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diff --git a/17601.txt b/17601.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a5465e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/17601.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6537 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Masques & Phases, by Robert Ross + + +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: Masques & Phases + + +Author: Robert Ross + + + +Release Date: January 24, 2006 [eBook #17601] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASQUES & PHASES*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the December 1909 Arthur L. Humphreys edition by David +Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +MASQUES & PHASES + + +BY +ROBERT ROSS + +LONDON: +ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS +187 PICCADILLY, W. +1909 + +The author wishes to express his indebtedness, to Messrs. Smith, Elder +for leave to reproduce 'A Case at the Museum,' which appeared in the +_Cornhill_ of October, 1900; to the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_, +which first published the account of Simeon Solomon; and to the former +proprietors of the Wilsford Press, for kindly allowing other articles to +be here reissued. 'How we Lost the Book of Jasher' and 'The Brand of +Isis' were contributed to two undergraduate publications, _The Spirit +Lamp_ and _The Oxford Point of View_. + +_To_ HAROLD CHILD, ESQ. + + + + +THE DEDICATION. + + +MY DEAR CHILD, + +It is not often the privilege of a contributor to address his former +editor in so fatherly a fashion; yet it is appropriate because you +justified an old proverb in becoming, if I may say so, my literary +parent. Though I had enjoyed the hospitality, I dare not say the +welcome, of more than one London editor, you were the first who took off +the bearing-rein from my frivolity. You allowed me that freedom, of +manner and matter, which I have only experienced in undergraduate +periodicals. It is not any lack of gratitude to such distinguished +editors as the late Mr. Henley; or Mr. Walter Pollock, who first accorded +me the courtesies of print in a periodical not distinguished for its +courtesy; or Professor C. J. Holmes, who has occasionally endured me with +patience in the _Burlington Magazine_; or Mr. Edmund Gosse, to whom I am +under special obligations; that I address myself particularly to you. But +I, who am not frightened of many things, have always been frightened of +editors. I am filled with awe when I think of the ultramarine pencil +that is to delete my ultramontane views. You were, as I have hinted, the +first to abrogate its use in my favour. When you, if not Consul, were at +least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an +essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.' It is not included, for +obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most +of the contents. These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle +miscellaneous and disconnected. Still there is a thread common to all, +though I cannot claim for them uniformity. There is no strict adherence +to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, essay, +criticism, and poetry. Count Tolstoy, however, has shown us that a novel +may be an essay rather than a story. No less a writer than Swift used +the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his +fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays. Plato, Sir +Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to +transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth. Some of +the greatest poets--Ruskin and Pater for example--have chosen prose for +their instrument of expression. If that theory is true of literature--and +I ask you to accept it as true--how much truer is it of journalism, at +least such journalism as mine; though I see a great gulf between +literature and journalism far greater than that between fiction and essay- +writing. The line, too, dividing the poetry of Keats from the prose of +Sir Thomas Browne is far narrower, in my opinion, than the line dividing +Pope from Tennyson. And I say this mindful of Byron's scornful couplet +and the recent animadversions of Lord Morley. + +There are essays in my book cast in the form of fiction; criticism cast +in the form of parody; and a vein of high seriousness sufficiently +obvious, I hope, behind the masques and phases of my jesting. The +psychological effects produced by works of art and archaeology, by drama +and books, on men and situations--such are the themes of these passing +observations. + +And though you find them like an old patchwork quilt I hope you will +laugh, in token of your acceptance, if not of the book at least of my +lasting regard and friendship for yourself. + +Ever yours, +ROBERT ROSS. + +5 _Hertford Street_, _Mayfair_, _W_. + + + + +A CASE AT THE MUSEUM. + + +It is a common error to confuse the archaeologist with the mere collector +of ignoble trifles, equally pleased with an unusual postage stamp or a +scarce example of an Italian primitive. Nor should the impertinent +curiosity of local antiquaries, which sees in every disused chalk-pit +traces of Roman civilisation, be compared with the rare predilection +requisite for a nobler pursuit. The archaeologist preserves for us those +objects which time has forgotten and passing fashion rejected; in the +museums he buries our ancient eikons, where they become impervious to +neglect, praise, or criticism; while the collector--a malicious atavist +unless he possess accidental perceptions--merely rescues the mistakes of +his forefathers, to crowd public galleries with an inconsequent lumber +which a better taste has taught as to despise. + +In the magic of escaped conventions surely none is more powerful than the +Greek, and even now, though we yawn over the enthusiasm of the +Renaissance mirrored in our more cadenced prose, there are some who can +still catch the delightful contagion which seized the princes and +philosophers of Europe in that Martin's Summer of Middle Age. + +Of the New Learning already become old, Professor Lachsyrma is reputed a +master. Scarcely any one in England holds a like position. He is sixty, +and, though his youth is said to have been eventful, he hardly looks his +age. He speaks English with a delightful accent, and there always hangs +about his presence a melancholy halo of mystery and Italy. His quiet +unassumed familiarity with every museum and library on the Continent +astonishes even the most erudite Teuton. Among archaeologists he is +thought a pre-eminent palaeographer, among palaeographers a great +archaeologist. I have heard him called the Furtwangler of Britain. His +facsimiles and collated texts of the classics are familiar throughout the +world. He has independent means, and from time to time entertains +English and foreign _cognoscenti_ with elegant simplicity at his +wonderful house in Kensington. His conversation is more informing than +brilliant. Yet you may detect an unaccountable melancholy in his voice +and manner, attributed by the irreverent to his constant visits to the +Museum. Religious people, of course, refer to his loss of faith at +Oxford; for I regret to say the Professor has been an habitual +freethinker these many years. + +However it may be, Professor Lachsyrma is sad, and has not yet issued his +edition of the newly discovered poems of Sappho unearthed in Egypt some +time since--an edition awaited so impatiently by poets and scholars. + +Some years ago, on retiring from his official appointment, Professor +Lachsyrma, being a married man, searched for some apartment remote from +his home, where he might work undisturbed at labours long since become +important pleasures. You cannot grapple with uncials, cursives, and the +like in a domestic environment. The preparation of facsimiles, +transcripts, and palaeographical observations, reports of excavations and +catalogues, demands isolation and complete immunity from the trivialities +of social existence. + +In a large Bloomsbury studio he found a retreat suitable to his +requirements. The uninviting entrance, up a stone staircase leading +immediately from the street, was open till nightfall, the rest of the +house being used for storage by second-hand dealers in Portland Street. +No one slept on the premises, but a caretaker came at stated intervals to +light fires and close the front door; for which, however, the Professor +owned a pass-key, each room having, as in modern flats, an independent +door that might be locked at pleasure. The general gloom of the building +never tempted casual callers. The Professor purposely abstained from the +decoration or even ordinary furnishing of his chamber. The whitewashed +walls were covered with dust-bitten maps, casts of bas-reliefs, +engravings of ruins. Behind the door were stacked huge packing-cases +containing the harvest of a recent journey to the eastern shores of the +Mediterranean. Along one wall mutilated statues and torsos were +promiscuously mounted on trestles or temporary pedestals made of inverted +wooden boxes. Above them a large series of shelves bulging with folios, +manuscript notebooks, pamphlets, and catalogues ran up to the window, +which faced north-east, admitting a strong top-light through panes of +ground glass; the lower sash was hidden by permanent blinds in order to +shut out all view of the opposite houses and the street below. A long +narrow table occupied the centre of the room. It was always strewn with +magnifying-glasses, proofs, printers' slips, negatives--the litter of a +palaeographic student. There were three or four wooden chairs for the +benefit of scholarly friends, and an armchair upholstered in green rep +near the stove. In a corner stood the most striking, perhaps the only +striking, object in the room--a huge mummy from the Fayyum. The canopic +jars and outer coffins belonging to it were still unpacked in the freight +cases. It had been purchased from a bankrupt Armenian dealer in Cairo +along with a number of Graeco-Egyptian antiquities and papyri, of far +greater interest to the Professor than the mummy itself. As soon as the +interior was examined it was to be presented to the Museum; but more +entertaining and important studies delayed its removal. For many months, +with a curious grave smile, the face on the shell seemed to look down +with amused and permanent interest on Professor Lachsyrma struggling with +the orthography of some forgotten scribe, and arguing with a friend on +mutilated or corrupt passages in a Greek palimpsest. + +Here, late one afternoon, Professor Lachsyrma was deciphering some yellow +leaves of papyrus. The dusk was falling, and he laid down the pen with +which he was delicately transcribing uncials on sheets of foolscap, in +order to light a lamp on the table. It was 6.30 by an irritating little +American clock recently presented him by one of his children, noisy +symbol and only indication that he held commune with a modern life he so +heartily despised. As the housekeeper entered with some tea he took up a +copy of a morning paper (a violent transition from uncials), and glanced +at the first lines of the leader: + + The Trustees of the British Museum announce one of the most + sensational literary discoveries in recent years, a discovery which + must startle the world of scholars, and even the apathetic public at + large. This is none other than the recovery of the long-lost poems of + Sappho, manuscripts of which were last heard of in the tenth century, + when they were burnt at Rome and Byzantium. We shall have to go back + to the fifteenth century, to the Fall of Constantinople, to the + Revival of Learning, ere we can find a fitting parallel to match the + importance of this recent find. Not since the spade of the excavator + uncovered from its shroud of earth the flawless beauty of the Olympian + Hermes has such a delightful acquisition been made to our knowledge of + Greek literature. The name of Professor Lachsyrma has long been one + to conjure with, and all of us should experience pleasure (where + surprise in his case is out of the question) on learning that his + recent tour to Egypt, besides greatly benefiting his health, was the + means of restoring to eager posterity one of the most precious + monuments of Hellenic culture. + +'Dear me, I had no idea the press could be so entertaining,' thought the +Professor, as a smile of satisfaction spread over his well-chiselled +face. Archaeologists are not above reading personal paragraphs and +leaders about themselves, though current events do not interest them. So +absorbing is their pursuit of antiquity that they are obliged to affect a +plausible indifference and a refined ignorance about modern affairs. Nor +are they very generous members of the community. Perhaps dealing in dead +gods, perpetually handling precious objects which have ceased to have any +relation to life, or quarrelling about languages no one ever uses, blunts +their sensibilities. At all events, they have none of that loyalty +distinguishing members of other learned professions. The canker of +jealousy eats perpetually at their hearts. + +Professor Lachsyrma was too well endowed by fortune to grudge his former +colleagues their little incomes or inadequate salaries at the Museum. +Still, his recent discovery would not only enhance his fame in the +learned world and his reputed _flair_ for manuscripts--it would irritate +those rivals in England and Germany who, in the more solemn reviews, +resisted some of his conclusions, canvassed his facts, and occasionally +found glaring errors in his texts. How jealous the discovery would make +young Fairleigh, for all his unholy knowledge of Greek vases, his +handsome profile, and his predilection for going too frequently into +society!--a taste not approved by other officials. How it would anger +old Gully! Professor Lachsyrma drank some more tea with further +satisfaction. Sappho herself could not have felt more elated on the +completion of one of her odes; we know she was poignant and sensitive. +Thus for a whole hour he idled with his thoughts--rare occupation for so +industrious a man. He was startled from the reverie by a slight knock at +his door. + +'Come in,' he said coldly. There was a touch of annoyance in his tone. +Visitors, frequent enough in the morning, rarely disturbed him in the +afternoon. + +'To whom have I the--duty of speaking?' He raised his well-preserved +spare form to its full height. The long loose alpaca coat, velvet skull- +cap, and pointed beard gave him the appearance of an eminent +ecclesiastic. + +The subdued light in the room presented only a dim figure on the +threshold, and the piercing eyes of the Professor could only see a +blurred white face against the black frame of the open door. A strange +voice replied: + +'I am sorry to disturb you, Professor Lachsyrma. I shall not detain you +for more than--an hour.' + +'If you will kindly write and state the nature of your business, I can +give you an appointment to-morrow or the day after. At the present +moment, you will observe, I am busy. I never see visitors except by +appointment.' + +'I am sorry to inconvenience you. Necessity compels me to choose my own +hours for interviewing any one.' + +The Professor then suddenly removed the green cardboard shade from the +lamp. The discourteous intruder was now visible for his inspection. + +He was a fair man of uncertain age, but could not be more than twenty- +eight. He wore his flaxen hair rather long and ill-kempt; his face might +have been handsome, but the flesh was white and flaccid; the features, +though regular, devoid of character; the blue eyes had so little +expression that a professed physiognomist would have found difficulty in +'placing' their possessor. His black clothes were shiny with age; his +gait was shuffling and awkward. + +'My name, though it will not convey very much to you, is Frank Carrel. I +am a scholar, an archaeologist, a palaeographer, and--other things +besides.' + +'A beggar and a British Museum reader,' was the mental observation of the +Professor. The other seemed to read his thoughts. + +'You think I want pecuniary assistance; well, I do.' + +'I fear you have come to the wrong person, at the wrong time, and if I +may say so, in the wrong way. I do not like to be disturbed at this +hour. Will you kindly leave me this instant?' + +Carrel's manner changed and became more deferential. + +'If you will allow me to show you something on which I want your opinion, +something I can leave with you, I will go away at once and come back to- +morrow at any time you name.' + +'Very well,' said the Professor, wearily, ready to compromise the matter +for the moment. + +From a small bag he was carrying Carrel produced a roll of papyrus. The +Professor's eyes gleamed; he held out his hands greedily to receive it, +fixing a searching, suspicious glance on Carrel. + +'Where did you get this, may I ask?' + +'I want your opinion first, and then I will tell you.' + +The Professor moved towards the lamp, replaced the cardboard green shade, +sat down, and with a strong magnifying-glass examined the papyrus with +evident interest. Carrel, appreciating the interest he was exciting, +talked on in rapid jerky sentences. + +'Yes. I think you will be able to help me. I am sure you will do so. +Like yourself, I am a scholar, and might have occupied a position in +Europe similar to your own.' + +The Professor smiled grimly, but did not look up from the table as Carrel +continued: + +'Mine has been a strange career. I was educated abroad. I became a +scholar at Cambridge. There was no prize I did not carry off. I knew +more Greek than both Universities put together. Then I was cursed not +only with inclination for vices, but with capacity and courage to +practise them--liquor, extravagance, gambling--amusements for rich +people; but I was poor.' + +'It is a very sad and a very common story,' said the Professor +sententiously, but without looking up from the table. 'I myself was an +Oxford man. Your name is quite unfamiliar to me.' + +'I fancy if you asked them at Cambridge they would certainly remember +me.' + +'I shall make a point of doing so,' said the professor drily. He +affected to be giving only partial attention to the narrative; but though +he seemed to be sedulous in his examination of the papyrus, he was +listening intently. + +'I was a great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short +laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of an undergraduate. + +'And to your parents?' queried Lachsyrma. + +'My mother was dead. I don't exactly know who my father was. I fear +these details bore you, however. To-morrow--' he added satirically. + +'A very romantic story, no doubt,' said the Professor, rising from his +chair, 'and it interests me--moderately; but before we go on any further, +I will be candid with you. That papyrus is a forgery--a very clever +forgery, too. I wonder why the writer tried Euripides; we have almost +enough of him.' + +'So do I sometimes,' returned Carrel cheerfully. The Professor arched +his eyebrows in surprise. + +He removed the green cardboard lampshade to keep his equivocal visitor +under strict observation. + +'If you knew it was a forgery, why did you waste my time and your own in +bringing it here? In order to tell me a long story about yourself, which +if true is extraordinarily dull?' + +It is almost an established convention for experts to be rude when they +have given an adverse opinion on anything submitted to them. It gives +weight to their statements. In the present case, however, the Professor +was really annoyed. + +'I wanted to know if you recognised the papyrus,' said Carrel, and he +smiled disingenuously. The Professor was startled. + +'Yes; it was offered to me in Cairo last winter by a German dealer in +antiquities. I recognised it at once. May I felicitate the talented +author?' + +'No. You would have been taken in if I were the author.' + +Professor Lachsyrma waved a white hand, loaded with scarabs and gems, in +a deprecatory, patronising manner towards Carrel. + +'I must apologise if I have wronged you. I am hardened to these little +amenities between brother palaeographers. Envy, jealousy, call it what +you will, attacks those in high places. There may be unrecognised +artists, mute inglorious Miltons, Chattertons, starving in garrets, +Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are +applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the +Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of +manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately. The science has been +carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still +unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of +our services quite out of proportion to our labours, there is now no +permanent place for the charlatan or the forger. The first would do +better as an art critic for the daily papers; the other might turn his +attention to the simple necessary cheque, or the safer and more enticing +Bank of England note. If you are an honest expert, there is a wide field +for your talents; and if I do not believe you to be anything of the kind, +you have yourself to blame for my scepticism. You came here without an +introduction, without any warning of your arrival. You refuse to leave +my room. You inform me that you want money with a candour unusual among +beggars. You then ask me to inspect a forged manuscript which you either +know or suspect me to have seen before. Should you have no explanation +to offer for this outrageous intrusion, may I ask you to leave the +premises immediately?' + +As he finished this somewhat pompous harangue he pointed menacingly +towards the door. He was slightly nervous, for Carrel, who was sitting +down, remained seated, his hands folded, gazing up with an insolent +childish stare. He might have been listening to an eloquent preacher +whom he thoroughly despised. + +'Professor Lachsyrma,' Carrel said in a sweet winning voice, 'I will go +away if you like now, but I have nearly finished my errand and we may as +well dispatch an affair tiresome to both of us, this evening, instead of +postponing it. I want you to give me 1000_l_.' + +The Professor rubbed his eyes. Was he dreaming? Was this some elaborate +practical joke? Was it the confidence trick? He seemed to lose his self- +possession, gaped on Carrel for some seconds, then controlled himself. + +'And why should I give you 1000_l_.?' + +'I am a blackmailer. I am a forger of manuscripts. I have more Greek in +my little finger than you have in your long body. I began to tell you my +history. I thought it might interest you. I do not propose to burden +you with it any further. To-night I ask you for 1000_l_., to-morrow I +shall ask you for 2000_l_., and the day after--' + +'The Sibyl was scarcely so extortionate when she offered the Tarquin +literary wares that no subsequent research with which I am acquainted has +proved to be spurious. And you, Mr. Carrel, offer me forgeries--merely +forgeries.' + +Fear expressed itself in clumsy satire. He was thoroughly alarmed. He +began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for +discreditable incidents. He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed +of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate. There were mean +actions, but many generous ones to balance in the scale. + +His knowledge of life was really slight, as his intimacy with Archaeology +(so he told himself) was profound. One foolish incident, a midsummer +madness, before he went to Oxford, was all he had to blush for. This, he +frequently confessed, not without certain pride, to his wife, the +daughter of a respectable man of letters from Massachusetts. He firmly +and privately believed an omission in a catalogue a far greater sin than +a breach of the Decalogue. But ethics are of little consequence where +conduct is above reproach. When buying antiquities he would come across +odd people from time to time, but never any one who openly avowed himself +a blackmailer and a forger. The novel experience was embarrassing and +unpleasant, but there was really little to fear. In all the delight of a +clear conscience, since Carrel vouchsafed no reply to his sardonic +Sibylline allusion, he said: + +'You have advanced no reason why I should hand you to-day or to-morrow +these modest sums you demand.' + +'Then I will tell you,' said Carrel, standing up suddenly. 'I fabricated +the poems of Sappho,--yes, the manuscript from which _you_ are reaping so +much credit'--he took up the newspaper--'from the morning press. When I +take to art criticism, as you kindly suggested a dishonest man might do, +it will be of a livelier description than any to which you are usually +accustomed. Vain dupe, you think yourself impeccable. Infallible ass, +there is hardly a museum in Europe where my manuscripts are not carefully +preserved for the greatest and rarest treasures by senile curators, too +ignorant to know their errors or too vain to acknowledge them. I fancied +you clever; until now I do not know that I ever caught you out, though +you may have bought many of my wares for all I know. I find you, +however, like the rest--dull, pedantic, and Pecksniffian. At Cambridge +we were not taught pretty manners, but we knew enough not to give +fellowships to pretentious charlatans like yourself.' + +The room swam round Professor Lachsyrma, and the mummy behind the door +grinned. The plaster casts and the statues seemed to wave their +mutilated limbs with the joy of demoniacal possession. Dead things were +startled into life. Sick giddiness permeated his brain. It was some +horrible nightmare. Yet his soul's tempest was entirely subjective; +outwardly his demeanour suffered no change. His tormentor noted with +astonishment and admiration his apparent self-control. There was merely +a slight falter in his speech. + +'What proofs have you? A blackmailer must have some token--something on +which to base a ridiculous libel.' + +'A few minutes ago I handed you a spurious papyrus, which you tell me you +recognise. In the same lot of rubbish, purporting to come from the +Fayyum, were the alleged poems of Sappho. You swallowed the bait which +has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will +admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial +simile, I have landed the largest salmon.' + +'I am deeply sensible of the compliment, but I must point out to you, my +friend, that your coming to tell me that a papyrus I happen to have +purchased from one of your shady friends is counterfeit, does not +necessarily prove it to be so.' + +The Professor realised that he must act cautiously, and consider his +position quietly. Each word must be charged with suppressed meaning. His +eyes wandered over the room, resting now and again on the majestic, +impassive smile of the mummy. It seemed to restore his nerve. He found +himself unconsciously looking towards it over Carrel's head each time he +spoke. While the blackmailer, seated once more, gazed up to his face +with a defiant, insolent stare, swinging his chair backwards and +forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless +of its issue. The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded +vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived +hoax. At his asking for a proof, Carrel laughed. + +'You are sceptical at last,' he sneered. 'I have the missing portions of +the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to +leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be +a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing for a new +acquisition.' + +Then he produced from his bag damning evidence of the truth of his +story--deftly confected sheets of papyrus, brown with the months it had +taken to fabricate them, and cracked with forger's inks and acids--ghastly +replicas of the former purchase. Nervously the Professor replaced the +green cardboard shade over the lamp, as though the glare affected his +eyes. + +'But how do you know I have not discovered the forgery already?' he said, +craftily. Carrel started. 'And see what I am sending to the press this +evening,' he added. + +Walking to the end of the table, he picked up a sheet of paper where +there was writing, and another object which Carrel could not see in the +gloom, so quickly and adroitly was the action accomplished. + +'Shall I read it to you, or will you read it yourself?' + +He advanced again towards the lamp, held the paper in the light, and +beckoned to Carrel, who leant over the table to see what was written. +Then Professor Lachsyrma plunged a long Greek knife into his back. A +toreador could hardly have done it more skilfully; the bull was pinned +through the heart, and expired instantaneously. + +* * * * * + +Now he paced the room in deep thought. For the first time he found +himself an actor in modern life, which hitherto for him meant digging +among excavations, or making romantic restoration for jaded connoisseurs, +of some faultless work of art described by Pausanias and hidden for +centuries beneath the rubbish of modern Greece. The entire absence of +horror appalled him. Even the dignity of tragedy was not there. He was +wrestling with hideous melodrama, often described to him by patrons of +Thespian art at transpontine theatres. The vulgarity--the +anachronism--made him shudder. Having till now ignored the issue of the +present, he began to be sceptical about the virtues of antiquity. +Antiquity, his only religion, his god, whose mangled incompleteness +endeared it to him, was crumbling away. He wondered if there were +friends with whom he might share his ugly secret. There was young +Fairleigh, who was always so modern, and actually read modern books. He +might have coped with the blackmailer alive, but hardly with his corpse. +You cannot run round and ask neighbours for coffins, false beards, and +rope in the delightful convention of the _Arabian Nights_, because you +have grazed modern life at a sharp angle, without exciting suspicion or +running the risk of positive refusal. There was his wife, to whom he +confided everything; but she was a lady from Massachusetts, and her +father was European correspondent to many American papers of the highest +repute. How could their pure ears be soiled with so sordid a confidence? +Poor Irene! she was to have an 'At Home' the following afternoon. It +would have to be postponed. Professor Lachsyrma fell to thinking of such +trivial matters, contemptible in their unimportance, as we do at the +terrible moments of our lives. He wondered if they would wait dinner for +him. He often remained at his club--the Serapeum--to finish a discussion +with some erudite antagonist. His absence would therefore cause no +alarm. He consulted the little American clock; it had stopped. How like +America! The only recorded instance, he would explain to Irene, of an +export from that country being required--the commodity proved inadequate. +No, that would make Irene cry. . . . The folly of hopeless, futile +thoughts jingled on. Suddenly he heard the cry of a belated newsvendor, +howling some British victory, some horrible scandal in Paris. Scandal, +exposure, publicity--_there_ was the horror. He could almost hear the +journalists stropping their pens. If his thoughts drifted towards any +potential expiation demanded by officialism, he put them aside. A social +_debacle_ was more fearful and vivid than the dock and its inevitable +consequence. . . . Presently his eyes rested again on the mummy case. A +brilliant inspiration! Here, at all events, was a temporary hiding-place +for the corpse of the blackmailer. If it was putting new wine into old +bottles, circumstances surely justified a violation of the proverb. Till +now a severe unromantic Hellenist, he held Egyptology in some contempt; +and for Egypt, except in so far as it illustrated the art of Greece or +remained a treasure-house for Greek manuscripts, his distaste was only +surpassed by that of the Prophet Isaiah. A bias so striking in the +immortal Herodotus is hardly shared by your modern encyclopaedist. While +the science of Egyptology and its adepts command rather awe and wonder +than sympathy from the uninitiated, who keep their praises for the more +attractive study of Greek art. Yet some of us still turn with relief +from the serene material masterpieces of Greece, soulless in their very +realism and truth of expression, to the vague and happily unexplained +monsters, the rigid gods and hieratic princes, who are given new names by +each succeeding generation. A knowledge that behind painted masks and +gilded, tawdry gew-gaws are the remains of a once living person gives +even the mummy a human interest denied to the most exquisite handiwork of +Pheidias. + +Professor Lachsyrma at present felt only the impossibility of a situation +that would have been difficult for many a weaker man to face. Humiliation +overwhelms the strongest. Modern agencies for the concealment of a body +having failed to suggest themselves, he must needs fall back on the +despised expedient of Egypt. Palaeography and Greek art were obviously +useless in the present instance. He understood at last why deplorable +people wanted to abolish Greek from the University curriculum. + +The coffin was of varnished sycamore wood, ornamented on the outside with +gods in their shrines and inscriptions relating to the name and titles of +the deceased, painted in red and green. The face was carved out of a +separate piece of wood, with the conventional beard attached to the chin; +the eyelids were of bronze; the eyes of obsidian; wooden hands were +crossed on the breast. Inside the lid were pictures of apes in yellow on +a purple background, symbolising the Spirits of the East adoring the Gods +of the Morning and Evening. The mummy itself was enclosed in a handsome +cartonnage case laced up the back. The Professor lifted it gently out on +the table, and substituted Carrel's body. He staunched as he best could +the blood which trickled on to the glaring pictures of the Judgment of +Osiris and the goddess Nut imparting the Waters of Life; then he turned +to examine the former occupant, whom two thousand years, even at such a +moment endowed with a greater interest than could attach to the corpse of +a defunct blackmailer. It now occurred to him that he might profitably +utilise the mummy cerements along with the coffin for more effectually +concealing Carrel's body until he could arrange for its final disposal. +He hastened to carry his idea into effect. + +The cartonnage case, composed of waste papyrus fragments glued together, +was painted with figures of deities. The face was a gilded mask, on the +headdress were lotus flowers, and the collar was studded to imitate +precious stones. Over the breast were representations of Horus, Apis, +and Thoth, and lower down the dead man was seen on his bier attended by +Anubis and the children of Horus, while the soul in the form of a hawk +hovered above. The Professor observed that an earlier method had been +employed for the preservation and protection of the body than is usually +found among Ptolemaic mummies. + +Beneath a network of blue porcelain bugles and a row of sepulchral gods +suspended by a wire to the neck was a dusky, red-hued sheet, sewn at the +head and feet and fastened with brown strips of linen. Under this last +shroud were the bandages which swathed the actual corpse, inscribed with +passages from the Book of the Dead, the mysterious fantastic directions +for the life hereafter. The symbolism requisite for the external +decoration of the mummy had been scrupulously executed by skilful +artists, and the conscientious method of wrapping again indicated the +pristine mode of embalmment practised when the craft was at its zenith, +long before the Greek conquest of Egypt. + +A considerable time was occupied in unrolling the three or four hundred +yards of linen. Meanwhile a strange fragrance of myrrh, cassia, +cinnamon, the sweet spices and aromatic unguents used in embalming, +filled the room. Gradually the yellow skin preserved by the natron began +to appear through the cross-hatchings of the bandages. Attached to a +thick gold wire round the neck and placed over the heart was a scarab of +green basalt, mounted in a gold setting; and on the henna-stained little +finger of the left hand was another of steatite. As the right arm was +freed from its artificially tightened grasp a peculiar wooden cylinder +rolled on to the floor into the heap of scented mummy dust and bandages. + +Languidly inquisitive, Professor Lachsyrma groped for it. Such objects +are generally found beneath the head. There was a seal at each end, both +of which he broke. A roll of papyrus was inside. He trembled, and with +forced deliberation made for the table, his knees tottering from +exhaustion. Excitement at this unexpected discovery made him forget +Carrel. The ghastly events of the evening were for the moment blotted +from his memory. After all, he was a palaeographer--an archaeologist +first, a murderer afterwards. Eagerly, painfully, he began to read, +adjusting his spectacles from time to time, the muscles of his face +twitching with anxiety and expectation. For a long time the words were +strange to him. Suddenly his glasses became dim. There were tears in +his eyes; he was reading aloud, unconsciously to himself, the beautiful +verses familiar to all students of Greek poetry:-- + + [Greek verse] + +and to students of English, in the marvellous, rendering of them by the +late Mr. Rossetti: + + 'Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, + A-top on the topmost twig,--which the pluckers forgot, somehow,-- + Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it till now.' + +The papyrus was of great length, and contained the poems of Sappho in a +cursive literary handwriting of the third century--the real poems, lost +to the world for over eight hundred years. It was morning now--a London +spring morning; dawn was creeping through the great north-east light of +the studio; birds were twittering outside. The murderer sobbed +hysterically. + +* * * * * + +On referring to 'Euterpe,' the second book of the Histories of Herodotus, +Professor Lachsyrma selected the second method of embalming as less +troublesome and more expeditious. The whole matter lasted little longer +than the seventy prescribed days. At the end of which time he was able, +in accordance with his original intention, to deposit in a handsome glass +case at the British Museum the Mummy of Heliodorus, a Greek settler in +Egypt who held some official appointment at the Court of Ptolemy +Philadelphus. It is described in the catalogue as one of the best +examples of its kind in Europe. Indeed, it is probably unique. + +Professor Lachsyrma often pauses before the case when visiting our gaunt +House of Art. Even the policeman on duty has noticed this peculiarity, +and smiles respectfully. The Professor has ceased to ridicule +Egyptology; and his confidence in the resources and sufficiency of +antiquity, so rudely shaken for one long evening, is completely +re-established. + +_To_ S. S. SPRIGGE, ESQ., M.D. + + + + +THE BRAND OF ISIS. + + + 'Videant irreligiosi videant et errorem suum recognoscant. En ecce + pristinis aerumnis absolutus, Isidis magnae providentia gaudens Lucius + de sua fortuna triumphat.' APULEIUS. + + 'Her image comes into the gloom + With her pale features moulded fair, + Her breathing beauty, morning bloom, + My heart's delight, my tongue's despair.' BINYON. + + 'An Oxford scholar of family and fortune; but quaint and opinionated, + despising every one who has not had the benefit of an University + education.' RICHARDSON. + + [Greek text]. HERODOTUS. + +I once had the good fortune to take down to dinner a young American lady +of some personal attractions. Her vivacity and shrewdness were racial; +her charm peculiar to herself. Her conversation consisted in a rather +fierce denunciation of Englishmen, young Oxford Englishmen in particular. +Their thoughts, their dress, their speech, their airs of superiority +offended one brought up with that Batavian type of humanity, the American +youth, to whom we have nothing exactly corresponding in this country +except among drawing-room conjurors. But I was startled at her keen +observation when I inquired with a smile how she knew I was not an Oxford +man myself. + +'Had you been one, you would never have listened to what I have been +saying,' she retorted. Rather nettled, I challenged her to pick out from +the other guests those on whom she detected the brand of Isis. A pair of +gloves was the prize for each successful guess. She won seven; in fact +all the stakes during the course of the evening. Over one only she +hesitated, and when he mentioned that he had neither the curiosity nor +the energy to cross the Atlantic, she knew he came from Oxford. + +Yes, there is something in that manner after all. It irritates others +besides Americans. Novelists try to describe it. We all know the hero +who talks English with a Balliol accent--that great creature who is +sometimes bow and sometimes cox of his boat on alternate evenings; who +puts the weight at the University Sports and conducts the lady home from +a College wine without a stain on her character; is rusticated for a year +or so; returns to win the Newdigate and leaves without taking a degree. +Or that other delightful abstraction--he has a Balliol accent too--with +literary tastes and artistic rooms, where gambling takes place. He is +invariably a coward, but dreadfully fascinating all the same; though he +scorns women he has an hypnotic influence over them; something in his +polished Oxford manner is irresistible. Throughout a career