cynical and +worldly, sometimes horrible enough to make a governess shudder, but +always epigrammatic. Epigrams and neat comparisons are much easier to +make than is vulgarly supposed. "Schoolmasters hang about the crops of +knowledge like dead crows about a field, examples and warnings to greedy +souls." "Marriage is the beginning of philosophy, and the end is, 'Do +not marry.'" "All women are constant, but some discover mistakes." "One +is generally repentant when one is found out, and remorseful when one +can't do it again." A little practice, and this kind of thing may be +ground out almost without thinking. Occasionally, in your conversation +with ladies, you may let an oath slip. (Better not let your aunt hear +you.) Apologise humbly at once, of course. But it will give them a +glimpse of the lurid splendour of your private life. + +And that brings us to the central thing of the Blade's life, the eternal +Feminine! Pity them, be a little sorry for them--the poor souls cannot +be Blades. They must e'en sit and palpitate while the Blade flashes. The +accomplished Blade goes through life looking unspeakable wickedness at +everything feminine he meets, old and young, rich and poor, one with +another. He reeks with intrigue. Every Blade has his secrets and +mysteries in this matter--remorse even for crimes. You do not know all +that his handsome face may hide. Even he does not know. He may have sat +on piers and talked to shop-girls, kissed housemaids, taken barmaids to +music halls, conversed with painted wickedness in public places--nothing +is too much for him. And oh! the reckless protestations of love he has +made, the broken promises, the broken hearts! Yet men must be Blades, +though women may weep; and every Blade must take his barmaid to a music +hall at least once, even if she be taller than himself. Until then his +manhood is not assured. + +Just one hint in conclusion. A Blade who collects stamps, or keeps tame +rabbits, or eats sweets, oranges, or apples in the streets, or calls +names publicly after his friends, is no Blade at all, but a boy still. +So, with our blessing, he swaggers on his way and is gone. A Don Juan as +fresh as spring, a rosebud desperado. May he never come upon just cause +for repentance! + + + + +OF CLEVERNESS + +ÀPROPOS OF ONE CRICHTON + + +Crichton is an extremely clever person--abnormally, indeed almost +unnaturally, so. He is not merely clever at this or that, but clever all +round; he gives you no consolations. He goes about being needlessly +brilliant. He caps your jests and corrects your mistakes, and does your +special things over again in newer and smarter ways. Any really +well-bred man who presumed so far would at least be plain or physically +feeble, or unhappily married by way of apology, but the idea of so much +civility seems never to have entered Crichton's head. He will come into +a room where we are jesting perhaps, and immediately begin to flourish +about less funny perhaps but decidedly more brilliant jests, until at +last we retire one by one from the conversation and watch him with +savage, weary eyes over our pipes. He invariably beats me at chess, +invariably. People talk about him and ask my opinion of him, and if I +venture to criticise him they begin to look as though they thought I was +jealous. Grossly favourable notices of his books and his pictures crop +up in the most unlikely places; indeed I have almost given up newspapers +on account of him. Yet, after all---- + +This cleverness is not everything. It never pleases me, and I doubt +sometimes if it pleases anyone. Suppose you let off some clever little +thing, a subtlety of expression, a paradox, an allusive suggestive +picture; how does it affect ordinary people? Those who are less clever +than yourself, the unspecialised, unsophisticated average people, are +simply annoyed by the puzzle you set them; those who are cleverer find +your cleverness mere obvious stupidity; and your equals, your +competitors in cleverness, are naturally your deadly rivals. The fact is +this cleverness, after all, is merely egotism in its worst and unwisest +phase. It is an incontinence of brilliance, graceless and aggressive, a +glaring swagger. The drunken helot of cleverness is the creature who +goes about making puns. A mere step above comes the epigram, the +isolated epigram framed and glazed. Then such impressionist art as +Crichton's pictures, mere puns in paint. What they mean is nothing, they +arrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodic +disgust as a pun in literature--the subject is a transparent excuse; +they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinks +it is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. He +cannot even sign his name without being offensive. He lacks altogether +the fundamental quality of a gentleman, the magnanimity to be +commonplace. I---- + +On the score of personal dignity, why should a young man of respectable +antecedents and some natural capacity stoop to this kind of thing? To be +clever is the last desperate resort of the feeble, it is the merit of +the ambitious slave. You cannot conquer _vi et armis_, you cannot +stomach a decent inferiority, so you resort to lively, eccentric, and +brain-wearying brilliance to ingratiate yourself. The cleverest animal +by far is the monkey, and compare that creature's undignified activity +with the mountainous majesty of the elephant! + +And I cannot help thinking, too, that cleverness must be the greatest +obstacle a man can possibly have in his way upward in the world. One +never sees really clever people in positions of trust, never widely +influential or deeply rooted. Look, for instance, at the Royal Academy, +at the Judges, at----But there! The very idea of cleverness is an +all-round readiness and looseness that is the very negation of +stability. + +Whenever Crichton has been particularly exasperating, getting himself +appreciated in a new quarter, or rising above his former successes, I +find some consolation in thinking of my Uncle Augustus. He was the +glory of our family. Even Aunt Charlotte's voice drooped a little in the +mention of his name. He was conspicuous for an imposing and even +colossal stupidity: he rose to eminence through it, and, what is more, +to wealth and influence. He was as reliable, as unlikely to alter his +precise position, or do anything unexpected, as the Pyramids of Egypt. I +do not know any topic upon which he was not absolutely uninformed, and +his contributions to conversation, delivered in that ringing baritone of +his, were appallingly dull. Often I have seen him utterly flatten some +cheerful clever person of the Crichton type with one of his simple +garden-roller remarks--plain, solid, and heavy, which there was no +possibility either of meeting or avoiding. He was very successful in +argument, and yet he never fenced. He simply came down. It was, so to +speak, a case of small sword _versus_ the avalanche. His moral inertia +was tremendous. He was never excited, never anxious, never jaded; he was +simply massive. Cleverness broke upon him like shipping on an ironbound +coast. His monument is like him--a plain large obelisk of coarse +granite, unpretending in its simple ugliness and prominent a mile off. +Among the innumerable little white sorrows of the cemetery it looks +exactly as he used to look among clever people. + +Depend upon it cleverness is the antithesis of greatness. The British +Empire, like the Roman, was built up by dull men. It may be we shall be +ruined by clever ones. Imagine a regiment of lively and eccentric +privates! There never was a statesman yet who had not some ballast of +stupidity, and it seems to me that part at least of the essentials of a +genius is a certain divine dulness. The people we used to call the +masters--Shakespeare, Raphael, Milton, and so forth--had a certain +simplicity Crichton lacks. They do not scintillate nearly so much as he +does, and they do not give that same uncomfortable feeling of internal +strain. Even Homer nods. There are restful places in their work, broad +meadows of breezy flatness, calms. But Crichton has no Pacific Ocean to +mitigate his everlasting weary passage of Cape Horn: it is all point +and prominence, point and prominence. + +No doubt this Crichton is having a certain vogue now, but it cannot +last. I wish him no evil, of course, but I cannot help thinking he will +presently have had his day. This epoch of cleverness must be very near +its last flare. The last and the abiding thought of humanity is peace. A +dull man will presently be sought like the shadow of a great rock in a +thirsty land. Dulness will be the New Genius. "Give us dull books," +people will cry, "great dull restful pictures. We are weary, very +weary." This hectic, restless, incessant phase in which we +travail--_fin-de-siècle_, "decadent," and all the rest of it--will pass +away. A chubby, sleepy literature, large in aim, colossal in execution, +rotund and tranquil will lift its head. And this Crichton will become a +classic, Messrs. Mudie will sell surplus copies of his works at a +reduction, and I shall cease to be worried by his disgusting success. + + + + +THE POSE NOVEL + + +I watched the little spurts of flame jet out from between the writhing +pages of my manuscript, watched the sheets coil up in their fiery +anguish and start one from another. I helped the fire to the very vitals +of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was +over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow +gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the +charred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of my +inspiration remained. The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blackness +of the burnt paper. I could still read this much of my indiscretion +remaining, "He smiled at them all and said nothing." + +"Fool!" I said, and stirred the crackling mass into a featureless heap +of black scraps. Then with my chin on my fists and elbows on knees I +stared at the end of my labours. + +I suppose, after all, there has been some profit out of the thing. Satan +finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, and one may well thank +Heaven it was only a novel. Still, it means many days out of my life, +and I would be glad to find some positive benefit accruing. Clearly, in +the first place, I have eased my mind of some execrable English. I am +cleaner now by some dozen faulty phrases that I committed and saw +afterwards in all the nakedness of typewriting. (Thank Heaven for +typewriting! Were it not for that, this thing had gone to the scoffing +of some publisher's reader, and another had known my shame.) And I shall +not write another pose novel. + +I am inclined to think these pose novels the wild oats of authorship. We +sit down in the heyday of our youth to write the masterpiece. +Obviously, it must be a novel about a man and a woman, and something as +splendid as we can conceive of in that way. We look about us. We do not +go far for perfection. One of the brace holds the pen and the other is +inside his or her head; and so Off! to the willing pen. Only a few years +ago we went slashing among the poppies with a walking-stick, and were, +we said boldly and openly, Harolds and Hectors slaying our thousands. +Now of course we are grown up to self-respect, and must needs be a +little disingenuous about it. But as the story unfolds there is no +mistaking the likeness, in spite of the transfiguration. This bold, +decided man who performs such deeds of derring-do in the noisome slum, +knocks down the burly wife-beater, rescues an unmistakable Miss Clapton +from the knife of a Lascar, and is all the while cultivating a virtuous +consumption that stretches him on an edifying, pathetic, and altogether +beautiful deathbed in the last chapter----My dear Authorling, cry my +friends, we hear the squeak of that little voice of yours in every word +he utters. Is _that_ what you aspire to be, that twopence-coloured +edition of yourself? Heaven defend you from your desires! + +Yet there was a singular fascination in writing the book; to be in +anticipation my own sympathetic historian, to joy with my joys yet to +come, and sorrow with my sorrows, to bear disaster like a man, and at +last to close my own dear eyes, and with a swelling heart write my own +epitaph. The pleasure remained with me until I reached the end. How +admirably I strutted in front of myself! And I and the better self of me +that was flourishing about in the book--we pretended not to know each +other for what we were. He was myself with a wig and a sham visiting +card, and I owed it to myself to respect my disguise. I made him with +very red hair--my hair is fairly dark--and shifted his university from +London to Cambridge. Clearly it could not be the same person, I argued. +But I endowed him with all the treasures of myself; I made him say all +the good things I might have said had I thought of them opportunely, and +all the noble thoughts that occurred to me afterwards occurred to him +at the time. He was myself--myself at a premium, myself without any +drawbacks, the quintessence and culmination of me. And yet somehow when +he came back from the typewriter he seemed a bit of an ass. + +Probably every tadpole author writes a pose novel--at least I hope so +for the sake of my self-respect. Most, after my fashion, burn the thing, +or benevolent publishers lose it. It is an ill thing if by some accident +the tadpole tale survives the tadpole stage. The authoress does the +feminine equivalent, but I should judge either that she did it more +abundantly or else that she burned less. Has she never swept past you +with a scornful look, disdained you in all the pride of her beauty, +rippled laughter at you, or amazed you with her artless girlishness? And +even after the early stages some of the trick may survive, unless I read +books with malice instead of charity. I must confess, though, that I +have a weakness for finding mine author among his puppets. I conceive +him always taking the best parts, like an actor-manager or a little boy +playing with his sisters. I do not read many novels with sincere belief, +and I like to get such entertainment from them as I can. So that these +artless little self-revelations are very sweet and precious to me among +all the lay figures, tragedy and comedy. Since the deception is +transparent I make the most of the transparency, and love to see the +clumsy fingers on the strings of the marionettes. And this will be none +the less pleasant now that I have so narrowly escaped giving this +entertainment to others. + +I suppose this stage is a necessary one. We begin with ignorance and the +imagination, the material of the pose novel. Later come self-knowledge, +disappointments and self-consciousness, and the prodigals of fiction +stay themselves upon the husks of epigram and cynicism, and in the place +of artless aspiration are indeed in plain black and white very desperate +characters. It is after all only another pose--the pose of not posing. +We, the common clay of the world of letters, must needs write in this +way, because we cannot forget our foolish little selves in our work. +But some few there are who sit as gods above their private universes, +and write without passion or vanity. At least, so I have been told. +These be the true artists of letters, the white windows upon the truth +of things. We by comparison are but stained glass in our own honour, and +do but obstruct the view with our halos and attitudes. Yet even +Shakespeare, the critics tell us--and they say they know--posed in the +character of Hamlet. + +After all, the pose novel method has at times attained to the level of +literature. Charlotte Brontë might possibly have found no other topic +had she disdained the plain little woman with a shrewish tongue; and +where had Charles Kingsley been if the vision of a curate rampant had +not rejoiced his heart? Still, I am not sorry that this novel is burned. +Even now it was ridiculous, and the time might have come when this book, +full of high, if foolish aims, and the vain vast promise of well-meaning +youth, had been too keen a reproach to be endured. Three volumes of good +intentions! It is too much. There was more than a novel burning just +now. After this I shall be in a position to take a humorist's view of +life. + + + + +THE VETERAN CRICKETER + + +My old cricketer was seized, he says, some score of years ago now, by +sciatica, clutched indeed about the loins thereby, and forcibly +withdrawn from the practice of the art; since when a certain +predisposition to a corpulent habit has lacked its natural check of +exercise, and a broadness almost Dutch has won upon him. Were it not for +this, which renders his contours and his receding aspect unseemly, he +would be indeed a venerable-looking person, having a profile worthy of a +patriarch, tinged though it may be with an unpatriarchal jollity, and a +close curly beard like that of King David. He lives by himself in a +small cottage outside the village--hating women with an unaccountable +detestation--and apparently earns a precarious livelihood, and certainly +the sincere aversion of the country side, by umpiring in matches, and +playing whist and "Nap" with such as will not be so discreet and +economical as to bow before his superior merit. + +His neighbours do not like him, because he will not take their cricket +or their whist seriously, because he will persist in offering counsel +and the stimulus of his gift of satire. All whist than his he avers is +"Bumble-puppy." His umpiring is pedagogic in tone; he fails to see the +contest in the game. To him, who has heard his thousands roar as the +bails of the best of All England went spinning, these village matches +are mere puerile exercises to be corrected. His corrections, too, are +Olympian, done, as it were, in red ink, vivid, and without respect of +persons. Particularly he gibes. He never uses vulgar bad language +himself, but has a singular power of engendering it in others. He has a +word "gaby," which he will sometimes enlarge to "stuppid gaby," the +which, flung neatly into a man who has just missed a catch, will fill +the same with a whirl of furious curses difficult to restrain. And if +perchance one should escape, my ancient cricketer will be as startled as +Cadmus at the crop he has sown. And not only startled but pained at +human wickedness and the follies of a new generation. "Why can't you +play without swearing, Muster Gibbs?" he will say, catching the +whispered hope twenty yards away, and proclaiming it to a censorious +world. And so Gibbs, our grocer and draper, and one made much of by the +vicar, is shamed before the whole parish, and damned even as he desired. + +To our vicar, a well-meaning, earnest, and extremely nervous man, he +displays a methodical antagonism. Our vicar is the worst of all possible +rural vicars--unripe, a glaring modern, no classical scholar, no lover +of nature, offensively young and yet not youthful, an indecent +politician. He was meant to labour amid Urban Myriads, to deal with +Social Evils, Home Rule, the Woman Question, and the Reunion of +Christendom, attend Conferences and go with the _Weltgeist_--damn +him!--wherever the _Weltgeist_ is going. He presents you jerkily--a tall +lean man of ascetic visage and ample garments, a soul clothed not so +much in a fleshy body as in black flaps that ever trail behind its +energy. Where they made him Heaven knows. No university owns him. It may +be he is a renegade Dissenting minister, neither good Church nor +wholesome Nonconformity. Him my cricketer regards with malignant +respect. Respect he shows by a punctilious touching of his hat brim, +directed to the sacred office; all the rest is malignity, and aimed at +the man that fills it. They come into contact on the cricket-field, and +on the committee of our reading-room. For our vicar, in spite of a +tendency to myopia, conceives it his duty to encourage cricket by his +participation. _Duty_--to encourage cricket! So figure the scene to +yourself. The sunlit green, and a match in progress,--the ball has just +snipped a stump askew,--my ancient, leaning on a stout cabbage stick, +and with the light overcoat that is sacred to umpires upon his arm. + +"_Out_, Billy Durgan," says he, and adds, _ex cathedrâ_, "and one you +ought to ha' hit for four." + +Then appears our vicar in semi-canonicals, worn "to keep up his +position," or some such folly, nervous about the adjustment of his hat +and his eyeglasses. He approaches the pitch, smiling the while to show +his purely genial import and to anticipate and explain any amateurish +touches. He reaches the wicket and poses himself, as the convenient book +he has studied directs. "You'll be caught, Muster Shackleforth, if you +keep your shoulder up like that," says the umpire. "Ya-a-ps! that's +worse!"--forgetting himself in his zeal for attitude. And then a voice +cries "Play!" + +The vicar swipes wildly, cuts the ball for two, and returns to his +wicket breathless but triumphant. Next comes a bye, and then over. The +misguided cleric, ever pursuing a theory of foolish condescension to his +betters at the game, and to show there is no offence at the "Yaaps," +takes the opportunity, although panting, of asking my ancient if his +chicks--late threatened with staggers--are doing well. What would he +think if my cricketer retaliated by asking, in the pause before the +sermon, how the vicarage pony took his last bolus? The two men do not +understand one another. My cricketer waves the hens aside, and revenges +himself, touching his hat at intervals, by some offensively obvious +remarks--as to a mere beginner--about playing with a straight bat. And +the field sniggers none too furtively. I sympathise with his malice. +Cricket is an altogether too sacred thing to him to be tampered with on +merely religious grounds. However, our vicar gets himself caught at the +first opportunity, and so being removed from my veteran's immediate +environment, to their common satisfaction, the due ritual of the great +game is resumed. + +My ancient cricketer abounds in reminiscence of the glorious days that +have gone for ever. He can still recall the last echoes of the +"throwing" controversy that agitated Nyren, when over-arm bowling began, +and though he never played himself in a beaver hat, he can, he says, +recollect seeing matches so played. In those days everyone wore tall +hats--the policeman, the milkman, workmen of all sorts. Some people I +fancy must have bathed in them and gone to bed wearing them. He recalls +the Titans of that and the previous age, and particularly delights in +the legend of Noah Mann, who held it a light thing to walk twenty miles +from Northchapel to Hambledon to practise every Tuesday afternoon, and +wander back after dark. He himself as a stripling would run a matter of +four miles, after a day's work in the garden where he was employed, to +attend an hour's practice over the downs before the twilight made the +balls invisible. And afterwards came Teutonic revelry or wanderings +under the summer starlight, as the mood might take him. For there was a +vein of silent poetry in the youth of this man. + +He hates your modern billiard-table pitch, and a batting of dexterous +snickery. He likes "character" in a game, gigantic hitting forward, +bowler-planned leg catches, a cunning obliquity in a wicket that would +send the balls mysteriously askew. But dramatic breaks are now a thing +unknown in trade cricket. One legend of his I doubt; he avers that once +at Brighton, in a match between Surrey and Sussex, he saw seven wickets +bowled by some such aid in two successive overs. I have never been able +to verify this. I believe that, as a matter of fact, the thing has never +occurred, but he tells it often in a fine crescendo of surprise, and the +refrain, "Out HE came." His first beginning is a cheerful +anecdote of a crew of "young gentlemen" from Cambridge staying at the +big house, and a challenge to the rustic talent of "me and Billy Hall," +who "played a bit at that time," "of me and Billy Hall" winning the +pitch and going in first, of a memorable if uncivil stand at the wickets +through a long hot afternoon, and a number of young gentlemen from +Cambridge painfully discovering local talent by exhaustive fielding in +the park, a duty they honourably discharged. + +I am fond of my old cricketer, in spite of a certain mendacious and +malign element in him. His yarns of gallant stands and unexpected turns +of fortune, of memorable hits and eccentric umpiring, albeit tending +sometimes incredibly to his glory, are full of the flavour of days well +spent, of bright mornings of play, sunlit sprawlings beside the score +tent, warmth, the flavour of bitten grass stems, and the odour of +crushed turf. One seems to hear the clapping hands of village ancients, +and their ululations of delight. One thinks of stone jars with cool +drink swishing therein, of shouting victories and memorable defeats, of +eleven men in a drag, and tuneful and altogether glorious home-comings +by the light of the moon. His were the Olympian days of the sport, when +noble squires were its patrons, and every village a home and nursery of +stalwart cricketers, before the epoch of special trains, gate-money, +star elevens, and the tumultuous gathering of idle cads to jabber at a +game they cannot play. + + + + +CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY + + +This lady wears a blue serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy; +she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and +she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking +people. