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diff --git a/381-h/381-h.htm b/381-h/381-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7505cd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/381-h/381-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5699 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Memories and Portraits, by Robert Louis Stevenson</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Memories and Portraits, by Robert Louis +Stevenson + + +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: Memories and Portraits + + +Author: Robert Louis Stevenson + + + +Release Date: October 22, 2010 [eBook #381] +First posted: November 27, 1995 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1912 Chatto and Windus edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h2>MEMORIES AND<br /> +PORTRAITS</h2> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/p0b.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Graphic" +title= +"Graphic" +src="images/p0s.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">fine-paper +edition</span></p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span><br /> +CHATTO & WINDUS<br /> +1912</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Printed by <span +class="smcap">Ballantyne</span>, <span class="smcap">Hanson & +Co.</span><br /> +At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to</span><br /> +MY MOTHER<br /> +<span class="smcap">in the</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">name of past joy and present sorrow</span><br +/> +<i>I DEDICATE</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">these memories and portraits</span></p> +<p><i>S.S.</i> “<i>Ludgate Hill</i>”<br /> + <i>within sight of Cape +Race</i></p> +<h2>NOTE</h2> +<p>This volume of papers, unconnected as they are, it will be +better to read through from the beginning, rather than dip into +at random. A certain thread of meaning binds them. +Memories of childhood and youth, portraits of those who have gone +before us in the battle—taken together, they build up a +face that “I have loved long since and lost awhile,” +the face of what was once myself. This has come by +accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was +but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for +the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is a face +of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of +magic, I was the first to be surprised at the occurrence.</p> +<p>My grandfather the pious child, my father the idle eager +sentimental youth, I have thus unconsciously exposed. Of +their descendant, the person of to-day, I wish to keep the +secret: not because I love him better, but because, with him, I +am still in a business partnership, and cannot divide +interests.</p> +<p>Of the papers which make up the volume, some have appeared +already in <i>The Cornhill</i>, <i>Longman’s</i>, +<i>Scribner</i>, <i>The English Illustrated</i>, <i>The Magazine +of Art</i>, <i>The Contemporary Review</i>; three are here in +print for the first time; and two others have enjoyed only what +may he regarded as a private circulation.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">R. L S.</p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The foreigner at Home</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Some College Memories</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Old Morality</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A College Magazine</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">An Old Scotch Gardener</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Pastoral</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Manse</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Memories of an Islet</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Thomas Stevenson</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Talk and Talkers: First +Paper</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Talk and Talkers: Second +Paper</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">The Character of Dogs</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p>“<span class="smcap">A Penny Plain and Twopence +Coloured</span>”</p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Gossip on a Novel of +Dumas’s</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Gossip on Romance</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XVI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Humble Remonstrance</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2>CHAPTER I. THE FOREIGNER AT HOME</h2> +<blockquote><p>“This is no my ain house;<br /> +I ken by the biggin’ o’t.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Two recent books <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1" +class="citation">[1]</a> one by Mr. Grant White on England, one +on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well +have set people thinking on the divisions of races and +nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular +congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, +peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different +dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, +from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from +the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only +when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts +of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has +not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she +sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still +cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the +other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show +in Mousehole, on St. Michael’s Bay, the house of the last +Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now +frank the traveller through the most of North America, through +the greater South Sea Islands, in India, along much of the coast +of Africa, and in the ports of China and Japan, is still to be +heard, in its home country, in half a hundred varying stages of +transition. You may go all over the States, +and—setting aside the actual intrusion and influence of +foreigners, negro, French, or Chinese—you shall scarce meet +with so marked a difference of accent as in the forty miles +between Edinburgh and Glasgow, or of dialect as in the hundred +miles between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Book English has gone +round the world, but at home we still preserve the racy idioms of +our fathers, and every county, in some parts every dale, has its +own quality of speech, vocal or verbal. In like manner, +local custom and prejudice, even local religion and local law, +linger on into the latter end of the nineteenth +century—<i>imperia in imperio</i>, foreign things at +home.</p> +<p>In spite of these promptings to reflection, ignorance of his +neighbours is the character of the typical John Bull. His +is a domineering nature, steady in fight, imperious to command, +but neither curious nor quick about the life of others. In +French colonies, and still more in the Dutch, I have read that +there is an immediate and lively contact between the dominant and +the dominated race, that a certain sympathy is begotten, or at +the least a transfusion of prejudices, making life easier for +both. But the Englishman sits apart, bursting with pride +and ignorance. He figures among his vassals in the hour of +peace with the same disdainful air that led him on to +victory. A passing enthusiasm for some foreign art or +fashion may deceive the world, it cannot impose upon his +intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a monkey, +but he will never condescend to study him with any +patience. Miss Bird, an authoress with whom I profess +myself in love, declares all the viands of Japan to be +uneatable—a staggering pretension. So, when the +Prince of Wales’s marriage was celebrated at Mentone by a +dinner to the Mentonese, it was proposed to give them solid +English fare—roast beef and plum pudding, and no +tomfoolery. Here we have either pole of the Britannic +folly. We will not eat the food of any foreigner; nor, when +we have the chance, will we suffer him to eat of it +himself. The same spirit inspired Miss Bird’s +American missionaries, who had come thousands of miles to change +the faith of Japan, and openly professed their ignorance of the +religions they were trying to supplant.</p> +<p>I quote an American in this connection without scruple. +Uncle Sam is better than John Bull, but he is tarred with the +English stick. For Mr. Grant White the States are the New +England States and nothing more. He wonders at the amount +of drinking in London; let him try San Francisco. He +wittily reproves English ignorance as to the status of women in +America; but has he not himself forgotten Wyoming? The name +Yankee, of which he is so tenacious, is used over the most of the +great Union as a term of reproach. The Yankee States, of +which he is so staunch a subject, are but a drop in the +bucket. And we find in his book a vast virgin ignorance of +the life and prospects of America; every view partial, parochial, +not raised to the horizon; the moral feeling proper, at the +largest, to a clique of states; and the whole scope and +atmosphere not American, but merely Yankee. I will go far +beyond him in reprobating the assumption and the incivility of my +countryfolk to their cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my +blood over the silly rudeness of our newspaper articles; and I do +not know where to look when I find myself in company with an +American and see my countrymen unbending to him as to a +performing dog. But in the case of Mr. Grant White example +were better than precept. Wyoming is, after all, more +readily accessible to Mr. White than Boston to the English, and +the New England self-sufficiency no better justified than the +Britannic.</p> +<p>It is so, perhaps, in all countries; perhaps in all, men are +most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is +ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but +considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of +countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for +instance—its frontier not so far from London, its people +closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the +English—of which I will go bail he knows nothing. His +ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot be described; it can only +be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled with a man of +plausible manners and good intelligence—a University man, +as the phrase goes—a man, besides, who had taken his degree +in life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in. +We were deep in talk, whirling between Peterborough and London; +among other things, he began to describe some piece of legal +injustice he had recently encountered, and I observed in my +innocence that things were not so in Scotland. “I beg +your pardon,” said he, “this is a matter of +law.” He had never heard of the Scots law; nor did he +choose to be informed. The law was the same for the whole +country, he told me roundly; every child knew that. At +last, to settle matters, I explained to him that I was a member +of a Scottish legal body, and had stood the brunt of an +examination in the very law in question. Thereupon he +looked me for a moment full in the face and dropped the +conversation. This is a monstrous instance, if you like, +but it does not stand alone in the experience of Scots.</p> +<p>England and Scotland differ, indeed, in law, in history, in +religion, in education, and in the very look of nature and +men’s faces, not always widely, but always +trenchantly. Many particulars that struck Mr. Grant White, +a Yankee, struck me, a Scot, no less forcibly; he and I felt +ourselves foreigners on many common provocations. A +Scotchman may tramp the better part of Europe and the United +States, and never again receive so vivid an impression of foreign +travel and strange lands and manners as on his first excursion +into England. The change from a hilly to a level country +strikes him with delighted wonder. Along the flat horizon +there arise the frequent venerable towers of churches. He +sees at the end of airy vistas the revolution of the windmill +sails. He may go where he pleases in the future; he may see +Alps, and Pyramids, and lions; but it will be hard to beat the +pleasure of that moment. There are, indeed, few merrier +spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a +fresh breeze over a woody country; their halting alacrity of +movement, their pleasant business, making bread all day with +uncouth gesticulations, their air, gigantically human, as of a +creature half alive, put a spirit of romance into the tamest +landscape. When the Scotch child sees them first he falls +immediately in love; and from that time forward windmills keep +turning in his dreams. And so, in their degree, with every +feature of the life and landscape. The warm, habitable age +of towns and hamlets, the green, settled, ancient look of the +country; the lush hedgerows, stiles, and privy path-ways in the +fields; the sluggish, brimming rivers; chalk and smock-frocks; +chimes of bells and the rapid, pertly-sounding English +speech—they are all new to the curiosity; they are all set +to English airs in the child’s story that he tells himself +at night. The sharp edge of novelty wears off; the feeling +is scotched, but I doubt whether it is ever killed. Rather +it keeps returning, ever the more rarely and strangely, and even +in scenes to which you have been long accustomed suddenly awakes +and gives a relish to enjoyment or heightens the sense of +isolation.</p> +<p>One thing especially continues unfamiliar to the +Scotchman’s eye—the domestic architecture, the look +of streets and buildings; the quaint, venerable age of many, and +the thin walls and warm colouring of all. We have, in +Scotland, far fewer ancient buildings, above all in country +places; and those that we have are all of hewn or harled +masonry. Wood has been sparingly used in their +construction; the window-frames are sunken in the wall, not flat +to the front, as in England; the roofs are steeper-pitched; even +a hill farm will have a massy, square, cold and permanent +appearance. English houses, in comparison, have the look of +cardboard toys, such as a puff might shatter. And to this +the Scotchman never becomes used. His eye can never rest +consciously on one of these brick houses—rickles of brick, +as he might call them—or on one of these flat-chested +streets, but he is instantly reminded where he is, and instantly +travels back in fancy to his home. “This is no my ain +house; I ken by the biggin’ o’t.” And yet +perhaps it is his own, bought with his own money, the key of it +long polished in his pocket; but it has not yet, and never will +be, thoroughly adopted by his imagination; nor does he cease to +remember that, in the whole length and breadth of his native +country, there was no building even distantly resembling it.</p> +<p>But it is not alone in scenery and architecture that we count +England foreign. The constitution of society, the very +pillars of the empire, surprise and even pain us. The dull, +neglected peasant, sunk in matter, insolent, gross and servile, +makes a startling contrast with our own long-legged, long-headed, +thoughtful, Bible-quoting ploughman. A week or two in such +a place as Suffolk leaves the Scotchman gasping. It seems +incredible that within the boundaries of his own island a class +should have been thus forgotten. Even the educated and +intelligent, who hold our own opinions and speak in our own +words, yet seem to hold them with a difference or, from another +reason, and to speak on all things with less interest and +conviction. The first shock of English society is like a +cold plunge. It is possible that the Scot comes looking for +too much, and to be sure his first experiment will be in the +wrong direction. Yet surely his complaint is grounded; +surely the speech of Englishmen is too often lacking in generous +ardour, the better part of the man too often withheld from the +social commerce, and the contact of mind with mind evaded as with +terror. A Scotch peasant will talk more liberally out of +his own experience. He will not put you by with +conversational counters and small jests; he will give you the +best of himself, like one interested in life and man’s +chief end. A Scotchman is vain, interested in himself and +others, eager for sympathy, setting forth his thoughts and +experience in the best light. The egoism of the Englishman +is self-contained. He does not seek to proselytise. +He takes no interest in Scotland or the Scotch, and, what is the +unkindest cut of all, he does not care to justify his +indifference. Give him the wages of going on and being an +Englishman, that is all he asks; and in the meantime, while you +continue to associate, he would rather not be reminded of your +baser origin. Compared with the grand, tree-like +self-sufficiency of his demeanour, the vanity and curiosity of +the Scot seem uneasy, vulgar, and immodest. That you should +continually try to establish human and serious relations, that +you should actually feel an interest in John Bull, and desire and +invite a return of interest from him, may argue something more +awake and lively in your mind, but it still puts you in the +attitude of a suitor and a poor relation. Thus even the +lowest class of the educated English towers over a Scotchman by +the head and shoulders.</p> +<p>Different indeed is the atmosphere in which Scotch and English +youth begin to look about them, come to themselves in life, and +gather up those first apprehensions which are the material of +future thought and, to a great extent, the rule of future +conduct. I have been to school in both countries, and I +found, in the boys of the North, something at once rougher and +more tender, at once more reserve and more expansion, a greater +habitual distance chequered by glimpses of a nearer intimacy, and +on the whole wider extremes of temperament and sensibility. +The boy of the South seems more wholesome, but less thoughtful; +he gives himself to games as to a business, striving to excel, +but is not readily transported by imagination; the type remains +with me as cleaner in mind and body, more active, fonder of +eating, endowed with a lesser and a less romantic sense of life +and of the future, and more immersed in present +circumstances. And certainly, for one thing, English boys +are younger for their age. Sabbath observance makes a +series of grim, and perhaps serviceable, pauses in the tenor of +Scotch boyhood—days of great stillness and solitude for the +rebellious mind, when in the dearth of books and play, and in the +intervals of studying the Shorter Catechism, the intellect and +senses prey upon and test each other. The typical English +Sunday, with the huge midday dinner and the plethoric afternoon, +leads perhaps to different results. About the very cradle +of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical divinity; and the +whole of two divergent systems is summed up, not merely +speciously, in the two first questions of the rival catechisms, +the English tritely inquiring, “What is your name?” +the Scottish striking at the very roots of life with, “What +is the chief end of man?” and answering nobly, if +obscurely, “To glorify God and to enjoy Him for +ever.” I do not wish to make an idol of the Shorter +Catechism; but the fact of such a question being asked opens to +us Scotch a great field of speculation; and the fact that it is +asked of all of us, from the peer to the ploughboy, binds us more +nearly together. No Englishman of Byron’s age, +character, and history would have had patience for long +theological discussions on the way to fight for Greece; but the +daft Gordon blood and the Aberdonian school-days kept their +influence to the end. We have spoken of the material +conditions; nor need much more be said of these: of the land +lying everywhere more exposed, of the wind always louder and +bleaker, of the black, roaring winters, of the gloom of +high-lying, old stone cities, imminent on the windy seaboard; +compared with the level streets, the warm colouring of the brick, +the domestic quaintness of the architecture, among which English +children begin to grow up and come to themselves in life. +As the stage of the University approaches, the contrast becomes +more express. The English lad goes to Oxford or Cambridge; +there, in an ideal world of gardens, to lead a semi-scenic life, +costumed, disciplined and drilled by proctors. Nor is this +to be regarded merely as a stage of education; it is a piece of +privilege besides, and a step that separates him further from the +bulk of his compatriots. At an earlier age the Scottish lad +begins his greatly different experience of crowded class-rooms, +of a gaunt quadrangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic +of the city to recall him from the public-house where he has been +lunching, or the streets where he has been wandering +fancy-free. His college life has little of restraint, and +nothing of necessary gentility. He will find no quiet +clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten borough +of the arts. All classes rub shoulders on the greasy +benches. The raffish young gentleman in gloves must measure +his scholarship with the plain, clownish laddie from the parish +school. They separate, at the session’s end, one to +smoke cigars about a watering-place, the other to resume the +labours of the field beside his peasant family. The first +muster of a college class in Scotland is a scene of curious and +painful interest; so many lads, fresh from the heather, hang +round the stove in cloddish embarrassment, ruffled by the +presence of their smarter comrades, and afraid of the sound of +their own rustic voices. It was in these early days, I +think, that Professor Blackie won the affection of his pupils, +putting these uncouth, umbrageous students at their ease with +ready human geniality. Thus, at least, we have a healthy +democratic atmosphere to breathe in while at work; even when +there is no cordiality there is always a juxtaposition of the +different classes, and in the competition of study the +intellectual power of each is plainly demonstrated to the +other. Our tasks ended, we of the North go forth as freemen +into the humming, lamplit city. At five o’clock you +may see the last of us hiving from the college gates, in the +glare of the shop windows, under the green glimmer of the winter +sunset. The frost tingles in our blood; no proctor lies in +wait to intercept us; till the bell sounds again, we are the +masters of the world; and some portion of our lives is always +Saturday, <i>la trêve de Dieu</i>.</p> +<p>Nor must we omit the sense of the nature of his country and +his country’s history gradually growing in the +child’s mind from story and from observation. A +Scottish child hears much of shipwreck, outlying iron skerries, +pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights; much of heathery +mountains, wild clans, and hunted Covenanters. Breaths come +to him in song of the distant Cheviots and the ring of foraying +hoofs. He glories in his hard-fisted forefathers, of the +iron girdle and the handful of oat-meal, who rode so swiftly and +lived so sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck, +enterprise, and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend +of his country’s history. The heroes and kings of +Scotland have been tragically fated; the most marking incidents +in Scottish history—Flodden, Darien, or the +Forty-five—were still either failures or defeats; and the +fall of Wallace and the repeated reverses of the Bruce combine +with the very smallness of the country to teach rather a moral +than a material criterion for life. Britain is altogether +small, the mere taproot of her extended empire: Scotland, again, +which alone the Scottish boy adopts in his imagination, is but a +little part of that, and avowedly cold, sterile and +unpopulous. It is not so for nothing. I once seemed +to have perceived in an American boy a greater readiness of +sympathy for lands that are great, and rich, and growing, like +his own. It proved to be quite otherwise: a mere dumb piece +of boyish romance, that I had lacked penetration to divine. +But the error serves the purpose of my argument; for I am sure, +at least, that the heart of young Scotland will be always touched +more nearly by paucity of number and Spartan poverty of life.</p> +<p>So we may argue, and yet the difference is not +explained. That Shorter Catechism which I took as being so +typical of Scotland, was yet composed in the city of +Westminster. The division of races is more sharply marked +within the borders of Scotland itself than between the +countries. Galloway and Buchan, Lothian and Lochaber, are +like foreign parts; yet you may choose a man from any of them, +and, ten to one, he shall prove to have the headmark of a +Scot. A century and a half ago the Highlander wore a +different costume, spoke a different language, worshipped in +another church, held different morals, and obeyed a different +social constitution from his fellow-countrymen either of the +south or north. Even the English, it is recorded, did not +loathe the Highlander and the Highland costume as they were +loathed by the remainder of the Scotch. Yet the Highlander +felt himself a Scot. He would willingly raid into the +Scotch lowlands; but his courage failed him at the border, and he +regarded England as a perilous, unhomely land. When the +Black Watch, after years of foreign service, returned to +Scotland, veterans leaped out and kissed the earth at Port +Patrick. They had been in Ireland, stationed among men of +their own race and language, where they were well liked and +treated with affection; but it was the soil of Galloway that they +kissed at the extreme end of the hostile lowlands, among a people +who did not understand their speech, and who had hated, harried, +and hanged them since the dawn of history. Last, and +perhaps most curious, the sons of chieftains were often educated +on the continent of Europe. They went abroad speaking +Gaelic; they returned speaking, not English, but the broad +dialect of Scotland. Now, what idea had they in their minds +when they thus, in thought, identified themselves with their +ancestral enemies? What was the sense in which they were +Scotch and not English, or Scotch and not Irish? Can a bare +name be thus influential on the minds and affections of men, and +a political aggregation blind them to the nature of facts? +The story of the Austrian Empire would seem to answer, <span +class="smcap">No</span>; the far more galling business of Ireland +clenches the negative from nearer home. Is it common +education, common morals, a common language or a common faith, +that join men into nations? There were practically none of +these in the case we are considering.</p> +<p>The fact remains: in spite of the difference of blood and +language, the Lowlander feels himself the sentimental countryman +of the Highlander. When they meet abroad, they fall upon +each other’s necks in spirit; even at home there is a kind +of clannish intimacy in their talk. But from his compatriot +in the south the Lowlander stands consciously apart. He has +had a different training; he obeys different laws; he makes his +will in other terms, is otherwise divorced and married; his eyes +are not at home in an English landscape or with English houses; +his ear continues to remark the English speech; and even though +his tongue acquire the Southern knack, he will still have a +strong Scotch accent of the mind.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II. SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES <a name="citation15"></a><a +href="#footnote15" class="citation">[15]</a></h2> +<p>I am asked to write something (it is not specifically stated +what) to the profit and glory of my <i>Alma Mater</i>; and the +fact is I seem to be in very nearly the same case with those who +addressed me, for while I am willing enough to write something, I +know not what to write. Only one point I see, that if I am +to write at all, it should be of the University itself and my own +days under its shadow; of the things that are still the same and +of those that are already changed: such talk, in short, as would +pass naturally between a student of to-day and one of yesterday, +supposing them to meet and grow confidential.</p> +<p>The generations pass away swiftly enough on the high seas of +life; more swiftly still in the little bubbling back-water of the +quadrangle; so that we see there, on a scale startlingly +diminished, the flight of time and the succession of men. I +looked for my name the other day in last year’s case-book +of the Speculative. Naturally enough I looked for it near +the end; it was not there, nor yet in the next column, so that I +began to think it had been dropped at press; and when at last I +found it, mounted on the shoulders of so many successors, and +looking in that posture like the name of a man of ninety, I was +conscious of some of the dignity of years. This kind of +dignity of temporal precession is likely, with prolonged life, to +become more familiar, possibly less welcome; but I felt it +strongly then, it is strongly on me now, and I am the more +emboldened to speak with my successors in the tone of a parent +and a praiser of things past.</p> +<p>For, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen +University; it has doubtless some remains of good, for human +institutions decline by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of +all seeming embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more +singular, began to do so when I ceased to be a student. +Thus, by an odd chance, I had the very last of the very best of +<i>Alma Mater</i>; the same thing, I hear (which makes it the +more strange), had previously happened to my father; and if they +are good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be +found in time to have befallen my successors of to-day. Of +the specific points of change, of advantage in the past, of +shortcoming in the present, I must own that, on a near +examination, they look wondrous cloudy. The chief and far +the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, +ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist +and heart of the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine +occasional purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, +shiverings on wet, east-windy, morning journeys up to class, +infinite yawnings during lecture and unquenchable gusto in the +delights of truantry, made up the sunshine and shadow of my +college life. You cannot fancy what you missed in missing +him; his virtues, I make sure, are inconceivable to his +successors, just as they were apparently concealed from his +contemporaries, for I was practically alone in the pleasure I had +in his society. Poor soul, I remember how much he was cast +down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun) seemed to +be already at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune and +dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he went. +And it may be worth while to add that these clouds rolled away in +their season, and that all clouds roll away at last, and the +troubles of youth in particular are things but of a moment. +So this student, whom I have in my eye, took his full share of +these concerns, and that very largely by his own fault; but he +still clung to his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct, +kept on in his own way learning how to work; and at last, to his +wonder, escaped out of the stage of studentship not openly +shamed; leaving behind him the University of Edinburgh shorn of a +good deal of its interest for myself.</p> +<p>But while he is (in more senses than one) the first person, he +is by no means the only one whom I regret, or whom the students +of to-day, if they knew what they had lost, would regret +also. They have still Tait, to be sure—long may they +have him!—and they have still Tait’s class-room, +cupola and all; but think of what a different place it was when +this youth of mine (at least on roll days) would be present on +the benches, and, at the near end of the platform, Lindsay senior +<a name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17" +class="citation">[17]</a> was airing his robust old age. It +is possible my successors may have never even heard of Old +Lindsay; but when he went, a link snapped with the last +century. He had something of a rustic air, sturdy and fresh +and plain; he spoke with a ripe east-country accent, which I used +to admire; his reminiscences were all of journeys on foot or +highways busy with post-chaises—a Scotland before steam; he +had seen the coal fire on the Isle of May, and he regaled me with +tales of my own grandfather. Thus he was for me a mirror of +things perished; it was only in his memory that I could see the +huge shock of flames of the May beacon stream to leeward, and the +watchers, as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the +windward bars of the furnace; it was only thus that I could see +my grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard road +from Pittenweem to Crail, and for all his business hurry, drawing +up to speak good-humouredly with those he met. And now, in +his turn, Lindsay is gone also; inhabits only the memories of +other men, till these shall follow him; and figures in my +reminiscences as my grandfather figured in his.</p> +<p>To-day, again, they have Professor Butcher, and I hear he has +a prodigious deal of Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who +is a man filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these +are set-offs. But they cannot change the fact that +Professor Blackie has retired, and that Professor Kelland is +dead. No man’s education is complete or truly liberal +who knew not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the +mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, +kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his +class by the spell of that very kindness. I have heard him +drift into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, and +give us glimpses of old-world life in out-of-the-way English +parishes when he was young; thus playing the same part as +Lindsay—the part of the surviving memory, signalling out of +the dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished +things. But it was a part that scarce became him; he +somehow lacked the means: for all his silver hair and worn face, +he was not truly old; and he had too much of the unrest and +petulant fire of youth, and too much invincible innocence of +mind, to play the veteran well. The time to measure him +best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, was when +he received his class at home. What a pretty simplicity +would he then show, trying to amuse us like children with toys; +and what an engaging nervousness of manner, as fearing that his +efforts might not succeed! Truly he made us all feel like +children, and like children embarrassed, but at the same time +filled with sympathy for the conscientious, troubled elder-boy +who was working so hard to entertain us. A theorist has +held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-tale as his +spectacles; that the mouth may be compressed and the brow +smoothed artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is +diagnostic. And truly it must have been thus with Kelland; +for as I still fancy I behold him frisking actively about the +platform, pointer in hand, that which I seem to see most clearly +is the way his glasses glittered with affection. I never +knew but one other man who had (if you will permit the phrase) so +kind a spectacle; and that was Dr. Appleton. But the light +in his case was tempered and passive; in Kelland’s it +danced, and changed, and flashed vivaciously among the students, +like a perpetual challenge to goodwill.</p> +<p>I cannot say so much about Professor Blackie, for a good +reason. Kelland’s class I attended, once even gained +there a certificate of merit, the only distinction of my +University career. But although I am the holder of a +certificate of attendance in the professor’s own hand, I +cannot remember to have been present in the Greek class above a +dozen times. Professor Blackie was even kind enough to +remark (more than once) while in the very act of writing the +document above referred to, that he did not know my face. +Indeed, I denied myself many opportunities; acting upon an +extensive and highly rational system of truantry, which cost me a +great deal of trouble to put in exercise—perhaps as much as +would have taught me Greek—and sent me forth into the world +and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an +education. But they say it is always a good thing to have +taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its +nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this I should plume myself, +that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and +none ever had more certificates for less education. One +consequence, however, of my system is that I have much less to +say of Professor Blackie than I had of Professor Kelland; and as +he is still alive, and will long, I hope, continue to be so, it +will not surprise you very much that I have no intention of +saying it.