of crime his +wonderful execution on the piano, his knowledge of Italian painting, and +his Oxford manner never seem to desert him. We feel, not for the first +time, how dangerous it must be to allow our simple perky unspoiled +Colonials to associate with such deleterious exotic beings, who, though +in fiction horsewhipped or (if heroes) shot in the last chapter, in real +life are so apt to become prosperous city men or respected college +officials. + +The Oxford manner is, alas, indefinable; I was going to say indefensible. +Perhaps it is an attitude--a mental attitude that finds physical +expression in the voice, the gesture, the behaviour. Oxford, not +conduct, is three-fourths of life to those who acquire the distemper. +Without becoming personal it is not easy to discuss purely social +aspects, and we must seek chiefly in literature for manifestations of the +phenomenon: in the prose of Matthew Arnold for instance--in the poems of +Mr. Laurence Binyon, typical examples where every thought seems a mental +reservation. Enemies rail at the voice, and the voice counts for +something. Any one having the privilege of hearing Mr. Andrew Lang speak +in public will know at once what I mean--a pleasure, let me hasten to +say, only equalled by the enjoyment of his inimitable writing, so pre- +eminently Oxonian when the subject is not St. Andrews, Folk Lore, or +cricket. Though Oxford men have their Cambridge moments, and beneath +their haughty exterior there sometimes beats a Cambridge heart. Behind +such reserve you would never suspect any passions at all save one of +pride. Even frankly irreligious Oxford men acquire an ecclesiastical pre- +Reformation aloofness which must have piqued Thackeray quite as much as +the refusal of the city to send him to Westminster. He complains +somewhere that the undergraduates wear kid gloves and drink less wine +than their jolly brethren of the Cam. He was thoroughly Cambridge in his +attitude towards life, as you may see when he writes of his favourite +eighteenth century in his own fascinating style. How angry he becomes +with the vices and corruption of a dead past! Now no Oxford essayist +would dream of being angry with the past. How annoyed the sentimental +author of _The Four Georges_ would be with Mr. Street's genial treatment +of the same epoch! It would, however, be the annoyance of a father for +his eldest son, whom he sent to Oxford perhaps to show that an old slight +was forgiven and forgotten. + +There have been, of course, plenty of men unravaged by the blithe +contagion. Mr. Gladstone intellectually always seemed to me a Cambridge +man in his energy, his enthusiasm, his political outlook. Only in his +High Church proclivities is he suspect. The poet Shelley was an obvious +Cantab. He was, we are told, a man of high moral character. Well, +principles and human weakness are common to all Universities, and others +besides Shelley have deserted their wives: but to desert your wife on +principle seems to me callous, calculating, and Cambridge-like. + +A painful but interesting case came under my personal observation, and it +illustrates the other side of the question. A clever young graduate of +my acquaintance, after four years of distinguished scholarship at Oxford, +came up to the metropolis and entered the dangerous lists of literature. +It is not indiscreet if I say that he belonged to what was quite a +brilliant little period--the days of Mr. Eric Parker, Mr. Max Beerbohm, +and Mr. Reginald Turner. So there was nothing surprising in his literary +tastes, though I believe he was unknown to those masters of prose. He +was tall, good-looking, and prepossessing, but his Oxford manner was +unusually pronounced. He never expressed disgust--no Oxford man +does--only pained surprise at what displeased him; he never censured the +morals or manners of people as a Cambridge man might have done. Out of +the University pulpit no Oxford man would dream of scolding people for +their morals. After a year of failure he fell into a decline. His +parents became alarmed. They hinted that his ill success was due to his +damned condescension (the father was of course a Cambridge man). I too +suggested in a mild way that a more ingratiating manner might produce +better luck with editors. At last his health broke down, and a wise +family physician was called in. After studying the case for some months, +Aesculapius (he was M.B. of Cambridge) divined that ill success rather +than ill health was the provocative; and he related to the patient (this +is becoming like an Arabian Night) the following story: + +'A certain self-made man, confiding to a friend plans for his son's +education, remarked: "Of course I shall send him to Eton." "Why Eton?" +said the friend. "Because he is to be a barrister, and if he did not go +to Eton no one would speak to him if they knew his poor old father was a +self-made man. Then he will go to Cambridge." "Why not Oxford?" said +the friend, who was a self-made Oxford tradesman. "Because then he would +never speak to me," replied the first self-made man.' + +My friend from that moment recovered. He became more tolerant; he became +successful. He became a distinguished dramatist. He justified his early +promise. + +There is in this little story perhaps a charge of snobbishness from which +Oxford men are really entirely free. They are too conscious of their own +superiority to be tuft-hunters, and I believe miss some of the prizes of +life by their indifference towards those who have already 'arrived.' Yet +they appear snobbish to others who have not had the benefit of a +University education, and in this little essay I endeavour to hold up the +mirror to their ill-nature--the fault to which I am unduly attached. +Writers besides Richardson have referred to it. I might quote many +eloquent tributes from Dryden to Wordsworth and Byron, all Cambridge men, +who have felt the charm and acknowledged a weakness for the step-sister +University. Cambridge has never been fortunate in having the compliment +reciprocated. Neither Oxford men nor her own sons have been +over-generous in her praises: you remember Ruskin on King's Chapel. And +I, the obscurest of her children, who cast this laurel on the Isis, will +content myself with admitting that I sincerely believe you can obtain a +cheaper and better education at Cambridge, though it has always been my +ambition to be mistaken for an Oxford man. + +I often wonder whether Mr. Cecil Rhodes, while he had the English +Government in one pocket, the English Press in the other, and South +Africa in the hollow of his hand, felt a certain impotency before Oxford. +He had to acknowledge its influence over himself--an influence stronger +than Dr. Jameson or the Afrikander Bond. He was never quite sure whether +he admired more the loneliness of the Matoppos or the rather over-crowded +diamond mines of Kimberley. On the grey veld he used to read _Marius the +Epicurean_, and sought in Mr. Pater the key to the mystery he was unable +to solve. He turned to the Thirty-nine Articles (more tampered with at +Oxford than in any other cathedral city) with the same want of success. +That always seems to me a real touch of Oxford in what some one well +said, was an 'ugly life.' What a wonderful subject for the brush of a +Royal Academician! no ordinary artist could ever do it justice: the great +South African statesman on the lonely rocks where he had chosen his tomb; +a book has fallen from his hand (Mr. Pater's no doubt); his eyes are +gazing from canvas into the future he has peopled with his dreams. By +some clever device of art or nature the clouds in the sky have shaped +themselves into Magdalen Tower--into harmony with his thoughts, and the +setting sun makes a mandorla behind him. He is thinking of Oxford, and +round his head _Oriel_ clings as in 'The Blessed Damozel.' + +He could terrorise the Colonial Secretary, he could foment a war and add +a new empire to England; he could not overcome his love of Oxford, the +antithesis of all sordid financial intrigue and political marauding. +Athens was after all a dearer name than Groot-Schuurr. He set fire to +both. + +I speculate sometimes whether the University was aware of his +testamentary dispositions before it conferred on him an honorary degree. +I hope not. He deserved it as the greatest son of Oxford, the greatest +Englishman of his time. Imre Kiralfy, who has done for a whole district +of London what Mr. Rhodes tried to do for the empire, is but an +_impresario_ beside him. A French critic says we cannot admire greatness +in England; and this was shown by the timid way a large number of +Imperialists, while professing to believe the war a righteous one, +thought they would seem independent if they disclaimed approval of Mr. +Rhodes, by not having the pluck to admit the same motives though ready +enough to share the plunder. You may compare the ungrateful +half-unfriendly obituaries in the press with the leaders a few days +later, after the will was opened. + +But what immediately concerns us here is the intention of Mr. Rhodes. Was +it entirely benevolence, or some wish to test the strength of Oxford--to +bring undergraduates into contact with something coarser, some terrific +impermeable force that would be manner-proof against Oxford? Would he +conquer from the grave? Several Americans have been known to go through +the University retaining the Massachusetts _patina_. What if a number of +these savages were grafted on Oxford? How would they alter the tone? We +shall see. It will be an interesting struggle. Shall we hear of six- +shooters in the High?--of hominy and flannel cake for breakfast?--will +undergrads look 'spry?'--will they 'voice' public opinion? . . . I +forbear: my American vocabulary is limited. _Outre_ _mer, outres moeurs_, +as Mr. Walkley might say in some guarded allusion to Paul Bourget. . . . +I shall be sorry to see poker take the place of roulette, and the Christ +Church meadows turned into a ranch for priggish cowboys, or Addison's +Walk re-named the Cake Walk. But no, I believe Mr. Rhodes, if there was +just a touch of malice in his testament, realised that Oxford manners +were stronger than the American want of them. Oxford may be wounded, but +I have complete confidence in the issue. These Boeotian invaders must +succumb, as nobler stock before them. They will form an interesting +subject for some exquisite study by Mr. Henry James, who will deal with +their gradual civilisation. Preserved in the amber of his art they will +become immortal. + +I have been able to clip only the fringe of a great theme. Athletes +require an essay to themselves. In later age they seem to me more +melancholy than their Cambridge peers and less successful. These +splendid creatures are really works of art, and form our only substitute +for sculpture in the absence of any native plastic talent. From the +collector's point of view they belong to the best period, while the +graceful convention of isocephaly, which has raised the standard of +height, renders them inapt for the 'battles' of life, however well +equipped for those of their College where the cuisine is at all +tolerable. + +I am not enough of an antiquary to conjecture if there was ever a temple +to Isis during the Roman occupation of Britain on the site of the now +illustrious University. But I like to imagine that there existed a +cultus of the venerable goddess in the green fields where the purple +fritillaries, so reminiscent of the lotus, blossom in the early spring. +In the curious formal pattern of their petals I see a symbol of the +Oxford manner--something archaic, rigid, severe. The Oxford Don may well +be a reversion to some earlier type, learned, mystic, and romantic as +those priests of whom Herodotus has given us so vivid a picture. The +worship of Apis, as Mr. Frazer or Mr. Lang would tell us, becomes then +merely the hieroglyph for a social standard, a manner of life. This, I +think, will explain the name Oxford on the Isis--the Ford of Apis, the ox- +god at this one place able to pass over the benign deity. You remember, +too, the horrid blasphemy of Cambyses (his very name suggests Cambridge), +and the vengeance of the gods. So be it to any sacrilegious reformer who +would transmute either the Oxford Don or the Oxford undergraduate--the +most august of human counsellors, the most delightful of friends. + +(1902.) + + + + +HOW WE LOST THE BOOK OF JASHER. + + +Everyone who knows anything about art, archaeology, or science has heard +of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge. And even outsiders who care +for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal +dissensions that have disturbed that usual calm which ought to reign +within the walls of a museum. The illustrious founder, to whose +munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will +for the support of four curators, who govern the two separate departments +of science and art. The University has been in the habit of making +grants of money from time to time to these separate departments for the +acquisition of scientific or archaeological curiosities and MSS. I +suppose there was something wrong in the system, but whatever it may be, +it led to notorious jealousies and disputes. At the time of which I +write, the principal curators of the art section were Professor +Girdelstone and Mr. Monteagle, of Prince's College. I looked after the +scientific welfare of the museum with Lowestoft as my understudy--he was +practically a nonentity and an authority on lepidoptera. Now, whenever a +grant was made to the left wing of the building, as I call it, I always +used to say that science was being sacrificed to archaeology. I mocked +at the illuminated MSS. over which Girdelstone grew enthusiastic, and the +musty theological folios purchased by Monteagle. They heaped abuse upon +me, of course, when my turn came, and cracked many a quip on my splendid +skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, the only known specimen from Greenland. At +one time the strife broke into print, and the London press animadverted +on our conduct. It became a positive scandal. We were advised, I +remember, to wash our dirty linen at home, and though I have often +wondered why the press should act as a voluntary laundress on such +occasions, I suppose the remark is a just one. + +There came a day when we took the advice of the press, and from then +until now science and art have gone hand in hand at the University of +Oxbridge. How the breach was healed forms the subject of the present +leaf from my memoirs. + +America, it has been wisely said, is the great land of fraud. It is the +Egypt of the modern world. From America came the spiritualists, from +America bogus goods, and cheap ideas and pirated editions, and from +America I have every reason to believe came Dr. Groschen. But if his +ancestors came from Rhine or Jordan, that he received his education on +the other side of the Atlantic I have no doubt. Why he came to Oxbridge +I cannot say. He appeared quite suddenly, like a comet. He brought +introductions from various parts of the world--from the British Embassy +at Constantinople, from the British and German Schools of Archaeology at +Athens, from certain French Egyptologists at Alexandria, and a holograph +letter from Archbishop Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, Curator +of the MSS. in the Monastery of St. Basil, at Mount Olympus. It was this +last that endeared him, I believe, to the High Church party in Oxbridge. +Dr. Groschen was already the talk of the University, the lion of the +hour, before I met him. There was rumour of an honorary degree before I +saw him in the flesh, at the high table of my college, a guest of the +Provost. If Dr. Groschen did not inspire me with any confidence, I +cannot say that he excited any feeling of distrust. He was a small, +black, commonplace-looking little man, very neat in his attire, without +the alchemical look of most archaeologists. Had I known then, as I know +now, that he presented his first credentials to Professor Girdelstone, I +might have suspected him. Of course, I took it for granted they were +friends. When the University was ringing with praises of the generosity +of Dr. Groschen in transferring his splendid collections of Greek +inscriptions to the FitzTaylor Museum, I rejoiced; the next grant would +be devoted to science, in consideration of the recently enriched +galleries of the art and archaeological section. I only pitied the +fatuity of the authorities for being grateful. Dr. Groschen now wound +himself into everybody's good wishes, and the University degree was +already conferred. He was offered a fine set of rooms in a college +famous for culture. He became a well-known figure on the Q.P. But he +was not always with us; he went to Greece or the East sometimes, for the +purpose, it was said, of adding to the Groschen collection, now the glory +of the FitzTaylor. + +It was after a rather prolonged period of absence that he wrote to +Girdelstone privately, announcing a great discovery. On his return he +was bringing home, he said, some MSS. recently unearthed by himself in +the monastic library of St. Basil, and bought for an enormous sum from +Sarpedon, the Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis. He was willing to sell +them to 'some public institution' for very little over the original +price. Girdelstone told several of us in confidence. It was public news +next day. Scholars grew excited. There were hints at the recovery of a +lost MS., which was to 'add to our knowledge of the antique world and +materially alter accepted views of the early state of Roman and Greek +society.' On hearing the news I smiled. 'Some institution,' that was +suspicious--MSS.--they meant forgery. The new treasure was described as +a palimpsest, consisting of fifty or sixty leaves of papyrus. On one +side was a portion of the _Lost Book of Jasher_, of a date not later than +the fourth century; on the other, in cursive characters, the too +notorious work of Aulus Gellius--_De moribus Romanorum_, concealed under +the life of a saint. + +But why should I go over old history? Every one remembers the excitement +that the discovery caused--the leaders in the _Times_ and the +_Telegraph_, the doubts of the sceptical, the enthusiasm of the +archaeologists, the jealousy of the Berlin authorities, the offers from +all the libraries of Europe, the aspersions of the British Museum. 'Why,' +asked indignant critics, 'did Dr. Groschen offer his MS. to the +authorities at Oxbridge?' 'Because Oxbridge had been the first to +recognise his genius,' was the crushing reply. And Professor Girdelstone +said that should the FitzTaylor fail to acquire the MS. by any false +economy on the part of the University authorities, the prestige of the +museum would be gone. But this is all old history. I only remind the +reader of what he knows already. I began to bring all my powers, and the +force of the scientific world in Oxbridge, to bear in opposition to the +purchase of the MS. I pulled every wire I knew, and execration was +heaped on me as a vandal, though I only said the University money should +be devoted to other channels than the purchase of doubtful MSS. I was +doing all this, when I was startled by the intelligence that Dr. Groschen +had suddenly come to the conclusion that his find was after all only a +forgery. + +The Book of Jasher was a Byzantine fake, and he ascribed the date at the +very earliest to the reign of Alexis Comnenus. Theologians became fierce +on the subject. They had seen the MS.; they knew it was genuine. And +when Dr. Groschen began to have doubts on Aulus Gellius, suggesting it +was a sixteenth-century fabrication, the classical world 'morally and +physically rose and denounced' him. Dr. Groschen, who had something of +the early Christian in his character, bore this shower of opprobrium like +a martyr. 'I may be mistaken,' he said, 'but I believe I have been +deceived. I have been taken in before, and I would not like the MS. +offered to any library before two of the very highest experts could +decide as to its authenticity.' People had long learnt to regard Dr. +Groschen himself as quite the highest expert in the world. They thought +he was out of his senses, though the press commended him for his honesty, +and one daily journal, loudest in declaring its authenticity, said it was +glad Dr. Groschen had detected the forgery long recognised by their +special correspondent. Dr. Groschen was furthermore asked to what +experts he would submit his MS., and by whose decision he would abide. +After some delay and correspondence, he could think of only two--Professor +Girdelstone and Monteagle. They possessed great opportunities, he said, +of judging on such matters. Their erudition was of a steadier and more +solid nature than his own. Then the world and Oxbridge joined again in a +chorus of praise. What could be more honest, more straightforward, than +submitting the MS. to a final examination at the hands of the two +curators of the FitzTaylor, who were to have the first refusal of the MS. +if it was considered authentic? No museum was ever given such an +opportunity. Professor Girdelstone and his colleague soon came to a +conclusion. They decided that there could be no doubt as to the +authenticity of the Aulus Gellius. In portions it was true that between +the lines other characters were partly legible; but this threw no slur on +the MS. itself. Of the commentary on the book of Jasher, it will be +remembered, they gave no decisive opinion, and it is still an open +question. They expressed their belief that the Aulus Gellius was alone +worth the price asked by Dr. Groschen. It only remained now for the +University to advance a sum to the FitzTaylor for the purchase of this +treasure. The curators, rather prematurely perhaps, wrote privately to +Dr. Groschen making him an offer for his MS., and paid him half the +amount out of their own pockets, so as to close the bargain once and for +all. + +The delay of the University in making the grant caused a good deal of +apprehension in the hearts of Professor Girdelstone and Monteagle. They +feared that the enormous sums offered by the Berlin Museum would tempt +even the simple-minded Dr. Groschen, though the interests of the +FitzTaylor were so near his heart. These suspicions proved unfounded as +they were ungenerous. The _savant_ was contented with his degree and +college rooms, and showed no hurry for the remainder of the sum to be +paid. + +One night, when I was seated in my rooms beside the fire, preparing +lectures on the ichthyosaurus, I was startled by a knock at my door. It +was a hurried, jerky rap. I shouted, 'Come in.' The door burst open, +and on the threshold I saw Monteagle, with a white face, on which the +beads of perspiration glittered. At first I thought it was the rain +which had drenched his cap and gown, but in a moment I saw that the +perspiration was the result of terror or anxiety (cf. my lectures on +Mental Equilibrium). Monteagle and I in our undergraduate days had been +friends; but like many University friendships, ours proved evanescent; +our paths had lain in different directions. + +He had chosen archaeology. We failed to convert one another to each +other's views. When he became a member of 'The Disciples,' a mystic +Oxbridge society, the fissure between us widened to a gulf. We nodded +when we met, but that was all. With Girdelstone I was not on speaking +terms. So when I found Monteagle on my threshold I confess I was +startled. + +'May I come in?' he asked. + +'Certainly, certainly,' I said cordially. 'But what is the matter?' + +'Good God! Newall,' he cried, 'that MS. after all is a forgery.' + +This expression I thought unbecoming in a 'Disciple,' but I only smiled +and said, 'Really, you think so?' Monteagle then made reference to our +old friendship, our unfortunate dissensions. He asked for my help, and +then really excited my pity. Some member of the High Church party in +Oxbridge had apparently been to Greece to attend a Conference on the +Union of the Greek and Anglican Churches. While there he met Sarpedon, +Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, and in course of conversation told him +of the renowned Dr. Groschen. Sarpedon became distant at mention of the +Doctor's name. He denied all knowledge of the famous letter of +introduction, and said the only thing he knew of the Professor was, that +he was usually supposed to have been the thief who had made off with a +large chest of parchments from the monastery of St. Basil. + +The Greek Patriarch refused to give any further information. The English +clergyman reported the incident privately to Girdelstone. + +Dr. Groschen's other letters were examined, and found to be fabrications. +The Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius were submitted to a like scrutiny. +Girdelstone and Monteagle came reluctantly to the conclusion that they +were also vulgar and palpable forgeries. At the end of his story +Monteagle almost burst into tears. I endeavoured to cheer him, although +I was shrieking with laughter at the whole story. + +Of course it was dreadful for him. If he exposed Dr. Groschen, his own +reputation as an expert would be gone, and the Doctor was already paid +half the purchase money. Monteagle was so agitated that it was with +difficulty I could get his story out of him, and to this day I have never +quite learned the truth. Controlling my laughter, I sent a note round to +Professor Girdelstone, asking him to come to my rooms. In about ten +minutes he appeared, looking as draggled and sheepish as poor Monteagle. +In his bosom he carried the fateful MS., which I now saw for the first +time. If it was a forgery (and I have never been convinced) it was +certainly a masterpiece. From what Girdelstone said to me, then and +since, I think that the Aulus Gellius portion was genuine enough, and the +Book of Jasher possibly the invention of Groschen; however, it will never +be discovered if one or neither was genuine. Monteagle thought the ink +used was a compound of tea and charcoal, but both he and Girdelstone were +too suspicious to believe even each other by this time. + +I tried to console them, and promised all help in my power. They were +rather startled and alarmed when I laid out my plan of campaign. In the +first place, I was to withdraw all opposition to the purchase of the MS. +Girdelstone and Monteagle, meanwhile, were to set about having the Aulus +Gellius printed and facsimiled; for I thought it was a pity such a work +should be lost to the world. The facsimile was only to be _announced_; +and publication by the University Press to be put in hand at once. The +text of Aulus Gellius can still be obtained, and a translation of those +portions which can be rendered into English forms a volume of Mr. Bohn's +excellent classical library, which will satisfy the curious, who are +unacquainted with Latin. Professor Girdelstone was to write a preface in +very guarded terms. This will be familiar to all classical scholars. + +It was with great difficulty that I could persuade Girdelstone and +Monteagle of the sincerity of my actions; but the poor fellows were ready +to catch at any straw for hope from exposure, and they listened to every +word I said. As the whole University knew I was not on speaking terms +with Girdelstone, I told him to adopt a Nicodemus-like attitude, and to +come to me in the night-time, when we could hold consultation. To the +outer world, during these anxious evenings, when I would see no one, I +was supposed to be preparing my great syllabus of lectures on the +ichthyosaurus. I communicated to my fellow-curators my plans bit by bit +only, for I thought it would be better for their nerves. I made +Monteagle send round a notice to the press:--'That the MS. about to +become the property of the University Museum was being facsimiled prior +to publication, and at the earliest possible date would be on view in the +Galleries where Dr. Groschen's collections are now exhibited.' This was +to quiet the complaints already being made by scholars and commentators +about the difficulty of obtaining access to the MS. The importunities of +several religious societies to examine the Book of Jasher became +intolerable. The Dean of Rothbury, an old friend of Girdelstone's, came +from the north on purpose to collate the new-found work. With permission +he intended, he said, to write a small brochure for the S.P.C.K. on the +Book of Jasher, though I believe that he also felt some curiosity in +regard to Aulus Gellius. I may be wronging him. The subterfuges, lies, +and devices to which we resorted were not very creditable to ourselves. +Girdelstone gave him a dinner, and Monteagle and I persuaded the Senate +to confer on him an honorary degree. We amused him with advance sheets +of the commentary. He was quite a month at Oxbridge, but at last was +recalled on business to the north by some lucky domestic family +bereavement. Our next difficulty was the news that Sarpedon, Patriarch +of Hermaphroditopolis, was about to visit England to attend an Anglican +Synod. I thought Girdelstone would go off his head. Monteagle's hair +became grey in a few weeks. Sarpedon was sure to be invited to Oxbridge. +He would meet Dr. Groschen and then expose him. Our fears, I soon found +out, were shared by the _savant_, who left suddenly on one of those +mysterious visits to the East. I saw that our action must be prompt; or +Girdelstone and Monteagle would be lost. They were horrified when I told +them I proposed placing the MS. on public view in the museum immediately. +A large plate-glass case was made by my orders, in which Girdelstone and +Monteagle, who obeyed me like lambs, deposited their precious burden. It +was placed in the Groschen Hall of the FitzTaylor. The crush that +afternoon was terrible. All the University came to peer at the new +acquisition. I must tell you that Dr. Groschen's antiquities occupied a +temporary and fire-proof erection built of wood and tin, at the back of +the museum, with which it was connected by a long stone gallery, adorned +with plaster casts. + +I mingled with the crowd, and heard the remarks; though I advised +Girdelstone and Monteagle to keep out of the way, as it would only upset +them. Various dons came up and chaffed me about the opposition I made to +the MS. being purchased. A little man of dark, sallow complexion asked +me if I was Professor Girdelstone. He wanted to obtain leave to examine +the MS. I gave him my card, and asked him to call on me, when I would +arrange a suitable day. He told me he was a Lutheran pastor from +Pomerania. + +I was the last to leave the museum that afternoon. I often remained in +the library long after five, the usual closing hour. So I dismissed the +attendants who locked up everything with the exception of a small door in +the stone gallery always used on such occasions. I waited till six, and +as I went out opened near this door a sash window, having removed the +iron shutters. After dinner I went round to Monteagle's rooms. He and +Girdelstone were sitting in a despondent way on each side of the fire, +sipping weak coffee and nibbling Albert biscuits. They were startled at +my entrance. + +'What _have_ you decided?' asked Girdelstone, hoarsely. + +'All is arranged. Monteagle and I set fire to the museum to-night,' I +said, quietly. + +Girdelstone buried his face in his hands and began to sob. + +'Anything but that--anything but that!' he cried. And Monteagle turned a +little pale. At first they protested, but I overcame their scruples by +saying they might get out of the mess how they liked. I advised +Girdelstone to go to bed and plead illness for the next few days, for he +really wanted rest. At eleven o'clock that night, Monteagle and myself +crossed the meadows at the back of our college, and by a circuitous route +reached the grounds surrounding the museum, which were planted with +rhododendrons and other shrubs. The pouring rain was, unfortunately, not +favourable for our enterprise. I brought however a small box of +combustibles from the University Laboratories, and a dark lantern. When +we climbed over the low wall not far from the stone gallery, I saw, to my +horror, a light emerging from the Groschen Hall. Monteagle, who is +fearfully superstitious, began chattering his teeth. When we reached the +small door I saw it was open. A thief had evidently forestalled us. +Monteagle suggested going back, and leaving the thief to make off with +the MS.; but I would not hear of such a proposal. + +The door opening to the Groschen Hall at the end of the gallery was open, +and beyond, a man, whom I at once recognised as the little Lutheran, was +busily engaged in picking the lock of the case where were deposited the +Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius. Telling Monteagle to guard the door, I +approached very softly, keeping behind the plaster casts. I was within a +yard of him before he heard my boots creak. Then he turned round, and I +found myself face to face with Dr. Groschen. I have never seen such a +look of terror on any one's face. + +'You scoundrel!' I cried, collecting myself, 'drop those things at once!' +and I made for him with my fist. He dodged me. I ran after him; but he +threaded his way like a rat through the statues and cases of antiquities, +and bolted down the passage out of the door, where he upset Monteagle and +the lantern, and disappeared in the darkness and rain. I then returned +to the scene of his labours. Monteagle was too frightened, owing to the +rather ghostly appearance of the museum by the light of a feeble +oil-lamp. In a small cupboard there was some dry sacking I had deposited +there for the purpose some days before. This I ignited, along with +certain native curiosities of straw and skin, wicker-work, and other +ethnographical treasures. + +Some new unpacked cases left by the attendants the previous afternoon +materially assisted the conflagration. + +It was an impressive scene, to witness the flames playing round the +pedestals of the torsos, statues, and cases. I only waited for a few +moments to make sure that my work was complete. I shut the iron door +between the gallery and the hall to avoid the possibility of the fire +spreading to the rest of the building. Then I seized Monteagle by the +arm and hurried him through the rhododendrons, over the wall, into the +meadows. I turned back once, and just caught a glimpse of red flame +bursting through the windows. Having seen Monteagle half-way back to the +college, I returned to see if any alarm was given. Already a small crowd +was collecting. A fire-engine arrived, and a local pump was almost set +going. I returned to college, where I found the porter standing in the +gateway. + +'The FitzTaylor is burning,' he said. 'I have been looking out for you, +sir.' + +* * * * * + +There is nothing more to tell. To this day no one suspects that the fire +was the work of an incendiary. The Professor has returned from the East, +but lives in great retirement. His friends say he has never quite +recovered the shock occasioned by the loss of his collection. The rest +of the museum was uninjured. + +The death of Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, at Naples, was a +sudden and melancholy catastrophe, which people think affected Dr. +Groschen more than the fire. Strangely enough, he had just been dining +with the Doctor the evening before. They met at Naples purposely to bury +the hatchet. Sometimes I ask myself if I did right in setting fire to +the museum. You see, it was for the sake of others, not myself, and +Monteagle was an old friend. + + + + +THE HOOTAWA VANDYCK. + + +'My own experience,' said an expert to a group of mostly middle-aged men, +who spent their whole life in investigating spiritual phenomena, 'is a +peculiar one. + +'It was in the early autumn of 1900. I was at Rome, where I went to +investigate the relative artistic affinity between Pietro Cavallini and +Giotto (whose position, I think, will have to be adjusted). There were +as yet only a few visitors at the Hotel Russie, chiefly maiden ladies and +casual tourists, besides a certain Scotch family and myself. Colonel +Brodie, formerly of the 69th Highlanders, was a retired officer of that +rather peppery type which always seems to belong to the stage rather than +real life, though you meet so many examples on the Continent. He +possessed an extraordinary topographical knowledge of modern Rome, the +tramway system, and the hours at which churches and galleries were open. +He would waylay you in the entrance-hall and inquire severely if you had +been to the Catacombs. In the case of an affirmative answer he would +describe an unvisited tomb or ruin, far better worth seeing; in that of a +negative, he would smile, tell you the shortest and cheapest route, and +the amount which should be tendered to the Trappist Father. Later on in +the evening, over coffee, if he was pleased with you, he would mention in +a very impressive manner, "I am, as you probably know, Colonel Brodie, of +Hootawa." His wife, beside whom I sat at table d'hote, retained traces +of former beauty. She was thin, and still tight-laced; was somewhat acid +in manner; censorious concerning the other visitors; singularly devoted +to her tedious husband, and fretfully attached to the beautiful daughter, +for whose pleasure and education they were visiting Rome. I gathered +that they were fairly well-to-do. + +It was Mrs. Brodie who first broke the ice by asking if I was interested +in pictures. Miss Brodie, who sat between her parents, turned very red, +and said, "Oh, mamma, you are talking to one of the greatest experts in +Europe!" I was surprised and somewhat gratified by her knowledge +(indeed, it chilled me some days later when she confessed to having +learnt the information only that day by overhearing an argument between +myself and a friend at the Colonna Gallery on Stefano de Zevio, and the +indebtedness of Northern Italian art to Teutonic influences). + +Mrs. Brodie took the intelligence quite calmly, and merely inspected me +through her lorgnettes as if I were an object in a museum. + +"Ah, you must talk to Flora about pictures. I have no doubt that she +will tell you a good deal that even _you_ do not know. We have some very +interesting pictures up in Scotland. My husband is Colonel Brodie of +Hootawa (no relation to the Brodie of Brodie). His grandfather was a +great collector, and originally we possessed seven Raphaels." + +"Indeed," I replied, eagerly, "might I ask the names of the pictures? I +should know them at once." + +"I have never seen them," said Mrs. Brodie; "they were not left to my +husband, who quarrelled with his father. Fortunately none of us cared +for Raphaels; but the most valuable pictures, including a Vandyck, were +entailed. Flora is particularly attached to Vandyck. He is always so +romantic, I think." + +Flora, embarrassed by her mother's eulogy of family heirlooms, leaned +across, as if to address me, and said, "Oh, mamma, I don't think they +really were Raphaels; they were probably only by pupils--Giulio Romano, +Perino del Vaga, or Luca Penni." + +"As you never saw them, my dear," said Mrs. Brodie, severely, "I don't +think you can possibly tell. Your grandfather" (she glared at me) "was +considered _the_ greatest expert in Europe, and described them in his +will as Raphaels. It would be impious to suggest that they are by any +one else. There were _two_ Holy Families. One of them was given to your +grandfather by the King of Holland in recognition of his services; and a +third was purchased direct from the Queen of Naples. But your father is +getting impatient for his cigar." + +They rose, and bowed sweetly. I joined them in the glass winter-garden a +few minutes later. + +"Have you been to the Pincio? But I forgot, of course you know Rome. I +do love the Pincio," sighed Mrs. Brodie over some needlework, and then, +as an afterthought, "Do you know the two things that have impressed me +most since I came here?" + +"I could not dare to guess any more than I dare tell you what has +impressed me most," I replied, gazing softly at Flora. + +"The two things which have really and truly impressed me most," continued +Mrs. Brodie, "more than anything else, more than the Pantheon, or the +Forum, are--St. Peter's and the Colosseum." She almost looked young +again. + +The next day we visited the Borghese; and I was able to explain to Flora +why the circular "Madonna and Angels" was not by Botticelli. And, +indeed, there was hardly a picture in Rome I was unable to reattribute to +its rightful owner. In the apt Flora I found a receptive pupil. She +even grew suspicious about the great Velasquez at the Doria, in which she +fancied, with all the enthusiasm of youth, that she detected the handling +of Mazo. I soon found that it was better for her training to discourage +her from looking at pictures at all--we confined ourselves to +photographs. In a photograph you are not disturbed by colour, or by +impasto. You are able to study the morphic values in a picture, by which +means you arrive at the attribution without any disturbing aesthetic +considerations. + +One afternoon, returning from some church ceremony, Flora said to me, +"Oh, Aleister" (we were already engaged secretly), "papa is going to ask +you next winter to stay at Hootawa. Before I forget, I want to warn you +never to criticise the pictures. They are mostly of the Dutch and +English School, and I dare say you will find a great many of the names +wrong; but, you know, papa is irritable, and it would offend him if you +said that the 'Terborch' was really by Pieter de Hooghe. You can easily +avoid saying anything--and then, you