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn at last, and so +will the mild, pacific literary man. Her last outrage was too much even +for my patience. It was committed at Gloucester Road Station the other +afternoon. I was about to get into a train for Wimbledon,--and there are +only two of them to the hour,--and, so far as I could see, the whole +world was at peace with me. I felt perfectly secure. The ægis of the +_pax Britannica_--if you will pardon the expression--was over me. For +the moment the thought of the lady in the blue serge was quite out of my +mind. I had just bought a newspaper, and had my hand on the carriage +door. The guard was fluttering his flag. + +Then suddenly she swooped out of space, out of the infinite unknown, and +hit me. She always hits me when she comes near me, and I infer she hits +everyone she comes across. She hit me this time in the chest with her +elbow and knocked me away from the door-handle. She hit me very hard; +indeed, she was as fierce as I have ever known her. With her there were +two nieces and a nephew, and the nephew hit me too. He was a horrid +little boy in an Eton suit of the kind that they do not wear at Eton, +and he hit me with his head and pushed at me with his little pink hands. +The nieces might have been about twenty-two and thirteen respectively, +and I infer that they were apprenticed to her. All four people seemed +madly excited. "It's just starting!" they screamed, and the train was, +indeed, slowly moving. Their object--so far as they had an object and +were not animated by mere fury--appeared to be to assault me and then +escape in the train. The lady in blue got in and then came backwards out +again, sweeping the smaller girl behind her upon the two others, who +were engaged in hustling me. "It's 'smoking!'" she cried. I could have +told her that, if she had asked instead of hitting me. The elder girl, +by backing dexterously upon me, knocked my umbrella out of my hand, and +when I stooped to pick it up the little boy knocked my hat off. I will +confess they demoralised me with their archaic violence. I had some +thought of joining in their wild amuck, whooping, kicking out madly, +perhaps assaulting a porter,--I think the lady in blue would have been +surprised to find what an effective addition to her staff she had picked +up,--but before I could collect my thoughts sufficiently to do any +definite thing the whole affair was over. A porter was slamming doors on +them, the train was running fast out of the station, and I was left +alone with an unmannerly newsboy and an unmannerly porter on the +platform. I waited until the porter was out of the way, and then I hit +the newsboy for laughing at me, but even with that altercation it was a +tedious wait for the next train to Wimbledon. + +This is the latest of my encounters with this lady, but it has decided +me to keep silence no longer. She has been persecuting me now for years +in all parts of London. It may be I am her only victim, but, on the +other hand, she may be in the habit of annoying the entire class of +slender and inoffensive young men. If so, and they will communicate with +me through the publishers of this little volume, we might do something +towards suppressing her, found an Anti-Energetic-Lady-League, or +something of that sort. For if there was ever a crying wrong that +clamoured for suppression it is this violent woman. + +She is, even now, flagrantly illegal. She might be given in charge for +hitting people at any time, and be warned, or fined, or given a week. +But somehow it is only when she is overpast and I am recovering my wits +that I recollect that she might be dealt with in this way. She is the +chartered libertine of British matrons, and assaulteth where she +listeth. The blows I have endured from her? She fights people who are +getting into 'buses. It is no mere accidental jostling, but a deliberate +shouldering, poking with umbrellas, and clawing. It is her delight to go +to the Regent Circus corner of Piccadilly, about half-past seven in the +evening, accompanied by a genteel rout of daughters, and fill up whole +omnibuses with them. At that hour there are work-girls and tired clerks, +and the like worn-out anæmic humanity trying to get home for an hour or +so of rest before bed, and they crowd round the 'buses very eagerly. +They are little able to cope with her exuberant vitality, being +ill-nourished and tired from the day's work, and she simply mows through +them and fills up every vacant place they covet before their eyes. Then, +I can never count change even when my mind is tranquil, and she knows +that, and swoops threateningly upon me in booking offices and +stationers' shops. When I am dodging cabs at crossings she will appear +from behind an omnibus or carriage and butt into me furiously. She holds +her umbrella in her folded arms just as the Punch puppet does his staff, +and with as deadly effect. Sometimes she discards her customary navy +blue and puts on a glittering bonnet with bead trimmings, and goes and +hurts people who are waiting to enter the pit at theatres, and +especially to hurt me. She is fond of public shows, because they afford +such possibilities of hurting me. Once I saw her standing partly on a +seat and partly on another lady in the church of St. George's, Hanover +Square, partly, indeed, watching a bride cry, but chiefly, I expect, +scheming how she could get round to me and hurt me. Then there was an +occasion at the Academy when she was peculiarly aggressive. I was +sitting next my lame friend when she marked me. Of course she came at +once and sat right upon us. "Come along, Jane," I heard her say, as I +struggled to draw my flattened remains from under her; "this gentleman +will make room." + +My friend was not so entangled and had escaped on the other side. She +noticed his walk. "Oh, don't _you_ get up," she said. "_This_ +gentleman," she indicated my convulsive struggles to free myself, "will +do that. _I did not see that you were a cripple._" + +It may be some of my readers will recognise the lady now. It can be--for +the honour of womankind--only one woman. She is an atavism, a survival +of the age of violence, a Palæolithic squaw in petticoats. I do not know +her name and address or I would publish it. I do not care if she kills +me the next time she meets me, for the limits of endurance have been +passed. If she kills me I shall die a martyr in the cause of the Queen's +peace. And if it is only one woman, then it was the same lady, more than +half intoxicated, that I saw in the Whitechapel Road cruelly +ill-treating a little costermonger. If it was not she it was certainly +her sister, and I do not care who knows it. + +What to do with her I do not know. A League, after all, seems +ineffectual; she would break up any League. I have thought of giving her +in charge for assault, but I shrink from the invidious publicity of +that. Still, I am in grim earnest to do something. I think at times that +the compulsory adoption of a narrow doorway for churches and places of +public entertainment might be some protection for quiet, inoffensive +people. How she would rage outside to be sure! Yet that seems a great +undertaking. + +But this little paper is not so much a plan of campaign as a preliminary +defiance. Life is a doubtful boon while one is never safe from assault, +from hitting and shoving, from poking with umbrellas, being sat upon, +and used as a target for projectile nephews and nieces. I warn +her--possibly with a certain quaver in my voice--that I am in revolt. If +she hits me again----I will not say the precise thing I will do, but I +warn her, very solemnly and deliberately, that she had better not hit me +again. + +And so for the present the matter remains. + + + + +THE SHOPMAN + + +If I were really opulent, I would not go into a shop at all--I would +have a private secretary. If I were really determined, Euphemia would do +these things. As it is, I find buying things in a shop the most +exasperating of all the many trying duties of life. I am sometimes +almost tempted to declare myself Adamite to escape it. The way the +shopman eyes you as you enter his den, the very spread of his fingers, +irritate me. "What can I have the pleasure?" he says, bowing forward at +me, and with his eye on my chin--and so waits. + +Now I hate incomplete sentences, and confound his pleasure! I don't go +into a shop to give a shopman pleasure. But your ordinary shopman must +needs pretend you delight and amuse him. I say, trying to display my +dislike as plainly as possible, "Gloves." "Gloves, yessir," he says. Why +should he? I suppose he thinks I require to be confirmed in my +persuasion that I want gloves. "Calf--kid--dogskin?" How should _I_ know +the technicalities of his traffic? "Ordinary gloves," I say, disdaining +his petty distinctions. "About what price, sir?" he asks. + +Now that always maddens me. Why should I be expected to know the price +of gloves? I'm not a commercial traveller nor a wholesale dealer, and I +don't look like one. Neither am I constitutionally parsimonious nor +petty. I am a literary man, unworldly, and I wear long hair and a soft +hat and a peculiar overcoat to indicate the same to ordinary people. +Why, I say, should I know the price of gloves? I know they are some +ordinary price--elevenpence-halfpenny, or three-and-six, or +seven-and-six, or something--one of those prices that everything is +sold at--but further I don't go. Perhaps I say elevenpence-halfpenny at +a venture. + +His face lights up with quiet malice. "Don't keep them, sir," he says. I +can tell by his expression that I am ridiculously low, and so being +snubbed. I think of trying with three-and-six, or seven-and-six; the +only other probable prices for things that I know, except a guinea and +five pounds. Then I see the absurdity of the business, and my anger +comes surging up. + +"Look here!" I say, as bitterly as possible. "I don't come here to play +at Guessing Games. Never mind your prices. I want some gloves. Get me +some!" + +This cows him a little, but very little. "May I ask your size, sir?" he +says, a trifle more respectfully. + +One would think I spent all my time remembering the size of my gloves. +However, it is no good resenting it. "It's either seven or nine," I say +in a tired way. + +He just begins another question, and then he catches my eye and stops +and goes away to obtain some gloves, and I get a breathing space. But +why do they keep on with this cross-examination? If I knew exactly what +I wanted--description, price, size--I should not go to a shop at all, it +would save me such a lot of trouble just to send a cheque to the Stores. +The only reason why I go into a tradesman's shop is because I don't know +what I want exactly, am in doubt about the name or the size, or the +price, or the fashion, and want a specialist to help me. The only reason +for having shopmen instead of automatic machines is that one requires +help in buying things. When I want gloves, the shopman ought to +understand his business sufficiently well to know better than I do what +particular kind of gloves I ought to be wearing, and what is a fair +price for them. I don't see why I should teach him what is in fashion +and what is not. A doctor does not ask you what kind of operation you +want and what price you will pay for it. But I really believe these +outfitter people would let me run about London wearing white cotton +gloves and a plaid comforter without lifting a finger to prevent me. + +And, by the bye, that reminds me of a scandalous trick these salesmen +will play you. Sometimes they have not the thing you want, and then they +make you buy other things. I happen to have, through no fault of my own, +a very small head, and consequently for one long summer I wore a little +boy's straw hat about London with the colours of a Paddington Board +School, simply because a rascal outfitter hadn't my size in a proper +kind of headgear, and induced me to buy the thing by specious +representations. He must have known perfectly well it was not what I +ought to wear. It seems never to enter into a shopman's code of honour +that he ought to do his best for his customer. Since that, however, I +have noticed lots of people about who have struck me in a new light as +triumphs of the salesman, masterpieces in the art of incongruity; age in +the garb of youth, corpulence put off with the size called "slender +men's"; unhappy, gentle, quiet men with ties like oriflammes, breasts +like a kingfisher's, and cataclysmal trouser patterns. Even so, if the +shopkeeper had his will, should we all be. Those poor withered maiden +ladies, too, who fill us with a kind of horror, with their juvenile +curls, their girlish crudity of colouring, their bonnets, giddy, +tottering, hectic. It overcomes me with remorse to think that I myself +have accused them of vanity and folly. It overcomes me with pain to hear +the thoughtless laugh aloud after them, in the public ways. For they are +simply short-sighted trustful people, the myopic victims of the salesman +and saleswoman. The little children gibe at them, pelt even.... And +somewhere in the world a draper goes unhung. + +However, the gloves are bought. I select a pair haphazard, and he +pretends to perceive they fit perfectly by putting them over the back of +my hand. I make him assure me of the fit, and then buy the pair and +proceed to take my old ones off and put the new on grimly. If they split +or the fingers are too long--glovemakers have the most erratic +conceptions of the human finger--I have to buy another pair. + +But the trouble only begins when you have bought your thing. "Nothing +more, sir?" he says. "Nothing," I say. "Braces?" he says. "No, thank +you," I say. "Collars, cuffs?" He looks at mine swiftly but keenly, and +with an unendurable suspicion. + +He goes on, item after item. Am I in rags, that I should endure this +thing? And I get sick of my everlasting "No, thank you"--the monotony +shows up so glaringly against his kaleidoscope variety. I feel all the +unutterable pettiness, the mean want of enterprise of my poor little +purchase compared with the catholic fling he suggests. I feel angry with +myself for being thus played upon, furiously angry with him. "_No, no_!" +I say. + +"These tie-holders are new." He proceeds to show me his infernal +tie-holders. "They prevent the tie puckering," he says with his eye on +mine. It's no good. "How much?" I say. + +This whets him to further outrage. "Look here, my man!" I say at last, +goaded to it, "I came here for gloves. After endless difficulties I at +last induced you to let me have gloves. I have also been intimidated, by +the most shameful hints and insinuations, into buying that _beastly_ +tie-holder. I'm not a child that I don't know my own needs. Now _will_ +you let me go? How much do you want?" + +That usually checks him. + +The above is a fair specimen of a shopman--a favourable rendering. There +are other things they do, but I simply cannot write about them because +it irritates me so to think of them. One infuriating manoeuvre is to +correct your pronunciation. Another is to make a terrible ado about your +name and address--even when it is quite a well-known name. + +After I have bought things at a shop I am quite unfit for social +intercourse. I have to go home and fume. There was a time when Euphemia +would come and discuss my purchase with a certain levity, but on one +occasion.... + +Some day these shopmen will goad me too far. It's almost my only +consolation, indeed, to think what I am going to do when I do break out. +There is a salesman somewhere in the world, he going on his way and I +on mine, who will, I know, prove my last straw. It may be he will read +this--amused--recking little of the mysteries of fate.... Is killing a +salesman murder, like killing a human being? + + + + +THE BOOK OF CURSES + + +Professor Gargoyle, you must understand, has travelled to and fro in the +earth, culling flowers of speech: a kind of recording angel he is, but +without any sentimental tears. To be plain, he studies swearing. His +collection, however, only approaches completeness in the western +departments of European language. Going eastward he found such an +appalling and tropical luxuriance of these ornaments as to despair at +last altogether of even a representative selection. "They do not curse," +he says, "at door-handles, and shirt-studs, and such other trifles as +will draw down the meagre discharge of an Occidental, but when they do +begin---- + +"I hired a promising-looking man at Calcutta, and after a month or so +refused to pay his wages. He was unable to get at me with the big knife +he carried, because the door was locked, so he sat on his hams outside +under the verandah, from a quarter-past six in the morning until nearly +ten, cursing--cursing in one steady unbroken flow--an astonishing spate +of blasphemy. First he cursed my family, from me along the female line +back to Eve, and then, having toyed with me personally for a little +while, he started off along the line of my possible posterity to my +remotest great-grandchildren. Then he cursed me by this and that. My +hand ached taking it down, he was so very rich. It was a perfect +anthology of Bengali blasphemy--vivid, scorching, and variegated. Not +two alike. And then he turned about and dealt with different parts of +me. I was really very fortunate in him. Yet it was depressing to think +that all this was from one man, and that there are six hundred million +people in Asia." + +"Naturally," said the Professor in answer to my question, "these +investigations involve a certain element of danger. The first condition +of curse-collecting is to be unpopular, especially in the East, where +comminatory swearing alone is practised, and you have to offend a man +very grievously to get him to disgorge his treasure. In this country, +except among ladies in comparatively humble circumstances, anything like +this fluent, explicit, detailed, and sincere cursing, aimed, +missile-fashion, at a personal enemy, is not found. It was quite common +a few centuries ago; indeed, in the Middle Ages it was part of the +recognised procedure. Aggrieved parties would issue a father's curse, +an orphan's curse, and so forth, much as we should take out a county +court summons. And it played a large part in ecclesiastical policy too. +At one time the entire Church militant here on earth was swearing in +unison, and the Latin tongue, at the Republic of Venice--a very splendid +and imposing spectacle. It seems to me a pity to let these old customs +die out so completely. I estimate that more than half these Gothic forms +have altogether passed out of memory. There must have been some splendid +things in Erse and Gaelic too; for the Celtic mind, with its more vivid +sense of colour, its quicker transitions, and deeper emotional quality, +has ever over-cursed the stolid Teuton. But it is all getting forgotten. + +"Indeed, your common Englishman now scarcely curses at all. A more +colourless and conventional affair than what in England is called +swearing one can scarcely imagine. It is just common talk, with some +half-dozen orthodox bad words dropped in here and there in the most +foolish and illogical manner. Fancy having orthodox unorthodox words! I +remember one day getting into a third-class smoking carriage on the +Metropolitan Railway about one o'clock, and finding it full of rough +working men. Everything they said was seasoned with one incredibly +stupid adjective, and no doubt they thought they were very desperate +characters. At last I asked them not to say that word again. One +forthwith asked me 'What the ----'--I really cannot quote these +puerilities--'what the idiotic _cliché_ that mattered to me?' So I +looked at him quietly over my glasses, and I began. It was a revelation +to these poor fellows. They sat open-mouthed, gasping. Then those that +were nearest me began to edge away, and at the very next station they +all bundled out of the carriage before the train stopped, as though I +had some infectious disease. And the thing was just a rough imperfect +rendering of some mere commonplaces, passing the time of day as it were, +with which the heathen of Aleppo used to favour the servants of the +American missionary. Indeed," said Professor Gargoyle, "if it were not +for women there would be nothing in England that one could speak of as +swearing at all." + +"I say," said I, "is not that rather rough on the ladies?" + +"Not at all; they have agreed to consider certain words, for no very +good reason, bad words. It is a pure convention; it has little or +nothing to do with the actual meaning, because for every one of these +bad words there is a paraphrase or synonym considered to be quite +suitable for polite ears. Hence the feeblest creature can always produce +a sensation by breaking the taboo. But women are learning how to undo +this error of theirs now. The word 'damn,' for instance, is, I hear, +being admitted freely into the boudoir and feminine conversation; it is +even considered a rather prudish thing to object to this word. Now, men, +especially feeble men, hate doing things that women do. As a +consequence, men who go about saying 'damn' are now regarded by their +fellow-men as only a shade less effeminate than those who go about +saying 'nasty' and 'horrid.' The subtler sex will not be long in +noticing what has happened to this objectionable word. When they do they +will, of course, forthwith take up all the others. It will be a little +startling perhaps at first, but in the end there will be no swearing +left. I have no doubt there will be those who will air their petty wit +on the pioneer women, but where a martyr is wanted a woman can always be +found to offer herself. She will clothe herself in cursing, like the +ungodly, and perish in that Nessus shirt, a martyr to pure language. And +then this dull cad swearing--a mere unnecessary affectation of +coarseness--will disappear. And a very good job too. + +"There is a pretty department of the subject which I might call grace +swearing. 'Od's fish,' cried the king, when he saw the man climbing +Salisbury spire; 'he shall have a patent for it--no one else shall do +it.' One might call such little things Wardour Street curses. 'Od's +bodkins' is a ladylike form, and 'Od's possles' a variety I met in the +British Museum. Every gentleman once upon a time aspired to have his own +particular grace curse, just as he liked to have his crest, and his +bookplate, and his characteristic signature. It fluttered pleasantly +into his conversation, as Mr. Whistler's butterfly comes into his +pictures--a signature and a delight. 'Od's butterfly!' I have sometimes +thought of a little book of grace-words and heraldic curses, printed +with wide margins on the best of paper. Its covers should be of soft red +leather, stamped with little gold flowers. It might be made a birthday +book, or a pocket diary--'Daily Invocations.' + +"Coming back to wrathy swearing, I must confess I am sorry to see it +decay. It was such a thoroughly hygienic and moral practice. You see, if +anything annoying happens to a man, or if any powerful emotion seizes +him, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at a +tremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control in +keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his +face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work, +some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so +that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a +stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it +may rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, the +breaking of furniture, 'murther' even. For all this energy a good +flamboyant, ranting swear is Nature's outlet. All primitive men and most +animals swear. It is an emotional shunt. Your cat swears at you because +she does not want to scratch your face. And the horse, because he cannot +swear, drops dead. So you see my reason for regretting the decay of +this excellent and most wholesome practice.... + +"However, I must be getting on. Just now I am travelling about London +paying cabmen their legal fares. Sometimes one picks up a new variant, +though much of it is merely stereo." + +And with that, flinging a playful curse at me, he disappeared at once +into the tobacco smoke from which I had engendered him. An amusing and +cheerful person on the whole, though I will admit his theme was a little +undesirable. + + + + +DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY + + +The story of Dunstone is so slight, so trivial in its cardinal +incidents, such a business of cheap feathers and bits of ribbon on the +surface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for its +Inwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, I +do not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering in +some indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of those +things that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say, +blinking, "Like _that_, you know." So do not imagine for one moment that +this is a shallow story, simply because it is painted, so to speak, not +in heart's blood but in table claret. + +Dunstone was a strong, quiet kind of man--a man of conspicuous +mediocrity, and rising rapidly, therefore, in his profession. He was +immensely industrious, and a little given to melancholia in private +life. He smoked rather too many cigars, and took his social occasions +seriously. He dressed faultlessly, with a scrupulous elimination of +style. Unlike Mr. Grant Allen's ideal man, he was not constitutionally a +lover; indeed, he seemed not to like the ordinary girl at all--found her +either too clever or too shallow, lacking a something. I don't think +_he_ knew quite what it was. Neither do I--it is a case for extended +hand and twiddling fingers. Moreover, I don't think the ordinary girl +took to Dunstone very much. + +He suffered, I fancy, from a kind of mental greyness; he was all subtle +tones; the laughter of girls jarred upon him; foolish smartness or +amiable foolishness got on his nerves; he detested, with equal +sincerity, bright dressing, artistic dabbling, piety, and the glow of +health. And when, as his confidential friend--confidential, that is, so +far as his limits allowed--I heard that he intended to marry, I was +really very much surprised. + +I expected something quintessential; I was surprised to find she was a +visiting governess. Harringay, the artist, thought there was nothing in +her, but Sackbut, the art critic, was inclined to admire her bones. For +my own part, I took rather a liking to her. She was small and thin, and, +to be frank, I think it was because she hardly got enough to eat--of the +delicate food she needed. She was shabby, too, dressed in rusty +mourning--she had recently lost her mother. But she had a sweet, low +voice, a shrinking manner, rather a graceful carriage, I thought, and, +though she spoke rarely, all she said was sweet and sane. She struck me +as a refined woman in a blatant age. The general effect of her upon me +was favourable; upon Dunstone it was tremendous. He lost a considerable +proportion of his melancholia, and raved at times like a common man. He +called her in particular his "Dear Lady" and his "Sweet Lady," things +that I find eloquent of what he found in her. What that was I fancy I +understand, and yet I cannot say it quite. One has to resort to the +extended arm and fingers vibratile. + +Before he married her--which he did while she was still in +half-mourning--there was anxiety about her health, and I understood she +needed air and exercise and strengthening food. But she recovered +rapidly after her marriage, her eyes grew brighter, we saw less of +Sackbut's "delicious skeleton." And then, in the strangest way, she +began to change. It is none of my imagining; I have heard the change +remarked upon by half a dozen independent observers. Yet you would think +a girl of three-and-twenty (as she certainly was) had attained her +development as a woman. I have heard her compared to a winter bud, cased +in its sombre scales, until the sun shone, and the warm, moist winds +began to blow. I noticed first that the delicate outline of her cheek +was filling, and then came the time when she reverted to colour in her +dress. + +Her first essays were