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, how many others have gone—Jenkin, Hodgson, +and I know not who besides; and of that tide of students that +used to throng the arch and blacken the quadrangle, how many are +scattered into the remotest parts of the earth, and how many more +have lain down beside their fathers in their +“resting-graves”! And again, how many of these +last have not found their way there, all too early, through the +stress of education! That was one thing, at least, from +which my truantry protected me. I am sorry indeed that I +have no Greek, but I should be sorrier still if I were dead; nor +do I know the name of that branch of knowledge which is worth +acquiring at the price of a brain fever. There are many +sordid tragedies in the life of the student, above all if he be +poor, or drunken, or both; but nothing more moves a wise +man’s pity than the case of the lad who is in too much +hurry to be learned. And so, for the sake of a moral at the +end, I will call up one more figure, and have done. A +student, ambitious of success by that hot, intemperate manner of +study that now grows so common, read night and day for an +examination. As he went on, the task became more easy to +him, sleep was more easily banished, his brain grew hot and clear +and more capacious, the necessary knowledge daily fuller and more +orderly. It came to the eve of the trial and he watched all +night in his high chamber, reviewing what he knew, and already +secure of success. His window looked eastward, and being +(as I said) high up, and the house itself standing on a hill, +commanded a view over dwindling suburbs to a country +horizon. At last my student drew up his blind, and still in +quite a jocund humour, looked abroad. Day was breaking, the +east was tinging with strange fires, the clouds breaking up for +the coming of the sun; and at the sight, nameless terror seized +upon his mind. He was sane, his senses were undisturbed; he +saw clearly, and knew what he was seeing, and knew that it was +normal; but he could neither bear to see it nor find the strength +to look away, and fled in panic from his chamber into the +enclosure of the street. In the cool air and silence, and +among the sleeping houses, his strength was renewed. +Nothing troubled him but the memory of what had passed, and an +abject fear of its return.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Gallo canente, spes redit,<br /> +Aegris salus refunditur,<br /> +Lapsis fides revertitur,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>as they sang of old in Portugal in the Morning Office. +But to him that good hour of cockcrow, and the changes of the +dawn, had brought panic, and lasting doubt, and such terror as he +still shook to think of. He dared not return to his +lodging; he could not eat; he sat down, he rose up, he wandered; +the city woke about him with its cheerful bustle, the sun climbed +overhead; and still he grew but the more absorbed in the distress +of his recollection and the fear of his past fear. At the +appointed hour, he came to the door of the place of examination; +but when he was asked, he had forgotten his name. Seeing +him so disordered, they had not the heart to send him away, but +gave him a paper and admitted him, still nameless, to the +Hall. Vain kindness, vain efforts. He could only sit +in a still growing horror, writing nothing, ignorant of all, his +mind filled with a single memory of the breaking day and his own +intolerable fear. And that same night he was tossing in a +brain fever.</p> +<p>People are afraid of war and wounds and dentists, all with +excellent reason; but these are not to be compared with such +chaotic terrors of the mind as fell on this young man, and made +him cover his eyes from the innocent morning. We all have +by our bedsides the box of the Merchant Abudah, thank God, +securely enough shut; but when a young man sacrifices sleep to +labour, let him have a care, for he is playing with the lock.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III. OLD MORTALITY</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p>There is a certain graveyard, looked upon on the one side by a +prison, on the other by the windows of a quiet hotel; below, +under a steep cliff, it beholds the traffic of many lines of +rail, and the scream of the engine and the shock of meeting +buffers mount to it all day long. The aisles are lined with +the inclosed sepulchres of families, door beyond door, like +houses in a street; and in the morning the shadow of the prison +turrets, and of many tall memorials, fall upon the graves. +There, in the hot fits of youth, I came to be unhappy. +Pleasant incidents are woven with my memory of the place. I +here made friends with a plain old gentleman, a visitor on sunny +mornings, gravely cheerful, who, with one eye upon the place that +awaited him, chirped about his youth like winter sparrows; a +beautiful housemaid of the hotel once, for some days together, +dumbly flirted with me from a window and kept my wild heart +flying; and once—she possibly remembers—the wise +Eugenia followed me to that austere inclosure. Her hair +came down, and in the shelter of the tomb my trembling fingers +helped her to repair the braid. But for the most part I +went there solitary and, with irrevocable emotion, pored on the +names of the forgotten. Name after name, and to each the +conventional attributions and the idle dates: a regiment of the +unknown that had been the joy of mothers, and had thrilled with +the illusions of youth, and at last, in the dim sick-room, +wrestled with the pangs of old mortality. In that whole +crew of the silenced there was but one of whom my fancy had +received a picture; and he, with his comely, florid countenance, +bewigged and habited in scarlet, and in his day combining fame +and popularity, stood forth, like a taunt, among that company of +phantom appellations. It was then possible to leave behind +us something more explicit than these severe, monotonous and +lying epitaphs; and the thing left, the memory of a painted +picture and what we call the immortality of a name, was hardly +more desirable than mere oblivion. Even David Hume, as he +lay composed beneath that “circular idea,” was +fainter than a dream; and when the housemaid, broom in hand, +smiled and beckoned from the open window, the fame of that +bewigged philosopher melted like a raindrop in the sea.</p> +<p>And yet in soberness I cared as little for the housemaid as +for David Hume. The interests of youth are rarely frank; +his passions, like Noah’s dove, come home to roost. +The fire, sensibility, and volume of his own nature, that is all +that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and gray +tide of life, the empire of routine, the unrejoicing faces of his +elders, fill him with contemptuous surprise; there also he seems +to walk among the tombs of spirits; and it is only in the course +of years, and after much rubbing with his fellow-men, that he +begins by glimpses to see himself from without and his fellows +from within: to know his own for one among the thousand undenoted +countenances of the city street, and to divine in others the +throb of human agony and hope. In the meantime he will +avoid the hospital doors, the pale faces, the cripple, the sweet +whiff of chloroform—for there, on the most thoughtless, the +pains of others are burned home; but he will continue to walk, in +a divine self-pity, the aisles of the forgotten graveyard. +The length of man’s life, which is endless to the brave and +busy, is scorned by his ambitious thought. He cannot bear +to have come for so little, and to go again so wholly. He +cannot bear, above all, in that brief scene, to be still idle, +and by way of cure, neglects the little that he has to do. +The parable of the talent is the brief epitome of youth. To +believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to +believe in life. Denunciatory preachers seem not to suspect +that they may be taken gravely and in evil part; that young men +may come to think of time as of a moment, and with the pride of +Satan wave back the inadequate gift. Yet here is a true +peril; this it is that sets them to pace the graveyard alleys and +to read, with strange extremes of pity and derision, the +memorials of the dead.</p> +<p>Books were the proper remedy: books of vivid human import, +forcing upon their minds the issues, pleasures, busyness, +importance and immediacy of that life in which they stand; books +of smiling or heroic temper, to excite or to console; books of a +large design, shadowing the complexity of that game of +consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not +least. But the average sermon flees the point, disporting +itself in that eternity of which we know, and need to know, so +little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous fields of +life where destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a +writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-hap that when +his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he should have +fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann. Yet +to Mr. Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a +grudge. The day is perhaps not far off when people will +begin to count <i>Moll Flanders</i>, ay, or <i>The Country +Wife</i>, more wholesome and more pious diet than these +guide-books to consistent egoism.</p> +<p>But the most inhuman of boys soon wearies of the inhumanity of +Obermann. And even while I still continued to be a haunter +of the graveyard, I began insensibly to turn my attention to the +grave-diggers, and was weaned out of myself to observe the +conduct of visitors. This was dayspring, indeed, to a lad +in such great darkness. Not that I began to see men, or to +try to see them, from within, nor to learn charity and modesty +and justice from the sight; but still stared at them externally +from the prison windows of my affectation. Once I remember +to have observed two working-women with a baby halting by a +grave; there was something monumental in the grouping, one +upright carrying the child, the other with bowed face crouching +by her side. A wreath of immortelles under a glass dome had +thus attracted them; and, drawing near, I overheard their +judgment on that wonder. “Eh! what +extravagance!” To a youth afflicted with the +callosity of sentiment, this quaint and pregnant saying appeared +merely base.</p> +<p>My acquaintance with grave-diggers, considering its length, +was unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his +spade in the red evening, high above Allan Water and in the +shadow of Dunblane Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with +the birds that still attended on his labours; how some would even +perch about him, waiting for their prey; and in a true +Sexton’s Calendar, how the species varied with the season +of the year. But this was the very poetry of the +profession. The others whom I knew were somewhat dry. +A faint flavour of the gardener hung about them, but +sophisticated and dis-bloomed. They had engagements to +keep, not alone with the deliberate series of the seasons, but +with man-kind’s clocks and hour-long measurement of +time. And thus there was no leisure for the relishing +pinch, or the hour-long gossip, foot on spade. They were +men wrapped up in their grim business; they liked well to open +long-closed family vaults, blowing in the key and throwing wide +the grating; and they carried in their minds a calendar of names +and dates. It would be “in fifty-twa” that such +a tomb was last opened for “Miss Jemimy.” It +was thus they spoke of their past patients—familiarly but +not without respect, like old family servants. Here is +indeed a servant, whom we forget that we possess; who does not +wait at the bright table, or run at the bell’s summons, but +patiently smokes his pipe beside the mortuary fire, and in his +faithful memory notches the burials of our race. To suspect +Shakespeare in his maturity of a superficial touch savours of +paradox; yet he was surely in error when he attributed +insensibility to the digger of the grave. But perhaps it is +on Hamlet that the charge should lie; or perhaps the English +sexton differs from the Scotch. The “goodman +delver,” reckoning up his years of office, might have at +least suggested other thoughts. It is a pride common among +sextons. A cabinet-maker does not count his cabinets, nor +even an author his volumes, save when they stare upon him from +the shelves; but the grave-digger numbers his graves. He +would indeed be something different from human if his solitary +open-air and tragic labours left not a broad mark upon his +mind. There, in his tranquil aisle, apart from city +clamour, among the cats and robins and the ancient effigies and +legends of the tomb, he waits the continual passage of his +contemporaries, falling like minute drops into eternity. As +they fall, he counts them; and this enumeration, which was at +first perhaps appalling to his soul, in the process of years and +by the kindly influence of habit grows to be his pride and +pleasure. There are many common stories telling how he +piques himself on crowded cemeteries. But I will rather +tell of the old grave-digger of Monkton, to whose unsuffering +bedside the minister was summoned. He dwelt in a cottage +built into the wall of the church-yard; and through a +bull’s-eye pane above his bed he could see, as he lay +dying, the rank grasses and the upright and recumbent +stones. Dr. Laurie was, I think, a Moderate: ’tis +certain, at least, that he took a very Roman view of deathbed +dispositions; for he told the old man that he had lived beyond +man’s natural years, that his life had been easy and +reputable, that his family had all grown up and been a credit to +his care, and that it now behoved him unregretfully to gird his +loins and follow the majority. The grave-digger heard him +out; then he raised himself upon one elbow, and with the other +hand pointed through the window to the scene of his life-long +labours. “Doctor,” he said, “I ha’e +laid three hunner and fower-score in that kirkyaird; an it had +been His wull,” indicating Heaven, “I would +ha’e likit weel to ha’e made out the fower +hunner.” But it was not to be; this tragedian of the +fifth act had now another part to play; and the time had come +when others were to gird and carry him.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p>I would fain strike a note that should be more heroical; but +the ground of all youth’s suffering, solitude, hysteria, +and haunting of the grave, is nothing else than naked, ignorant +selfishness. It is himself that he sees dead; those are his +virtues that are forgotten; his is the vague epitaph. Pity +him but the more, if pity be your cue; for where a man is all +pride, vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through fire +unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, to lose +oneself is to be gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy; and +this poor, laughable and tragic fool has not yet learned the +rudiments; himself, giant Prometheus, is still ironed on the +peaks of Caucasus. But by-and-by his truant interests will +leave that tortured body, slip abroad and gather flowers. +Then shall death appear before him in an altered guise; no longer +as a doom peculiar to himself, whether fate’s crowning +injustice or his own last vengeance upon those who fail to value +him; but now as a power that wounds him far more tenderly, not +without solemn compensations, taking and giving, bereaving and +yet storing up.</p> +<p>The first step for all is to learn to the dregs our own +ignoble fallibility. When we have fallen through storey +after storey of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful among +the ruins, then it is that we begin to measure the stature of our +friends: how they stand between us and our own contempt, +believing in our best; how, linking us with others, and still +spreading wide the influential circle, they weave us in and in +with the fabric of contemporary life; and to what petty size they +dwarf the virtues and the vices that appeared gigantic in our +youth. So that at the last, when such a pin falls +out—when there vanishes in the least breath of time one of +those rich magazines of life on which we drew for our +supply—when he who had first dawned upon us as a face among +the faces of the city, and, still growing, came to bulk on our +regard with those clear features of the loved and living man, +falls in a breath to memory and shadow, there falls along with +him a whole wing of the palace of our life.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p>One such face I now remember; one such blank some half-a-dozen +of us labour to dissemble. In his youth he was most +beautiful in person, most serene and genial by disposition; full +of racy words and quaint thoughts. Laughter attended on his +coming. He had the air of a great gentleman, jovial and +royal with his equals, and to the poorest student gentle and +attentive. Power seemed to reside in him exhaustless; we +saw him stoop to play with us, but held him marked for higher +destinies; we loved his notice; and I have rarely had my pride +more gratified than when he sat at my father’s table, my +acknowledged friend. So he walked among us, both hands full +of gifts, carrying with nonchalance the seeds of a most +influential life.</p> +<p>The powers and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, +looking back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he +was, for some shadow of what he was to be. For with all his +beauty, power, breeding, urbanity and mirth, there was in those +days something soulless in our friend. He would astonish us +by sallies, witty, innocent and inhumane; and by a misapplied +Johnsonian pleasantry, demolish honest sentiment. I can +still see and hear him, as he went his way along the lamplit +streets, <i>Là ci darem la mano</i> on his lips, a noble +figure of a youth, but following vanity and incredulous of good; +and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of life, with his +health, his hopes, his patrimony and his self-respect, miserably +went down.</p> +<p>From this disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came desperately +ashore, bankrupt of money and consideration; creeping to the +family he had deserted; with broken wing, never more to +rise. But in his face there was a light of knowledge that +was new to it. Of the wounds of his body he was never +healed; died of them gradually, with clear-eyed resignation; of +his wounded pride, we knew only from his silence. He +returned to that city where he had lorded it in his ambitious +youth; lived there alone, seeing few; striving to retrieve the +irretrievable; at times still grappling with that mortal frailty +that had brought him down; still joying in his friend’s +successes; his laugh still ready but with kindlier music; and +over all his thoughts the shadow of that unalterable law which he +had disavowed and which had brought him low. Lastly, when +his bodily evils had quite disabled him, he lay a great while +dying, still without complaint, still finding interests; to his +last step gentle, urbane and with the will to smile.</p> +<p>The tale of this great failure is, to those who remained true +to him, the tale of a success. In his youth he took thought +for no one but himself; when he came ashore again, his whole +armada lost, he seemed to think of none but others. Such +was his tenderness for others, such his instinct of fine courtesy +and pride, that of that impure passion of remorse he never +breathed a syllable; even regret was rare with him, and pointed +with a jest. You would not have dreamed, if you had known +him then, that this was that great failure, that beacon to young +men, over whose fall a whole society had hissed and pointed +fingers. Often have we gone to him, red-hot with our own +hopeful sorrows, railing on the rose-leaves in our princely bed +of life, and he would patiently give ear and wisely counsel; and +it was only upon some return of our own thoughts that we were +reminded what manner of man this was to whom we disembosomed: a +man, by his own fault, ruined; shut out of the garden of his +gifts; his whole city of hope both ploughed and salted; silently +awaiting the deliverer. Then something took us by the +throat; and to see him there, so gentle, patient, brave and +pious, oppressed but not cast down, sorrow was so swallowed up in +admiration that we could not dare to pity him. Even if the +old fault flashed out again, it but awoke our wonder that, in +that lost battle, he should have still the energy to fight. +He had gone to ruin with a kind of kingly <i>abandon</i>, like +one who condescended; but once ruined, with the lights all out, +he fought as for a kingdom. Most men, finding themselves +the authors of their own disgrace, rail the louder against God or +destiny. Most men, when they repent, oblige their friends +to share the bitterness of that repentance. But he had held +an inquest and passed sentence: <i>mene</i>, <i>mene</i>; and +condemned himself to smiling silence. He had given trouble +enough; had earned misfortune amply, and foregone the right to +murmur.</p> +<p>Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless in his days of +strength; but on the coming of adversity, and when that strength +was gone that had betrayed him—“for our strength is +weakness”—he began to blossom and bring forth. +Well, now, he is out of the fight: the burden that he bore thrown +down before the great deliverer. We</p> +<blockquote><p> “In the vast cathedral +leave him;<br /> +God accept him,<br /> +Christ receive him!”</p> +</blockquote> +<h3>IV</h3> +<p>If we go now and look on these innumerable epitaphs, the +pathos and the irony are strangely fled. They do not stand +merely to the dead, these foolish monuments; they are pillars and +legends set up to glorify the difficult but not desperate life of +man. This ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.</p> +<p>I see the indifferent pass before my friend’s last +resting-place; pause, with a shrug of pity, marvelling that so +rich an argosy had sunk. A pity, now that he is done with +suffering, a pity most uncalled for, and an ignorant +wonder. Before those who loved him, his memory shines like +a reproach; they honour him for silent lessons; they cherish his +example; and in what remains before them of their toil, fear to +be unworthy of the dead. For this proud man was one of +those who prospered in the valley of humiliation;—of whom +Bunyan wrote that, “Though Christian had the hard hap to +meet in the valley with Apollyon, yet I must tell you, that in +former times men have met with angels here; have found pearls +here; and have in this place found the words of life.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV. A COLLEGE MAGAZINE</h2> +<h3>I</h3> +<p>All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out +for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on my own +private end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two +books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I +walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appropriate +words; when I sat by the roadside, I would either read, or a +pencil and a penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down +the features of the scene or commemorate some halting +stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus +wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for +practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an author +(though I wished that too) as that I had vowed that I would learn +to write. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I +practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with +myself. Description was the principal field of my exercise; +for to any one with senses there is always something worth +describing, and town and country are but one continuous +subject. But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied +my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; +and often exercised myself in writing down conversations from +memory.</p> +<p>This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I +sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, +finding them a school of posturing and melancholy +self-deception. And yet this was not the most efficient +part of my training. Good though it was, it only taught me +(so far as I have learned them at all) the lower and less +intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the essential +note and the right word: things that to a happier constitution +had perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training, it +had one grave defect; for it set me no standard of +achievement. So that there was perhaps more profit, as +there was certainly more effort, in my secret labours at +home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly +pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with +propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or +some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and +set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I +knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always +unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some +practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the +co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape +to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to +Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to +Obermann. I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was +called <i>The Vanity of Morals</i>: it was to have had a second +part, <i>The Vanity of Knowledge</i>; and as I had neither +morality nor scholarship, the names were apt; but the second part +was never attempted, and the first part was written (which is my +reason for recalling it, ghost-like, from its ashes) no less than +three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner +of Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and third, in a +laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. So with my other +works: <i>Cain</i>, an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of +<i>Sordello</i>: <i>Robin Hood</i>, a tale in verse, took an +eclectic middle course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer and +Morris: in <i>Monmouth</i>, a tragedy, I reclined on the bosom of +Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable gouty-footed lyrics, I followed +many masters; in the first draft of <i>The King’s +Pardon</i>, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no lesser man than +John Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with +staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, +and of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein—for +it was not Congreve’s verse, it was his exquisite prose, +that I admired and sought to copy. Even at the age of +thirteen I had tried to do justice to the inhabitants of the +famous city of Peebles in the style of the <i>Book of +Snobs</i>. So I might go on for ever, through all my +abortive novels, and down to my later plays, of which I think +more tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first under +the bracing influence of old Dumas, but have met with +resurrection: one, strangely bettered by another hand, came on +the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the other, +originally known as <i>Semiramis</i>: <i>a Tragedy</i>, I have +observed on bookstalls under the <i>alias</i> of <i>Prince +Otto</i>. But enough has been said to show by what arts of +impersonation, and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first +saw my words on paper.</p> +<p>That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write whether I +have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats +learned, and there was never a finer temperament for literature +than Keats’s; it was so, if we could trace it out, that all +men have learned; and that is why a revival of letters is always +accompanied or heralded by a cast back to earlier and fresher +models. Perhaps I hear some one cry out: But this is not +the way to be original! It is not; nor is there any way but +to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there +anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your +originality. There can be none more original than +Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no +craftsman can fail to see how much the one must have tried in his +time to imitate the other. Burns is the very type of a +prime force in letters: he was of all men the most +imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds +directly from a school. It is only from a school that we +can expect to have good writers; it is almost invariably from a +school that great writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. +Nor is there anything here that should astonish the +considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly +prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; +before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he +should long have practised the literary scales; and it is only +after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, +legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase +simultaneously bidding for his choice, and he himself knowing +what he wants to do and (within the narrow limit of a man’s +ability) able to do it.</p> +<p>And it is the great point of these imitations that there still +shines beyond the student’s reach his inimitable +model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of +failure; and it is a very old and a very true saying that failure +is the only highroad to success. I must have had some +disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own +performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were +done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very +rarely showed them even to my friends; and such friends as I +chose to be my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had +the friendliness to be quite plain with me, +“Padding,” said one. Another wrote: “I +cannot understand why you do lyrics so badly.” No +more could I! Thrice I put myself in the way of a more +authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. +These were returned; and I was not surprised nor even +pained. If they had not been looked at, as (like all +amateurs) I suspected was the case, there was no good in +repeating the experiment; if they had been looked at—well, +then I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning +and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is +the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see my +literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I +stood from the favour of the public.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p>The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has +counted among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner, +Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local +celebrity besides. By an accident, variously explained, it +has its rooms in the very buildings of the University of +Edinburgh: a hall, Turkey-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, +when lighted up at night with fire and candle, like some goodly +dining-room; a passage-like library, walled with books in their +wire cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, +many prints of famous members, and a mural tablet to the virtues +of a former secretary. Here a member can warm himself and +loaf and read; here, in defiance of Senatus-consults, he can +smoke. The Senatus looks askance at these privileges; looks +even with a somewhat vinegar aspect on the whole society; which +argues a lack of proportion in the learned mind, for the world, +we may be sure, will prize far higher this haunt of dead lions +than all the living dogs of the professorate.</p> +<p>I sat one December morning in the library of the Speculative; +a very humble-minded youth, though it was a virtue I never had +much credit for; yet proud of my privileges as a member of the +Spec.; proud of the pipe I was smoking in the teeth of the +Senatus; and in particular, proud of being in the next room to +three very distinguished students, who were then conversing +beside the corridor fire. One of these has now his name on +the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn, is +influential in the law courts. Of the death of the second, +you have just been reading what I had to say. And the third +also has escaped out of that battle of life in which he fought so +hard, it may be so unwisely. They were all three, as I have +said, notable students; but this was the most conspicuous. +Wealthy, handsome, ambitious, adventurous, diplomatic, a reader +of Balzac, and of all men that I have known, the most like to one +of Balzac’s characters, he led a life, and was attended by +an ill fortune, that could be properly set forth only in the +<i>Comédie Humaine</i>. He had then his eye on +Parliament; and soon after the time of which I write, he made a +showy speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven next +day in the <i>Courant</i>, and the day after was dashed lower +than earth with a charge of plagiarism in the +<i>Scotsman</i>. Report would have it (I daresay, very +wrongly) that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly +trusted, and that the author of the charge had learned its truth +from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was up one day on a +pinnacle, admired and envied by all; and the next, though still +but a boy, he was publicly disgraced. The blow would have +broken a less finely tempered spirit; and even him I suppose it +rendered reckless; for he took flight to London, and there, in a +fast club, disposed of the bulk of his considerable patrimony in +the space of one winter. For years thereafter he lived I +know not how; always well dressed, always in good hotels and good +society, always with empty pockets. The charm of his manner +may have stood him in good stead; but though my own manners are +very agreeable, I have never found in them a source of +livelihood; and to explain the miracle of his continued +existence, I must fall back upon the theory of the philosopher, +that in his case, as in all of the same kind, “there was a +suffering relative in the background.” From this +genteel eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently +sought me out in the character of a generous editor. It is +in this part that I best remember him; tall, slender, with a not +ungraceful stoop; looking quite like a refined gentleman, and +quite like an urbane adventurer; smiling with an engaging +ambiguity; cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great +appearance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick, with a +touch of burr; telling strange tales with singular deliberation +and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. After all +these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the rich student that +he was of yore, to breathe of money; seemed still perfectly sure +of himself and certain of his end. Yet he was then upon the +brink of his last overthrow. He had set himself to found +the strangest thing in our society: one of those periodical +sheets from which men suppose themselves to learn opinions; in +which young gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, at so +much a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations and +calumniate private individuals; and which are now the source of +glory, so that if a man’s name be often enough printed +there, he becomes a kind of demigod; and people will pardon him +when he talks back and forth, as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and +crowd him to suffocation on railway platforms, as they did the +other day to General Boulanger; and buy his literary works, as I +hope you have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were +upon some great enterprise, would sacrifice a life; building, it +may be, a favourite slave into the foundations of their +palace. It was with his own life that my companion disarmed +the envy of the gods. He fought his paper single-handed; +trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic; up early and +down late, for he was nothing of a sluggard; daily ear-wigging +influential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In +that slender and silken fellow there must have been a rare vein +of courage, that he should thus have died at his employment; and +doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless love +also, for it seems there was a marriage in his view had he +succeeded. But he died, and his paper died after him; and +of all this grace, and tact, and courage, it must seem to our +blind eyes as if there had come literally nothing.</p> +<p>These three students sat, as I was saying, in the corridor, +under the mural tablet that records the virtues of Macbean, the +former secretary. We would often smile at that ineloquent +memorial and thought it a poor thing to come into the world at +all and have no more behind one than Macbean. And yet of +these three, two are gone and have left less; and this book, +perhaps, when it is old and foxy, and some one picks it up in a +corner of a book-shop, and glances through it, smiling at the +old, graceless turns of speech, and perhaps for the love of +<i>Alma Mater</i> (which may be still extant and flourishing) +buys it, not without haggling, for some pence—this book may +alone preserve a memory of James Walter Ferrier and Robert +Glasgow Brown.</p> +<p>Their thoughts ran very differently on that December morning; +they were all on fire with ambition; and when they had called me +in to them, and made me a sharer in their design, I too became +drunken with pride and hope. We were to found a University +magazine. A pair of little, active +brothers—Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, +great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the +University building—had been debauched to play the part of +publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors and, what +was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, +by every rule of arithmetic—that flatterer of +credulity—the adventure must succeed and bring great +profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went +home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by +these three distinguished students was to me the most unspeakable +advance; it was my first draught of consideration; it reconciled +me to myself and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the +railings at the Tron, I could not withhold my lips from smiling +publicly. Yet, in the bottom of my heart, I knew that +magazine would be a grim fiasco; I knew it would not be worth +reading; I knew, even if it were, that nobody would read it; and +I kept wondering how I should be able, upon my compact income of +twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, to meet my share in the +expense. It was a comfortable thought to me that I had a +father.