will really admire the Vandyck." + +"Darling Flora, of course I promise. By the way, you never speak of your +family ghost, although Mrs. Brodie always refers to it as if I knew all +about it; and the Colonel has often told me of Sir Rupert's military +achievements." + +"Oh, Aleister, I don't know whether you believe in ghosts: it _is_ very +extraordinary. Whenever any disaster, or any good fortune happens to our +family, Sir Rupert Brodie's figure, just as he appears in the Vandyck, is +seen walking in the Long Gallery; and every night he appears at twelve +o'clock in the green spare bedroom; but only guests and servants ever see +him there. We have a saying at Hootawa, that servants will not stay +unless they are able to see Sir Rupert the first month after their +arrival. Only members of the family are able to see him in the Long +Gallery, and, of course, we never know whether he betokens good or ill +luck. The last time he appeared there, papa was so nervous that he sold +out of Consols, which went down an eighth the day after. We were all +very much relieved. But he invested the money in some concern called +"The Imperial Federation Stylograph Pen Company," and lost most of it; so +it was not of much use." + +"Tell me, darling, of your father's other investments," I asked +anxiously. + +"Oh, you must ask papa about them, I don't understand business; but I +want to tell you about Sir Rupert. The Society for Psychical Research +sent down a Committee to inquire into the credibility of the ghost, and +recorded four authentic apparitions in the spare bedroom; and on family +evidence accepted at least three events in the Long Gallery. It was just +after their report was issued that papa was invited to lease the house to +some Americans for the summer. He always gets a good price for it now, +simply on account of the ghost. I always think that rather horrid. I +don't believe poor Sir Rupert would like it." + +"Perhaps he doesn't know," I suggested. + +"Of course, you don't believe in him," she said in rather an offended +way. + +"My darling, of course I do; I have always believed in ghosts. Most of +the pictures in the world, as I am always saying, were painted by +_ghosts_." + +"Oh, no, Aleister, you're laughing at me; but when you see Sir Rupert, as +you will, in the spare bedroom, you will believe too." + +At the end of January, I became Flora's accepted fiance. + +In February, I moved with the Brodies to Florence, where I was able to +introduce them to all my kind and hospitable friends,--the Berensons, Mr. +Charles Loeser, Mr. Herbert Horne, and Mr. Hobart Cust. Flora was in +every way a great success, and commenced a little book on Nera di Bicci +for Bell's Great Painters Series. She was invited to contribute to the +_Burlington Magazine_. It was quite a primavera. Our marriage was +arranged for the following February. The Brodies were to return to +Hootawa after it was vacated by the American summer tenants. I was to +join them for Christmas on my return from America, where I was compelled +to go in order to settle my affairs. My father, Lorenzo Q. Sweat, of +Chicago, evinced great pleasure at my approaching union with an old +Scotch family; he promised me a handsome allowance considering his recent +losses in the meat packing swindle--I mean trade. I was able to dissuade +him from coming to Europe for the ceremony. After delivering two +successful lectures on Pietro Cavallini in the early fall at mothers' +soirees, I sailed for Liverpool. + +There was deep snow on the ground when I arrived at Hootawa in the early +afternoon of a cold December day. The Colonel met me at the station in +the uniform of the 69th, attended by two gillies holding torches. + +"There will just be enough light to glance at the pictures before tea," +he said gaily, and in three-quarters of an hour I was embracing Flora and +saluting her mother, who were in the hall to greet me. For the most part +Hootawa was a typical old Scotch castle, with extinguisher turrets; an +incongruous Jacobean addition rather enhancing its picturesque ensemble. + +"You'll see better pictures here than anything in Rome," remarked the +Colonel; but Flora giggled rather nervously. + +In the smoking-room and library, I inspected, with assumed interest, +works by the little masters of Holland, and some more admirable examples +of the English Eighteenth Century School. Faithful to my promise, I +pronounced every one of them to be little gems, unsurpassed by anything +in the private collections of America or Europe. We passed into the +drawing-room and parlour with the same success. In the latter apartment +the Colonel, grasping my arm, said impressively: "Now you will see our +great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you. +I have never lent it for exhibition, for, as you know, we are rather +superstitious about it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1780, offered to paint +the portraits of the whole family in exchange for the picture. Dr. +Waagen describes it in his well-known work. Dr. Bode came from Berlin on +purpose to see it some years ago, when he left a certificate (which was +scarcely necessary) of its undoubted authenticity. I was so touched by +his genuine admiration, that I presented him with a small Dutch picture +which he admired in the smoking-room, and thought not unworthy of placing +in the Berlin Gallery. I expect you know Dr. Bode." + +"Not personally," I said, as we stepped into the Long Gallery. + +It was a delightful panelled room, with oak-beamed ceiling. Between the +mullioned windows were old Venetian mirrors and seventeenth-century +chairs. At the end, concealed by a rich crimson brocade, hung the +Vandyck, the only picture on the walls. + +It was the Colonel himself who drew aside the curtain which veiled +discreetly the famous picture of Sir Rupert Brodie at the age of thirty- +two, in the beautiful costume of the period. The face was unusually +pallid; it was just the sort of portrait you would expect to walk out of +its frame. + +"You have never seen a finer Vandyck, I am sure," said Mrs. Brodie, +anxiously. I examined the work with great care, employing a powerful +pocket-glass. There was an awkward pause for about five minutes. + +"Well, sir," said the Colonel, sternly, "have you nothing to say?" + +"It is a very interesting and excellent work, though _not_ by Vandyck; it +is by Jamieson, his Scotch pupil; the morphic forms . . ."--but I got no +further. There was a loud clap of thunder, and Flora fainted away. I +was hastening to her side when her father's powerful arm seized my +collar. He ran me down the gallery and out by an egress which led into +the entrance hall, where some menial opened the massive door. I felt one +stinging blow on my face; then, bleeding and helpless, I was kicked down +the steps into the snow from which I was picked up, half stunned, by one +of the gillies. + +"Eh, mon, hae ye seen the bogles at Hootawa?" he observed. + +"It will be very civil of you if you will conduct me to the depot, or the +nearest caravanserai," I replied. + +I never saw Flora again.' + +* * * * * + +'But what has happened about the ghost, Mr. Sweat? You never told us +anything about it. Did you ever see it?' asked one of the listeners in a +disappointed tone. + +'Oh, I forgot; no, that was rather tragic. _Sir Rupert Brodie never +appeared again_, not even in the spare bedroom; he seemed offended. +Eventually his portrait was sent up to London, where Mr. Lionel Cust +pointed out that it could not have been painted until after Vandyck's +death, at which time Sir Rupert was only ten years old. Indeed, there +was some uncertainty whether the picture represented Sir Rupert at all. +Mr. Bowyer Nichols found fault with the costume, which belonged to an +earlier date prior to Sir Rupert's birth. Colonel Brodie never recovered +from the shock. He resides chiefly at Harrogate. Gradually the servants +all gave notice, and Hootawa ceased to attract Americans. Poor Flora! I +ought to have remembered my promise; but the habit was too strong in me. +Sir Oliver Lodge, I believe, has an explanation for the non-appearance of +the phantom after the events I have described. He regards it as a good +instance of _bypsychic duality_--the fortuitous phenomenon by which +spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent. But I am +only an art critic, not a physicist.' + +_To_ HERBERT HORNE, ESQ. + + + + +THE ELEVENTH MUSE. + + +In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a +publisher's hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became +publisher's reader and adviser. It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,' +and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous +literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The +business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but +there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful +public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the +'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of +things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. 'Bad Taste in +All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of +Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these +unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook--the +skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being. + +I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of +bad poetry. It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary +little volume of unreadable and unsaleable song. There are, however, +certain stanzas so exquisite in their unconscious absurdity that an +inverted immortality may be claimed for them. It is essential that their +authors should have been serious, because parody and light verse have +been carried to such a state of perfection that a tenth muse has been +created--the muse of Mr. Owen Seaman and the late St. John Hankin for +example. When the Anakim, men of old, which were men of renown--Shelley, +Keats, or Tennyson--become playful, I confess to a feeling of +nervousness: the unpleasant, hot sensation you experience when a +distinguished man makes a fool of himself. Rossetti--I suppose from his +Italian origin--was able to assume motley without loss of dignity, and +that wounded Titan, the late W. E. Henley, was another exception. Both +he and Rossetti had the faculty of being foolish, or obscene, without +impairing the high seriousness of their superb poetic gifts. + +But I refer to more serious folly--that of the disciples of Silas Wegg. +Some friends of mine in the country employed a ladies'-maid with literary +proclivities. She was never known to smile; the other servants thought +her stuck up; she was a great reader of novels, poetry, and popular books +on astronomy. One day she gave notice, departed at the end of a month, +left no address, and never applied for a character. Beneath the mattress +of her bed was found a manuscript of poems. One of these, addressed to +our satellite, is based on the scientific fact (of which I was not aware +until I read her poem) that we see only one side of the moon. The ode +contains this ingenious stanza:-- + + O beautiful moon! + When I gaze on thy face + Careering among the boundaries of space, + The thought has often come to my mind + If I ever shall see thy glorious behind. + +It was my pleasure to communicate this verse to our greatest living +conversationalist, a point I mention because it may, in consequence, be +already known to those who, like myself, enjoy the privileges of his +inimitable talk. I possess the original manuscript of the poem, and can +supply copies of the remainder to the curious. + +In a magazine managed by the physician of a well-known lunatic asylum I +found many inspiring examples. The patients are permitted to contribute: +they discuss art and literature, subject of course to a stringent +editorial discretion. As you might suppose, poetry occupies a good deal +of space. It was from that source of clouded English I culled the +following:-- + + His hair is red and blue and white, + His face is almost tan, + His brow is wet with blood and sweat, + He steals from where he can: + And looks the whole world in the face, + A drunkard and a man. + +I think we have here a Henley manque. In robustious assertion you will +not find anything to equal it in the Hospital Rhymes of that author. I +was so much struck by the poem that I obtained permission to correspond +with the poet. I discovered that another Sappho might have adorned our +literature; that a mute inglorious Elizabeth Barrett was kept silent in +Darien--for the asylum was in the immediate vicinity of the Peak in +Derbyshire. Of the correspondence which ensued I venture to quote only +one sentence: + + 'I was brought up to love beauty; my home was more than cultured; it + was refined; we took in the _Art Journal_ regularly.' + +Of all modern artists, I suppose that Sir Edward Burne-Jones has inspired +more poetry than any other. A whole school of Oxford poets emerged from +his fascinating palette, and he is the subject of perhaps the most +exquisite of all the _Poems and Ballads_--the '_Dedication_'--which forms +the colophon to that revel of rhymes. I sometimes think that is why his +art is out of fashion with modern painters, who may inspire dealers, but +would never inspire poets. For who could write a sonnet on some +uncompromising pieces of realism by Mr. Rothenstein, Mr. John, or Mr. +Orpen? Theirs is an art which speaks for itself. But Sir Edward Burne- +Jones seems to have dazzled the undergrowth of Parnassus no less than the +higher slopes. In a long and serious epic called 'The Pageant of Life,' +dealing with every conceivable subject, I found:-- + + With some the mention of Burne-Jones + Elicits merely howls and groans; + But those who know each inch of art + Believe that he can bear his part. + +I don't remember what he could bear. Perhaps it referred to his election +at the Royal Academy. Then, again, in a 'Vision' of the next world, a +poet described how-- + + Byron, Burne-Jones, and Beethoven, + Charlotte Bronte and Chopin are there. + +I wonder if this has escaped the eagle eye of Mr. Clement Shorter. Though +perhaps the most delightful nonsense, for which, I fear, this great +painter is partly responsible, may be found in a recent poem addressed to +the memory of my old friend, Simeon Solomon:-- + + More of Rossetti? Yes: + You follow'd than Burne-Jones, + Your depth of colour his + than that of monochromes! + Yes; amber lilies poured, I say, + A joy for thee, than poet's bay. + + But while true art refines + and often stimulates, + ART does, at times, I say, + sit grief within our gates! + Art causes men to weep at times-- + If you may heed these falt'ring rhymes. + +A small volume of lyrics once sent to me for review afforded another +flower for my garland:-- + + Where in the spring-time leaves are wet, + Oh, lay my love beneath the shades, + Where men remember to forget, + And are forgot in Hades. + +But I have given enough examples for what would form Part I. of the +English anthology. Part II. would consist of really bad verses from +really great poetry. + + Auspicious Reverence, hush all meaner song, + +is one of the most pompously stupid lines in English poetry. Arnold did +not hesitate to quote instances from Shakespeare:-- + + Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof, + Confronted him with self-comparisons. + +You would have to sacrifice Browning, because it might fairly be +concluded--well, anything might be concluded about Browning. Byron is, +of course, a mine. Arthur Hugh Clough is, perhaps, the 'flawless +numskull,' as, I think, Swinburne calls him. Tennyson surpassed + + A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman, + +in many of his serious poems. + + To travellers indeed the sea + Must always interesting be + +I have heard ascribed to Wordsworth, but wrongly, I believe. I should, +of course, exclude from the collection living writers; only the select +dead would be requisitioned. They cannot retort. And the entertaining +volume would illustrate that curious artistic law--the survival of the +unfittest, of which we are only dimly beginning to realise the +significance. It is like the immortality of the invalid, now recognised +by all men of science. You see it manifested in the plethora of memoirs. +All new books not novels are about great dead men by unimportant little +living ones. When I am asked, as I have been, to write recollections of +certain 'people of importance,' as Dante says, I feel the force of that +law very keenly. + +_To_ FREDERICK STANLEY SMITH, ESQ. + + + + +SWINBLAKE: A PROPHETIC BOOK, WITH HOME ZARATHRUSTS. + + +Every student of Blake has read, or must read, Mr. Swinburne's +extraordinary essay, _William Blake: a critical study_, of which a new +edition was recently published. It would be idle at this time of day to +criticise. Much has been discovered, and more is likely to be +discovered, about Blake since 1866. The interest of the book, for us, is +chiefly reflex. _And does not the great mouth laugh at a gift_, if +scheduled in an examination paper with the irritating question, 'From +what author does this quotation come?' would probably elicit the reply, +'Swinburne.' Yet it occurs in one of Blake's prophetic books. + +How fascinated Blake would have been with Mr. Swinburne if by some +exquisite accident he had lived _after_ him. We should have had, I +fancy, another Prophetic Book; something of this kind: + + Swinburne roars and shakes the world's literature-- + The English Press, and a good many contemporaries-- + Tennyson palls, Browning is found-- + Only a brownie-- + The mountains divide, the Press is unanimous-- + Aylwin is born-- + On a perilous path, on the cliff of immortality-- + I met Theodormon-- + He seemed sad: I said, 'Why are you sad-- + Are you writing the long-promised life-- + Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?'-- + He sighed and said, 'No, not that-- + Not that, my child-- + I consigned the task to William Michael-- + Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are cheap to-day-- + You can have them for a sextet or an octave.'-- + I brightened and said, 'Then you are writing a sonnet?' + He shook his head and said it was symbolical-- + For six and eightpence!-- + A golden rule: Never lend only George Borrow-- + +A new century had begun, and I asked Theodormon what he was doing on that +path and where Mr. Swinburne was. Beneath us yawned the gulf of +oblivion. + +'Be careful, young man, not to tumble over; are you a poet or a +biographer?' + +I explained that I was merely a tourist. He gave a sigh of relief: 'I +have an appointment here with my only disciple, Mr. Howlglass; if you are +not careful he may write an appreciation of you.' + +'My dear Theodormon, if you will show me how to reach Mr. Swinburne I +will help you.' + +'I swear by the most sacred of all oaths, by Aylwin, you shall see +Swinburne.' + +Just then we saw a young man coming along the path with a Kodak and a +pink evening paper. He seemed pleased to see me, and said, 'May I +appreciate you?' + +I gave the young man a push and he fell right over the cliff. Theodormon +threw down after him a heavy-looking book which, alighting on his skull, +smashed it. 'My preserver,' he cried, 'you shall see what you like, you +shall do what you like, except write my biography. Swinburne is close at +hand, though he occasionally wanders. His permanent address is the +Peaks, Parnassus. Perhaps you would like to pay some other calls as +well.' + +I assented. + +We came to a printing-house and found William Morris reverting to type +and transmitting art to the middle classes. + +'The great Tragedy of Topsy's life,' said Theodormon, 'is that he +converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched +the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set. You would have +thought, on homoeopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal to +cretins.' + +'Vale, vale,' cried Charles Ricketts from the interior. + +I was rather vexed, as I wanted to ask Ricketts his opinions about +various things and people and to see his wonderful collection. Shannon, +however, presented me with a lithograph and a copy of 'Memorable +Fancies,' by C. R. + + How sweet I roamed from school to school, + But I attached myself to none; + I sat upon my ancient Dial + And watched the other artists' fun. + + Will Rothenstein can guard the faith, + Safe for the Academic fold; + 'Twas very wise of William Strang, + What need have I of Chantrey's gold? + + Let the old masters be my share, + And let them fall on B. B.'s corn; + Let the Uffizi take to Steer-- + What do I care for Herbert Horne + + Or the stately Holmes of England, + Whose glories never fade; + The Constable of Burlington, + Who holds the Oxford Slade. + + It's Titian here and Titian there, + And come to have a look; + But 'thanks of course Giorgione,' + With Mr. Herbert Cook. + + For MacColl is an intellectual thing, + And Hugh P. Lane keeps Dublin awake, + And Fry to New York has taken wing, + And Charles Holroyd has got the cake. + +After turning round a rather sharp corner I began to ask Theodormon if +John Addington Symonds was anywhere to be found. He smiled, and said: 'I +know why you are asking. Of course he _is_ here, but we don't see much +of him. He published, at the Kelmscott, the other day, "An Ode to a +Grecian Urning." The proceeds of the sale went to the Arts and Krafts +Ebbing Guild, but the issue of "Aretino's Bosom, and other Poems," has +been postponed.' + +We now reached a graceful Renaissance building covered with blossoms; on +each side of the door were two blue-breeched gondoliers smoking calamus. +Theodormon hurried on, whispering: '_That_ is where he lives. If you +want to see Swinburne you had better make haste, as it is getting late, +and I want you to inspect the Castalian spring.' + +The walking became very rough just here; it was really climbing. Suddenly +I became aware of dense smoke emerging with a rumbling sound from an +overhanging rock. + +'I had no idea Parnassus was volcanic now,' I remarked. + +'No more had we,' said Theodormon; 'it is quite a recent eruption due to +the Celtic movement. The rock you see, however, is not a real rock, but +a sham rock. Mr. George Moore has been turned out of the cave, and is +still hovering about the entrance.' + +Looming through the smoke, which hung like a veil of white muslin between +us, I was able to trace the silhouette of that engaging countenance which +Edouard Manet and others have immortalised. 'Go away,' he said: 'I do +not want to speak to you.' 'Come, come, Mr. Moore,' I rejoined, 'will +you not grant a few words to a really warm admirer?'--but he had faded +away. Then a large hand came out of the cavern and handed me a piece of +paper, and a deep voice with a slight brogue said: 'If you see mi darlin' +Gosse give this to him.' The paper contained these verses:-- + + Georgey Morgie, kidden and sly, + Kissed the girls and made them cry; + _What_ the girls came out to say + George never heard, for he ran away. + + W. B. Y + +We skirted the edge of a thick wood. A finger-post pointed to the +Castalian spring, and a notice-board indicated _Trespassers will be +prosecuted_. _The lease to be disposed of. Apply to G. K. Chesterton_. + +Soon we came to an open space in which was situated a large, rather +dilapidated marble tank. I noticed that the water did not reach further +than the bathers' stomachs. Theodormon anticipated my surprise. 'Yes, +we have had to depress the level of the water during the last few years +out of compliment to some of the bathers, and there have been a good many +bathing fatalities of a very depressing description.' + +'You don't mean to say,' I replied, 'Richard le Gallienne?' + +'Hush! hush! he was rescued.' + +'Stephen Phillips?' I asked, anxiously. + +'Well, he couldn't swim, of course, but he floated; you see he had the +Sidney Colvin lifebelt on, and that is always a great assistance.' + +'Not,' I almost shrieked, 'my favourite poet, the author of "Lord 'a +Muzzy don't you fret. Missed we De Wet. Missed we De Wet"?' + +Theodormon became very grave. 'We do not know any of their names,' he +said. 'I will show you, presently, the Morgue. Perhaps you will be able +to identify some of your friends. The Coroner has refused to open an +inquest until Mr. John Lane can attend to give his evidence.' + +I saw the Poet Laureate trying very hard to swim on his back. Another +poet was sitting down on the marble floor so that the water might at +least come up to his neck. Gazing disconsolately into the pellucid +shallows I saw the revered and much-loved figures of Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. +Austin Dobson, and Mr. Edmund Gosse. 'Going for a dip?' said Theodormon. +'Thanks, we don't care about paddling,' Mr. Lang retorted. + +'I hope it is not _always_ so shallow,' I said to my guide. + +'Oh, no; we have a new water-supply, but as the spring is in the nature +of a public place, we won't turn on the fresh water until people have +learnt to appreciate what is good. That handsome little marble structure +which you see at the end of the garden is really the _new_ Castalian +Spring. At all events, that is where all the miracles take place. The +old bath is terribly out of repair, in spite of plumbing.' + +We then inspected a very neat little apartment mosaiced in gold. Round +the walls were attractive drinking-fountains, and on each was written the +name of the new water--I mean the new poet. Some of them I recognised: +Laurence Binyon, A. E. Housman, Sturge Moore, Santayana, Arthur Symons, +Herbert Trench, Henry Simpson, Laurence Housman, F. W. Tancred, Arthur +Lyon Raile, William Watson, Hugh Austin. + +'You see we have the very latest,' said Theodormon, 'provided it is +always the best. I am sorry to say that some of the taps don't give a +constant supply, but that is because the machinery wants oiling. Try +some Binyon,' said my guide, filling a gold cup on which was wrought by +some cunning craftsman the death of Adam and the martyrdom of the Blessed +Christina. I found it excellent and refreshing, and observed that it was +cheering to come across the excellence of sincerity and strength at a +comparatively new source . . . + +Mr. Swinburne was seated in an arbour of roses, clothed in a gold +dalmatic, a birthday gift from his British Peers. Their names were +embroidered in pearls on the border. I asked permission to read my +address:-- + + There beats no heart by Cam or Isis + (Where tides of poets ebb and flow), + But guards Dolores as a crisis + Of long ago. + + A crisis bringing fire and wonder, + A gift of some dim Eastern Mage, + A firework still smouldering under + The feet of middle age. + + For you could love and hate and tell us + Of almost everything, + You made our older poets jealous, + For you alone could sing. + + In truth it was your splendid praises + Which made us wake + To glories hidden in the phrases + Of William Blake. + + No boy who sows his metric salads + His tamer oats, + But always steals from Swinburne's ballads + The stronger notes. + +'Do you play golf?' said Mr. Swinburne, handing me two little spheres +such as are used in the royal game. And I heard no more; for I received +a blow--whether delivered by Mr. Swinburne or the ungrateful Theodormon I +do not know, but I found myself falling down the gulf of oblivion, and +suddenly, with a dull thud, I landed on the remains of Howlglass. The +softness of his head had really preserved me from what might have been a +severe shock, because the distance from Parnassus to Fleet Street, as you +know, is considerable, and the escalade might have been more serious. I +reached my rooms in Half Moon Street, however, having seen only one star, +with just a faint nostalgia for the realms into which for one brief day I +was privileged to peep. + +(1906.) + + + + +A MISLAID POET. + + +In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more +discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few +verse-writers were overlooked. Bosola's observation about 'the neglected +poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety. Mr. John +Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway, +armed _bag-a-pied_, in order to discover the new and unpublished. Now he +has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary +for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the +London soot. There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his +rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of +the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung +in the Bodley Head. Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across +her by accident. Her song is not without significance. + +In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her _Miscellaneous +Poems_, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious +exaggeration. Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could +have penned her startling numbers. I suggest that she retained more of +her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit. +In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people +were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:-- + + A home where Jesus Christ is King, + A home where e'en Archangels sing, + Where common wealth is shared by all, + And God Himself lights up the Hall. + +She was philosemite, and from the reference to Lord Beaconsfield we can +easily date the following:-- + + You who doubt the truth of Scripture, + Pray tell me, then, who are the Jews? + Scattered in all lands and nations, + Pray why their evidence refuse? + + It seems to me you must be blind; + Are they not daily gaining ground? + We find them now in every land, + And well-nigh ruling all around. + + Their music is most sweet to hear; + Jews were Rossini and Mozart, + Mendelssohn, too, and Meyerbeer; + Grisi in song could charm the heart. + + The funds their princes hold in hand; + Their merchants trade both near and far; + Ill-used and robbed they long have been, + Yet wealthy now they surely are. + + In Germany who has great sway? + Prince Bismarck, most will answer me; + Our own Prime Minister retains + A name that shows his pedigree. + + Who after this will dare to say + They nought in these strange people see; + Do they not prove the Scripture true, + And throw a light on history? + +The twenty-five years that have elapsed since the poem was written must +have convinced those innocent persons who 'saw nought' in our Israelitish +compatriots. I never heard before that Prince Bismarck or Mozart was of +Jewish extraction! + +Mrs. Farrer was, of course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so +late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may +expect. She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of +her muse. When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were +talking 'art for art's sake,' she could strike a decisive didactic blow:-- + + My voice like thunder may appear, + Yet oft-times I have shed a tear + Behind the peal, like rain in storm, + To moisten those I would reform. + + Then pardon if my stormy mood, + Instead of blighting, does some good. + Sooner a thunder-clap, think me, + Than sunstroke sent in wrath on thee. + +With a splendid Calvinism, too rare at that time, she would not argue +beyond a _certain_ limit; there was an edge, she realised, to every +platform; an ounce of assertion is worth pounds of proof. Religious +discussion after a time becomes barren:-- + + Then hundredfolds to sinners + Must be repaid in Hell. + If you think such men winners, + We disagree. Farewell. + +But to the person who _is_ right (and Mrs. Farrer was never in a moment's +doubt, though her prosody is influenced sometimes by the sceptical +Matthew Arnold) there is no mean reward:-- + + I sparkle resplendent, + A star in His crown, + And glitter for ever, + A gem of renown. + +From internal evidence we can gauge her social position, while her views +of caste appear in these radical days a trifle _demode_. Her metaphors +of sin are all derived from the life of paupers:-- + + Paupers through their sinful folly + Are workers of iniquity, + Living on Jehovah's bounty, + Wasting in abject poverty. + + A pauper's funeral their end, + No angels waft their souls on high; + Rich they were thought on earth, perhaps, + Yet far from wealth accursed they lie. + + Who are the rich? God's Word declares, + The men whose treasure is above-- + Those humble working _gentlefolk_ + Whose life flows on in deeds of love. + + Despised in life I may remain, + Misunderstood by rich and poor; + An entrance yet I hope to gain + To wealthy plains on endless shore. + + No paupers in that heavenly land, + The sons of God are rich indeed; + His daughters all His treasures share; + It will their highest hopes exceed. + +Those paupers who are 'saved' are rewarded by material comforts such as +graced the earthly home of Georgiana herself, one of the 'humble working +_gentlefolk_.' She enjoys her own fireside with an almost Pecksniffian +relish, and she profoundly observes, as she sits beside her hearth:-- + + Like forest trees men rise and grow: + Good timber some will prove, + Others decayed as fuel piled, + Prepared are for that stove + + That burns for ever, Tophet called, + Heated by jealous heat, + Adapted to destroy all chaff, + And leaves unscorched the wheat. + +Excellent Georgiana! She could not stand very much chaff of any kind, I +suspect. + +The alarming progress of ritualism in the 'eighties disturbed her +considerably, though it inspired some of her more weighty verses. They +should be favourites with Dr. Clifford and Canon Hensley Henson:-- + + Some men in our days cover over + A body deformed with their sin: + A cross worked in various colours, + Forgetting that God looks within. + + Alas! in our churches at present + Simplicity seems quite despised; + To represent things far above us + Are heathenish customs revived. + + This evil is spreading among us, + And where will it end, can you tell? + Join not with the misled around us, + Take warning, my readers . . . + +The veneration of the Blessed Virgin goaded her into composition of +stanzas unparalleled in the whole literature of Protestantism:-- + + My readers, can you nowhere see + A parallel to Israel's sin? + The House of God, at home, abroad: + _Idols are there_--that house within. + + Who incense burns? are strange cakes made? + What woman's chapel, decked with gold, + Stands full of unchecked worshippers + Like those idolaters of old? + + The Blessed Virgin--blest she is + That does not make her Heaven's Queen! + Yet some are taught to worship her; + What else does all this teaching mean? + +What she denied to the Mother of God she accorded (rather daringly, I +opine) to one Harriet, whose death and future are recorded in the +following lines:-- + + Declining like the setting sun + After a course divinely run, + I saw a maiden passing fair + Reposing on an easy chair. + + A Bridegroom of celestial mien + Came forth and claimed her for His Queen; + One with His Father on His throne + She lives entirely His own. + +Harrietolatry, I thought, was confined to the members of the defunct +Shelley Society. But every reader will feel the poignant truth of Mrs. +Farrer's view of the Church of England--truer to-day than it could have +been in the 'eighties:-- + + The Church of England--grand old ship-- + Toss'd is on a troubled sea! + Her sails are rent, her decks are foul'd, + Mutiny on board must be. + + The winds of discord howl around, + Wild disputers throw up foam, + From high to low she's beat about; + Frighten'd some who love her roam. + +I do not know if the last word is intended for a pun, but I scarcely +think it is likely. + +I would like to reconstruct Mrs. Farrer's home, with its stiff Victorian +chairs, its threaded antimacassars, its pictorial paper-weights, its wax +flowers under glass shades, and the charming household porcelain from the +Derby and Worcester furnaces. There must have been a sabbatic air of +comfort about the dining-room which was soothing. I can see the +engravings after Landseer: 'The Stag at Bay,' 'Dignity and Impudence'; or +those after Martin: 'The Plains of Heaven,' and 'The Great Day of His +Wrath'; and 'Blucher meeting Wellington,' after Maclise. I can see on +each side of the mirror examples of the art of Daguerre, which have +already begun to produce in us the same sentiment that we get from the +early Tuscans; and on the mantelpiece a photograph of Harriet in a plush +frame, the one touch of modernity in a room which was otherwise severely +1845. Then, on a bookshelf which hung above the old tea-caddy and cut- +glass sugar-bowl, Georgiana's library--'Line upon Line,' 'Precept upon +Precept,' 'Jane the Cottager,' 'Pinnock's Scripture History,' and a few +costly works bound in the style of the Albert Memorial. The +drawing-room, just a trifle damp, must have contained Mr. Hunt's 'Light +of the World,' which Mrs. Farrer never quite learned to love, though it +was a present from a missionary, and rendered fire and artificial light +unnecessary during the winter months. Would that Mrs. Farrer's home-life +had come under the magic lens of Mr. Edmund Gosse, for it would now be +classic, like the household of Sir Thomas More. + +Whatever its attractions, Mrs. Farrer was at times induced to go abroad, +visiting, I imagine, only the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. She +stayed, however, in Paris, which she apostrophises with Sibyllic +candour:-- + + O city of pleasure, what did I see + When passing through or staying in thee. + Bright shone the sun above, blue was the sky, + Everywhere music heard, none seemed to sigh. + Beautiful carriages in Champs Elysee + Filled with fair maidens on cushions easy. + Such was the outer side; what was within? + Most I was often told revelled in sin. + Sad its fate since I left, sadder 'twill be + If they go on in sin as seen by me. + Let us hope, ere too late, warned by the past, + They may seek pleasures more likely to last, + Or, like to Babylon, it must decline, + And o'er its ruins its lovers repine. + +But London hardly fares much better, in spite of Mrs. Farrer's own +residence, at Campden Hill, if I may hazard the locality:-- + + To the tomb they must go, + Rich and poor all in woe, + Strange motley throng. + Wealth in its splendour weeps, + Poverty silence keeps; + None last here long. . . . + So much for thee, London. + +Except in a spiritual sense, her existence was not an eventful one. It +was, I think, the loss of some neighbour's child which suggested:-- + + Nellarina, forced exotic, + Born to bloom in region fair, + Thou wert to me a narcotic, + Hope I did thy lot to share. + +Any near personal sorrow she does not seem to have experienced, I am glad +to say, else she might have regarded it as a grievance the consequences +of which one dares not contemplate; you feel that _Some One_ would have +heard of it in no measured terms. Certainty and content are, indeed, the +dominating notes of her poetry rather than mere commonplace hope:-- + + I am bound for the land of Beulah, + There all the guests sing Hallelujah. + No longer time here let us squander, + But on the good things promised ponder. + +It would be futile to discuss the exact position on Parnassus of a lady +whose throne was secured on a more celestial mountain, even more +difficult of access. But I think we may claim for her an honourable +place in that new Oxford school of poetry of which Professor Mackail +officially knows little, and of which Dr. Warren (the President of +Magdalen) is the distinguished living protagonist. With all her acrid +Evangelicalism she was a good soul, for she was fond of animals and +children, and kind to them both in her own way; so I am sure some of her +dreams have been realised, even if there has reached her nostrils just a +whiff of those tolerating purgatorial fires which, spelt differently, she +believed to be _permanently_ prepared for the vast majority of her +contemporaries. + +_To_ MRS. CAREW. + + + + +GOING UP TOP. + + +During the closing years of the last century certain critics contracted a +rather depressing habit of numbering men of letters, especially poets, as +though they were overcoats in a cloak-room, or boys competing in an +examination set by themselves. 'It requires very little discernment,' +wrote the late Churton Collins, A.D. 1891, 'to foresee that among the +English poets of the present century the first place will _ultimately_ be +assigned to Wordsworth, the second to Byron, and the third to Shelley.' +Matthew Arnold, I fear, was the first to make these unsafe Zadkielian +prognostications. He, if I remember correctly, gave Byron the first +place and Wordsworth the second; but Swinburne, with his usual +discernment, observed that English taste in that eventuality would be in +the same state as it was at the end of the seventeenth century, which +firmly believed that Fletcher and Jonson were the best of its poets. + +But when is Ultimately? Obviously not the present moment. Byron does +not hold the rank awarded him by the distinguished critic in 1891. The +cruel test of the auctioneer's hammer has recently shown that Keats and +Shelley are regarded as far more important by those unprejudiced judges, +the book-dealers. Wordsworth, of course, is still one of the poets' +poets, and the _Spectator_, that Mrs. Micawber of literature, will, of +course, never desert him; but I doubt very much whether he has yet +reached the harbour of Ultimately. His repellent personality has blinded +a good many of us to his exquisite qualities; on the Greek Kalends of +criticism, however, may I be there to see. I shall certainly vote for +him if I am one of the examiners--or one of the cloak-room attendants. + +It was against such kind of criticism that Whistler hurled his impatient +epigram about pigeon-holes. And if it is absurd in regard to painting, +how much more absurd is it in regard to the more various and less friable +substances of literature. By the old ten-o'clock rule (I do not refer to +Whistler's lecture), once observed in Board schools, no scripture could +be taught after that hour. Once a teacher asked his class who was the +wisest man. 