charitably received. Her years of struggle, her +year of mourning, had no doubt dwarfed her powers in this direction; +presently her natural good taste would reassert itself. But the next +effort and the next were harder to explain. It was not the note of +nervousness or inexperience we saw; there was an undeniable decision, +and not a token of shame. The little black winter bud grew warm-coloured +above, and burst suddenly into extravagant outlines and chromatic +confusion. Harringay, who is a cad, first put what we were all feeling +into words. "I've just seen Dunstone and his donah," he said. Clearly +she was one of those rare women who cannot dress. And that was not all. +A certain buoyancy, hitherto unsuspected, crept into her manner, as the +corpuscles multiplied in her veins--an archness. She talked more, and +threw up a spray of playfulness. And, with a growing energy, she began +to revise the exquisite æsthetic balance of Dunstone's house. She even +enamelled a chair. + +For a year or so I was in the East. When I returned Mrs. Dunstone amazed +me. In some odd way she had grown, she had positively grown. She was +taller, broader, brighter--infinitely brighter. She wore a diamond +brooch in the afternoon. The "delicious skeleton" had vanished in +plumpness. She moved with emphasis. Her eye--which glittered--met mine +bravely, and she talked as one who would be heard. In the old days you +saw nothing but a rare timid glance from under the pretty lids. She +talked now of this and that, of people of "good family," and the +difficulty of getting a suitable governess for her little boy. She said +she objected to meeting people "one would not care to invite to one's +house." She swamped me with tea and ruled the conversation, so that +Dunstone and I, who were once old friends, talked civil twaddle for the +space of one hour--theatres, concerts, and assemblies chiefly--and then +parted again. The furniture had all been altered--there were two "cosy +nooks" in the room after the recipe in the _Born Lady_. It was plain to +me, it is plain to everyone, I find, that Mrs. Dunstone is, in the sun +of prosperity, rapidly developing an extremely florid vulgarity. And +afterwards I discovered that she had forgotten her music, and evidently +enjoyed her meals. Yet I for one can witness that five years ago there +was _that_ about her--I can only extend my arm with quivering digits. +But it was something very sweet and dainty, something that made her +white and thoughtful, and marked her off from the rest of womankind. I +sometimes fancy it may have been anæmia in part, but it was certainly +poverty and mourning in the main. + +You may think that this is a story of disillusionment. When I first +heard the story, I thought so too. But, so far as Dunstone goes, that is +not the case. It is rare that I see him now, but the other day we smoked +two cigars apiece together. And in a moment of confidence he spoke of +her. He said how anxious he felt for her health, called her his "Dainty +Little Lady," and spoke of the coarseness of other women. I am afraid +this is not a very eventful story, and yet there is _that_----That very +convenient gesture, an arm protruded and flickering fingers, conveys my +meaning best. Perhaps you will understand. + + + + +EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT + + +Euphemia has great ideas of putting people at their ease, a thousand +little devices for thawing the very stiffest among them with a home-like +glow. Far be it from me to sing her praises, but I must admit that at +times she is extremely successful in this--at times almost too +successful. That tea-cake business, for instance. No doubt it's a genial +expedient to make your guests toast his own tea-cake: down he must go +upon his knees upon your hearthrug, and his poses will melt away like +the dews of the morning before the rising sun. Nevertheless, when it +comes to roasting a gallant veteran like Major Augustus, deliberately +roasting him, in spite of the facts that he has served his country nobly +through thirty irksome years of peace, and that he admires Euphemia with +a delicate fervour--roasting him, I say, alive, as if he were a +Strasburg goose, or suddenly affixing a delicate young genius to the +hither end of a toasting-fork while he is in the midst of a really very +subtle and tender conversation, the limits of social warmth seem to be +approaching dangerously near. However, this scarcely concerns Euphemia's +new entertainment. + +This new entertainment is modelling in clay. Euphemia tells me it is to +be quite the common thing this winter. It is intended especially for the +evening, after a little dinner. As the reader is aware, the evening +after a little dinner is apt to pall. A certain placid contentment +creeps over people. I don't know in what organ originality resides; but +it's a curious thing, and one I must leave to the consideration of +psychologists, that people's output of original remarks appears to be +obstructed in some way after these gastronomic exercises. Then a little +dinner always confirms my theory of the absurdity of polygonal +conversation. Music and songs, too, have their drawbacks, especially gay +songs; they invariably evoke a vaporous melancholy. Card-playing +Euphemia objects to because her uncle, the dean, is prominent in +connection with some ridiculous association for the suppression of +gambling; and in what are called "games" no rational creature esteeming +himself an immortal soul would participate. In this difficulty it was +that Euphemia--decided, I fancy, by the possession of certain really +very becoming aprons--took up this business of clay-modelling. + +You have a lump of greyish clay and a saucer of water and certain small +tools of wood (for which I cannot discover the slightest use in the +world) given you, and Euphemia puts on a very winning bib. Then, +moistening the clay until it acquires sufficient plasticity, and +incidentally splashing your cuffs and coat-sleeves with an agreeably +light tinted mud, you set to work. At first people are a little +disgusted at the apparent dirtiness of the employment, and also perhaps +rather diffident. The eldest lady says weakly deprecatory things, and +the feeblest male is jocular after his wont. But it is remarkable how +soon the charm of this delightful occupation seizes hold of you. For +really the sensations of moulding this plastic matter into shape are +wonderfully and quite unaccountably pleasing. It is ever so much easier +than drawing things--"anyone can do it," as the advertisement people +say--and the work is so much more substantial in its effects. Technical +questions arise. In moulding a head, do you take a lump and fine it +down, or do you dab on the features after the main knob of it is shaped? + +So soon as your guests realise the plastic possibilities before them, a +great silence, a delicious absorption comes over them. Some rash person +states that he is moulding an Apollo, or a vase, or a bust of Mr. +Gladstone, or an elephant, or some such animal. The wiser ones go to +work in a speculative spirit, aiming secretly at this perhaps, but quite +willing to go on with that, if Providence so wills it. Buddhas are good +subjects; there is a certain genial rotundity not difficult to attain, +and the pyramidal build of the idol is well suited to the material. You +can start a Buddha, and hedge to make it a loaf of bread if the features +are unsatisfactory. For slender objects a skeletal substructure of bent +hairpins or matches is advisable. The innate egotism of the human animal +becomes very conspicuous. "His tail is too large," says the lady with +the fish, in self-criticism. "I haven't put his tail on yet--that's his +trunk," answers the young man with the elephant. + +[Illustration] + +It's a pretty sight to see the first awakening of the artistic passion +in your guests--the flush of discovery, the glow of innocent pride as +the familiar features of Mr. Gladstone emerge from the bust of Clytie. +An accidental stroke of the thumbnail develops new marvels of +expression. (By the bye, it's just as well to forbid deliberate attempts +at portraiture.) And I know no more becoming expression for everyone +than the look of intent and pleasing effort--a divine touch almost--that +comes over the common man modelling. For my own part, I feel a being +infinitely my own superior when I get my fingers upon the clay. And, +incidentally, how much pleasanter this is than writing articles--to see +the work grow altogether under your hands; to begin with the large +masses and finish with the details, as every artist should! Just to show +how easy the whole thing is, I append a little sketch of the first work +I ever did. I had had positively no previous instruction. Unfortunately +the left ear of the animal--a cat, by the bye--has fallen off. (The +figure to the left is the back view of a Buddha.) + +However, I have said enough to show the charm of the new amusement. It +will prove a boon to many a troubled hostess. The material is called +modelling-clay, and one may buy it of any dealer in artists' materials, +several pounds for sixpence. This has to be renewed at intervals, as a +good deal is taken away by the more careless among your guests upon +their clothes. + + + + +FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING + +THE DISCOVERY OF AN ART + + +It is curious that people do not grumble more at having to spell +correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value +of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of +artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some +elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet +naturalised, or technical, or a mere local vulgarity; yet one does not +often hear the idea canvassed in polite conversation. Dealers in small +talk, of the less prolific kind, are continually falling back upon the +silk hat or dress suit, or some rule of etiquette or other convention as +a theme, but spelling seems to escape them. The suspicion seems quaint, +but one may almost fancy that an allusion to spelling savoured a little +of indelicacy. It must be admitted, though where the scruples come from +would be hard to say, that there is a certain diffidence even here in +broaching my doubts in the matter. For some inexplicable reason spelling +has become mixed up with moral feeling. One cannot pretend to explain +things in a little paper of this kind; the fact is so. Spelling is not +appropriate or inappropriate, elegant or inelegant; it is right or +wrong. We do not greatly blame a man for turn-down collars when the +vogue is erect; nor, in these liberal days, for theological +eccentricity; but we esteem him "Nithing" and an outcast if he but drop +a "p" from opportunity. It is not an anecdote, but a scandal, if we say +a man cannot spell his own name. There is only one thing esteemed worse +before we come to the deadly crimes, and that is the softening of +language by dropping the aspirate. + +After all, it is an unorthodox age. We are all horribly afraid of being +bourgeois, and unconventionality is the ideal of every respectable +person. It is strange that we should cling so steadfastly to correct +spelling. Yet again, one can partly understand the business, if one +thinks of the little ways of your schoolmaster and schoolmistress. This +sanctity of spelling is stamped upon us in our earliest years. The +writer recalls a period of youth wherein six hours a week were given to +the study of spelling, and four hours to all other religious +instruction. So important is it, that a writer who cannot spell is +almost driven to abandon his calling, however urgent the thing he may +have to say, or his need of the incidentals of fame. Yet in the crisis +of such a struggle rebellious thoughts may arise. Even this: Why, after +all, should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary +merit? For it is less fatal for an ambitious scribe to be as dull as +Hoxton than to spell in diverse ways. + +Yet correct spelling of English has not been traced to revelation; there +was no grammatical Sinai, with a dictionary instead of tables of stone. +Indeed, we do not even know certainly when correct spelling began, which +word in the language was first spelt the right way, and by whom. Correct +spelling may have been evolved, or it may be the creation of some master +mind. Its inventor, if it had an inventor, is absolutely forgotten. +Thomas Cobbett would have invented it, but that he was born more than +two centuries too late, poor man. All that we certainly know is that, +contemporaneously with the rise of extreme Puritanism, the belief in +orthography first spread among Elizabethan printers, and with the +Hanoverian succession the new doctrine possessed the whole length and +breadth of the land. At that time the world passed through what +extension lecturers call, for no particular reason, the classical epoch. +Nature--as, indeed, all the literature manuals testify--was in the +remotest background then of human thought. The human mind, in a mood of +the severest logic, brought everything to the touchstone of an orderly +reason; the conception of "correctness" dominated all mortal affairs. +For instance, one's natural hair with its vagaries of rat's tails, +duck's tails, errant curls, and baldness, gave place to an orderly wig, +or was at least decently powdered. The hoop remedied the deficiencies of +the feminine form, and the gardener clipped his yews into +respectability. All poetry was written to one measure in those days, and +a Royal Academy with a lady member was inaugurated that art might become +at least decent. Dictionaries began. The crowning glory of Hanoverian +literature was a Great Lexicographer. + +In those days it was believed that the spelling of every English word +had been settled for all time. Thence to the present day, though the +severities then inaugurated, so far as metre and artistic composition +are concerned, been generously relaxed--though we have had a Whistler, a +Walt Whitman, and a Wagner--the rigours of spelling have continued +unabated. There is just one right way of spelling, and all others are +held to be not simply inelegant or undesirable, but wrong; and +unorthodox spelling, like original morality, goes hand in hand with +shame. + +Yet even at the risk of shocking the religious convictions of some, may +not one ask whether spelling is in truth a matter of right and wrong at +all? Might it not rather be an art? It is too much to advocate the +indiscriminate sacking of the alphabet, but yet it seems plausible that +there is a happy medium between a reckless debauch of errant letters and +our present dead rigidity. For some words at anyrate may there not be +sometimes one way of spelling a little happier, sometimes another? We do +something of this sort even now with our "phantasy" and "fantasie," and +we might do more. How one would spell this word or that would become, if +this latitude were conceded, a subtle anxiety of the literary exquisite. +People are scarcely prepared to realise what shades of meaning may be +got by such a simple device. Let us take a simple instance. You write, +let us say, to all your cousins, many of your friends, and even, it may +be, to this indifferent intimate and that familiar enemy, "My dear +So-and-so." But at times you feel even as you write, sometimes, that +there is something too much and sometimes something lacking. You may +even get so far in the right way occasionally as to write, "My dr. +So-and-so," when your heart is chill. And people versed in the arts of +social intercourse know the subtle insult of misspelling a person's +name, or flicking it off flippantly with a mere waggling wipe of the +pen. But these are mere beginnings. + +Let the reader take a pen in hand and sit down and write, "My very dear +wife." Clean, cold, and correct this is, speaking of orderly affection, +settled and stereotyped long ago. In such letters is butcher's meat also +"very dear." Try now, "Migh verrie deare Wyfe." Is it not immediately +infinitely more soft and tender? Is there not something exquisitely +pleasant in lingering over those redundant letters, leaving each word, +as it were, with a reluctant caress? Such spelling is a soft, domestic, +lovingly wasteful use of material. Or, again, if you have no wife, or +object to an old-fashioned conjugal tenderness, try "Mye owne sweete +dearrest Marrie." There is the tremble of a tenderness no mere +arrangement of trim everyday letters can express in those double +_r's_. "Sweete" my ladie must be; sweet! why pump-water and inferior +champagne, spirits of nitrous ether and pancreatic juice are "sweet." +For my own part I always spell so, with lots of f's and g's and such +like tailey, twirley, loopey things, when my heart is in the tender +vein. And I hold that a man who will not do so, now he has been shown +how to do it, is, in plain English, neither more nor less than a prig. +The advantages of a varied spelling of names are very great. +Industrious, rather than intelligent, people have given not a little +time, and such minds as they have, to the discussion of the right +spelling of our great poet's name. But he himself never dreamt of tying +himself down to one presentation of himself, and was--we have his hand +for it--Shakespeare, Shakspear, Shakespear, Shakspeare, and so forth, as +the mood might be. It would be almost as reasonable to debate whether +Shakespeare smiled or frowned. My dear friend Simmongues is the same. +He is "Sims," a mere slash of the pen, to those he scorns, Simmonds or +Simmongs to his familiars, and Simmons, A.T. Simmons, Esq., to all +Europe. + +From such mere introductory departures from precision, such petty +escapades as these, we would we might seduce the reader into an utter +debauch of spelling. But a sudden Mænad dance of the letters on the +page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of +howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won +reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader--the +printer's reader--to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these +matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this +authority, begging his mercy, to let the little flowers of spelling +alone. Else the plough of that Philistine's uniformity will utterly root +them out. + +Such high art of spelling as is thus hinted at is an art that has still +to gather confidence and brave the light of publicity. A few, indeed, +practise it secretly for love--in letters and on spare bits of paper. +But, for the most part, people do not know that there is so much as an +art of spelling possible; the tyranny of orthography lies so heavily on +the land. Your common editors and their printers are a mere orthodox +spelling police, and at the least they rigorously blot out all the +delightful frolics of your artist in spelling before his writings reach +the public eye. But commonly, as I have proved again and again, the +slightest lapse into rococo spelling is sufficient to secure the +rejection of a manuscript without further ado. + +And to end,--a word about Phonographers. It may be that my title has led +the reader to anticipate some mention of these before. They are a kind +of religious sect, a heresy from the orthodox spelling. They bind one +another by their mysteries and a five-shilling subscription in a +"soseiti to introduis an impruvd method of spelinj." They come across +the artistic vision, they and their Soseiti, with an altogether +indefinable offence. Perhaps the essence of it is the indescribable +meanness of their motive. For this phonography really amounts to a +study of the cheapest way of spelling words. These phonographers are +sweaters of the Queen's English, living meanly on the selvage of honest +mental commerce by clipping the coin of thought. But enough of them. +They are mentioned here only to be disavowed. They would substitute one +narrow orthodoxy for another, and I would unfold the banner of freedom. +Spell, my brethren, as you will! Awake, arise, O language living in +chains; let Butter's spelling be our Bastille! So with a prophetic +vision of liberated words pouring out of the dungeons of a +spelling-book, this plea for freedom concludes. What trivial arguments +there are for a uniform spelling I must leave the reader to discover. +This is no place to carp against the liberation I foresee, with the glow +of the dawn in my eyes. + + + + +INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD + + +I was asked to go, quite suddenly, and found myself there before I had +time to think of what it might be. I understood her to say it was a +meeting of some "Sunday society," some society that tried to turn the +Sabbath from a day of woe to a day of rejoicing. "St. George's Hall, +Langham Place," a cab, and there we were. I thought they would be +picturesque Pagans. But the entertainment was the oddest it has ever +been my lot to see, a kind of mystery. The place was dark, except for a +big circle of light on a screen, and a dismal man with a long stick was +talking about the effects of alcohol on your muscles. He talked and +talked, and people went to sleep all about us. Euphemia's face looked so +very pretty in the dim light that I tried to talk to her and hold her +hand, but she only said "Ssh!" And then they began showing pictures on +the screen--the most shocking things!--stomachs, and all that kind of +thing. They went on like that for an hour, and then there was a lot of +thumping with umbrellas, and they turned the lights up and we went home. +Curious way of spending Sunday afternoon, is it not? + +But you may imagine I had a dismal time all that hour. I understood the +people about me were Sceptics, the kind of people who don't believe +things--a singular class, and, I am told, a growing one. These excellent +people, it seems, have conscientious objections to going to chapel or +church, but at the same time the devotional habit of countless +generations of pious forerunners is strong in them. Consequently they +have invented things like these lectures to go to, with a professor +instead of a priest, and a lantern slide of a stomach by way of +altar-piece; and alcohol they make their Devil, and their god is +Hygiene--a curious and instructive case of mental inertia. I understand, +too, there are several other temples of this Cult in London--South Place +Chapel and Essex Hall, for instance, where they worship the Spirit of +the Innermost. But the thing that struck me so oddly was the number of +bald heads glimmering faintly in the reflected light from the lantern +circle. And that set me thinking upon a difficulty I have never been +able to surmount. + +You see these people, and lots of other people, too, believe in a thing +they call Natural Selection. They think, as part of that belief, that +men are descended from hairy simian ancestors; assert that even a +hundred thousand years ago the ancestor was hairy--hairy, heavy, and +almost as much a brute as if he lived in Mr. Arthur Morrison's +Whitechapel. For my own part I think it a pretty theory, and would +certainly accept it were it not for one objection. The thing I cannot +understand is how our ancestor lost that hair. I see no reason why he +should not have kept his hair on. According to the theory of natural +selection, materially favourable variations survive, unfavourable +disappear; the only way in which the loss is to be accounted for is by +explaining it as advantageous; but where is the advantage of losing your +hair? The disadvantages appear to me to be innumerable. A thick covering +of hair, like that of a Capuchin monkey, would be an invaluable +protection against sudden changes of temperature, far better than any +clothing can be. Had I that, for instance, I should be rid of the +perpetual cold in the head that so disfigures my life; and the +multitudes who die annually of chills, bronchitis, and consumption, and +most of those who suffer from rheumatic pains, neuralgia, and so forth, +would not so die and suffer. And in the past, when clothing was less +perfect and firing a casual commodity, the disadvantages of losing hair +were all the greater. In very hot countries hair is perhaps even more +important in saving the possessor from the excessive glare of the sun. +Before the invention of the hat, thick hair on the head at least was +absolutely essential to save the owner of the skull from sunstroke. +That, perhaps, explains why the hair has been retained there, and why it +is going now that we have hats, but it certainly does not explain why it +has gone from the rest of the body. + +One--remarkably weak--explanation has been propounded: an appeal to our +belief in human vanity. He picked it out by the roots, because he +thought he was prettier without. But that is no reason at all. Suppose +he did, it would not affect his children. Professor Weismann has at +least convinced scientific people of this: that the characters acquired +by a parent are rarely, if ever, transmitted to its offspring. An +individual given to such wanton denudation would simply be at a +disadvantage with his decently covered fellows, would fall behind in the +race of life, and perish with his kind. Besides, if man has been at such +pains to uncover his skin, why have quite a large number of the most +respected among us such a passionate desire to have it covered up again? + +Yet that is the only attempted explanation I have ever come upon, and +the thing has often worried me. I think it is just as probably a change +in dietary. I have noticed that most of your vegetarians are +shock-headed, ample-bearded men, and I have heard the Ancestor was +vegetarian. Or it may be, I sometimes fancy, a kind of inherent +disposition on the part of your human animal to dwindle. That came back +in my memory vividly as I looked at the long rows of Sceptics, typical +Advanced people, and marked their glistening crania. I recalled other +losses. Here is Humanity, thought I, growing hairless, growing bald, +growing toothless, unemotional, irreligious, losing the end joint of the +little toe, dwindling in its osseous structures, its jawbone and brow +ridges, losing all the full, rich curvatures of its primordial beauty. + +It seems almost like what the scientific people call a Law. And by +strenuous efforts the creature just keeps pace with his losses--devises +clothes, wigs, artificial teeth, paddings, shoes--what civilised being +could use his bare feet for his ordinary locomotion? Imagine him on a +furze-sprinkled golf links. Then stays, an efficient substitute for the +effete feminine backbone. So the thing goes on. Long ago his superficies +became artificial, and now the human being shrinks like a burning cigar, +and the figure he has abandoned remains distended with artificial ashes, +dead dry protections against the exposures he so unaccountably fears. +Will he go on shrinking, I wonder?