</p> +<p>The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover, which was the best +part of it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran four months in +undisturbed obscurity, and died without a gasp. The first +number was edited by all four of us with prodigious bustle; the +second fell principally into the hands of Ferrier and me; the +third I edited alone; and it has long been a solemn question who +it was that edited the fourth. It would perhaps be still +more difficult to say who read it. Poor yellow sheet, that +looked so hopefully Livingtones’ window! Poor, +harmless paper, that might have gone to print a +<i>Shakespeare</i> on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with +nonsense; And, shall I say, Poor Editors? I cannot pity +myself, to whom it was all pure gain. It was no news to me, +but only the wholesome confirmation of my judgment, when the +magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly sickened and +subsided into night. I had sent a copy to the lady with +whom my heart was at that time somewhat engaged, and who did all +that in her lay to break it; and she, with some tact, passed over +the gift and my cherished contributions in silence. I will +not say that I was pleased at this; but I will tell her now, if +by any chance she takes up the work of her former servant, that I +thought the better of her taste. I cleared the decks after +this lost engagement; had the necessary interview with my father, +which passed off not amiss; paid over my share of the expense to +the two little, active brothers, who rubbed their hands as much, +but methought skipped rather less than formerly, having perhaps, +these two also, embarked upon the enterprise with some graceful +illusions; and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told myself +that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; and to work I +went again with my penny version-books, having fallen back in one +day from the printed author to the manuscript student.</p> +<h3>III</h3> +<p>From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint one of my +own papers. The poor little piece is all +tail-foremost. I have done my best to straighten its array, +I have pruned it fearlessly, and it remains invertebrate and +wordy. No self-respecting magazine would print the thing; +and here you behold it in a bound volume, not for any worth of +its own, but for the sake of the man whom it purports dimly to +represent and some of whose sayings it preserves; so that in this +volume of Memories and Portraits, Robert Young, the Swanston +gardener, may stand alongside of John Todd, the Swanston +shepherd. Not that John and Robert drew very close together +in their lives; for John was rough, he smelt of the windy brae; +and Robert was gentle, and smacked of the garden in the +hollow. Perhaps it is to my shame that I liked John the +better of the two; he had grit and dash, and that salt of the Old +Adam that pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood; and +he was a way-farer besides, and took my gipsy fancy. But +however that may be, and however Robert’s profile may be +blurred in the boyish sketch that follows, he was a man of a most +quaint and beautiful nature, whom, if it were possible to recast +a piece of work so old, I should like well to draw again with a +maturer touch. And as I think of him and of John, I wonder +in what other country two such men would be found dwelling +together, in a hamlet of some twenty cottages, in the woody fold +of a green hill.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V. AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER</h2> +<p>I think I might almost have said the last: somewhere, indeed, +in the uttermost glens of the Lammermuir or among the +southwestern hills there may yet linger a decrepid representative +of this bygone good fellowship; but as far as actual experience +goes, I have only met one man in my life who might fitly be +quoted in the same breath with Andrew Fairservice,—though +without his vices. He was a man whose very presence could +impart a savour of quaint antiquity to the baldest and most +modern flower-plots. There was a dignity about his tall +stooping form, and an earnestness in his wrinkled face that +recalled Don Quixote; but a Don Quixote who had come through the +training of the Covenant, and been nourished in his youth on +<i>Walker’s Lives</i> and <i>The Hind let Loose</i>.</p> +<p>Now, as I could not bear to let such a man pass away with no +sketch preserved of his old-fashioned virtues, I hope the reader +will take this as an excuse for the present paper, and judge as +kindly as he can the infirmities of my description. To me, +who find it so difficult to tell the little that I know, he +stands essentially as a <i>genius loci</i>. It is +impossible to separate his spare form and old straw hat from the +garden in the lap of the hill, with its rocks overgrown with +clematis, its shadowy walks, and the splendid breadth of +champaign that one saw from the north-west corner. The +garden and gardener seem part and parcel of each other. +When I take him from his right surroundings and try to make him +appear for me on paper, he looks unreal and phantasmal: the best +that I can say may convey some notion to those that never saw +him, but to me it will be ever impotent.</p> +<p>The first time that I saw him, I fancy Robert was pretty old +already: he had certainly begun to use his years as a stalking +horse. Latterly he was beyond all the impudencies of logic, +considering a reference to the parish register worth all the +reasons in the world, “<i>I am old and well stricken in +years</i>,” he was wont to say; and I never found any one +bold enough to answer the argument. Apart from this vantage +that he kept over all who were not yet octogenarian, he had some +other drawbacks as a gardener. He shrank the very place he +cultivated. The dignity and reduced gentility of his +appearance made the small garden cut a sorry figure. He was +full of tales of greater situations in his younger days. He +spoke of castles and parks with a humbling familiarity. He +told of places where under-gardeners had trembled at his looks, +where there were meres and swanneries, labyrinths of walk and +wildernesses of sad shrubbery in his control, till you could not +help feeling that it was condescension on his part to dress your +humbler garden plots. You were thrown at once into an +invidious position. You felt that you were profiting by the +needs of dignity, and that his poverty and not his will consented +to your vulgar rule. Involuntarily you compared yourself +with the swineherd that made Alfred watch his cakes, or some +bloated citizen who may have given his sons and his condescension +to the fallen Dionysius. Nor were the disagreeables purely +fanciful and metaphysical, for the sway that he exercised over +your feelings he extended to your garden, and, through the +garden, to your diet. He would trim a hedge, throw away a +favourite plant, or fill the most favoured and fertile section of +the garden with a vegetable that none of us could eat, in supreme +contempt for our opinion. If you asked him to send you in +one of your own artichokes, “<i>That I wull</i>, +<i>mem</i>,” he would say, “<i>with pleasure</i>, +<i>for it is mair blessed to give than to +receive</i>.” Ay, and even when, by extra twisting of +the screw, we prevailed on him to prefer our commands to his own +inclination, and he went away, stately and sad, professing that +“<i>our wull was his pleasure</i>,” but yet reminding +us that he would do it “<i>with +feelin’s</i>,”—even then, I say, the triumphant +master felt humbled in his triumph, felt that he ruled on +sufferance only, that he was taking a mean advantage of the +other’s low estate, and that the whole scene had been one +of those “slights that patient merit of the unworthy +takes.”</p> +<p>In flowers his taste was old-fashioned and catholic; affecting +sunflowers and dahlias, wallflowers and roses and holding in +supreme aversion whatsoever was fantastic, new-fashioned or +wild. There was one exception to this sweeping ban. +Foxgloves, though undoubtedly guilty on the last count, he not +only spared, but loved; and when the shrubbery was being thinned, +he stayed his hand and dexterously manipulated his bill in order +to save every stately stem. In boyhood, as he told me once, +speaking in that tone that only actors and the old-fashioned +common folk can use nowadays, his heart grew +“<i>proud</i>” within him when he came on a +burn-course among the braes of Manor that shone purple with their +graceful trophies; and not all his apprenticeship and practice +for so many years of precise gardening had banished these boyish +recollections from his heart. Indeed, he was a man keenly +alive to the beauty of all that was bygone. He abounded in +old stories of his boyhood, and kept pious account of all his +former pleasures; and when he went (on a holiday) to visit one of +the fabled great places of the earth where he had served before, +he came back full of little pre-Raphaelite reminiscences that +showed real passion for the past, such as might have shaken hands +with Hazlitt or Jean-Jacques.</p> +<p>But however his sympathy with his old feelings might affect +his liking for the foxgloves, the very truth was that he scorned +all flowers together. They were but garnishings, childish +toys, trifling ornaments for ladies’ chimney-shelves. +It was towards his cauliflowers and peas and cabbage that his +heart grew warm. His preference for the more useful growths +was such that cabbages were found invading the flower-pots, and +an outpost of savoys was once discovered in the centre of the +lawn. He would prelect over some thriving plant with +wonderful enthusiasm, piling reminiscence on reminiscence of +former and perhaps yet finer specimens. Yet even then he +did not let the credit leave himself. He had, indeed, +raised “<i>finer o’ them</i>;” but it seemed +that no one else had been favoured with a like success. All +other gardeners, in fact, were mere foils to his own superior +attainments; and he would recount, with perfect soberness of +voice and visage, how so and so had wondered, and such another +could scarcely give credit to his eyes. Nor was it with his +rivals only that he parted praise and blame. If you +remarked how well a plant was looking, he would gravely touch his +hat and thank you with solemn unction; all credit in the matter +falling to him. If, on the other hand, you called his +attention to some back-going vegetable, he would quote Scripture: +“<i>Paul may plant and Apollos may water</i>;” all +blame being left to Providence, on the score of deficient rain or +untimely frosts.</p> +<p>There was one thing in the garden that shared his preference +with his favourite cabbages and rhubarb, and that other was the +beehive. Their sound, their industry, perhaps their sweet +product also, had taken hold of his imagination and heart, +whether by way of memory or no I cannot say, although perhaps the +bees too were linked to him by some recollection of Manor braes +and his country childhood. Nevertheless, he was too chary +of his personal safety or (let me rather say) his personal +dignity to mingle in any active office towards them. But he +could stand by while one of the contemned rivals did the work for +him, and protest that it was quite safe in spite of his own +considerate distance and the cries of the distressed +assistant. In regard to bees, he was rather a man of word +than deed, and some of his most striking sentences had the bees +for text. “<i>They are indeed wonderfu’ +creatures</i>, <i>mem</i>,” he said once. +“<i>They just mind me o’ what the Queen of Sheba said +to Solomon—and I think she said it wi’ a +sigh</i>,—‘<i>The half of it hath not been told unto +me</i>.’”</p> +<p>As far as the Bible goes, he was deeply read. Like the +old Covenanters, of whom he was the worthy representative, his +mouth was full of sacred quotations; it was the book that he had +studied most and thought upon most deeply. To many people +in his station the Bible, and perhaps Burns, are the only books +of any vital literary merit that they read, feeding themselves, +for the rest, on the draff of country newspapers, and the very +instructive but not very palatable pabulum of some cheap +educational series. This was Robert’s position. +All day long he had dreamed of the Hebrew stories, and his head +had been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel ethics; until they had +struck deep root into his heart, and the very expressions had +become a part of him; so that he rarely spoke without some +antique idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness to the +merest trivialities of talk. But the influence of the Bible +did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint +phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a +spirit of peace and love: he interposed between man and wife: he +threw himself between the angry, touching his hat the while with +all the ceremony of an usher: he protected the birds from +everybody but himself, seeing, I suppose, a great difference +between official execution and wanton sport. His mistress +telling him one day to put some ferns into his master’s +particular corner, and adding, “Though, indeed, Robert, he +doesn’t deserve them, for he wouldn’t help me to +gather them,” “<i>Eh</i>, <i>mem</i>,” replies +Robert, “<i>But I wouldnae say that</i>, <i>for I think +he’s just a most deservin’ +gentleman</i>.” Again, two of our friends, who were +on intimate terms, and accustomed to use language to each other, +somewhat without the bounds of the parliamentary, happened to +differ about the position of a seat in the garden. The +discussion, as was usual when these two were at it, soon waxed +tolerably insulting on both sides. Every one accustomed to +such controversies several times a day was quietly enjoying this +prize-fight of somewhat abusive wit—every one but Robert, +to whom the perfect good faith of the whole quarrel seemed +unquestionable, and who, after having waited till his conscience +would suffer him to wait no more, and till he expected every +moment that the disputants would fall to blows, cut suddenly in +with tones of almost tearful entreaty: “<i>Eh</i>, +<i>but</i>, <i>gentlemen</i>, <i>I wad hae nae mair words about +it</i>!” One thing was noticeable about +Robert’s religion: it was neither dogmatic nor +sectarian. He never expatiated (at least, in my hearing) on +the doctrines of his creed, and he never condemned anybody +else. I have no doubt that he held all Roman Catholics, +Atheists, and Mahometans as considerably out of it; I don’t +believe he had any sympathy for Prelacy; and the natural feelings +of man must have made him a little sore about Free-Churchism; but +at least, he never talked about these views, never grew +controversially noisy, and never openly aspersed the belief or +practice of anybody. Now all this is not generally +characteristic of Scotch piety; Scotch sects being churches +militant with a vengeance, and Scotch believers perpetual +crusaders the one against the other, and missionaries the one to +the other. Perhaps Robert’s originally tender heart +was what made the difference; or, perhaps, his solitary and +pleasant labour among fruits and flowers had taught him a more +sunshiny creed than those whose work is among the tares of fallen +humanity; and the soft influences of the garden had entered deep +into his spirit,</p> +<blockquote><p>“Annihilating all that’s made<br /> +To a green thought in a green shade.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But I could go on for ever chronicling his golden sayings or +telling of his innocent and living piety. I had meant to +tell of his cottage, with the German pipe hung reverently above +the fire, and the shell box that he had made for his son, and of +which he would say pathetically: “<i>He was real +pleased wi’ it at first</i>, <i>but I think he’s got +a kind o’ tired o’ it now</i>”—the son +being then a man of about forty. But I will let all these +pass. “’Tis more significant: he’s +dead.” The earth, that he had digged so much in his +life, was dug out by another for himself; and the flowers that he +had tended drew their life still from him, but in a new and +nearer way. A bird flew about the open grave, as if it too +wished to honour the obsequies of one who had so often quoted +Scripture in favour of its kind. “Are not two +sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet not one of them falleth +to the ground.”</p> +<p>Yes, he is dead. But the kings did not rise in the place +of death to greet him “with taunting proverbs” as +they rose to greet the haughty Babylonian; for in his life he was +lowly, and a peacemaker and a servant of God.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI. PASTORAL</h2> +<p>To leave home in early life is to be stunned and quickened +with novelties; but when years have come, it only casts a more +endearing light upon the past. As in those composite +photographs of Mr. Galton’s, the image of each new sitter +brings out but the more clearly the central features of the race; +when once youth has flown, each new impression only deepens the +sense of nationality and the desire of native places. So +may some cadet of Royal Écossais or the Albany Regiment, +as he mounted guard about French citadels, so may some officer +marching his company of the Scots-Dutch among the polders, have +felt the soft rains of the Hebrides upon his brow, or started in +the ranks at the remembered aroma of peat-smoke. And the +rivers of home are dear in particular to all men. This is +as old as Naaman, who was jealous for Abana and Pharpar; it is +confined to no race nor country, for I know one of Scottish blood +but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about the +lilied lowland waters of that shire. But the streams of +Scotland are incomparable in themselves—or I am only the +more Scottish to suppose so—and their sound and colour +dwell for ever in the memory. How often and willingly do I +not look again in fancy on Tummel, or Manor, or the talking +Airdle, or Dee swirling in its Lynn; on the bright burn of +Kinnaird, or the golden burn that pours and sulks in the den +behind Kingussie! I think shame to leave out one of these +enchantresses, but the list would grow too long if I remembered +all; only I may not forget Allan Water, nor birch-wetting Rogie, +nor yet Almond; nor, for all its pollutions, that Water of Leith +of the many and well-named mills—Bell’s Mills, and +Canon Mills, and Silver Mills; nor Redford Burn of pleasant +memories; nor yet, for all its smallness, that nameless trickle +that springs in the green bosom of Allermuir, and is fed from +Halkerside with a perennial teacupful, and threads the moss under +the Shearer’s Knowe, and makes one pool there, overhung by +a rock, where I loved to sit and make bad verses, and is then +kidnapped in its infancy by subterranean pipes for the service of +the sea-beholding city in the plain. From many points in +the moss you may see at one glance its whole course and that of +all its tributaries; the geographer of this Lilliput may visit +all its corners without sitting down, and not yet begin to be +breathed; Shearer’s Knowe and Halkerside are but names of +adjacent cantons on a single shoulder of a hill, as names are +squandered (it would seem to the in-expert, in superfluity) upon +these upland sheepwalks; a bucket would receive the whole +discharge of the toy river; it would take it an appreciable time +to fill your morning bath; for the most part, besides, it soaks +unseen through the moss; and yet for the sake of auld lang syne, +and the figure of a certain <i>genius loci</i>, I am condemned to +linger awhile in fancy by its shores; and if the nymph (who +cannot be above a span in stature) will but inspire my pen, I +would gladly carry the reader along with me.</p> +<p>John Todd, when I knew him, was already “the oldest herd +on the Pentlands,” and had been all his days faithful to +that curlew-scattering, sheep-collecting life. He +remembered the droving days, when the drove roads, that now lie +green and solitary through the heather, were thronged +thoroughfares. He had himself often marched flocks into +England, sleeping on the hillsides with his caravan; and by his +account it was a rough business not without danger. The +drove roads lay apart from habitation; the drovers met in the +wilderness, as to-day the deep-sea fishers meet off the banks in +the solitude of the Atlantic; and in the one as in the other case +rough habits and fist-law were the rule. Crimes were +committed, sheep filched, and drovers robbed and beaten; most of +which offences had a moorland burial and were never heard of in +the courts of justice. John, in those days, was at least +once attacked,—by two men after his watch,—and at +least once, betrayed by his habitual anger, fell under the danger +of the law and was clapped into some rustic prison-house, the +doors of which he burst in the night and was no more heard of in +that quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in +quieter places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his +dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But for a +man of his propensity to wrath these were enough; he knew neither +rest nor peace, except by snatches; in the gray of the summer +morning, and already from far up the hill, he would wake the +“toun” with the sound of his shoutings; and in the +lambing time, his cries were not yet silenced late at +night. This wrathful voice of a man unseen might be said to +haunt that quarter of the Pentlands, an audible bogie; and no +doubt it added to the fear in which men stood of John a touch of +something legendary. For my own part, he was at first my +enemy, and I, in my character of a rambling boy, his natural +abhorrence. It was long before I saw him near at hand, +knowing him only by some sudden blast of bellowing from far +above, bidding me “c’way oot amang the +sheep.” The quietest recesses of the hill harboured +this ogre; I skulked in my favourite wilderness like a Cameronian +of the Killing Time, and John Todd was my Claverhouse, and his +dogs my questing dragoons. Little by little we dropped into +civilities; his hail at sight of me began to have less of the +ring of a war-slogan; soon, we never met but he produced his +snuff-box, which was with him, like the calumet with the Red +Indian, a part of the heraldry of peace; and at length, in the +ripeness of time, we grew to be a pair of friends, and when I +lived alone in these parts in the winter, it was a settled thing +for John to “give me a cry” over the garden wall as +he set forth upon his evening round, and for me to overtake and +bear him company.</p> +<p>That dread voice of his that shook the hills when he was +angry, fell in ordinary talk very pleasantly upon the ear, with a +kind of honied, friendly whine, not far off singing, that was +eminently Scottish. He laughed not very often, and when he +did, with a sudden, loud haw-haw, hearty but somehow joyless, +like an echo from a rock. His face was permanently set and +coloured; ruddy and stiff with weathering; more like a picture +than a face; yet with a certain strain and a threat of latent +anger in the expression, like that of a man trained too fine and +harassed with perpetual vigilance. He spoke in the richest +dialect of Scotch I ever heard; the words in themselves were a +pleasure and often a surprise to me, so that I often came back +from one of our patrols with new acquisitions; and this +vocabulary he would handle like a master, stalking a little +before me, “beard on shoulder,” the plaid hanging +loosely about him, the yellow staff clapped under his arm, and +guiding me uphill by that devious, tactical ascent which seems +peculiar to men of his trade. I might count him with the +best talkers; only that talking Scotch and talking English seem +incomparable acts. He touched on nothing at least, but he +adorned it; when he narrated, the scene was before you; when he +spoke (as he did mostly) of his own antique business, the thing +took on a colour of romance and curiosity that was +surprising. The clans of sheep with their particular +territories on the hill, and how, in the yearly killings and +purchases, each must be proportionally thinned and strengthened; +the midnight busyness of animals, the signs of the weather, the +cares of the snowy season, the exquisite stupidity of sheep, the +exquisite cunning of dogs: all these he could present so humanly, +and with so much old experience and living gusto, that weariness +was excluded. And in the midst he would suddenly straighten +his bowed back, the stick would fly abroad in demonstration, and +the sharp thunder of his voice roll out a long itinerary for the +dogs, so that you saw at last the use of that great wealth of +names for every knowe and howe upon the hillside; and the dogs, +having hearkened with lowered tails and raised faces, would run +up their flags again to the masthead and spread themselves upon +the indicated circuit. It used to fill me with wonder how +they could follow and retain so long a story. But John +denied these creatures all intelligence; they were the constant +butt of his passion and contempt; it was just possible to work +with the like of them, he said,—not more than +possible. And then he would expand upon the subject of the +really good dogs that he had known, and the one really good dog +that he had himself possessed. He had been offered forty +pounds for it; but a good collie was worth more than that, more +than anything, to a “herd;” he did the herd’s +work for him. “As for the like of them!” he +would cry, and scornfully indicate the scouring tails of his +assistants.</p> +<p>Once—I translate John’s Lallan, for I cannot do it +justice, being born <i>Britannis in montibus</i>, indeed, but +alas! <i>inerudito sæculo</i>—once, in the days of +his good dog, he had bought some sheep in Edinburgh, and on the +way out, the road being crowded, two were lost. This was a +reproach to John, and a slur upon the dog; and both were alive to +their misfortune. Word came, after some days, that a farmer +about Braid had found a pair of sheep; and thither went John and +the dog to ask for restitution. But the farmer was a hard +man and stood upon his rights. “How were they +marked?” he asked; and since John had bought right and left +from many sellers and had no notion of the +marks—“Very well,” said the farmer, “then +it’s only right that I should keep +them.”—“Well,” said John, +“it’s a fact that I cannae tell the sheep; but if my +dog can, will ye let me have them?” The farmer was +honest as well as hard, and besides I daresay he had little fear +of the ordeal; so he had all the sheep upon his farm into one +large park, and turned John’s dog into their midst. +That hairy man of business knew his errand well; he knew that +John and he had bought two sheep and (to their shame) lost them +about Boroughmuirhead; he knew besides (the lord knows how, +unless by listening) that they were come to Braid for their +recovery; and without pause or blunder singled out, first one and +then another, the two waifs. It was that afternoon the +forty pounds were offered and refused. And the shepherd and +his dog—what do I say? the true shepherd and his +man—set off together by Fairmilehead in jocund humour, and +“smiled to ither” all the way home, with the two +recovered ones before them. So far, so good; but +intelligence may be abused. The dog, as he is by little +man’s inferior in mind, is only by little his superior in +virtue; and John had another collie tale of quite a different +complexion. At the foot of the moss behind Kirk Yetton +(Caer Ketton, wise men say) there is a scrog of low wood and a +pool with a dam for washing sheep. John was one day lying +under a bush in the scrog, when he was aware of a collie on the +far hillside skulking down through the deepest of the heather +with obtrusive stealth. He knew the dog; knew him for a +clever, rising practitioner from quite a distant farm; one whom +perhaps he had coveted as he saw him masterfully steering flocks +to market. But what did the practitioner so far from home? +and why this guilty and secret manoeuvring towards the +pool?—for it was towards the pool that he was +heading. John lay the closer under his bush, and presently +saw the dog come forth upon the margin, look all about him to see +if he were anywhere observed, plunge in and repeatedly wash +himself over head and ears, and then (but now openly and with +tail in air) strike homeward over the hills. That same +night word was sent his master, and the rising practitioner, +shaken up from where he lay, all innocence, before the fire, was +had out to a dykeside and promptly shot; for alas! he was that +foulest of criminals under trust, a sheep-eater; and it was from +the maculation of sheep’s blood that he had come so far to +cleanse himself in the pool behind Kirk Yetton.</p> +<p>A trade that touches nature, one that lies at the foundations +of life, in which we have all had ancestors employed, so that on +a hint of it ancestral memories revive, lends itself to literary +use, vocal or written. The fortune of a tale lies not alone +in the skill of him that writes, but as much, perhaps, in the +inherited experience of him who reads; and when I hear with a +particular thrill of things that I have never done or seen, it is +one of that innumerable army of my ancestors rejoicing in past +deeds. Thus novels begin to touch not the fine +<i>dilettanti</i> but the gross mass of mankind, when they leave +off to speak of parlours and shades of manner and still-born +niceties of motive, and begin to deal with fighting, sailoring, +adventure, death or childbirth; and thus ancient outdoor crafts +and occupations, whether Mr. Hardy wields the shepherd’s +crook or Count Tolstoi swings the scythe, lift romance into a +near neighbourhood with epic. These aged things have on +them the dew of man’s morning; they lie near, not so much +to us, the semi-artificial flowerets, as to the trunk and +aboriginal taproot of the race. A thousand interests spring +up in the process of the ages, and a thousand perish; that is now +an eccentricity or a lost art which was once the fashion of an +empire; and those only are perennial matters that rouse us +to-day, and that roused men in all epochs of the past. +There is a certain critic, not indeed of execution but of matter, +whom I dare be known to set before the best: a certain +low-browed, hairy gentleman, at first a percher in the fork of +trees, next (as they relate) a dweller in caves, and whom I think +I see squatting in cave-mouths, of a pleasant afternoon, to munch +his berries—his wife, that accomplished lady, squatting by +his side: his name I never heard, but he is often described as +Probably Arboreal, which may serve for recognition. Each +has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits +Probably Arboreal; in all our veins there run some minims of his +old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilised nerves still tingle with +his rude terrors and pleasures; and to that which would have +moved our common ancestor, all must obediently thrill.</p> +<p>We have not so far to climb to come to shepherds; and it may +be I had one for an ascendant who has largely moulded me. +But yet I think I owe my taste for that hillside business rather +to the art and interest of John Todd. He it was that made +it live for me, as the artist can make all things live. It +was through him the simple strategy of massing sheep upon a snowy +evening, with its attendant scampering of earnest, shaggy +aides-de-camp, was an affair that I never wearied of seeing, and +that I never weary of recalling to mind: the shadow of the night +darkening on the hills, inscrutable black blots of snow shower +moving here and there like night already come, huddles of yellow +sheep and dartings of black dogs upon the snow, a bitter air that +took you by the throat, unearthly harpings of the wind along the +moors; and for centre piece to all these features and influences, +John winding up the brae, keeping his captain’s eye upon +all sides, and breaking, ever and again, into a spasm of +bellowing that seemed to make the evening bleaker. It is +thus that I still see him in my mind’s eye, perched on a +hump of the declivity not far from Halkerside, his staff in airy +flourish, his great voice taking hold upon the hills and echoing +terror to the lowlands; I, meanwhile, standing somewhat back, +until the fit should be over, and, with a pinch of snuff, my +friend relapse into his easy, even conversation.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII. THE MANSE</h2> +<p>I have named, among many rivers that make music in my memory, +that dirty Water of Leith. Often and often I desire to look +upon it again; and the choice of a point of view is easy to +me. It should be at a certain water-door, embowered in +shrubbery. The river is there dammed back for the service +of the flour-mill just below, so that it lies deep and darkling, +and the sand slopes into brown obscurity with a glint of gold; +and it has but newly been recruited by the borrowings of the +snuff-mill just above, and these, tumbling merrily in, shake the +pool to its black heart, fill it with drowsy eddies, and set the +curded froth of many other mills solemnly steering to and fro +upon the surface. Or so it was when I was young; for +change, and the masons, and the pruning-knife, have been busy; +and if I could hope to repeat a cherished experience, it must be +on many and impossible conditions. I must choose, as well +as the point of view, a certain moment in my growth, so that the +scale may be exaggerated, and the trees on the steep opposite +side may seem to climb to heaven, and the sand by the water-door, +where I am standing, seem as low as Styx. And I must choose +the season also, so that the valley may be brimmed like a cup +with sunshine and the songs of birds;—and the year of +grace, so that when I turn to leave the riverside I may find the +old manse and its inhabitants unchanged.</p> +<p>It was a place in that time like no other: the garden cut into +provinces by a great hedge of beech, and over-looked by the +church and the terrace of the churchyard, where the tombstones +were thick, and after nightfall “spunkies” might be +seen to dance at least by children; flower-plots lying warm in +sunshine; laurels and the great yew making elsewhere a pleasing +horror of shade; the smell of water rising from all round, with +an added tang of paper-mills; the sound of water everywhere, and +the sound of mills—the wheel and the dam singing their +alternate strain; the birds on every bush and from every corner +of the overhanging woods pealing out their notes until the air +throbbed with them; and in the midst of this, the manse. I +see it, by the standard of my childish stature, as a great and +roomy house. In truth, it was not so large as I supposed, +nor yet so convenient, and, standing where it did, it is +difficult to suppose that it was healthful. Yet a large +family of stalwart sons and tall daughters were housed and +reared, and came to man and womanhood in that nest of little +chambers; so that the face of the earth was peppered with the +children of the manse, and letters with outlandish stamps became +familiar to the local postman, and the walls of the little +chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The +dullest could see this was a house that had a pair of hands in +divers foreign places: a well-beloved house—its image +fondly dwelt on by many travellers.</p> +<p>Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd of men. I +read him, judging with older criticism the report of childish +observation, as a man of singular simplicity of nature; +unemotional, and hating the display of what he felt; standing +contented on the old ways; a lover of his life and innocent +habits to the end. We children admired him: partly for his +beautiful face and silver hair, for none more than children are +concerned for beauty and, above all, for beauty in the old; +partly for the solemn light in which we beheld him once a week, +the observed of all observers, in the pulpit. But his +strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old age, +slow blood, and settled habit, oppressed us with a kind of +terror. When not abroad, he sat much alone, writing sermons +or letters to his scattered family in a dark and cold room with a +library of bloodless books—or so they seemed in those days, +although I have some of them now on my own shelves and like well +enough to read them; and these lonely hours wrapped him in the +greater gloom for our imaginations. But the study had a +redeeming grace in many Indian pictures, gaudily coloured and +dear to young eyes. I cannot depict (for I have no such +passions now) the greed with which I beheld them; and when I was +once sent in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, quaking +indeed with fear, but at the same time glowing with hope that, if +I said it well, he might reward me with an Indian picture.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thy foot He’ll not let slide, nor +will<br /> + He slumber that thee keeps,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>it ran: a strange conglomerate of the unpronounceable, a sad +model to set in childhood before one who was himself to be a +versifier, and a task in recitation that really merited +reward. And I must suppose the old man thought so too, and +was either touched or amused by the performance; for he took me +in his arms with most unwonted tenderness, and kissed me, and +gave me a little kindly sermon for my psalm; so that, for that +day, we were clerk and parson. I was struck by this +reception into so tender a surprise that I forgot my +disappointment. And indeed the hope was one of those that +childhood forges for a pastime, and with no design upon +reality. Nothing was more unlikely than that my grandfather +should strip himself of one of those pictures, love-gifts and +reminders of his absent sons; nothing more unlikely than that he +should bestow it upon me. He had no idea of spoiling +children, leaving all that to my aunt; he had fared hard himself, +and blubbered under the rod in the last century; and his ways +were still Spartan for the young. The last word I heard +upon his lips was in this Spartan key. He had over-walked +in the teeth of an east wind, and was now near the end of his +many days. He sat by the dining-room fire, with his white +hair, pale face and bloodshot eyes, a somewhat awful figure; and +my aunt had given him a dose of our good old Scotch medicine, Dr. +Gregory’s powder. Now that remedy, as the work of a +near kinsman of Rob Roy himself, may have a savour of romance for +the imagination; but it comes uncouthly to the palate. The +old gentleman had taken it with a wry face; and that being +accomplished, sat with perfect simplicity, like a child’s, +munching a “barley-sugar kiss.” But when my +aunt, having the canister open in her hands, proposed to let me +share in the sweets, he interfered at once. I had had no +Gregory; then I should have no barley-sugar kiss: so he decided +with a touch of irritation. And just then the phaeton +coming opportunely to the kitchen door—for such was our +unlordly fashion—I was taken for the last time from the +presence of my grandfather.