'Solomon,' said a little boy. 'Right; go up top,' said the +teacher. But there was a small pedant who, while never paying much +attention to the lessons, and being usually at the bottom of the form in +consequence, knew the regulations by heart. He interrupted with a shrill +voice (for the clock had passed the hour), 'No, sir, please, sir; past +ten o'clock, sir . . . Solon.' Thus it is, I fear, with critics of every +generation, though they try very hard to make the time pass as slowly as +possible. + +But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, +I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great +man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we +have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to +me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become +Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current +literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher. + +During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very +diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well- +known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in +the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic +structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir +Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered +forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and +ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a +hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five +Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy +of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest +Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the +_Evening News_ list. The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was +recalled with indifferent accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our +hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of +that most charming game, _suck-pencil_. + +At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest +living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard +players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room. +Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement. +One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was +Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of +the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary +interest: + +Hall Caine. + +Marie Corelli. + +Rudyard Kipling. + +Lord Northcliffe. + +Sir Thomas Lipton. + +Hichens. + +Chamberlain. + +Barrie. + +George Alexander. + +Beerbohm Tree. + +I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual. +There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of +King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a +stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal +Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer +with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife; +three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a +picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a +baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only +point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the +ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse, +however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a +pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I +suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all +abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord +Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian +De Wet; but on discovery of documents he was ruled out, in spite of my +pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, +too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to +me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in +the Album at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows: + +H. G. Wells. + +C. H. Shannon. + +Bernard Shaw. + +Thomas Hardy. + +Lord Northcliffe. + +Edmund Gosse. + +Andrew Lang. + +Oliver Lodge. + +Dom Gasquet. + +Reginald Turner. + +Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without +scholarship, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and +the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in +showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of +poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord +Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private +imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of +Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought +C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly +convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature. +The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to +the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of +the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it +was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper +were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the +election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a +massive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk +pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result: + +Frank Richardson. + +Marie Corelli. + +John Roberts. + +C. B. Fry. + +Eustace Miles. + +Robert Hichens. + +T. P. O'Connor. + +Lord Lyonesse. + +Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People). + +Hall Caine. + +The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler +himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the +vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is +interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of +_belles lettres_ who is appreciated in the servants' hall! The other +names we associate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than +literature. + +The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in +the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded). +Every one by this time had caught the _suck-pencil_ fever. By general +consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being +thus one hundred. And what, you will ask, came of it all? I suggest +that readers should guess. Any one interested should fill up, cut out, +and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first. + +_I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were_: + +1 . . . . . . . . . . + +2 . . . . . . . . . . + +3 . . . . . . . . . . + +4 . . . . . . . . . . + +5 . . . . . . . . . . + +6 . . . . . . . . . . + +7 . . . . . . . . . . + +8 . . . . . . . . . . + +9 . . . . . . . . . . + +10 . . . . . . . . . . + +A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of +To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot. + + + + +MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.' + + +In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The +second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost +universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they +do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of +Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair +chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in +the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors +who have just passed away. A few of our great writers--Ruskin and +Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by +a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is +contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination, +owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for +us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer +live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component +part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the +least of these was Walter Pater. + +His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his +death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a +daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of +innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To +a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small +souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so +strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only +the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end +with Lord Macaulay. + +It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more +discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been +chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present +day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on +deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and +their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to +dissipate. From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and +critical acumen. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His +book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature +itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a +triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the +University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's +geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false +quantity. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not +the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round +which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on +Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces +winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace +'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which +Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the +'_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _passe_ in the +light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of +Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly +satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are +being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and +perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to +the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma +fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_. But +perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to +the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871. +_Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence. + +Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture' +is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority. A more +serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in +_Apollo in Picardy_--'_rebellious_ masses of black hair.' This is the +only instance in the _parfait prosateur_, as Bourget called him, of a +cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.' Then it is possible to differ from Mr. +Benson in his criticism of the _Imaginary Portraits_ (the four fair ovals +in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the +_Renaissance_. _Gaston_ is the failure Pater thought it was, and +_Emerald Uthwart_ is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious +tenderness for it. One sentence he abandons as absolute folly. The +grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses +compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect +anatomy. Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and +interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he +has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself +as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well- +bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel +sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of _Denys +l'Auxerrois_ as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last +quality, so obvious in _Uthwart_, he seems to condone. + +Again, _Marius the Epicurean_ is a failure by Pater's own high standard: +you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson. + +Dulness is by no means its least fault. In scheme it is not unlike _John +Inglesant_; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of +Shorthouse. Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the +incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of +sequence. In the historical panorama which moves behind _Inglesant_, +there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is +conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know. In +_Marius_ the background is merely a backcloth for mental _poses +plastiques_. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they +move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and +the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies +are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius, +Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a +pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there +is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a +plaster cast. The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image +make it resemble the _ex voto_ Madonnas of continental churches--a shrine +in literature but not a lighthouse. + +I sometimes wonder what Pater would have become had he been a Cambridge +man, and if the more strenuous University might have _forced_ him into +greater sympathy with modernity; or if he had been born in America, as he +nearly was, and Harvard acted as the benign stepmother of his days. Such +speculations are not beyond all conjecture, as Sir Thomas Browne said. I +think he would have been exactly the same. + +On the occasion of Pater's lecture on Prosper Merimee, his friends +gathered round the platform to congratulate him; he expressed a hope that +the audience was able to hear what he said. 'We overheard you,' said +Oscar Wilde. 'Ah, you have a phrase for everything,' replied the +lecturer, the only contemporary who ever influenced himself, Wilde +declared. How admirable both of the criticisms! Pater is an aside in +literature, and that is why he was sometimes overlooked, and may be so +again in ages to come. Though he is the greatest master of style the +century produced, he can never be regarded as part of the structure of +English prose. He is, rather, one of the ornaments, which often last, +long after a structure has perished. His place will be shifted, as +fashions change. Like some exquisite piece of eighteenth-century +furniture perchance he may be forgotten in the attics of literature +awhile, only to be rediscovered. And as Fuseli said of Blake, 'he is +damned good to steal from.' If he uses words as though they were +pigments, and sentences like vestments at the Mass, it is not merely the +ritualistic cadence of his harmonies which makes his works imperishable, +but the ideas which they symbolise and evoke. Pater thinks beautifully +always, about things which some people do not think altogether beautiful, +perhaps; and sometimes he thinks aloud. We overhear him, and feel almost +the shame of the eavesdropper. + +Mr. Benson has approached Walter Pater, the man, with almost sacerdotal +deference. He suggests ingeniously where you can find the +self-revelation in _Gaston_ and _The Child in the House_. This is far +more illuminating than the recollections of personal friends whose +reminiscences are modelled on those of Captain Sumph. Mr. Humphry Ward +remembers Pater only once being angry--it was in the Common Room--it was +with X, an elderly man! The subject of the difference was 'modern +lectures.' 'Relations between them were afterwards strained.' Mr. +Arthur Symons remembers that he intended to bring out a new volume of +_Imaginary Portraits_. Fancy that! Really, when friends begin to tell +stories of that kind, I begin to suspect they are trying to conceal +something. Perhaps we have no right to know everything or anything about +the amazing personalities of literature; but Henleys and Purcells lurk +and leak out even at Oxford; and that is not the way to silence them. +Just when the aureole is ready to be fitted on, some horrid graduate +(Litterae _in_humaniores) inks the statue. Anticipating something of the +kind, Mr. Benson is careful to insist on the divergence between Rossetti +and Pater, and on page eighty-six says something which is ludicrously +untrue. If self-revelation can be traced in _Gaston_, it can be found +elsewhere. There are sentences in _Hippolytus Veiled_, the _Age of the +Athletic_ _Prizemen_, and _Apollo in Picardy_, which not only explode Mr. +Benson's suggestions, but illustrate the objections he urges against +_Denys l'Auxerrois_. They are passages where Pater thinks aloud. If +Rossetti wore his heart on the sleeve, Pater's was just above the cuff, +like a bangle; though it slips down occasionally in spite of the alb +which drapes the hieratic writer not always discreetly. + +(1906.) + + + + +SIMEON SOLOMON. + + +A good many years ago, before the Rhodes scholars invaded Oxford, there +lingered in that home of lost causes and unpopular names, the afterglow +of the aesthetic sunset. It was not a very brilliant period. Professor +Mackail and Mr. Bowyer Nichols had left Balliol. Nothing was expected of +either the late Sir Clinton Dawkins or Canon Beeching; and the +authorities of Merton could form no idea where Mr. Beerbohm would +complete his education. Names are more suggestive than dates and give +less pain. Then, as now, there were 'cultured' undergraduates, and those +who were very cultured indeed, read Shelley and burned incense, would +always have a few photographs after Simeon Solomon on their walls--little +notes of illicit sentiment to vary the monotony of Burne-Jones and +Botticelli. When uncles and aunts came up for Gaudys and Commem., while +'Temperantia' and the 'Primavera' were left in their places, 'Love dying +from the breath of Lust,' 'Antinous,' and other drawings by Solomon with +titles from the Latin Vulgate, were taken down for the occasion. Views +of the sister University, Cambridge took their places, being more +appropriate to Uncle Parker's and Aunt Jane's tastes. More advanced +undergraduates, who 'knew what things were,' possessed even originals. +Now the unfortunate artist is dead his career can be mentioned without +prejudice. + +Simeon Solomon was born in 1841. He was the third son of Michael +Solomon, a manufacturer of Leghorn hats, and the first Jew ever admitted +to the Freedom of London. The elder brother, Abraham, became a +successful painter of popular subjects ('Waiting for the Verdict' and +'First and Third Class'), and died on the day of his election to the +Academy! Rebecca a sister who was also a painter, copied with success +some of Millais's pictures. At the age of sixteen Simeon exhibited at +the Academy, though beyond a short training at Leigh's Art School in +Newman Street he was almost self-taught. He was an early and intimate +friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, with whose art he had much in common, +though it is only for convenience that he is included in the school. Like +Whistler, he was profoundly affected by the genius of Rossetti. Racial +and other causes removed him from any real affinity to the archaistic +moralatarianism of Mr. Holman Hunt. For obvious reasons the +Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are silent about him, but Burne-Jones was said to +have maintained, in after years, 'that he was the greatest artist of us +all.' Throughout the sixties Solomon was one of those black-and-white +draughtsmen whose contributions to the magazines have made the period +famous in English art. He found ready purchasers for his pictures and +drawings, not only among the well-to-do Hebrew community, such as Dr. +Ernest Hart, his brother's brother-in-law, but with well-known Christian +collectors like Mr. Leathart. He was on intimate terms with Walter +Pater, of whom he executed one of the only two known portraits; and in +the _Greek Studies_ will be found a graceful reference to the 'young +Hebrew painter' whose 'Bacchus' at the Academy obviously contributed to +the 'gem-like' flame of which we have heard so much. + +In a short-lived magazine, the _Dark Blue_, of July 1871, may be found a +characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, _A +Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep_, his only literary work, now a great +rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most +interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the first years +of his early and brilliant celebrity as a young artist of high +imagination, power, and promise,' Swinburne says, 'he has been at work +long enough to enable us to define at least certain salient and dominant +points of his genius . . . I have heard him likened to Heine as a kindred +Hellenist of the Hebrews; Grecian form and beauty divide the allegiance +of his spirit with Hebrew shadow and majesty.' It would be difficult to +add anything further, in praise of the unfortunate artist, to the poet's +eloquent eulogy of his friend's talents. An interesting piece of +autobiography is afforded in the same article, where Swinburne tells us +that his own poem of 'Erotion,' in the first series of _Poems and +Ballads_, was written for a drawing by Simeon Solomon; and in another +number of the same magazine there appeared 'The End of the Month,' to +accompany a new design of Solomon's, the poem appearing later in the +second series of _Poems and Ballads_. Very few English artists--not even +Millais--began life with fairer prospects. Thackeray wrote in one of the +'Roundabout Papers' for 1860: 'For example, one of the pictures I admired +most at the Royal Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my +knowledge, set eyes. The picture is (346) "Moses," by S. Solomon. I +thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly represented to my mind +the dark children of the Egyptian bondage. . . . My newspaper says: "Two +ludicrously ugly women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing +object," and so good-bye, Mr. S. S.' This beautiful picture, painted +when the artist was only nineteen, is now in the collection of Mr. W. G. +Rawlinson, and was seen quite recently at the Franco-British Exhibition, +where those familiar with his work considered it one of Solomon's +masterpieces. Very few students of Thackeray realised, however, that the +painter thus singled out for praise formed the subject of a sordid +inquest reported in the _Times_ of August 18th, 1905. + +That Solomon's pictures were at first better known to the public than +those of his now more famous associates is shown by Robert Buchanan +confessing that he had scarcely seen any of their works except those of +Solomon, which he proceeded to attack in the famous _The Fleshly School +of Poetry_. As a sort of justification of the criticism, in the early +seventies, the extraordinary artist had become a pariah. He was +imprisoned for a short while, and on his release was placed in a private +asylum by his friends. Scandal having subsided, since he showed no +further signs of eccentricity, he was, by arrangement, sent out to post a +letter in order that he might have a chance of quietly escaping and +returning to the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half +an hour!--a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was +subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily +downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort +was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for +him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent +his week-ends in the lock-up. Several picture-dealers tried giving him +an allowance, but he turned up intoxicated to demand advances, and the +police had to be called in. He was found selling matches in the Mile End +Road and tried his hand at pavement decoration without much success. The +companion of Walter Pater and Swinburne became the associate of thieves +and blackmailers. A story is told that one afternoon he called for +assistance at the house of a well-known artist, a former friend, from +whom he received a generous dole. Observing that the remote +neighbourhood of the place lent itself favourably to burgling operations, +Solomon visited his benefactor the same evening in company with a +housebreaker. They were studying the dining-room silver when they were +disturbed; both were in liquor, and the noise they made roused the +sleepers above. The unwilling host good-naturedly dismissed them! + +Though a very delightful book might be made of his life by some one who +would not shirk the difficulties of the subject, it is unnecessary here +to dwell further on a career which belongs to the history of morbid +psychology rather than of painting. After drifting from the stream of +social existence into a Bohemian backwater, he found himself in the main +sewer. This he thoroughly enjoyed in his own particular way, and +rejected fiercely all attempts at rescue or reform. To his other old +friends, such as Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, there must have been +something very tragic in the contemplation of his wasted talents, for few +young painters were more successful. Any one curious enough to study his +pictures will regret that he was lost to art by allowing an ill-regulated +life to prey upon his genius. He had not sufficient strength to keep the +two things separate, as Shakespeare, Verlaine, and Leonardo succeeded in +doing. At the same time, it is a consolation to think that he enjoyed +himself in his own sordid way. When I had the pleasure of seeing him +last, so lately as 1893, he was extremely cheerful and not aggressively +alcoholic. Unlike most spoilt wastrels with the artistic temperament, he +seemed to have no grievances, and had no bitter stories or complaints +about former friends, no scandalous tales about contemporaries who had +remained reputable; no indignant feeling towards those who assisted him. +This was an amiable, inartistic trait in his character, though it may be +a trifle negative; and for a positive virtue, as I say, he enjoyed his +drink, his overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of +delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and +prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far +more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to +which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor +Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, with keen, laughing +eyes. + +By 1887 he entirely ceased to produce work of any value. He poured out a +quantity of pastels at a guinea apiece. They are repulsive and +ill-drawn, with the added horror of being the shadows of once splendid +achievements. Long after his name could be ever mentioned except in +whispers, Mr. Hollyer issued a series of photographs of some of the fine +early sanguine, Indian ink, and pencil drawings. The originals are +unique of their kind. It is very easy to detect the unwholesome element +which has inspired many of them, even the titles being indicative: +'Sappho,' 'Antinous,' 'Amor Sacramentum.' One of the finest, 'Love dying +from the breath of Lust,' of which also he painted a picture, became +quite popular in reproduction owing to the moral which was screwed out of +it. Another, of 'Dante meeting Beatrice at a Child's Party,' is +particularly fascinating. To the present generation his work is perhaps +too 'literary,' and his technique is by no means faultless; but the +slightest drawing is informed by an idea, nearly always a beautiful one, +however exotic. The faceless head and the headless body of shivering +models dear to modern art students were absent from Solomon's designs. +His pigments, both in water-colour and oils, are always harmonious, pure +in tone, and rich without being garish. We need not try to frighten +ourselves by searching too curiously for hidden meanings. His whole art +is, of course, unwholesome and morbid, to employ two very favourite +adjectives. His work has always appealed to musicians and men of letters +rather than collectors--to those who ask that a drawing or a picture +should suggest an idea rather than the art of the artist. Subject with +him triumphs over drawing. He is sometimes hopelessly crude; but during +the sixties, when, as some one said, 'every one was a great artist,' he +showed considerable promise of draughtsmanship. His pictures are less +fantastic than the drawings, and aim at probability, even when they are +allegorical, or, as is too often the case, _odd_ in sentiment. He is +apparently never concerned with what are called 'problems,' the +articulation of forms, or any fidelity to nature beyond the human frame. +Unlike many of the Pre-Raphaelites, he showed a feeling for the medium of +oil. His friends and contemporaries, with the exception of Millais, and +Rossetti occasionally, were always more at ease with water-colour or +gouache, and you feel that most of their pictures ought to have been +painted in _tempera_, the technique of which was not then understood. +Since Millais was of French extraction, Rossetti of Italian, and Solomon +of Hebrew, I fear this does not get us very much further away from the +old French criticism that the English had forgotten or never learnt how +to paint in oil. It must be remembered that Whistler, who in the sixties +achieved some of his masterpieces, was an American. + +It is strange that Solomon did not allow a sordid existence to alter the +trend of his subjects, for these are always derived from poetry and the +Bible, or from Catholic, Jewish, or Greek Orthodox ritual--a strange +contrast to the respectable, impeccable painter, M. Degas, the doyen of +European art, nationalist and anti-Semite, who finds beauty only in +brasseries, in the vulgar circus, and in the ghastly wings of the opera. +How far removed from his surroundings are the inspirations of the artist! +I believe J. F. Millet would have painted peasants if he had been born +and spent his days in the centre of New York. With the life-long friend +of M. Degas--Gustave Moreau--Solomon had much in common, but the colour +of the English Hebrew is much finer, and his themes are less monotonous. +I can imagine many people being repelled by this troubled introspective +art, especially at the present day. There is hardly room for an inverted +Watts. At the same time, even those who from age and training cannot +take a sentimental interest in faded rose-leaves, whose perfume is a +little overpowering, may care to explore an interesting byway of art. For +poor Solomon there was no place in life. Casting reality aside, he +stepped back into the riotous pages of Petronius. Perhaps on the Paris +boulevards, with Verlaine and Bibi la Puree, he might have enjoyed a +distinct artistic individuality. Expeditions conducted by Mr. Arthur +Symons might have been organized in order to view him at some popular +cafe. Mr. George Moore might have written about him. But in respectable +London he was quite impossible. In the temple of Art, which is less +Calvinistic than artists would have us suppose, he will always have his +niche. To the future English Vasari he will be a real gold-mine. + +(1905.) + + + + +AUBREY BEARDSLEY. + + +Middle-aged, middle-class people, with a predilection for mediaeval art, +still believe that subject is an important factor in a picture or +drawing. I am one of the number. The subject need not be literary or +historical. After you have discussed in the latest studio jargon its +carpentry, valued the tones and toned the values, motive or theme must +affect your appreciation of a picture, your desire, or the contrary, to +possess it. That the artist is able to endow the unattractive, and woo +you to surrender, I admit. Unless, however, you are a pro-Boer in art +matters, and hold that Rembrandt and the Boer school (the greatest +technicians who ever lived) are finer artists than Titian, you will find +yourself preferring Gainsborough to Degas, and the unskilful Whistler to +the more accomplished Edouard Manet. Long ago French critics invented an +aesthetic formula to conceal that poverty of imagination which sometimes +stares from their perfectly executed pictures, and this was eagerly +accepted by certain Englishmen, both painters and writers. Yet, when an +artist frankly deals with forbidden subjects, the canons regular of +English art begin to thunder; the critics forget their French accent; the +old Robert Adam, which is in all of us, asserts himself; we fly for the +fig-leaves. + +I am led to these reflections by the memory of Aubrey Beardsley, and the +reception which his work received, not from the British public, but from +the inner circle of advanced intellectuals. Too much occupied with the +obstetrics of art, his superfluity of naughtiness has tarnished his niche +in the temple of fame. 'A wish to _epater le bourgeois_,' says Mr. +Arthur Symons, 'is a natural one.' I do not think so; at least, in an +artist. Now much of Beardsley's work shows the _eblouissement_ of the +burgess on arriving at Montmartre for the first time--a weakness he +shared with some of his contemporaries. This must be conceded in +praising a great artist for a line which he never drew, after you have +taken the immortal Zero's advice and divested yourself of the scruples. + +'I would rather be an Academician than an artist,' said Aubrey Beardsley +to me one day. 'It takes thirty-nine men to make an Academician, and +only one to make an artist.' In that sneer lay all his weakness and his +strength. Grave friends (in those days it was the fashion) talked to him +of 'Dame Nature.' '_Damn Nature_!' retorted Aubrey Beardsley, and pulled +down the blinds and worked by gaslight on the finest days. But he was a +real Englishman, who from his glass-house peppered the English public. No +Latin could have contrived his arabesque. The grotesques of Jerome Bosch +are positively pleasant company beside many of Beardsley's inventions. +Even in his odd little landscapes, with their twisted promontories +sloping seaward, he suggested mocking laughter; and the flowers of 'Under +the Hill' are cackling in the grass. + +An essay, which Mr. Arthur Symons published in 1897, has always been +recognised as far the most sympathetic and introspective account of this +strange artist's work. It has been reissued, with additional +illustrations, by Messrs. Dent. Those who welcome it as one of the most +inspiring criticisms from an always inspired critic, will regret that +eight of the illustrations belong to the worst period of Beardsley's art. +Kelmscott dyspepsia following on a surfeit of Burne-Jones, belongs to the +pathology of style; it is a phase that should be produced by the +prosecution, not by the eloquent advocate for the defence. Moreover, I +do not believe Mr. Arthur Symons admires them any more than I do; he +never mentions them in his text. 'Le Debris d'un Poete,' the 'Coiffing,' +'Chopin's Third Ballad,' and those for _Salome_ would have sufficed. With +these omissions the monograph might have been smaller; but it would have +been more truly representative of Beardsley's genius and Mr. Arthur +Symons's taste. + +At one time or another every one has been brilliant about Beardsley. +'Born Puck, he died Pierrot,' said Mr. MacColl in one of the superb +phrases with which he gibbets into posterity an art or an artist he +rather dislikes. 'The Fra Angelico of Satanism,' wrote Mr. Roger Fry of +an exhibition of the drawings. There seems hardly anything left even for +Mr. Arthur Symons to write. Long anterior to these particular fireworks, +however, his criticism is just as fresh as it was twelve years ago. I +believe it will always remain the terminal essay. + +The preface has been revised, and I could have wished for some further +revision. Why is the name of Leonard Smithers--here simply called _a_ +publisher--omitted, when the other Capulets and Montagus are faithfully +recorded? When no one would publish Beardsley's work, Smithers stepped +into the breach. I do not know that the _Savoy_ exactly healed the +breach between Beardsley and the public, but it gave the artist another +opportunity; and Mr. Arthur Symons an occasion for song. Leonard +Smithers, too, was the most delightful and irresponsible publisher I ever +knew. Who remembers without a kindly feeling the little shop in the +Royal Arcade with its tempting shelves; its limited editions of _5000_ +copies; the shy, infrequent purchaser; the upstairs room where the roar +of respectable Bond Street came faintly through the tightly-closed +windows; the genial proprietor? In the closing years of the nineteenth +century his silhouette reels (my metaphor is drawn from a Terpsichorean +and Caledonian exercise) across an artistic horizon of which the _Savoy_ +was the afterglow. Again, why is Mr. Arthur Symons so precise about +forgetting the date of Beardsley's expulsion from the _Yellow Book_? It +was in April 1895, April 10th. A number of poets and writers blackmailed +Mr. Lane by threatening to withdraw their own publications unless the +Beardsley Body was severed from the Bodley Head. I am glad to have this +opportunity, not only of paying a tribute to the courage of my late +friend Smithers, but of defending my other good friend, Mr. John Lane, +from the absurd criticism of which he was too long the victim. He could +hardly be expected to wreck a valuable business in the cause of unpopular +art. Quite wrongly Beardsley's designs had come to be regarded as the +pictorial and sympathetic expression of a decadent tendency in English +literature. But if there was any relation thereto, it was that of +Juvenal towards Roman Society. Never was mordant satire more evident. If +Beardsley is carried away in spite of himself by the superb invention of +_Salome_, he never forgets his hatred of its author. It is +characteristic that he hammered beauty from the gold he would have +battered into caricature. _Salome_ has survived other criticism and +other caricature. And Mr. Lane once informed an American interviewer +that since that April Fool's Day poetry has ceased to sell altogether. +The bards unconsciously committed suicide; and the _Yellow Book_ perished +in the odour of sanctity. + +Recommending the perusal of some letters (written by Beardsley to an +unnamed friend) published some years ago, Mr. Arthur Symons says: 'Here, +too, we are in the presence of the real thing.' I venture to doubt this. +I do not doubt Beardsley's sincerity in the religion he embraced, but his +expression of it in the letters. At least, I hope it was insincere. The +letters left on some of us a disagreeable impression, at least of the +recipient. You wonder if this pietistic friend received a copy of the +_Lysistrata_ along with the eulogy of St. Alfonso Liguori and Aphra Behn. +A fescennine temperament is too often allied with religiosity. It +certainly was in Beardsley's case, but I think the other and stronger +side of his character should, in justice to his genius, be insisted upon, +as Mr. Arthur Symons insisted upon it. If we knew that the ill-advised +and unnamed friend was the author of certain pseudo-scientific and +pornographic works issued in Paris, we should be better able to gauge the +unimportance of these letters. Far more interesting would have been +those written to Mr. Joseph Pennell, one of the saner influences; or +those to Aubrey Beardsley's mother and sister. + +'It was at Arques,' says Mr. Arthur Symons . . . 