--become at last a mere lurking atomy +in his own recesses, a kind of hermit crab, the bulk of him a complex +mechanism, a thing of rags and tatters and papier-maché, stolen from the +earth and the plant-world and his fellow beasts? And at last may he not +disappear altogether, none missing him, and a democracy of honest +machinery, neatly clad and loaded up with sound principles of action, +walk to and fro in a regenerate world? Thus it was my mind went dreaming +in St. George's Hall. But presently, as I say, came the last word about +stomachs, and the bald men woke up, rattled their umbrellas, said it was +vastly interesting, and went toddling off home in an ecstasy of advanced +Liberalism. And we two returned to the place whence we came. + + + + +OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN + + +Accomplished literature is all very well in its way, no doubt, but much +more fascinating to the contemplative man are the books that have not +been written. These latter are no trouble to hold; there are no pages to +turn over. One can read them in bed on sleepless nights without a +candle. Turning to another topic, primitive man in the works of the +descriptive anthropologist is certainly a very entertaining and quaint +person, but the man of the future, if we only had the facts, would +appeal to us more strongly. Yet where are the books? As Ruskin has said +somewhere, _à propos_ of Darwin, it is not what man has been, but what +he will be, that should interest us. + +The contemplative man in his easy-chair, pondering this saying, suddenly +beholds in the fire, through the blue haze of his pipe, one of these +great unwritten volumes. It is large in size, heavy in lettering, +seemingly by one Professor Holzkopf, presumably Professor at +Weissnichtwo. "The Necessary Characters of the Man of the Remote Future +deduced from the Existing Stream of Tendency" is the title. The worthy +Professor is severely scientific in his method, and deliberate and +cautious in his deductions, the contemplative man discovers as he +pursues his theme, and yet the conclusions are, to say the least, +remarkable. We must figure the excellent Professor expanding the matter +at great length, voluminously technical, but the contemplative +man--since he has access to the only copy--is clearly at liberty to make +such extracts and abstracts as he chooses for the unscientific reader. +Here, for instance, is something of practicable lucidity that he +considers admits of quotation. "The theory of evolution," writes the +Professor, "is now universally accepted by zoologists and botanists, and +it is applied unreservedly to man. Some question, indeed, whether it +fits his soul, but all agree it accounts for his body. Man, we are +assured, is descended from ape-like ancestors, moulded by circumstances +into men, and these apes again were derived from ancestral forms of a +lower order, and so up from the primordial protoplasmic jelly. Clearly +then, man, unless the order of the universe has come to an end, will +undergo further modification in the future, and at last cease to be man, +giving rise to some other type of animated being. At once the +fascinating question arises, What will this being be? Let us consider +for a little the plastic influences at work upon our species. + +"Just as the bird is the creature of the wing, and is all moulded and +modified to flying, and just as the fish is the creature that swims, and +has had to meet the inflexible conditions of a problem in hydrodynamics, +so man is the creature of the brain; he will live by intelligence, and +not by physical strength, if he live at all. So that much that is purely +'animal' about him is being, and must be, beyond all question, +suppressed in his ultimate development. Evolution is no mechanical +tendency making for perfection, according to the ideas current in the +year of grace 1897; it is simply the continual adaptation of plastic +life, for good or evil, to the circumstances that surround it.... We +notice this decay of the animal part around us now, in the loss of teeth +and hair, in the dwindling hands and feet of men, in their smaller jaws, +and slighter mouths and ears. Man now does by wit and machinery and +verbal agreement what he once did by bodily toil; for once he had to +catch his dinner, capture his wife, run away from his enemies, and +continually exercise himself, for love of himself, to perform these +duties well. But now all this is changed. Cabs, trains, trams, render +speed unnecessary, the pursuit of food becomes easier; his wife is no +longer hunted, but rather, in view of the crowded matrimonial market, +seeks him out. One needs wits now to live, and physical activity is a +drug, a snare even; it seeks artificial outlets, and overflows in +games. Athleticism takes up time and cripples a man in his competitive +examinations, and in business. So is your fleshly man handicapped +against his subtler brother. He is unsuccessful in life, does not marry. +The better adapted survive." + +The coming man, then, will clearly have a larger brain, and a slighter +body than the present. But the Professor makes one exception to this. +"The human hand, since it is the teacher and interpreter of the brain, +will become constantly more powerful and subtle as the rest of the +musculature dwindles." + +Then in the physiology of these children of men, with their expanding +brains, their great sensitive hands and diminishing bodies, great +changes were necessarily worked. "We see now," says the Professor, "in +the more intellectual sections of humanity an increasing sensitiveness +to stimulants, a growing inability to grapple with such a matter as +alcohol, for instance. No longer can men drink a bottleful of port; some +cannot drink tea; it is too exciting for their highly-wrought nervous +systems. The process will go on, and the Sir Wilfrid Lawson of some near +generation may find it his duty and pleasure to make the silvery spray +of his wisdom tintinnabulate against the tea-tray. These facts lead +naturally to the comprehension of others. Fresh raw meat was once a dish +for a king. Now refined persons scarcely touch meat unless it is +cunningly disguised. Again, consider the case of turnips; the raw root +is now a thing almost uneatable, but once upon a time a turnip must have +been a rare and fortunate find, to be torn up with delirious eagerness +and devoured in ecstasy. The time will come when the change will affect +all the other fruits of the earth. Even now, only the young of mankind +eat apples raw--the young always preserving ancestral characteristics +after their disappearance in the adult. Some day even boys will regard +apples without emotion. The boy of the future, one must believe, will +gaze on an apple with the same unspeculative languor with which he now +regards a flint"--in the absence of a cat. + +"Furthermore, fresh chemical discoveries came into action as modifying +influences upon men. In the prehistoric period even, man's mouth had +ceased to be an instrument for grasping food; it is still growing +continually less prehensile, his front teeth are smaller, his lips +thinner and less muscular; he has a new organ, a mandible not of +irreparable tissue, but of bone and steel--a knife and fork. There is no +reason why things should stop at partial artificial division thus +afforded; there is every reason, on the contrary, to believe my +statement that some cunning exterior mechanism will presently masticate +and insalivate his dinner, relieve his diminishing salivary glands and +teeth, and at last altogether abolish them." + +Then what is not needed disappears. What use is there for external ears, +nose, and brow ridges now? The two latter once protected the eye from +injury in conflict and in falls, but in these days we keep on our legs, +and at peace. Directing his thoughts in this way, the reader may +presently conjure up a dim, strange vision of the latter-day face: "Eyes +large, lustrous, beautiful, soulful; above them, no longer separated by +rugged brow ridges, is the top of the head, a glistening, hairless dome, +terete and beautiful; no craggy nose rises to disturb by its unmeaning +shadows the symmetry of that calm face, no vestigial ears project; the +mouth is a small, perfectly round aperture, toothless and gumless, +jawless, unanimal, no futile emotions disturbing its roundness as it +lies, like the harvest moon or the evening star, in the wide firmament +of face." Such is the face the Professor beholds in the future. + +Of course parallel modifications will also affect the body and limbs. +"Every day so many hours and so much energy are required for digestion; +a gross torpidity, a carnal lethargy, seizes on mortal men after dinner. +This may and can be avoided. Man's knowledge of organic chemistry widens +daily. Already he can supplement the gastric glands by artificial +devices. Every doctor who administers physic implies that the bodily +functions may be artificially superseded. We have pepsine, pancreatine, +artificial gastric acid--I know not what like mixtures. Why, then, +should not the stomach be ultimately superannuated altogether? A man +who could not only leave his dinner to be cooked, but also leave it to +be masticated and digested, would have vast social advantages over his +food-digesting fellow. This is, let me remind you here, the calmest, +most passionless, and scientific working out of the future forms of +things from the data of the present. At this stage the following facts +may perhaps stimulate your imagination. There can be no doubt that many +of the Arthropods, a division of animals more ancient and even now more +prevalent than the Vertebrata, have undergone more phylogenetic +modification"--a beautiful phrase--"than even the most modified of +vertebrated animals. Simple forms like the lobsters display a primitive +structure parallel with that of the fishes. However, in such a form as +the degraded 'Chondracanthus,' the structure has diverged far more +widely from its original type than in man. Among some of these most +highly modified crustaceans the whole of the alimentary canal--that is, +all the food-digesting and food-absorbing parts--form a useless solid +cord: the animal is nourished--it is a parasite--by absorption of the +nutritive fluid in which it swims. Is there any absolute impossibility +in supposing man to be destined for a similar change; to imagine him no +longer dining, with unwieldy paraphernalia of servants and plates, upon +food queerly dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in elegant +simplicity by immersion in a tub of nutritive fluid? + +"There grows upon the impatient imagination a building, a dome of +crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most +glorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change. In the +centre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular white +marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this +plunge and float strange beings. Are they birds? + +"They are the descendants of man--at dinner. Watch them as they hop on +their hands--a method of progression advocated already by +Bjornsen--about the pure white marble floor. Great hands they have, +enormous brains, soft, liquid, soulful eyes. Their whole muscular +system, their legs, their abdomens, are shrivelled to nothing, a +dangling, degraded pendant to their minds." + +The further visions of the Professor are less alluring. + +"The animals and plants die away before men, except such as he preserves +for his food or delight, or such as maintain a precarious footing about +him as commensals and parasites. These vermin and pests must succumb +sooner or later to his untiring inventiveness and incessantly growing +discipline. When he learns (the chemists are doubtless getting towards +the secret now) to do the work of chlorophyll without the plant, then +his necessity for other animals and plants upon the earth will +disappear. Sooner or later, where there is no power of resistance and no +necessity, there comes extinction. In the last days man will be alone on +the earth, and his food will be won by the chemist from the dead rocks +and the sunlight. + +"And--one may learn the full reason in that explicit and painfully right +book, the _Data of Ethics_--the irrational fellowship of man will give +place to an intellectual co-operation, and emotion fall within the +scheme of reason. Undoubtedly it is a long time yet, but a long time is +nothing in the face of eternity, and every man who dares think of these +things must look eternity in the face." + +Then the earth is ever radiating away heat into space, the Professor +reminds us. And so at last comes a vision of earthly cherubim, hopping +heads, great unemotional intelligences, and little hearts, fighting +together perforce and fiercely against the cold that grips them tighter +and tighter. For the world is cooling--slowly and inevitably it grows +colder as the years roll by. "We must imagine these creatures," says the +Professor, "in galleries and laboratories deep down in the bowels of the +earth. The whole world will be snow-covered and piled with ice; all +animals, all vegetation vanished, except this last branch of the tree of +life. The last men have gone even deeper, following the diminishing heat +of the planet, and vast metallic shafts and ventilators make way for the +air they need." + +So with a glimpse of these human tadpoles, in their deep close gallery, +with their boring machinery ringing away, and artificial lights glaring +and casting black shadows, the Professor's horoscope concludes. Humanity +in dismal retreat before the cold, changed beyond recognition. Yet the +Professor is reasonable enough, his facts are current science, his +methods orderly. The contemplative man shivers at the prospect, starts +up to poke the fire, and the whole of this remarkable book that is not +written vanishes straightway in the smoke of his pipe. This is the great +advantage of this unwritten literature: there is no bother in changing +the books. The contemplative man consoles himself for the destiny of the +species with the lost portion of Kubla Khan. + + + + +THE EXTINCTION OF MAN + + +It is part of the excessive egotism of the human animal that the bare +idea of its extinction seems incredible to it. "A world without _us_!" +it says, as a heady young Cephalaspis might have said it in the old +Silurian sea. But since the Cephalaspis and the Coccostëus many a fine +animal has increased and multiplied upon the earth, lorded it over land +or sea without a rival, and passed at last into the night. Surely it is +not so unreasonable to ask why man should be an exception to the rule. +From the scientific standpoint at least any reason for such exception is +hard to find. + +No doubt man is undisputed master at the present time--at least of most +of the land surface; but so it has been before with other animals. Let +us consider what light geology has to throw upon this. The great land +and sea reptiles of the Mesozoic period, for instance, seem to have been +as secure as humanity is now in their pre-eminence. But they passed away +and left no descendants when the new orders of the mammals emerged from +their obscurity. So, too, the huge Titanotheria of the American +continent, and all the powerful mammals of Pleistocene South America, +the sabre-toothed lion, for instance, and the Machrauchenia suddenly +came to a finish when they were still almost at the zenith of their +rule. _And in no case does the record of the fossils show a really +dominant species succeeded by its own descendants._ What has usually +happened in the past appears to be the emergence of some type of animal +hitherto rare and unimportant, and the extinction, not simply of the +previously ruling species, but of most of the forms that are at all +closely related to it. Sometimes, indeed, as in the case of the extinct +giants of South America, they vanished without any considerable rivals, +victims of pestilence, famine, or, it may be, of that cumulative +inefficiency that comes of a too undisputed life. So that the analogy of +geology, at anyrate, is against this too acceptable view of man's +certain tenure of the earth for the next few million years or so. + +And, after all, even now man is by no means such a master of the +kingdoms of life as he is apt to imagine. The sea, that mysterious +nursery of living things, is for all practical purposes beyond his +control. The low-water mark is his limit. Beyond that he may do a little +with seine and dredge, murder a few million herrings a year as they come +in to spawn, butcher his fellow air-breather, the whale, or haul now and +then an unlucky king-crab or strange sea-urchin out of the deep water, +in the name of science; but the life of the sea as a whole knows him +not, plays out its slow drama of change and development unheeding him, +and may in the end, in mere idle sport, throw up some new terrestrial +denizens, some new competitor for space to live in and food to live +upon, that will sweep him and all his little contrivances out of +existence, as certainly and inevitably as he has swept away auk, bison, +and dodo during the last two hundred years. + +For instance, there are the Crustacea. As a group the crabs and lobsters +are confined below the high-water mark. But experiments in air-breathing +are no doubt in progress in this group--we already have tropical +land-crabs--and as far as we know there is no reason why in the future +these creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity. In +the past we have the evidence of the fossil _Paradoxides_ that creatures +of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering +their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as +formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious +capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is +only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we +imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could +take refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what a +terrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And so far as +zoological science goes we must, at least, admit that such a creature is +an evolutionary possibility. + +Then, again, the order of the Cephalopods, to which belong the +cuttle-fish and the octopus (sacred to Victor Hugo), may be, for all we +can say to the contrary, an order with a future. Their kindred, the +Gastropods, have, in the case of the snail and slug, learnt the trick of +air-breathing. And not improbably there are even now genera of this +order that have escaped the naturalist, or even well-known genera whose +possibilities in growth and dietary are still unknown. Suppose some day +a specimen of a new species is caught off the coast of Kent. It excites +remark at a Royal Society soirée, engenders a Science Note or so, "A +Huge Octopus!" and in the next year or so three or four other specimens +come to hand, and the thing becomes familiar. "Probably a new and larger +variety of _Octopus_ so-and-so, hitherto supposed to be tropical," says +Professor Gargoyle, and thinks he has disposed of it. Then conceive some +mysterious boating accidents and deaths while bathing. A large animal of +this kind coming into a region of frequent wrecks might so easily +acquire a preferential taste for human nutriment, just as the Colorado +beetle acquired a new taste for the common potato and gave up its old +food-plants some years ago. Then perhaps a school or pack or flock of +_Octopus gigas_ would be found busy picking the sailors off a stranded +ship, and then in the course of a few score years it might begin to +stroll up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would be a +common feature of the watering-places--possibly at last commoner than +excursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear--and it is, we +repeat, a possibility, if perhaps a remote one--how could it be fought +against? Something might be done by torpedoes; but, so far as our past +knowledge goes, man has no means of seriously diminishing the numbers of +any animal of the most rudimentary intelligence that made its fastness +in the sea. + +Even on land it is possible to find creatures that with a little +modification might become excessively dangerous to the human ascendency. +Most people have read of the migratory ants of Central Africa, against +which no man can stand. On the march they simply clear out whole +villages, drive men and animals before them in headlong rout, and kill +and eat every living creature they can capture. One wonders why they +have not already spread the area of their devastations. But at present +no doubt they have their natural checks, of ant-eating birds, or what +not. In the near future it may be that the European immigrant, as he +sets the balance of life swinging in his vigorous manner, may kill off +these ant-eating animals, or otherwise unwittingly remove the checks +that now keep these terrible little pests within limits. And once they +begin to spread in real earnest, it is hard to see how their advance +could be stopped. A world devoured by ants seems incredible now, simply +because it is not within our experience; but a naturalist would have a +dull imagination who could not see in the numerous species of ants, and +in their already high intelligence, far more possibility of strange +developments than we have in the solitary human animal. And no doubt the +idea of the small and feeble organism of man, triumphant and +omnipresent, would have seemed equally incredible to an intelligent +mammoth or a palæolithic cave bear. + +And, finally, there is always the prospect of a new disease. As yet +science has scarcely touched more than the fringe of the probabilities +associated with the minute fungi that constitute our zymotic diseases. +But the bacilli have no more settled down into their final quiescence +than have men; like ourselves, they are adapting themselves to new +conditions and acquiring new powers. The plagues of the Middle Ages, for +instance, seem to have been begotten of a strange bacillus engendered +under conditions that sanitary science, in spite of its panacea of +drainage, still admits are imperfectly understood, and for all we know +even now we may be quite unwittingly evolving some new and more terrible +plague--a plague that will not take ten or twenty or thirty per cent., +as plagues have done in the past, but the entire hundred. + +No; man's complacent assumption of the future is too confident. We +think, because things have been easy for mankind as a whole for a +generation or so, we are going on to perfect comfort and security in the +future. We think that we shall always go to work at ten and leave off at +four, and have dinner at seven for ever and ever. But these four +suggestions, out of a host of others, must surely do a little against +this complacency. Even now, for all we can tell, the coming terror may +be crouching for its spring and the fall of humanity be at hand. In the +case of every other predominant animal the world has ever seen, I +repeat, the hour of its complete ascendency has been the eve of its +entire overthrow. But if some poor story-writing man ventures to figure +this sober probability in a tale, not a reviewer in London but will tell +him his theme is the utterly impossible. And, when the thing happens, +one may doubt if even then one will get the recognition one deserves. + + + + +THE WRITING OF ESSAYS + + +The art of the essayist is so simple, so entirely free from canons of +criticism, and withal so delightful, that one must needs wonder why all +men are not essayists. Perhaps people do not know how easy it is. Or +perhaps beginners are misled. Rightly taught it may be learnt in a brief +ten minutes or so, what art there is in it. And all the rest is as easy +as wandering among woodlands on a bright morning in the spring. + +Then sit you down if you would join us, taking paper, pens, and ink; and +mark this, your pen is a matter of vital moment. For every pen writes +its own sort of essay, and pencils also after their kind. The ink +perhaps may have its influence too, and the paper; but paramount is the +pen. This, indeed, is the fundamental secret of essay-writing. Wed any +man to his proper pen, and the delights of composition and the birth of +an essay are assured. Only many of us wander through the earth and never +meet with her--futile and lonely men. + +And, of all pens, your quill for essays that are literature. There is a +subtle informality, a delightful easiness, perhaps even a faint +immorality essentially literary, about the quill. The quill is rich in +suggestion and quotation. There are quills that would quote you +Montaigne and Horace in the hands of a trades-union delegate. And those +quirky, idle noises this pen makes are delightful, and would break your +easy fluency with wit. All the classical essayists wrote with a quill, +and Addison used the most expensive kind the Government purchased. And +the beginning of the inferior essay was the dawn of the cheap steel +pen. + +The quill nibs they sell to fit into ordinary pen-holders are no true +quills at all, lacking dignity, and may even lead you into the New +Humour if you trust overmuch to their use. After a proper quill commend +me to a stumpy BB pencil; you get less polish and broader effects, but +you are still doing good literature. Sometimes the work is close--Mr. +George Meredith, for instance, is suspected of a soft pencil--and always +it is blunter than quill work and more terse. With a hard pencil no man +can write anything but a graceless style--a kind of east wind air it +gives--and smile you cannot. So that it is often used for serious +articles in the half-crown reviews. + +There follows the host of steel pens. That bald, clear, scientific +style, all set about with words like "evolution" and "environment," +which aims at expressing its meaning with precision and an exemplary +economy of words, is done with fine steel nibs--twelve a penny at any +stationer's. The J pen to the lady novelist, and the stylograph to the +devil--your essayist must not touch the things. So much for the pen. If +you cannot write essays easily, that is where the hitch comes in. Get a +box of a different kind of pen and begin again, and so on again and +again until despair or joy arrests you. + +As for a typewriter, you could no more get an essay out of a typewriter +than you could play a sonata upon its keys. No essay was ever written +with a typewriter yet, nor ever will be. Besides its impossibility, the +suggestion implies a brutal disregard of the division of labour by which +we live and move and have our being. If the essayist typewrite, the +unemployed typewriter, who is commonly a person of superior education +and capacity, might take to essays, and where is your living then? One +might as reasonably start at once with the Linotype and print one's wit +and humour straight away. And taking the invasion of other trades one +step further one might, after an attempt to sell one's own newspaper, +even get to the pitch of having to read it oneself. No; even essayists +must be reasonable. If its mechanical