</p> +<p>Now I often wonder what I have inherited from this old +minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of +preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it +maintained that either of us loved to hear them. He sought +health in his youth in the Isle of Wight, and I have sought it in +both hemispheres; but whereas he found and kept it, I am still on +the quest. He was a great lover of Shakespeare, whom he +read aloud, I have been told, with taste; well, I love my +Shakespeare also, and am persuaded I can read him well, though I +own I never have been told so. He made embroidery, +designing his own patterns; and in that kind of work I never made +anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin wool, and an odd garter of +knitting, which was as black as the chimney before I had done +with it. He loved port, and nuts, and porter; and so do I, +but they agreed better with my grandfather, which seems to me a +breach of contract. He had chalk-stones in his fingers; and +these, in good time, I may possibly inherit, but I would much +rather have inherited his noble presence. Try as I please, +I cannot join myself on with the reverend doctor; and all the +while, no doubt, and even as I write the phrase, he moves in my +blood, and whispers words to me, and sits efficient in the very +knot and centre of my being. In his garden, as I played +there, I learned the love of mills—or had I an ancestor a +miller?—and a kindness for the neighbourhood of graves, as +homely things not without their poetry—or had I an ancestor +a sexton? But what of the garden where he played +himself?—for that, too, was a scene of my education. +Some part of me played there in the eighteenth century, and ran +races under the green avenue at Pilrig; some part of me trudged +up Leith Walk, which was still a country place, and sat on the +High School benches, and was thrashed, perhaps, by Dr. +Adam. The house where I spent my youth was not yet thought +upon; but we made holiday parties among the cornfields on its +site, and ate strawberries and cream near by at a +gardener’s. All this I had forgotten; only my +grandfather remembered and once reminded me. I have +forgotten, too, how we grew up, and took orders, and went to our +first Ayrshire parish, and fell in love with and married a +daughter of Burns’s Dr. Smith—“Smith opens out +his cauld harangues.” I have forgotten, but I was +there all the same, and heard stories of Burns at first hand.</p> +<p>And there is a thing stranger than all that; for this +<i>homunculus</i> or part-man of mine that walked about the +eighteenth century with Dr. Balfour in his youth, was in the way +of meeting other <i>homunculos</i> or part-men, in the persons of +my other ancestors. These were of a lower order, and +doubtless we looked down upon them duly. But as I went to +college with Dr. Balfour, I may have seen the lamp and oil man +taking down the shutters from his shop beside the Tron;—we +may have had a rabbit-hutch or a bookshelf made for us by a +certain carpenter in I know not what wynd of the old, smoky city; +or, upon some holiday excursion, we may have looked into the +windows of a cottage in a flower-garden and seen a certain weaver +plying his shuttle. And these were all kinsmen of mine upon +the other side; and from the eyes of the lamp and oil man +one-half of my unborn father, and one-quarter of myself, looked +out upon us as we went by to college. Nothing of all this +would cross the mind of the young student, as he posted up the +Bridges with trim, stockinged legs, in that city of cocked hats +and good Scotch still unadulterated. It would not cross his +mind that he should have a daughter; and the lamp and oil man, +just then beginning, by a not unnatural metastasis, to bloom into +a lighthouse-engineer, should have a grandson; and that these +two, in the fulness of time, should wed; and some portion of that +student himself should survive yet a year or two longer in the +person of their child.</p> +<p>But our ancestral adventures are beyond even the arithmetic of +fancy; and it is the chief recommendation of long pedigrees, that +we can follow backward the careers of our <i>homunculos</i> and +be reminded of our antenatal lives. Our conscious years are +but a moment in the history of the elements that build us. +Are you a bank-clerk, and do you live at Peckham? It was +not always so. And though to-day I am only a man of +letters, either tradition errs or I was present when there landed +at St. Andrews a French barber-surgeon, to tend the health and +the beard of the great Cardinal Beaton; I have shaken a spear in +the Debateable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots; I was +present when a skipper, plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to +France after the ’15; I was in a West India +merchant’s office, perhaps next door to Bailie Nicol +Jarvie’s, and managed the business of a plantation in St. +Kitt’s; I was with my engineer-grandfather (the son-in-law +of the lamp and oil man) when he sailed north about Scotland on +the famous cruise that gave us the <i>Pirate</i> and the <i>Lord +of the Isles</i>; I was with him, too, on the Bell Rock, in the +fog, when the <i>Smeaton</i> had drifted from her moorings, and +the Aberdeen men, pick in hand, had seized upon the only boats, +and he must stoop and lap sea-water before his tongue could utter +audible words; and once more with him when the Bell Rock beacon +took a “thrawe,” and his workmen fled into the tower, +then nearly finished, and he sat unmoved reading in his +Bible—or affecting to read—till one after another +slunk back with confusion of countenance to their engineer. +Yes, parts of me have seen life, and met adventures, and +sometimes met them well. And away in the still cloudier +past, the threads that make me up can be traced by fancy into the +bosoms of thousands and millions of ascendants: Picts who rallied +round Macbeth and the old (and highly preferable) system of +descent by females, fleërs from before the legions of +Agricola, marchers in Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on +Chaldæan plateaus; and, furthest of all, what face is this +that fancy can see peering through the disparted branches? +What sleeper in green tree-tops, what muncher of nuts, concludes +my pedigree? Probably arboreal in his habits. . . .</p> +<p>And I know not which is the more strange, that I should carry +about with me some fibres of my minister-grandfather; or that in +him, as he sat in his cool study, grave, reverend, contented +gentleman, there was an aboriginal frisking of the blood that was +not his; tree-top memories, like undeveloped negatives, lay +dormant in his mind; tree-top instincts awoke and were trod down; +and Probably Arboreal (scarce to be distinguished from a monkey) +gambolled and chattered in the brain of the old divine.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII. MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET</h2> +<p>Those who try to be artists use, time after time, the matter +of their recollections, setting and resetting little coloured +memories of men and scenes, rigging up (it may be) some especial +friend in the attire of a buccaneer, and decreeing armies to +manœuvre, or murder to be done, on the playground of their +youth. But the memories are a fairy gift which cannot be +worn out in using. After a dozen services in various tales, +the little sunbright pictures of the past still shine in the +mind’s eye with not a lineament defaced, not a tint +impaired. <i>Glück und Unglück wird Gesang</i>, +if Goethe pleases; yet only by endless avatars, the original +re-embodying after each. So that a writer, in time, begins +to wonder at the perdurable life of these impressions; begins, +perhaps, to fancy that he wrongs them when he weaves them in with +fiction; and looking back on them with ever-growing kindness, +puts them at last, substantive jewels, in a setting of their +own.</p> +<p>One or two of these pleasant spectres I think I have +laid. I used one but the other day: a little eyot of dense, +freshwater sand, where I once waded deep in butterburrs, +delighting to hear the song of the river on both sides, and to +tell myself that I was indeed and at last upon an island. +Two of my puppets lay there a summer’s day, hearkening to +the shearers at work in riverside fields and to the drums of the +gray old garrison upon the neighbouring hill. And this was, +I think, done rightly: the place was rightly peopled—and +now belongs not to me but to my puppets—for a time at +least. In time, perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; the +original memory swim up instant as ever; and I shall once more +lie in bed, and see the little sandy isle in Allan Water as it is +in nature, and the child (that once was me) wading there in +butterburrs; and wonder at the instancy and virgin freshness of +that memory; and be pricked again, in season and out of season, +by the desire to weave it into art.</p> +<p>There is another isle in my collection, the memory of which +besieges me. I put a whole family there, in one of my +tales; and later on, threw upon its shores, and condemned to +several days of rain and shellfish on its tumbled boulders, the +hero of another. The ink is not yet faded; the sound of the +sentences is still in my mind’s ear; and I am under a spell +to write of that island again.</p> +<h3>I</h3> +<p>The little isle of Earraid lies close in to the south-west +corner of the Ross of Mull: the sound of Iona on one side, across +which you may see the isle and church of Columba; the open sea to +the other, where you shall be able to mark, on a clear, surfy +day, the breakers running white on many sunken rocks. I +first saw it, or first remembered seeing it, framed in the round +bull’s-eye of a cabin port, the sea lying smooth along its +shores like the waters of a lake, the colourless clear light of +the early morning making plain its heathery and rocky +hummocks. There stood upon it, in these days, a single rude +house of uncemented stones, approached by a pier of +wreckwood. It must have been very early, for it was then +summer, and in summer, in that latitude, day scarcely withdraws; +but even at that hour the house was making a sweet smoke of peats +which came to me over the bay, and the bare-legged daughters of +the cotter were wading by the pier. The same day we visited +the shores of the isle in the ship’s boats; rowed deep into +Fiddler’s Hole, sounding as we went; and having taken stock +of all possible accommodation, pitched on the northern inlet as +the scene of operations. For it was no accident that had +brought the lighthouse steamer to anchor in the Bay of +Earraid. Fifteen miles away to seaward, a certain black +rock stood environed by the Atlantic rollers, the outpost of the +Torran reefs. Here was a tower to be built, and a star +lighted, for the conduct of seamen. But as the rock was +small, and hard of access, and far from land, the work would be +one of years; and my father was now looking for a shore station, +where the stones might be quarried and dressed, the men live, and +the tender, with some degree of safety, lie at anchor.</p> +<p>I saw Earraid next from the stern thwart of an Iona lugger, +Sam Bough and I sitting there cheek by jowl, with our feet upon +our baggage, in a beautiful, clear, northern summer eve. +And behold! there was now a pier of stone, there were rows of +sheds, railways, travelling-cranes, a street of cottages, an iron +house for the resident engineer, wooden bothies for the men, a +stage where the courses of the tower were put together +experimentally, and behind the settlement a great gash in the +hillside where granite was quarried. In the bay, the +steamer lay at her moorings. All day long there hung about +the place the music of chinking tools; and even in the dead of +night, the watchman carried his lantern to and fro in the dark +settlement and could light the pipe of any midnight muser. +It was, above all, strange to see Earraid on the Sunday, when the +sound of the tools ceased and there fell a crystal quiet. +All about the green compound men would be sauntering in their +Sunday’s best, walking with those lax joints of the +reposing toiler, thoughtfully smoking, talking small, as if in +honour of the stillness, or hearkening to the wailing of the +gulls. And it was strange to see our Sabbath services, +held, as they were, in one of the bothies, with Mr. Brebner +reading at a table, and the congregation perched about in the +double tier of sleeping bunks; and to hear the singing of the +psalms, “the chapters,” the inevitable +Spurgeon’s sermon, and the old, eloquent lighthouse +prayer.</p> +<p>In fine weather, when by the spy-glass on the hill the sea was +observed to run low upon the reef, there would be a sound of +preparation in the very early morning; and before the sun had +risen from behind Ben More, the tender would steam out of the +bay. Over fifteen sea-miles of the great blue Atlantic +rollers she ploughed her way, trailing at her tail a brace of +wallowing stone-lighters. The open ocean widened upon +either board, and the hills of the mainland began to go down on +the horizon, before she came to her unhomely destination, and +lay-to at last where the rock clapped its black head above the +swell, with the tall iron barrack on its spider legs, and the +truncated tower, and the cranes waving their arms, and the smoke +of the engine-fire rising in the mid-sea. An ugly reef is +this of the Dhu Heartach; no pleasant assemblage of shelves, and +pools, and creeks, about which a child might play for a whole +summer without weariness, like the Bell Rock or the Skerryvore, +but one oval nodule of black-trap, sparsely bedabbled with an +inconspicuous fucus, and alive in every crevice with a dingy +insect between a slater and a bug. No other life was there +but that of sea-birds, and of the sea itself, that here ran like +a mill-race, and growled about the outer reef for ever, and ever +and again, in the calmest weather, roared and spouted on the rock +itself. Times were different upon Dhu-Heartach when it +blew, and the night fell dark, and the neighbour lights of +Skerryvore and Rhu-val were quenched in fog, and the men sat +prisoned high up in their iron drum, that then resounded with the +lashing of the sprays. Fear sat with them in their +sea-beleaguered dwelling; and the colour changed in anxious faces +when some greater billow struck the barrack, and its pillars +quivered and sprang under the blow. It was then that the +foreman builder, Mr. Goodwillie, whom I see before me still in +his rock-habit of undecipherable rags, would get his fiddle down +and strike up human minstrelsy amid the music of the storm. +But it was in sunshine only that I saw Dhu-Heartach; and it was +in sunshine, or the yet lovelier summer afterglow, that the +steamer would return to Earraid, ploughing an enchanted sea; the +obedient lighters, relieved of their deck cargo, riding in her +wake more quietly; and the steersman upon each, as she rose on +the long swell, standing tall and dark against the shining +west.</p> +<p>But it was in Earraid itself that I delighted chiefly. +The lighthouse settlement scarce encroached beyond its fences; +over the top of the first brae the ground was all virgin, the +world all shut out, the face of things unchanged by any of +man’s doings. Here was no living presence, save for +the limpets on the rocks, for some old, gray, rain-beaten ram +that I might rouse out of a ferny den betwixt two boulders, or +for the haunting and the piping of the gulls. It was older +than man; it was found so by incoming Celts, and seafaring +Norsemen, and Columba’s priests. The earthy savour of +the bog-plants, the rude disorder of the boulders, the inimitable +seaside brightness of the air, the brine and the iodine, the lap +of the billows among the weedy reefs, the sudden springing up of +a great run of dashing surf along the sea-front of the isle, all +that I saw and felt my predecessors must have seen and felt with +scarce a difference. I steeped myself in open air and in +past ages.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Delightful would it be to me to be in +<i>Uchd Ailiun</i><br /> + On the pinnacle of a rock,<br /> +That I might often see<br /> + The face of the ocean;<br /> +That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,<br /> + Source of happiness;<br /> +That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves<br /> + Upon the rocks:<br /> +At times at work without compulsion—<br /> + This would be delightful;<br /> +At times plucking dulse from the rocks<br /> + At times at fishing.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So, about the next island of Iona, sang Columba himself twelve +hundred years before. And so might I have sung of +Earraid.</p> +<p>And all the while I was aware that this life of sea-bathing +and sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year +cannon were roaring for days together on French battlefields; and +I would sit in my isle (I call it mine, after the use of lovers) +and think upon the war, and the loudness of these far-away +battles, and the pain of the men’s wounds, and the +weariness of their marching. And I would think too of that +other war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of +man: the unsparing war, the grinding slavery of competition; the +toil of seventy years, dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the +perils and pitfalls, and the poor rewards. It was a long +look forward; the future summoned me as with trumpet calls, it +warned me back as with a voice of weeping and beseeching; and I +thrilled and trembled on the brink of life, like a childish +bather on the beach.</p> +<p>There was another young man on Earraid in these days, and we +were much together, bathing, clambering on the boulders, trying +to sail a boat and spinning round instead in the oily whirlpools +of the roost. But the most part of the time we spoke of the +great uncharted desert of our futures; wondering together what +should there befall us; hearing with surprise the sound of our +own voices in the empty vestibule of youth. As far, and as +hard, as it seemed then to look forward to the grave, so far it +seems now to look backward upon these emotions; so hard to recall +justly that loath submission, as of the sacrificial bull, with +which we stooped our necks under the yoke of destiny. I met +my old companion but the other day; I cannot tell of course what +he was thinking; but, upon my part, I was wondering to see us +both so much at home, and so composed and sedentary in the world; +and how much we had gained, and how much we had lost, to attain +to that composure; and which had been upon the whole our best +estate: when we sat there prating sensibly like men of some +experience, or when we shared our timorous and hopeful counsels +in a western islet.</p> +<h3>CHAPTER IX. THOMAS STEVENSON—CIVIL ENGINEER</h3> +<p>The death of Thomas Stevenson will mean not very much to the +general reader. His service to mankind took on forms of +which the public knows little and understands less. He came +seldom to London, and then only as a task, remaining always a +stranger and a convinced provincial; putting up for years at the +same hotel where his father had gone before him; faithful for +long to the same restaurant, the same church, and the same +theatre, chosen simply for propinquity; steadfastly refusing to +dine out. He had a circle of his own, indeed, at home; few +men were more beloved in Edinburgh, where he breathed an air that +pleased him; and wherever he went, in railway carriages or hotel +smoking-rooms, his strange, humorous vein of talk, and his +transparent honesty, raised him up friends and admirers. +But to the general public and the world of London, except about +the parliamentary committee-rooms, he remained unknown. All +the time, his lights were in every part of the world, guiding the +mariner; his firm were consulting engineers to the Indian, the +New Zealand, and the Japanese Lighthouse Boards, so that +Edinburgh was a world centre for that branch of applied science; +in Germany, he had been called “the Nestor of lighthouse +illumination”; even in France, where his claims were long +denied, he was at last, on the occasion of the late Exposition, +recognised and medalled. And to show by one instance the +inverted nature of his reputation, comparatively small at home, +yet filling the world, a friend of mine was this winter on a +visit to the Spanish main, and was asked by a Peruvian if he +“knew Mr. Stevenson the author, because his works were much +esteemed in Peru?” My friend supposed the reference +was to the writer of tales; but the Peruvian had never heard of +<i>Dr. Jekyll</i>; what he had in his eye, what was esteemed in +Peru, where the volumes of the engineer.</p> +<p>Thomas Stevenson was born at Edinburgh in the year 1818, the +grandson of Thomas Smith, first engineer to the Board of Northern +Lights, son of Robert Stevenson, brother of Alan and David; so +that his nephew, David Alan Stevenson, joined with him at the +time of his death in the engineership, is the sixth of the family +who has held, successively or conjointly, that office. The +Bell Rock, his father’s great triumph, was finished before +he was born; but he served under his brother Alan in the building +of Skerryvore, the noblest of all extant deep-sea lights; and, in +conjunction with his brother David, he added two—the +Chickens and Dhu Heartach—to that small number of +man’s extreme outposts in the ocean. Of shore lights, +the two brothers last named erected no fewer than twenty-seven; +of beacons, <a name="citation84"></a><a href="#footnote84" +class="citation">[84]</a> about twenty-five. Many harbours +were successfully carried out: one, the harbour of Wick, the +chief disaster of my father’s life, was a failure; the sea +proved too strong for man’s arts; and after expedients +hitherto unthought of, and on a scale hyper-cyclopean, the work +must be deserted, and now stands a ruin in that bleak, +God-forsaken bay, ten miles from +John-o’-Groat’s. In the improvement of rivers +the brothers were likewise in a large way of practice over both +England and Scotland, nor had any British engineer anything +approaching their experience.</p> +<p>It was about this nucleus of his professional labours that all +my father’s scientific inquiries and inventions centred; +these proceeded from, and acted back upon, his daily +business. Thus it was as a harbour engineer that he became +interested in the propagation and reduction of waves; a difficult +subject in regard to which he has left behind him much suggestive +matter and some valuable approximate results. Storms were +his sworn adversaries, and it was through the study of storms +that he approached that of meteorology at large. Many who +knew him not otherwise, knew—perhaps have in their +gardens—his louvre-boarded screen for instruments. +But the great achievement of his life was, of course, in optics +as applied to lighthouse illumination. Fresnel had done +much; Fresnel had settled the fixed light apparatus on a +principle that still seems unimprovable; and when Thomas +Stevenson stepped in and brought to a comparable perfection the +revolving light, a not unnatural jealousy and much painful +controversy rose in France. It had its hour; and, as I have +told already, even in France it has blown by. Had it not, +it would have mattered the less, since all through his life my +father continued to justify his claim by fresh advances. +New apparatus for lights in new situations was continually being +designed with the same unwearied search after perfection, the +same nice ingenuity of means; and though the holophotal revolving +light perhaps still remains his most elegant contrivance, it is +difficult to give it the palm over the much later condensing +system, with its thousand possible modifications. The +number and the value of these improvements entitle their author +to the name of one of mankind’s benefactors. In all +parts of the world a safer landfall awaits the mariner. Two +things must be said: and, first, that Thomas Stevenson was no +mathematician. Natural shrewdness, a sentiment of optical +laws, and a great intensity of consideration led him to just +conclusions; but to calculate the necessary formulæ for the +instruments he had conceived was often beyond him, and he must +fall back on the help of others, notably on that of his cousin +and lifelong intimate friend, <i>emeritus</i> Professor Swan, of +St. Andrews, and his later friend, Professor P. G. Tait. It +is a curious enough circumstance, and a great encouragement to +others, that a man so ill equipped should have succeeded in one +of the most abstract and arduous walks of applied science. +The second remark is one that applies to the whole family, and +only particularly to Thomas Stevenson from the great number and +importance of his inventions: holding as the Stevensons did a +Government appointment they regarded their original work as +something due already to the nation, and none of them has ever +taken out a patent. It is another cause of the comparative +obscurity of the name: for a patent not only brings in money, it +infallibly spreads reputation; and my father’s instruments +enter anonymously into a hundred light-rooms, and are passed +anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least +considerable patent would stand out and tell its author’s +story.</p> +<p>But the life-work of Thomas Stevenson remains; what we have +lost, what we now rather try to recall, is the friend and +companion. He was a man of a somewhat antique strain: with +a blended sternness and softness that was wholly Scottish and at +first somewhat bewildering; with a profound essential melancholy +of disposition and (what often accompanies it) the most humorous +geniality in company; shrewd and childish; passionately attached, +passionately prejudiced; a man of many extremes, many faults of +temper, and no very stable foothold for himself among +life’s troubles. Yet he was a wise adviser; many men, +and these not inconsiderable, took counsel with him +habitually. “I sat at his feet,” writes one of +these, “when I asked his advice, and when the broad brow +was set in thought and the firm mouth said his say, I always knew +that no man could add to the worth of the +conclusion.” He had excellent taste, though whimsical +and partial; collected old furniture and delighted specially in +sunflowers long before the days of Mr. Wilde; took a lasting +pleasure in prints and pictures; was a devout admirer of Thomson +of Duddingston at a time when few shared the taste; and though he +read little, was constant to his favourite books. He had +never any Greek; Latin he happily re-taught himself after he had +left school, where he was a mere consistent idler: happily, I +say, for Lactantius, Vossius, and Cardinal Bona were his chief +authors. The first he must have read for twenty years +uninterruptedly, keeping it near him in his study, and carrying +it in his bag on journeys. Another old theologian, Brown of +Wamphray, was often in his hands. When he was indisposed, +he had two books, <i>Guy Mannering</i> and <i>The Parent’s +Assistant</i>, of which he never wearied. He was a strong +Conservative, or, as he preferred to call himself, a Tory; except +in so far as his views were modified by a hot-headed chivalrous +sentiment for women. He was actually in favour of a +marriage law under which any woman might have a divorce for the +asking, and no man on any ground whatever; and the same sentiment +found another expression in a Magdalen Mission in Edinburgh, +founded and largely supported by himself. This was but one +of the many channels of his public generosity; his private was +equally unstrained. The Church of Scotland, of which he +held the doctrines (though in a sense of his own) and to which he +bore a clansman’s loyalty, profited often by his time and +money; and though, from a morbid sense of his own unworthiness, +he would never consent to be an office-bearer, his advice was +often sought, and he served the Church on many committees. +What he perhaps valued highest in his work were his contributions +to the defence of Christianity; one of which, in particular, was +praised by Hutchinson Stirling and reprinted at the request of +Professor Crawford.</p> +<p>His sense of his own unworthiness I have called morbid; +morbid, too, were his sense of the fleetingness of life and his +concern for death. He had never accepted the conditions of +man’s life or his own character; and his inmost thoughts +were ever tinged with the Celtic melancholy. Cases of +conscience were sometimes grievous to him, and that delicate +employment of a scientific witness cost him many qualms. +But he found respite from these troublesome humours in his work, +in his lifelong study of natural science, in the society of those +he loved, and in his daily walks, which now would carry him far +into the country with some congenial friend, and now keep him +dangling about the town from one old book-shop to another, and +scraping romantic acquaintance with every dog that passed. +His talk, compounded of so much sterling sense and so much +freakish humour, and clothed in language so apt, droll, and +emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all who knew him before the +clouds began to settle on his mind. His use of language was +both just and picturesque; and when at the beginning of his +illness he began to feel the ebbing of this power, it was strange +and painful to hear him reject one word after another as +inadequate, and at length desist from the search and leave his +phrase unfinished rather than finish it without propriety. +It was perhaps another Celtic trait that his affections and +emotions, passionate as these were, and liable to passionate ups +and downs, found the most eloquent expression both in words and +gestures. Love, anger, and indignation shone through him +and broke forth in imagery, like what we read of Southern +races. For all these emotional extremes, and in spite of +the melancholy ground of his character, he had upon the whole a +happy life; nor was he less fortunate in his death, which at the +last came to him unaware.</p> +<h3>CHAPTER X. TALK AND TALKERS</h3> +<blockquote><p>Sir, we had a good talk.—<span +class="smcap">Johnson</span>.</p> +<p>As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every +idle silence.—<span class="smcap">Franklin</span>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be +affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a +thought, or an illustration, pat to every subject; and not only +to cheer the flight of time among our intimates, but bear our +part in that great international congress, always sitting, where +public wrongs are first declared, public errors first corrected, +and the course of public opinion shaped, day by day, a little +nearer to the right. No measure comes before Parliament but +it has been long ago prepared by the grand jury of the talkers; +no book is written that has not been largely composed by their +assistance. Literature in many of its branches is no other +than the shadow of good talk; but the imitation falls far short +of the original in life, freedom and effect. There are +always two to a talk, giving and taking, comparing experience and +according conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, +continually “in further search and progress”; while +written words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, +found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in +the amber of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, +gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the +life of man, talk goes fancy free and may call a spade a +spade. Talk has none of the freezing immunities of the +pulpit. It cannot, even if it would, become merely +æsthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest +intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and +speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into the open +fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of +school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our +period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is +to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, +which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most +accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is +all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our +friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any +state of health.</p> +<p>The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are +still a kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is +valuable in our lot, we must continually face some other person, +eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. +It is still by force of body, or power of character or intellect, +that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women contend +for each other in the lists of love, like rival mesmerists; the +active and adroit decide their challenges in the sports of the +body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation. +All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, +solitary and selfish; and every durable bond between human beings +is founded in or heightened by some element of competition. +Now, the relation that has the least root in matter is +undoubtedly that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it +is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk +is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of friendship. It +is in talk alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy +that amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge +of relations and the sport of life.</p> +<p>A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours +must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, +company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, +the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a +deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of the +hunter’s pride, though he has all and more than all his +ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream of +conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook, not +dallying where he fails to “kill.” He trusts +implicitly to hazard; and he is rewarded by continual variety, +continual pleasure, and those changing prospects of the truth +that are the best of education. There is nothing in a +subject, so called, that we should regard it as an idol, or +follow it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there +are few subjects; and so far as they are truly talkable, more +than the half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I, that +you are you, and that there are other people dimly understood to +be not quite the same as either. Wherever talk may range, +it still runs half the time on these eternal lines. The +theme being set, each plays on himself as on an instrument; +asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain for instances +and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his own +surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural +talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game +each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from +that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we +dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each +other’s eyes to such a vast proportion. For talkers, +once launched, begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary +selves, tower up to the height of their secret pretensions, and +give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical and +wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to be. +So they weave for themselves with words and for a while inhabit a +palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, where they fill +the round of the world’s dignities, and feast with the +gods, exulting in Kudos. And when the talk is over, each +goes his way, still flushed with vanity and admiration, still +trailing clouds of glory; each declines from the height of his +ideal orgie, not in a moment, but by slow declension. I +remember, in the <i>entr’acte</i> of an afternoon +performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful +green, gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat and +smoked, the music moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and +evaporate <i>The Flying Dutchman</i> (for it was that I had been +hearing) with a wonderful sense of life, warmth, well-being and +pride; and the noises of the city, voices, bells and marching +feet, fell together in my ears like a symphonious +orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of a good talk +lives for a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot +within you, the brain still simmering, and the physical earth +swimming around you with the colours of the sunset.</p> +<p>Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large surface +of life, rather than dig mines into geological strata. +Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, +quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of +two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand from every +point of the compass, and from every degree of mental elevation +and abasement—these are the material with which talk is +fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such +argument as is proper to the exercise should still be brief and +seizing. Talk should proceed by instances; by the apposite, +not the expository. It should keep close along the lines of +humanity, near the bosoms and businesses of men, at the level +where history, fiction and experience intersect and illuminate +each other. I am I, and You are You, with all my heart; but +conceive how these lean propositions change and brighten when, +instead of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the +spirit housed in the live body, and the very clothes uttering +voices to corroborate the story in the face. Not less +surprising is the change when we leave off to speak of +generalities—the bad, the good, the miser, and all the +characters of Theophrastus—and call up other men, by +anecdote or instance, in their very trick and feature; or trading +on a common knowledge, toss each other famous names, still +glowing with the hues of life. Communication is no longer +by words, but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics, +systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That +which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and +quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, +as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort +the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have +a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the +sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know +Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and +Steenie Steenson, they can leave generalities and begin at once +to speak by figures.