'that I had the only +serious, almost solemn conversation I ever had with Beardsley.' You can +scarcely believe that any of the conversations between the two were other +than serious and solemn, because he approaches Beardsley as he would John +Bunyan or Aquinas. Art, literature and life, are all to this engaging +writer a scholiast's pilgrim's progress. Beside him, Walter Pater, from +whom he derives, seems almost flippant--and to have dallied too long in +the streets of Vanity Fair. + +(1906.) + + + + +ENGLISH AESTHETICS. + + +The law reports in newspapers contain perhaps the only real history of +England that has any relation to truth. Here, too, may be found +indications of current thought, more pregnant than the observations of +historians. They still afford material for the future short or longer +history of the English people by the John Richard Greens of posterity. +This was brought home to me by perusing two cases reported in the +_Morning Post_, that of Mrs. Rita Marsh and the disputed will of Miss +Browne. I yield to no one in my ignorance of English law, but I have +seldom read judgments which seemed so conspicuously unfair, so +characteristic of the precise minimum of aesthetic perception in the +English people. + +The hostelries of Great Britain are famous for their high charges, their +badly-kept rooms, and loathsome cooking; let me add, their warm welcome. +In the reign of Edward III. there was legislation on the subject. The +colder and cheaper hospitality of the Continent strikes a chill, I am +sometimes told by those familiar with both. The hotel selected by a +certain Mrs. Rita Marsh was no exception to the ordinary English +caravanserai. It was 'replete with every comfort.' The garden contained +an _oubliette_, down which Mrs. Marsh, while walking in the evening, +inadvertently fell. On the Continent the _oubliettes_ are inside the +house, and you are ostentatiously warned of their immediate +neighbourhood. These things are managed better in France, if I may say +so without offending Tariff Reformers. + +The accident disfigured Mrs. Marsh for life; and for the loss of unusual +personal attractions an English jury awarded her only 500_l_. The judge +made a joke about it. Mr. Gill was very playful about her photograph, +and every one, except, I imagine, Mrs. Marsh, seems to have been +satisfied that ample justice was done. The hotel proprietors did not +press their counter-claim for a bill of 191_l_.! Chivalrous fellows! +Still, I can safely say that in France Mrs. Marsh would have been awarded +at least four times that amount; though if she had been murdered the +proprietors would have only been fined forty francs. But beauty to its +fortunate possessors is more valuable than life itself, and the story is +to me one of the most pathetic I have ever heard. To the English mind +there is something irresistibly comic when any one falls, morally or +physically. It is the basis of English Farce. Jokes made about those +who have never fallen, 'too great to appease, too high to appal,' are +voted bad taste. Caricaturists of the mildest order are considered +irreligious and vulgar if they burlesque, say, the Archbishop of +Canterbury for example; or unpatriotic if they hint that Lord Roberts did +not really finish the Boer War when he professed to have done so. After +Parnell came to grief I remember the Drury Lane pantomime was full of +fire-escapes, and every allusion to the _cause celebre_ produced roars of +laughter. Mr. Justice Bigham was only a thorough Englishman when he +gently rallied the jury for awarding, as he obviously thought, excessive +damages. So little is beauty esteemed in England. + +The case of Miss Browne was also singular. She left a trust fund 'for +the erection of an ornamental structure of Gothic design, such as a +market cross, tall clock, street lamp-stand, or all combined, in a +central part of London, the plan whereof shall be offered for open +competition, and ultimately decided upon by the Royal Institute of +British Architects.' The President of the Probate Division said _he was +satisfied that Miss Browne was not of sound mind, and pronounced against +the will_, with costs out of the estate. I wonder what the Royal +Institute thinks of this legal testimonial. It seems almost a pity that +some one did not dispute Sir Francis Chantrey's will years ago on similar +grounds. I suggest to Mr. MacColl that it might still be upset. That +would settle once and for all the question whether the administration of +the bequest has evinced evidence of insanity or not. A recent Royal +Commission left the matter undecided. I do not, however, wish to +criticise trustees, but to defend the memory of Miss Browne (who may have +been eccentric in private life) from such a charge, because her +testamentary dispositions were a trifle aesthetic. The will was +un-English in one respect: '_no inscription of my name shall be placed on +such erection_.' Was that the clause which proved her hopelessly mad? +The erection was to be Gothic. I know Gothic is out of fashion just now. +Ruskin is quite over; the Seven Lamps exploded long ago; but Miss Browne +seems to have attended before her death Mr. MacColl's lectures, knew all +about 'masses' and 'tones' in architecture, and wished particular stress +to be laid on 'the general outline as seen from a good distance.' This +is greeted by some of the papers as particularly side-splitting and +eccentric. Looking at the unlovely streets of London, never one of the +more beautiful cities of Europe, where each new building seems contrived +to go one better in sheer _uglitude_ (especially since builders of Tube +stations have ventured into the Vitruvian arena), you can easily suppose +that poor Miss Browne, with her views about 'general outlines seen from a +good distance,' must have appeared hopelessly insane. The decision of +the court is not likely to encourage any further public bequests of this +kind. I have cut the British Museum and the National Gallery out of my +own will already. And I understand why Mr. MacColl, with his passionate +pleading for a living national architecture, for official recognition of +past and present English art, is thought by many good people quite odd. +How he managed to attract the notice of any but the Lunacy Commissioners +I cannot conceive. Valued critic, admired artist, model keeper, I only +hope he will attract no further attention. + +Since it is clear that the law assists in blackening reputations even in +the grave, I claim that other Miss Brownes who take advantage of life, +and time by the forelock to put up monuments in the sufficiently hideous +thoroughfares should be pronounced _non compos mentis_. The perpetrators +of the erection in High Street, Kensington, hard by St. Mary Abbots, may +serve as an example. Inconvenient, vulgar, inapposite, this should debar +even the subscribers from obtaining probate for their wills. I invoke +posthumous revenge, and claim that at least 500_l_. damages should be +paid as compensation to the nearest hospital for the _indignant_ blind, +as my friend Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan calls them in one of his delightful +stories. + +(1906.) + + + + +NON ANGELI SED ANGLI. + + +I wish that the Rokeby Velasquez now firmly secured for the British +nation could have been allowed to remain in Bond Street for a short +while; not to tantalise the foreign countries who so eagerly competed for +its acquisition, nor to emphasise the patriotism of its former owners, +but as a contrast to 'Some Examples of the Independent Art of To-day,' +held at Messrs. Agnew's. Perhaps not as a contrast even, but as a +complement. I do not mean to place all the examples on the same level +with the 'Venus,' though with some I should have preferred to live; yet +the juxtaposition would have asserted the tradition of the younger +painters and the modernity of the older master. 'We are all going +to--Agnew's, and Velasquez will be of the company,' or something like +Gainsborough's dying words would have occurred sooner or later. I am +persuaded that we look at the ancient pictures with frosted magnifying- +glasses, and stare at the younger men from the wrong end of the +binoculars. It was ever thus; it always will be so. Most of us suspect +our contemporaries or juniors. And they--_les jeunes feroces_--are +impatient of their immediate predecessors. _Nos peres out toujours +tort_. Though grandpapa is sometimes quite picturesque; his waistcoat +and old buttons suit us very well. 'Your Raphael is not even divine,' +said Velasquez when he left Rome and that wonderful _p.p.c_. card on the +Doria. 'Your Academicians are not even academic,' some of the younger +painters and their champions are saying to-day. + +I found, moreover, the epithet 'independent,' to qualify an entertaining +and significant exhibition, misleading. For many of the items could only +be so classified in the sense that they were independent of Messrs. Agnew +and the Royal Academy. Mr. Tonks and Professor Brown are official +instructors at the Slade School in London; Mr. C. J. Holmes is Keeper of +the National Portrait Gallery. Mr. Gerard Chowne was a professor at +Liverpool. Mr. Fry is now an official at New York; and the majority of +the painters belonged to two distinctive and _dependent_ groups--the +Glasgow School and the New English Art Club. Intense individualism is +not incompatible with militant collectivism. The only independent +artists, if you except Mr. Nicholson, were Mr. C. H. Shannon and Mr. +Charles Ricketts, who have always stood apart, being neither for the +Royal Academy nor its enemies; their choice is in their pictures. + +I feel it difficult to write of painters for some of whom I acted showman +so long at the Carfax Gallery. I confess that when I heard they were +going to Bond Street my pangs were akin to those of the owner of a small +country circus on learning that his troupe of performing dogs had been +engaged by Mr. Imre Kiralfy or the Hippodrome. A quondam dealer in +ultramontanes, I became an Othello of the trade. And in their grander +quarters (I grieve to say) they looked better than ever, though I would +have chosen another background, something less expensive and more severe. +Yes, they all went through their hoops gracefully. With one exception, I +never saw finer Wilson Steers; the 'Sunset' might well be hung beside the +new Turners, when the gulf between ancient and modern art would be almost +imperceptible. The 'Aliens' of Mr. Rothenstein in the cosmopolitan +society of a public picture gallery would hardly appear foreigners, +because they belong to a country where the inhabitants are racy of every +one else's soil. When time has given an added dignity (if that were +possible) to this work, I can realise how our descendants will laugh at +our lachrymose observations on the decadence of art. The background +against which the stately Hebrew figures are silhouetted is in itself a +liberal education for the aged and those who ask their friends what these +modern fellows mean. + +When the inhabitants of the unceltiferous portion of these islands employ +the adjective _un-English_ you may be sure there is something serious on +the carpet. It is valedictory, expressive of sorrow and contempt rather +than anger. All the other old favourites of vituperative must have +missed fire before this almost sacred, disqualifying Podsnappianism is +applied to the objectionable person, picture, book, behaviour, or +movement. And when the epithet is brought into action, in nine cases out +of ten it is aimed at some characteristic essentially, often blatantly, +Anglo-Saxon. Throughout the nineteenth century all exponents of art and +literature not conforming to Fleet Street ideals were voted un-English; +Byron, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, and, in course of +good time, those artists who formed the New English Art Club. There was +some ground for suspicion of foreign intrigue. They regarded Mr. +Whistler, an American, who flirted with French impressionism, as a +pioneer. Some of their names suggest the magic Orient or the romantic +scenery of the Rhine. But it is not extravagant to assert that if Mr. +Rothenstein had chosen to be born in France or Germany, instead of in +Bradford, his art would have come to us in another form. In his strength +and his weakness he is more English than the English. Art may have +cosmopolitan relations (it is usually a hybrid), but it must take on the +features of the country and people where it grows; or it may change them, +or change the vision of the people of its adoption. Yet Ruth must not +look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong. When +an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French +pigment his work has no permanent significance. Even Professor Legros +unconsciously assimilated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been +slackened; his experiments are often literary. + +It is an error however to regard the exhibitions of the New English Art +Club as a homogeneous movement, such as that of Barbizon and the +Pre-Raphaelite--inspired by a single idea or similar group of ideas. The +members have not even the cohesion of Glasgow or defunct Newlyn. The +only thing they have in common, in common originally with Glasgow, was a +distaste for the tenets and ideals of Burlington House. The serpent (or +was it the animated rod?) of the Academy soon swallowed the +sentimentalities of Newlyn, just as the International boa-constrictor +made short work of Glasgow. And the forbidden fruit of an official Eden +has tempted many members of the Club. Others have resigned from time to +time, but with no ill result--to the Club. Now, the reason for this is +that the members have no dependence on each other, except for the +executive organization of Mr. Francis Bate. It may be doubted if in +their heart of hearts they admire each other's works. They are intense +individualists (personal friends, maybe, in private life) artistically +speaking, on terms of cutting acquaintance at the Slade. + +The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common +denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a +familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable +training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks. The Spartan Mr. Tonks +may not be able to make geniuses, but he has the faculty of turning out +efficient workmen. Whether they become members of the Club or drift into +the haven of Burlington House, at all events they _can_ fly and wear +their aureoles with propriety. A society, however, which contains such +distinctive and assertive personalities as Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Henry +Tonks, Mr. Augustus John, Mr. William Orpen, Mr. Von Glehn, Mr. MacColl, +and Professor Holmes, cannot possess even such unity of purpose as +inspired Mr. Holman Hunt and his associates of the 'fifties. The New +English Art Club is simply an admirably administered association whose +members have rather less in common than is shared by the members of an +ordinary political club. The exhibitions are for this reason intensely +interesting. They cannot be waved aside like mobs, and no comprehensive +epigram can do them even an injustice. + +I never knew any painter worthy of the name who paid the smallest +attention to what a critic says, even in conversation. He will retort; +but he will not change his style or regulate his motives to suit a +critic's palate. So may I now mention their faults? What painter is +without fault? Their faults are shared by _nearly_ all of them; their +virtues are their own. I see among them an absence of any _desire_ for +beauty--for physical beauty. If the artists have fulfilled a mission in +abolishing 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I +think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ignoble. They put a not +very interesting domesticity into their frames. Rossetti, of course, +wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting +object of _virtu_. Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations +and thoughts of the day when modern artists refused to become the +servants of the commune, but asserted themselves as a component part of +an intellectual republic. That is why people only commission portraits, +and prefer to buy old masters who anticipate those better aspirations. +Burne-Jones, however, expressed in paint that longing to be out of the +nineteenth century which was so widespread. Now we are well out of it, +the rising generation does not esteem his works with the same enthusiasm +as the elders. It reads Mr. Wells on the future, and looks into the +convex mirror of Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it does not buy Dubedats to the +extent that it ought to do. The members of the New English Art Club +could, I think, preserve their aesthetic conscience and yet paint +beautiful things and beautiful people. Mr. Steer has now given them a +lead. I wonder what Mr. Winter's opinion would be? He is the best +salesman in London. + +Among dealers, the ancient firm of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi, of which +Thackeray writes, is the _doyen_. That of Messrs. Agnew is the _douane_. +Here it is that the official seal must be set before modern paintings can +pass onwards to the Midlands and the middle classes. Well, I felicitate +the august officials on removing a tariff of prejudice; I felicitate the +young artists who, released from the bondage of the Egyptian Hall, can +now enjoy the lighter air, the larger day, the pasturage and patronage of +Palestine. I compliment the fearless collectors, such as Mr. C. K. +Butler, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Daniel, His Honour Judge Evans, the +Leylands and the Leathearts of a latter day, for ignoring contemporary +ridicule and anticipating the verdict, not of passing fashion but of +posterity. As the servant spoke well of his master while wearing his +clothes which were far too big for him, let me congratulate the +Chrysostom of critics, the Origen who has scourged our heresies, Mr. D. +S. MacColl; because the Greeks have entered Troy or the barbarians the +senate-house. _Dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens_, and let +us mix our metaphors. What was Mr. MacColl's Waterloo was a Canossa for +Messrs. Agnew. + +(1906.) + + + + +MR. HOLMAN HUNT AT THE LEICESTER GALLERIES. + + +An enterprising American syndicate was once formed for manufacturing +Stilton cheeses on a large scale; like the pirated Cheddars from similar +sources, enjoyed by members of most London clubs. Various farms +celebrated for their Stiltons were visited, sums of money being offered +for old family recipes. The simple peasants of the district willingly +parted with copies of their heirlooms, for a consideration, to the +different American agents, who, filled with joy, repaired to their London +offices in order to compare notes, and fully persuaded that England was a +greener country than ever Constable painted it. What was their +mortification on discovering that all the recipes were entirely +different; they could not be reconciled even by machinery. So it is with +Pre-Raphaelitism; every critic believes that he knows the great secret, +and can always quote from one of the brotherhood something in support of +his view. At the beginning the brothers meekly accepted Ruskin's +explanation of their existence; his, indeed, was a very convenient, +though not entirely accurate, exposition of their collective view, if +they can be said to have possessed one. How far Ruskin was out of +sympathy with them, indiscreet memoirs have revealed. An artistic idea, +or a group of ideas, must always be broken gently to the English people, +because the acceptance of them necessitates the swallowing of words. When +the golden ladders are let down from heaven by poets, artists, or critics +even; or new spirits are hovering in the intellectual empyrean, the +patriarch public snoring on its stone pillow wakes up; but he will not +wrestle with the angel. He mistakes the ladders for scaffolding, or some +temporary embarrassment in the street traffic; he orders their instant +removal; he writes angry letters to the papers and invokes the police. +After some time Ruskin's definition of Pre-Raphaelitism was generally +accepted, and then the death of Rossetti produced other recipes for the +Stilton cheese, Mr. Hall Caine being among the grocers. Whatever the +correct definition may be, ungracious and ungrateful though it is to +praise the dead at the expense of the living, it has to be recognised +that among the remarkable group of painters in which even the minor men +were little masters, the greatest artist of them all was Dante Gabriel +Rossetti. 'By critic I mean finding fault,' says Sir William Richmond; +so let us follow his advice, and avoid technical discussion along with +the popular jargon of art criticism. 'After staying two or three hours +in the always-delightful Leicester Galleries, let us walk home and think +a little of what we have seen.' For the essence of beauty there is +nothing of Mr. Holman Hunt's to compare with Rossetti's 'Beloved' or the +'Blue Bower;' and you could name twenty of the poet's water-colours +which, for design, invention, devious symbolism, and religious impulse, +surpass the finest of Mr. Hunt's most elaborate works. Even in the +painter's own special field--the symbolised illustration of Holy Writ--he +is overwhelmed by Millais with the superb 'Carpenter's Shop.' In +Millais, it was well said by Mr. Charles Whibley, 'we were cheated out of +a Rubens.' Millais was the strong man, the great oil-painter of the +group, as Rossetti was the supreme artist. In Mr. Holman Hunt we lost +another Archdeacon Farrar. Then, in the sublimation of uglitude, Madox- +Brown, step-father of the Pre-Raphaelites (my information is derived from +a P.R.B. aunt), was an infinitely greater conjurer. Look at the radiant +painting of 'Washing of the Feet' in the Tate Gallery; is there anything +to equal that masterpiece from the brush of Mr. Holman Hunt? The +'Hireling Shepherd' comes nearest, but the preacher, following his own +sheep, has strayed into alien corn, and on cliffs from which is ebbing a +tide of nonconformist conscience. Like his own hireling shepherd, too, +he has mistaken a phenomenon of nature for a sermon. + +One of the great little pictures, 'Claudio and Isabella,' proves, +however, that _once_ he determined to be a painter. In the 'Lady of +Shalott' he showed himself a designer with unusual powers akin to those +of William Blake. Still, examined at a distance or close at hand, among +his canvases do we find a single piece of decoration or a picture in the +ordinary sense of the word? My definition of a religious picture is a +painted object in two dimensions destined or suitable for the decoration +of an altar or other site in a church, or room devoted to religious +purposes; if it fails to satisfy the required conditions, it fails as a +work of art. Where is the work of this so-called religious painter which +would satisfy the not exacting conditions of a nonconformist or Anglican +place of worship? You are not surprised to learn that Keble College +mistook the 'Light of the World' for a patent fuel, or that the +background of the 'Innocents' was painted in 'the Philistine plain.' Who +could live even in cold weather with the 'Miracle of the Sacred Fire?' +Give me rather the 'Derby Day' of Mr. Frith--admirable and underrated +master. What are they if we cannot place them in the category of +pictures? They are pietistic ejaculations--tickled-up maxims in pigment +of extraordinary durability--counsels of perfection in colour and +conduct. Of all the Pre-Raphaelites, Mr. Hunt will remain the most +popular. He is artistically the scapegoat of that great movement which +gave a new impulse to English art, a scapegoat sent out to wander by the +dead seas of popularity. I once knew a learned German who regretted that +none of his countrymen could paint 'Alpine scenery' as Mr. Hunt has done +in the 'Scapegoat'! Yes, he has a message for every one, for my German +friend, for Sir William Richmond, and myself. He is a missing link +between art and popularity. He symbolises the evangelical attitude of +those who would go to German Reed's and the Egyptian Hall, but would not +attend a theatre. After all, it was a gracious attitude, because it is +that of mothers who aged more beautifully, I think, than the ladies of a +later generation which admired Whistler or Burne-Jones and regularly +attended the Lyceum. When modern art, the brilliant art of the 'sixties, +was strictly excluded from English homes except in black and white +magazines, engravings from the 'Finding of Christ in the Temple' and the +'Light of the World' were allowed to grace the parlour along with 'Bolton +Abbey,' the 'Stag at Bay,' and 'Blucher meeting Wellington.' You see +them now only in Pimlico and St. John's Wood. A friend of mine said he +could never look at the picture of 'Blucher meeting Wellington' without +blushing. . . . Like a good knight and true, Sir William Richmond, +another Bedivere, has brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for +Mr. Hunt's pictures. He offers the jewels for our inspection; they make +a brave show; they are genuine; they are intrinsic, but you remember +others of finer water, Bronzino-like portraits of Mr. Andrew Lang and +Bismarck and many others. Now, you should never recollect anything +during the enjoyment of a complete work of art. + +Every one knows the view from Richmond, I should say _of_ Richmond; it is +almost my own . . . Far off Sir Bedivere sees Lyonesse submerged; Camelot- +at-Sea has capitulated after a second siege to stronger forces. The new +Moonet is high in the heaven and a dim Turner-like haze has begun to +obscure the landscape and soften the outlines. Under cover of the mist +the hosts of Mordred MacColl, _en-Tate_ with victory, are hunting the +steer in the New English Forest. Far off the enchanter Burne-Jones is +sleeping quietly in Broceliande (I cannot bear to call it Rottingdean). +Hark, the hunt, (not the Holman Hunt) is up in Caledon (Glasgow); they +have started the shy wilson steer: they have wound the hornel; the lords +of the International, who love not Mordred overmuch, are galloping nearer +and nearer. Sir Bedivere can see their insolent pencils waving black and +white flags: and the game-keepers and beaters (critics) chant in low +vulgar tones: + + When we came out of Glasgow town + There was really nothing at all to see + Except Legros and Professor Brown, + But _now_ there is Guthrie and Lavery. + +Undaunted Sir Bedivere drags his burden to a hermitage near Coniston; but +he finds it ruined; he bars the door in order to administer refreshment +to the wounded Pre-Raphaelite; there is a knocking at the wicket-gate; is +it the younger generation? No, he can hear the tread of the royal +sargent-at-arms; his spurs and sword are clanking on the pavement. Sir +Bedivere feels his palette parched; his tongue cleaves to the roof of St. +Paul's; but he is undaunted. 'We are surely betrayed if that is really +Sargent,' he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic +window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic +arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from +ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the +door cautiously. 'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.' 'Perhaps they +cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill; +and he flew away. + +(1906.) + +_To_ SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND, R.A., K.C.B. + + + + +THE ECLECTIC AT LARGE. + + +In _The Education of an Artist_, Mr. Lewis Hind invented a new kind of +art criticism--a pleasing blend of the Morelli narrative (minus the +scientific method) and _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_. He contrives a +young man, ignorant like the Russian, Lermoliev, who receives certain +artistic impressions, faithfully recorded by Mr. Hind and visualised for +the reader in a series of engaging half-tone illustrations. The hero's +name is itself suggestive--Claude Williamson Shaw. By the end of the +book he is nearly as learned as Mr. Claude Phillips: he might edit a +series of art-books with all the skill of Dr. Williamson, and his power +of racy criticism rivals that of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. You can hardly +escape the belief that these three immortals came from the north and +south, gathered as unto strife, breathed upon his mouth and filled his +body--with ideas: Mr. Hind supplying the life. But this is not so: the +ideas are all Mr. Hind's and the godfathers only supplied the name. What +a name it is to be sure! It recalls one of Ibsen's plays: 'Claude +Williamson Shaw was a miner's son--a Cornish miner's son, as you know; or +perhaps you didn't know. He was always wanting _plein-air_.' Some one +ought to say that in the book, but I must say it instead. At all events, +Mr. Hind nearly always refers to him by his three names, and every one +must think of him in the same way, otherwise side issues will intrude +themselves--thoughts of other things and people. 'O Captain Shaw, type +of true love kept under,' is not inapposite, because Claude Williamson +Shaw fell in love with a lady who in a tantalising manner became a +religious in one of the strictest Orders, the rules of which were duly +set forth in old three-volume novels; that is the only conventional +incident in the book. C. W. S., although he trains for painting, is +admitted by Mr. Hind to be quite a bad artist. Apart, therefore, from +the admirable criticism which is the main feature of the book, it shows +great courage on the part of the inventor, great sacrifice, to admit that +C. W. S. _was_ a failure as an artist. Bad artists, however, are always +nice people. I do not say that the reverse is true; indeed, I know many +good and even great artists who are charming; but I never met a +thoroughly inferior painter (without any promise of either a future or a +past) who was not irresistible socially. This accounts for some of the +elections at the Royal Academy, I believe, and for the pictures on the +walls of your friends whose taste you know to be impeccable. There is +more hearty recognition of bad art in England than the Tate Gallery gives +us any idea of. + +I know that the Chantrey Trustees were deprived of the only possible +excuse for their purchases by the finding of Lord Lytton's Commission; +but I, for one, shall always think of them as kindly men with a fellow- +feeling for incompetence, who would have bought a work by Claude +Williamson Shaw if the opportunity presented itself. I have sometimes +tried to imagine what the pictures of _invented_ artists in fiction or +drama were really like--I fear they were all dreadful performances. I +used to imagine that Oswald Avling was a sort of Segantini, but something +he says in the play convinced me that he was merely another Verboekhoven. +Then Thackeray's Ridley must have been a terrible Philistine--a sort of +Sir John Gilbert. Poor Basil Hallward's death was no great loss to art, +I surmise: his portrait of 'Dorian Grey, Esq.', from all accounts, +resembled the miraculous picture exhibited in Bond Street a short while +ago. I am not surprised that its owner, whose taste improved, I suspect, +with advancing years, destroyed it in the ordinary course after reading +something by Mr. D. S. MacColl. It is distinctly stated that Dorian read +the _Saturday Review_! Frenhofer, Hippolite Schimier, and Leon de Lora +were probably chocolate-box painters of the regular second-empire type. +Theobald, we know from Mr. Henry James, was a man of ideas who could not +carry out his intentions. It must have been an exquisite memory of +Theobald's failures which made Pater, when he wished to contrive an +imaginary artistic personality, take Watteau as being some one in whose +achievements you can believe. No literary artist can persuade us into +admiring pictures which never existed; though an artist can reconstruct +from literature a picture which has perished we know, from the 'Calumny +of Apelles' by Botticelli. It was, therefore, wise to make Claude +Williamson Shaw a failure as a painter. In accordance with my rule he +was an excellent fellow, nearly as charming as his author, and better +company in a picture-gallery it would be difficult to find--and you +cannot visit picture-galleries with every friend: you require a +sympathetic personality. It is the Claude--the Claude Phillips in him +which I like best: the Dr. Williamson I rather suspect. I mean that when +he was at Messrs. Chepstow, the publishers, he must have mugged up some +of the real Dr. Williamson's art publications. Whether in the Louvre, or +National Gallery, or in Italian towns, he always goes for the right +thing; sometimes you wish he would make a mistake. Bad artists, of +course, are often excellent judges of old pictures and make excellent +dealers, and I am not denying the instinct of C. W. S.; but I cannot +think it all came so naturally as Mr. Hind would indicate. + +The reason why Claude Williamson Shaw discovered 'that he would not find +a true expression of his temperament' in painting readers of this +ingenious book will discover for themselves. Assuming that he had any +innate talent, I do not think he went about the right way to cultivate +it. His friend Lund gave him the very worst advice; though we are the +gainers. It is quite unnecessary to go out of England and gaze at a lot +of pictures of entirely different schools in order to become a painter. +Gainsborough and our great Norwich artists evolved themselves without any +foreign study. There was no National Gallery in their days. A second- +rate Wynants and a doubtful Hobbema seem to have been enough to give them +hints. It would be tedious to mention other examples. The fortunate +meeting of Zuccarelli and Wilson at Venice is the only instance I know in +which foreign travel benefited any English landscape painter. Foreign +travel is all very well when the artist has grown up. Paris has been the +tomb of many English art students. M. Bordeaux, who gave Mr. Hind's hero +tips in the atelier, seems to have been as 'convincing' as the famous +barrel of the same name. Far better will the English student be under +Mr. Tonks at the Slade; or even at the Royal Academy, where, owing to the +doctrine of contraries, out of sheer rebellion he may become an artist. +In Paris you learn perfect carpentry, but not art, unless you are a born +artist; but in that case you will be one in spite of Paris, not because +of it. But if C. W. Shaw had been a real painter he would have seen at +Venice certain Tiepolos which seem to have escaped him, and in other +parts of Italy certain Caravaggios. Yes, and Correggios and Guido Renis, +too hastily passed by. He was doomed to be a connoisseur. + +(1906.) + + + + +EGO ET MAX MEUS. + + +'How very delightful Max's drawings are. For all their mad perspective +and crude colour, they have, indeed, the sentiment of style, and they +reveal with rarer delicacy than does any other record the spirit of Lloyd- +George's day.' This sentence is not quite original: it is adapted from +an eminent author because the words sum up so completely the +inexpressible satisfaction following an inspection of Mr. Beerbohm's +caricatures. To-day essentially belongs to the Minister who once +presided at the Board of Trade. Several attempts indeed have been made +to describe the literature, art and drama of the present as 'Edwardian,' +from a very proper and loyal spirit, to which I should be the last to +object. We were even promised a few years ago a new style of furniture +to inaugurate the reign--something to supplant that Louis Dix-neuvieme +_decor_ which is merely a compromise with the past. But somehow the +whole thing has fallen through; in this democratic aeon the adjective +'Edwardian' trips on the tongue; our real dramatists are all Socialists +or Radicals; our poets and writers Anarchists. Our artists are the only +conservatives of intellect. Our foreign policy alone can be called +'Edwardian,' so personal is it to the King. Everything else is a +compromise; so our time must therefore be known--at least ten years of +it--as the Lloyd-Georgian period. I can imagine collectors of the future +struggling for an _alleged_ genuine work of art belonging to this brief +renaissance, and the disappointment of the dealer on finding that it +dated a year before the Budget, thereby reducing its value by some +thousands. + +Just as we go to Kneller and Lely for speaking portraits of the men who +made their age, so I believe our descendants will turn to Max for +listening likenesses of the present generation. Of all modern artists, +he alone follows Hamlet's advice. If the mirror is a convex one, that is +merely the accident of genius, and reflects the malady of the century. +Other artists have too much eye on the Uffizi and the National Gallery +(the more modest of them only painting up to the Tate). In Max we have +one who never harks forward to the future, and is therefore more +characteristic, more Lloyd-Georgian than any of his peers. Set for one +moment beside some Rubens' goddess a portrait by Mr. Sargent, and how +would she be troubled by its beauty? Not in the slightest degree; +because they are both similar but differing expressions of the same +genius of painting. The centuries which separate them are historical +conventions; and in Art, history does not count; aesthetically, time is +of no consequence. But in the more objective art of caricature, history +is of some import, and (as Mr. Beerbohm himself admitted about +photographs) the man limned is of paramount importance. Actual +resemblance, truthfulness of presentation, criticism of the model become +legitimate subjects for consideration. Generally speaking, artists long +since wisely resigned all attempts at catching a likeness, leaving to +photography an inglorious victory. Mr. Beerbohm, realising this fact, +seized caricature as a substitute--the consolation, it may be, for a lost +or neglected talent. It is as though Watts (painter of the soul's prism, +if ever there was one) had pushed away Ward and Downey from the camera, +to insert a subtler lens, a more sensitive negative. + +* * * * + +If, reader, you have ever been to a West-end picture shop, you will have +suffered some annoyance on looking too attentively at any item in the +exhibition, by the approach of an officious attendant, who presses you to +purchase it. He begins by flattery; he felicitates you on your choice of +the _best_ picture in the room--the one that has been 'universally +admired by critics and collectors.' + +The fact of its not being sold is due (he naively confesses) to its +rather high price; several offers have been submitted, and if not sold at +the catalogued amount the artist has promised to consider them; but it is +very unlikely that the drawing will remain long without a red ticket, +'_as people come back to town to-morrow_.' There is the stab, the stab +in the back while you were drinking honey; the tragedy of Corfe Castle +repeated. _People with_ a capital _P_ in picture-dealing circles does +not mean what they call the _Hoypolloy_; it means the great ones of the +earth, the _monde_, the Capulets and Montagues with wealth or rank. You +have been measured by the revolting attendant. He does not count you +with them, or you would not be in town to-day; something has escaped you +in the _Morning Post_, some function to which you were not invited, or of +which you knew nothing. If you happen to be a Capulet you feel mildly +amused, and in order to correct the wrong impression and let the +underling know your name and address you purchase the drawing; for the +greatest have their weak side. But, if not, and you have simply risen +from the 'purple of commerce,' you are determined not to lag behind stuck- +up Society; you will revenge yourself for the thousand injuries of +Fortunatus; you will deprive him of his prerogative to buy the _best_. +The purchase is concluded. You go home with your nerves slightly shaken +from the gloved contest--you go home to face your wife and children, +wearing a look of wistful inquiry on their irregular upturned faces, as +when snow lies upon the ground, they scent Christmas, and you look up +with surprise at the whiteness of the ceiling. Though in private life a +contributor to the press, in public I used to be one of those importunate +salesmen. + +It was my duty, my pleasurable duty, so to act for Mr. Beerbohm's +caricatures when exhibited at a fashionable West-end gallery where among +the visitors I recognised many of his models. I observe that when Mr. +Beerbohm is a friend of his victim he is generally at his best; that he +is always excellent and often superb if he is in sympathy with the +personality of that victim, however brutally he may render it. His +failures are due to lack of sympathy, and they are often, oddly enough, +the mildest as caricatures. Fortunately, Mr. Beerbohm selects chiefly +celebrities who are either personal friends or those for whom he must +have great admiration and sympathy. By a divine palmistry he estimates +them with exquisite perception. I noted that those who were annoyed with +their own caricature either did not know Mr. Beerbohm or disliked his +incomparable writings; and, curiously enough, he misses the likeness in +people he either does not know personally or whom you suspect he +dislikes. I am glad now of the opportunity of being sincere, because it +was part of my function as salesman to agree with what every one said, +whether in praise or in blame. + +And let me reproduce a conversation with one of the visitors. It is +illustrative:-- + +[SCENE: _The Carfax Gallery; rather empty; early morning: Caricatures by +Max Beerbohm; entrance one shilling. Enter_ DISTINGUISHED CLIENT, _takes +catalogue, but does not consult it. No celebrity ever consults a +catalogue in a modern picture-gallery. This does not apply to ladies, +however distinguished, who conscientiously begin at number one and read +out from the catalogue the title of each picture_. SHOPMAN _in +attendance_.] + +D. C. (_glancing round_). Yes; how very clever they are. + +SHOPMAN. Yes; they are very amusing. + +D. C. I suppose you have had heaps of People. What a pity Max cannot +draw! + +SHOPMAN. Yes; it _is_ a great pity. + +D. C. (_examines drawing; after a pause_). But he _can_ draw. Look at +that one of Althorp. + +SHOPMAN (_trying to look intelligent_): Yes; that certainly is well +drawn. + +D. C. (_pointing to photograph of Paris inserted in Mr. Claude Lowther's +caricature_). And how extraordinary that is. It is like one of Muirhead +Bone's street scenes. He does street scenes, doesn't he? + +SHOPMAN. Yes; or one of Mr. Joseph Pennell's. + +D. C. (_after a pause_). What a pity he never gets the likeness. That's +very bad of Arthur Balfour. + +SHOPMAN. Yes; it is a great pity. No; that's not at all a good one of +Mr. Balfour. + +D. C. (_pointing to Mr. Shaw's photograph inserted in caricature_). But +he _has_ got the likeness there. By Jove! it's nearly as good as a +photograph. + +SHOPMAN (_examining photograph as if he had never seen it; +enthusiastically_). It's _almost_ as good as a photograph. + +D. C. (_pointing with umbrella to Lord Weardale_). Of course, that's +Rosebery? + +SHOPMAN (_nervously_): Y-e-s. (_Brightly changing subject_.) What do +you think of Mr. Sargent's? + +D. C. (_now worked up_). Oh! that's very good. Yes; that's the best of +all. I see it's sold. I should have bought that one if it hadn't been +sold. I wish Max would do a caricature of (_describes a possible +caricature_). Tell him I suggested it; he knows me quite well (_glancing +round_). He really is tremendous. Are they going to be published? + +SHOPMAN. Yes; by Methuen & Co. (_Hastily going over to new-comer_.) +Yes, madam, that is Mr. Arthur Balfour; it's considered the _best_ +caricature in the exhibition--the likeness is so particularly striking; +and as a pure piece of draughtsmanship it is certainly the finest drawing +in the room. No; that's not so good of Lord Althorp, though it _was_ the +first to sell. (_Turning to another client_.) Yes, sir; he is Mr. +Beerbohm Tree's half-brother. + +(1907.) + +_To_ MRS. BEERBOHM. + + + + +THE ETHICS OF REVIEWING. + + +The 'Acropolis,' a review of literature, science, art, politics, society, +and the drama, is, as every one knows, our leading literary weekly. Its +original promoters decided on its rather eccentric title with a symbolism +now outmoded. The 'Acropolis' was to be impregnable to outside +contributors, and the editor was always to be invisible. All the vile +and secret arts of reclame and puffery were to find no place in its +immaculate pages. One afternoon some time ago a number of gentlemen, +more or less responsible for the production of the 'Acropolis,' were +seated round the fire in the smoking-room of a certain club. For the +last hour they had been discussing with some warmth the merits of signed +or unsigned articles and the reviewing of books. A tall, good-looking +man, who pretended to be unpopular, was advocating the anonymous. 