clitter-clatter did not render +composition impossible, the typewriter would still be beneath the honour +of a literary man. + +Then for the paper. The luxurious, expensive, small-sized cream-laid +note is best, since it makes your essay choice and compact; and, failing +that, ripped envelopes and the backs of bills. Some men love ruled +paper, because they can write athwart the lines, and some take the +fly-leaves of their friends' books. But whosoever writes on cheap sermon +paper full of hairs should write far away from the woman he loves, lest +he offend her ears. It is good, however, for a terse, forcible style. + +The ink should be glossy black as it leaves your pen, for polished +English. Violet inks lead to sham sentiment, and blue-black to +vulgarity. Red ink essays are often good, but usually unfit for +publication. + +This is as much almost as anyone need know to begin essay writing. Given +your proper pen and ink, or pencil and paper, you simply sit down and +write the thing. The value of an essay is not its matter, but its mood. +You must be comfortable, of course; an easy-chair with arm-rests, +slippers, and a book to write upon are usually employed, and you must be +fed recently, and your body clothed with ease rather than grandeur. For +the rest, do not trouble to stick to your subject, or any subject; and +take no thought for the editor or the reader, for your essay should be +as spontaneous as the lilies of the field. + +So long as you do not begin with a definition you may begin anyhow. An +abrupt beginning is much admired, after the fashion of the clown's entry +through the chemist's window. Then whack at your reader at once, hit him +over the head with the sausages, brisk him up with the poker, bundle him +into the wheelbarrow, and so carry him away with you before he knows +where you are. You can do what you like with a reader then, if you only +keep him nicely on the move. So long as you are happy your reader will +be so too. But one law must be observed: an essay, like a dog that +wishes to please, must have a lively tail, short but as waggish as +possible. Like a rocket, an essay goes only with fizzle and sparks at +the end of it. And, know, that to stop writing is the secret of writing +an essay; the essay that the public loves dies young. + + + + +THE PARKES MUSEUM + +THE PLACE TO SPEND A HAPPY DAY + + +By way of jest, my morning daily paper constantly includes in its menu +of "To-day" the Parkes Museum, Margaret Street, adding, seductively, +"free"; and no doubt many a festive Jonas Chuzzlewit has preened himself +for a sight-seeing, and all unaware of the multitudes of Margaret +Streets--surely only Charlottes of that ilk are more abundant--has +started forth, he and his feminine, to find this Parkes Museum. One may +even conceive a rare Bank Holiday thoughtfully put aside for the quest, +and spent all vainly in the asking of policemen, and in traversing this +vast and tiresome metropolis, from Margaret Street to Margaret Street, +the freshness of the morning passing into the dry heat of the day, +fatigue spreading from the feet upwards, discussion, difference, denial, +"words," and a day of recreation dying at last into a sunset of lurid +sulks. Such possibility was too painful to think of, and a philanthropic +inquirer has at last by persistent investigation won the secret of the +Missing Museum and opened the way to it for all future investigators. + +The Margaret Street in question is an apparently derelict thoroughfare, +opening into Great Portland Street. Immemorial dust is upon its +pavements, and a profound silence broods over its vacant roadway. The +blinds of its houses are mostly down, and, where the blackness of some +window suggests a dark interior, no face appears to reassure us in our +doubt of humanity within. It may be that somewhen in the past the entire +population of this street set out on a boating party up the river, and +was overset by steam launches, and so never returned, or perchance it +has all been locked up for a long term of imprisonment--though the +houses seem almost too respectable for that; or the glamour of the +Sleeping Beauty is upon it all. Certainly we saw the figure of a porter +in an attitude of repose in the little glass lodge in the museum +doorway. He _may_ have been asleep. But we feared to touch him--and +indeed slipped very stealthily by him--lest he should suddenly crumble +into dust. + +And so to the Museum and its wonders. This Parkes Museum is a kind of +armoury of hygiene, a place full of apparatus for being healthy--in +brief, a museum of sanitary science. To that large and growing class of +people who take no thought of anything but what they eat and what they +drink, and wherewithal they should be clothed, it should prove intensely +interesting. Apart from the difficulty of approach we cannot understand +how it is so neglected by an intelligent public. You can see germicides +and a model convict prison, Pentonville cells in miniature, statistical +diagrams and drain pipes--if only there was a little more about +heredity, it would be exactly the kind of thing that is popular in +literature now, as literature goes. And yet excepting ourselves and the +sleeping porter--if he was sleeping--and the indistinct and motionless +outline, visible through a glass door, of a human body sitting over a +book, there was not a suggestion or memory of living humanity about the +place. + +The exhibits of food are especially remarkable. We cleaned the glass +case with our sleeves and peered at the most appetising revelations. +There are dozens of little bottles hermetically sealed, containing such +curios as a sample of "Bacon Common (Gammon) Uncooked," and then the +same cooked--it looked no nicer cooked--Irish sausage, pork sausage, +black pudding, Welsh mutton, and all kinds of rare and exquisite +feeding. There are ever so many cases of this kind of thing. We saw, for +instance, further along, several good specimens of the common oyster +shell (_Ostrea edulis_), cockle shells, and whelks, both "almonds" and +"whites," and then came breadstuffs. The breadstuffs are particularly +impressive, of a grey, scientific aspect, a hard, hoary antiquity. We +always knew that stale bread was good for one, but yet the Parkes Museum +startled us with the antique pattern it recommended. There was a muffin, +too, identified and labelled, but without any Latin name, a captured +crumpet, a collection of buns, a dinner-roll, and a something novel to +us, called Pumpernickel, that we had rather be without, or rather--for +the expression is ambiguous--that we had rather not be without, but +altogether remote from. And all these things have been tested by an +analyst, with the most painful results. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and +the like nasty chemical things seem indeed to have occurred in +everything he touched. Those sturdy mendicants who go about complaining +that they cannot get food should visit this Parkes Museum and see what +food is really like, and learn contentment with their lot. + +There were no real vegetables, but only the ideals of a firm of +seedsmen, made of wax and splendidly coloured, with something of the +boldness and vigour of Michael Angelo about the modelling of them. And +among other food stuffs were sweetmeats and yellow capers, liver flukes, +British wines, and snuff. At last we felt replete with food stuffs, and +went on to see the models to illustrate ventilation, and the exhibits of +hygienic glazed tiles arranged around a desert lecture-theatre. Hygienic +tiles stimulate the eye vigorously rather than relax it by any æsthetic +weakness; and the crematory appliances are so attractive as they are, +and must have such an added charm of neatness and brightness when +alight, that one longs to lose a relative or so forthwith, for the mere +pleasure of seeing them in operation. + +A winding staircase designed upon hygienic principles, to bump your head +at intervals, takes one to a little iron gallery full of the most +charming and varied display of cooking-stoves and oil-lamps. Here, also, +there are flaunted the resources of civilisation for the Prevention of +Accidents, which resources are four, namely, a patent fire-escape, a +patent carriage pole, a coal plate, and a dog muzzle. But the labels, +though verbose, are scarcely full enough. They do not tell you, for +instance, if you wish to prevent cramp while bathing, whether the dog +muzzle or the coal plate should be employed, nor do they show how the +fire-escape will prevent the explosion of a paraffin lamp. However, this +is a detail. We feel assured that no intelligent person will regret a +visit to this most interesting and instructive exhibition. It offers you +valuable hints how to live, and suggests the best and tidiest way in +which you can, when dead, dispose of your body. We feel assured that the +public only needs this intimation of its whereabouts to startle the +death-like slumbers of Margaret Street with an unaccustomed tumult. And +the first to arrive will, no doubt, find legibly and elegantly written +in the dust that covers the collection the record of its discovery by +Euphemia and me. + + + + +BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST + + +All along the selvage of Epping Forest there was excitement. Before the +swallows, before the violets, long before the cuckoo, with only untimely +honeysuckle bushes showing a trace of green, two trippers had been seen +traversing the district, making their way towards High Beech, and +settling awhile near the Forest Hotel. Whether they were belated +survivals from last season or exceptionally early hatchings of the +coming year, was a question of considerable moment to the natives, and +has since engaged the attention of the local Natural History Society. +But we know that, as a matter of fact, they were of little omen, being +indeed but insignificant people from Hampstead and not true trippers at +all, who were curious to see this forest in raw winter. + +For some have argued that there is no Epping Forest at all in the +winter-time; that it is, in fact, taken up and put away, and that +agriculture is pursued there. Others assert that the Forest is shrouded +with wrappers, even as a literary man's study is shrouded by dusty women +when they clean him out. Others, again, have supposed that it is a +delightful place in winter, far more delightful than in summer, but that +this is not published, because no writing man hath ever been there in +the cold season. And much more of unreal speculation, but nothing which +bore upon it the stamp of truth. So these two--and I am one of the +two--went down to Epping Forest to see that it was still there, and how +it fared in the dismal weather. + +The sky was a greasy grey that guttered down to the horizon, and the +wind smote damp and chill. There was a white fringe of ice in the +cart-wheel ruts, but withal the frost was not so crisp as to prevent a +thin and slippery glaze of softened clay upon the road. The decaying +triumphal arch outside the station sadly lacked a coat of paint, and was +indistinctly regretful of remote royal visits and processions gone for +ever. Then we passed shuddering by many vacant booths that had once +resounded with the revelry of ninepenny teas and the gingerbeer cork's +staccato, and their forms were piled together and their trestles +overturned. And the wind ravened, and no human beings were to be seen. +So up the hill to the left, and along the road leading by devious +windings between the black hedges and through clay wallows to the hilly +part round High Beech. + +But upon the shoulder of a hill we turned to a gate to scrape off the +mud that made our boots unwieldy. At that moment came a threadbare place +in the cloudy curtain that was sweeping across the sun, and our shadows +showed themselves for an instant to comfort us. The amber patch of +sunlight presently slipped from us and travelled down the meadows +towards the distant blue of the hills by Waltham Abbey, touching with +miraculous healing a landscape erst dead and shrouded in grey. This +transitory gleam of light gladdened us mightily at the time, but it made +the after-sky seem all the darker. + +So through the steep and tortuous village to High Beech, and then +leaving the road we wandered in among big trees and down slopes ankle +deep with rustling leaves towards Chingford again. Here was pleasanter +walking than the thawing clay, but now and then one felt the threat of +an infinite oozy softness beneath the stiff frozen leaves. Once again +while we were here the drifting haze of the sky became thinner, and the +smooth green-grey beech stems and rugged oak trunks were brightly +illuminated. But only for a moment, and thereafter the sky became not +simply unsympathetic but ominous. And the misery of the wind grew apace. + +Presently we wandered into that sinister corner of the Forest where the +beech trees have grown so closely together that they have had perforce +to lift their branches vertically. Divested of leaves, the bare grey +limbs of these seem strangely restless. These trees, reaching so +eagerly upward, have an odd resemblance to the weird figures of horror +in which William Blake delighted--arms, hands, hair, all stretch +intensely to the zenith. They seem to be straining away from the spot to +which they are rooted. It is a Laocoon grouping, a wordless concentrated +struggle for the sunlight, and disagreeably impressive. The trippers +longed to talk and were tongue-tied; they looked now and then over their +shoulders. They were glad when the eerie influence was passed, though +they traversed a morass to get away from it. + +Then across an open place, dismal with the dun hulls of lost cows and +the clatter of their bells, over a brook full of dead leaves and edged +with rusty clay, through a briery thicket that would fain have detained +us, and so to a pathway of succulent green, that oozed black under our +feet. Here some poor lost wayfarer has blazed his way with rustic seats, +now rheumatic and fungus-eaten. And here, too, the wind, which had +sought us howling, found us at last, and stung us sharply with a shower +of congealing raindrops. This grew to a steady downfall as the open +towards Chingford station was approached at last, after devious winding +in the Forest. Then, coming upon the edge of the wood and seeing the +lone station against the grey sky, we broke into a shout and began +running. But it is dismal running on imperfectly frozen clay, in rain +and a gusty wind. We slipped and floundered, and one of us wept sore +that she should never see her home again. And worse, the only train +sleeping in the station was awakened by our cries, and, with an eldritch +shriek at the unseasonable presence of trippers, fled incontinently +Londonward. + +Smeared with clay and dead leaves almost beyond human likeness, we +staggered into the derelict station, and found from an outcast porter +that perhaps another train might after the lapse of two hours accumulate +sufficiently to take us back to Gospel Oak and a warm world again. So we +speered if there were amusements to be got in this place, and he told us +"some very nice walks." To refrain from homicide we left the station, +and sought a vast red hotel that loomed through the drift on a steep +hill, and in the side of this a door that had not been locked. Happily +one had been forgotten, and, entering at last, we roused a hibernating +waiter, and he exhumed us some of his winter victual. In this way we +were presently to some degree comforted, and could play chess until a +train had been sent for our relief. And this did at last happen, and +towards the hour of dinner we rejoined our anxious friends, and all the +evening time we boasted of a pleasant day and urged them to go even as +we had gone. + + + + +THE THEORY OF QUOTATION + + +The nobler method of quotation is not to quote at all. For why should +one repeat good things that are already written? Are not the words in +their fittest context in the original? Clearly, then, your new setting +cannot be quite so congruous, which is, forthwith, an admission of +incongruity. Your quotation is evidently a plug in a leak, an apology +for a gap in your own words. But your vulgar author will even go out of +his way to make the clothing of his thoughts thus heterogeneous. He +counts every stolen scrap he can work in an improvement--a literary +caddis worm. Yet would he consider it improvement to put a piece of even +the richest of old tapestry or gold embroidery into his new pair of +breeks? + +The passion for quotation is peculiar to literature. We do not glory to +quote our costume, dress in cast-off court robes, or furnish our houses +from the marine store. Neither are we proud of alien initials on the +domestic silver. We like things new and primarily our own. We have a +wholesome instinct against infection, except, it seems, in the matter of +ideas. An authorling will deliberately inoculate his copy with the +inverted comma bacillus, till the page swims unsteadily, counting the +fever a glow of pure literary healthiness. Yet this reproduction, +rightly considered, is merely a proof that his appetite for books has +run beyond his digestion. Or his industry may be to seek. You expect an +omelette, and presently up come the unbroken eggs. A tissue of quotation +wisely looked at is indeed but a motley garment, eloquent either of a +fool, or an idle knave in a fool's disguise. + +Nevertheless at times--the truth must be told--we must quote. As for +admitting that we have quoted, that is another matter altogether. But +the other man's phrase will lie at times so close in one's mind to the +trend of one's thoughts, that, all virtue notwithstanding, they must +needs run into the groove of it. There are phrases that lie about in the +literary mind like orange peel on a pavement. You are down on them +before you know where you are. But does this necessitate acknowledgment +to the man, now in Hades, who sucked that orange and strewed the peel in +your way? Rather, is it not more becoming to be angry at his careless +anticipation? + +One may reasonably look at it in this way. What business has a man to +think of things right in front of you, poke his head, as it were, into +your light? What right has he to set up dams and tunnel out +swallow-holes to deflect the current of your thoughts? Surely you may +remove these obstructions, if it suits you, and put them where you will. +Else all literature will presently be choked up, and the making of books +come to an end. One might as well walk ten miles out of one's way +because some deaf oaf or other chose to sit upon a necessary stile. +Surely Shakespeare or Lamb, or what other source you contemplate, has +had the thing long enough? Out of the road with them. Turn and turn +about. + +And inverted commas are so inhospitable. If you _must_ take in another +man's offspring, you should surely try to make the poor foundlings feel +at home. Away with such uncharitable distinctions between the children +of the house and the stranger within your gates. I never see inverted +commas but I think of the necessary persecuted mediæval Jew in yellow +gabardine. + +At least, never put the name of the author you quote. Think of the +feelings of the dead. Don't let the poor spirit take it to heart that +its monumental sayings would pass unrecognised without your +advertisement. You mean well, perhaps, but it is in the poorest taste. +Yet I have seen Patience on a Monument honourably awarded to William +Shakespeare, and fenced in by commas from all intercourse with the +general text. + +There is something so extremely dishonest, too, in acknowledging +quotations. Possibly the good people who so contrive that such +signatures as "Shakespeare," "Homer," or "St. Paul," appear to be +written here and there to parts of their inferior work, manage to +justify the proceeding in their conscience; but it is uncommonly like +hallmarking pewter on the strength of an infinitesimal tinge of silver +therein. The point becomes at once clear if we imagine some obscure +painter quoting the style of Raphael and fragments of his designs, and +acknowledging his indebtedness by appending the master's signature. +Blank forgery! And a flood of light was thrown on the matter by a chance +remark of one of Euphemia's aunts--she is a great reader of pure +fiction--anent a popular novel: "I am sure it must be a nice book," said +she, "or she could not get all these people to write the mottoes for the +chapters." + +No, it is all very well to play with one's conscience. I have known men +so sophisticated as to assert that unacknowledged quotation was wrong. +But very few really reasonable people will, I think, refuse to agree +with me that the only artistic, the only kindly, and the only honest +method of quotation is plagiary. If you cannot plagiarise, surely it +were better not to quote. + + + + +ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE + +A MEDITATION AT EASTBOURNE + + +To stay at the seaside properly, one should not think. But even in +staying at the seaside there are intervals, waking moments when meals +come, even if there are no appointed meal-times. Moreover, now and then, +one must go to buy tobacco, a matter one can trust to no hireling, lest +he get it dry. It cannot be always seaside, even as it cannot be always +May, and through the gaps thought creeps in. Going over the cliff and +along the parade, and down by the circulating library to the cigar +divan, where they sell Parique tobacco, the swinging of one's legs seems +to act like a pendulum to the clockwork of one's brain. One meditates +all the way, and chiefly on how few people there are who can really--to +a critical adept--be said to stay at the seaside. + +People seem to think that one can take a ticket to Eastbourne, or +Bognor, or Ventnor, and come and stay at the seaside straight away, just +as I have known new-hatched undergraduates tell people they were going +to play billiards. Thousands and thousands of people think they have +stayed at the seaside, and have not, just as thousands of people +erroneously imagine they have played whist. For the latter have played +not whist, but Bumble-puppy, and the former have only frequented a +watering-place for a time. Your true staying at the seaside is an art, +demanding not only railway fares but special aptitude, and, moreover, +needing culture, like all worthy arts. + +The most insurmountable difficulty of the beginner is the classical +simplicity of the whole thing. To stay at the seaside properly you just +spread yourself out on the extreme edge of the land and let the sunlight +soak in. Your eyes are fixed upon the horizon. Some have it that your +head should be towards the sea, but the best authorities think that this +determines blood to that region, and so stimulates thought. This is all +the positive instruction; the rest is prohibition. You must not think, +and you must not move, neither may you go to sleep. In a few minutes the +adept becomes as a god, even as a god that sits upon the lotus leaf. New +light and colour come into the sky and sea, and the surges chant his +praises. But those who are not of the elect get pins and needles all +over them. + +It must be freely admitted that staying at the seaside such as this, +staying at the seaside in its perfection, is a thing for a select few. +You want a broad stretch of beach and all the visible sea to yourself. +You cannot be disturbed by even the most idyllic children trying to bury +you with sand and suchlike playfulness, nor by boatloads of the +democracy rowing athwart your sea and sky. And the absence of friend or +wife goes without saying. I notice down here a very considerable +quantity of evidently married pairs, and the huge majority of the rest +of the visitors run in couples, and are to all appearances engaged. If +they are not, I would submit that they ought to be. Probably there is a +certain satisfaction in sitting by the sea with the girl you are in love +with, or your wife for the matter of that, just as many people +undoubtedly find tea with milk and sugar very nice. But the former is no +more the way to get the full and perfect pleasure of staying at the +seaside than the latter is the way to get the full and perfect flavour +of the tea. True staying at the seaside is neither the repetition of old +conversations in new surroundings nor the exposure of one's affections +to ozone. It is something infinitely higher. It is pure quiescence. It +is the experience of a waking inanition savouring of Buddha and the +divine. + +Now, staying at the seaside is so rarely done well, because of the +littleness of man. To do it properly needs many of the elements of +greatness. Your common man, while he has life in him, can let neither +himself nor the universe alone. He must be asserting himself in some +way, even if it is only by flinging pebbles at a stick. That +self-forgetfulness which should be a delight is a terror to him. He +brings dogs down to the beach to stand between him and the calm of +nature, and yelp. He does worse than that. + +The meditative man going daily over by the cliff and along the parade, +to get his ounce of tobacco, has a sad spectacle of what human beings +may be driven to in this way. One sees altogether some hundreds of +people there who have heard perhaps that staying at the seaside is good, +and who have, anyhow, got thus far towards it, and stopped. They have +not the faintest idea how to make themselves happy. The general +expression is veiled curiosity. They sit--mostly with their backs to the +sea--talking poorly of indifferent topics and watching one another. Most +obviously they want hints of what to do with themselves. Behind them is +a bank of flowers like those in Battersea Park, and another parallel +parade, and beyond are bathing-machines. The pier completely cuts the +horizon out of the background. There is a stout lady, in dark blue, +bathing. The only glances directed seaward are furtive ones at her. Many +seem to be doubting whether this is not what they came down for. Others +lean dubiously to the invitations of the boatmen. Others again listen to +vocalists and dramatic outcasts who, for ha'pence, render obvious the +reason of their professional degradation. It seems eccentric to travel +seventy or eighty miles to hear a man without a voice demonstrate that +he is unfit to have one, but they do. Anyone curious in these matters +need only go to a watering-place to see and, what is worse, to hear for +himself. After an excursion train to Eastbourne, upwards of a thousand +people have been seen thus heaped together over an oblong space of a +mile long by twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was a +towering white cliff overhanging a practically desert beach; and one +seagull circled above one solitary, motionless, supine man, really +staying at the seaside. + +You cannot walk six miles anywhere along the south coast without coming +upon one of these heaps of people, called a