</p> +<p>Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most +frequently and that embrace the widest range of facts. A +few pleasures bear discussion for their own sake, but only those +which are most social or most radically human; and even these can +only be discussed among their devotees. A technicality is +always welcome to the expert, whether in athletics, art or law; I +have heard the best kind of talk on technicalities from such rare +and happy persons as both know and love their business. No +human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a +time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in +literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and +scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the +dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, +and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable +features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the +people generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it; and it +is often excitingly presented in literature. But the +tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the +common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street +and market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort is still +in a discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of +gossip; heroic in virtue of its high pretensions; but still +gossip, because it turns on personalities. You can keep no +men long, nor Scotchmen at all, off moral or theological +discussion. These are to all the world what law is to +lawyers; they are everybody’s technicalities; the medium +through which all consider life, and the dialect in which they +express their judgments. I knew three young men who walked +together daily for some two months in a solemn and beautiful +forest and in cloudless summer weather; daily they talked with +unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered that whole time beyond two +subjects—theology and love. And perhaps neither a +court of love nor an assembly of divines would have granted their +premisses or welcomed their conclusions.</p> +<p>Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any more +than by private thinking. That is not the profit. The +profit is in the exercise, and above all in the experience; for +when we reason at large on any subject, we review our state and +history in life. From time to time, however, and specially, +I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective, conquering like +war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an +exploration. A point arises; the question takes a +problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to +feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; +towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own +path, and struggling for first utterance; and then one leaps upon +the summit of that matter with a shout, and almost at the same +moment the other is beside him; and behold they are agreed. +Like enough, the progress is illusory, a mere cat’s cradle +having been wound and unwound out of words. But the sense +of joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspiriting. +And in the life of the talker such triumphs, though imaginary, +are neither few nor far apart; they are attained with speed and +pleasure, in the hour of mirth; and by the nature of the process, +they are always worthily shared.</p> +<p>There is a certain attitude, combative at once and +deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which +marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, +not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of +these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. +They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen questing +after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be +instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree +on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of +consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. +But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without +the tussle and effort wherein pleasure lies.</p> +<p>The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call +Spring-Heel’d Jack. I say so, because I never knew +any one who mingled so largely the possible ingredients of +converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man necessary +to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack is that +madman. I know not which is more remarkable; the insane +lucidity of his conclusions the humorous eloquence of his +language, or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into +the focus of the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad +like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes +and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily +into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and +with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them +empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. +It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to +attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such +partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur +him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons +the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies +the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with +the <i>vim</i> of these impersonations, the strange scale of +language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant to Major +Dyngwell—</p> +<blockquote><p>“As fast as a musician scatters sounds<br /> +Out of an instrument”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant +particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and +bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the +admired disorder of their combination. A talker of a +different calibre, though belonging to the same school, is +Burly. Burly is a man of a great presence; he commands a +larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of +character than most men. It has been said of him that his +presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the +same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions +condemned to much physical inaction. There is something +boisterous and piratic in Burly’s manner of talk which +suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you +down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo +passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind +is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after Pistol has +been out Pistol’d, and the welkin rung for hours, you begin +to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, points +of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of +mutual admiration. The outcry only serves to make your +final union the more unexpected and precious. Throughout +there has been perfect sincerity, perfect intelligence, a desire +to hear although not always to listen, and an unaffected +eagerness to meet concessions. You have, with Burly, none +of the dangers that attend debate with Spring-Heel’d Jack; +who may at any moment turn his powers of transmigration on +yourself, create for you a view you never held, and then +furiously fall on you for holding it. These, at least, are +my two favourites, and both are loud, copious, intolerant +talkers. This argues that I myself am in the same category; +for if we love talking at all, we love a bright, fierce +adversary, who will hold his ground, foot by foot, in much our +own manner, sell his attention dearly, and give us our full +measure of the dust and exertion of battle. Both these men +can be beat from a position, but it takes six hours to do it; a +high and hard adventure, worth attempting. With both you +can pass days in an enchanted country of the mind, with people, +scenery and manners of its own; live a life apart, more arduous, +active and glowing than any real existence; and come forth again +when the talk is over, as out of a theatre or a dream, to find +the east wind still blowing and the chimney-pots of the old +battered city still around you. Jack has the far finer +mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the animated +poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar themes; the one +glances high like a meteor and makes a light in darkness; the +other, with many changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, +like a conflagration; but both have the same humour and artistic +interests, the same unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts +of talk and thunderclaps of contradiction.</p> +<p>Cockshot <a name="citation100"></a><a href="#footnote100" +class="citation">[100]</a> is a different article, but vastly +entertaining, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long +evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the +choice of words not much. The point about him is his +extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound +nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will +have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers +and launch it in your presence. “Let me see,” +he will say. “Give me a moment. I <i>should</i> +have some theory for that.” A blither spectacle than +the vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to +fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the +elements for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a +horse-shoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in +theorising, a compass, an art; what I would call the synthetic +gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of +the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, to place +your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them +are right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest serve +for a cock shy—as when idle people, after picnics, float a +bottle on a pond and have an hour’s diversion ere it +sinks. Whichever they are, serious opinions or humours of +the moment, he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit +and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punishment like +a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk, first +of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring, to +use the old slang, like a thorough “glutton,” and +honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. +Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. +Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is +like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight +of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he +lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the +spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking +aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in +conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a +refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to +throw it in the end. And there is something singularly +engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus +exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as +the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of +inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, +coming from deeper down, they smack the more personally, they +have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment and +humour. There are sayings of his in which he has stamped +himself into the very grain of the language; you would think he +must have worn the words next his skin and slept with them. +Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred +is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of +thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while +he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this +unequal division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I +have known him to battle the same question night after night for +years, keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it +and re-applying it to life with humorous or grave intention, and +all the while, never hurrying, nor flagging, nor taking an unfair +advantage of the facts. Jack at a given moment, when +arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more radiantly just +to those from whom he differs; but then the tenor of his thoughts +is even calumnious; while Athelred, slower to forge excuses, is +yet slower to condemn, and sits over the welter of the world, +vacillating but still judicial, and still faithfully contending +with his doubts.</p> +<p>Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct and +religion studied in the “dry light” of prose. +Indirectly and as if against his will the same elements from time +to time appear in the troubled and poetic talk of +Opalstein. His various and exotic knowledge, complete +although unready sympathies, and fine, full, discriminative flow +of language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps he +is with some, not quite with me—<i>proxime accessit</i>, I +should say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts, +flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading +manner, as to the light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue +like singing; no one is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper +notes. But even while he sings the song of the Sirens, he +still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx. Jarring +Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian humours. +His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for its +perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a double +orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance, one pealing +Beethoven in the distance. He is not truly reconciled +either with life or with himself; and this instant war in his +members sometimes divides the man’s attention. He +does not always, perhaps not often, frankly surrender himself in +conversation. He brings into the talk other thoughts than +those which he expresses; you are conscious that he keeps an eye +on something else, that he does not shake off the world, nor +quite forget himself. Hence arise occasional +disappointments; even an occasional unfairness for his +companions, who find themselves one day giving too much, and the +next, when they are wary out of season, giving perhaps too +little. Purcel is in another class from any I have +mentioned. He is no debater, but appears in conversation, +as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of which I +admire and fear, and the other love. In the first, he is +radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly +hilltop, and from that vantage-ground drops you his remarks like +favours. He seems not to share in our sublunary +contentions; he wears no sign of interest; when on a sudden there +falls in a crystal of wit, so polished that the dull do not +perceive it, but so right that the sensitive are silenced. +True talk should have more body and blood, should be louder, +vainer and more declaratory of the man; the true talker should +not hold so steady an advantage over whom he speaks with; and +that is one reason out of a score why I prefer my Purcel in his +second character, when he unbends into a strain of graceful +gossip, singing like the fireside kettle. In these moods he +has an elegant homeliness that rings of the true Queen +Anne. I know another person who attains, in his moments, to +the insolence of a Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as +Congreve wrote; but that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls +under the rubric, for there is none, alas! to give him +answer.</p> +<p>One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine conversation +that the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect +beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper +weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait +of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic; it is like an +impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to +the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where +each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if +you were to shift the speeches round from one to another, there +would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity. +It is for this reason that talk depends so wholly on our +company. We should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, +or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia +seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of +man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk, that +strikes out all the slumbering best of us, comes only with the +peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded as deep as love in +the constitution of our being, and is a thing to relish with all +our energy, while yet we have it, and to be grateful for +forever.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI. TALK AND TALKERS <a name="citation105"></a><a +href="#footnote105" class="citation">[105]</a></h2> +<h3>II</h3> +<p>In the last paper there was perhaps too much about mere +debate; and there was nothing said at all about that kind of talk +which is merely luminous and restful, a higher power of silence, +the quiet of the evening shared by ruminating friends. +There is something, aside from personal preference, to be alleged +in support of this omission. Those who are no +chimney-cornerers, who rejoice in the social thunderstorm, have a +ground in reason for their choice. They get little rest +indeed; but restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are +all active, life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare +themselves for evil. On the other hand, they are bruised +into a knowledge of themselves and others; they have in a high +degree the fencer’s pleasure in dexterity displayed and +proved; what they get they get upon life’s terms, paying +for it as they go; and once the talk is launched, they are +assured of honest dealing from an adversary eager like +themselves. The aboriginal man within us, the cave-dweller, +still lusty as when he fought tooth and nail for roots and +berries, scents this kind of equal battle from afar; it is like +his old primæval days upon the crags, a return to the +sincerity of savage life from the comfortable fictions of the +civilised. And if it be delightful to the Old Man, it is +none the less profitable to his younger brother, the +conscientious gentleman I feel never quite sure of your urbane +and smiling coteries; I fear they indulge a man’s vanities +in silence, suffer him to encroach, encourage him on to be an +ass, and send him forth again, not merely contemned for the +moment, but radically more contemptible than when he +entered. But if I have a flushed, blustering fellow for my +opposite, bent on carrying a point, my vanity is sure to have its +ears rubbed, once at least, in the course of the debate. He +will not spare me when we differ; he will not fear to demonstrate +my folly to my face.</p> +<p>For many natures there is not much charm in the still, +chambered society, the circle of bland countenances, the +digestive silence, the admired remark, the flutter of +affectionate approval. They demand more atmosphere and +exercise; “a gale upon their spirits,” as our pious +ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well breathed in an +uproarious Valhalla. And I suspect that the choice, given +their character and faults, is one to be defended. The +purely wise are silenced by facts; they talk in a clear +atmosphere, problems lying around them like a view in nature; if +they can be shown to be somewhat in the wrong, they digest the +reproof like a thrashing, and make better intellectual +blood. They stand corrected by a whisper; a word or a +glance reminds them of the great eternal law. But it is not +so with all. Others in conversation seek rather contact +with their fellow-men than increase of knowledge or clarity of +thought. The drama, not the philosophy, of life is the +sphere of their intellectual activity. Even when they +pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of what we may call +human scenery along the road they follow. They dwell in the +heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their eyes +laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that +makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on +people, living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man +of this description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and +ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed countenance, +floods of tears, an insult which his conscience obliges him to +swallow, he is brought round to knowledge which no syllogism +would have conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid, +he is so superlatively conscious of himself, that if, day after +day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but approving +echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and take +himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one +the very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be +at once intolerable and ridiculous.</p> +<p>This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers +suppose. And for persons of that stamp to learn much by +conversation, they must speak with their superiors, not in +intellect, for that is a superiority that must be proved, but in +station. If they cannot find a friend to bully them for +their good, they must find either an old man, a woman, or some +one so far below them in the artificial order of society, that +courtesy may be particularly exercised.</p> +<p>The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths +are always partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and +listen. They sit above our heads, on life’s raised +dais, and appeal at once to our respect and pity. A flavour +of the old school, a touch of something different in their +manner—which is freer and rounder, if they come of what is +called a good family, and often more timid and precise if they +are of the middle class—serves, in these days, to +accentuate the difference of age and add a distinction to gray +hairs. But their superiority is founded more deeply than by +outward marks or gestures. They are before us in the march +of man; they have more or less solved the irking problem; they +have battled through the equinox of life; in good and evil they +have held their course; and now, without open shame, they near +the crown and harbour. It may be we have been struck with +one of fortune’s darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly +is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as +thought upon, the like calamity befell the old man or woman that +now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our inattention, +sitting composed in the holy evening of man’s life, in the +clear shining after rain. We grow ashamed of our +distresses, new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside +brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens of +faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented +elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before +them “like a thing reproved,” not the flitting and +ineffectual fear of death, but the instant, dwelling terror of +the responsibilities and revenges of life. Their speech, +indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path; they counsel a +meticulous footing; but their serene, marred faces are more +eloquent and tell another story. Where they have gone, we +will go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have endured +unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make a shift to bear.</p> +<p>Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but +their minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom’s simples, +plain considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter +to communicate, be they never so stupid. Their talk is not +merely literature, it is great literature; classic in virtue of +the speaker’s detachment, studded, like a book of travel, +with things we should not otherwise have learnt. In virtue, +I have said, of the speaker’s detachment,—and this is +why, of two old men, the one who is not your father speaks to you +with the more sensible authority; for in the paternal relation +the oldest have lively interests and remain still young. +Thus I have known two young men great friends; each swore by the +other’s father; the father of each swore by the other lad; +and yet each pair of parent and child were perpetually by the +ears. This is typical: it reads like the germ of some +kindly comedy.</p> +<p>The old appear in conversation in two characters: the +critically silent and the garrulous anecdotic. The last is +perhaps what we look for; it is perhaps the more +instructive. An old gentleman, well on in years, sits +handsomely and naturally in the bow-window of his age, scanning +experience with reverted eye; and chirping and smiling, +communicates the accidents and reads the lesson of his long +career. Opinions are strengthened, indeed, but they are +also weeded out in the course of years. What remains +steadily present to the eye of the retired veteran in his +hermitage, what still ministers to his content, what still +quickens his old honest heart—these are “the real +long-lived things” that Whitman tells us to prefer. +Where youth agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies; +and it is when the young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune +with his gray-bearded teacher’s that a lesson may be +learned. I have known one old gentleman, whom I may name, +for he is now gathered to his stock—Robert Hunter, Sheriff +of Dumbarton, and author of an excellent law-book still re-edited +and republished. Whether he was originally big or little is +more than I can guess. When I knew him he was all fallen +away and fallen in; crooked and shrunken; buckled into a stiff +waistcoat for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him +hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a wig for +decency, not for deception, on his head; close shaved, except +under his chin—and for that he never failed to apologise, +for it went sore against the traditions of his life. You +can imagine how he would fare in a novel by Miss Mather; yet this +rag of a Chelsea veteran lived to his last year in the plenitude +of all that is best in man, brimming with human kindness, and +staunch as a Roman soldier under his manifold infirmities. +You could not say that he had lost his memory, for he would +repeat Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy Taylor and Burke by the +page together; but the parchment was filled up, there was no room +for fresh inscriptions, and he was capable of repeating the same +anecdote on many successive visits. His voice survived in +its full power, and he took a pride in using it. On his +last voyage as Commissioner of lighthouses, he hailed a ship at +sea and made himself clearly audible without a speaking trumpet, +ruffling the while with a proper vanity in his achievement. +He had a habit of eking out his words with interrogative hems, +which was puzzling and a little wearisome, suited ill with his +appearance, and seemed a survival from some former stage of +bodily portliness. Of yore, when he was a great pedestrian +and no enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with these +minute guns his allocutions to the bench. His humour was +perfectly equable, set beyond the reach of fate; gout, +rheumatism, stone and gravel might have combined their forces +against that frail tabernacle, but when I came round on Sunday +evening, he would lay aside Jeremy Taylor’s <i>Life of +Christ</i> and greet me with the same open brow, the same kind +formality of manner. His opinions and sympathies dated the +man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under his +mother’s influence, as an admirer of Junius, but on maturer +knowledge had transferred his admiration to Burke. He +cautioned me, with entire gravity, to be punctilious in writing +English; never to forget that I was a Scotchman, that English was +a foreign tongue, and that if I attempted the colloquial, I +should certainly, be shamed: the remark was apposite, I suppose, +in the days of David Hume. Scott was too new for him; he +had known the author—known him, too, for a Tory; and to the +genuine classic a contemporary is always something of a +trouble. He had the old, serious love of the play; had +even, as he was proud to tell, played a certain part in the +history of Shakespearian revivals, for he had successfully +pressed on Murray, of the old Edinburgh Theatre, the idea of +producing Shakespeare’s fairy pieces with great scenic +display. A moderate in religion, he was much struck in the +last years of his life by a conversation with two young lads, +revivalists “H’m,” he would +say—“new to me. I have +had—h’m—no such experience.” It +struck him, not with pain, rather with a solemn philosophic +interest, that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a Christian of so +old a standing, should hear these young fellows talking of his +own subject, his own weapons that he had fought the battle of +life with,—“and—h’m—not +understand.” In this wise and graceful attitude he +did justice to himself and others, reposed unshaken in his old +beliefs, and recognised their limits without anger or +alarm. His last recorded remark, on the last night of his +life, was after he had been arguing against Calvinism with his +minister and was interrupted by an intolerable pang. +“After all,” he said, “of all the ’isms, +I know none so bad as rheumatism.” My own last sight +of him was some time before, when we dined together at an inn; he +had been on circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a chief part +of his existence; and I remember it as the only occasion on which +he ever soiled his lips with slang—a thing he +loathed. We were both Roberts; and as we took our places at +table, he addressed me with a twinkle: “We are just what +you would call two bob.” He offered me port, I +remember, as the proper milk of youth; spoke of +“twenty-shilling notes”; and throughout the meal was +full of old-world pleasantry and quaintness, like an ancient boy +on a holiday. But what I recall chiefly was his confession +that he had never read <i>Othello</i> to an end. +Shakespeare was his continual study. He loved nothing +better than to display his knowledge and memory by adducing +parallel passages from Shakespeare, passages where the same word +was employed, or the same idea differently treated. But +<i>Othello</i> had beaten him. “That noble gentleman +and that noble lady—h’m—too painful for +me.” The same night the hoardings were covered with +posters, “Burlesque of <i>Othello</i>,” and the +contrast blazed up in my mind like a bonfire. An +unforgettable look it gave me into that kind man’s +soul. His acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious +education. All the humanities were taught in that bare +dining-room beside his gouty footstool. He was a piece of +good advice; he was himself the instance that pointed and adorned +his various talk. Nor could a young man have found +elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or +any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a +soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to +a touch in music—as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter +chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, +fearless and gentle.</p> +<p>The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they are +rather hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an +amused and critical attention. To have this sort of +intercourse to perfection, I think we must go to old +ladies. Women are better hearers than men, to begin with; +they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the tedious and +infantile vanity of the other sex; and we will take more from a +woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting +comment. Biting comment is the chief part, whether for +profit or amusement, in this business. The old lady that I +have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years +of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or +attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted +to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please +even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing +grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in +play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a +singular art, as well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these +stunning corrections among the coxcombs of the young. The +pill is disguised in sugar of wit; it is administered as a +compliment—if you had not pleased, you would not have been +censured; it is a personal affair—a hyphen, <i>a trait +d’union</i>, between you and your censor; age’s +philandering, for her pleasure and your good. Incontestably +the young man feels very much of a fool; but he must be a perfect +Malvolio, sick with self-love, if he cannot take an open buffet +and still smile. The correction of silence is what kills; +when you know you have transgressed, and your friend says nothing +and avoids your eye. If a man were made of gutta-percha, +his heart would quail at such a moment. But when the word +is out, the worst is over; and a fellow with any good-humour at +all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism, every +bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile, +and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral +reaction, and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, +for a repetition of the discipline.</p> +<p>There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps +toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true +thing with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are +some—and I doubt if there be any man who can return the +compliment. The class of man represented by Vernon Whitford +in <i>The Egoist</i> says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it +stockishly. Vernon is a noble fellow, and makes, by the +way, a noble and instructive contrast to Daniel Deronda; his +conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but we agree with him, +against our consciences, when he remorsefully considers +“its astonishing dryness.” He is the best of +men, but the best of women manage to combine all that and +something more. Their very faults assist them; they are +helped even by the falseness of their position in life. +They can retire into the fortified camp of the proprieties. +They can touch a subject and suppress it. The most adroit +employ a somewhat elaborate reserve as a means to be frank, much +as they wear gloves when they shake hands. But a man has +the full responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a question, +can scarce be silent without rudeness, must answer for his words +upon the moment, and is not seldom left face to face with a +damning choice, between the more or less dishonourable wriggling +of Deronda and the downright woodenness of Vernon Whitford.</p> +<p>But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do +not sit throned on infirmities like the old; they are suitors as +well as sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are +too apt to follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes +degenerates into something unworthy of the name. The desire +to please, to shine with a certain softness of lustre and to draw +a fascinating picture of oneself, banishes from conversation all +that is sterling and most of what is humorous. As soon as a +strong current of mutual admiration begins to flow, the human +interest triumphs entirely over the intellectual, and the +commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes secondary to the +commercing of eyes. But even where this ridiculous danger +is avoided, and a man and woman converse equally and honestly, +something in their nature or their education falsifies the +strain. An instinct prompts them to agree; and where that +is impossible, to agree to differ. Should they neglect the +warning, at the first suspicion of an argument, they find +themselves in different hemispheres. About any point of +business or conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement, a +woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only +with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. +But if the subject of debate be something in the air, an +abstraction, an excuse for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may +the male debater instantly abandon hope; he may employ reason, +adduce facts, be supple, be smiling, be angry, all shall avail +him nothing; what the woman said first, that (unless she has +forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. Hence, at the +very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter and quicker +and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the sexes is +menaced with dissolution. The point of difference, the +point of interest, is evaded by the brilliant woman, under a +shower of irrelevant conversational rockets; it is bridged by the +discreet woman with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly +forward to the nearest point of safety. And this sort of +prestidigitation, juggling the dangerous topic out of sight until +it can be reintroduced with safety in an altered shape, is a +piece of tactics among the true drawing-room queens.