'There +is something so cowardly about a signed article,' he was saying. 'It is +nearly as bad as insulting a man in public, when there is no redress +except to call for the police. And that is ridiculous. If I am slated +by an anonymous writer, it is always in my power to pay no attention, +whereas if the slate is signed, I am obliged to take notice of some kind. +I must either deny the statements, often at a great sacrifice of truth, +or if I assault the writer there is always the risk of his being +physically stronger than I am. No; anonymous attack is the only weapon +for gentlemen.' + +'To leave for a moment the subject of anonymity,' said an eminent +novelist, 'I think the great curse of all criticism is that of slating +any book at all. Think of the unfortunate young man or woman first +entering the paths of literature, and the great pain it causes them. You +should encourage them, and not damp their enthusiasm.' + +'My dear fellow,' said North, 'I encourage no one, and writers should +never have any feelings at all. They can't have any, or they would not +bore the public by writing.' + +The discussion was getting heated when the editor, Rivers, interfered. + +'My dear North,' he began, addressing the first speaker, 'your eloquent +advocacy of the anonymous reminds me of a curious incident that occurred +many years ago when I was assistant-editor of the "Acropolis." The facts +were never known to the public, and my old chief, Curtis, met with much +misplaced abuse in consequence. There were reasons for which he could +never break silence; but it happened so long ago that I cannot be +betraying any confidence. All of you have heard of, and some of you have +seen, Quentin Burrage, whose articles practically made the "Acropolis" +what it now is. His opinion on all subjects was looked forward to by the +public each week. Young poetasters would tremble when their time should +come to be pulverised by the scathing epigrams which fell from his +anonymous pen. Essayists, novelists, statesmen were pale for weeks until +a review appeared that would make or mar their fame. In the various +literary coteries of London no one knew that Quentin Burrage was the +slater who thrilled, irritated, or amused them, though he was of course +recognised as an occasional contributor. The secret was well kept. He +was practically critical censor of London for ten years. A whole school +of novelists ceased to exist after three of his notices in the +"Acropolis." The names of painters famous before his time you will not +find in the largest dictionaries now. Four journalists committed suicide +after he had burlesqued their syntax, and two statesmen resigned office +owing to his masterly examination of their policy. We were all much +shocked when a popular actor set fire to his theatre on a first night +because Curtis and his dramatic critic refused to take champagne and +chicken between the acts. This may give you some idea of Burrage's power +in London for a decade of the last century. + +'One day a curious change came over him. It was Monday when he and I +were in the office receiving our instructions. Curtis, after going over +some books, handed to Quentin a vellum-covered volume of poems, saying +with a grim smile: "There are some more laurels for you to hash." + +'An expression of pain spread over Quentin's serene features. + +'"I'll see what I can do," he said wearily. But his curious manner +struck both Curtis and myself. The book was a collection of very +indifferent verse which already enjoyed a wide popularity. I cannot tell +you the title, for that is a secret not my own. It was early work of one +of our most esteemed poets who for some time was regarded by _his +friends_ as the natural successor to Mr. Alfred Austin. The "Acropolis" +had not spoken. We were sometimes behindhand in our reviews. The public +waited to learn if the new poet was really worth anything. You may +imagine the general surprise when a week afterwards there appeared a +flamingly favourable review of the poems. It made a perfect sensation +and was quoted largely. The public became quite conceited with its +foresight. The reputation of the poet was assured. "Snarley-ow must be +dead," some one remarked in my hearing at the club, and members tried to +pump me. One day a telegram came from Curtis asking me to go down to his +house at once. A request from him was a command. I found him in a state +of some excitement, his manner a little artificial. "My dear Rivers, I +suppose you think me mad. The geese have got into the Capitol at last." +Without correcting his classical allusion, I said: "Where is Burrage?" +"He is coming here presently. Of course, I glanced at the thing in +proof, and thought it a splendid joke, but reading it this morning, I +have come to the conclusion that something is wrong with Burrage. You +remember his agitated manner the other day?" I was about to reply, when +Burrage was announced. His haggard and pale appearance startled both of +us. "My dear Burrage, what _is_ the matter with you?" we exclaimed +simultaneously. He gave a sickly nervous smile. "Of course you have +sent to ask me about that review. Well, I have changed my opinions, I +have altered. I think we should praise everything or ignore everything. +To slate a book, good or bad, is taking the bread out of a fellow's +mouth. I have been the chief sinner in this way, and I am going to be +the first reformer." "Not in my paper," said Curtis, angrily. + +'Then we all fell to discussing that old question with all the warmth +that North and the rest of you were doing just now. We lost our tempers +and Curtis ended the matter by saying: "I tell you what it is, Burrage, +if you ever bring out a book yourself I'll send it to you to review. You +can praise it as much as you like. But don't let this occur again, with +any one else's work." Burrage turned quite white, I thought, and Curtis, +noticing the effect of his words, went up and taking him by the hand, +added more kindly, "My poor Burrage, are you quite well? I never saw you +in so morbid a state before. All this is mere sentimentality--so +different from your usual manly spirit. Go away for a change, to +Brighton or Eastbourne, and you must come back with that wholesome +contempt for your contemporaries that characterises most of your +writings. I'll look over the matter this time, and we'll say no more +about it." And here Curtis was so overcome that he dashed a tear from +his eye. A few hours later I saw Burrage off to the sea. He was very +strange in his manner. "I'll never be quite the same again. If I only +dared to tell you," he said. And the train rolled out of the station. + +'Some weeks later I was again in the editorial room and Curtis showed me +a curiously bound book, printed on hand-made paper, entitled +_Prejudices_. I had already seen it. "That book," Curtis remarked, +"ought to have been noticed long ago. I was keeping it for Burrage when +he gets better. Shall I send it to him?" + +'_Prejudices_ for some weeks had been the talk of London. It was a +series of very ineffectual essays on different subjects. Sight, Colour, +Sound, Art, Letters, and Religion were all dealt with in that highly +glowing and original manner now termed _Style_. It was delightfully +unwholesome and extraordinarily silly. Young persons had already begun +to get foolish over it, and leaving the more stimulating pages of Mr. +Pater they hailed the work as an earnest of the English Renaissance. +Instead of stroking _Marius the Epicurean_ they fondled a copy of +_Prejudices_. I prophesied that Burrage would vindicate himself over it +and that the public would hear very little of _Prejudices_ in a year's +time. The book was sent; and the first part of my prophecy was +fulfilled, Burrage spared neither the author nor his admirers. The +pedantry, the affected style, the cheap hedonism were all pitilessly +exposed. London, rocked with laughter. Some of the admirers, with the +generosity of youth, nobly came to the rescue. They made a paper war and +talked of "The cruelty and cowardice of the attack," "The stab in the +dark," "Journalistic marauding," "Disappointed author turned critic." The +slate was one that I am bound to say was _killing_ in both senses of the +word. A book less worthless could never have lived under it. It was one +of those decisive reviews of all ages. _Prejudices_ was withdrawn by the +publisher fearful of damaging his prestige. Yet it was never looked on +as a rarity, and fell at book auctions for a shilling, for some time +after, amidst general tittering. The daily papers meanwhile devoted +columns to the discussion. I telegraphed to Burrage in cipher and +congratulated him, knowing that secrets leak out sometimes through the +post office. I was surprised to get no reply for some weeks, but Curtis +said he was lying low while the excitement lasted. One day I got a +letter simply saying, "For God's sake come. I am very ill." I went at +once. How shall I describe to you the pitiful condition I found him in? +The doctor told me he was suffering from incipient tuberculosis due to +cerebral excitement and mental trouble. When I went in to see him he was +lying in bed, pale and emaciated as a corpse, surrounded by friends and +relations. He asked every one to go out of the room; he had something of +importance to say to me. I then learned what you have divined already. +The anonymous author of _Prejudices_ was no other than Quentin Burrage +himself. Or rather not himself, but the other self of which neither I +nor Curtis knew anything. He had been living a double existence. As a +writer of trashy essays and verse, an incomplete sentimentalist +surrounded by an admiring band of young ladies and gentlemen, he was not +recognised as the able critic and the anonymous slater of the +"Acropolis." + +'When he first received his own book for review he recalled the words of +Curtis. He must be honest, impartial, and just. No one knew better the +faults of _Prejudices_. As he began to write, the old spirit of the +slater came over him. His better self conquered. He forgot for the +moment that he was the author. He hardly realised the sting of his own +sarcasms even when he saw them in proof. It was not until it appeared, +and the papers were full of the controversy, that the _cruelty_ and +_unfairness_ of the attack dawned on him. I was much shocked at the +confession, and the extraordinary duplicity of Burrage, who had been +living a lie for the last ten years. His denunciation of poor Curtis +pained me. I would have upbraided him, but his tortured face and hacking +cough made me relent. I need not prolong the painful story. Burrage +never recovered. He sank into galloping consumption, only aggravated by +a broken heart. I saw him on his deathbed at Rome. He was attended by +Strange, and died in his arms. His last words to me were, "Rivers, tell +Curtis I forgive him." + +'We buried in the Protestant cemetery near Keats and Shelley one whose +name was written in hot water. His sad death provoked a good deal of +comment, as you may suppose. Strange has often promised to write his +life. But he could never get through _Prejudices_, and I pointed out to +him that you can hardly write an author's life without reading one of his +works, even though he did die in your arms. That is the worst of +literary martyrs with a few brilliant exceptions: their works are +generally dull.' + +'Is that all?' asked North. + +'That is all, and I hope you understand the moral.' + +'Perfectly; but your reminiscences have too much construction, my dear +Rivers.' + +'The story is perfectly true for all that,' remarked the Editor, drily. + + + + +A LITTLE DOCTORED FAUST. A PROLOGUE. + + +'The version of _Faust_ which Mr. Stephen Phillips is contemplating will, +it is interesting to learn from the author, be a "compact drama," of +which the spectacular embellishment will form no part. In Mr. Phillips's +view the story is in itself so strong and so rich in all the elements +that make for dramatic effectiveness that to treat the subject as one for +elaborate scenic display would be to diminish the direct appeal of a +great tragedy. "First let me say," said Mr. Stephen Phillips, "how +gladly I approach a task which will bring me again into association with +Mr. George Alexander, whose admirable treatment of _Paolo and Francesco_, +you will no doubt remember. In the version of _Faust_ which I am going +to prepare there will be nothing spectacular, nothing to overshadow or +intrude upon an immortal theme. As to how I shall treat the story, and +as to the form in which it will be written, I am not yet sure--it may be +a play in blank verse, or in prose with lyrics . . ." Mr. Phillips added +that he had also in view a play on the subject of _Harold_."--_The +Tribune_. + +_Scene: The British Museum_. + +SIDNEY COLVIN. Ah! my dear Stephen, when they told me Phillips +Was waiting in my study, I imagined +That it was Claude, whom I have been expecting. +I have arranged that you shall have this room +All to yourself and friends. Now I must leave you. +I have to go and speak to Campbell Dodgson +About some prints we've recently acquired. + +STEPHEN PHILLIPS. How can I ever thank you? Love to Binyon! + +[COLVIN _goes out_. + +_Enter_ Mr. GEORGE ALEXANDER, GOETHE, MARLOWE, GOUNOD. + +ALEXANDER (_from force of habit_). I always told you he was reasonable. + +GOETHE. Well, I consent. Mein Gott! how colossal +You English are! 'Tis nigh impossible +For poets to refuse you anything, +And German thought beneath some English shade-- +_Unter den Linden_, as we say at home-- +Sounds really quite as well on British soil. +Our good friend Marlowe hardly seems so pleased. + +MARLOWE. Oh, Goethe! cease these frivolous remarks. +Think you that I, who knew Elizabeth, +And tasted all the joys of literature +And played the dawn to Shakespeare's larger day, +And heralded a mighty line of verse +With half-a-dozen mighty lines my own, +Am feeling well? + +GOUNOD (_brightening_). Ah! Monsieur Wells, +Auteur d'une histoire fine et romanesque +Traduit par Davray; il a des idees +C'est une chose rare la-bas . . . + +STEPHEN PHILLIPS. He does not speak of Huysmans; 'tis myself. +I thank you, gentlemen, with all my heart; +I thank you, gentlemen, with all my soul; +I thank you, sirs, with all my soul and strength. +So for your leave much thanks. You know my weakness: +I love to be at peace with all the past. +The present and the future I can manage; +The stirrup of posterity may dangle +Against the heaving flanks of Pegasus. +I feel my spurs against the saucy mare +And Alexander turned Bucephalus. + +MARLOWE. Neigh! Neigh! though you have told us what you are, +And we have witnessed Nero several times, +You do not tell us of this wretched Faustus, +Who must be damned in any case, I fear. + +S. P. Of course, I treat you as material +On which to work; but then I simplify +And purify the story for our stage. +The English stage is nothing if not pure. +For instance, we will not allow _Salome_. +So in Act II. of _Faust_ I represent +The marriage feast of beauteous Margaret; +Act I. I get from Goethe, III. from Marlowe, +And Gounod's music fills the gaps in mine. +Margaret, of course, will never come to grief. +She only gets a separation order. +By the advice of Plowden magistrate, +She undertakes to wean Euphorion, +Who in his bounding habit symbolises +The future glories of the English empire. +As the production must not cost too much, +Harker, Hawes Craven, Hann are relegated +To a back place. It is a compact drama, +Of which spectacular embellishment +Will form no part. The story is so strong, +So rich in all the elements that make +A drama suitable for Alexander, +That scenery, if necessary to Tree, +Shall not intrude on this immortal theme. + +GOETHE. Pyramidal! My friend, but you are splendid. +Now, have you shown the manuscript to Colvin? + +MARLOWE. He is a scholar, and a ripe and good one, +And far too tolerant of modern poets. + +ALEXANDER. One of your lines strike my familiar spirit. +Surely, that does not come from Stephen Phillips. + +MARLOWE. No matter; I may quote from whom I will. +Shakespeare himself was not immaculate, +And borrowed freely from a barren past. + +GOETHE. What thinks Herr Sidney Colvin of your work? + +S. P. That he will tell you when he sees it played. + + + +ACT I. + + +_Scene: Faust's Studio_. + +SERVANT. Well, if you have no further use for me, +I will go make our preparation. + +FAUST. If anybody calls, say I am out; +I must have time to see how I will act. +As to the form in which I shall be written, +I must decide whether in prose or verse. +My thoughts I'll bend. Give me at once the _Times_: +Walkley I always find inspiriting-- +And really I learn much about the drama +(Even the German drama) from his pen, +More curious than that of Paracelsus. +(_Reads_) 'Sic vos non vobis, Bernard Shaw might say, +Dieu et mon droit. Ich dien. Et taceat +Femina in ecclesia. Ellen Terry, +La plus belle femme de toutes les femmes +Du monde.' Archer, I have observed, +Writes no more for the World, but for himself. +Then I forgot; he's writing for the _Leader_, +That highly independent Liberal paper. + +[FAUST _muses_. _Bell heard_. + +The Elixir of Life, is it a play +Which runs a thousand nights? Is it a dream +Precipitated into some alembic +Or glass retort by Ex-ray Lankester? + +_Enter_ SERVANT. + +SERVANT. A gentleman has called. + +FAUST. Say I am out. + +SERVANT. He will take no denial. + +FAUST. Show him in. +Most probably 'tis Herbert Beerbohm Tree, +Who long has planned a play of Doctor Faustus. + +_Enter_ MEPHISTOPHELES. + +MEPHISTOPHELES. Ah! my dear Doctor, here we are again! +Micawber-like, I never will desert you. +How do you feel? Your house I see myself +In perfect order. Ah! how much has past +Since those Lyceum days when you and I +Climbed up the Brocken on Walpurgis night. +That times have changed I realise myself; +No longer through the chimney I descend; +I enter like a super from the side. +Widowers' Houses dramas have become; +Morals and sentiment and Clement Scott +No more seem adjuncts of the English stage. + +FAUST. Oh, Mephistopheles, you come in time +To save the English drama from a deadlock! +Like Mahmud's coffin hung 'twixt Heaven and Earth, +It falters up to verse and down to prose. +Tell us, then, how to act, how consummate +The aspirations of our Stephen Phillips! + +MEPHISTO. Ah, Alexander Faustus! young as ever, +Still unabashed by Paolo and Francesca, +You long for plays with literary motives, +Plots oft attempted both in prose and rhyme. + +FAUST. As ever, you are timid and old-fashioned. + +MEPHISTO. Hark you! One thing I know above all others, +The English drama of the century past. +Though English critics have consigned to me +The plays of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Shaw, +And Wilde's _Salome_, none has ever reached me. +Back to their native land they must have gone, +Or else you have them here in Germany. +Only to me come down real British plays, +The mid-Victorian twaddle, the false gems +Which on the stretched forefinger of oblivion +Glitter a moment, and then perish paste. + +FAUST (_drily_). Well, if I learn of any critic's death +Leaving a vacant place upon the Press, +You'll hear from me; meanwhile, Mephisto mine, +As we must needs play out our little play, +Whom would you cast for Margaret, _alias_ Gretchen? +Kindly sketch out an inexpensive _Faust_, +Modelled on the Vedrenne and Barker style +Once much in favour at the English Court. + +MEPHISTO. The stage is now an auditorium, +And all the audiences are amateurs, +First-nighters at the bottom of their heart. +What do they care for drama in the least? +All that they need are complimentary stalls, +To know the leading actor, to be round +At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes, +To hear the row the actor-manager +Had with the author or the leading lady, +Then to recount the story at the Garrick, +Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies, +They babble over chestnuts and their punch +And stale round-table jests of years ago. + +FAUST. So Mephistopheles is growing old! +Kindly omit your stage philosophy, +And tell me all your plans about the play. + +MEPHISTO. First we must make you young and fresh as paint, +Philters and elixirs are out of date. +A week in London--that is what you want; +London Society is our objective. +There you will find a not unlikely Gretchen, +For actresses are all the rage just now; +Countesses quarrel over Edna May, +And Mrs. Patrick Campbell is received +In the best houses. I shall introduce you +As a philosopher from Tubingen. +A sort of Nordau, no? Then Doctor Reich-- +Advocates polyandry, children suffrage-- +One man, one pianola; the usual thing +That will secure success: here is a card +For Thursday next--Lady Walpurge 'At Home' +From nine till twelve--a really charming hostess. +Her ladyship is intellectual, +The husband rich, dishonest, a collector +Of _objets d'art_, especially old masters. +He got his title for his promises +To England in the war; financed the raid, +A patriot millionaire within whose veins +Imperial pints of German-Jewish blood +Must make the English think imperially, +And rather bear with all the ills they have +Than fly to others that they know not of. + +FAUST. Excellent plan! Except at Covent Garden, +I've hardly been in England since the 'eighties. + + + +Act II. + + +_Scene: Brocken House, Park Lane_. + +_The top of the Grand Staircase_. LORD _and_ LADY WALPURGE _receiving +their guests. The greatest taste is shown in the decorations, which are +lent for the occasion of the play free of charge, owing to the deserved +popularity of Mr. George Alexander. Furniture supplied by Waring, +selected by Mr. Percy Macquoid; Old Masters by Agnew & Son, P. & D. +Colnaghi, Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell; Wigs by Clarkson. A large, +full-length Reynolds, seen above the well of staircase_; R. _a +Gainsborough_, L. _a Hoppner. The party is not very smart, rather +intellectual and plutocratic; well-known musicians and artists in group_ +R., _and second-rate literary people_ L. _An Irish peer and a member of +the White Rose League are the only 'Society' present. There are no +actors or actresses_. FAUST, _who has aged considerably since the +Prologue, is an obvious failure, and is seen talking to a lady +journalist_. MEPHISTOPHELES, _disguised as a Protectionist Member of +Parliament, is in earnest conversation with_ LORD WALPURGE. FOOTMAN +_announcing the guests: The Bishop of Hereford, Mr. Maldonado, Mr. Andrew +Undershaft, Mr. Harold Hodge, Mrs. Gorringe, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey +Tanqueray, &c_. + +LADY WALPURGE (_archly_). Ah, Mr. Tanqueray, you never forwarded me my +photographs; it is nearly three weeks ago since I sent you a cheque for +them. + +TANQUERAY. Labby has been poisoning your mind against me. You shall +have a proof to-morrow! + +FOOTMAN. Mr. Gillow Waring. + +LADY WALPURGE. I was so afraid you were not coming. My husband thought +you would give us the slip. + +WARING. How charming your decorations are! You must give me some ideas +for my new yacht, you have such perfect taste. + +MALDONADO. Walpurge! what will you take for that Reynolds? Or will you +swap it for my Velasquez? + +WALPURGE. My dear Maldo, I always do my deals through-- + +FOOTMAN. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell. + +WALPURGE. Through Dowdeswell and Dowdeswell; and you, my dear Maldo, if +you want to get rid of your Velasquez, ought to join the National Art +Collections Fund, or go and see-- + +FOOTMAN. Mr. Lockett Agnew. 'Er 'Ighness the Princess Swami. + +_Enter the_ PRINCESS SALOME. + +LADY JOURNALIST. Fancy having that woman here. She is not recognised in +any decent society, she is nothing but an adventuress; talks such bad +French, too. Have you ever seen her, Doctor Faustus? + +FAUST. Yes, I have met her very often in Germany. Though the Emperor +would not receive her at first, she is much admired in Europe. + +LADY JOURNALIST (_hedging_). I wonder where she gets her frocks? They +must be worth a good deal. + +FAUST. From Ricketts and Shannon, if you want to know. + +LADY JOURNALIST. Dear Doctor, you know everything! Let me see: Ricketts +and Shannon is that new place in Regent Street, rather like Lewis and +Allenby's, I suppose? + +FAUST. Yes, only different. + +IRISH PEER (_to_ FAUST). Do you think Lady Walpurge will ever get into +Society? + +FAUST. Not if she gives her guests such wretched coffee. + +LADY JOURNALIST. It's nothing to her tea. I've never had such bad tea. +Besides, she cannot get actors or actresses to come to her house. + +LADY WALPURGE (_overhearing_). I expect _Sir Herbert and Lady Beerbohm +Tree_ here to-night, and perhaps VIOLA. (_Sensation_.) + +[_Enter, hurriedly_, MR. C. T. H. HELMSLEY.] Mr. Alexander, a moment +with you! A most important telegram has just arrived. + +FAUST (_reading_). 'Handed in at Greba Castle, 10.15. Reply paid. Do +not close with Stephen Phillips until you have seen my play of +_Gretchen_, same subject, five acts and twelve tableaux.--HALL CAINE.' +Where is Mr. Stephen Phillips? [STEPHEN PHILLIPS _advances_.] My dear +Phillips, I think we will put up _Harold Hodge_ instead. 'The Last of +the Anglo-Saxon Editors,' by the last Anglo-Saxon poet. + +CURTAIN. + +(1906.) + +_To_ W. BARCLAY SQUIRE, ESQ. + + + + +SHAVIANS FROM SUPERMAN. + + +DONNA ANA _has vanished to sup her man at the Savoy; the_ DEVIL _and the_ +STATUE _are descending through trap, when a voice is heard crying, 'Stop, +stop'; the mechanism is arrested and there appears in the empyrean_ MR. +CHARLES HAZELWOOD SHANNON, _the artist, with halo_. + +THE DEVIL (_while Shannon regains his breath_). Really, Mr. Shannon, +this is a great pleasure and _quite_ unexpected. I am truly honoured. No +quarrel I hope with the International? Pennell quite well? How is the +Whistler memorial getting on? + +SHANNON. So-so. To be quite frank I had no time to prepare for Heaven, +and earth has become intolerable for me. (_Seeing the Statue_.) Is that +a Rodin you have there? + +THE DEVIL. Oh! I forgot, let me introduce you. Commander! Mr. C. H. +Shannon, a most distinguished painter, the English Velasquez, the Irish +Titian, the Scotch Giorgione, all in one. Mr. Shannon, his Excellency +the Commander. + +SHANNON. Delighted, I am sure. The real reason for my coming here is +that I could stand Ricketts no longer. Ricketts the artist I adore. +Ricketts the causeur is delightful. Ricketts the enemy, entrancing. +Ricketts the friend, one of the best. But Ricketts, when designing +dresses for the Court, Trench, and other productions, is not very +amiable. + +THE STATUE (_sighing_). Ah! yes, I know Ricketts. + +THE DEVIL (_sighing_). We all know Ricketts. Never mind, he shall not +come here. I shall give special orders to Charon. Come on to the trap +and we can start for the palace. + +SHANNON. Ah! yes. I heard you were moving to the Savoy. Think it will +be a success? + +[_They descend and no reply is heard. Whisk! Mr. Frank Richardson on +this occasion does not appear; void and emptiness; the fireproof curtain +may be lowered here in accordance with the County Council regulations; +moving portraits of deceased, and living dramatic critics can be thrown +without risk of ignition on the curtain by magic lantern_. _The point of +this travesty will be entirely lost to those who have not read 'Man and +Superman.' It is the first masterpiece in the English literature of the +twentieth century. It is also necessary to have read the dramatic +criticisms in the daily press, and to have some acquaintance with the +Court management, the Stage Society, and certain unlicensed plays; and to +know that Mr. Ricketts designs scenery. This being thoroughly explained, +the Curtain may rise; discovering a large Gothic Hall, decorated in the +1880 taste. Allegories by Watts on the wall_--'_Time cutting the corns +of Eternity,' 'Love whistling down the ear of Life,' 'Youth catching +Crabs,' &c. Windows by Burne-Jones and Morris. A Peacock Blue Hungarian +Band playing music on Dolmetsch instruments by Purcell, Byrde, Bull, +Bear, Palestrina, and Wagner, &c. Various well-known people crowd the +Stage. Among the_ LIVING _may be mentioned Mr. George Street; Mr. Max +Beerbohm and his brother; Mr. Albert Rothenstein and his brother, &c. The +company is intellectual and artistic; not in any way smart. The Savile +and Athenaeum Clubs are well represented, but not the Garrick, the +Gardenia, nor any of the establishments in the vicinity of Leicester +Square. The Princess Salome is greeting some of the arrivals_--_The +Warden of Keble, The President of Magdalen Coll., Oxford, and others--who +stare at her in a bewildered fashion_. + +THE DEVIL. Silence, please, ladies and gentlemen, for his Excellency the +Commander. (_A yellowish pallor moves over the audience; effect by +Gordon Craig_.) + +THE STATUE. It was my intention this evening to make a few observations +on flogging in the Navy, Vaccination, the Censor, Vivisection, the Fabian +Society, the Royal Academy, Compound Chinese Labour, Style, Simple +Prohibition, Vulgar Fractions, and other kindred subjects. But as I +opened the paper this morning, my eye caught these headlines: 'Future of +the House of Lords,' 'Mr. Edmund Gosse at home,' 'The Nerves of Lord +Northcliffe,' 'Interview with Mr. Winston Churchill,' 'Reported +Indisposition of Miss Edna May.' A problem was thus presented to me. +Will I, shall I, ought I to speak to my friends _here_--ahem!--and +elsewhere, on the subject about which they came to hear me speak. +(_Applause_.) No. I said; the bounders must be disappointed; otherwise +they will know what to expect. You must always surprise your audience. +When it has been advertised (sufficiently) that I am going to speak about +the truth, for example, the audience comes here expecting me to speak +about fiction. The only way to surprise them is to speak the truth and +that I always do. Nothing surprises English people more than truth; they +don't like it; they don't pay any attention to those (such as my friend +Mr. H. G. Wells and myself) who _trade_ in truth; but they listen and go +away saying, 'How very whimsical and paradoxical it all is,' and 'What a +clever adventurer the fellow is, to be sure.' 'That was a good joke +about duty and beauty being the same thing'--that was a joke I did _not_ +make. It is not my kind of joke--but when people begin ascribing to you +the jokes of other people, you become a living--I was going to say +statue--but I mean a living classic. + +THE DEVIL. I thought you disliked anything classic? + +THE STATUE. Ahem! only _dead_ classics--especially when they are +employed to protect romanticism. Dead classics are the protective +tariffs put on all realism and truth by bloated idealism. In a country +of plutocrats, idealism keeps out truth: idealism is more expensive, and +therefore more in demand. In America, there are more plutocrats, and +therefore more idealists . . . as Mr. Pember Reeves has pointed out in +New Zealand . . . + +THE DEVIL. But I say, is this drama? + +THE STATUE. Certainly not. It is a discussion taking place at a +theatre. It is no more drama than a music-hall entertainment, or a comic +opera, or a cinematograph, or a hospital operation, all of which things +take place in theatres. But surely it is more entertaining to come to a +discussion charmingly mounted by Ricketts--discussion too, in which every +one knows what he is going to say--than to flaccid plays in which the +audience always knows what the actors _are_ going to say better often +than the actors. The sort of balderdash which Mr. --- serves up to us +for plays. + +THE DEVIL (_peevish and old-fashioned_). I wish you would define drama. + +HANKIN (_advancing_). Won't you have tea, Commander? It's not bad tea. + +THE STATUE. I was afraid you were going to talk idealism. + +HANKIN (_aside_). Excuse my interrupting, but I want you to be +particularly nice to the Princess Salome. You know she was jilted by the +Censor. She has brought her music. + +THE DEVIL. You might introduce her to Mrs. Warren. But I am afraid the +Princess has taken rather too much upon herself this evening. + +THE STATUE. Yes, she has taken too much; I am sure she has taken too +much. + +A JOURNALIST. Is that the Princess Salome who has Mexican opals in her +teeth, and red eyebrows and green hair, and curious rock-crystal breasts? + +THE DEVIL. Yes, that is the Princess Salome. + +SHANNON. I know the Princess quite well. Ricketts makes her frocks. +Shall I ask her to dance? + +THE DEVIL. Yes, anything to distract her attention from the guests. +These artistic English people are so easily shocked. They don't +understand Strauss, nor indeed anything until it is quite out of date. I +want to make Hell at least as attractive as it is painted; a _place_ as +well as a _condition_ within the meaning of the Act. Full of wit, +beauty, pleasure, freedom-- + +THE STATUE. Ugh--ugh. + +SHANNON. Will you dance for us, Princess? + +SALOME. Anything for you, dear Mr. Shannon, only my ankles are a little +sore to-night. How is dear Ricketts? I want new dresses so badly. + +SHANNON. I suppose by this time he is in Heaven. But won't you dance +just to make things go? And then the Commander will lecture on super- +maniacs later on! + +SALOME. Senor Diavolo, what will you give me if I dance to-night? + +THE DEVIL. Anything you like, Salome. I swear by the dramatic critics. + +HANKIN (_correcting_). You mean the Styx. + +THE DEVIL. Same thing. Dance without any further nonsense, Salome. +Forget that you are in England. This is an unlicensed house. + +[SALOME _dances the dance of the Seven Censors_. + +THE DEVIL (_applauding_). She is charming. She is quite charming. +Salome, what shall I do for you? You who are like a purple patch in some +one else's prose. You who are like a black patch on some one else's +face. You are like an Imperialist in a Radical Cabinet. You are like a +Tariff Reformer in a Liberal-Unionist Administration. You are like the +Rokeby Velasquez in St. Paul's Cathedral. What can I do for you who are +fairer than-- + +SALOME. This sort of thing has been tried on me before. Let us come to +business. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab. + +THE DEVIL. No, not that. You must not ask that. I will give you +Walkley's head. He has one of the best heads. He is not ignorant. He +really knows what he is talking about. + +SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab. + +THE DEVIL. Salome, listen to me. Be reasonable. Do not interrupt me. I +will give you William Archer's head. He is charming--a cultivated, +liberal-minded critic. He is too liberal. He admires Stephen Phillips. +I will give you his dear head if you release me from my oath. + +SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab. +Remember your oath! + +THE DEVIL. I remember I swore _at_--I mean _by_--the dramatic critics. +Well, I am offering them to you. Exquisite and darling Salome, I will +give you the head of Max Beerbohm. It is unusually large, but it is full +of good things. What a charming ornament for your mantelpiece! You will +be in the movement. How every one will envy you! People will call upon +you who never used to call. Others will send you invitations. You will +at last get into English society. + +SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on the top of a four-wheel cab. + +THE DEVIL. Salome, come hither. Have you ever looked at the _Daily +Mirror_? Only in the _Daily Mirror_ should one look. For it tells the +truth sometimes. Well, I will give you the head of Hamilton Fyfe. He is +my best friend. No critic is so fond of the drama as Hamilton Fyfe. +(_Huskily_.) Salome, I will give you W. L. Courtney's head. I will give +you all their heads. + +SALOME. I have the scalps of most critics. I want Mr. Redford's head on +a four-wheel cab. + +THE DEVIL. Salome! You do not know what you ask. Mr. Redford is a kind +of religion. He represents the Lord Chamberlain. You know the dear Lord +Chamberlain. You would not harm one of his servants, especially when +they are not insured. It would be cruel. It would be irreligious. It +would be in bad taste. It would not be respectable. Listen to me; I +will give you all Herod's Stores . . . Salome. Shannon was right. You +HAVE taken too much, or you would not ask this thing. See, I will give +you Mr. Redford's body, but not his head. Not that, not that, my child. + +SALOME. I want Mr. Redford's head on a four-wheel cab. + +THE DEVIL. Salome, I must tell you a secret. It is terrible for me to +have to tell the truth. The Commander said that I would have to tell the +truth. MR. REDFORD HAS NO HEAD! + +[_The audience long before this have begun to put on their cloaks, and +the dramatic critics have gone away to describe the cold reception with +which the play has been greeted. All the people on the stage cover their +heads except the_ STATUE, _who has become during the action of the piece +more and more like Mr. Bernard Shaw. Curtain descends slowly_. + +(1907.) + +_To_ ARTHUR CLIFTON, ESQ. + + + + +SOME DOCTORED DILEMMA. + + +A NEW EPILOGUE FOR THE LAST PERFORMANCE OF MR. SHAW'S PLAY. + +Though Mr. Bernard Shaw has set the fashion in prologues for modern +plays, his admirers were not altogether satisfied with the epilogue to +_The Doctor's Dilemma_. It is far too short; and leaves us in the dark +as to whom 'Jennifer Dubedat' married. Epilogues, as students of English +drama remember, were often composed by other authors. The following +experiment ought to have come from the hand of Mr. St. John Hankin, that +master of Dramatic Sequels, but his work on the 'Cassilis Engagement' +deprived Mr. Shaw of the only possible collaborator. + +[SCENE: _A Bury Street Picture Gallery_--MESSRS. GERSAINT & CO. _The +clock strikes ten, and_ SIR COLENSO RIDGEON _is seen going out rather +crestfallen by centre door_. MR. GERSAINT, _the manager, is nailing up a +notice_ ('_All works of art, for art's sake or sale; prices on +application. Catalogue_ 1_s_.). MR. JACK STEPNEY, _the secretary, is +receiving the private view cards from the visitors who are trooping in; +some sneak catalogues as they enter, and on being asked for payment +protest and produce visiting cards and press vouchers instead of +shillings. Artists, Royal Academicians_, MR. EDMUND GOSSE, _and other +members of the House of Lords discovered; men of letters, art critics, +connoisseurs, journalists, collectors, dealers, private viewers, +impostors, dramatic critics, poets, pickpockets, politicians crowd the +stage. From time to time_ JACK STEPNEY _places a red star on the picture +frames in the course of the action_.] + +J. STEPNEY. I thought all the pictures had been bought by Dr. +Schutzmacher. + +GERSAINT. So they were, my boy, but he has wired saying they are all to +be put up for sale at double the price; capital business, you see we +shall get two commissions. + +J. STEPNEY. Yes, sir. It is fortunate Mrs. Dubedat did not have the +prices marked in the Catalogue. + +GERSAINT. You mean Mrs. Schutzmacher. (_Drives in last nail_). + +J. STEPNEY. Yes, sir. + +_Enter a striking-looking-man, not unlike a Holbein drawing, at a +distance: but on nearer inspection, as he comes within range of the +footlights, he is more like an Isaac Oliver or Nicholas Lucidel. He +examines the notice and sniffs_. + +S.L.M.N.U.H.D. Which are the works of Art? + +EDMUND GOSSE. Can you tell me who that is? He is one of the few people +I don't know by sight. A celebrity of course; and do point out any +obscurities. Every one is so distinguished. It is rather confusing. + +GERSAINT. That is the Holland Park Wonder, so-called because he lives at +the top of a tower in Holland Park--the greatest Art Connoisseur in +England. Mr. Charles Ricketts, the greatest-- + +EDMUND GOSSE. Thank you; thank you. + +MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE (_interrupting_). Can you tell me whether the +frames are included in the prices of the pictures? + +J. STEPNEY. No, sir. They are stock frames, the property of the +Gallery, and are only lent for the occasion. + +MR. FREDERICK WEDMORE. Then I fear I cannot buy; a naked picture without +a frame is useless to me. + +CHARLES RICKETTS. Do you think I could buy a frame without a picture? + +JOSEPH PENNELL. I say Ricketts, it seems a beastly shame we didn't get +this show for the International. It would have been good 'ad.' What's +the use of Backers? I see they're selling well. + +CHARLES RICKETTS. But, my dear Pennell, you're doing the _Life_, aren't +you?