watering-place. There will +be a town of houses behind wherein the people lodge, until, as they +think, they have stayed a sufficient time at the sea, and they return, +hot, cross, and mystified, to London. The sea front will be bricked or +paved for a mile or so, and there will be rows of boats and +bathing-machines, and other contrivances to screen off the view of the +sea. And, as we have indicated, watering-places and staying by the +seaside are incompatible things. The true stayer by the seaside goes +into the watering-place because he must; because there is little food, +and that uncooked, and no tobacco, between the cliffs and the sea. +Having purchased what he needs he flees forth again. What time the whole +selvage of England becomes watering-place, there will be no more staying +by the seaside at all in the land. But this is a gloomy train of thought +that we will not pursue. + +There have been those who assert that one end of staying at the seaside +is bathing; but it is easy to show that this is not so. Your proper +bathing-place is up the river, where the trees bend to the green and +brown shadows of the water. There the bath is sweet, fresh out of the +sky, or but just filtered through the blue hills of the distant +water-shed; and it is set about with flowers. But the sea--the sea has +stood there since the beginning of things, and with small prospect of +change, says Mr. Kipling, to all eternity. The water in the sea, +geologists tell us, has _not been changed for fifty million years_! The +same chemist who sets me against all my food with his chemical names +speaks of the sea as a weak solution of drowned men. Be that as it may, +it leaves the skin harsh with salt, and the hair sticky. Moreover, it is +such a promiscuous bathing-place. However, we need scarcely depreciate +the sea as a bath, for what need is there of that when the river is +clearly better? No one can deny that the river is better. People who +bathe in the sea bathe by mistake, because they have come to the side of +the sea, and know not how else to use it. + +So, too, with the boating. It is hard to imagine how human beings who +have drifted down streams, and watched the brown fish in the shallows, +and peered through the tall sedges at the forget-me-nots, and fought +with the ropes of the water-lilies, and heard the ripple under the bows, +can ever think of going to and fro, pitching spasmodically, in front of +a watering-place. And as for fishing--they catch fish at sea, indeed, +but it is not fishing at all; neither rods nor flies have they, and +there is an end to that matter. + +An Eastbourne meditative man returning to where he stays, with his daily +ounce of tobacco already afire, sees in the streets what are called by +the natives "cherry-bangs," crowded with people, and, further, +cabriolets and such vehicles holding parties and families. The good +folks are driving away from the sea for the better part of the day, +going to Battle and other places inland. The puzzle of what to do with +their sea is too much for them, and they are going away for a little to +rest their minds. Regarded as a centre of drives one might think an +inland place would be preferable to a seaside town, which at best +commands but a half-circle. However that may be, the fact remains that +one of the chief occupations of your common visitor to the seaside is +going away from it. Than this fact there can be nothing more conclusive +in support of my argument that ordinary people are absolutely ignorant +and incapable of staying by the seaside. + + + + +CONCERNING CHESS + + +The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the +world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the +most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an +aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us +say, a promising politician, a rising artist, that you wish to destroy. +Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy, and unreliable--but teach him, +inoculate him with chess! It is well, perhaps, that the right way of +teaching chess is so little known, that consequently in most cases the +plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should +all be chess-players--there would be none left to do the business of the +world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went +to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our +bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible +mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this +abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the +cabmen would go trying to drive their horses in Knights' moves up and +down Charing Cross Road. And now and again a suicide would come to hand +with the pathetic inscription pinned to his chest: "I checked with my +Queen too soon. I cannot bear the thought of it." There is no remorse +like the remorse of chess. + +Only, happily, as we say, chess is taught the wrong way round. People +put out the board before the learner with all the men in battle array, +sixteen a side, with six different kinds of moves, and the poor wretch +is simply crushed and appalled. A lot of things happen, mostly +disagreeable, and then a mate comes looming up through the haze of +pieces. So he goes away awestricken but unharmed, secretly believing +that all chess-players are humbugs, and that intelligent chess, which is +neither chancy nor rote-learned, is beyond the wit of man. But clearly +this is an unreasonable method of instruction. Before the beginner can +understand the beginning of the game he must surely understand the end; +how can he commence playing until he knows what he is playing for? It is +like starting athletes on a race, and leaving them to find out where the +winning-post is hidden. + +Your true teacher of chess, your subtle chess-poisoner, your cunning +Comus who changes men to chess-players, begins quite the other way +round. He will, let us say, give you King, Queen, and Pawn placed out in +careless possible positions. So you master the militant possibilities of +Queen and Pawn without perplexing complications. Then King, Queen, and +Bishop perhaps; King, Queen, and Knight; and so on. It ensures that you +always play a winning game in these happy days of your chess childhood, +and taste the one sweet of chess-playing, the delight of having the +upper hand of a better player. Then to more complicated positions, and +at last back to the formal beginning. You begin to see now to what end +the array is made, and understand why one Gambit differeth from another +in glory and virtue. And the chess mania of your teacher cleaveth to you +thenceforth and for evermore. + +It is a curse upon a man. There is no happiness in chess--Mr. St. George +Mivart, who can find happiness in the strangest places, would be at a +loss to demonstrate it upon the chess-board. The mild delight of a +pretty mate is the least unhappy phase of it. But, generally, you find +afterwards that you ought to have mated two moves before, or at the time +that an unforeseen reply takes your Queen. No chess-player sleeps well. +After the painful strategy of the day one fights one's battles over +again. You see with more than daylight clearness that it was the Rook +you should have moved, and not the Knight. No! it is impossible! no +common sinner innocent of chess knows these lower deeps of remorse. Vast +desert boards lie for the chess-player beyond the gates of horn. +Stalwart Rooks ram headlong at one, Knights hop sidelong, one's Pawns +are all tied, and a mate hangs threatening and never descends. And once +chess has been begun in the proper way, it is flesh of your flesh, bone +of your bone; you are sold, and the bargain is sealed, and the evil +spirit hath entered in. + +The proper outlet for the craving is the playing of games, and there is +a class of men--shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men--who gather in +coffee-houses, and play with a desire that dieth not, and a fire that is +not quenched. These gather in clubs and play Tournaments, such +tournaments as he of the Table Round could never have imagined. But +there are others who have the vice who live in country places, in remote +situations--curates, schoolmasters, rate collectors--who go consumed +from day to day and meet no fit companion, and who must needs find some +artificial vent for their mental energy. No one has ever calculated how +many sound Problems are possible, and no doubt the Psychical Research +people would be glad if Professor Karl Pearson would give his mind to +the matter. All the possible dispositions of the pieces come to such a +vast number, however, that, according to the theory of probability, and +allowing a few thousand arrangements each day, the same problem ought +never to turn up more than twice in a century or so. As a matter of +fact--it is probably due to some flaw in the theory of probability--the +same problem has a way of turning up in different publications several +times in a month or so. It may be, of course, that, after all, quite +"sound" problems are limited in number, and that we keep on inventing +and reinventing them; that, if a record were kept, the whole system, up +to four or five moves, might be classified, and placed on record in the +course of a few score years. Indeed, if we were to eliminate those with +conspicuously bad moves, it may be we should find the number of +reasonable games was limited enough, and that even our brilliant Lasker +is but repeating the inspirations of some long-buried Persian, some mute +inglorious Hindoo, dead and forgotten ages since. It may be over every +game there watches the forgotten forerunners of the players, and that +chess is indeed a dead game, a haunted game, played out centuries ago, +even, as beyond all cavil, is the game of draughts. + +The artistic temperament, the gay irresponsible cast of mind, does what +it can to lighten the gravity of this too intellectual game. To a mortal +there is something indescribably horrible in these champions with their +four moves an hour--the bare thought of the mental operations of the +fifteen minutes gives one a touch of headache. Compulsory quick moving +is the thing for gaiety, and that is why, though we revere Steinitz and +Lasker, it is Bird we love. His victories glitter, his errors are +magnificent. The true sweetness of chess, if it ever can be sweet, is to +see a victory snatched, by some happy impertinence, out of the shadow of +apparently irrevocable disaster. And talking of cheerfulness reminds me +of Lowson's historical game of chess. Lowson said he had been cheerful +sometimes--but, drunk! Perish the thought! Challenged, he would have +proved it by some petty tests of pronunciation, some Good Templar's +shibboleths. He offered to walk along the kerb, to work any problem in +mathematics we could devise, finally to play MacBryde at chess. The +other gentleman was appointed judge, and after putting the antimacassar +over his head ("jush wigsh") immediately went to sleep in a disorderly +heap on the sofa. The game was begun very solemnly, so I am told. +MacBryde, in describing it to me afterwards, swayed his hands about with +the fingers twiddling in a weird kind of way, and said the board went +like that. The game was fierce but brief. It was presently discovered +that both kings had been taken. Lowson was hard to convince, but this +came home to him. "Man," he is reported to have said to MacBryde, "I'm +just drunk. There's no doubt in the matter. I'm feeling very ashamed of +myself." It was accordingly decided to declare the game drawn. The +position, as I found it next morning, is an interesting one. Lowson's +Queen was at K Kt 6, his Bishop at Q B 3, he had several Pawns, and his +Knight occupied a commanding position at the intersection of four +squares. MacBryde had four Pawns, two Rooks, a Queen, a draught, and a +small mantel ornament arranged in a rough semicircle athwart the board. +I have no doubt chess exquisites will sneer at this position, but in my +opinion it is one of the cheerfulest I have ever seen. I remember I +admired it very much at the time, in spite of a slight headache, and it +is still the only game of chess that I recall with undiluted pleasure. +And yet I have played many games. + + + + +THE COAL-SCUTTLE + +A STUDY IN DOMESTIC ÆSTHETICS + + +Euphemia, who loves to have home dainty and delightful, would have no +coals if she could dispense with them, much less a coal-scuttle. Indeed, +it would seem she would have no fireplace at all, if she had her will. +All the summer she is happy, and the fireplace is anything but the place +for a fire; the fender has vanished, the fireirons are gone, it is +draped and decorated and disguised. So would dear Euphemia drape and +disguise the whole iron framework of the world, with that decorative and +decent mind of hers, had she but the scope. There are exotic ferns +there, spreading their fanlike fronds, and majolica glows and gleams; +and fabrics, of which Morris is the actual or spiritual begetter, +delight the eye. In summer-time our fireplace is indeed a thing of +beauty, but, alas for the solar system! it is not a joy for ever. The +sun at last recedes beyond the equinoxes, and the black bogey who has +slept awakens again. Euphemia restores the fender kerb and the brazen +dogs and the fireirons that will clatter; and then all the winter, +whenever she sits before the fire, her trouble is with her. Even when +the red glow of the fire lights up her features most becomingly, and +flattery is in her ear, every now and then a sidelong glance at her ugly +foe shows that the thought of it is in her mind, and that the crumpled +roseleaf, if such a phrase may be used for a coal-scuttle, insists on +being felt. And she has even been discovered alone, sitting elbows on +knees, and chin on her small clenched fist, frowning at it, puzzling how +to circumvent the one enemy of her peace. + +"_It_" is what Euphemia always calls this utensil, when she can bring +herself to give the indescribable an imperfect vent in speech. But +commonly the feeling is too deep for words. Her war with this foeman in +her household, this coarse rebel in her realm of soft prettiness, is one +of those silent ones, those grim struggles without outcry or threat or +appeal for quarter that can never end in any compromise, never find a +rest in any truce, except the utter defeat of her antagonist. And how +she has tried--the happy thoughts, the faint hopes, the new departures +and outflanking movements! And even to-day there the thing defies her--a +coal-box, with a broad smile that shows its black teeth, thick and +squat, filling a snug corner and swaggering in unmanly triumph over the +outrage upon her delicacy that it commits. + +One of Euphemia's brightest ideas was to burn wood. Logs make even a +picturesque pile in a corner--look "uncommon." But there are objections +to wood. Wood finely divided burns with gay quirks and jets of flame, +and making cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth and +brightness are as evanescent as love's young dream. And your solid log +has a certain irritating inertness. It is an absentee fuel, spending its +fire up the chimney, and after its youthful clouds of glory turns but a +cheerless side of black and white char towards the room. And, above all, +the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with the +poker, and you get but a sullen resonance, a flight of red sparks, a +sense of an unconquerable toughness. It is worse than coke. The crisp +fracture of coal, the spitting flames suddenly leaping into existence +from the shiny new fissures, are altogether wanting. Old-seasoned timber +burns indeed most delightfully, but then it is as ugly as coal, and +withal very dear. So Euphemia went back to coal again with a sigh. +Possibly if Euphemia had been surrounded by the wealth she deserves this +trouble would not have arisen. A silent servant, bearing the due dose of +fresh fuel, would have come gliding from a mysterious Beneath, restored +the waning animation of the grate, and vanished noiselessly again. But +this was beyond the range of Euphemia's possibilities. And so we are +face to face with this problem of the scuttle again. + +At first she would feign there was no such thing as coal. It was too +horrible. Only a Zola would admit it. It was the epoch of concealment. +The thing purchased was like a little cupboard on four legs; it might +have held any convenient trifle; and there was a shelf upon the top and +a book of poetry and a piece of crackled Satsuma. You took a little +brass handle and pulled it down, and the front of the little cupboard +came forward, and there you found your coal. But a dainty little +cupboard can no more entertain black coal and inelegant firewood and +keep its daintiness than a mind can entertain black thoughts and yet be +sweet. This cabinet became demoralised with amazing quickness; it became +incontinent with its corruptions, a hinge got twisted, and after a time +it acquired the habit of suddenly, and with an unpleasant oscillatory +laughing noise, opening of its own accord and proclaiming its horrid +secret to Euphemia's best visitors. An air of wickedness, at once +precocious and senile, came upon it; it gaped and leered at Euphemia as +the partner of her secret with such a familiar air of "I and you" that +she could stand it no longer, and this depraved piece of furniture was +banished at last from her presence, and relegated to its proper sphere +of sham gentility below stairs, where it easily passed itself upon the +cook as an exquisite. Euphemia tried to be sensible then, and +determined, since she must have coal in her room, to let no false +modesty intervene, but to openly proclaim its presence to all the world. + +The next thing, therefore, was a cylinder of brass, broadly open above, +saying to the world, as it were, "Look! I contain coal." And there were +brass tongs like sugar tongs wherewith Euphemia would regale the fire +and brighten it up, handing it a lump at a time in the prettiest way. +But brass dints. The brazen thing was quiet and respectable enough +upstairs, but ever and again it went away to be filled. What happened on +these holiday jaunts Euphemia has never ascertained. But a chance blow +or worse cause ran a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, and +below an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency. And +there was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed, and an +increasing difficulty in keeping it bright. And except when it was full +to the brim, the lining was unsightly; and this became more so. One day +Ithuriel must have visited Euphemia's apartment, and the tarnished +brilliancy of the thing stood confessed. For some days there was an +interregnum, and a coal-scuttle from downstairs--a black unstable thing +on flat foot and with a vast foolish nether lip--did its duty with +inelegant faithfulness. + +Then Euphemia had a really pretty fancy. She procured one of those big +open garden baskets and painted it a pleasant brown, and instead of a +garden fork she had a little half horticultural scoop. In this basket +she kept her coals, and she tied a pink ribbon on the handle. One might +fancy she had been in some dewy garden and had dug a few coals as one +might dig up bulbs, and brought them in and put them down. It attracted +attention from all her visitors, and set a kind of fashion in the +neighbourhood. For a time Euphemia was almost contented. But one day a +malignant woman called, and looked at this device through her gilt +eye-glasses, while she secretly groped in the dark of her mind for an +unpleasant thing to say. Then suddenly she remarked, "Why not put your +coal in a bassinette? Or keep it _all_ on the floor?" Euphemia's face +fell. The thing was undeniably very like a cradle, in the light of this +suggestion; the coal certainly did seem a little out of place there; and +besides, if there were more than three or four lumps they had a way of +tumbling over the edge upon the carpet when the fire was replenished. +The tender shoot of Euphemia's satisfaction suddenly withered and died. + +So the struggle has gone on. Sometimes it has been a wrought iron tripod +with a subtle tendency to upset in certain directions; sometimes a +coal-box; once even the noisy old coal-box of japanned tin, making more +noise than a Salvation Army service, and strangely decorated with "art" +enamels, had a turn. At present Euphemia is enduring a walnut "casket," +that since its first week of office has displayed an increasing +indisposition to shut. But things cannot stay like this. The worry and +anxiety and vexation, Euphemia declares, are making her old before her +time. A delicate woman should not be left alone to struggle against +brazen monsters. A closed gas stove is happily impossible, but the +husband of the household is threatened with one of those beastly sham +fires, wherein gas jets flare among firebrick--a mechanical fire without +vitality or variety, that never dances nor crackles nor blazes, a +monotonous horror, a fire you cannot poke. That is what it will +certainly come to if the problem remains unsolved. + + + + +BAGARROW + + +Frankly, I detest this Bagarrow. Yet it is quite generally conceded that +Bagarrow is a very well-meaning fellow. But the trouble is to understand +him. To do that I have been at some pains, and yet I am still a mere +theorist. An anthropometric estimate of the man fails to reveal any +reason for the distinction of my aversion. He is of passable height, +breadth, and density, and, save for a certain complacency of expression, +I find no salient objection in his face. He has bluish eyes and a +whitish skin, and average-coloured hair--none of them distinctly +indictable possessions. It is something in his interior and unseen +mechanism, I think, that must be wrong; some internal lesion that finds +expression in his acts. + +His mental operations, indeed, were at first as inconceivable to me as a +crab's or a cockchafer's. That is where all the trouble came in. For +that reason alone they fascinated me and aggrieved me. From the +conditions of our acquaintance--we were colleagues--I had to study him +with some thoroughness, observing him under these circumstances and +those. I have, by the bye, sometimes wondered idly how he would react to +alcohol--a fluid he avoids. It would, I am sure, be an entirely novel +and remarkable kind of Drunk, and I am also certain it would be an +offensive one. But I can't imagine it; I have no data. I could as soon +evolve from my inner consciousness an intoxicated giraffe. But, as I +say, this interesting experience has hitherto been denied me. + +Now my theory of Bagarrow is this, that he has a kind of disease in his +ideals, some interruption of nutrition that has left them small and +emasculate. He aims, it appears, at a state called "Really Nice" or the +"True Gentleman," the outward and visible signs of which are a +conspicuous quietness of costume, gloves in all weathers, and a +tightly-rolled umbrella. But coupled in some way with this is a queer +smack of the propagandist, a kind of dwarfed prophetic passion. That is +the particular oddness of him. He displays a timid yet persistent desire +to foist this True Gentleman of his upon an unwilling world, to make you +Really Nice after his own pattern. I always suspect him of trying to +convert me by stealth when I am not looking. + +So far as I can see, Bagarrow's conception of this True Gentleman of his +is at best a compromise, mainly holiness, but a tinted kind of +holiness--goodness in clean cuffs and with something neat in ties. He +renounces the flesh and the devil willingly enough, but he wants to keep +up a decent appearance. Now a stark saint I can find sympathy for. I +respect your prophet unkempt and in a hair shirt denouncing Sin--and +mundane affairs in general--with hoarse passion and a fiery hate. I +would not go for my holidays with nor make a domestic pet of such a man, +but I respect him. But Bagarrow's pose is different. Bagarrow would call +that carrying things to extremes. His is an unobtrusive virtue, a +compromising dissent, inaggressive aggressions on sin. So I take it. And +at times he puts it to you in a drawling argument, a stream of +Bagarrowisms, until you have to hurt his feelings--happily he is always +getting his feelings hurt--just to stop the flow of him. + +"Life," said Bagarrow, in a moment of expansiveness, "is scarcely worth +living unless you are doing good to someone." That I take to be the +keystone of him. "I want to be a Good Influence upon all the people I +meet." I do not think it has ever dawned upon him that he himself is any +way short of perfection; and, so far as I can see, the triumph and end +of his good influence is cleanliness of cuff, compactness of umbrella, +and general assimilation to the Bagarrow ideal. + +Hear him upon one's social duties--this living soul in this world of +wonders! "In moderation," said Bagarrow, opening out to questions on +that matter, "social relaxation is desirable, and I will even go so far +as to admit that I think it well to have at hand some pleasant expedient +for entertaining people and passing the time. A humorous song or a +recitation--provided it is in really good taste--is harmless enough, and +sometimes it may even be turned to good account. And everyone should try +to master some instrument or other. The flute, perhaps, is as convenient +as any; for the fiddle and piano, you know, are difficult and expensive +to learn, and require constant practice. A little legerdemain is also a +great acquisition for a man. Some may differ from me in that," continued +Bagarrow, "but I see no harm in it. There are hundreds of perfectly +proper and innocent tricks with coins and bits of paper, and pieces of +string, that will make an evening pass most delightfully. One may get +quite a little reputation as an entertainer with these things." + +"And it is," pursued Bagarrow, quite glowing with liberality, "just a +little pharisaical to object to card tricks. There are quantities of +really quite clever and mathematical things that one may do with a +chosen card, dealing the pack into heaps and counting slowly. Of course +it is not for mere pleasuring that I learn these things. It gives anyone +with a little tact an opportunity for stopping card-playing. When the +pack is brought in, and all the party are intent upon gaming, you may +seize your opportunity and take the cards, saying, 'Let me show you a +little trick,' or, 'Have you seen Maskelyne's new trick with the cards?' +Before anyone can object you are displaying your skill to their +astonished eyes, and in their wonder at your cleverness the +objectionable game may be indefinitely postponed." + +"Yet so set at times is your gambler upon his abominable pursuit," says +Bagarrow, "that in practice even this ingenious expedient has been known +to fail." He tried it once, it seems, in a race train to Kempton Park, +and afterwards he had to buy a new hat. That incident, indeed, gives