</p> +<p>The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by +our choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the +ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like a +hair-shirt, with so much constancy; their motherly, superior +tenderness to man’s vanity and self-importance; their +managing arts—the arts of a civilised slave among +good-natured barbarians—are all painful ingredients and all +help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of +that amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, +or ideas honestly compared. In the garden, on the road or +the hillside, or <i>tête-à-tête</i> and apart +from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much from +any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married +life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by +disputes. The disputes are valueless; they but ingrain the +difference; the heroic heart of woman prompting her at once to +nail her colours to the mast. But in the intervals, almost +unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the whole material of +life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out and shared, +the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to suit the +other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they +conduct each other into new worlds of thought.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII. THE CHARACTER OF DOGS</h2> +<p>The civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-kind are +to a great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, +man. This animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a +position of inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours +the caprices of the tyrant. But the potentate, like the +British in India, pays small regard to the character of his +willing client, judges him with listless glances, and condemns +him in a byword. Listless have been the looks of his +admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of praise, and buried the +poor soul below exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if +possible, more unintelligent has been the attitude of his express +detractors; those who are very fond of dogs “but in their +proper place”; who say “poo’ fellow, poo’ +fellow,” and are themselves far poorer; who whet the knife +of the vivisectionist or heat his oven; who are not ashamed to +admire “the creature’s instinct”; and flying +far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal +machines. The “dog’s instinct” and the +“automaton-dog,” in this age of psychology and +science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton he +certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the +heart, like the mill-wheel, keeping all in motion, and the +consciousness, like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying +the view out of the window and shaken by the thunder of the +stones; an automaton in one corner of which a living spirit is +confined: an automaton like man. Instinct again he +certainly possesses. Inherited aptitudes are his, inherited +frailties. Some things he at once views and understands, as +though he were awakened from a sleep, as though he came +“trailing clouds of glory.” But with him, as +with man, the field of instinct is limited; its utterances are +obscure and occasional; and about the far larger part of life +both the dog and his master must conduct their steps by deduction +and observation.</p> +<p>The leading distinction between dog and man, after and perhaps +before the different duration of their lives, is that the one can +speak and that the other cannot. The absence of the power +of speech confines the dog in the development of his +intellect. It hinders him from many speculations, for words +are the beginning of meta-physic. At the same blow it saves +him from many superstitions, and his silence has won for him a +higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies. The +faults of the dog are many. He is vainer than man, +singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, +suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and +radically devoid of truth. The day of an intelligent small +dog is passed in the manufacture and the laborious communication +of falsehood; he lies with his tail, he lies with his eye, he +lies with his protesting paw; and when he rattles his dish or +scratches at the door his purpose is other than appears. +But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of the +signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary +meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet +when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of +meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this +necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of +the sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his +own conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction +between formal and essential truth. Of his punning +perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even +vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is +not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of +gentlemanly feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful +vices. The canine, like the human, gentleman demands in his +misdemeanours Montaigne’s “<i>je ne sais quoi de +généreux</i>.” He is never more than +half ashamed of having barked or bitten; and for those faults +into which he has been led by the desire to shine before a lady +of his race, he retains, even under physical correction, a share +of pride. But to be caught lying, if he understands it, +instantly uncurls his fleece.</p> +<p>Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, +the dog has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how +the use of language blunts the faculties of man—that +because vain glory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied +with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and +obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed +with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about +himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in +a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for +falsehood, in a year’s time he would have gone far to weary +out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby +Patterne, but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own +merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian +Andersen, as we behold him in his startling memoirs, thrilling +from top to toe with an excruciating vanity, and scouting even +along the street for shadows of offence—here was the +talking dog.</p> +<p>It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the +dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The +cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his +independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the +audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted +into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting +and became man’s plate-licker, the Rubicon was +crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and +except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and +more self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of +things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small. +Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material cares, he +is far more theatrical than average man. His whole life, if +he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain +show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your +puppy for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur +clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but a few +months pass, and when you repeat the process you will find nature +buried in convention. He will do nothing plainly; but the +simplest processes of our material life will all be bent into the +forms of an elaborate and mysterious etiquette. Instinct, +says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so. Some +dogs—some, at the very least—if they be kept separate +from others, remain quite natural; and these, when at length they +meet with a companion of experience, and have the game explained +to them, distinguish themselves by the severity of their devotion +to its rules. I wish I were allowed to tell a story which +would radiantly illuminate the point; but men, like dogs, have an +elaborate and mysterious etiquette. It is their bond of +sympathy that both are the children of convention.</p> +<p>The person, man or dog, who has a conscience is eternally +condemned to some degree of humbug; the sense of the law in their +members fatally precipitates either towards a frozen and affected +bearing. And the converse is true; and in the elaborate and +conscious manners of the dog, moral opinions and the love of the +ideal stand confessed. To follow for ten minutes in the +street some swaggering, canine cavalier, is to receive a lesson +in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the body; in every +act and gesture you see him true to a refined conception; and the +dullest cur, beholding him, pricks up his ear and proceeds to +imitate and parody that charming ease. For to be a +high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and +gay, is the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so +much lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic +in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic +means to wholly represent the part. And it is more pathetic +and perhaps more instructive to consider the small dog in his +conscientious and imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip +Sidney. For the ideal of the dog is feudal and religious; +the ever-present polytheism, the whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, +rules them on the one hand; on the other, their singular +difference of size and strength among themselves effectually +prevents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we +might more exactly compare their society to the curious spectacle +presented by a school—ushers, monitors, and big and little +boys—qualified by one circumstance, the introduction of the +other sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar +tension of manner, and somewhat similar points of honour. +In each the larger animal keeps a contemptuous good humour; in +each the smaller annoys him with wasp-like impudence, certain of +practical immunity; in each we shall find a double life producing +double characters, and an excursive and noisy heroism combined +with a fair amount of practical timidity. I have known +dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the fur, +could hardly have been told apart; and if we desire to understand +the chivalry of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the +dungheap where the dogs are trooping.</p> +<p>Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. +Incessant massacre of female innocents has changed the +proportions of the sexes and perverted their relations. +Thus, when we regard the manners of the dog, we see a romantic +and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at +war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer for; +and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous than +Corin’s in the eyes of Touchstone. But his +intervention has at least created an imperial situation for the +rare surviving ladies. In that society they reign without a +rival: conscious queens; and in the only instance of a canine +wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice, the criminal +was somewhat excused by the circumstances of his story. He +is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as +a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairngorms for +eyes. To the human observer, he is decidedly well-looking; +but to the ladies of his race he seems abhorrent. A +thorough elaborate gentleman, of the plume and sword-knot order, +he was born with a nice sense of gallantry to women. He +took at their hands the most outrageous treatment; I have heard +him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him streaming blood, and +his ear tattered like a regimental banner; and yet he would scorn +to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady upraised the +contumelious whip against the very dame who had been so cruelly +misusing him, my little great-heart gave but one hoarse cry and +fell upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a +soul’s tragedy. After three years of unavailing +chivalry, he suddenly, in one hour, threw off the yoke of +obligation; had he been Shakespeare he would then have written +<i>Troilus and Cressida</i> to brand the offending sex; but being +only a little dog, he began to bite them. The surprise of +the ladies whom he attacked indicated the monstrosity of his +offence; but he had fairly beaten off his better angel, fairly +committed moral suicide; for almost in the same hour, throwing +aside the last rags of decency, he proceeded to attack the aged +also. The fact is worth remark, showing, as it does, that +ethical laws are common both to dogs and men; and that with both +a single deliberate violation of the conscience loosens +all. “But while the lamp holds on to burn,” +says the paraphrase, “the greatest sinner may +return.” I have been cheered to see symptoms of +effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian; and by the handling that +he accepted uncomplainingly the other day from an indignant fair +one, I begin to hope the period of <i>Sturm und Drang</i> is +closed.</p> +<p>All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists. The duty +to the female dog is plain; but where competing duties rise, down +they will sit and study them out, like Jesuit confessors. I +knew another little Skye, somewhat plain in manner and +appearance, but a creature compact of amiability and solid +wisdom. His family going abroad for a winter, he was +received for that period by an uncle in the same city. The +winter over, his own family home again, and his own house (of +which he was very proud) reopened, he found himself in a dilemma +between two conflicting duties of loyalty and gratitude. +His old friends were not to be neglected, but it seemed hardly +decent to desert the new. This was how he solved the +problem. Every morning, as soon as the door was opened, off +posted Coolin to his uncle’s, visited the children in the +nursery, saluted the whole family, and was back at home in time +for breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done +without a sacrifice on his part, sharply felt; for he had to +forego the particular honour and jewel of his day—his +morning’s walk with my father. And, perhaps from this +cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the practice, and at +length returned entirely to his ancient habits. But the +same decision served him in another and more distressing case of +divided duty, which happened not long after. He was not at +all a kitchen dog, but the cook had nursed him with unusual +kindness during the distemper; and though he did not adore her as +he adored my father—although (born snob) he was critically +conscious of her position as “only a +servant”—he still cherished for her a special +gratitude. Well, the cook left, and retired some streets +away to lodgings of her own; and there was Coolin in precisely +the same situation with any young gentleman who has had the +inestimable benefit of a faithful nurse. The canine +conscience did not solve the problem with a pound of tea at +Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying visit, it was +the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his solitary +friend. And so, day by day, he continued to comfort her +solitude until (for some reason which I could never understand +and cannot approve) he was kept locked up to break him of the +graceful habit. Here, it is not the similarity, it is the +difference, that is worthy of remark; the clearly marked degrees +of gratitude and the proportional duration of his visits. +Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy; and +one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a character so +destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and so +priggishly obedient to the voice of reason.</p> +<p>There are not many dogs like this good Coolin, and not many +people. But the type is one well marked, both in the human +and the canine family. Gallantry was not his aim, but a +solid and somewhat oppressive respectability. He was a +sworn foe to the unusual and the conspicuous, a praiser of the +golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble. +And as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his +own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an +even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my +father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin’s idol: he +was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in +the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of +virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth.</p> +<p>I have called him a snob; but all dogs are so, though in +varying degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among +themselves; for though I think we can perceive distinctions of +rank, we cannot grasp what is the criterion. Thus in +Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, there were several +distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning to—the +phrase is technical—to “rake the backets” in a +troop. A friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one +day surprised to observe that they had left one club and joined +another; but whether it was a rise or a fall, and the result of +an invitation or an expulsion, was more than he could +guess. And this illustrates pointedly our ignorance of the +real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their social +hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with men they are +not only conscious of sex, but of the difference of +station. And that in the most snobbish manner; for the poor +man’s dog is not offended by the notice of the rich, and +keeps all his ugly feeling for those poorer or more ragged than +his master. And again, for every station they have an ideal +of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of derogation, will +do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance of an +eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more +gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded +in the seat of piety!</p> +<p>I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a cat; +cared little or nothing for men, with whom he merely coexisted as +we do with cattle, and was entirely devoted to the art of +poaching. A house would not hold him, and to live in a town +was what he refused. He led, I believe, a life of troubled +but genuine pleasure, and perished beyond all question in a +trap. But this was an exception, a marked reversion to the +ancestral type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog +of the nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my fairly +large acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A +street-dog was once adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, +he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the mud, charging into +butchers’ stalls, a cat-hunter, a sturdy beggar, a common +rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside +these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted +no more cats; and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old +companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to +recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human +countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports +and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of +happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no +care but to support it solemnly. Are we to condemn or +praise this self-made dog? We praise his human +brother. And thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with +dogs as with men. With the more part, for all their +scruple-mongering and moral thought, the vices that are born with +them remain invincible throughout; and they live all their years, +glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves of their +defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; +among a thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold leg +of mutton lay upon his conscience; but Woggs, <a +name="citation128"></a><a href="#footnote128" +class="citation">[128]</a> whose soul’s shipwreck in the +matter of gallantry I have recounted above, has only twice been +known to steal, and has often nobly conquered the +temptation. The eighth is his favourite commandment. +There is something painfully human in these unequal virtues and +mortal frailties of the best. Still more painful is the +bearing of those “stammering professors” in the house +of sickness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a +doubt to me that, somehow or other, the dog connects together, or +confounds, the uneasiness of sickness and the consciousness of +guilt. To the pains of the body he often adds the tortures +of the conscience; and at these times his haggard protestations +form, in regard to the human deathbed, a dreadful parody or +parallel.</p> +<p>I once supposed that I had found an inverse relation between +the double etiquette which dogs obey; and that those who were +most addicted to the showy street life among other dogs were less +careful in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man. +But the female dog, that mass of carneying affectations, shines +equally in either sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant +swains with unwearying tact and gusto; and with her master and +mistress pushes the arts of insinuation to their crowning +point. The attention of man and the regard of other dogs +flatter (it would thus appear) the same sensibility; but perhaps, +if we could read the canine heart, they would be found to flatter +it in very different degrees. Dogs live with man as +courtiers round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice +and enriched with sinecures. To push their favour in this +world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their +lives; and their joys may lie outside. I am in despair at +our persistent ignorance. I read in the lives of our +companions the same processes of reason, the same antique and +fatal conflicts of the right against the wrong, and of unbitted +nature with too rigid custom; I see them with our weaknesses, +vain, false, inconstant against appetite, and with our one stalk +of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as they +hurry by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to +solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their lives +is still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he +the patron only? Have they indeed forgotten nature’s +voice? or are those moments snatched from courtiership when they +touch noses with the tinker’s mongrel, the brief reward and +pleasure of their artificial lives? Doubtless, when man +shares with his dog the toils of a profession and the pleasures +of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the affection +warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But +doubtless, also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a +merely interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze, +giving and receiving flattery and favour; and the dogs, like the +majority of men, have but foregone their true existence and +become the dupes of their ambition.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII. A PENNY PLAIN AND TWOPENCE COLOURED</h2> +<p>These words will be familiar to all students of Skelt’s +Juvenile Drama. That national monument, after having +changed its name to Park’s, to Webb’s, to +Redington’s, and last of all to Pollock’s, has now +become, for the most part, a memory. Some of its pillars, +like Stonehenge, are still afoot, the rest clean vanished. +It may be the Museum numbers a full set; and Mr. Ionides perhaps, +or else her gracious Majesty, may boast their great collections; +but to the plain private person they are become, like Raphaels, +unattainable. I have, at different times, possessed +<i>Aladdin</i>, <i>The Red Rover</i>, <i>The Blind Boy</i>, +<i>The Old Oak Chest</i>, <i>The Wood Dæmon</i>, <i>Jack +Sheppard</i>, <i>The Miller and his Men</i>, <i>Der +Freischütz</i>, <i>The Smuggler</i>, <i>The Forest of +Bondy</i>, <i>Robin Hood</i>, <i>The Waterman</i>, <i>Richard +I.</i>, <i>My Poll and my Partner Joe</i>, <i>The Inchcape +Bell</i> (imperfect), and <i>Three-Fingered Jack</i>, <i>The +Terror of Jamaica</i>; and I have assisted others in the +illumination of <i>Maid of the Inn</i> and <i>The Battle of +Waterloo</i>. In this roll-call of stirring names you read +the evidences of a happy childhood; and though not half of them +are still to be procured of any living stationer, in the mind of +their once happy owner all survive, kaleidoscopes of changing +pictures, echoes of the past.</p> +<p>There stands, I fancy, to this day (but now how fallen!) a +certain stationer’s shop at a corner of the wide +thoroughfare that joins the city of my childhood with the +sea. When, upon any Saturday, we made a party to behold the +ships, we passed that corner; and since in those days I loved a +ship as a man loves Burgundy or daybreak, this of itself had been +enough to hallow it. But there was more than that. In +the Leith Walk window, all the year round, there stood displayed +a theatre in working order, with a “forest set,” a +“combat,” and a few “robbers carousing” +in the slides; and below and about, dearer tenfold to me! the +plays themselves, those budgets of romance, lay tumbled one upon +another. Long and often have I lingered there with empty +pockets. One figure, we shall say, was visible in the first +plate of characters, bearded, pistol in hand, or drawing to his +ear the clothyard arrow; I would spell the name: was it Macaire, +or Long Tom Coffin, or Grindoff, 2d dress? O, how I would +long to see the rest! how—if the name by chance were +hidden—I would wonder in what play he figured, and what +immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel! +And then to go within, to announce yourself as an intending +purchaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo those +bundles and breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating +villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and +war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults—it was a +giddy joy. That shop, which was dark and smelt of Bibles, +was a loadstone rock for all that bore the name of boy. +They could not pass it by, nor, having entered, leave it. +It was a place besieged; the shopmen, like the Jews rebuilding +Salem, had a double task. They kept us at the stick’s +end, frowned us down, snatched each play out of our hand ere we +were trusted with another, and, increditable as it may sound, +used to demand of us upon our entrance, like banditti, if we came +with money or with empty hand. Old Mr. Smith himself, worn +out with my eternal vacillation, once swept the treasures from +before me, with the cry: “I do not believe, child, that you +are an intending purchaser at all!” These were the +dragons of the garden; but for such joys of paradise we could +have faced the Terror of Jamaica himself. Every sheet we +fingered was another lightning glance into obscure, delicious +story; it was like wallowing in the raw stuff of +story-books. I know nothing to compare with it save now and +then in dreams, when I am privileged to read in certain unwrit +stories of adventure, from which I awake to find the world all +vanity. The <i>crux</i> of Buridan’s donkey was as +nothing to the uncertainty of the boy as he handled and lingered +and doated on these bundles of delight; there was a physical +pleasure in the sight and touch of them which he would jealously +prolong; and when at length the deed was done, the play selected, +and the impatient shopman had brushed the rest into the gray +portfolio, and the boy was forth again, a little late for dinner, +the lamps springing into light in the blue winter’s even, +and <i>The Miller</i>, or <i>The Rover</i>, or some kindred drama +clutched against his side—on what gay feet he ran, and how +he laughed aloud in exultation! I can hear that laughter +still. Out of all the years of my life, I can recall but +one home-coming to compare with these, and that was on the night +when I brought back with me the <i>Arabian Entertainments</i> in +the fat, old, double-columned volume with the prints. I was +just well into the story of the Hunchback, I remember, when my +clergyman-grandfather (a man we counted pretty stiff) came in +behind me. I grew blind with terror. But instead of +ordering the book away, he said he envied me. Ah, well he +might!</p> +<p>The purchase and the first half-hour at home, that was the +summit. Thenceforth the interest declined by little and +little. The fable, as set forth in the play-book, proved to +be not worthy of the scenes and characters: what fable would +not? Such passages as: “Scene 6. The Hermitage. +Night set scene. Place back of scene 1, No. 2, at back of +stage and hermitage, Fig. 2, out of set piece, R. H. in a +slanting direction”—such passages, I say, though very +practical, are hardly to be called good reading. Indeed, as +literature, these dramas did not much appeal to me. I +forget the very outline of the plots. Of <i>The Blind +Boy</i>, beyond the fact that he was a most injured prince and +once, I think, abducted, I know nothing. And <i>The Old Oak +Chest</i>, what was it all about? that proscript (1st dress), +that prodigious number of banditti, that old woman with the +broom, and the magnificent kitchen in the third act (was it in +the third?)—they are all fallen in a deliquium, swim +faintly in my brain, and mix and vanish.</p> +<p>I cannot deny that joy attended the illumination; nor can I +quite forget that child who, wilfully foregoing pleasure, stoops +to “twopence coloured.” With crimson lake (hark +to the sound of it—crimson lake!—the horns of +elf-land are not richer on the ear)—with crimson lake and +Prussian blue a certain purple is to be compounded which, for +cloaks especially, Titian could not equal. The latter +colour with gamboge, a hated name although an exquisite pigment, +supplied a green of such a savoury greenness that to-day my heart +regrets it. Nor can I recall without a tender weakness the +very aspect of the water where I dipped my brush. Yes, +there was pleasure in the painting. But when all was +painted, it is needless to deny it, all was spoiled. You +might, indeed, set up a scene or two to look at; but to cut the +figures out was simply sacrilege; nor could any child twice court +the tedium, the worry, and the long-drawn disenchantment of an +actual performance. Two days after the purchase the honey +had been sucked. Parents used to complain; they thought I +wearied of my play. It was not so: no more than a person +can be said to have wearied of his dinner when he leaves the +bones and dishes; I had got the marrow of it and said grace.</p> +<p>Then was the time to turn to the back of the play-book and to +study that enticing double file of names, where poetry, for the +true child of Skelt, reigned happy and glorious like her Majesty +the Queen. Much as I have travelled in these realms of +gold, I have yet seen, upon that map or abstract, names of El +Dorados that still haunt the ear of memory, and are still but +names. <i>The Floating Beacon</i>—why was that denied +me? or <i>The Wreck Ashore</i>? <i>Sixteen-String Jack</i> +whom I did not even guess to be a highwayman, troubled me awake +and haunted my slumbers; and there is one sequence of three from +that enchanted calender that I still at times recall, like a +loved verse of poetry: <i>Lodoiska</i>, <i>Silver Palace</i>, +<i>Echo of Westminster Bridge</i>. Names, bare names, are +surely more to children than we poor, grown-up, obliterated fools +remember.</p> +<p>The name of Skelt itself has always seemed a part and parcel +of the charm of his productions. It may be different with +the rose, but the attraction of this paper drama sensibly +declined when Webb had crept into the rubric: a poor cuckoo, +flaunting in Skelt’s nest. And now we have reached +Pollock, sounding deeper gulfs. Indeed, this name of Skelt +appears so stagey and piratic, that I will adopt it boldly to +design these qualities. Skeltery, then, is a quality of +much art. It is even to be found, with reverence be it +said, among the works of nature. The stagey is its generic +name; but it is an old, insular, home-bred staginess; not French, +domestically British; not of to-day, but smacking of O. Smith, +Fitzball, and the great age of melodrama: a peculiar fragrance +haunting it; uttering its unimportant message in a tone of voice +that has the charm of fresh antiquity. I will not insist +upon the art of Skelt’s purveyors. These wonderful +characters that once so thrilled our soul with their bold +attitude, array of deadly engines and incomparable costume, +to-day look somewhat pallidly; the extreme hard favour of the +heroine strikes me, I had almost said with pain; the +villain’s scowl no longer thrills me like a trumpet; and +the scenes themselves, those once unparalleled landscapes, seem +the efforts of a prentice hand. So much of fault we find; +but on the other side the impartial critic rejoices to remark the +presence of a great unity of gusto; of those direct clap-trap +appeals, which a man is dead and buriable when he fails to +answer; of the footlight glamour, the ready-made, bare-faced, +transpontine picturesque, a thing not one with cold reality, but +how much dearer to the mind!</p> +<p>The scenery of Skeltdom—or, shall we say, the kingdom of +Transpontus?—had a prevailing character. Whether it +set forth Poland as in <i>The Blind Boy</i>, or Bohemia with +<i>The Miller and his Men</i>, or Italy with <i>The Old Oak +Chest</i>, still it was Transpontus. A botanist could tell +it by the plants. The hollyhock was all pervasive, running +wild in deserts; the dock was common, and the bending reed; and +overshadowing these were poplar, palm, potato tree, and +<i>Quercus Skeltica</i>—brave growths. The caves were +all embowelled in the Surreyside formation; the soil was all +betrodden by the light pump of T. P. Cooke. Skelt, to be +sure, had yet another, an oriental string: he held the gorgeous +east in fee; and in the new quarter of Hyères, say, in the +garden of the Hotel des Iles d’Or, you may behold these +blessed visions realised. But on these I will not dwell; +they were an outwork; it was in the occidental scenery that Skelt +was all himself. It had a strong flavour of England; it was +a sort of indigestion of England and drop-scenes, and I am bound +to say was charming. How the roads wander, how the castle +sits upon the hill, how the sun eradiates from behind the cloud, +and how the congregated clouds themselves up-roll, as stiff as +bolsters! Here is the cottage interior, the usual first +flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the +gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this +drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob +Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day +clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the +chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow +elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable +Thames—England, when at last I came to visit it, was only +Skelt made evident: to cross the border was, for the Scotsman, to +come home to Skelt; there was the inn-sign and there the +horse-trough, all foreshadowed in the faithful Skelt. If, +at the ripe age of fourteen years, I bought a certain cudgel, got +a friend to load it, and thenceforward walked the tame ways of +the earth my own ideal, radiating pure romance—still I was +but a puppet in the hand of Skelt; the original of that regretted +bludgeon, and surely the antitype of all the bludgeon kind, +greatly improved from Cruikshank, had adorned the hand of +Jonathan Wild, pl. <span class="smcap">i</span>. +“This is mastering me,” as Whitman cries, upon some +lesser provocation. What am I? what are life, art, letters, +the world, but what my Skelt has made them? He stamped +himself upon my immaturity. The world was plain before I +knew him, a poor penny world; but soon it was all coloured with +romance. If I go to the theatre to see a good old +melodrama, ’tis but Skelt a little faded. If I visit +a bold scene in nature, Skelt would have been bolder; there had +been certainly a castle on that mountain, and the hollow +tree—that set piece—I seem to miss it in the +foreground. Indeed, out of this cut-and-dry, dull, +swaggering, obtrusive, and infantile art, I seem to have learned +the very spirit of my life’s enjoyment; met there the +shadows of the characters I was to read about and love in a late +future; got the romance of <i>Der Freischütz</i> long ere I +was to hear of Weber or the mighty Formes; acquired a gallery of +scenes and characters with which, in the silent theatre of the +brain, I might enact all novels and romances; and took from these +rude cuts an enduring and transforming pleasure. +Reader—and yourself?</p> +<p>A word of moral: it appears that B. Pollock, late J. +Redington, No. 73 Hoxton Street, not only publishes twenty-three +of these old stage favourites, but owns the necessary plates and +displays a modest readiness to issue other thirty-three. If +you love art, folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to +Pollock’s, or to Clarke’s of Garrick Street. In +Pollock’s list of publicanda I perceive a pair of my +ancient aspirations: <i>Wreck Ashore</i> and <i>Sixteen-String +Jack</i>; and I cherish the belief that when these shall see once +more the light of day, B. Pollock will remember this +apologist. But, indeed, I have a dream at times that is not +all a dream. I seem to myself to wander in a ghostly +street—E. W., I think, the postal district—close +below the fool’s-cap of St. Paul’s, and yet within +easy hearing of the echo of the Abbey bridge. There in a +dim shop, low in the roof and smelling strong of glue and +footlights, I find myself in quaking treaty with great Skelt +himself, the aboriginal all dusty from the tomb. I buy, +with what a choking heart—I buy them all, all but the +pantomimes; I pay my mental money, and go forth; and lo! the +packets are dust.