--the real Dubedat? + +JOSEPH PENNELL. Oh, yes, but the family have injuncted Heinemann from +publishing the letters: Mr. Justice Kekewich will probably change his +opinion when the weather gets warmer. It is only an interim injunction. + +CHARLES RICKETTS. A sort of Clapham Injunction. + +SIR WILLIAM RICHMOND, K.C.B., R.A. If I had known what a stupendous +genius Dubedat was, I should have given him part of the 'New Bailey' to +decorate. + +D. S. MACCOLL. Let us be thankful he's as dead as Bill Bailey. + +SIR CHARLES HOLROYD (_smoothing things over_). I think we ought to have +an example for the Tate. (MACCOLL _winces_.) The Chantrey +Bequest--(MACCOLL _winces again_)--might do something; and I must write +to Lord Balcarres. The National Arts Collections Fund may have something +over from the subscriptions to the Rokeby Velasquez; but I want to see +what Colvin is going to choose for the British Museum. + +SIDNEY COLVIN. I think we might have this drawing; it stands on its +legs. A most interesting fellow Dubedat. He reminds me of Con-- + +GEORGE MOORE. Not Stevenson, though _he_ had no talent whatever. My +dear Mr. Colvin, have you ever read 'Vailima Letters'? I have read parts +of them. + +SIDNEY COLVIN (_coldly_). Ah, really! Did you suffer very much? + +SIR HUGH P. LANE. Do you think, Mr. Gersaint, the artist's widow would +give me one of the pictures for the Dublin Gallery? We have no money at +all. _I have no money_, but all the artists are giving pictures: +Sargent, Shannon, Lavery, Frank Dicksee; and Rodin is giving a plaster +cast. + +GERSAINT. How charming and insinuating you are, Sir Hugh. We can make +special reductions for the Dublin Gallery, but you can hardly expect +charitable bequests from picture dealers. + +SIR HUGH P. LANE. Oh! but Dowdeswell, Agnew, Sulley, Wertheimer, P. and +D. Colnaghi, and Humphry Ward are all giving me pictures. Now, look +here, I'll buy these five drawings, and you can give me these two. I'll +give you a Gainsborough drawing in exchange for them. It has a very good +history. First it belonged to Ricketts, then to Rothenstein, then Wilson +Steer, and then to the Carfax Gallery, and . . . then it came into my +possession, and all that in three months. (_Bargain concluded_.) + +MR. PFFUNGST (_aside_). But is there any evidence that it belonged to +Gainsborough? + +SIR HUGH P. LANE (_turning to a titled lady_). Oh, do come to tea next +Saturday. I want to show you my new Titian which I _have just bought +for_ 2100_l_. + +TITLED LADY. Sir Hugh, _can_ you tell me who Mrs. Dubedat is now? + +SIR HUGH P. LANE. Oh, yes. She married Dr. Schutzmacher, the specialist +on bigamy only this morning. + +TITLED LADY. How interesting. I should like to meet her. Dresses +divinely, I'm told. + +SIR HUGH P. LANE. She's coming to tea next Saturday; such good tea, too! + +TITLED LADY. That will be delightful. + +ST. JOHN HANKIN (_loftily_). Can you tell me whether this charmian +artist is pronounced Dubedat or Dubedat? + +W. P. KER (_in deep Scotch_). Non Dubitat. (_He does not speak again_.) + +P. G. KONODY. Oh, Mr. Phillips, do tell me _exactly_ what _you_ think of +this artist! + +CLAUDE PHILLIPS. I think he wanted a good smacking. + +P. G. KONODY. Ah, yes, his art _has_ a smack about it. (_Aside_.) Good +heading for the _Daily Mail_, 'Art with a smack.' (_Writes in +catalogue_.) + +WILL ROTHENSTEIN. When I see pictures of this kind, my dear Gersaint, +they seem to me to explain your existence. An artist without a +conscience . . . (_Sees_ ROGER FRY.) My dear Fry, what are _you_ doing +here? Buying for New York? (_Laughs meaningly_.) + +ROGER FRY. Oh, no; but I hear Gersaint has a very fine picture by the +Maitresse of the Moulin Rouge. Weale says it is School of Gheel +(_pronounced Kail_). + +WILL ROTHENSTEIN. Kail Yard I should think; do look at these things. + +ROGER FRY (_vaguely_). Who are they by? Oh, yes, Dubedat, of course. + +[FRY _and_ ROTHENSTEIN _regard picture with disdain_; _it withers under +their glance_. _Stage illusion by_ MASKELYNE _and_ THEODORE COOK. +STEPNEY _places a red star on it_. + +GERSAINT. Well, Mr. Bowyer Nichols, I hope we shall have a good long +notice in the _Westminster Gazette_. Now if there is any drawing . . . + +BOWYER NICHOLS (_very stiffly_). No, there isn't. I don't think the +Exhibition sufficiently important; everything seems to me cribbed: most +of the pictures look like reproductions of John, Orpen or Neville Lytton. + +GERSAINT. Ah, no doubt, influenced by Neville Lytton. That portrait of +Mr. Cutler Walpole has a Neville Lytton feeling. Neville Lytton in his +earlier manner. + +_Enter_ SIR PATRICK CULLEN, SIR RALPH BLOOMFIELD BONNINGTON _and_ SIR +COLENSO RIDGEON. + +SIR C. RIDGEON. Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are +for sale; now I am going to plunge a little. I think they will rise in +value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man. If +I treat four artists with _virus obscaenum_ for three weeks, what will be +the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week? + +SIR P. CULLEN. Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior +wrangler and then abolished. + +SIR C. RIDGEON. What a cynic you are. All the same I've had great +successes, though Dubedat _was_ one of our failures. A rather anaemic +member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less +than a year he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to +that? + +SIR P. CULLEN. Out of Phagocyte, out of mind. + +SIR R. B. B. My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are. Take +MacColl's case: a typical instance of _morbus ferox ars nova anglicana_: +under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate. + +SIR C. RIDGEON. Then there's Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high +tempera? + +SIR P. CULLEN. There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue. + +SIR R. B. B. How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the +former nurse: 'the evil that men do lives after them.' + +SIR P. CULLEN. My dear B. B., this is not Dubedat's funeral. Do you +think Bernard Shaw will like the new epilogue? + +BERNARD SHAW. He will; I'm shaw. + +L. C. C. INSPECTOR. Excuse me, is Mr. Vedrenne here? Ah, yes! There is +Mr. Vedrenne. Will you kindly answer some of my questions? Is that door +on the left a real door? In case of fire I cannot allow property doors; +the actors might be seized with stage fright, and they must have, as Sir +B. B. would say, 'their exits and their entrances.' + +VEDRENNE. Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real. Ask +Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar. The art, the +acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic +critics I cannot exclude. I admit the audience looks improbable at +matinees; _out of Court_ is a truth in art of which we are only dimly +beginning to understand the significance. [_Noise outside_. + +_Enter_ JENNIFER, _dressed in deep mourning_. + +JENNIFER (_with a bright smile_). Mr. Vedrenne, I have just had a +telegram saying that my husband, Leo, was killed in his motor after +leaving me at the Synagogue. His last words were: 'Jennifer, promise me +that you will wear mourning if I die, merely to mark the difference +between Dubedat and myself.' This afternoon I am going to marry +Blenkinsop. How are the sales going? + +VEDRENNE. Well, I think we might have the catechism or the churching of +heroines. What is your name? + +JENNIFER. Jennifer. + +VEDRENNE. Where did you get that name? + +JENNIFER. From Bernard Shaw in my baptism. + +MR. REDFORD (_Licenser of Plays_). Mr. Shaw, I really must point out +that this passage comes from the Anglican Prayer-book. Are you aware of +that? I have a suggestion of my own for ending the play. + +BERNARD SHAW. Oh, shut up! Let us have my ten commandments. + +GRANVILLE BARKER. My dear Shaw, you sent them to Wells for revision and +he lost them in the Tube. I can remember the first one, 'Maude spake +these words and said: "Thou shalt have none other Shaws but me."' + +BERNARD SHAW. How careless of Wells. I remember the second: 'Do not +indulge in craven imitation.' + +W. L. COURTNEY. The third commandment runs: 'Thou shalt not covet George +Alexander.' + +GRANVILLE BARKER. One of them runs: 'Do not commit yourself to Beerbohm +Tree, though his is His Majesty's . . . ' But we shall never get them +right. We must offer a reward for their recovery. I vote that Walkley +now says the _credo_. That, I think, expresses every one's sentiment. + +A. B. WALKLEY (_reluctantly_). I believe in Bernard Shaw, in Granville +Barker, and (_heartily_) in _The Times_. + +WILLIAM ARCHER. Plaudite, missa est. + +(1907.) + +CURTAIN. + + + + +THE JADED INTELLECTUALS. A DIALOGUE. + + +_Scene: The Smoking-room of the Elivas Club_. + +_Characters_: LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS, _aetat. 54, a distinguished literary +critic, and_ LUKE CULLUS, _a rich connoisseur of art and life. They are +not smoking nor drinking spirits. One is sipping barley water, the other +Vichy_. + +LUKE CULLUS. You are a dreadful pessimist! + +LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS. Alas! there is no such thing in these days. We are +merely disappointed optimists. When Walter Pater died I did not realise +that English literature expired. Yet the event excited hardly any +interest in the Press. Our leading weekly, the _Spectator_, merely +mentioned that Brasenose College, Oxford, had lost an excellent Dean. + +L. C. I can hardly understand you. Painting, I admit, is entirely a +lost art, so far as England is concerned. The death of Burne-Jones +brought our tradition to an end. I see no future for any of the arts +except needlework, of which, I am told, there is a hopeful revival. But +in your fields of literature, what a number of great names! How I envy +you! + +L. T. Who is there? + +L. C. Well, to take the novelists first: you have the great Thomas +Hardy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Hewlett . . . I +can't remember the names of any others just at present. Then take the +poets: Austin Dobson, my own special favourite; and among the younger +men, A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Yeats, Arthur Symons, Laurence +Binyon, William Watson-- + +L. T. (_interrupting_). Who always keeps one foot in Wordsworth's grave. +But all the men you mention, my dear Cullus, belong to the last century. +They have done their best work. Hardy has become mummy, and Henry James +is sold in Balham. Except Hardy, they have become unintelligible. The +theory that 'to be intelligible is to be found out' seems to have +frightened them. The books they issue are a series of 'not-at-home' +cards--sort of P.P.C.'s on posterity. And the younger poets, too, belong +to the last century, or they stand in the same relation to their +immediate predecessors, to borrow one of your metaphors, as _l'art +nouveau_ does to Chippendale. Oh, for the days of Byron, Keats, and +Shelley! + +L. C. All of whom died before they were matured. You seem to resent +development. In literature I am a mere _dilettante_. A fastidious +reader, but not an expert. I know what I don't like; but I never know +what I shall like. At least twice a year I come across a book which +gives me much pleasure. As it comes from the lending library it is never +quite new. That is an added charm. If it happens to have made a +sensation, the sensation is all over by the time it reaches me. The book +has matured. A quite new book is always a little crude. It suggests an +evening paper. There at least you will agree. But to come across a work +which Henry James published, say, last year, is, I assure you, like +finding a Hubert Van Eyck in the Brompton Road. + +L. T. I wish I could share your enthusiasm, or that I could change +places with you. Every year the personality of a new artist is revealed +to you. I know you only pretend not to admire the modern school of +painting. You find it a convenient pose. Your flora and your fauna are +always receiving additions; while my garden is withered; my zoo is out of +repair. The bars are broken; the tanks have run dry. There is hardly a +trace of life except in the snake-house, and, as I mentioned, the last +giraffe is dead. + +L. C. Our friend, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, is fortunately able to give us +a different account of the institution in Regent's Park. You are quite +wrong about modern painting. None of the younger men can paint at all. A +few of them can draw, I admit. It is all they can do. The death of +Charles Furse blasted all my hopes of English art. Whistler is dead; +Sargent is an American. + +L. T. Well, so is Henry James, if it comes to that. And so _was_ +Whistler. But I have seen the works of several young artists who I +understand are carrying out the great traditions of painting. Ricketts, +Shannon, Wilson Steer, Rothenstein, Orpen, Nicholson, Augustus John are +surely worthy successors to Turner, Alfred Stevens, and the +Pre-Raphaelites. + +L. C. They are merely connoisseurs gifted with expressing their +appreciation of the past in paint. They appeal to you as a literary man. +You like to detect in every stroke of their brushes an echo of the past. +Their pictures have been _heard_, not _seen_. All the younger artists +are committing burglary on the old masters. + +L. T. It is you who are a disappointed optimist. + +L. C. Not about literature or the drama. I seem to hear, with Ibsen's +'Master Builder,' the younger generation knocking at the door. + +L. T. It comes in without knocking in my experience; and generally has +_fig_-leaves in its hair--a decided advance on the coiffure of Hedda +Gabler's lover. + +L. C. But look at Bernard Shaw. + +L. T. Why should I look at Bernard Shaw? I read his plays and am more +than ever convinced that he has gone on the wrong lines. His was the +opportunity. He made _il gran refuto_. Some one said that George +Saintsbury never got over the first night of _Hernani_. Shaw never +recovered the _premiere_ of _Ghosts_. He roofed our Thespian temple with +Irish slate. His disciples found English drama solid brick and leave it +plaster of Paris. Yet Shaw might have been another Congreve. + +L. C. _Troja fuit_. We do not want another. I am sure you never went +to the Court at all. + +L. T. Oh, yes, I attended the last _levee_. But the drama is too large +a subject, or, in England, too small a subject to discuss. We live, as +Professor Mahaffy has reminded us, in an Alexandrian age. We are wounded +with archaeology and exquisite scholarship, and must drag our slow length +along . . . We were talking about literature. Where are the essayists, +the Lambs, and the Hazlitts? I know you are going to say Andrew Lang; I +say it every day; it is like an Amen in the Prayer-book; it occurs quite +as frequently in periodical literature. He _was_ my favourite essayist, +during the _last_ fifteen years of the _last_ century. What is he now? +An historian, a folk-lorist, an archaeologist, a controversialist. I +believe he is an expert on portraits of Mary Stuart. You were going on +to say G. K. Chesterton-- + +L. C. No. I was going to say Max Beerbohm. Some of his essays I put +beside Lamb's, and above Hazlitt's. He has style; but then I am +prejudiced because he is the only modern artist I really admire. He is a +superb draughtsman and our only caricaturist. Then there is George +Moore. I don't care for his novels, but his essays are delightful. +George Moore really counts. Few people know so little about art; yet how +delightfully he writes about it. Everything comes to him as a surprise. +He gives you the same sort of enjoyment as you would derive from hearing +a nun preach on the sins of smart society. + +L. T. Moore is one of many literary Acteons who have mistaken Diana for +Aphrodite. + +L. C. You mean he is great dear; but he gets hold of the right end of +the stick. + +L. T. And he generally soils it. But you know nothing about literature. +The age requires blood and Kipling gave it Condy's Fluid (_drinks barley +water_). The age requires life, and Moore gave us a gallantee show from +Montmartre (_drinks barley water_). Even I require life. To-morrow I am +off to Aix. + +L. C.--les Bains? + +L. T. No, la-Chapelle! + +L. C. Oh, then we shall probably meet. Thanks. I can get on my own +overcoat. I shall probably be there myself in a few weeks. + + + + +ABBEY THOUGHTS. + + +Shall some memorial of Herbert Spencer be erected in the Abbey, or rather +in what journalists love to call the 'National Valhalla,' the 'English +Pantheon,' or the 'venerable edifice,' where, as Macaulay says, the dust +of the illustrious accusers, _et cetera_----? The question was once +agitated in a daily paper. It seems that the Dean, when approached on +the subject, acted like one of his predecessors in the case of Byron. The +Dean is in a very difficult position, because any decision of his must be +severely criticised from one quarter or another. The Abbey retains, I +understand, some of its pre-Reformation privileges, and is not under the +jurisdiction of Bishop or Archbishop. Yet no one who has ever visited +the Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor on October 13th, the festival of +his translation, can accuse the Abbey authorities of bigotry or narrow- +mindedness. Only a few years ago I fought my way, with other Popish +pilgrims, to the shrine of our patron Saint (as he _was_, until +superseded by Saint George in the thirteenth century), and there I +indulged in overt acts of superstition violating Article XXII. of 'the +Church of England by law established.' A verger, with some colonial +tourists, arrived during our devotions, but his voice was lowered out of +regard for our feelings. Indeed, both he and the tourists adopted +towards us an attitude of respectful curiosity (not altogether +unpleasant), which was in striking contrast to the methods of the +continental _Suisse_ routing out worshippers from a side chapel of a +Catholic church in order to show Baedeker-ridden sightseers an +altar-piece by Rotto Rotinelli. + +Thoughts of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley irresistibly mingled with my +devotions. What had the poor fellows burnt for, after all? Here we were +ostentatiously ignoring English history and the adjacent Houses of +Parliament; outraging the rubrics by ritual observations for which poor +curates in the East End are often suspended, and before now have been +imprisoned. I could not help thinking that the Archbishop of Westminster +would hardly care to return these hospitalities, by permitting, on August +24th, a memorial service for Admiral Coligny in Westminster Cathedral. . . . +I rose from my knees a new Luther, with something like a Protestant +feeling, and scrutinised severely the tombs in Poets' Corner. Even there +I found myself confronted with an almost irritating liberalism. Here was +Alexander Pope, who rejected all the overtures of Swift and Atterbury to +embrace the Protestant faith. And there was Dryden, not, perhaps, a +great ornament to my persuasion, but still a Catholic at the last. Dean +Panther had not grudged poet Hind his niche in the National Valhalla (I +knew I should be reduced to that periphrasis). And here was the mighty +Charles Darwin, about whose reception into the English Pantheon (I have +fallen again) I remember there was some trouble. Well, if precedent +embalms a principle, I venture to raise a thin small voice, and plead for +Herbert Spencer. 'The English people,' said a friendly French critic, +'do not admire their great men because they were great, but because they +reflect credit on themselves.' So on the score of national vanity I +claim space for Herbert Spencer. Very few Englishmen have exercised such +extraordinary influence on continental opinion, which Beaconsfield said +was the verdict of posterity. On the news of his death, the Italian +Chamber passed a vote of condolence with the English people. I suppose +that does not seem a great honour to Englishmen, but to me, an enemy of +United Italy, it seemed a great honour, not only to the dead but to the +English people. Can you imagine the Swiss Federal Council sending us a +vote of condolence on the death of Mr. Hall Caine or Mr. Robert Hichens? + +Again, though it is ungrateful of me to mention the fact after my +experiences of October 13th, the Abbey was not built nor endowed by +people who anticipated the Anglican form of worship being celebrated +within its walls, though I admit it has been _restored_ by the adherents +of that communion. The image of Milton, to take only one instance, would +have been quite as objectionable to Henry III. or Abbot Islip as those of +Darwin or Spencer. The emoluments bequeathed by Henry VII. and others +for requiem masses are now devoted to the education of Deans' daughters +and Canons' sons. Where incensed altars used to stand, hideous monuments +of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries wound the Gothic +air with their monstrous ornaments and inapposite epitaphs. St. Paul's +may fairly be held sacred to Anglicanism, and I do not think any one +would claim sepulture within its precincts for one who was avowedly +hostile to Christian or Anglican sentiment. But I think the Abbey has +now passed into the category of museums, and might well be declared a +national monument under control of the State. The choir, and possibly +the nave, should, of course, be severely preserved for whatever the State +religion might be at the time. Catholics need not mourn the +secularisation of the transepts and chapels, because Leo XIII. renounced +officially all claims on the ancient shrines of the Catholic faith, and +High Churchmen might console themselves by recalling the fact that Abbots +were originally laymen. + +My whole scheme would be a return to the practice of the Primitive +Church, when priests were only allowed on sufferance inside abbeys at +all. The Low Church party need not be considered, because they can have +no sentiment about what they regard as relics of superstition and Broad +Churchmen could hardly complain at the logical development of their own +principle. The Nonconformists, the backbone of the nation, could not be +otherwise than grateful. The decision about admitting busts, statues, or +bodies into the national and sacred 'musee des morts' (as the +anti-clerical French might call it under the new constitution) would rest +with the Home Secretary. This would be an added interest to the duties +of a painstaking official, forming pleasant interludes between +considering the remission of sentences on popular criminals: it would +relieve the Dean and Chapter at all events from grave responsibility. The +Home Secretary would always be called the Abbot of Westminster. How +picturesque at the formation of a new Cabinet--'_Home Secretary and Abbot +of Westminster_, the Right Hon. Mr. So-and-So.' The first duty of the +Abbot will be to appoint a Royal Commission to consider the removal of +hideous monuments which disfigure the edifice: nothing prior to 1700 +coming under its consideration. A small tablet would recall what has +been taken away. Herbert Spencer's claim to a statue would be duly +considered, and, I hope, by a unanimous vote some of the other glaring +gaps would be filled up. If the Abbey is full of obscurities, very dim +religious lights, many of the illustrious names in our literature have +been omitted: Byron, Shelley, Keats--to mention only these. There is no +monument to Chatterton, one of the more powerful influences in the +romantic movement, nor to William Blake, whose boyish inspiration was +actually nourished amid that 'Gothic supineness,' as Mr. MacColl has +finely said of him. Of all our poets and painters Blake surely deserves +a monument in the grey church which became to him what St. Mary Redcliffe +was to Chatterton. A window adapted from the book of Job (with the +marvellous design of the Morning Stars) was, I am told, actually offered +to, and rejected by, the late Dean. To Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the +wonderful movement of which he was the dynamic force there should also be +a worthy memorial; to Water Pater, the superb aside of English prose; to +Cardinal Manning, _the_ Ecclesiastic of the nineteenth century; and +Professor Huxley, that master of dialectics. + +A young actor of my acquaintance, who bore the honoured name of Siddons, +was invited to take part in the funeral service of the late Sir Henry +Irving. His step-father was connected by marriage with the great +actress, and he was very proud of his physical resemblance to her +portrait by Reynolds. He had played with great success the part of +Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was +the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz. It was an open secret that he had +refused Mr. Arthur Bourchier's offer of that _role_ in a proposed revival +of _Hamlet_ at the Garrick. Since the burial of Sir Henry Irving in the +Abbey, _he has never been seen_: though I saw him myself in the funeral +_cortege_. All his friends remember the curious exaltation in his manner +a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a +moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial +in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the +prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's +tomb. What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault +was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James +and the curious imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells to describe. I have been +assured by the vergers that mysterious sounds were heard for some days +after this historical occasion. Distressed by the loss of my friend, I +applied to the Dean of Westminster and finally to Scotland Yard. I need +not say that I was met with sacerdotal indifference on the one hand and +with callous officialism on the other. I hope that under the Royal +Commission which I have appointed the mystery will be cleared up. Not +that I begrudge poor Siddons a niche with Garrick and Irving. + +(1906.) + +_To_ PROFESSOR JAMES MAYOR, _Toronto University_. + + + + +THE ELETHIAN MUSE. + + +After chaperoning into Fleet Street the eleventh Muse, the rather +Batavian lady who is not to be found in that Greek peerage, Lempriere's +Dictionary, an obliging correspondent from Edinburgh (an eminent writer +to the Signet in our northern Thebes) inquired if there were any more +muses who had escaped the students of comparative mythology. It is in +response to his letter that I now present, as Mr. Charles Frohman would +say, the thirteenth, the Elethian Muse. + +Yet I can fancy people asking, Where is the twelfth, and over what art or +science does she preside? According to Apollodorus (in a recently +recovered fragment from Oxyrynchus), Jupiter, suffering from the chronic +headaches consequent on his acrimonious conversations with Athena, +decided to consult Vulcan, AEsculapius having come to be regarded as a +quack. Mulciber (as we must now call him, having used the name Vulcan +once), suggested an extraordinary remedy, one of the earliest records of +a homoeopathic expedient. He prescribed that the king of gods and men +should keep his ambrosial tongue in the side of his cheek for half an +hour three times a day. The operation produced violent retching in the +Capitoline stomach. And on the ninth day, from his mouth, quite unarmed, +sprang the twelfth muse. The other goddesses were very disgusted; and +even the gods declined to have any communication with the new arrival. +Apollo, however, was more tolerant, and offered her an asylum on the top +shelf of the celestial library. Ever afterwards Musagetes used to be +heard laughing immoderately, even for a librarian to the then House of +Lords. Jupiter, incensed at this irregularity, paid him a surprise visit +one day in order to discover the cause. He stayed, however, quite a long +time; and the other deities soon contracted the habit of taking their +nectar into the library. With the decline of manners, the twelfth muse +began to be invited to dessert, after Juno and the more reputable +goddesses had retired. To cut a long story short, when Pan died, in the +Olympian sense very shortly afterwards, all the gods, as we know, took +refuge on earth. Jupiter retired to Iceland, Aphrodite to Germany, +Apollo to Picardy, but the twelfth muse wandered all over Europe, and +found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters. The castle, +the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made +her welcome. Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a +protestant libel, she took the black veil in a nunnery. + +She is older than the chestnuts of Vallombrosa. Perhaps of all the +ancient goddesses time has chilled her least. Her unfathomable smile +wears a touch of something sinister in it, but she has a new meaning for +every generation. And yet for Aretino there was some further magic of +crimson on her lips and cheeks, lost for us. She is a solecism for the +convalescent, and has given consolation to the brave. She has been a +diver in rather deep seas and a climber in somewhat steep places. Her +censers are the smoking-rooms of clubs; and her presence-lamps are +schoolboys' lanterns. Though held the friend of liars and brutes, she +has lived on the indelicacies of kings, and has made even pontiffs laugh. +Her mysteries are told in the night-time, and in low whispers to the +garish day. She lingers over the stable-yard (no doubt called _mews_ for +that reason). Her costly breviaries, embellished with strange +illuminations, are prohibited under Lord Campbell's Act. Stars mark the +places where she has been. Sometimes a scholar's fallacy, a sworn foe to +Dr. Bowdler, she is Notre Dame de Milet, our Lady of Limerick. + +* * * * * + +But it is of her sister I would speak, the thirteenth sister, who was +created to keep the eleventh in countenance. She presides over the +absurdities of prose. She is responsible for the stylistic flights of +Pegasus when, owing to the persuasive eloquence of the Hon. Stephen +Coleridge, his bearing-rein has been abolished, and he kicks over the +traces. + +It was the Elethian Muse who inspired that Oxford undergraduate's +peroration to his essay on the Characteristics of St. John's Gospel-- + + 'Furthermore, we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a + tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the other + Evangelists'-- + +and she hovered over the journalist who, writing for a paper which we +need not name, referred to Bacchus as + + 'that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably + connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.' + +There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker's +mines of pregnant information and barren fact. I know it is fashionable +to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies +about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge +indispensable, if exiguous. You must always kick away the ladder when +you arrive at literary distinction. I, who am still climbing and still +clinging, can afford to be more generous. Let me, therefore, crown +Baedeker with an essayist's parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too +become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous. + +In _Southern France_, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find-- + + To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a + delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way: + guide 12, horse 10 fr.; _adders abound_. + +For synthetic prose you will have to go to Tacitus to find the equal of +that passage. No more is heard of the excursion. 'We leave Luz by the +Barege road,' the text goes on to say. Reflections and picturesque word- +painting are left for Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Murray. + +In _Southern Italy_, Baedeker yields to softer and more Virgilian +influences. The purple patches are longer and more frequent. On page 99 +we learn not only how to get to Baiae, but that + + Luxury and profligacy, however, soon took up their abode at Baiae, and + the desolate ruins, which now alone encounter the eye, point the usual + moral! + +And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:-- + + The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish + that are not quite fresh. + +But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have +yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology. There are +passages I would not willingly let die. In one of these books general +knowledge was imparted after the manner of Magnall: 'What is the world? +The earth on which we live.' 'Who was Raphael?' 'How is rice made?' +After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question +15: 'Give the character of Prince Potemki':-- + + Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and + affectedly refined. Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly + superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in + action. + +Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never +learnt who Potemki was. At the age of seven he stood to me for what +'Timberio' still is for Capriote children. My teacher obviously did not +know. She always evaded my inquiries by saying, 'You will know when you +are older, darling.' Suspecting her ignorance, I became pertinacious. +'When I am as old as you?' was my ungallant rejoinder. I had to write +the character out a hundred times. Then one Christmas Day I ventured to +ask my father, who said I would find out about him in Gibbon. But I knew +he was not speaking the truth, because he laughed in a nervous, peculiar +way, and added that since I was so fond of history I must go to Oxford +when I was older. I loathed history, and inwardly resolved that +Cambridge should be my University. My mother admitted entire ignorance +of Potemki's identity; and on my sketching his character (for I was proud +of the knowledge), said he was obviously a 'horrid' man. His personality +shadowed my childhood with a deadly fascination, which has not entirely +worn away; producing the same sort of effect on me as an imaginary +portrait by Pater. + +In a semi-geographical work called _Near Home; or, Europe Described_, +published by Hatchards in the fifties (though my friend, Mr. Arthur +Humphreys, denies all knowledge of it), I can recall many stereos of +dialectic cast in a Socratic mould:-- + + _Q_. What is the religion of the Italians? _A_. They are Roman + Catholics. + + _Q_. What do the Roman Catholics worship? _A_. Idols and a piece of + bread. + + _Q_. Would not God be very angry if He knew the Italians worshipped + idols and a piece of bread? _A_. God IS very angry. + +Mr. Augustine Birrell, if still interested in educational phenomena, will +not be surprised to learn that when I reached to man's estate I 'embraced +the errors of Rome,' as my historical manual would have phrased it. + +I pity the child who did not learn universal history from Collier. How +tame are the periods of Lord Acton, the Rev. William Hunt, Froude, +Freeman, Oman, Round, even Macaulay, and little Arthur, beside the rich +Elethian periods of William Francis Collier. Not Berenson, not Byron, +not Beerbohm, have given us such a picture of Venice as Collier in +describing the Council of Ten:-- + + The ten were terrible; but still more terrible were the three + inquisitors--two black, one red--appointed in 1454. Deep mystery hung + over the three. They were elected by the ten; none else knew their + names. Their great work was to kill; and no man--doge, councillor, or + inquisitor--was beyond their reach. Secretly they pronounced a doom; + and ere long the stiletto or the poison cup had done its work, or the + dark waters of the lagoon had closed over a life. The spy was + everywhere. No man dared to speak out, for his most intimate + companions might be on the watch to betray him. Bronze vases, shaped + like a lion's mouth, gaped at the corner of every square to receive + the names of suspected persons. Gloom and suspicion haunted gondola + and hearth!! + +It is owing to Collier that I know at least one fact about the Goths who +took Rome, 'having reduced the citizens to feed on mice and nettles, A.D. +546,' a diet to which many of the hotel proprietors in the imperial city +still treat their clients. + +But let _Bellows' Dictionary_, a friend and instructor of riper years, +close my list of great examples and my theme. The criticism is apposite +to myself, and its only oddity--its Elethian quality, if I may say so--is +its presence in that marvellous miniature whose ingenious author you +would never suspect could have found room for such portentous +observations in the small duodecimo to which he confined himself:-- + + Unaffected language is the inseparable accompaniment of natural + refinement; but that affectation which would make up for paucity of + thought by overstrained expression is a mark of vulgarity from which + no accident of social position can redeem those who are guilty of it. + +_To_ MORE ADEY, ESQ. + + + + +THERE IS NO DECAY. + + +_A Lecture delivered in the Old Bluecoat School, Liverpool, on February +12th, 1908_. + + 'In every age there is some question raised as to its wants and + powers, its strength and weakness, its great or small worth and work; + and in every age that question is waste of time and speech. To a + small soul the age which has borne it can appear only as an age of + small souls; the pigmy brain and emasculate spirit can perceive in its + own time nothing but dwarfishness and emasculation. Each century has + seemed to some of its children an epoch of decadence and decline in + national life and spiritual, in moral or material glory; each alike + has heard the cry of degeneracy raised against it, the wave of emulous + impotence set up against the weakness of the age.'