you +the very essence of Bagarrow in his insidious attacks on evil. I +remember that on another occasion he went out of his way to promise a +partially intoxicated man a drink; and taking him into a public-house +ordered two lemon squashes! Drinks! He liked lemon squash himself and he +did not like beer, and he thought he had only to introduce the poor +fallen creature to the delights of temperance to ensure his conversion +there and then. I think he expected the man to fall upon him, crying "My +benefactor!" But he did not say "My benefactor," at anyrate, though he +fell upon him, cheerfully enough. + +To avoid the appearance of priggishness, which he dreads with some +reason, he even went so far as to procure a herb tobacco, which he +smokes with the help of frequent sulphur matches. This he recommends to +us strongly. "Won't you try it?" he says, with a winning smile. "Just +once." And he is the only man I ever met who drinks that facetious +fluid, non-alcoholic beer. Once he proposed to wean me upon that from my +distinctive vice, which led indeed to our first rupture. "_I_ find it +delicious," he said in pathetic surprise. + +It is one of his most inveterate habits to tell you quietly what he +does, or would do under the circumstances. Seeing you at Kipling, he +will propound the proposition that "all true literature has a distinct +aim." His test of literary merit is "What good does it do you?" He is a +great lender of books, especially of Carlyle and Ruskin, which authors +for some absolutely inscrutable reason he considers provocative of +Bagarrowism, and he goes to the County Council lectures on dairy-work, +because it encourages others to improve themselves. But I have said +enough to display him, and of Bagarrow at least--as I can well +testify--it is easy to have more than enough. Indeed, after whole days +with him I have gone home to dream of the realisation of his ideals, a +sort of Bagarrow millennium, a world of Bagarrows. All kinds of +men--Falstaffs, Don Quixotes, Alan Stewarts, John the Baptists, John +Knoxes, Quilps, and Benvenuto Cellinis--all, so to speak, Bagarrowed, +all with clean cuffs, tight umbrellas, and temperate ways, passing to +and fro in a regenerate earth. + +And so he goes on his way through this wonderful universe with his eyes +fixed upon two or three secondary things, without the lust or pride of +life, without curiosity or adventure, a mere timid missionary of a +religion of "Nicer Ways," a quiet setter of a good example. I can assure +you this is no exaggeration, but a portrait. It seems to me that the +thing must be pathological, that he and this goodness of his have +exactly the same claim upon Lombroso, let us say, as the born criminal. +He is born good, a congenital good example, a sufferer from atrophy of +his original sin. The only hope I can see for Bagarrow, short of murder, +is forcible trepanning. He ought to have the seat of his ideals lanced, +and all this wash about doing good to people by stealth taken away. It +may be he might prove a very decent fellow then--if there was anything +left of him, that is. + + + + +THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY + + +I have been bothered about this book this three months. I have written +scarcely anything since Llewellyn asked me for it, for when he asked me +I had really nothing on hand. I had just published every line I had ever +written, at my own expense, with Prigsbys. Yet three months should +suffice for one of Llewellyn's books, which consist chiefly of decorous +fly-leaves and a dedication or so, and margins. Of course you know +Llewellyn's books--the most delightful things in the market: the +sweetest covers, with little gilt apples and things carelessly +distributed over luminous grey, and bright red initials, and all these +delightful fopperies. But it was the very slightness of these bibelots +that disorganised me. And perhaps, also, the fact that no one has ever +asked me for a book before. + +I had no trouble with the title though--"Lichens." I have wondered the +thing was never used before. Lichens, variegated, beautiful, though on +the most arid foundations, half fungoid, half vernal--the very name for +a booklet of modern verse. And that, of course, decided the key of the +cover and disposed of three or four pages. A fly-leaf, a leaf with +"Lichens" printed fair and beautiful a little to the left of the centre, +then a title-page--"Lichens. By H.G. Wells. London: MDCCCXCV. Stephen +Llewellyn." Then a restful blank page, and then--the Dedication. It was +the dedication stopped me. The title-page, it is true, had some points +of difficulty. Should the Christian name be printed in full or not, for +instance; but it had none of the fatal fascination of the dedicatory +page. I had, so to speak, to look abroad among the ranks of men, and +make one of those fretful forgotten millions--immortal. It seemed a +congenial task. + +I went to work forthwith. + +It was only this morning that I realised the magnitude of my +accumulations. Ever since then--it was three months ago--I have been +elaborating this Dedication. I turned the pile over, idly at first. +Presently I became interested in tracing my varying moods, as they had +found a record in the heap. + +This struck me-- + +[Illustration: A Handwritten dedication, "To my Dearest Friend" +followed by three successive names, two crossed out, then the whole +dedication struck out] + +Then again, a little essay in gratitude came to hand-- + + TO + PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS FLOOD, + Whose Admirable Lectures on + Palæontology + First turned my Attention to + Literature. + +There was a tinge of pleasantry in the latter that pleased me very +greatly when I wrote it, and I find immediately overlying it another +essay in the same line-- + + To the Latter-day Reviewer, + These Pearls. + +For some days I was smitten with the idea of dedicating my little +booklet to one of my numerous personal antagonists, and conveying some +subtly devised insult with an air of magnanimity. I thought, for +instance, of Blizzard-- + + SIR JOSEPH BLIZZARD, +The most distinguished, if not the greatest, of contemporary + anatomists. + + +I think it was "X.L.'s" book, _Aut Diabolus aut Nihil_, that set me upon +another line. There is, after all, your reader to consider in these +matters, your average middle-class person to impress in some way. They +say the creature is a snob, and absolutely devoid of any tinge of +humour, and I must confess that I more than half believe it. At anyrate, +it was that persuasion inspired-- + + To the Countess of X., + In Memory of Many Happy Days. + +I know no Countess of X., as a matter of fact, but if the public is such +an ass as to think better of my work for the suspicion, I do not care +how soon I incur it. And this again is a pretty utilisation of the waste +desert of politics-- + + MY DEAR SALISBURY,--Pray accept this unworthy tribute of + my affectionate esteem. + +There were heaps of others. And looking at those heaps it suddenly came +sharp and vivid before my mind that there--there was the book I needed, +already written! A blank page, a dedication, a blank page, a dedication, +and so on. I saw no reason to change the title. It only remained to +select the things, and the book was done. I set to work at once, and in +a very little while my bibelot was selected. There were dedications +fulsome and fluid, dedications acrid and uncharitable, dedications in +verse and dedications in the dead languages: all sorts and conditions of +dedications, even the simple "To J.H. Gabbles"--so suggestive of the +modest white stones of the village churchyard. Altogether I picked out +one hundred and three dedications. At last only one thing remained to +complete the book. And that was--the Dedication. You will scarcely +credit it, but that worries me still.... + +I am almost inclined to think that Dedications are going out of +fashion. + + + + +THROUGH A MICROSCOPE + +SOME MORAL REFLECTIONS + + +This dabbler person has recently disposed of his camera and obtained a +microscope--a short, complacent-looking implement it is, of brass--and +he goes about everywhere now with little glass bottles in his pocket, +ready to jump upon any stray polly-woggle he may find, and hale it home +and pry into its affairs. Within his study window are perhaps half a +dozen jars and basins full of green scum and choice specimens of black +mud in which his victims live. He persists in making me look through +this instrument, though I would rather I did not. It seems to me a kind +of impropriety even when I do it. He gets innumerable things in a drop +of green water, and puts it on a glass slip under the object glass, and, +of course, they know nothing of the change in their condition, and go on +living just as they did before they were observed. It makes me feel at +times like a public moralist, or Peeping Tom of Coventry, or some such +creature. + +Certainly there are odd things enough in the water. Among others, +certain queer green things that are neither plants nor animals. Most of +the time they are plants, quiet green threads matted together, but every +now and then the inside comes out of one, so to speak, and starts off +with a fine red eye and a long flickering tail, to see the world. The +dabbler says it's quite a usual thing among the lower plants--_Algæ_ he +calls them, for some reason--to disgorge themselves in this way and go +swimming about; but it has quite upset my notions of things. If the +lower plants, why not the higher? It may be my abominable imagination, +but since he told me about these--swarm spores I think he called +them--I don't feel nearly so safe with my geraniums as I did. + +A particularly objectionable thing in these water drops, the dabbler +insists upon my spying at is the furious activity of everything you see +in them. You look down his wretched tube, and there, bright and yellow +with the lamplight in the round field of the microscope, is a perfect +riot of living things. Perhaps it's the water he got from Hampstead, and +a dozen flat things the shape of shortbreads will be fussing about. +They are all quite transparent and colourless, and move about like +galleys by means of a lot of minute oars that stick out all over them. +Never a moment's rest. And, presently, one sees that even the green +plant threads are wriggling across the field. The dabbler tries to +moralise on this in the vein of Charles Kingsley, and infer we have much +to learn from these ridiculous creatures; but, so far as I can see, it's +a direct incentive to sloth to think how low in the scale of creation +these things are, in spite of all their fussing. If they had sat about +more and thought, they might be fishing the dabbler out of ponds and +examining him instead of his examining them. Your energetic people might +do worse things than have a meditative half-hour at the microscope. Then +there are green things with a red spot and a tail, that creep about like +slugs, and are equally transparent. _Euglena viridis_ the dabbler calls +them, which seems unnecessary information. In fact all the things he +shows me are transparent. Even the little one-eyed Crustacea, the size +of a needle-point, that discredit the name of Cyclops. You can see their +digestion and muscle and nerve, and, in fact, everything. It's at least +a blessing we are not the same. Fancy the audible comments of the +temperance advocate when you get in the bus! No use pulling yourself +together then. "Pretty full!" And "Look," people would say, "his wife +gives him cold mutton." + +Speaking of the name of Cyclops reminds me that these scientific people +have been playing a scurvy trick upon the classics behind our backs. It +reminds one of Epistemon's visit to Hades, when he saw Alexander a +patcher of clouts and Xerxes a crier of mustard. Aphrodite, the dabbler +tells me, is a kind of dirty mud-worm, and much dissected by spectacled +pretenders to the London B.Sc.; every candidate, says the syllabus, must +be able to dissect, to the examiner's satisfaction, and demonstrate upon +Aphrodite, Nereis, Palæmon. Were the gods ever so insulted? Then the +snaky Medusa and Pandora, our mother, are jelly-fish; Astræa is still to +be found on coral reefs, a poor thing, and much browsed upon by parrot +fish; and Doris and Tethys and Cydippe are sea slugs. It's worse than +Heine's vision of the gods grown old. They can't be content with the +departed gods merely. Evadne is a water flea--they'll make something out +of Mrs. Sarah Grand next; and Autolycus, my Autolycus! is a polymorphic +worm, whatever subtlety of insult "polymorphic worm" may convey. + +However, I wander from the microscope. These shortbread things are +fussing about hither and thither across the field, and now and then an +amoeba comes crawling into view. These are invertebrate jelly-like +things of no particular shape, and they keep on thrusting out a part +here, and withdrawing a part there, and changing and advancing just as +though they were popular democratic premiers. Then diatoms keep gliding +athwart the circle. These diatoms are, to me at least, the most +perplexing things in the universe. Imagine a highly ornamental thing in +white and brown, the shape of a spectacle case, without any limbs or +other visible means of progression, and without any wriggling of the +body, or indeed any apparent effort at all, gliding along at a smart +pace. That's your diatom. The dabbler really knows nothing of how they +do it. He mumbles something about Bütschli and Grenfell. Imagine the +thing on a larger scale, Cleopatra's Needle, for instance, travelling on +its side up the Thames Embankment, and all unchaperoned, at the rate of +four or five miles an hour. + +There's another odd thing about these microscope things which redeems, +to some extent at least, their singular frankness. To use the decorous +phrase of the text-book, "They multiply by fission." Your amoeba or +vorticella, as the case may be, splits in two. Then there are two amoebæ +or vorticellæ. In this way the necessity of the family, that +middle-class institution so abhorrent to the artistic mind, is avoided. +In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither +marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which +should appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has none +of that fitful fever of falling in love, that distressingly tender state +that so bothers your mortal man. They go about their business with an +enviable singleness of purpose, and when they have eaten and drunk, and +attained to the fulness of life, they divide and begin again with +renewed zest the pastime of living. + +In a sense they are immortal. For we may look at this matter in another +light, and say our exuberant protozoon has shed a daughter, and remains. +In that case the amoeba I look at may have crawled among the slime of +the Silurian seas when the common ancestor of myself and the royal +family was an unassuming mud-fish like those in the reptile house in the +Zoo. His memoirs would be interesting. The thought gives a solemn tint +to one's meditations. If the dabbler wash him off this slide into his +tube of water again, this trivial creature may go on feeding and growing +and dividing, and presently be thrown away to wider waters, and so +escape to live ... after I am dead, after my masterpieces are forgotten, +after our Empire has passed away, after the human animal has passed +through I know not what vicissitudes. It may be he will still, with the +utmost nonchalance, be pushing out his pseudopodia, and ingesting +diatoms when the fretful transitory life of humanity has passed +altogether from the earth. One may catch him in specimen tubes by the +dozen; but still, when one thinks of this, it is impossible to deny him +a certain envious, if qualified, respect. + +And all the time these creatures are living their vigorous, fussy little +lives; in this drop of water they are being watched by a creature of +whose presence they do not dream, who can wipe them all out of existence +with a stroke of his thumb, and who is withal as finite, and sometimes +as fussy and unreasonably energetic, as themselves. He sees them, and +they do not see him, because he has senses they do not possess, because +he is too incredibly vast and strange to come, save as an overwhelming +catastrophe, into their lives. Even so, it may be, the dabbler himself +is being curiously observed.... The dabbler is good enough to say that +the suggestion is inconceivable. I can imagine a decent amoeba saying +the same thing. + + + + +THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING + + +Your cultivated man is apt to pity the respectable poor, on the score of +their lack of small excitements, and even in the excess of his generous +sympathy to go a Toynbee-Halling in their cause. And Sir Walter Besant +once wrote a book about Hoxton, saying, among other things, how +monotonous life was there. That is your modern fallacy respecting the +lower middle class. One might multiply instances. The tenor of the pity +is always the same. + +"No music," says the cultivated man, "no pictures, no books to read nor +leisure to read in. How can they pass their lives?" + +The answer is simple enough, as Emily Brontë knew. They quarrel. And an +excellent way of passing the time it is; so excellent, indeed, that the +pity were better inverted. But we all lack the knowledge of our chiefest +needs. In the first place, and mainly, it is hygienic to quarrel, it +disengages floods of nervous energy, the pulse quickens, the breathing +is accelerated, the digestion improved. Then it sets one's stagnant +brains astir and quickens the imagination; it clears the mind of +vapours, as thunder clears the air. And, finally, it is a natural +function of the body. In his natural state man is always quarrelling--by +instinct. Not to quarrel is indeed one of the vices of our civilisation, +one of the reasons why we are neurotic and anæmic, and all these things. +And, at last, our enfeebled palates have even lost the capacity for +enjoying a "jolly good row." + +There can be no more melancholy sight in the world than that of your +young man or young woman suffering from suppressed pugnacity. Up to the +end of the school years it was well with them; they had ample scope for +this wholesome commerce, the neat give and take of offence. In the +family circle, too, there are still plentiful chances of acquiring the +taste. Then, suddenly, they must be gentle and considerate, and all the +rest of it. A wholesome shindy, so soon as toga and long skirts arrive, +is looked upon as positively wrong; even the dear old institution of the +"cut" is falling into disrepute. The quarrelling is all forced back into +the system, as it were; it poisons the blood. This is why our literature +grows sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and that, +write odd books, and ride about on bicycles in remarkable clothes. They +have shut down the safety valve, they suffer from the present lamentable +increase of gentleness. They must find some outlet, or perish. If they +could only put their arms akimbo and tell each other a piece of their +minds for a little, in the ancient way, there can be not the slightest +doubt that much of this _fin-de-siècle_ unwholesomeness would disappear. + +Possibly this fashion of gentleness will pass. Yet it has had increasing +sway now for some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen--among the +more educated class at least--that quarrels little, regards the function +as a vice or a nuisance, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art or +literature. We seem indeed to be getting altogether out of the way of +it. Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone, but rare quarrelling is +no quarrelling at all. Like beer, smoking, sea-bathing, cycling, and the +like delights, you cannot judge of quarrelling by the early essay. But +to show how good it is--did you ever know a quarrelsome person give up +the use? Alcohol you may wean a man from, and Barrie says he gave up the +Arcadia Mixture, and De Quincey conquered opium. But once you are set as +a quarreller you quarrel and quarrel till you die. + +How to quarrel well and often has ever been something of an art, and it +becomes more of an art with the general decline of spirit. For it takes +two to make a quarrel. Time was when you turned to the handiest human +being, and with small care or labour had the comfortable warmth you +needed in a minute or so. There was theology, even in the fifties it was +ample cause with two out of three you met. Now people will express a +lamentable indifference. Then politics again, but a little while ago fat +for the fire of any male gathering, is now a topic of mere tepidity. So +you are forced to be more subtle, more patient in your quarrelling. You +play like a little boy playing cricket with his sisters, with those who +do not understand. A fellow-votary is a rare treat. As a rule you have +to lure and humour your antagonist like a child. The wooing is as +intricate and delicate as any wooing can well be. To quarrel now, +indeed, requires an infinity of patience. The good old days of +thumb-biting--"Do you bite your thumbs at us, sir?" and so to clash and +stab--are gone for ever. + +There are certain principles in quarrelling, however, that the true +quarreller ever bears in mind, and which, duly observed, do much to +facilitate encounters. In the first place, cultivate Distrust. Have +always before you that this is a wicked world, full of insidious people, +and you never know what villainous encroachments upon you may be hidden +under fair-seeming appearances. That is the flavour of it. At the first +suspicion, "stick up for your rights," as the vulgar say. And see that +you do it suddenly. Smite promptly, and the surprise and sting of your +injustice should provoke an excellent reply. And where there is least +ground for suspicion, there, remember, is the most. The right hand of +fellowship extended towards you is one of the best openings you have. +"Not such a fool," is the kind of attitude to assume, and "You don't put +upon _me_ so easy." Your adversary resents this a little, and, rankling, +tries to explain. You find a personal inference in the expostulation. + +Next to a wariness respecting your interests is a keen regard for your +honour. Have concealed in the privacy of your mind a code of what is due +to you. Expand or modify it as occasion offers. Be as it were a +collector of what are called "slights," and never let one pass you. +Watch your friend in doorways, passages; when he eats by you, when he +drinks with you, when he addresses you, when he writes you letters. It +will be hard if you cannot catch him smuggling some deadly insult into +your presence. Tax him with it. He did not think, forsooth! Tell him no +gentleman would do such a thing, thinkingly or not; that you certainly +will not stand it again. Say you will show him. He will presently argue +or contradict. So to your climax. + +Then, again, there is the personal reference. "Meaning me, sir?" Your +victim with a blithe heart babbles of this or that. You let him meander +here and there, watching him as if you were in ambush. Presently he +comes into your spring. "Of course," you say, "I saw what you were +driving at just this minute, when you mentioned mustard in salad +dressing, but if I am peppery I am not mean. And if I have a thing to +say I say it straight out." A good gambit this, and well into him from +the start. The particular beauty of this is that you get him apologetic +at first, and can score heavily before he rises to the defensive. + +Then, finally, there is your abstract cause, once very fruitful indeed, +but now sadly gone in decay, except perhaps in specialist society. As an +example, let there be one who is gibing genially at some topic or other, +at Japanese king-crabs, or the inductive process, or any other topic +which cannot possibly affect you one atom. Then is the time to drop all +these merely selfish interests, and to champion the cause of truth. Fall +upon him in a fine glow of indignation, and bring your contradiction +across his face--whack!