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV. A GOSSIP ON A NOVEL OF DUMAS’S</h2> +<p>The books that we re-read the oftenest are not always those +that we admire the most; we choose and we re-visit them for many +and various reasons, as we choose and revisit human +friends. One or two of Scott’s novels, Shakespeare, +Molière, Montaigne, <i>The Egoist</i>, and the <i>Vicomte +de Bragelonne</i>, form the inner circle of my intimates. +Behind these comes a good troop of dear acquaintances; <i>The +Pilgrim’s Progress</i> in the front rank, <i>The Bible in +Spain</i> not far behind. There are besides a certain +number that look at me with reproach as I pass them by on my +shelves: books that I once thumbed and studied: houses which were +once like home to me, but where I now rarely visit. I am on +these sad terms (and blush to confess it) with Wordsworth, +Horace, Burns and Hazlitt. Last of all, there is the class +of book that has its hour of brilliancy—glows, sings, +charms, and then fades again into insignificance until the fit +return. Chief of those who thus smile and frown on me by +turns, I must name Virgil and Herrick, who, were they but</p> +<blockquote><p>“Their sometime selves the same throughout +the year,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>must have stood in the first company with the six names of my +continual literary intimates. To these six, incongruous as +they seem, I have long been faithful, and hope to be faithful to +the day of death. I have never read the whole of Montaigne, +but I do not like to be long without reading some of him, and my +delight in what I do read never lessens. Of Shakespeare I +have read all but <i>Richard III.</i>, <i>Henry VI.</i>, <i>Titus +Andronicus</i>, and <i>All’s Well that Ends Well</i>; and +these, having already made all suitable endeavour, I now know +that I shall never read—to make up for which unfaithfulness +I could read much of the rest for ever. Of +Molière—surely the next greatest name of +Christendom—I could tell a very similar story; but in a +little corner of a little essay these princes are too much out of +place, and I prefer to pay my fealty and pass on. How often +I have read <i>Guy Mannering</i>, <i>Rob Roy</i>, or +<i>Redgauntlet</i>, I have no means of guessing, having begun +young. But it is either four or five times that I have read +<i>The Egoist</i>, and either five or six that I have read the +<i>Vicomte de Bragelonne</i>.</p> +<p>Some, who would accept the others, may wonder that I should +have spent so much of this brief life of ours over a work so +little famous as the last. And, indeed, I am surprised +myself; not at my own devotion, but the coldness of the +world. My acquaintance with the <i>Vicomte</i> began, +somewhat indirectly, in the year of grace 1863, when I had the +advantage of studying certain illustrated dessert plates in a +hotel at Nice. The name of d’Artagnan in the legends +I already saluted like an old friend, for I had met it the year +before in a work of Miss Yonge’s. My first perusal +was in one of those pirated editions that swarmed at that time +out of Brussels, and ran to such a troop of neat and dwarfish +volumes. I understood but little of the merits of the book; +my strongest memory is of the execution of d’Eyméric +and Lyodot—a strange testimony to the dulness of a boy, who +could enjoy the rough-and-tumble in the Place de Grêve, and +forget d’Artagnan’s visits to the two +financiers. My next reading was in winter-time, when I +lived alone upon the Pentlands. I would return in the early +night from one of my patrols with the shepherd; a friendly face +would meet me in the door, a friendly retriever scurry upstairs +to fetch my slippers; and I would sit down with the +<i>Vicomte</i> for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light evening by +the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it +was enlivened with such a clatter of horse-shoes, and such a +rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call those +evenings solitary in which I gained so many friends. I +would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the +snow and the glittering hollies chequer a Scotch garden, and the +winter moonlight brighten the white hills. Thence I would +turn again to that crowded and sunny field of life in which it +was so easy to forget myself, my cares, and my surroundings: a +place busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with +memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech. I +carried the thread of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it +unbroken, I rejoiced to plunge into the book again at breakfast, +it was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own +labours; for no part of the world has ever seemed to me so +charming as these pages, and not even my friends are quite so +real, perhaps quite so dear, as d’Artagnan.</p> +<p>Since then I have been going to and fro at very brief +intervals in my favourite book; and I have now just risen from my +last (let me call it my fifth) perusal, having liked it better +and admired it more seriously than ever. Perhaps I have a +sense of ownership, being so well known in these six +volumes. Perhaps I think that d’Artagnan delights to +have me read of him, and Louis Quatorze is gratified, and Fouquet +throws me a look, and Aramis, although he knows I do not love +him, yet plays to me with his best graces, as to an old patron of +the show. Perhaps, if I am not careful, something may +befall me like what befell George IV. about the battle of +Waterloo, and I may come to fancy the <i>Vicomte</i> one of the +first, and Heaven knows the best, of my own works. At +least, I avow myself a partisan; and when I compare the +popularity of the <i>Vicomte</i> with that of <i>Monte +Cristo</i>, or its own elder brother, the <i>Trois +Mousquetaires</i>, I confess I am both pained and puzzled.</p> +<p>To those who have already made acquaintance with the titular +hero in the pages of <i>Vingt Ans Après</i>, perhaps the +name may act as a deterrent. A man might, well stand back +if he supposed he were to follow, for six volumes, so +well-conducted, so fine-spoken, and withal so dreary a cavalier +as Bragelonne. But the fear is idle. I may be said to +have passed the best years of my life in these six volumes, and +my acquaintance with Raoul has never gone beyond a bow; and when +he, who has so long pretended to be alive, is at last suffered to +pretend to be dead, I am sometimes reminded of a saying in an +earlier volume: “<i>Enfin</i>, <i>dit Miss +Stewart</i>,”—and it was of Bragelonne she +spoke—“<i>enfin il a fait quelquechose</i>: +<i>c’est</i>, <i>ma foi</i>! <i>bien +heureux</i>.” I am reminded of it, as I say; and the +next moment, when Athos dies of his death, and my dear +d’Artagnan bursts into his storm of sobbing, I can but +deplore my flippancy.</p> +<p>Or perhaps it is La Vallière that the reader of +<i>Vingt Ans Après</i> is inclined to flee. Well, he +is right there too, though not so right. Louise is no +success. Her creator has spared no pains; she is +well-meant, not ill-designed, sometimes has a word that rings out +true; sometimes, if only for a breath, she may even engage our +sympathies. But I have never envied the King his +triumph. And so far from pitying Bragelonne for his defeat, +I could wish him no worse (not for lack of malice, but +imagination) than to be wedded to that lady. Madame +enchants me; I can forgive that royal minx her most serious +offences; I can thrill and soften with the King on that memorable +occasion when he goes to upbraid and remains to flirt; and when +it comes to the “<i>Allons</i>, <i>aimez-moi +donc</i>,” it is my heart that melts in the bosom of de +Guiche. Not so with Louise. Readers cannot fail to +have remarked that what an author tells us of the beauty or the +charm of his creatures goes for nought; that we know instantly +better; that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a +moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall from round her like +the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us, +self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a +strapping market-woman. Authors, at least, know it well; a +heroine will too often start the trick of “getting +ugly;” and no disease is more difficult to cure. I +said authors; but indeed I had a side eye to one author in +particular, with whose works I am very well acquainted, though I +cannot read them, and who has spent many vigils in this cause, +sitting beside his ailing puppets and (like a magician) wearying +his art to restore them to youth and beauty. There are +others who ride too high for these misfortunes. Who doubts +the loveliness of Rosalind? Arden itself was not more +lovely. Who ever questioned the perennial charm of Rose +Jocelyn, Lucy Desborough, or Clara Middleton? fair women with +fair names, the daughters of George Meredith. Elizabeth +Bennet has but to speak, and I am at her knees. Ah! these +are the creators of desirable women. They would never have +fallen in the mud with Dumas and poor La Vallière. +It is my only consolation that not one of all of them, except the +first, could have plucked at the moustache of +d’Artagnan.</p> +<p>Or perhaps, again, a proportion of readers stumble at the +threshold. In so vast a mansion there were sure to be back +stairs and kitchen offices where no one would delight to linger; +but it was at least unhappy that the vestibule should be so badly +lighted; and until, in the seventeenth chapter, d’Artagnan +sets off to seek his friends, I must confess, the book goes +heavily enough. But, from thenceforward, what a feast is +spread! Monk kidnapped; d’Artagnan enriched; +Mazarin’s death; the ever delectable adventure of Belle +Isle, wherein Aramis outwits d’Artagnan, with its epilogue +(vol. v. chap. xxviii.), where d’Artagnan regains the moral +superiority; the love adventures at Fontainebleau, with St. +Aignan’s story of the dryad and the business of de Guiche, +de Wardes, and Manicamp; Aramis made general of the Jesuits; +Aramis at the bastille; the night talk in the forest of +Sénart; Belle Isle again, with the death of Porthos; and +last, but not least, the taming of d’Artagnan the +untamable, under the lash of the young King. What other +novel has such epic variety and nobility of incident? often, if +you will, impossible; often of the order of an Arabian story; and +yet all based in human nature. For if you come to that, +what novel has more human nature? not studied with the +microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural +eye? What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, +and unflagging, admirable literary skill? Good souls, I +suppose, must sometimes read it in the blackguard travesty of a +translation. But there is no style so untranslatable; light +as a whipped trifle, strong as silk; wordy like a village tale; +pat like a general’s despatch; with every fault, yet never +tedious; with no merit, yet inimitably right. And, once +more, to make an end of commendations, what novel is inspired +with a more unstrained or a more wholesome morality?</p> +<p>Yes; in spite of Miss Yonge, who introduced me to the name of +d’Artagnan only to dissuade me from a nearer knowledge of +the man, I have to add morality. There is no quite good +book without a good morality; but the world is wide, and so are +morals. Out of two people who have dipped into Sir Richard +Burton’s <i>Thousand and One Nights</i>, one shall have +been offended by the animal details; another to whom these were +harmless, perhaps even pleasing, shall yet have been shocked in +his turn by the rascality and cruelty of all the +characters. Of two readers, again, one shall have been +pained by the morality of a religious memoir, one by that of the +<i>Vicomte de Bragelonne</i>. And the point is that neither +need be wrong. We shall always shock each other both in +life and art; we cannot get the sun into our pictures, nor the +abstract right (if there be such a thing) into our books; enough +if, in the one, there glimmer some hint of the great light that +blinds us from heaven; enough if, in the other, there shine, even +upon foul details, a spirit of magnanimity. I would scarce +send to the <i>Vicomte</i> a reader who was in quest of what we +may call puritan morality. The ventripotent mulatto, the +great eater, worker, earner and waster, the man of much and witty +laughter, the man of the great heart and alas! of the doubtful +honesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the world; he +still awaits a sober and yet genial portrait; but with whatever +art that may be touched, and whatever indulgence, it will not be +the portrait of a precisian. Dumas was certainly not +thinking of himself, but of Planchet, when he put into the mouth +of d’Artagnan’s old servant this excellent +profession: “<i>Monsieur</i>, <i>j’étais une +de ces bonnes pâtes d’hommes que Dieu a fait pour +s’animer pendant un certain temps et pour trouver bonnes +toutes choses qui accompagnent leur séjour sur la +terre</i>.” He was thinking, as I say, of Planchet, +to whom the words are aptly fitted; but they were fitted also to +Planchet’s creator; and perhaps this struck him as he +wrote, for observe what follows: “<i>D’Artagnan +s’assit alors près de la fenêtre</i>, +<i>et</i>, <i>cette philosophie de Planchet lui ayant paru +solide</i>, <i>il y rêva</i>.” In a man who +finds all things good, you will scarce expect much zeal for +negative virtues: the active alone will have a charm for him; +abstinence, however wise, however kind, will always seem to such +a judge entirely mean and partly impious. So with +Dumas. Chastity is not near his heart; nor yet, to his own +sore cost, that virtue of frugality which is the armour of the +artist. Now, in the <i>Vicomte</i>, he had much to do with +the contest of Fouquet and Colbert. Historic justice should +be all upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty, and fiscal +competence. And Dumas knew it well: three times at least he +shows his knowledge; once it is but flashed upon us and received +with the laughter of Fouquet himself, in the jesting controversy +in the gardens of Saint Mandé; once it is touched on by +Aramis in the forest of Sénart; in the end, it is set +before us clearly in one dignified speech of the triumphant +Colbert. But in Fouquet, the waster, the lover of good +cheer and wit and art, the swift transactor of much business, +“<i>l’homme de bruit</i>, <i>l’homme de +plaisir</i>, <i>l’homme qui n’est que parceque les +autres sont</i>,” Dumas saw something of himself and drew +the figure the more tenderly. It is to me even touching to +see how he insists on Fouquet’s honour; not seeing, you +might think, that unflawed honour is impossible to spendthrifts; +but rather, perhaps, in the light of his own life, seeing it too +well, and clinging the more to what was left. Honour can +survive a wound; it can live and thrive without a member. +The man rebounds from his disgrace; he begins fresh foundations +on the ruins of the old; and when his sword is broken, he will do +valiantly with his dagger. So it is with Fouquet in the +book; so it was with Dumas on the battlefield of life.</p> +<p>To cling to what is left of any damaged quality is virtue in +the man; but perhaps to sing its praises is scarcely to be called +morality in the writer. And it is elsewhere, it is in the +character of d’Artagnan, that we must look for that spirit +of morality, which is one of the chief merits of the book, makes +one of the main joys of its perusal, and sets it high above more +popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of years, has +declined too much into the preacher, and the preacher of a +sapless creed; but d’Artagnan has mellowed into a man so +witty, rough, kind and upright, that he takes the heart by +storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, +nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civility; he +will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor—no +Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement +whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a +good sovereign. Readers who have approached the +<i>Vicomte</i>, not across country, but by the legitimate, +five-volumed avenue of the <i>Mousquetaires</i> and <i>Vingt Ans +Après</i>, will not have forgotten +d’Artagnan’s ungentlemanly and perfectly improbable +trick upon Milady. What a pleasure it is, then, what a +reward, and how agreeable a lesson, to see the old captain humble +himself to the son of the man whom he had personated! Here, +and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for myself or my +friends, let me choose the virtues of d’Artagnan. I +do not say there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare; I +do say there is none that I love so wholly. There are many +spiritual eyes that seem to spy upon our actions—eyes of +the dead and the absent, whom we imagine to behold us in our most +private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to offend: our +witnesses and judges. And among these, even if you should +think me childish, I must count my d’Artagnan—not +d’Artagnan of the memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to +prefer—a preference, I take the freedom of saying, in which +he stands alone; not the d’Artagnan of flesh and blood, but +him of the ink and paper; not Nature’s, but +Dumas’s. And this is the particular crown and triumph +of the artist—not to be true merely, but to be lovable; not +simply to convince, but to enchant.</p> +<p>There is yet another point in the <i>Vicomte</i> which I find +incomparable. I can recall no other work of the imagination +in which the end of life is represented with so nice a +tact. I was asked the other day if Dumas made me laugh or +cry. Well in this my late fifth reading of the +<i>Vicomte</i>, I did laugh once at the small Coquelin de +Volière business, and was perhaps a thought surprised at +having done so: to make up for it, I smiled continually. +But for tears, I do not know. If you put a pistol to my +throat, I must own the tale trips upon a very airy +foot—within a measurable distance of unreality; and for +those who like the big guns to be discharged and the great +passions to appear authentically, it may even seem inadequate +from first to last. Not so to me; I cannot count that a +poor dinner, or a poor book, where I meet with those I love; and, +above all, in this last volume, I find a singular charm of +spirit. It breathes a pleasant and a tonic sadness, always +brave, never hysterical. Upon the crowded, noisy life of +this long tale, evening gradually falls; and the lights are +extinguished, and the heroes pass away one by one. One by +one they go, and not a regret embitters their departure; the +young succeed them in their places, Louis Quatorze is swelling +larger and shining broader, another generation and another France +dawn on the horizon; but for us and these old men whom we have +loved so long, the inevitable end draws near and is +welcome. To read this well is to anticipate +experience. Ah, if only when these hours of the long +shadows fall for us in reality and not in figure, we may hope to +face them with a mind as quiet!</p> +<p>But my paper is running out; the siege guns are firing on the +Dutch frontier; and I must say adieu for the fifth time to my old +comrade fallen on the field of glory. +<i>Adieu</i>—rather <i>au revoir</i>! Yet a sixth +time, dearest d’Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take +horse together for Belle Isle.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV. A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE</h2> +<p>In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the +process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should +gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from +the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic +dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous +thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run +thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the +story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured +pictures to the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we +read so closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, +troubled period of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, +character and conversation, were but obstacles to brush aside as +we dug blithely after a certain sort of incident, like a pig for +truffles. For my part, I liked a story to begin with an old +wayside inn where, “towards the close of the year +17--,” several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing +bowls. A friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast in a +storm, with a ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of +Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, +was a pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping +fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger +canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a highwayman +and I was full to the brim; a Jacobite would do, but the +highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that +merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the +coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of +John Rann or Jerry Abershaw; and the words +“post-chaise,” the “great North road,” +“ostler,” and “nag” still sound in my +ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his +particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood, not for +eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the +brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or +wonder. Although each of these was welcome in its place, +the charm for the sake of which we read depended on something +different from either. My elders used to read novels aloud; +and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, +before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. +One I discovered long afterwards to be the admirable opening of +<i>What will he Do with It</i>: it was no wonder I was pleased +with that. The other three still remain unidentified. +One is a little vague; it was about a dark, tall house at night, +and people groping on the stairs by the light that escaped from +the open door of a sickroom. In another, a lover left a +ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence he could +watch the lighted windows and the figures of the dancers as they +moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I +had yet received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the +sentimental. In the last, a poet, who had been tragically +wrangling with his wife, walked forth on the sea-beach on a +tempestuous night and witnessed the horrors of a wreck. <a +name="citation153"></a><a href="#footnote153" +class="citation">[153]</a> Different as they are, all these +early favourites have a common note—they have all a touch +of the romantic.</p> +<p>Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of +circumstance. The pleasure that we take in life is of two +sorts—the active and the passive. Now we are +conscious of a great command over our destiny; anon we are lifted +up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and dashed we know not +how into the future. Now we are pleased by our conduct, +anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard +to say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more +effective, but the latter is surely the more constant. +Conduct is three parts of life, they say; but I think they put it +high. There is a vast deal in life and letters both which +is not immoral, but simply a-moral; which either does not regard +the human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and healthy +relations; where the interest turns, not upon what a man shall +choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on the +passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the +problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, +open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of +life. With such material as this it is impossible to build +a play, for the serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, +and is a standing proof of the dissemination of the human +conscience. But it is possible to build, upon this ground, +the most joyous of verses, and the most lively, beautiful, and +buoyant tales.</p> +<p>One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in +events and places. The sight of a pleasant arbour puts it +in our mind to sit there. One place suggests work, another +idleness, a third early rising and long rambles in the dew. +The effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of +the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean, calls up in the +mind an army of anonymous desires and pleasures. Something, +we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we proceed in quest +of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet by us +in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and +moment. It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks +that reach into deep soundings, particularly torture and delight +me. Something must have happened in such places, and +perhaps ages back, to members of my race; and when I was a child +I tried in vain to invent appropriate games for them, as I still +try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper story. +Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry +aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; +certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots +again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, +“miching mallecho.” The inn at Burford Bridge, +with its arbours and green garden and silent, eddying +river—though it is known already as the place where Keats +wrote some of his <i>Endymion</i> and Nelson parted from his +Emma—still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate +legend. Within these ivied walls, behind these old green +shutters, some further business smoulders, waiting for its +hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen’s Ferry makes a +similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from the +town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half +marine—in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the +guardship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the +trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and +Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of the +<i>Antiquary</i>. But you need not tell me—that is +not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet complete, +which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So +it is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle +and inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning +of some quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves +untold. How many of these romances have we not seen +determine at their birth; how many people have met us with a look +of meaning in their eye, and sunk at once into trivial +acquaintances; to how many places have we not drawn near, with +express intimations—“here my destiny awaits +me”—and we have but dined there and passed on! +I have lived both at the Hawes and Burford in a perpetual +flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of some adventure that +should justify the place; but though the feeling had me to bed at +night and called me again at morning in one unbroken round of +pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth +remark. The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, +I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen’s Ferry, +fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a +tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters of +the inn at Burford. <a name="citation155"></a><a +href="#footnote155" class="citation">[155]</a></p> +<p>Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which any +lively literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I +had almost added the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated +than this demand for fit and striking incident. The dullest +of clowns tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the +feeblest of children uses invention in his play; and even as the +imaginative grown person, joining in the game, at once enriches +it with many delightful circumstances, the great creative writer +shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of +common men. His stories may be nourished with the realities +of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless longings +of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the day-dream. +The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of +place; the right kind of thing should follow; and not only the +characters talk aptly and think naturally, but all the +circumstances in a tale answer one to another like notes in +music. The threads of a story come from time to time +together and make a picture in the web; the characters fall from +time to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which +stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe +recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over against the +Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running with +his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in +the legend, and each has been printed on the mind’s eye for +ever. Other things we may forget; we may forget the words, +although they are beautiful; we may forget the author’s +comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these +epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a +story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic +pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that +neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. +This, then, is the plastic part of literature: to embody +character, thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall +be remarkably striking to the mind’s eye. This is the +highest and hardest thing to do in words; the thing which, once +accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and the sage, and +makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared +with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely +lyrical or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile +of execution, and feeble in result. It is one thing to +write about the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the +word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the +suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is +one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, +the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite +another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or of +Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is +something besides, for it is likewise art.</p> +<p>English people of the present day <a name="citation157"></a><a +href="#footnote157" class="citation">[157]</a> are apt, I know +not why, to look somewhat down on incident, and reserve their +admiration for the clink of teaspoons and the accents of the +curate. It is thought clever to write a novel with no story +at all, or at least with a very dull one. Reduced even to +the lowest terms, a certain interest can be communicated by the +art of narrative; a sense of human kinship stirred; and a kind of +monotonous fitness, comparable to the words and air of +<i>Sandy’s Mull</i>, preserved among the infinitesimal +occurrences recorded. Some people work, in this manner, +with even a strong touch. Mr. Trollope’s inimitable +clergymen naturally arise to the mind in this connection. +But even Mr. Trollope does not confine himself to chronicling +small beer. Mr. Crawley’s collision with the +Bishop’s wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in the deserted +banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly +embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If +Rawdon Crawley’s blow were not delivered, <i>Vanity +Fair</i> would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the +chief ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from +Rawdon’s fist is the reward and consolation of the +reader. The end of <i>Esmond</i> is a yet wider excursion +from the author’s customary fields; the scene at Castlewood +is pure Dumas; the great and wily English borrower has here +borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he +has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds +off the best of all his books with a manly, martial note. +But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity +for marking incident than to compare the living fame of +<i>Robinson Crusoe</i> with the discredit of <i>Clarissa +Harlowe</i>. <i>Clarissa</i> is a book of a far more +startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable +courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, +passion, plot, conversations full of spirit and insight, letters +sparkling with unstrained humanity; and if the death of the +heroine be somewhat frigid and artificial, the last days of the +hero strike the only note of what we now call Byronism, between +the Elizabethans and Byron himself. And yet a little story +of a shipwrecked sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a +thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of the arcana of +humanity and deprived of the perennial interest of love, goes on +from edition to edition, ever young, while <i>Clarissa</i> lies +upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh +blacksmith, was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor +write, when he heard a chapter of <i>Robinson</i> read aloud in a +farm kitchen. Up to that moment he had sat content, huddled +in his ignorance, but he left that farm another man. There +were day-dreams, it appeared, divine day-dreams, written and +printed and bound, and to be bought for money and enjoyed at +pleasure. Down he sat that day, painfully learned to read +Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had been lost, +nor could he find another copy but one that was in English. +Down he sat once more, learned English, and at length, and with +entire delight, read <i>Robinson</i>. It is like the story +of a love-chase. If he had heard a letter from +<i>Clarissa</i>, would he have been fired with the same +chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet <i>Clarissa</i> has +every quality that can be shown in prose, one alone +excepted—pictorial or picture-making romance. While +<i>Robinson</i> depends, for the most part and with the +overwhelming majority of its readers, on the charm of +circumstance.</p> +<p>In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic +and the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall +together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated +with passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither +exists for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the +other. This is high art; and not only the highest art +possible in words, but the highest art of all, since it combines +the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth and +pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have +the epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the +creative, incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may +character and drama be omitted or subordinated to romance. +There is one book, for example, more generally loved than +Shakespeare, that captivates in childhood, and still delights in +age—I mean the <i>Arabian Nights</i>—where you shall +look in vain for moral or for intellectual interest. No +human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of kings +and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most +naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found +enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to +these Arabian authors in the purely material charm of some of his +romances. The early part of <i>Monte Cristo</i>, down to +the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; +the man never breathed who shared these moving incidents without +a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and +Dantès little more than a name. The sequel is one +long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for +these early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume +extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of +romance. It is very thin and light to be sure, as on a high +mountain; but it is brisk and clear and sunny in +proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old and a +very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into +<i>Monte Cristo</i>. Here are stories which powerfully +affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where +the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of +the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open +secret; their faces are of wood, their bellies filled with bran; +and yet we thrillingly partake of their adventures. And the +point may be illustrated still further. The last interview +between Lucy and Richard Feveril is pure drama; more than that, +it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the English +tongue. Their first meeting by the river, on the other +hand, is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it +might happen to any other boy or maiden, and be none the less +delightful for the change. And yet I think he would be a +bold man who should choose between these passages. Thus, in +the same book, we may have two scenes, each capital in its order: +in the one, human passion, deep calling unto deep, shall utter +its genuine voice; in the second, according circumstances, like +instruments in tune, shall build up a trivial but desirable +incident, such as we love to prefigure for ourselves; and in the +end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to give the +preference to either. The one may ask more genius—I +do not say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in +the memory.