--SWINBURNE. + +Before the invention of printing, or let me say before the cheapening of +printing, the lecturer was in a more fortunate position than he is to- +day; because, if a learned man, he was able to give his audience certain +pieces of information which he could be fairly sure _some_ of his +listeners had never heard before. The arrival in town or city of +Abelard, Paracelsus, or Erasmus, to take the first instances occurring to +me, must have been a great event, the importance of which we can scarcely +appreciate at the present day. It must have excited our forefathers, at +least as much as the arrival of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in any large +city, excites I imagine, all of us to-day. But multiplication of books +has really rendered lecturers, as instructors, mere intellectual +Othellos; their occupation is gone; the erudition of the ages is now +within reach of all; though educational books were fairly expensive +within living memory. You owe, therefore, a debt of gratitude to the +_Times_ and the _Daily Mail_ for bringing Encyclopaedias of all kinds +into the range of the shallowest purse and in contact with the shallowest +heads in the community. + +But in case your learned professors have not contributed all their hidden +lore and scholarship to the cheap Encyclopaedias, and still allow their +learning to leak out at lectures, you may have come expecting instruction +from me on some neglected subject. If that is so, I must confess myself +at once an impostor. I have no information to give you. I assume your +erudition to compensate for my own lack of it. There are no facts which +I might bring before you that you cannot find stated more clearly in +valuable manuals or works of reference, if you have not mastered them +already. There is no scientific or philosophic theory which I might +propound that you could not hear with greater benefit from others. + +Briefly, I have no orange up my sleeve. + +Let there be no deception or disappointment. I want you to play with an +idea as children play at ball--not football--but the old game of catch. +And out of this discussion, for I trust that you will all differ, if not +with me, at least with each other, trains of thought may be quickened; +mental grassland ploughed up; hidden perspectives unveiled. Above all, I +would stimulate you to an appreciation of your contemporaries and of +contemporary literature, contemporary drama, and contemporary art. + +Every few years distinguished men lift their voices, and tell us that all +is over, _decay has begun_. The obscure and the anonymous echo the +sentiment in the London Press. With the fall of any Government its +supporters prophesy the rapid decomposition of the Empire; in the pulpit +eloquent preachers of every sect and communion, thundering against the +vices of Society, declare that Society is breaking up. Of course, not +being in Society, I am hardly in a position to judge; and the vices I +know only at second-hand--from the preachers. Yet I see no outward signs +of decay in Society; it dresses quite as well, in some ways better than, +it did. Society eats as much, judging from the size and number of new +restaurants; its patronises as usual the silliest plays in London, and +buys in larger quantities than ever the idiotic novels provided for it. +Have you ever been to a bazaar in aid of Our Dumb Friends' League? Well, +you see Society _there_, I can tell you; it is not dumb. And the +conversation sounds no less vapid and no less brilliant than we are told +it was in the eighteenth century; the dresses and faces are quite as +pretty. But much as I should like to discuss the decay of English +Society and the English nation, I feel that such lofty themes are beyond +my reach. I am concerned only with the so-called decay of humbler +things, the abstract manifestations of the human intellect, the Arts and +Sciences. And lest, weary at the end of my discourse, you forget the +argument or miss it, let me state at once what I wish to suggest, nay, +what I wish to assert, _there is no such thing as decay_. Decay is an +intellectual Mrs. Harris, a highly useful entity wherewith the +journalistic Gamps try to frighten Betsy Prig. Of course an obvious +objection to my assertion is the truism that everything has a life; and +that towards the end of that natural life we are correct in speaking of +approaching decay. With physical phenomena, however, I am not dealing, +though I may say, by the way, that there are many examples of human +intellect maturing in middle life or extreme old age. William Blake's +masterpiece, the illustrations to the Book of Job, were executed when he +was sixty-eight, a few years before his death. The late Lord Kelvin is +an example of an unimpaired intellect. Still, it must be admitted that +while nations may be destroyed by conquest, or by conquering too much and +becoming absorbed by the conquered, and that ancient buildings may be +pulled down or restored, so, too, conventions in literature and schools +of art have been brought to an end by war, plague, or death--ostensibly +brought to an end. But it is an error to suppose that art or literature, +because their development was artificially arrested, were in a state of +decay. + +The favourite object-lesson of our childhood was the Roman Empire. +'Here's richness,' as Mr. Squeers said, here was decline, and Gibbon +wrote his prose epic from that point of view. I hardly dare to differ +with the greatest of English historians, but if we approach his work in +the scientific spirit with which we should always regard history, we +shall find that Gibbon draws false deductions from the undisputed facts, +the unchallenged assertions of his history. Commencing with the Roman +Empire almost in its cradle, he sees in every twist of the infant limbs +prognostications of premature decline in a dispensation which by his own +computation lasted over fourteen hundred years. It is safe enough to +prophesy about the past. Everything I admit has a life, but I do not +consider old age decay any more than I think exuberant youth immature +childhood; death may be only arrested development and life itself an +exhausted convention. Have you ever tried to count the number of reasons +Gibbon gives (each one is a principal reason) for the cause of Roman +decline? His philosophy reminds me of Flaubert's hero, who observed that +if Napoleon had been content to remain a simple soldier in the barracks +at Marseilles, he might still be on the throne of France. If we really +accept Gibbon's view of history, I am not surprised that any one should +be nervous about the British Empire. The great intellectual idea of the +Roman dominion, arrested indeed by barbarian invasion, philosophically +never decayed. Some of it was embalmed in Byzantium--particularly its +artistic and literary sides; its religious forces were absorbed by the +Roman Church, as Hobbes pointed out in a very wonderful passage; its +humanism and polity became the common property of the European nations of +to-day. Gibbon's work should have been called 'The Rise and Progress of +Greco-Roman Civilisation.' That is not such a good title, but it would +have been more accurate. And if you compare critically the history of +any manifestation of the human intellect, religion, literature, painting, +architecture, or science, you will find that the development of one +expressive force has been momentarily arrested while some other +manifestation is asserting itself synchronously with the supposed decay +in a manifestation whose particular history you are studying. Always +regard the deductions of the historian with the same scepticism that you +regard the deductions of fiscal politicians. + +Every one knows the charming books by writers more learned than I can +pretend to be, where the history of Italian art is traced from Giotto +downwards; the story of Giotto and the little lamb, now, alas! entirely +exploded; of Cimabue's Madonna being carried about in processions, and +now discovered to have been painted by some one else! Then on to +Massaccio through the delightful fifteenth century until you see in the +text-book in large print, like the flashes of harbour lights after a bad +Channel crossing, RAPHAEL, MICHAEL ANGELO, DA VINCI. But when you come +to the seventeenth century, Guido Reni, the Carracci, and other painters +(for the present moment out of fashion), painters whose work fetches +little at Christie's, the art critic and historian begin to snivel about +decay; not only of Italian art, but of the Italian peninsula; and their +sobs will hardly ever allow them to get as far as Longhi, Piazetta, and +Tiepolo, those great masters of the eighteenth century. + +But we know, painters certainly must know if they look at old masters at +all, that Tiepolo, if he was the last of the old masters, was also the +first of the moderns; it was his painting in Spain which influenced Goya, +and Goya is not only a deceased Spanish master, he is a European master +of to-day. You can trace his influence through all the great French +figure-painters of the nineteenth century down to those of the New +English Art Club, though they may not have actually known they were under +his influence. Painting commences with a childish naturalism, such as +you see on the walls of pre-historic caves; that is why savages always +prefer photographs to any work of art, and why photographers are always +so savage about works of art. Gradually this childish naturalism +develops into decoration; it becomes stylistic. The decoration becomes +perfected and sterile; then there arises a more sophisticated generation, +longing for naturalism, for pictorial _vraisemblance_, without the +childishness of the cave pictures. And their new art develops at the +expense of decoration; it becomes perfect and sterile. What is commonly +called decay is merely stylistic development. The exquisite art of +Byzantium was wrongly considered as the debasement of Greco-Roman art. It +was really the decorative expansion of it; the conventionalising of +exaggerated realism. The same might have happened in Europe after the +Baroque and Rococo fashions had their day; politics and commerce +interfered. The intensely artificial painting of France, to which +Diderot objected so much, had become perfect and sterile. Then (happily +or unhappily, in whichever direction your tastes lie) the French +Revolution, by a pathetic misunderstanding of classical ideals, paved the +way for the naturalism of the misnamed Romantic school. We were told, a +short time ago, that Sienese painting anticipated by a few years the +Florentine manifestations of Cimabue and Giotto, but Mr. Berenson has +pointed out that Sienese art is not the beginning but the end of an +exquisite convention, the quintessence of Byzantium. In the Roscoe +collection at Liverpool you have one of the most superb and precious +examples of this delicate, impeccable and decadent art: 'Christ found in +the Temple,' by Simone di Martini. + +In Egyptian art, again, compare the pure naturalism of the wonderful +Egyptian scribe of the Louvre, belonging, I am told, to the fifth or +sixth dynasty, with the hieratic and conventional art of the twelfth +dynasty; while in the eighteenth dynasty you get a reversion to realism, +which critics have the audacity to call a 'revival of art.' But you +might just as well call it decayed, as indeed they do call some of the +most magnificent Ptolemaean remains, simply because they happen to belong +to a certain date which, by Egyptian reckoning, may be regarded as very +recent. Just now we very foolishly talk in accents of scorn about the +early Victorian art, of which I venture to remind you Turner was not the +least ornament. Of course commercial and political events often +interrupt the gestation of the arts, or break our idols in pieces. +Another generation picks up the fragments and puts them together in the +wrong way, and that is why it is so confusing and interesting; but there +is no reason to be depressed about it. Only iconoclasm need annoy us. In +histories of English literature too often you find the same attitude when +the writer comes to a period which he dislikes. Restoration Comedy is +often said to be a period of debasement, and with Tennyson the young +student is given to understand that English literature ceased altogether. +But perhaps there are more modern text-books where the outlook is less +gloomy. If, instead of reading the history of literature, you read the +literature itself, you will find plenty of instances of writers at the +most brilliant periods complaining of decay. + +George Putman, in the _Art of English Poesy_, published in 1589, when +English poetry was starting on a particularly glorious period, says, 'In +these days all poets and poesy are despised, they are subject to scorn +and derision,' and 'this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance of the +time--in _other ages it was not so_.' Then Jonson, in his 'Discoveries,' +lamenting the decline of literature, says, 'It is the disease of the age, +and no wonder if the world, growing old, begins to be infirm.' There are +hundreds of others which will immediately occur to you, from Chaucer to +Tennyson, though Pope made noble protests on behalf of his +contemporaries. You have only got to compare these lachrymose +observations with the summary of the year's literature in any +newspaper--'literary output' is the detestable expression always used--and +you will find the same note of depression. 'The year has not produced a +single masterpiece. Glad as we have been to welcome Mr. Blank's verse, +"Larkspurs" cannot be compared with his first delicious volume, +"Tealeaves," published thirty years ago.' Then turn to the review in the +same paper of 'Tealeaves' thirty years ago. 'Coarse animalism draped in +the most seductive hues of art and romance, we will not analyse these +poems, we will not even pretend to give the reasons on which our opinion +is based.' Or read the incisive 'Musings without Method,' in +_Blackwood's Magazine_, on contemporary literature and contemporary +things generally. + +Again, every painter is told that his work is not as good as last year, +and that we have no one like Titian or Velasquez. The Royal Academy is +always said to be worse than usual. I have known the summer exhibitions +at Burlington House for twenty years. Let me assure you throughout that +period they have always been quite as bad as they are now. But we do not +want painters like Titian or Velasquez; we want something else. If +painters were like Titian or Velasquez they would not be artists at all. +When Velasquez went to Rome he was told he ought to imitate Raphael; had +he done so should we regard him as the greatest painter in the world? If +Rossetti had merely been another Fra Angelico or one of the early artists +from whom he derived such noble inspiration, should we regard him as we +do, as even the fierce young modern art student does, as one of the +greatest figures in English art of the nineteenth century? In the latter +part of that century I think he is the greatest force in English +painting. I would reserve for him the largest print in my manual of +English art. But have we declined since the death of Rossetti? On the +contrary, I think we have advanced and are advancing. You must not think +I am depreciating the past. The past is one of my witnesses. The past +was very like our present; it nearly always depreciated itself +intellectually and materially. + +We all of us think of Athens in the fifth century as a golden period of +great men, when every genius was appreciated, but you know that they put +Pheidias in prison. And take the instance of Euripides. The majority of +his countrymen said he was nothing to the late Aeschylus. He was chiefly +appreciated by foreigners, as you will remember if you are able to read +'Balaustion's Adventure' (so much more difficult than Euripides in the +original Greek). Listen to what Professor Murray says:-- + + His contemporary public denounced him as dull, because he tortured + them with personal problems; as malignant, because he made them see + truths they wished not to see; as blasphemous and foul-minded, because + he made demands on their religious and spiritual natures which they + could neither satisfy nor overlook. They did not know whether he was + too wildly imaginative or too realistic, too romantic or too prosaic, + too childishly simple or too philosophical--Aristophanes says he was + all these things at once. They only knew that he made them angry and + that they could not help listening to him. + +Does not that remind you a little of what was said all over England of +Mr. Bernard Shaw? Of what is still said about him in many London houses +to-day? If some one praises him, the majority of people will tell you +that he is overrated. Does it not remind you of the reception which +Ibsen's plays met when they were first produced here: when they gave an +impetus to that new English drama which I understand is decaying, though +it seems to me to be only beginning--the new English Drama of Mr. +Granville Barker, Mr. Housman, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Galsworthy, and +Mr. Masefield? + +Every year the patient research of scholars by the consultation of +original documents has caused us to readjust our historical perspective. +Those villains of our childhood, Tiberius, Richard III., Mary Tudor, and +others, have become respectable monarchs, almost model monarchs, if you +compare them with the popular English view of the present King of the +Belgians, the ex-Sultan of Turkey, and the present Czar of Russia. It is +realised that contemporary journalism gave a somewhat twopence coloured +impression of Kings and Queens, who were only creatures of their age, +less admirable expressions of the individualism of their time. And just +as historical facts require readjustment by posterity, so our critical +estimate of intellectual and aesthetic evolution requires strict +revision. We must not accept the glib statement of the historian, +especially of the contemporary historian, that at certain periods +intellectual activity and artistic expression were decaying or did not +exist. If a convention in one field of intellectual activity is said by +the historian or chronicler to be approaching termination or to be +decaying, as he calls it, we should test carefully his data and his +credentials. But, assuming he is right, there will always be found some +compensating reaction in another sphere of intellectual activity which is +in process of development; and through which, by some divine alchemy, +providence, or nature, call it what you will, a new manifestation will be +made to the world. The arts which we suppose to have perished, of which, +indeed, we write affecting epitaphs, are merely hibernating; the +intellect which is necessary for their production and nutrition is simply +otherwise employed; while, of course, you must make allowances for the +appreciations of posterity, change of fashion and taste. From the middle +of the sixteenth century down to nearly the middle of the nineteenth, the +Middle Ages were always thought of as the Dark Ages. Scarcely any one +could appreciate either the pictorial art or architecture of mediaevalism; +those who did so always had to apologise for their predilection. The +wonders of Gothic art were furtively relished by a few antiquaries; and, +at certain periods, by men like Beckford and Walpole, as agreeable +drawing-room curiosities. The Romantic movement commenced by Chatterton +enabled us to revise a limited and narrow view, based on insufficient +information. It was John Ruskin, in England, who made us see what a +splendid heritage the Middle Ages had bequeathed to us. Ruskin and his +disciples then fell into the error of turning the tables on the +Renaissance, and regarded everything that deviated from Gothic convention +as _debased_; the whole art of the eighteenth century was anathema to +them. The decadence began, according to Ruskin, with Raphael. Out of +that ingenious error, or synchronous with it, began the brilliant +movement of the Pre-Raphaelites in the middle of the last century. And +when the Pre-Raphaelites appeared, every one said the end of Art had +arrived. Dickens openly attacked them; Thackeray ridiculed the new +tendencies; every one, great and small, spoke of decay and decline. The +French word _Decadence_ had not crept into use. However, the weary Titan +staggered on, as Matthew Arnold said, and when Mr. Whistler's art dawned +on the horizon, Ruskin was among the first to see in it signs of decay. +Except the poetry of Swinburne, never has any art met with such abuse. An +example of the immortal painter now adorns the National Gallery of +_British_ painting, which is cared for--oh, irony of circumstances--by +one of the first prophets of impressionism in this country, or, rather, +let me say, one of the first English critics--Mr. D. S. MacColl. + +But you will now ask how do I account for those periods when apparently +the liberal arts are supposed not to have existed? I maintain they did +exist, or that human intellect was otherwise employed. The excavations +of prehistoric cities are evidences of my contention. Because things are +destroyed we must not say they have decayed; if evidences are scarce, do +not say they never existed. Our architecture, for example, took five +hundred years to develop out of the splendid Norman through the various +transitions of Gothic down to the perfection of the English country house +in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. If church architecture was decaying, +domestic architecture was improving. _Architecture is, of course, the +first and most important of all the arts_, and when the human intellect +is being used up for some other purpose there is a temporary cessation; +there is never any decay of architecture. The putting up of ugly +buildings is merely a sign of growing stupidity, not of declining +intellect or decaying taste. Jerry-building is the successful +competition of dishonesty against competency. Do not imagine that +because the good architects do not get commissions to put up useful or +beautiful buildings they do not exist. The history of stupidity and the +history of bad taste must one day engage our serious attention. There is +no decay, alas, even in stupidity and bad taste. + +The suddenness with which the literature of the sixteenth century +developed in England has been explained, I know, by the Reformation. But +you should remember the other critics of art, who ascribe the barrenness +of our painting and the necessity of importing continental artists, also +to the Reformation. I suggest that the intellectual capacity of the +nation was directed towards literature, politics and _religious_ +controversy, rather than to art and religion. I cannot think there was +any scarcity of the artistic germ in the English nation which had already +expressed itself in the great Abbeys and Churches, such as Glastonbury, +Tintern, Fountains, and York. And you must remember that the minor art +of embroidery, the '_opus anglicanum_' (which flourished for three +centuries previous to the Reformation), was famous throughout Europe. + +In the middle of the eighteenth century, the big men, Swift, Pope, and +Addison, having passed away, the Augustan age of English literature +seemed exhausted. It was a time of intellectual dyspepsia; every one was +much too fond of ruins; people built sham ruins on their estates. Rich +men, who could afford the luxury, kept a dilapidated hermit in a cavern. +Their chief pleasure on the continent was measuring ruins in the way +described so amusingly by Goldsmith in _The Citizen of the World_. Though +no century was more thoroughly pleased with itself, I might almost say +smugly self-satisfied, the men of that century were always lamenting the +decline of the age. The observations of Johnson and Goldsmith I need +scarcely repeat. But here is one which may have escaped your notice. It +is not a suggestion of decline, but an assertion of non-existence. Gray, +the poet, the cultivated connoisseur, the Professor of History, writing +in 1763 to Count Algarrotti, says: 'Why this nation has made no advances +hitherto in painting and sculpture it is hard to say; the fact is +undeniable, and we have the vanity to apologise for ourselves as Virgil +did for the Romans: + + Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, + Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus, + Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus + Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent: + Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento; + Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. + +'You are generous enough to wish, and sanguine enough to see that art +shall one day flourish in England. _I too much wish, but can hardly +extend my hopes so far_.' Yet in 1754 Chippendale had published his +Cabinet Makers' Guide; and the next fifty years was to see the production +of all that beautiful English furniture of which we are so justly proud, +and which we forge with such surprising skill. It was the next fifty +years that saw the production of the beautiful English pottery which we +prize so highly, and it was the next hundred years that was to be the +period of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, Crome, Cotman, Alfred +Stevens, and Turner, who died in 1851, just when the Pre-Raphaelites were +supposed to be inaugurating the decay of that which Gray denied the +existence, nearly one hundred years before. + +Though the scope of my discussion is limited to literature and art, it +would be paltry to confine our inquiries within limited horizons. +Painting and architecture, alas, are not the whole of life; the fine arts +are only the flowers of existence; they are useful as humanising +elements; but they are not indispensable. That vague community among +whom we arbitrarily place those with whom we disagree--the +Philistines--get on very well without them. But even Philistines have to +reckon with Religion and Science, and in a lesser degree with Philosophy. +That powerful trinity affects our every-day life. Philosophy is so +cloistered, so difficult to understand, that we seldom hear of its decay; +though we are constantly told that some branch of science is being +neglected, or owing to a religious revival that its prestige is becoming +undermined; its truths are becoming falsehoods. I am not a man of +science, not even a student, only a desultory reader. Yet I suggest +that, as was pointed out in the case of the fine arts, certain branches +of the divine scholarship, if I may call it so, may be arrested +temporarily in any development they may have reached. Let us take +medicine. Medicine is primarily based upon the study of anatomy or +structure--physiology--or the scheme of structure carried out in life; +and upon botany and chemistry as representing the vegetable and mineral +worlds where the remedies are sought. Anatomy soon reaches a finite +position, when a sufficient number of careful dissections has been made; +the other divisions used to look like promising endless development; but +there is reason to suppose that they too, as far as medicine is +concerned, have reached a sterile perfection. + +The microscope is perfected up to a point which mechanicians think cannot +be improved upon; so that those ultimate elements of physiology which +depend upon the observation of minute structure are known to us. To put +it crudely, we cannot discover any more germs, whose presence is hidden +from us by mere minuteness, unless we can improve our machinery, and +that, we are told, is an improbable event. I will not labour the point +by applying it to botany, which is very obvious, or to chemistry, where +it is not so clear. But it _is_ clear that owing to a feeling that not +much more is to be got from minute observation with the tools at our +disposal, the brightest intellects and most inventive clairvoyant work +are shunted into more imaginative channels. There are no men who guess +so brilliantly as men of science, so that science, in that respect, has +attained the dignity of Theology. I suppose that the startling theories +propounded by Sir Oliver Lodge and others will be taken as evidence of +the decay of science. But the human intellect, especially if it is +scientific, cannot, I imagine, like actors, go on repeating or feigning +the same emotion. It must leave for the moment as apparently completed +one branch of knowledge to which it may return again after developing +some less mature branch on which the attention of the most learned +investigators is for a time wholly concentrated. The tree of knowledge +is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any +decay. When Darwin published his great _Origin of Species_ which was +hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent +laymen, religious people became very much alarmed. They talked about the +decay of faith, and ascribed any falling off in the offertories to the +shillings spent on visiting the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. +Younger sons and less gifted members of clever families were no longer +destined for Holy Orders; as we were descended from apes it would have +seemed impious. They were sent to Cambridge to pursue a so-called +scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany +instead of a pass in history. The falling off in candidates for Holy +Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin--the gentle, +delightful Darwin--became what the Pope had been to our ancestors. I +need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be. The +younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the +moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine +difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number +of candles on the altar, and the legality of incense. Now, I rejoice to +say, there is a healthy revival of interest and a healthy difference of +opinion on all these important religious questions. We must never pay +serious attention to the alarmists who tell us that the churches and +sects are seeing their last days. Macaulay has warned us never to be too +sanguine about the Church of Rome. The moments of her greatest trials +produced some of her greatest men--Ignatius Loyola, Philip Neri, and +Francis Xavier. Do you think the Church is decaying because the +congregations are banished from France, and the Concordat has come to an +end? I tell you it will only stimulate her to further conquests; it is +the beginning of a new life for the Catholic Church in France. If the +Anglican Church were to be disestablished to-morrow, I would regard it as +a Sandow exercise for the hardworking, splendid intellects of the +Establishment. The Nonconformists--well, they never talk about their own +decline; of all the divisions of Christianity they always seem to me +heartily to enjoy persecution; and like myself, I never knew them to +admit the word _decadence_ into their vocabulary, at least about +themselves. I hold them up to you as examples. Let us all be +Nonconformists in that respect. + +I do not ask you to adopt the habit against which Matthew Arnold directed +one of his witty essays, the habit of expressing a too unctuous +satisfaction with the age and time in which we are living. That was the +intellectual error of the Eighteenth Century. There are problems of +poverty, injustice, disease, and unhappiness, which should make the most +prosperous and most selfish of us chafe; but I do urge that we should not +suspect the art and literature of our time, the intellectual +manifestations of our age, whether scientific or literary. I urge that +we do not sit on the counter in order to cry 'stinking fish,' and observe +that this is merely an age of commerce. An overweening modesty in us +seems to persuade us that it is quite impossible we should be fortunate +enough to be the contemporaries of great men. The fact that we know them +personally sometimes undermines our faith; contemporary contempt for a +great man is too often turned on the contemporaries. Do not let us look +upon genius, as Schopenhauer accused some people of doing, 'as upon a +hare which is good to eat when it has been killed and dressed up, but so +long as it is alive only good to be shot at.' And if our intellectuals +are not all Brobdingnagians, they are not all Liliputians. It seems to +me ungenerous to make sweeping and deprecating assertions about our own +time; it is also dangerous. The contemporary praise of unworthy work, +ephemeral work--there is always plenty of that, we know--is forgotten; +and (though it does not decay) perishes with the work it extolled. But +unsound criticism and foolish abuse of great work is remembered to the +confusion of the critics. Think of the reception accorded to Wordsworth, +Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Rossetti, and Swinburne. + +I remember that excellent third-rate writer, W. E. H. Lecky, making a +speech at a dinner of the Authors' Society, in which he said that he was +sorry to say there were no great writers alive, and no stylists to +compare with those who had passed away. A few paces off him sat Walter +Pater, George Meredith, and Mr. Austin Dobson. Tennyson, though not +present at the banquet, was president of the Society, and Ruskin was +still alive. When Swinburne's 'Atalanta in Calydon' appeared, another +third-rate writer, James Russell Lowell, assured the world that its +author was no poet, because there was no thought in the verse. Four +years ago, at a provincial town in Italy, when one of the Italian +ministers, at the opening of some public building, said that united Italy +owed to the great English poet Swinburne a debt which it could never +forget, the inhabitants cheered vociferously. This was no idle +compliment; every one in Italy knows who Swinburne was. I will not +hazard to guess the extent of the ovation which the names of Lowell and +Lecky would receive, but I think the incident is a fair sign that English +poetry has not decayed. + +In the _Daily Mail_ I saw once an interview with an inferior American +black-and-white draughtsman at Berlin. He was asked his opinion about a +splendid exhibition of old English pictures being held there, and took +occasion to say 'what the pictures demonstrate is not that the English +women of the eighteenth century were conspicuously lovely, but the +artists who painted them possessed secrets of reproduction which +posterity has failed to inherit.' I would like to reply 'Rot, rot, rot;' +but that would imply a belief in decay. I suggest to the same critic +that he should visit one of the 'International Exhibitions,' where he +will see the pictures of Mr. Charles Hazelwood Shannon. Such a stupid +view from an American is particularly amazing, because in Mr. John Singer +Sargent, we (by _we_ I mean America and ourselves) possess an artist who +is certainly the peer of Gainsborough and Reynolds, and personally I +should say a much greater painter than Reynolds. A hundred years hence, +perhaps people at Berlin (the most critical and cultivated capital in the +world) will be bending before the 'Three Daughters of Percy Wyndham,' the +'Duchess of Sutherland,' the 'Marlborough Family,' and many another +masterpiece of Mr. Sargent and Mr. Charles Shannon. The same American +critic says that our era of mediocrity will continue; so I am full of +hope. Even the existence of America does not depress me: nor do I see in +it a symptom of decay; if it produces much that is distasteful in the way +of tinned meat, it gave us Mr. John Sargent and Mr. Henry James, and it +took away from England Mr. Richard Le Gallienne. + +I should be the last to invite you not to discriminate about the present. +We must be cautious in estimating the very popular writers or painters of +our time; but we must not dismiss them because they are popular. We +should be tall enough to worship in a crowd. Let our criticism be +aristocratic, our taste fastidious, and let our sympathies be democratic +and catholic. Dickens, I suppose, is one of the most popular writers who +ever lived, and yet he is part of the structure of our literature; but as +Dickens is dead, I prefer to mention the names of three living writers, +who are also popular, and have become corner-stones of the same +building--Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. H. G. Wells. 'There +are at all times,' says Schopenhauer, 'two literatures in progress +running side by side, but little known to each other; the one real, the +other only apparent. The former grows into permanent literature: it is +pursued by those who live _for_ science or poetry. The other is pursued +by those who live _on_ science or poetry; but after a few years one asks +where are they? where is the glory that came so soon and made so much +clamour?' We are happy if we can discriminate between those two +literatures. + +While we should remember that there are at all times intellects whose +work is more for posterity than for the present; work which appeals, +perhaps, only to the few, that of artists whose work has no purchasers, +writers whose books may have publishers but few readers, we must be +cautious about accepting the verdict of the dove-cot. There are many +obscure artists and writers whose work, though admired by a select few, +remains very properly obscure, and will always remain obscure; it is of +no value intellectually; the world should know nothing of its inferior +men. Sometimes, however, it is these inferior men who are able to get +temporary places as critics, and inform us in leading articles that ours +is an age _of Decadence_. Every new drama, every work of art which +possesses individuality or gives a fresh point of view or evinces +development of any kind, is held up as an instance of Decay. '_L'ecole +decadent_' was a phrase invented as a jest in 1886, I believe by Monsieur +Bourde, a journalist in Paris. It was eagerly adopted by the Parisians, +and soon floated across the Channel. Used as a term of reproach, it was +accepted by the group of poets it was intended to ridicule. I need not +remind you that the master of that school was Paul Verlaine, the immortal +poet who enlarged the scope of French verse--the poet who achieved for +French poetry what I am told the so-called decadent philosopher Nietzsche +has done for German prose. Unfortunately I do not know German, and it +seems almost impossible to add to the German language. But Nietzsche, I +am assured by competent authorities, has performed a similar feat to that +of Luther on the issue of his Bible. + +When, therefore, we hear of decadence in literature or art, even if we +accept Mr. Balfour's definition of its symptom--'_the employment of an +over-wrought technique_'--we must remember that Decadence and Decay have +now different meanings, though originally they meant the same sort of +thing. An over-wrought technique is characteristic of the decadent +school of France, particularly of Mallarme, and some of our own +decadents. Walter Pater and Sir Thomas Browne. The existence of writers +adopting an over-wrought technique, however, is not (and Mr. Balfour +would repudiate the idea) a sign of decay as commonplace moralists would +have us believe, but of realised perfection. Pater is the most perfect +prose writer we ever produced. The Euphuists of the sixteenth century +were of course decadents, and I think you will admit that they did not +herald any decay in our literature. + +The truth is that men after a certain age, if not on the crest of the +waves themselves, become bored with counting the breakers, and decide +that the tide is going out. You must often have had arguments with +friends on this subject when walking by the sea. The water seems to be +receding; you can see that there is an ebb; and then an unusually long +wave comes up and wets your feet. Great writers are guilty of a similar +error without any intention of contriving a literary conceit (as I +suspect many a past outcry to have been). Even Pater declared that he +would not disturb himself by reading any contemporary literature +published by an author who did not exist before 1870. He never read +Stevenson or Kipling. Now that is a terrible state to be in; it is a +symptom of premature old age; not physical but mental old age. + +The art of the present day is not architecture, painting, or literature. +It is the art of remaining young. It is the art of life. It is a +science. The fairer, the stronger, the better sex--shall I call its +members our equals or our superiors?--have always realised this. Indeed, +they have employed ingenious mechanical contrivances for arresting the +march of time or that physical decay of which we are all victims. +Sometimes they may be said to have indulged in an over-wrought technique, +which may be the reason why we are told that every woman is at heart a +decadent. Otto Weininger certainly thought so. I have always regretted +that the male sex was precluded by prejudice from following their +example. I regret somewhat acutely the desuetude of the periwig. + +So we can take an example from women--they are so often our theme, let +them be our examples in a symbolical sense. If we choose, we too can +remain young intellectually, sensitive to new impressions, new impulses +and new revelations, whether of science or art. The Greeks of the fifth +century, and even of the age of St. Paul, preserved their youth by +cultivating the superb gift of curiosity, delightful anxiety about the +present and future. William Morris once described the Whigs as careless +of the past, ignorant of the present, and fearful of the future. Whatever +your politics are, do not be like the Whigs as described by William +Morris. Cultivate a feminine curiosity. I used to be told the old story +of Blue Beard as a warning against that particular failing. I see in it +a much profounder moral. It is the emancipation of woman; and asserts +her right, if not to vote, at least to be curious. Her curiosity rid the +world of a monster, and in her curiosity we see the nucleus of the new +drama. That little blood-stained key unlocked for us the cupboard where +the family skeleton had been left too long in the cold; it was time that +he joined the festive board, or, at least, appeared on the boards: and +now, I am glad to say, he has done so; and he is called new-fangled. Do +not let us call things 'new-fangled.' New-fangled medicine probably +saves fifty per cent. of the population from premature death. Do not +speak of the 'crudity of youth.' Youth is sometimes crude. It is better +than being rude. It is an error to mock at the single virtue a possible +offender may possess. I observe that men of science remain younger +intellectually, and even physically, than artists or men of letters. I +believe it is because to them science is always full of surprises and +fresh impressions. They know there is practically no end to their +knowledge; and that in the study of science there is no decay, whatever +they may detect in the crust of the earth or on the face of heaven. They +are never satisfied with the past. They look to youth and its +enthusiasms for realising their own dreams and developing their own +hypotheses. And as there are great men of science to-day, so, too, there +are great men of letters, great poets, and great painters, some of whose +names you may not have heard. But when you do hear of them I beg of you +not to regard any of them as symptoms of decay, even if their technique +is elaborate and over-wrought. The _early_ work of every modern painter +is over-elaborate and over-wrought, just as all the work of early +painters is over-elaborate and over-wrought. Do not greet the dawn as +though it were a lowering sunset. Listen, and, with William Blake, you +may hear the sons of God shouting for joy. If your mind is bent on +decay, read that neglected poet, Byron. He thought the romantic +movement, of which he became the accidental centre, a symptom of decay. +Read any period of history and its literature, and you will find the same +cry reiterated. When you have read an old book go out and buy a new one. +When you have sold your old masters, go out and buy new masters. +Aladdin's maid is one of the wronged characters of legend. . . . Of the +Pierian spring there are many fountains. Yet it is a spring which never +runs dry; though it flows with greater freedom at one season than at +another, with greater volume from one fountain than some other. In the +glens of Parnassus there are hidden flowers always blooming; though, to +the binoculars of the tourist, the mountain seems unusually barren. You +will find that youth does not vanish with the rose, that you need never +close the sweet-scented manuscript of love, science, art or literature. +In them youth returns like daffodils that come before the swallow dares, +and take the winds of March with beauty: or like the snapdragons which +Cardinal Newman saw blossoming on the wall at Oxford, and which became +for him the symbol of hope. For us they may stand as the symbol of +realisation and the immortality of the human intellect, in which there +has been no decay since the days of Tubal Cain. + +_To_ J. G. LEGGE, ESQ. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASQUES & PHASES*** + + +******* This file should be named 17601.txt or 17601.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/6/0/17601 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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