--so that all the table may hear. Tell him, with +his pardon, that the king-crab is no more a crab than you are a +jelly-fish, or that Mill has been superseded these ten years. Ask: "How +can you say such things?" From thence to his general knowledge is a +short flight, and so to his veracity, his reasoning powers, his mere +common sense. "Let me tell you, sir," is the special incantation for the +storm. + +These are the four chief ways of quarrelling, the four gates to this +delightful city. For it is delightful, once your 'prentice days are +past. In a way it is like a cold bath on a winter's morning, and you +glow all day. In a way it is like football, as the nimble aggravation +dances to and fro. In a way it is like chess. Indeed, all games of skill +are watered quarrels, quarrel and soda, come to see them in a proper +light. And without quarrelling you have not fully appreciated your +fellow-man. For in the ultimate it is the train and complement of Love, +the shadow that rounds off the delight we take in poor humanity. It is +the vinegar and pepper of existence, and long after our taste for sweets +has vanished it will be the solace of our declining years. + + + + +THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER + + +It is possible that an education entirely urban is not the best +conceivable preparation for descriptive articles upon the country. On +the other hand, your professional nature-lover is sometimes a little +over-familiar with his subject. He knows the names of all the things, +and he does not spare you. Besides, he is subtle. The prominent features +are too familiar to him, and he goes into details. What respectable +townsman, for instance, knows what "scabiosa" is? It sounds very +unpleasant. Then the professional nature-lover assumes that you know +trees. No Englishman can tell any tree from any other tree, except a +very palpable oak or poplar. So that we may at least, as an experiment, +allow a good Londoner to take his unsophisticated eyes out into the +sweet country for once, and try his skill at nature-loving, though his +botany has been learned over the counter of flower-shops, and his +zoology on Saturday afternoons when they have the band in the Gardens. +He makes his way, then, over by Epsom Downs towards Sutton, trying to +assimilate his mood to the proper flavour of appreciation as he goes, +and with a little notebook in the palm of his hand to assist an +ill-trained memory. And the burthen of his song is of course the autumn +tints. + +The masses of trees towards Epsom and Ewell, with the red houses and +Elizabethan façades peeping through their interstices, contain, it would +seem, every conceivable colour, except perhaps sky-blue; there are +brilliant yellow trees, and a kind of tree of the most amazing gamboge +green, almost the green of spring come back, and tan-coloured trees, +deep brown, red, and deep crimson trees. Here and there the wind has +left its mark, and the grey-brown branches and their purple tracery of +twigs, with a suggestion of infinite depth behind, show through the +rents in the leafy covering. There are deep green trees--the amateur +nature-lover fancies they may be yews--with their dense warm foliage +arranged in horizontal masses, like the clouds low down in a sunset; and +certain other evergreens, one particularly, with a bluish-green covering +of upstanding needles, are intensely conspicuous among the flame tints +around. On a distant church tower, and nearer, disputing the possession +of a gabled red house with a glowing creeper, is some ivy; and never is +the perennial green of ivy so delightful as it is now, when all else is +alight with the sombre fire of the sunset of the year.... + +The amateur nature-lover proceeds over the down, appreciating all this +as hard as he can appreciate, and anon gazing up at the grey and white +cloud shapes melting slowly from this form to that, and showing lakes, +and wide expanses, and serene distances of blue between their gaps. And +then he looks round him for a zoological item. Underfoot the grass of +the down is recovering from the summer drought and growing soft and +green again, and plentiful little flattened snail shells lie about, and +here and there a late harebell still nods in the breeze. Yonder bolts a +rabbit, and then something whizzes by the amateur nature-lover's ear. + +They shoot here somewhere, he remembers suddenly; and then looking +round, in a palpitating state, is reassured by the spectacle of a lone +golfer looming over the brow of the down, and gesticulating black and +weird against the sky. The Londoner, with an abrupt affectation of +nonchalance, flings himself flat upon his back, and so remains +comparatively safe until the golfer has passed. These golfers are +strange creatures, rabbit-coloured, except that many are bright red +about the middle, and they repel and yet are ever attracted by a devil +in the shape of a little white ball, which leads them on through toothed +briars, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns; cursing the thing, +weeping even, and anon laughing at their own foolish rambling; +muttering, heeding no one to the right or left of their +career,--demented creatures, as though these balls were their souls, +that they ever sought to lose, and ever repented losing. And silent, +ever at the heel of each, is a familiar spirit, an eerie human hedgehog, +all set about with walking-sticks, a thing like a cylindrical +umbrella-stand with a hat and boots and a certain suggestion of leg. And +so they pass and are gone. + +Rising, the amateur nature-lover finds he has been reclining on a +puff-ball. These puff-balls are certainly the most remarkable example of +adaptation to circumstances known to English botanists. They grow +abundantly on golf grounds, and are exactly like golf-balls in external +appearance. They are, however, Pharisees and whited sepulchres, and +within they are full of a soft mess of a most unpleasant appearance--the +amateur nature-lover has some on him now--which stuff contains the +spores. It is a case of what naturalists call "mimicry"--one of nature's +countless adaptations. The golf-player smites these things with force, +covering himself with ridicule--and spores, and so disseminating this +far-sighted and ingenious fungus far and wide about the links. + +The amateur nature-lover passes off the down, and towards Banstead +village. He is on the watch for characteristic objects of the +countryside, and rustling through the leaves beneath a chestnut avenue +he comes upon an old boot. It is a very, very old boot, all its blacking +washed off by the rain, and two spreading chestnut leaves, yellow they +are with blotches of green, with their broad fingers extended, rest upon +it, as if they would protect and altogether cover the poor old boot in +its last resting-place. It is as if Mother Nature, who lost sight of her +product at the tanner's yard, meant to claim her own trampled child +again at last, after all its wanderings. So we go on, noting a sardine +tin gleaming brightly in the amber sunlight, through a hazel hedge, and +presently another old boot. Some hawthorn berries, some hoary clematis +we notice--and then another old boot. Altogether, it may be remarked, in +this walk the amateur nature-lover saw eleven old boots, most of them +dropped in the very sweetest bits of hedge tangle and grassy corner +about Banstead. + +It is natural to ask, "Whence come all these old boots?" They are, as +everyone knows, among the commonest objects in a country walk, so +common, indeed, that the professional nature-lover says very little +about them. They cannot grow there, they cannot be dropped from +above--they are distinctly earth-worn boots. I have inquired of my own +domestic people, and caused inquiry to be made in a large number of +households, and there does not appear to be any regular custom of taking +boots away to remote and picturesque spots to abandon them. Some +discarded boots of my own were produced, but they were quite different +from the old boot of the outer air. These home-kept old boots were +lovely in their way, hoary with mould running into the most exquisite +tints of glaucophane and blue-grey, but it was a different way +altogether from that of the wild boot. + +A friend says, that these boots are cast away by tramps. People, he +states, give your tramp old boots and hats in great profusion, and the +modesty of the recipient drives him to these picturesque and secluded +spots to effect the necessary change. But no nature-lover has ever +observed the tramp or tramp family in the act of changing their clothes, +and since there are even reasons to suppose that their garments are not +detachable, it seems preferable to leave the wayside boot as a pleasant +flavouring of mystery to our ramble. Another point, which also goes to +explode this tramp theory, is that these countryside boots _never occur +in pairs_, as any observer of natural history can testify.... + +So our Cockney Jefferies proceeds, presently coming upon a cinder path. +They use cinders a lot about Sutton, to make country paths with; it +gives you an unexpected surprise the first time it occurs. You drop +suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the Black +Country, and go on with loathing in your soul for your fellow-creatures. +There is also an abundance of that last product of civilisation, barbed +wire. Oh that I were Gideon! with thorns and briers of the wilderness +would I teach these elders of Sutton! But a truce to dark thoughts! + +We take our last look at the country from the open down above Sutton. +Blue hills beyond blue hills recede into the remote distance; from +Banstead Down one can see into Oxfordshire. Windsor Castle is in minute +blue silhouette to the left, and to the right and nearer is the Crystal +Palace. And closer, clusters red-roofed Sutton and its tower, then +Cheam, with its white spire, and further is Ewell, set in a variegated +texture of autumn foliage. Water gleams--a silver thread--at Ewell, and +the sinking sun behind us catches a window here and there, and turns it +into an eye of flame. And so to Sutton station and home to Cockneydom +once more. + + + + +FROM AN OBSERVATORY + + +It will be some time yet before the rising of the moon. Looking down +from the observatory one can see the pathways across the park dotted out +in yellow lamps, each with a fringe of dim green; and further off, hot +and bright, is the tracery of the illuminated streets, through which the +people go to and fro. Save for an occasional stirring, or a passing +voice speaking out of the dimness beneath me, the night is very still. +Not a cloud is to be seen in the dark midwinter sky to hide one speck of +its broad smears of star dust and its shining constellations. + +As the moon rises, heaven will be flooded with blue light, and one after +another the stars will be submerged and lost, until only a solitary +shining pinnacle of brightness will here and there remain out of the +whole host of them. It is curious to think that, were the moon but a +little brighter and truly the ruler of the night, rising to its empire +with the setting of the sun, we should never dream of the great stellar +universe in which our little solar system swims--or know it only as a +traveller's tale, a strange thing to be seen at times in the Arctic +Circle. Nay, if the earth's atmosphere were some few score miles higher, +a night-long twilight would be drawn like an impenetrable veil across +the stars. By a mere accident of our existence we see their multitude +ever and again, when the curtains of the daylight and moonlight, and of +our own narrow pressing necessities, are for a little while drawn back. +Then, for an interval, we look, as if out of a window, into the great +deep of heaven. So far as physical science goes, there is nothing in the +essential conditions of our existence to necessitate that we should have +these transitory glimpses of infinite space. We can imagine men just +like ourselves without such an outlook. But it happens that we have it. + +If we had not this vision, if we had always so much light in the sky +that we could not perceive the stars, our lives, so far as we can infer, +would be very much as they are now; there would still be the same needs +and desires, the same appliances for our safety and satisfaction; this +little gaslit world below would scarcely miss the stars now, if they +were blotted out for ever. But our science would be different in some +respects had we never seen them. We should still have good reason, in +Foucault's pendulum experiment, for supposing that the world rotated +upon its axis, and that the sun was so far relatively fixed; but we +should have no suspicion of the orbital revolution of the world. Instead +we should ascribe the seasonal differences to a meridional movement of +the sun. Our spectroscopic astronomy--so far as it refers to the +composition of the sun and moon--would stand precisely where it does, +but the bulk of our mathematical astronomy would not exist. Our calendar +would still be in all essential respects as it is now; our year with the +solstices and equinoxes as its cardinal points. The texture of our +poetry might conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles; our +philosophy, for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be the +main differences. Yet, to those who indulge in speculative dreaming, how +much smaller life would be with a sun and a moon and a blue beyond for +the only visible, the only thinkable universe. And it is, we repeat, +from the scientific standpoint a mere accident that the present--the +daylight--world periodically opens, as it were, and gives us this +inspiring glimpse of the remoteness of space. + +One may imagine countless meteors and comets streaming through the solar +system, unobserved by those who dwelt under such conditions as have just +been suggested, or some huge dark body from the outer depths sweeping +straight at that little visible universe, and all unsuspected by the +inhabitants. One may imagine the scientific people of such a world, calm +in their assurance of the permanence of things, incapable almost of +conceiving any disturbing cause. One may imagine how an imaginative +writer who doubted that permanence would be pooh-poohed. "Cannot we see +to the uttermost limits of space?" they might argue, "and is it not +altogether blue and void?" Then, as the unseen visitor draws near, begin +the most extraordinary perturbations. The two known heavenly bodies +suddenly fail from their accustomed routine. The moon, hitherto +invariably full, changes towards its last quarter--and then, behold! for +the first time the rays of the greater stars visibly pierce the blue +canopy of the sky. How suddenly--painfully almost--the minds of thinking +men would be enlarged when this rash of the stars appeared. + +And what then if _our_ heavens were to open? Very thin indeed is the +curtain between us and the unknown. There is a fear of the night that is +begotten of ignorance and superstition, a nightmare fear, the fear of +the impossible; and there is another fear of the night--of the starlit +night--that comes with knowledge, when we see in its true proportion +this little life of ours with all its phantasmal environment of cities +and stores and arsenals, and the habits, prejudices, and promises of +men. Down there in the gaslit street such things are real and solid +enough, the only real things, perhaps; but not up here, not under the +midnight sky. Here for a space, standing silently upon the dim, grey +tower of the old observatory, we may clear our minds of instincts and +illusions, and look out upon the real. + +And now to the eastward the stars are no longer innumerable, and the sky +grows wan. Then a faint silvery mist appears above the housetops, and at +last in the midst of this there comes a brilliantly shining line--the +upper edge of the rising moon. + + + + +THE MODE IN MONUMENTS + +STRAY THOUGHTS IN HIGHGATE CEMETERY + + +On a sharp, sunlight morning, when the white clouds are drifting swiftly +across the luminous blue sky, there is no finer walk about London than +the Highgate ridge. One may stay awhile on the Archway looking down upon +the innumerable roofs of London stretching southward into the haze, and +shining here and there with the reflection of the rising sun, and then +wander on along the picturesque road by the college of Saint Aloysius to +the new Catholic church, and so through the Waterlow Park to the +cemetery. The Waterlow Park is a pleasant place, full of children and +aged persons in perambulators during the middle hours of the day, and in +the summer evening time a haunt of young lovers; but your early wanderer +finds it solitary save for Vertumnus, who, with L.C.C. on the front of +him, is putting in crocuses. So we wander down to the little red lodge, +whence a sinuous road runs to Hampstead, and presently into the close +groves of monuments that whiten the opposite slope. + +How tightly these white sepulchres are packed here! How different this +congestion of sorrow from the mossy latitude of God's Acre in the +country! The dead are crammed together as closely as the living seemed +in that bird's-eye view from the Archway. There is no ample shadow of +trees, no tangled corners where mother earth may weave flower garlands +over her returning children. The monuments positively jostle and elbow +each other for frontage upon the footways. And they are so rawly clean +and assertive. Most of them are conspicuously new whitened, with +freshly-blackened or newly-gilt inscriptions, bare of lichen, moss, or +mystery, and altogether so restless that it seems to the meditative man +that the struggle for existence, for mere standing room and a show in +the world, still rages among the dead. The unstable slope of the hill, +with its bristling array of obelisks, crosses and urns, craning one +above another, is as directly opposed to the restfulness of the village +churchyard with its serene outspreading yews as midday Fleet Street to a +Sabbath evening amidst the Sussex hills. This cemetery is, indeed, a +veritable tumult of tombs. + +Another thing that presently comes painfully home to one is the lack of +individuality among all these dead. Not a necessary lack of +individuality so much as a deliberate avoidance of it. As one wanders +along the steep, narrow pathways one is more and more profoundly +impressed by the wholesale flavour of the mourning, the stereotyping of +the monuments. The place is too modern for _memento mori_ and the +hour-glass and the skull. Instead, Slap & Dash, that excellent firm of +monumental masons, everywhere crave to be remembered. Truly, the firm of +Slap & Dash have much to answer for among these graves, and they do not +seem to be ashamed of it. + +From one elevated point in this cemetery one can count more than a +hundred urns, getting at last weary and confused with the receding +multitude. The urn is not dissimilar to the domestic mantel ornament, +and always a stony piece of textile fabric is feigned to be thrown over +its shoulder. At times it is wreathed in stony flowers. The only variety +is in the form. Sometimes your urn is broad and squat, a Silenus among +urns; sometimes fragile and high-shouldered, like a slender old maid; +here an "out-size" in urns stalwart and strong, and there a dwarf +peeping quaintly from its wrapping. The obelisks, too, run through a +long scale of size and refinement. But the curious man finds no hidden +connection between the carriage of the monument and the character of the +dead. Messrs. Slap & Dash apparently take the urn or obelisk that comes +readiest to hand. One wonders dimly why mourners have this overwhelming +proclivity for Messrs. Slap & Dash and their obelisk and urn. + +The reason why the firm produces these articles may be guessed at. They +are probably easy to make, and require scarcely any skill. The +contemplative man has a dim vision of a grimy shed in a back street, +where a human being passes dismally through life the while he chips out +an unending succession of these cheap urns and obelisks for his +employers' retailing. But the question why numberless people will +profane the memory of their departed by these public advertisements of +Slap & Dash, and their evil trade, is a more difficult problem. For +surely nothing could be more unmeaning or more ungainly than the +monumental urn, unless it be the monumental obelisk. The plain cross, by +contrast, has the tenderest meaning, and is a simple and fitting +monument that no repetition can stale. + +The artistic cowardice of the English is perhaps the clue to the +mystery. Your Englishman is always afraid to commit himself to criticism +without the refuge of a _tu quoque_. He is covered dead, just as he is +covered living, with the "correct thing." A respectable stock-in-trade +is proffered him by the insinuating shopman, to whom it is our custom to +go. He is told this is selling well, or that is much admired. Heaven +defend that he should admire on his own account! He orders the stock urn +or the stock slab because it is large and sufficiently expensive for his +means and sorrow, and because he knows of nothing better. So we mourn as +the stonemason decrees, or after the example and pattern of the Smiths +next door. But some day it will dawn upon us that a little thought and a +search after beauty are far more becoming than an order and a cheque to +the nearest advertising tradesman. Or it may be we shall conclude that +the anonymous peace of a grassy mould is better than his commercial +brutalities, and so there will be an end of him. + +One may go from end to end of this cemetery and find scarcely anything +beautiful, appropriate, or tender. A lion, ill done, and yet to some +degree impressive, lies complacently above a menagerie keeper, and near +this is a tomb of some imagination, with reliefs of the life of Christ. +In one place a grotesque horse, with a head disproportionately vast, is +to be seen. Perhaps among all these monuments the one to Mrs. Blake is +the most pleasing. It is a simply and quaintly executed kneeling figure, +with a certain quiet and pathetic reverence of pose that is strangely +restful against the serried vulgarity around it. + +But the tradesman ghoul will not leave us; he follows us up and down, +indecently clamouring his name and address, and at last turns our +meditation to despair. Certain stock devices become as painful as +popular autotypes. There is the lily broken on its stalk; we meet it +here on a cross and there on an obelisk, presently on the pedestal of an +urn. There is the hand pointing upward, here balanced on the top of an +obelisk and there upon a cross. The white-robed angel, free from the +remotest shadow of expression, meets us again and again. "All this is +mine," says the tradesman ghoul. "Behold the names of me--Slap & Dash +here, the Ugliness Company there, and this the work of the Cheap and +Elegant Funeral Association. This is where we slew the art of sculpture. +These are our trophies that sculpture is no more. All this marble might +have been beautiful, all this sorrow might have been expressive, had it +not been for us. See, this is our border, No. A 5, and our pedestal No. +E, and our second quality urn, along of a nice appropriate text--a +pretty combination and a cheap one. Or we can do it you better in border +A 3, and pedestal C, and a larger urn or a hangel----" + +The meditative man is seized with a dismal horror, and retreats to the +gates. Even there a wooden advertisement grins broadly at him in his +discomfiture, and shouts a name athwart his route. And so down the +winding road to the valley, and then up Parliament Hill towards +Hampstead and its breeze-whipped ponds. And the mind of him is full of a +dim vision of days that have been, when sculptor and stonemason were +one, when the artist put his work in the porch for all the world to see, +when people had leisure to think how things should be done and heart to +do them well, when there was beauty in the business of life and dignity +in death. And he wonders rather hopelessly if people will ever rise up +against these damnable tradesmen who ruin our arts, make our lives +costly and dismal, and advertise, advertise even on our graves. + + + + +HOW I DIED + + +It is now ten years ago since I received my death warrant. All these ten +years I have been, and I am, and shall be, I hope, for years yet, a +Doomed Man. It only occurred to me yesterday that I had been +dodging--missing rather than dodging--the common enemy for such a space +of time. _Then_, I know, I respected him. It seemed he marched upon me, +inexorable, irresistible; even at last I felt his grip upon me. I bowed +in the shadow. And he passed. Ten years ago, and once since, he and I +have been very near. But now he seems to me but a blind man, and we, +with all our solemn folly of medicine and hygiene, but players in a game +of Blind Man's Buff. The gaunt, familiar hand comes out suddenly, +swiftly, this time surely? And it passes close to my shoulder; I hear +someone near me cry, and it is over.... Another ream of paper; there is +time at least for the Great Book still. + +Very close to the tragedy of life is the comedy, brightest upon the very +edge of the dark, and I remember now with a queer touch of sympathetic +amusement my dear departed self of the middle eighties. How the thing +staggered me! I was full of the vast ambition of youth; I was still at +the age when death is quite out of sight, when life is still an +interminable vista of years; and then suddenly, with a gout of blood +upon my knuckle, with a queer familiar taste in my mouth, that cough +which had been a bother became a tragedy, and this world that had been +so solid grew faint and thin. I saw through it; saw his face near to my +own; suddenly found him beside me, when I had been dreaming he was far +beyond there, far away over the hills. + +My first phase was an immense sorrow for myself. It was a purely selfish +emotion. You see I had been saving myself up, denying myself half the +pride of life and most of its indulgence, drilling myself like a +drill-sergeant, with my eyes on those now unattainable hills. Had I +known it was to end so soon, I should have planned everything so +differently. I lay in bed mourning my truncated existence. Then +presently the sorrow broadened. They were so sorry, so genuinely sorry +for me. And they considered me so much now. I had this and that they +would never have given me before--the stateliest bedding, the costliest +food. I could feel from my bed the suddenly disorganised house, the +distressed friends, the new-born solicitude. Insensibly a realisation of +enhanced importance came to temper my regrets for my neglected sins. The +lost world, that had seemed so brilliant and attractive, dwindled +steadily as the days of my illness wore on. I thought more of the +world's loss, and less of my own. + +Then came the long journey; the princely style of it! the sudden +awakening on the part of external humanity, which had hitherto been wont +to jostle me, to help itself before me, to turn its back upon me, to my +importance. "He has a diseased lung--cannot live long".... + +I was going into the dark and I was not afraid--with ostentation. I +still regard that, though now with scarcely so much gravity as +heretofore, as a very magnificent period in my life. For nearly four +months I was dying with immense dignity. Plutarch might have recorded +it. I wrote--in touchingly unsteady pencil--to all my intimate friends, +and indeed to many other people. I saw the littleness of hate and +ambition. I forgave my enemies, and they were subdued and owned to it. +How they must regret these admissions! I made many memorable remarks. +This lasted, I say, nearly four months. + +The medical profession, which had pronounced my death sentence, +reiterated it steadily--has, indeed, done so now this ten years. Towards +the end of those four months, however, dying lost its freshness for me. +I began to detect a certain habitual quality in my service. I had +exhausted all my memorable remarks upon the subject, and the strain +began to tell upon all of us. + +One day in the spring-time I crawled out alone, carefully wrapped, and +with a stick, to look once more--perhaps for the last time--on sky and +earth, and the first scattered skirmishers of the coming army of +flowers. It was a day of soft wind, when the shadows of the clouds go +sweeping over the hills. Quite casually I happened upon a girl +clambering over a hedge, and her dress had caught in a bramble, and the +chat was quite impromptu and most idyllic. I remember she had three or +four wood anemones in her hand--"wind stars" she called them, and I +thought it a pretty name. And we talked of this and that, with a light +in our eyes, as young folks will. + +I quite forgot I was a Doomed Man. I surprised myself walking home with +a confident stride that jarred with the sudden recollection of my +funereal circumstances. For a moment I tried in vain to think what it +was had slipped my memory. Then it came, colourless and remote. "Oh! +Death.... He's a Bore," I said; "I've done with him," and laughed to +think of having done with him. + +"And why not so?" said I. + + +THE END + + + + + _This book appeared some years ago at another price and in another + form. The Publisher believes that its present guise will bring it + within the reach of all and sundry, who, while delighting in the + marriage of_ wit _with_ wisdom, _cannot complete the trilogy with + the third desideratum of_ wealth. + + + +PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH + + + + +[Illustration: Front Book Cover] + +CERTAIN +PERSONAL +MATTERS + + +By + +H.G. WELLS +_Author of the "Time Machine"_ + + + +LONDON +T. 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