</p> +<p>True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. +It reaches into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not +refuse the most pedestrian realism. <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> +is as realistic as it is romantic; both qualities are pushed to +an extreme, and neither suffers. Nor does romance depend +upon the material importance of the incidents. To deal with +strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates, war and murder, is +to conjure with great names, and, in the event of failure, to +double the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn and Consuelo at +the Canon’s villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may +read a dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not +receive so fresh and stirring an impression of adventure. +It was the scene of Crusoe at the wreck, if I remember rightly, +that so bewitched my blacksmith. Nor is the fact +surprising. Every single article the castaway recovers from +the hulk is “a joy for ever” to the man who reads of +them. They are the things that should be found, and the +bare enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the +same interest the other day in a new book, <i>The Sailor’s +Sweetheart</i>, by Mr. Clark Russell. The whole business of +the brig <i>Morning Star</i> is very rightly felt and spiritedly +written; but the clothes, the books and the money satisfy the +reader’s mind like things to eat. We are dealing here +with the old cut-and-dry, legitimate interest of treasure +trove. But even treasure trove can be made dull. +There are few people who have not groaned under the plethora of +goods that fell to the lot of the <i>Swiss Family Robinson</i>, +that dreary family. They found article after article, +creature after creature, from milk kine to pieces of ordnance, a +whole consignment; but no informing taste had presided over the +selection, there was no smack or relish in the invoice; and these +riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in +Verne’s <i>Mysterious Island</i> is another case in point: +there was no gusto and no glamour about that; it might have come +from a shop. But the two hundred and seventy-eight +Australian sovereigns on board the <i>Morning Star</i> fell upon +me like a surprise that I had expected; whole vistas of secondary +stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth from that +discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in life; +and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right +to be.</p> +<p>To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we +must bear in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any +art. No art produces illusion; in the theatre we never +forget that we are in the theatre; and while we read a story, we +sit wavering between two minds, now merely clapping our hands at +the merit of the performance, now condescending to take an active +part in fancy with the characters. This last is the triumph +of romantic story-telling: when the reader consciously plays at +being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in +character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we +watch, we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to +sudden heats of sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. +But the characters are still themselves, they are not us; the +more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand +away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into +our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with +Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac, for I have +scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not +character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. +Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; +some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is +realised in the story with enticing and appropriate +details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the +hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and +bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we +have been reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable +things that we imagine in our day-dreams; there are lights in +which we are willing to contemplate even the idea of our own +death; ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us to be +cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus possible to +construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every +incident, detail and trick of circumstance shall be welcome to +the reader’s thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man +what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the +atmosphere and tenor of his life; and when the game so chimes +with his fancy that he can join in it with all his heart, when it +pleases him with every turn, when he loves to recall it and +dwells upon its recollection with entire delight, fiction is +called romance.</p> +<p>Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. +<i>The Lady of the Lake</i> has no indisputable claim to be a +poem beyond the inherent fitness and desirability of the +tale. It is just such a story as a man would make up for +himself, walking, in the best health and temper, through just +such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm +dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen +cuckoo fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we +have flung the book aside, the scenery and adventures remain +present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of +that beautiful name, <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>, or that direct, +romantic opening—one of the most spirited and poetical in +literature—“The stag at eve had drunk his +fill.” The same strength and the same weaknesses +adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged +book, <i>The Pirate</i>, the figure of Cleveland—cast up by +the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness—moving, +with the blood on his hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, +among the simple islanders—singing a serenade under the +window of his Shetland mistress—is conceived in the very +highest manner of romantic invention. The words of his +song, “Through groves of palm,” sung in such a scene +and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the emphatic +contrast upon which the tale is built. In <i>Guy +Mannering</i>, again, every incident is delightful to the +imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan +is a model instance of romantic method.</p> +<p>“‘I remember the tune well,’ he says, +‘though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly +recall it to my memory.” He took his flageolet from +his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the tune +awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel. She +immediately took up the song—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Are these the links of Forth, she +said;<br /> + Or are they the crooks of Dee,<br /> +Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head<br /> + That I so fain would see?’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“‘By heaven!’ said Bertram, ‘it is the +very ballad.’”</p> +<p>On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as +an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of +the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for +omission. Miss Braddon’s idea of a story, like Mrs. +Todgers’s idea of a wooden leg, were something strange to +have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, +Meg’s appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins +of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the +Dominie’s recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes +that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid +aside. The second point is still more curious. The +reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted +by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: “a +damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the +descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was +engaged in bleaching linen.” A man who gave in such +copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. +Scott has forgotten to prepare the reader for the presence of the +“damsel”; he has forgotten to mention the spring and +its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his +omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all +this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling +sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is +abominably bad narrative besides.</p> +<p>Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that +throws a strong light upon the subject of this paper. For +here we have a man of the finest creative instinct touching with +perfect certainty and charm the romantic junctures of his story; +and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, +incapable, in the technical matter of style, and not only +frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. +In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he +was delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated +features of too many of his heroes have already wearied two +generations of readers. At times his characters will speak +with something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note; but +on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an +ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man +who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the +Craigburnfoot, as Scott has conceived and written it, had not +only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How +comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, +inarticulate twaddle?</p> +<p>It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very +quality of his surprising merits. As his books are play to +the reader, so were they play to him. He conjured up the +romantic with delight, but he had hardly patience to describe +it. He was a great day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful +and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the +manful sense, an artist at all. He pleased himself, and so +he pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted fully; +but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew +less. A great romantic—an idle child.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI. A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE <a +name="citation168a"></a><a href="#footnote168a" +class="citation">[168a]</a></h2> +<p>We have recently <a name="citation168b"></a><a +href="#footnote168b" class="citation">[168b]</a> enjoyed a quite +peculiar pleasure: hearing, in some detail, the opinions, about +the art they practise, of Mr. Walter Besant and Mr. Henry James; +two men certainly of very different calibre: Mr. James so precise +of outline, so cunning of fence, so scrupulous of finish, and Mr. +Besant so genial, so friendly, with so persuasive and humorous a +vein of whim: Mr. James the very type of the deliberate artist, +Mr. Besant the impersonation of good nature. That such +doctors should differ will excite no great surprise; but one +point in which they seem to agree fills me, I confess, with +wonder. For they are both content to talk about the +“art of fiction”; and Mr. Besant, waxing exceedingly +bold, goes on to oppose this so-called “art of +fiction” to the “art of poetry.” By the +art of poetry he can mean nothing but the art of verse, an art of +handicraft, and only comparable with the art of prose. For +that heat and height of sane emotion which we agree to call by +the name of poetry, is but a libertine and vagrant quality; +present, at times, in any art, more often absent from them all; +too seldom present in the prose novel, too frequently absent from +the ode and epic. Fiction is the same case; it is no +substantive art, but an element which enters largely into all the +arts but architecture. Homer, Wordsworth, Phidias, Hogarth, +and Salvini, all deal in fiction; and yet I do not suppose that +either Hogarth or Salvini, to mention but these two, entered in +any degree into the scope of Mr. Besant’s interesting +lecture or Mr. James’s charming essay. The art of +fiction, then, regarded as a definition, is both too ample and +too scanty. Let me suggest another; let me suggest that +what both Mr. James and Mr. Besant had in view was neither more +nor less than the art of narrative.</p> +<p>But Mr. Besant is anxious to speak solely of “the modern +English novel,” the stay and bread-winner of Mr. Mudie; and +in the author of the most pleasing novel on that roll, <i>All +Sorts and Conditions of Men</i>, the desire is natural +enough. I can conceive, then, that he would hasten to +propose two additions, and read thus: the art of +<i>fictitious</i> narrative <i>in prose</i>.</p> +<p>Now the fact of the existence of the modern English novel is +not to be denied; materially, with its three volumes, leaded +type, and gilded lettering, it is easily distinguishable from +other forms of literature; but to talk at all fruitfully of any +branch of art, it is needful to build our definitions on some +more fundamental ground then binding. Why, then, are we to +add “in prose”? <i>The Odyssey</i> appears to +me the best of romances; <i>The Lady of the Lake</i> to stand +high in the second order; and Chaucer’s tales and prologues +to contain more of the matter and art of the modern English novel +than the whole treasury of Mr. Mudie. Whether a narrative +be written in blank verse or the Spenserian stanza, in the long +period of Gibbon or the chipped phrase of Charles Reade, the +principles of the art of narrative must be equally +observed. The choice of a noble and swelling style in prose +affects the problem of narration in the same way, if not to the +same degree, as the choice of measured verse; for both imply a +closer synthesis of events, a higher key of dialogue, and a more +picked and stately strain of words. If you are to refuse +<i>Don Juan</i>, it is hard to see why you should include +<i>Zanoni</i> or (to bracket works of very different value) +<i>The Scarlet Letter</i>; and by what discrimination are you to +open your doors to <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i> and close +them on <i>The Faery Queen</i>? To bring things closer +home, I will here propound to Mr. Besant a conundrum. A +narrative called <i>Paradise Lost</i> was written in English +verse by one John Milton; what was it then? It was next +translated by Chateaubriand into French prose; and what was it +then? Lastly, the French translation was, by some inspired +compatriot of George Gilfillan (and of mine) turned bodily into +an English novel; and, in the name of clearness, what was it +then?</p> +<p>But, once more, why should we add +“fictitious”? The reason why is obvious. +The reason why not, if something more recondite, does not want +for weight. The art of narrative, in fact, is the same, +whether it is applied to the selection and illustration of a real +series of events or of an imaginary series. Boswell’s +<i>Life of Johnson</i> (a work of cunning and inimitable art) +owes its success to the same technical manœuvres as (let us +say) <i>Tom Jones</i>: the clear conception of certain characters +of man, the choice and presentation of certain incidents out of a +great number that offered, and the invention (yes, invention) and +preservation of a certain key in dialogue. In which these +things are done with the more art—in which with the greater +air of nature—readers will differently judge. +Boswell’s is, indeed, a very special case, and almost a +generic; but it is not only in Boswell, it is in every biography +with any salt of life, it is in every history where events and +men, rather than ideas, are presented—in Tacitus, in +Carlyle, in Michelet, in Macaulay—that the novelist will +find many of his own methods most conspicuously and adroitly +handled. He will find besides that he, who is +free—who has the right to invent or steal a missing +incident, who has the right, more precious still, of wholesale +omission—is frequently defeated, and, with all his +advantages, leaves a less strong impression of reality and +passion. Mr. James utters his mind with a becoming fervour +on the sanctity of truth to the novelist; on a more careful +examination truth will seem a word of very debateable propriety, +not only for the labours of the novelist, but for those of the +historian. No art—to use the daring phrase of Mr. +James—can successfully “compete with life”; and +the art that seeks to do so is condemned to perish <i>montibus +aviis</i>. Life goes before us, infinite in complication; +attended by the most various and surprising meteors; appealing at +once to the eye, to the ear, to the mind—the seat of +wonder, to the touch—so thrillingly delicate, and to the +belly—so imperious when starved. It combines and +employs in its manifestation the method and material, not of one +art only, but of all the arts, Music is but an arbitrary trifling +with a few of life’s majestic chords; painting is but a +shadow of its pageantry of light and colour; literature does but +drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral obligation, of +virtue, vice, action, rapture and agony, with which it +teems. To “compete with life,” whose sun we +cannot look upon, whose passions and diseases waste and slay +us—to compete with the flavour of wine, the beauty of the +dawn, the scorching of fire, the bitterness of death and +separation—here is, indeed, a projected escalade of heaven; +here are, indeed, labours for a Hercules in a dress coat, armed +with a pen and a dictionary to depict the passions, armed with a +tube of superior flake-white to paint the portrait of the +insufferable sun. No art is true in this sense: none can +“compete with life”: not even history, built indeed +of indisputable facts, but these facts robbed of their vivacity +and sting; so that even when we read of the sack of a city or the +fall of an empire, we are surprised, and justly commend the +author’s talent, if our pulse be quickened. And mark, +for a last differentia, that this quickening of the pulse is, in +almost every case, purely agreeable; that these phantom +reproductions of experience, even at their most acute, convey +decided pleasure; while experience itself, in the cockpit of +life, can torture and slay.</p> +<p>What, then, is the object, what the method, of an art, and +what the source of its power? The whole secret is that no +art does “compete with life.” Man’s one +method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut his eyes +against the dazzle and confusion of reality. The arts, like +arithmetic and geometry, turn away their eyes from the gross, +coloured and mobile nature at our feet, and regard instead a +certain figmentary abstraction. Geometry will tell us of a +circle, a thing never seen in nature; asked about a green circle +or an iron circle, it lays its hand upon its mouth. So with +the arts. Painting, ruefully comparing sunshine and +flake-white, gives up truth of colour, as it had already given up +relief and movement; and instead of vying with nature, arranges a +scheme of harmonious tints. Literature, above all in its +most typical mood, the mood of narrative, similarly flees the +direct challenge and pursues instead an independent and creative +aim. So far as it imitates at all, it imitates not life but +speech: not the facts of human destiny, but the emphasis and the +suppressions with which the human actor tells of them. The +real art that dealt with life directly was that of the first men +who told their stories round the savage camp-fire. Our art +is occupied, and bound to be occupied, not so much in making +stories true as in making them typical; not so much in capturing +the lineaments of each fact, as in marshalling all of them +towards a common end. For the welter of impressions, all +forcible but all discreet, which life presents, it substitutes a +certain artificial series of impressions, all indeed most feebly +represented, but all aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of +the same idea, all chiming together like consonant notes in music +or like the graduated tints in a good picture. From all its +chapters, from all its pages, from all its sentences, the +well-written novel echoes and re-echoes its one creative and +controlling thought; to this must every incident and character +contribute; the style must have been pitched in unison with this; +and if there is anywhere a word that looks another way, the book +would be stronger, clearer, and (I had almost said) fuller +without it. Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt +and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, +self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate. Life +imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate thunder; art catches +the ear, among the far louder noises of experience, like an air +artificially made by a discreet musician. A proposition of +geometry does not compete with life; and a proposition of +geometry is a fair and luminous parallel for a work of art. +Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both inhere +in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a +work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are +forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of leather, but +by its immeasurable difference from life, which is designed and +significant, and is both the method and the meaning of the +work.</p> +<p>The life of man is not the subject of novels, but the +inexhaustible magazine from which subjects are to be selected; +the name of these is legion; and with each new subject—for +here again I must differ by the whole width of heaven from Mr. +James—the true artist will vary his method and change the +point of attack. That which was in one case an excellence, +will become a defect in another; what was the making of one book, +will in the next be impertinent or dull. First each novel, +and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself. I +will take, for instance, three main classes, which are fairly +distinct: first, the novel of adventure, which appeals to certain +almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man; second, the +novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual +appreciation of man’s foibles and mingled and inconstant +motives; and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same +stuff as the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature +and moral judgment.</p> +<p>And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James refers, +with singular generosity of praise, to a little book about a +quest for hidden treasure; but he lets fall, by the way, some +rather startling words. In this book he misses what he +calls the “immense luxury” of being able to quarrel +with his author. The luxury, to most of us, is to lay by +our judgment, to be submerged by the tale as by a billow, and +only to awake, and begin to distinguish and find fault, when the +piece is over and the volume laid aside. Still more +remarkable is Mr. James’s reason. He cannot criticise +the author, as he goes, “because,” says he, comparing +it with another work, “<i>I have been a child</i>, <i>but I +have never been on a quest for buried treasure</i>.” +Here is, indeed, a wilful paradox; for if he has never been on a +quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has +never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master +James) but has hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military +commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has fought, and +suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in +gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and triumphantly +protected innocence and beauty. Elsewhere in his essay Mr. +James has protested with excellent reason against too narrow a +conception of experience; for the born artist, he contends, the +“faintest hints of life” are converted into +revelations; and it will be found true, I believe, in a majority +of cases, that the artist writes with more gusto and effect of +those things which he has only wished to do, than of those which +he has done. Desire is a wonderful telescope, and Pisgah +the best observatory. Now, while it is true that neither +Mr. James nor the author of the work in question has ever, in the +fleshly sense, gone questing after gold, it is probable that both +have ardently desired and fondly imagined the details of such a +life in youthful day-dreams; and the author, counting upon that, +and well aware (cunning and low-minded man!) that this class of +interest, having been frequently treated, finds a readily +accessible and beaten road to the sympathies of the reader, +addressed himself throughout to the building up and +circumstantiation of this boyish dream. Character to the +boy is a sealed book; for him, a pirate is a beard, a pair of +wide trousers and a liberal complement of pistols. The +author, for the sake of circumstantiation and because he was +himself more or less grown up, admitted character, within certain +limits, into his design; but only within certain limits. +Had the same puppets figured in a scheme of another sort, they +had been drawn to very different purpose; for in this elementary +novel of adventure, the characters need to be presented with but +one class of qualities—the warlike and formidable. So +as they appear insidious in deceit and fatal in the combat, they +have served their end. Danger is the matter with which this +class of novel deals; fear, the passion with which it idly +trifles; and the characters are portrayed only so far as they +realise the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy of +fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start the +hare of moral or intellectual interest while we are running the +fox of material interest, is not to enrich but to stultify your +tale. The stupid reader will only be offended, and the +clever reader lose the scent.</p> +<p>The novel of character has this difference from all others: +that it requires no coherency of plot, and for this reason, as in +the case of <i>Gil Blas</i>, it is sometimes called the novel of +adventure. It turns on the humours of the persons +represented; these are, to be sure, embodied in incidents, but +the incidents themselves, being tributary, need not march in a +progression; and the characters may be statically shown. As +they enter, so they may go out; they must be consistent, but they +need not grow. Here Mr. James will recognise the note of +much of his own work: he treats, for the most part, the statics +of character, studying it at rest or only gently moved; and, with +his usual delicate and just artistic instinct, he avoids those +stronger passions which would deform the attitudes he loves to +study, and change his sitters from the humorists of ordinary life +to the brute forces and bare types of more emotional +moments. In his recent <i>Author of Beltraffio</i>, so just +in conception, so nimble and neat in workmanship, strong passion +is indeed employed; but observe that it is not displayed. +Even in the heroine the working of the passion is suppressed; and +the great struggle, the true tragedy, the +<i>scène-à-faire</i> passes unseen behind the +panels of a locked door. The delectable invention of the +young visitor is introduced, consciously or not, to this end: +that Mr. James, true to his method, might avoid the scene of +passion. I trust no reader will suppose me guilty of +undervaluing this little masterpiece. I mean merely that it +belongs to one marked class of novel, and that it would have been +very differently conceived and treated had it belonged to that +other marked class, of which I now proceed to speak.</p> +<p>I take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by that name, +because it enables me to point out by the way a strange and +peculiarly English misconception. It is sometimes supposed +that the drama consists of incident. It consists of +passion, which gives the actor his opportunity; and that passion +must progressively increase, or the actor, as the piece +proceeded, would be unable to carry the audience from a lower to +a higher pitch of interest and emotion. A good serious play +must therefore be founded on one of the passionate <i>cruces</i> +of life, where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple; +and the same is true of what I call, for that reason, the +dramatic novel. I will instance a few worthy specimens, all +of our own day and language; Meredith’s <i>Rhoda +Fleming</i>, that wonderful and painful book, long out of print, +<a name="citation178"></a><a href="#footnote178" +class="citation">[178]</a> and hunted for at bookstalls like an +Aldine; Hardy’s <i>Pair of Blue Eyes</i>; and two of +Charles Reade’s, <i>Griffith Gaunt</i> and the <i>Double +Marriage</i>, originally called <i>White Lies</i>, and founded +(by an accident quaintly favourable to my nomenclature) on a play +by Maquet, the partner of the great Dumas. In this kind of +novel the closed door of <i>The Author of Beltraffio</i> must be +broken open; passion must appear upon the scene and utter its +last word; passion is the be-all and the end-all, the plot and +the solution, the protagonist and the <i>deus ex +machinâ</i> in one. The characters may come anyhow +upon the stage: we do not care; the point is, that, before they +leave it, they shall become transfigured and raised out of +themselves by passion. It may be part of the design to draw +them with detail; to depict a full-length character, and then +behold it melt and change in the furnace of emotion. But +there is no obligation of the sort; nice portraiture is not +required; and we are content to accept mere abstract types, so +they be strongly and sincerely moved. A novel of this class +may be even great, and yet contain no individual figure; it may +be great, because it displays the workings of the perturbed heart +and the impersonal utterance of passion; and with an artist of +the second class it is, indeed, even more likely to be great, +when the issue has thus been narrowed and the whole force of the +writer’s mind directed to passion alone. Cleverness +again, which has its fair field in the novel of character, is +debarred all entry upon this more solemn theatre. A +far-fetched motive, an ingenious evasion of the issue, a witty +instead of a passionate turn, offend us like an +insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to +the end. Hence it is that, in <i>Rhoda Fleming</i>, Mrs. +Lovell raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too +flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength +of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the +reader when Balzac, after having begun the <i>Duchesse de +Langeais</i> in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts +the knot by the derangement of the hero’s clock. Such +personages and incidents belong to the novel of character; they +are out of place in the high society of the passions; when the +passions are introduced in art at their full height, we look to +see them, not baffled and impotently striving, as in life, but +towering above circumstance and acting substitutes for fate.</p> +<p>And here I can imagine Mr. James, with his lucid sense, to +intervene. To much of what I have said he would apparently +demur; in much he would, somewhat impatiently, acquiesce. +It may be true; but it is not what he desired to say or to hear +said. He spoke of the finished picture and its worth when +done; I, of the brushes, the palette, and the north light. +He uttered his views in the tone and for the ear of good society; +I, with the emphasis and technicalities of the obtrusive +student. But the point, I may reply, is not merely to amuse +the public, but to offer helpful advice to the young +writer. And the young writer will not so much be helped by +genial pictures of what an art may aspire to at its highest, as +by a true idea of what it must be on the lowest terms. The +best that we can say to him is this: Let him choose a motive, +whether of character or passion; carefully construct his plot so +that every incident is an illustration of the motive, and every +property employed shall bear to it a near relation of congruity +or contrast; avoid a sub-plot, unless, as sometimes in +Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of the +main intrigue; suffer not his style to flag below the level of +the argument; pitch the key of conversation, not with any thought +of how men talk in parlours, but with a single eye to the degree +of passion he may be called on to express; and allow neither +himself in the narrative nor any character in the course of the +dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and parcel of +the business of the story or the discussion of the problem +involved. Let him not regret if this shortens his book; it +will be better so; for to add irrelevant matter is not to +lengthen but to bury. Let him not mind if he miss a +thousand qualities, so that he keeps unflaggingly in pursuit of +the one he has chosen. Let him not care particularly if he +miss the tone of conversation, the pungent material detail of the +day’s manners, the reproduction of the atmosphere and the +environment. These elements are not essential: a novel may +be excellent, and yet have none of them; a passion or a character +is so much the better depicted as it rises clearer from material +circumstance. In this age of the particular, let him +remember the ages of the abstract, the great books of the past, +the brave men that lived before Shakespeare and before +Balzac. And as the root of the whole matter, let him bear +in mind that his novel is not a transcript of life, to be judged +by its exactitude; but a simplification of some side or point of +life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity. For +although, in great men, working upon great motives, what we +observe and admire is often their complexity, yet underneath +appearances the truth remains unchanged: that simplification was +their method, and that simplicity is their excellence.</p> +<h3>II</h3> +<p>Since the above was written another novelist has entered +repeatedly the lists of theory: one well worthy of mention, Mr. +W. D. Howells; and none ever couched a lance with narrower +convictions. His own work and those of his pupils and +masters singly occupy his mind; he is the bondslave, the zealot +of his school; he dreams of an advance in art like what there is +in science; he thinks of past things as radically dead; he thinks +a form can be outlived: a strange immersion in his own history; a +strange forgetfulness of the history of the race! +Meanwhile, by a glance at his own works (could he see them with +the eager eyes of his readers) much of this illusion would be +dispelled. For while he holds all the poor little +orthodoxies of the day—no poorer and no smaller than those +of yesterday or to-morrow, poor and small, indeed, only so far as +they are exclusive—the living quality of much that he has +done is of a contrary, I had almost said of a heretical, +complexion. A man, as I read him, of an originally strong +romantic bent—a certain glow of romance still resides in +many of his books, and lends them their distinction. As by +accident he runs out and revels in the exceptional; and it is +then, as often as not, that his reader rejoices—justly, as +I contend. For in all this excessive eagerness to be +centrally human, is there not one central human thing that Mr. +Howells is too often tempted to neglect: I mean himself? A +poet, a finished artist, a man in love with the appearances of +life, a cunning reader of the mind, he has other passions and +aspirations than those he loves to draw. And why should he +suppress himself and do such reverence to the Lemuel +Barkers? The obvious is not of necessity the normal; +fashion rules and deforms; the majority fall tamely into the +contemporary shape, and thus attain, in the eyes of the true +observer, only a higher power of insignificance; and the danger +is lest, in seeking to draw the normal, a man should draw the +null, and write the novel of society instead of the romance of +man.</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">Printed by <span +class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> +Edinburgh & London</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1" +class="footnote">[1]</a> 1881.</p> +<p><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15" +class="footnote">[15]</a> Written for the “Book” of +the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair.</p> +<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17" +class="footnote">[17]</a> Professor Tait’s laboratory +assistant.</p> +<p><a name="footnote84"></a><a href="#citation84" +class="footnote">[84]</a> In Dr. Murray’s admirable +new dictionary, I have remarked a flaw <i>sub voce</i> +Beacon. In its express, technical sense, a beacon may be +defined as “a founded, artificial sea-mark, not +lighted.”</p> +<p><a name="footnote100"></a><a href="#citation100" +class="footnote">[100]</a> The late Fleeming Jenkin.</p> +<p><a name="footnote105"></a><a href="#citation105" +class="footnote">[105]</a> This sequel was called forth by +an excellent article in <i>The Spectator</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote128"></a><a href="#citation128" +class="footnote">[128]</a> Waiter, Watty, Woggy, Woggs, +Wogg, and lastly Bogue; under which last name he fell in battle +some twelve months ago. Glory was his aim and he attained +it; for his icon, by the hand of Caldecott, now lies among the +treasures of the nation.</p> +<p><a name="footnote153"></a><a href="#citation153" +class="footnote">[153]</a> Since traced by many obliging +correspondents to the gallery of Charles Kingsley.</p> +<p><a name="footnote155"></a><a href="#citation155" +class="footnote">[155]</a> Since the above was written I +have tried to launch the boat with my own hands in +<i>Kidnapped</i>. Some day, perhaps, I may try a rattle at +the shutters.</p> +<p><a name="footnote157"></a><a href="#citation157" +class="footnote">[157]</a> 1882.</p> +<p><a name="footnote168a"></a><a href="#citation168a" +class="footnote">[168a]</a> This paper, which does not +otherwise fit the present volume, is reprinted here as the proper +continuation of the last.</p> +<p><a name="footnote168b"></a><a href="#citation168b" +class="footnote">[168b]</a> 1884</p> +<p><a name="footnote178"></a><a href="#citation178" +class="footnote">[178]</a> Now no longer so, thank +Heaven!</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 381-h.htm or 381-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/381 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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